Torn with Time

One year ago today, October 3, 2012, Awakenings featured Torn with Time. A revisit today provides enhancement and a challenge.

Oakland at Broadway & E 41st (Photograph © 2011 by Richard Sargent)

As you travel along life's highway, what enters your mind when you pass decaying billboards, faded, peeling, or etched with graffiti? What is your first gut reaction? Do you view them as merely nothing more than an eyesore, dirty, ragged and ugly? Do you turn the other way, possibly start a conversation and leave each behind without the slightest thought?

Today, Awakenings plants a seed and challenges you to see it grow — grow from something torn with time into something inspirational. Next time you pass a decaying billboard take time to consider it differently, embrace the past, empower the present and enrich the future.

Embrace the Past . . .

Instead of a quick glance, immediately looking away, take a closer look. Consider each as more than dying words blistering from scorching heat across disparate images. Think about the faded words and torn images as part of history. . .the evolution of change.

Empower the Present . . .

Inspiration can be gathered from the strangest sources, even decaying billboards. Each billboard is a colorful, creative, engaging melting pot. Now, at first glance, what inspires you?

Enrich the Future . . .

What once attracted attention now reflects aging as life itself. Become aware of your life's billboards as images inch their way forward revealing memories of events or friendships gone, but not forgotten.

 Torn with Time

With time comes progression, with progression comes change, 

with change comes growth that often stills memories as new ways of the world emerge.

Now with fewer bits of information

billboards ravaged with time

maintain their outer shapes

lingering of secrets hidden

as paper peels and drapes

  

diminishing camouflaged enigmas

lay under cover out of view

concealing mysteries beneath their skins

’til forgotten layers push through

 
  

rugged frames, solid foundations

endure the eroding sands of time

weathering the change in seasons

as the layers gradually unwind

 
 

billboards generating smiles of life

reveal captivating thought

pressing designs into memory

as images remain taut

 
 

bleached paper and spotted ink

subtly reflect on times past

fading into the distance

as lone ghosts of meaning last

 
 

onionskins exposed to the world

tear freely from the scorching surge

relinquishing sun-dried membranes

as tomorrow’s new skins emerge

©2013 Awakenings

Sharla Lee Shults

"Without skin, we would have no wrinkles; without wrinkles, we would have no past, present, or future. Within each new wrinkle resides a memory torn with time."

—Sharla Lee Shults