November 2020:
Waiting to Inhale

By Corey Sandler

We are still adrift in the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness, the epoch of belief and the epoch of incredulity.

As we move from a dismal spring and summer into a winter of foreboding, we can hope that relief lies before us.

My words derive from the famous opening lines of Charles Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities”, published in 1859.

About the same time, in 1853, Unitarian minister Theodore Parker declared, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. rephrased those words poetically: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Last night, the arc of the moral universe bent toward justice, and that is a transcendent good.

That other arc, the awful accounting of sickness and death in this dreadful year, is bending as well, and still not in a good way.

It will be a while before we can inhale freely. And it will be a while before we can resume something close to our way of life as it existed in January 2020, before the worst of times took hold.

I generally take my constitutionals in the early morning, and today I found myself drawn east to the Black Falcon Terminal, the cruise port of Boston.

Not a single cruise ship has made a scheduled call at the port in all of 2020.

Sunrise at Black Falcon Cruise Terminal, November 8, 2020. Photo by Corey Sandler

Here in my office, I bide my time doing some writing and revisiting my collection of tens of thousands of travel photos I have taken on our various journeys. I continue to uncover hidden gems, and I also have shifted my focus slightly in the direction of artistic reinterpretations of reality.

Bending another arc, you might say.

Here are a few recent works.

Bryggen in Bergen, Norway. March 2019. Photo Art by Corey Sandler
Antwerp, Belgium. June 2013. Photo Art by Corey Sandler
Bilbao, Spain. September 2015. Photo Art by Corey Sandler
Sunrise over Boston Harbor. October 2020. Photo by Corey Sandler
Baobob at Sunset. Photo Art by Corey Sandler

All photos copyright 2020 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. Contact me to obtain rights to use any image.