The traveling eye 5: Holding

"The eye has to travel."
                       Diana Vreeland

The eye has to travel, 
in order to observe how best to hold the things we love,

much the way nature does.

The eye has to travel,
in order to consider the wayward journey of things not of one's land.

Not to judge,
but to remember that there are forces more enormous, more powerful and further beyond our control than the minor acts of what are first assumed to be irresponsibility. 

And to also remember that we are all guilty of these accumulations, 
these small, yet mindless acts of discarding.

The eye has to travel, inward, in order to solve the challenge of preserving the things we love.

Not because of some need for nostalgia. Or sentimentality.
But because these objects deserve reverence. 

The things we find deserve to be held.
Even if for a short time.
Even if they are ugly.
Even if the task involved with some of them feels insurmountable.

Because it is through this act of holding
that we learn and teach and discover
the most basic lessons of responsibility.

Summer-long beach clean up, 2014. Prince William Sound, Alaska.