“The Hope Of Nations”
Kevyn Bashore’s 365 Day iPhone Photo of the Day
St. Michael’s Lutheran Church
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Saturday, December 31, 2011
iPhone 4s Camera: Instagram – Photoforge2
Tag Archive: candle
“Birthday Treat”
Bravo Restaurant
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
iPhone 4 Camera
Photoforge 2
Pop! Cam
Yesterday, during my 49th Birthday, I was away on a business trip to Allentown. Thankfully, my good friends Jill and Eric were hosting me and they treated me to a delightful dinner at Bravo, one of our favorite local restaurants. Today’s photo is a shot of my birthday treat. It’s not great art, but while I am shooting my 365 Day iPhone Photo Project, I am posting some shots that simply document my experiences or travels throughout the year.
Before my birthday dinner, I received news that I had won the bid for the job on which I was consulting. After my birthday dinner, they called to say they were on a hiring freeze. My day had several highs and lows. Like life.
Birthdays are strange yearly occurrences where one minute or day you are a certain age, and the next minute or day you are another age, never to return to that which went before you. It’s like walking through a gate, actually being forced through a gate, with no passage for return. And each successive yearly gate ushers us nearer and closer to the final gate of no return: Death, and that which comes beyond.
I have heard stories that in some countries people line up to visit the elderly, in order to honor them and to glean their wisdom. In America, age has become like a blemish everyone wants to hide in places called Retirement Homes. What has happened to us here? In L.A. they say you are either 19 or 99. No one wants to be old or show their age. For the past ten years, the guy who cuts my hair has strongly suggested I use dye on my beard to “wash” away the gray. I simply told him I earned every one of my gray hairs. We spend billions on tummy tucks, diet fads, hair coloring, make-overs, body-building, trainers, and body transforming surgeries, all to flee, or to hold back, the raging tide of, graying, wrinkles, fat, and age. And Reality TV exacerbates this trend with shows like “The Real Housewives of (a city near you)”, where the focus on beauty and youth trumps any pursuit of emotional, intellectual or spiritual growth.
And so here I am on the second day of having walked through Gate 49, with less hair on my head than ever, and more in other places I never dreamed possible, with crevasses on my face, a sore hip, bruised rotator, and the hardest time yet in losing winter fat. And to think that as a child I actually thought crows-feet on adults were beautiful, because I thought it made them look happy and wise. Maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe crows-feet, wrinkles, gray hair, and fat, are actually beautiful.
In either case, I’m what my friend Jessica did when she turned 30: she celebrated 30 new experiences that year. Or what my sister, Crystal, did last year when she celebrated her entire 50th Birthday Year. As Gate 50 is appearing on my horizon, I’m choosing to act on new, creative impulses and to dig up creative works from my past that have lain fallow, pressing ahead with passions and projects, to turn vaporous dreams into reality.
If not now, when?
If not me, who?
May it be so for you, as well.
Cheers to the most fulfilling year ever–and the least of all those yet to come!
The iPhoneographic World 