a prayer to know when is the time to surrender to life when is the time to conquer this life and to then know and tend the vast grounds between
a prayer for the small birds whose confidence I can not seem to garner for may they find what they need in this coming barren season although there is no need for I see them every spring
notes… for those who might be new to peruse my blog, I use ‘prayer’ in the non religious sense, if you want to use it in the religious sense, cool, I have no problem with that, I think everyone looks to the sky at some point and asks for something sometime, I was an atheist once upon a time but these days I want to believe there is something else but have to accept the possibility there is nothing and I will simply disappear from all existence when I am gone, there is no hope in that end, so I choose hope over logic in that regard, does it quell my mind and fears ? no… but it is better than utter despair, so that is where I am at, prayer is not a harmful thing, try not to make it selfish, I think that is the right ring… (and I do post other ‘prayer’ works, check out my collections & series page).
so here I am, admiring the moon across the water, shimmering sections of the bay hold my attention, I come back here every year, laziness, familiarity, perhaps, maybe I have found something that suits me, my personality, having the experience of being in the middle of nowhere but yet with slingTV, cable internet and a Starbucks fifteen minutes away, sure, that’s fair, but I am off the beaten path, even if that path is not but a stone’s throw away, the familiarity lets me decompress, the guess and the guess work has been removed, there is still plenty I could do or explore in these parts, just as in my own state there are corners and nooks I have yet to really route around in, I suppose I revel in the strange juxtaposition of this place, the cliffs produce fossils from the miocene era quite often, I am staying in a hand built 100 year old log cabin, and I am sitting here typing on my dumbly suped up alienware laptop, whittling away at the meaning of life or at least mine, it all seems pretentious, sometimes I feel guilty, do I deserve this? do I feel guilt due to circumstance? perhaps, but how can we change the circumstance of how we are brought in to this world, all we can do is be empathetic, I say those words, but I do not know if I believe them 100%, although I should, the truth does not always set you free, maybe like many things I must practice in this, allowing myself to uncoil and feel able to embrace my life such as it is, I did not wrong anyone to have the things I have, maybe the world did, but I do not want to have blind thankfulness to that end, but tonight should not be about such things, I need to clear my mind, feel the subtle gentle wisp of wind, cold dew on the bottom of my feet, I have to decompress, let all the stress from work seep out into the ground, let the moon’s light cleanse me as I lose myself in those ripples down on the bay, soak up each moment and forget myself for a time, deep exhale, the world moves on regardless, this is my time to become lost, for a few days, not quite separated from the race, but enough to recharge and renew, it all begins with the view, and the immediate effect I feel…
you can check out the views of Scientist Cliffs on my YouTube channel, I am uploading the moon vid right now, it is taking some time, I should be posting some nice vids this week from my new 4K go pro style cam… or at least that is the plan…
“ginger gold“ for such as the ocean hath reached the land and scorched with tide by god’s own hand for fierce camille stormed in from the coast and brought forthwith the entire gulf through these valleys that became the sea countless washed past these winesap trees, but amidst this rip in nelson county tract from this ripe new wound so would emerge a fruit pure golden and brightly new so forever we are reminded true of dear old clyde and his wife this plot of earth, the loss of life for from the mud and roots up torn that golden apple took up form, to you, I raise my ginger gold to you rise! from that dire stance this fruit of hope, so behold – so began, the ginger gold.
notes… so this has a lot of footnotes, or links as they are these days, in short I am fascinated by hurricanes and dorian is no exception (I called it floyd 2.0 days ago), I took a look back at the 1969 hurricane season which is a historical one, it produced camille which devastated the gulf coast with a 27 foot (confirmed, probably higher) storm surge, this is a mirror for what happened in the bahamas, so one of the things the storm (camille) produced, outside of the devastation, was the discovery of a new (since popular) varietal of apples, survivors of the massive flooding that killed over 150 people discovered it in the wake of all that tragedy. The rest, well, that should be obvious I hope, and all power to the muse as I wrote this all today in almost one stroke…
there are these moments, tiny flakes of time space, hours of days, one of these, these times when I feel like I am living in past tense, moments that have happened before seem intensely ‘now’, or directly directing the now, overwhelmingly, a feeling floods me as if I have been running in place for years waiting for the past to change, or worse yet sitting in place as the world spins around me, past me, passing by, waiting for something, something that will never come, and the ability to rewrite – a wrong…
Photo by K Zoltan on Pexels.com
the day started out so nicely, with the starch definitely taken out of summer, a cool morning, barely 70 degrees, mail order blue sky, someone must have paid to have all the clouds removed for there are none, at least for now, the sun is warming instead of broiling, a barely noticeable ball playing hide and seek in between the full taller trees behind the house, everything is green, with a little tired at the edges brown, I take a moment to look around, take it all in as it were, mornings like these, makes you want to be rich beyond your wildest dreams so you could just stop, stay in place and experience every ounce, then, with your hands squeeze-twist the very confines of time to get every last drop out, but, like most of us, most of any who have ever walked this earth, I have to take what I can take, in this fleeting passing moment, with a shallow deep breath I take in what I can, trying to commit to memory this little slice of near perfection for later recall, knowing soon enough I will be back in the reality of the race, the pace, cars lining up like ants in an artery, all with our destinations and routines, all under the umbrella of such a perfect day, bills to pay, obligations to meet.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
