“To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal,
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
~ Mary Oliver
I was walking to the car after work, reminiscing about all the cool stuff I used to find along the way that I would photograph and write about in the outhouse. I was feeling I’d exhausted the supply. No sooner did the thought cross my mind that I was stopped in my tracks by the wooden relief sculptures between every set of doors on the Whitehall Classroom Building and Patterson Office Tower. I’ve been around campus for more than 25 years now, and while I noticed the reliefs, I never really saw them until today, the very second I thought I wasn’t paying attention. The symbolism is both ancient and modern in appearance, as the rectangular and square elements highlight the style of the 1960’s and 70’s (the buildings were erected in 1969). In cursory searches, I haven’t found any information about the reliefs, but somewhere, someone knows the meaning of the symbols, who had the idea to add this art to the buildings, and who the artist was. I would love to know the answer to these questions, and I hope I never stop paying attention, even if I’ve seen it all before. Coming back to mindfulness: it’s good for my soul.
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