These two things then thou must bear in mind; the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years, or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.-Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius (pp. 13-14). Kindle Edition.
When I began photographing the Foxtail Agave for my new series, I had a vision that I was going to start from the overall form of the plant, then zoom in for details that became more and more abstract until the plant was no longer recognizable. This approach can be taken with a lot of things you want to explore: start with the satellite map, then go on restricting your universe until it is very, very small. Then look at this very small part and try to make sense out of it without attempting to associate it with the whole. Imagine you have been helicoptered into a very small island while your eyes were covered, and now you are in this place you know nothing about.
Seeing things for “what they are” is obviously not easy for humans, because we label and categorize everything, but it is possible to use our brains to make different connections and associations when the old associations are temporarily forgotten or blocked out. I think this is one reason why abstract paintings and photography have an appeal. We look at them and look at them again, trying to make sense of shape and form.
What does all that have to do with Marcus Aurelius and time? Well, we can look at our lives as a “whole” and see that it has a lot of past in it, a short present, and a somewhat fuzzy future. We do that all the time. Things get interesting, however, if we allow ourselves to “zoom in time” to its smallest possible fraction, the very now, and try to discover it all over again without resort to or considerations about what came before and what is expected to come after. Remember when you were a baby? Of course not, but that wonder, that amazement at all the new things we don’t recognize or know, that is the only “thing” we actually lose when we die. The rest has already been lost, or was never ours to begin with.
I took the FEATURED PHOTOGRAPH with a 50mm mirrorless lens, at f/10, 1/100s, ISO 400, handheld.
My previous posts about my Foxtail Agave project can be found here.
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It is all about the light 
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