so I am driving, the traffic is a bit lighter today, you never know when a holiday approaches how said holiday will encroach on your day, so perhaps my mind is off in another place, not distracted by the constant foot race to my brakes and then go stop go stop base routine, I wonder about things, the circumstances of a life, if they would have changed, would I be right here now wondering the same? these are times I wish my memories were not so vivid or clear, or perhaps to be so vapid as to not care, maybe ignorance is bliss, but I can not know of this, I wish for amnesia, will I be happy… or just unaware? I try and tell myself, comfort myself, convince myself, that I would rather have full awareness, to have clarion clarity, but at once I might still want to be an ostrich, and bury my head in the sands of time, how my life might have been different if this or that, the mental exercise, the gymnastics of a foolish mind and lost heart, and her, would we have changed our opinion on having children, and where has all the time gone as that decision now seems past any comprehension or contemplation… from where I am situated I do not remember the sand escaping my palms, slipping from my grasp if I grasped at all, blown scattered by the winds to the four corners of no recompense, and my hands feel empty, youth is fullness, youth is an overgrown garden of possibility inculcated with weeds, and as the years go, some flowers die, others are planted, some bushes manicured, others upgraded to fancier exotics, and not so suddenly the once wild jungle of opportunity has been whittled down quite nicely, quite on purpose, with purpose, at least at the time, no longer allowed to grow wild, everything has order now, the paving stones, the path all neatly appointed, and I look back, am I satisfied with what I have? or who I am? but there is no magic elixir in the face of time, no amount of thought or determination can catch even a second in a bottle, or snare a minute in a net, my thoughts seem shackled by the past, tension on the chains, my own doing, but there is no instructions how to steer this ship, how to set the sails of life into the headwinds of success, for as I cross the trade-routes and circumnavigate, like the great explorers, I come to know, to sail around, this earthly globe, I arrive back here, in past tense, all the same, but years now spent.
Music to read by… (when will you just trust me and click the links?)
the clouds are like a perfectly aligned photograph of a still fire bloom set upon the dazzling supreme aqua of a pristine tropical ocean, maybe a cliche, maybe not, I’ll take it any day of the week, and three times today or tonight as the sun is slipping under the horizon, even though this is really just the earth’s rotation, such a large but understood concept, but do we stand here and admire that fact? or feel the spin, feel the ground whipping around at dizzying speeds, all with our terra firma feet planted well on this ground, the dirt, the thin skin layer of the molten apple we call earth, a seething ocean of fire just a few miles, under where we feel so safe, a thin layer of air all that separates us from space, how precarious we are, but do we perceive it, we worry more about the local buzzing about, unaware of some outer calamity that could end our little love affair with ourselves, the action of every breath of every being, an orchestra of the absurd chances of just being, being here, writing this, or reading these words, I am truly amazed in moments like this, I think nature is sneaky, or wise, or both quite combined, to show us glimpses, here and there, drops of reminders, breath taking visions, thundering falls, tiny bugs of imaginable stripe and scope, unimaginable combinations of dna in humans alone, the colors, of eyes, of hair, heights, and smiles, the buffet of laughter shared across global realms, all revealed in an evening sky, the signs are all there, they describe locations, the mile markers, more subtle than neon flashing colors but no less informative, all around, so train the mind, use your eyes, take in that precious breath, hold a loved one for just a moment to feel that warmth, that is the miracle of life, this is bounty, this is our corner of the universe, the only one we can possibly know but we are here in the face of impossibility, that rare bloom of existence, for a short while, stars have formed your very core, for once twilight is now your veins, once heavenly bodies are your precious thoughts, take a moment, absorb the world’s wonder, feel the universe in your bones as we are one, we all come from the most basic of elements, a recipe of those touched by a spark, and here you are.
sitting at a light, a familiar one, a common one, route one and nine, or maybe just route one at this point, a typical late summer afternoon, the sky bragging and flashing an amazing spectrum of colors, if you care to stop by, and I do, for a moment, collect up my consciousness off the floor, and look up to that sky, something I hope I never tire of, or at least remind myself to remember the sky by, on days that are more or mere gray, or perhaps when my outlook is under the weather, to remember, days such as this, windows down, sounds of my choosing caressing my ears, staring out into that sky, getting lost but not enough to piss off, those in traffic with me, waiting to make a left, and then – a burst across that sky, a flock of geese, candian probably, some other type, your guess, immediately I think to myself, for who else am I going to think to, that I enjoy geese more than other flocks, the lines, the patterns, the organization, the ultimate arrow point, perhaps this says more about me, on a psychological level, than I might care to admit, but in flight, the precision, the dynamic of coordination, the collaboration of individuals, appeals to me, at some base level, my base level, rather than the flocks that look like schools of fish darting in swirls back and forth like a whirlwind, no, I much prefer the geese, and there is a honk, not from them, for the light has turned green…
Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com on Pexels.com
I place my hand upon the trunk run my fingers along so I might read a story above under thumb the bumps of history I do not remember how long since I lost my worldly sight for I am the known wise man and those seek me out
but for that which wisdom I have gained was paid for with which I left behind so perhaps that is my lesson to teach those still with vision
notes… written back in June, revised just now, one of those that sprang from a single thought, me just running my hand down a tree trunk, when I was walking my dog, and thinking what so many have thought, what has this tree seen ? and could I ever tap into that knowledge ? and if I could…
Shades of My Garden 