Things are,
and human beings,
gifts and sacrifices are,
animals and plants are,
equipment and works are.
The particular being stands in Being.

Through Being there passes a veiled fatality
that is ordained between the godly and the countergodly.
There is much in being that man cannot master.
There is but little that comes to be known.
What is known remains inexact,
what is mastered insecure.
Beings are never of our own making,
or merely our representations as it might all too easily seem.

When we contemplate this whole as one,
when we apprehend, so it appears,
all that is—
though we grasp it crudely enough.

—excerpt The Origin of the Work of Art
by Martin Heidegger page 178

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A friend sent a link to a collection of vintage photographs.  I viewed these images, some from the recent past, within my lifetime, remembering the words of Heidegger used to open this post.  A great deal of the flow of the manifold of experience is beyond our grasp, escapes our comprehension.  I am certain that only a sliver is available to our mind and that is

incompletely understood.  The collection of photos, people and things frozen in an instant of their life span reminded me that every single element displayed is related to every other person and things displayed.

There is a “whole” in which everything participates, a grand dance if you will.  And

there is a sadness to it all, which is palpable in the photos.  Do you feel the sadness, the inescapable sadness?

…..which Heidegger characterizes as:

a veiled fatality
that is ordained between the godly and the countergodly.

Also, there is a spaciousness of mind, a clearing of felt kinship with the people, and the things in the photos…

A few of the photos are displayed here without further comment.