A Different Algorithm
“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.”
A winter exploring the ancient mountains of home.
Slowly, inefficiently, surely.
Three notes of passing age while passing through.
Familiar pathways ensconced in a different living algorithm.
Older
Measurably older. Older than my first use of a film camera decades before; older as well than my first childhood forest wander into curiosity, awe, reverence.
Age felt now in the hips and heels after the heavy hikes, but also in the mental scaffolding.
A welcome, biologically-scheduled, physically-inevitable patina to own and not lament.
Humbler
Few preconceptions of the world survive. Long-held certainties pushed aside for new interrogation.
Daily routine met instead with the quieter senses. Acceptance and rejection of the pesky, tenuous limitations of precious attention.
All somehow both integral and subject to change, sometimes overnight, without notice.
Wiser
Internal combustion hidden but formed from decades of life, jubilation, loss.
Patience to notice and absorb all insignificant patterns to synthesize before permanently, resolutely going dormant.
A defining, lasting brightness within. Carrying the fire.
Older, 3/13/26
Humbler, 3/6/26
Carry the Fire, 2/12/26
