Tag Archives: learning

Taking a shower …

is sometimes one of the hardest things to do.

Maybe it is a day.

Or a week.

Or possibly several weeks.

It shouldn’t be that difficult, but it is.

It requires focus, dedication, ambition and the willingness to wash away everything that has built in the past days, weeks, or even a month.

I’m not sure I’ve ever gone a month without showering, but I not positively certain.

What I know for a fact is that I showered tonight.

Super hot water and excellent Eucalyptus soap given to me by a dear friend.

Managed to shave my legs and stuff.

Quite a feat as that hasn’t been done since last December.

Did you note the song title?

Obviously, I have had multiple showers in the past year, but they are hard.

I love being clean.

I love my very awesome Eucalyptus soap.

I want to smell wonderful and yet there is this thing.

I know, on some level, I have friends.

I love my friends.

I love my family.

But when I am at home, with my dog Murphy, I get to be me.

I get to clean house when I feel like it.

Dust when I want, vacuum when the dog hair takes over my house and shower when I feel like it.

It took me a while to realize it, but my life if perfect for me.

I did all the crazy stuff early and got it out of the way, and now I’m sitting beside my dog looking at a three day weekend.

I think I may get a haircut tomorrow because my hair is clean from my long, hot shower.

 

 

 

 

 

Light, to me …

is much more than simply the absence of darkness.

I watch it.

I chase it.

I adore it.

The golden hour, and there are two, are my favorite times to be alive.

I didn’t take courses in photography, though I wanted to.

I learned through trial and error.

Light is unforgiving.

If I miss the perfect moment, it doesn’t offer a do-over.

It is Edwardian in its boundaries and doesn’t allow room for foolishness.

I love that about it.

It is constantly changing.

Sometimes, it is indescribable and others completely intolerable.

It gives what it gives; therefore putting the burden of catching it on my shoulders.

It keeps me centered.

It makes me yearn for something that, to a layman, is intangible.

As a photographer, however, I understand the language of the light and revel in it.

It is what fuels me, sustains me, makes me who I aspire to be.

I work as a nurse so I can be a photographer.

It is all I ever wanted to be and the light, inexplicably, seems to understand that.

I’m a child of the Creator and He has given me an eye for His magnificence.

I am, beyond description, blessed.

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Light, in every season, in several circumstances and with unimaginable awe makes me fall, literally, to my knees in thanksgiving.

I adore and will, as long as I have breath in my body, seek the light.

It is HIS gift to me and I praise HIM, through photography, for it.

Amen.

In the midst of the Polar Vortex …

my heat goes out, or at the very least makes it painfully obvious that it is planning, in the very near future, to take an extended vacation.

No phone, no lights, no motor car; not a single luxury.  (this is completely untrue, but it manifested itself, unbidden, in my head) .

Not good, I suppose, but not the worst thing that could happen.

Not the song in my head, (while the theme from Gilligan’s Island wasn’t my first choice, I suppose it beats Henry the Eighth), but the heat going out.

Keeping up with my brain is a full time job and sometimes, even I want to quit.

Yet, I digress.

I still have power, which means my heated mattress pad works.

I still have hot water so hot showers are there to eradicate the goosebumps.

I have many quilts that Granny (God rest her soul), lovingly made for me.  They are warm, too, hand sewn and have enough love in them to keep me warm even if they were only threads.

I don’t know what is wrong with it.

The heat, not the shower, the quilts or the mattress pad.

It started making a noise that sounded similar to the sound the brakes on my car makes when I stop suddenly.

I suppose I will have to call the man.

I could call my dad and have him call the man, but I am working diligently on being independent, self-sufficient, self-reliant.

Funnily enough, I waited until I was nearly fifty years old to come to this decision.

That is, in part, why I don’t know how to fix my own, among other things,  poorly functioning furnace.

When I learn to fix the furnace, change the oil in my car, replace my brakes and fix the broken tail light that has gotten me pulled over three times this month, I will have made it.

I’m not inept.  I can photograph nature  like nobody’s business.

I can string words together to articulate what I want to say when I want to say it.

I can write poetry that incites tears and sketch peoples’ faces that illicit sighs.

I have plenty of artistic ability, but it is fairly useless when things break.

Oh well, it is what it is and will be what it will be.  At some point, the man will come to fix my furnace and I will once again bask in heat; in the meantime, I’m sitting here with my heavy coat, gloves, ear-muffs and scarf on.

And for each of those things, I am grateful.

One moment, one hour, one day, one month, one event at a time.

That’s how I see life.  A little thing like a crippled furnace is no reason to change that.

It will get fixed when it gets fixed.

It isn’t, by a long shot, the worst thing that could happen.

Staying warm the old-fashioned way and finding it adventurous while I do so.  I am, after all, the adventurous sort.

I simply didn’t expect adventure  to exploit itself in my living room, but being a Sagittarius, I will take it as it comes and make the best of it.

That is what we Jesus loving, faith having, wishful thinking Sagittarius beings do.

