September’s come and gone. How did that happen?

I blame it on Mark Twain.

My head was down all month, re-living his escapades in Hawaii. I poured through his 25 dispatches for the Sacramento Union. I dug into his notebooks and letters. I scoured a gem of a book–Mark Twain and Hawaii–by Walter Francis Frear. And I wrote.

I wrote.

I wrote.

I wrote.

So much so my head hurts. No, it really does. I’m off to see my reflexologist for help this afternoon.

In an 1896 notation, Mark Twain penned, “There is in life only one moment and in eternity only one [moment]. It is so brief that it is represented by the fleeting of a luminous mote through the thin ray of sunlight–and it is visible but a fraction of a second. The moments that preceded it have been lived, are forgotten and are without value; the moments that have not been lived have no existence and will have no value except in the moment that each shall be lived.”

I interpret Twain as reinforcing the importance of living in the moment. What many self-help and spiritual gurus might say as, “Be. Here. Now.”

I managed to drag myself away from my laptop and managed a few outings this past month. There was the trip to Volcano on Big Island. There was a celebration of the opening of Ke Kai Ola, the monk seal hospital. There were a few treks along a few beaches in search of Hawaiian monk seals. There was an evening watching an unusual visitor to Hawaii–the common ringed plover. And there were a few snorkel outings.

I spent this morning reviewing photographs taken in September. It’s just my way of grabbing hold of a few luminous motes of moments in an effort to extend their value a few more moments. Here are my September motes in pictures;-)