what a beauty!!!!

The Zodiak on a windy day in Puget Sound!

life questions

I have a few life questions:

Why can we put satellites in outer space, have cell phones, create nuclear power, and we STILL cannot invent a lotion bottle that gets ALL the lotion out of it, even as it gets empty?

Why does cheese in great quantities have to make you fat? It's my favourite protein, hands down. Middle age and cheese, can I reconcile the two? Deep sigh.......

Why do we grow hair, to shave it off? I'm not advocating extreme hairiness, which would be disturbing I am sure, but I do wonder at the point of it all.

Is there ever any point at which one has enough chapstick?

Why do people drive in the left lane when they want to go the speed limit or under? Do they not SEE the long line of cars behind them? I'd like to be a member of the Voluntary Left-Lane Patrol. I'd be good, damn good, at my job.

Should we believe in the pre-hensile tail? All the doctors say we have one.

Do we really need directions on a bottle of salad dressing?

Why does the width of the brim of a hat corollate to age? As age increases, so the width of the brim. Is the sun MORE dangerous as you get older or does the sun just give people another reason to be cantankerous, and they must therefore have more sun protection? I'd suggest then, also, that there is an inverse relationship to hipness -- as the width of the brim expands, so the fashion of the wearee diminishes.

Why do people say they love the natural world, but then go to the mountains in a ready made home on wheels, so that they can have all the 'comforts of home'?

Why does Citibank tell you to use credit responsibly and then send you a notice that says, Guess what? We've increased your credit line by 5,000 bucks?

What did they do before dental floss?

As you can see my mind is just brimming with any number of significant ponderings. Put me out of my misery and write to me: please answer my questions if you can.

By the way, Autumn is HERE!!!! The sky is blue, the trees are turning and the air is crisp. Yahoo! I've been loving my rides lately as I fly through the leaves and listen to them rustling. Snowshoeing, winter camping, and skiing are right around the corner, but biking is now. On that note, I think I'll head out for a ride!

Get out and enjoy the blessed creation -- ain't it amazin'?

land rock

Apparently I have what's called Land Rock. It's been two days now since coming off Cynthia's brother's boat, and I can't quite shake it: the terra firma ain't feeling so firma. The computer screen sways in front of me as I write this.

I had a blast -- see pictures. Sea, sky, autumn air, orcas and salmon and river otters and osprey. My heart, in many ways, is replete. Being on a boat causes one to focus on the moment. There are no distractions (when you're not the captain or the engineer or the chef!), only the journey. Not surprisingly, I slept -- a lot. The motion, the enforced silencing of mundane activities, and the cessation of all things normal was a lullaby and nighty night.

In my more wakeful times, my soul was trailing its fingers in the water as I kayaked and explored the bays we anchored in. Salmon leapt around us everywhere one night, desperately flinging themselves toward the spawn -- the stream where they themselves were hatched. Am I doing that, too? Desperately trying to find, not the metaphor for where my life is headed, but the actual life of which I have come? Out of the heart of God borne, am I finding my way back?

Attraction and response -- the salmon climb the ladders not out of want or preference, they do this because they must. They are attracted -- by what, no one really knows -- to return at whatever their internally appointed time is (when they reach a certain state of maturity in their life cycle) and when that time is now, they respond and go. Upstream. For weeks. They don't eat or linger. They swim and jump and flail until they have returned. And somehow also, they know when they have come back to that place of genesis.

With my soul-fingers in the water, I am listening: what am I incorrigibly attracted to and respond to?

I have a few days at home to let this sit, not so much in my head, but in my belly. I know I can't reason out the answer, can't call upon the Great Magician (i.e. the Analyst) to bail me out this time. I have to stay with the motion of my soul as it rocks upon the waters, even though I am back on hard ground.

darkroom

Cynthia made a deal with me: she would do the dishes if I wrote a blog. Hmmmm. Conundrum. Either avoid a creative activity or do the nightly cleanup. Okay, so you know which one I opted for! But, perhaps surprisingly, the choice was a hard one.

Creative acts still scare me. They seem too risky. Too fraught. To likely to cause tangles. And I am not much for tangles. Tedious. Tiresome. Making me, Testy.

When I was 12, I used to ride my bike to the creative arts center, based out of an old, beautiful home, circa 1920, in my home town for a photography class and for the occasional tye-dying workshop. In the photography class, I learned how to develop film, how to alter negatives for different effects, how to play with light and the side of photography which is often forgotten -- processing. Alot happens in that hermetic, basement environment. Things grow in the dark. Images, colours, light. Too much or too little of one or the other and it changes everything.

The red light is glowing in my little darkroom, and I am fiddling with the canister of film, rolling precious celloid exposed to secret slants of light round and round. In preparation. The images embedded, out-of-sight, will be called out and defined, for others to see and perceive. I wonder, in the obscurity of this imposed night, of what will emerge when the lights of daytime and industry are switched back on. What will they see?