A snowy day at the base of Clinch Mountain

A snowy day at the base of Clinch Mountain

A beautiful view of a snowy Clinch Mountain

A beautiful view of a snowy Clinch Mountain

Snow-covered cows as they indulge in hay.  They seem no worse for the wear.  Encouraging.;

Snow-covered cows as they indulge in hay. They seem no worse for the wear. Encouraging.;

Political correctness …

has really cramped my style.  There are things I want to know, questions I want to ask, mysteries that I want to unravel, but since the world has decided that everything is taboo, it seems that I’m not allowed to ask.  If I ask what the significance of a certain dress is for, I am frowned upon.  If I ask what the red dot on the forehead means, I am given the cold shoulder.  I don’t ask because I find it odd or disturbing; I ask because I am curious.  I really want to know.

I want to know what someone from India has for breakfast on an ordinary day.  I want to know what someone from Germany holds dear in their heart.  I want to know why and how and who.  I am curious by nature and have a hard time keeping my questions to myself, but find that more often, instead of answers, I am given silence.  Why is it that we have to be so separate.  My blood is as red as the next person’s.  My heart beats, my lungs fill with air, my eyes see, my mouth speaks.

I spent my years in elementary, middle and high school fighting cliques, trying to belong in a place where I really didn’t.  I really thought that, once I reached adulthood, those things would pass away.  There are things I want to learn, people I want to photograph and cultures I want to know more about, but I feel thwarted by a bigotry, prejudice and hatred that isn’t mine.

I know folks of different nationalities and cultures, different colors and countries, but I, because of the standards the world has set, am an outsider.  I don’t want it to be that way, but try as I might to find a way to change it, I continually find myself on the outside looking in.  I would be honored to be invited to sit at the table for a traditional African American New Year’s Day dinner.  To participate in the beauty of the preparation of an Indian wedding.  To partake in the awe of a German Christmas tree decorated with candles.  To walk in the vineyards of Italy and see the beauty that is there, learn what makes them beautiful and listen to the song that the growing vines sing.  I want to sit in an Irish Pub listening to the storytellers as they weave their magic and feel that I am a part of it all, not an outsider, not an American, not  anyone except who I am.  How satisfying it would be to sit at a long table, whether I speak the language or not, with a culture not my own and just absorb it, draw it into myself and hold it in my heart for all time.  I want to understand the color of red in the paint of Easter eggs in Russia.   I want to know what the traditional foods of Hanukkah represent, what the words to the songs they sing  mean.   I have so many questions … and no one to answer them.

I am not politically correct.  I call a spade a spade and am not afraid to speak my mind.  I only wish that there were others, ones who were willing to share, so that what I know of would be more than what I know of.  I am willing to learn if someone is willing to teach me.  I am willing to open myself to the possibilities of endless fascination, but before I can, there must be those willing to open themselves to the possibility that everyone does not harbor a heart of hate.  I am a child of God, that is true in the purest form, and as such, I want to know all there is about the world I live in.  I cannot help it.  I want to know.  I want to learn.  I want to know.  Surely, in all the world, there are others like me.  Teach me and I will learn, and as I learn, I will teach others.  Together, one at a time, we really can change the world.  Come … Let us reason together.

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A heart for all mankind … a heart for knowledge … a heart for truth

you just might be a fruitcake…

Ok… now I am beginning to become somewhat concerned… I wasn’t concerned when I listened to Jimmy Buffet over and over day and night for the past two weeks, at home, in the car and at work… I wasn’t really aware that I shouted out lyrics to his songs out of the blue at the oddest of times and already know nearly every word to my favorites (although, if I had been aware, I would have begun to realize that something was up)  Not really worried when I realized that I actually paid money for skull and crossbones tablecloths on a post-halloween sale to use in a “pirate motif” at my birthday dinner… didn’t flinch when I bought the “ghost pirate” at the same post-halloween sale… never occurred to me that there was a time in my life when I had not been a Parrothead and really was bummed that I was an over 40 victim of fate…  never mind my new love of boat drinks…  i’ve put myself in time-out twice for saying hell and damn… two words I never used to say… at least not out loud… It doesn’t bother me that I think, seriously, about flying down south for a few days this winter… not just south, but SOUTH… Now although everything so far has pointed towards obsessive behavior and maybe even a little, um, for lack of a better word, weird, even for me… it feels natural, like a second skin so… I didn’t realize how absorbed I had become by the “island life” and that I actually considered myself an islander… at least not until an encounter at Kroger the other night that made me realize that I might need to run to the nearest Margaritaville and have a cheeseburger in paradise until the whole fruitcake moment has passed… I was standing in front of the febreeze and glade scents… I love those new febreeze pop-up things, whatever they are, and was smelling them… they have a scatch and sniff doohickey on the front… that said, there was this man coming in my direction and he says to me “which one smells the best”… I held the one in my hand up, hawaiian some such or another, and said “this one”… so he goes and picks up one and says to me, “so what does hawaiian stuff smell like”… and I said.. and this is what made me realize that I have earned my Parrothead badge… I said “it smells like one particular harbor”…  now is that messed up or what… i need help and i need it in a hurry…  for what it’s worth, tho, he put the febreeze in his cart…
I LIKE MINE WITH LETTUCE AND TOMATOES, HEINZ 57 AND FRANCH FRIED POTATOES….