When I was a young man I backpacked alone around the world, wishing that I had the ability to write about what I was seeing and to capture great photographs.
Somewhere along the way I put my passion for the arts aside and got a “real” job.
Fortunately, I’ve lived long enough to rekindle the dream. I’ve just published a memoir, Delta Jacks and Other Cards (see www.deltajacks.com), and I’m romping through the world of digital photography—rediscovering the beauty around us, from the dazzling colors of India to the majesty of Montana.
I have been pixilated, becoming fairly drunk on life.
As I say in my book, “We take the days or years that God gives us and eventually the light of life fades and goes dim, turning inevitably to darkness, the default mode of the universe. How will those of the future know we were here, that we laughed and loved and had our time in the sun?’
The arts provide a darned good answer. William Faulkner says that when we pass through the wall of oblivion some of us want “to leave a scratch on that wall—Kilroy was here—that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see.”
We were here.
(Whit Perry is a past president of the LaGrange Art Museum.)
