2011: Adieu

Photo © Joachim Beyrowski.

To mark the end of the year, here are a few of the most interesting images I've come across on the Web as the year closed. No copyright infringements are intended.

Farewell to a strange year.  Whatever tragedies, struggles and rewards it brought, it became a year en route to something larger.  They say the journey is more important than the final goal, and perhaps we will look back on 2011 and miss it for precisely that reason. It was a year with some answers, but not all of them, a year when we still did not know what would happen; we were like people clustered in the cafés of 1910.  It was a year of hanging threads, cliffhangers, a year that needed a sequel.  In retrospect, maybe we will remember that it carried promise and hope, a potential for something beautiful and amazing that will change everything. The year began with catastrophe, was filled with upheavals, violent endings and still, the unseen promise of things - whether they will be good, or bad, or terrible - to come. It was a year of suspended animation, as we waited for the recession to end and more of the world's sleeping secrets to awake. Now, this year's dance is done.

Possibly in anticipation of trials to come, some of us did not make it (see here; here; here; here; here; and here).  Whatever it will bring, tomorrow is a new dawn, one step deeper into the second Millennial decade.  But until that countdown to January 1, Fin.

Super Moon, St. Michael's Tower at Glastonbury Tor (21 March 2011). Image Source: Life.

An illuminated picture of North Korea's late founder and ruler Kim Il-sung -- father of autocrat Kim Jong-il -- decorates a building in the capital of Pyongyang, October 5. Image Source: Life.

Swimming Home. Photo © Joachim Beyrowski.

Image Source: I09.

New Orleans Hallowe'en, 2011. Image © A. Evans / National Geographic (1 November 2011).

Timeless, Li River, Guilin, China.  Photo © Michael Anderson. See his Website here.

Pacific Midnight, Tutuila Island, American Samoa (2010). Photo © Michael Anderson.

Singsing Tambaran (Dance of the Spirits), Tsoi Lik Island, Papua New Guinea. Photo © Michael Anderson.

The Ice Cavern, Canadian Rockies (2003). Photo © Michael Anderson.

Autumn in Patagonia. Photo © Michael Anderson.

Pietro Mascagni, Cavalleria rusticana, Intermezzo (1890). Video Source: Youtube.

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Those who look outside, dream; those who look inside, awaken.” - Carl Jung