Aging, in oneself or one’s surroundings, is nearly impossible to see until, suddenly, it has already happened.

Shiny new paint become dingy and marked; interiors and websites become dated, and as we see from these remarkable gifs, WE ourselves, slowly change…We are all in process.  A remarkable series of gifs at My Modern Met perfectly show the process.

AgingFaceTransformations7

Aging provides many gifts. Perhaps the most valuable one is simple endurance and a honed, subtle kind of presence. Guatemalan poet Humberto Ak’abal expresses this movingly in Poems I Brought Down from the Mountain.
GRANDFATHER
The street silent,
the wind fresh.
The ninety-year-old man
leaning
on the bannister
of the stone bridge
looking at the river,
or the river
looking at him.
Short in stature
strong of character,
fierce grey eyes,
k’iche’ voice.
Cornerstone of the house
and cornerstone of the town.

—Collaborative post by Sally Schneider and Susan Dworski…improvised, 3,000 miles apart!


Gifs via My Modern Met

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