The Charm of Time

        After coming home from Alki beach today, I looked at some of the photos I took and, all of a sudden, a thought came to me.  For several years, I've been taking photos of stuff randomly( mostly depended on the timing and the mood) without really being serious or wanting to accomplish anything out of it rather than killing time. When it was sunny out and I was in the mood for a walk and a change of scene, I would just drive around(sometimes had a plan, sometimes had not) to some neighborhood, park my car, and walk around taking photo. Way before I was already into architecture and street shops or that kind of stuff but recently I was drawn to take photo of houses, old ones in particular. Seattle sky is so fluctuate even when I chose sunny days to go out, I often ended up with a mixed of bright and lonely afternoons, sometimes the sadness of the rain, and sometimes the cold and dull evenings. But because of the randomness I also discovered something really great. It is the beauty of time!

       Time is in constant moving with no returning. We cannot go back in time( of course, unless we successfully invented a time machine) but that is the whole point of life. Time allows us a chance to make mistake, to forget, and to not know what the future holds. Imagine just a minute what we would do with a time machine. My imagination would be that we would go back to the past to undo mistakes and we would go to the future to predict the success so that we could live happily in a present. But since we are human beings, we naturally make a lot of mistakes and, therefore, naturally make a lot of wishes. Chances are we would spend all of our time going back and forth between the past and the future and have no time at all to be anything now, let alone happy. In a traditional Italian rustic style farmhouse, the beauty of the unit lies mainly on what nature provides. The stone walls that have various sized stones, the terra-cotta tiles that at their best when used, the wall finishes that used thin amount of paint( because traditionally Italian farmers could not afford too much paint), the wooden floors that preferred when laid with nails to produce a squeaking effect and applied with local beeswax or not treating the wood at all to let the time puts warmth to its texture.

        Just the same way I came to appreciate the old, abandoned, unimportant things I happened to come across such as the old houses. Then I thought why not put together a series of images that convey the sense of time and its charm. I'm no great photographer but the thought just seemed like a fun idea to me. I'll do as much as the time allows me to.