My New Years Post

I certainly hope that you all are having a good holiday season.

I’ve been having one; today I was out walking up and down hills taking photo’s in the snow.  Well, mostly snow pellets and bone chilling wind.  This reminded me of all my frozen alone time in childhood in the midwest.  Just your own heart keeping you warm. Unlike the recent 70-mid 80 degree weather of mid-late December this 2010.

But enough bout me.

Now more about me.  This is blogging

I loved seeing the wet ground and landscape vistas.  Took maybe 200 photo’s.  I have 6 gigs more waiting to go somewhere, most notable a new storage system so I can relieve this hard drive.

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In the coming year you can rest assure of more nature photo’s.  All of you dropping in to see them can keep coming, the door is open.

I will continue with my sociocultural analysis, along with psychospiritual aspects.  Some polemical diatribes are to be assured.  My exposé of the pitfall trap of the conservative mind frame will be paramount, for reality yearns to be untethered from human imposed perceptual exclusions of fact and full context.

The problem with this all will be how much time I have for WEBing.  Life is always short, so I am putting my time with the “real world” the hands on and touchable one so important to me.

Congrats on making it swiftly into 2011

Benafia

She laughed. “You watching the game?” I replied perplexed; What game?

On November forth I actually received this comment to my—– What Game?;

“You’re funny.”

That was said after she laughed.

All I can say is; No sports rule my life. I was out taking photos and making a small raised pond.

Flowers in Late Afternoon

-Sunlight happened to penetrate deep into the house where I noticed this nice illumination.

-I only slept a few hours yesterday, then was off for doing set-up and takedown for a local event (volunteer).  A very long day but I still had to do my physical therapy.  The cat wondered what I was up to.  She goes just about wherever I go.

Baking Cookies; Fundraising Event For A Domestic Violence Nonprofit Group

Baking Cookies; Fundraising Event For A Domestic Violence Nonprofit Group On Labor Day (and other days coming and gone as well)

-Here are some of the cookies from yesterday.  I had half of one, which was quite good.  Making them from high quality ingredients, love, good recipes and attention.

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It was fun doing this cookie making.  These will join others, then be added to much more being baked by those who work for and those of us who volunteer for a pilot project that addresses family violence issues with the affected family and community.  Otherwise this effort is funded by those whose cases are accepted, and various grants from foundations, which is kind of like living from paycheck to paycheck.  We’ll do other events throughout the year for this effort.

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The Passionate Eye; Children Full Of Life Video

Thanks to those who put this up on Youtube.

Although this teacher, Toshiro Kanamori, is extraordinary, we all are teachers and students of Life.  His approach is often spiritual common sense, uncommon to doctrinaire thinking.  The participatory intention behind the teaching is also aligned closely with Restorative Justice—addressing individual issues as not only the concern of the individual; that we all have a stake in each others well being.

First video seems to be the longest.  I watched them all together in sequence, it seemed no time at all.

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Teacher’s name; Toshiro Kanamori

Journeys of One

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One Creation

One Existence

One Setting of you

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One earth is here

One breath of air

One Place to be true

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One definition ensues

One view in ones eyes

One heart to conceive

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One Union divided

Ones dreams forgotten

One destiny reprieve

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One Holiness becomes

One sojourners soul

One purpose revealed

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One answer in many

One heart for receiving

One Love once concealed

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The 2009 Southwest US Monsoon

There are interest afoot trying to change the theme of “The Monsoon”, to the Summer Thunderstorm Season.  I’m not sure if the act has been accomplished yet, or if it will be.

Sunday May Showers in the Desert; Not Normal.

Anyway.

They have been saying that there is a 40% chance of an early monsoon season, perhaps weeks early.  Things like La Niña, which seem to add to this seasons precipitation, and the negative things that detract, are favoring the positive precipitation scenario.

It seems only fair, since these same conditions seem to detract from our winter rains.  El Niño often helps the winter rains and harms the summer ones.  At least that seems very consistent to the last many years of these tropical water phenomenon as they effect the Desert Southwest.

Today. Still May and not the “early” monsoon start date of mid June, today there were conditions somewhat like the monsoon.  This week is said to have a few more rain chances.  The question is; could our start be this early?  Often stars are sporadic.  Usually the monsoon start is determined by dewpoint and elevation.  Tucson’s is a 54 dewpoint for 3 consecutive days.  Phoenix is usually later with a 55 dewpoint.  But last year they perhaps began a shift to the Summer Thunderstorm Season, by declaring the Monsoon Season now starts on June 15, wet or not.

Who said we just talk about the weather but do nothing about it?

I will be meeting with real meteorologist this week.  I will be interested in seeing if I can coordinate with some other local weather spotters  when severe weather is occurring, such as last seasons funnel cloud.  If I can triangulate those of us viewing, we may be better able to identify the location of a severe event.  We live here in a non Doppler covered zone, so eyes on the issue in real time may make a warning difference and add up to better info as we call severe events in.  I’m going to check it out anyway.

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To my experience; these summer tornado, and or funnel clouds, have occurred on “Gulf Surges” from the Gulf of California,  which are somewhat unpredictable; happening in Mexico often from the collapse of a mesoscale feature, sending surges of humid air into our present monsoon conditions. And the other enhanced monsoon creature causing  uplift, retrograde low’s/easterly waves, tropical disturbances that might have crossed the Gulf of Mexico into the US-Mexico, or otherwise came up from Mexico.  Last years funnel also seemed to have followed an upper low that may still have been sending upper level cool air aloft from the northwest, greatly energizing cumulus buildups.

We seem unlikely to receive tornado watches, but do get the warning on rare occasion.  I’ve managed to be living in a few of those in Tucson.  Usually these have occurred earlier in the Monsoon Season, but I do not know they cannot occur in late August or into September if some other feature is working with the waining monsoon.

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Weather or not.

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An Orientation To Being

To be or not to be, may be the question (from Shakespeare), but to be or not to be what or how, seem to also issue from existence. In the Bible, as an example of this question, it is asked why one worries about what to wear? The flowers of the field do not worry. Does one gain one hour of life from worrying? I’d say we are trained to say; Yes! We must worry or be tilled under!

Yet from today’s experiential driven societies; “it” seems all about chasing experiences. A hundred or a thousand things one must do before dying. Of course this need to have “it” lends itself to selling ones identity to oneself by a checklist. I can help you catch your experience, get those, I have done that clothing on top of your life. This becomes an identity wed, not only to resource usage and destruction, but to a life of scheduling when one gets to be what one wants to be. Or is that be doing?

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And all the while, you are, I am. We are immersed in Life just as the flower. We may not be vegetation with its needs and requirements, but there is a vast difference between being present now, and planning on being something some time to come. A big agenda laid out into the future carries its own requirements, which have cast backward upon us their own expectation in our minds over the present moment. This can become an addiction scenario that drives one to chase having, by getting. Once I get a new pair of shoes, why I needed them does matter. It also matters why I chose to be fully present however one might be with shoes, or start wishing for something better.

We have been culturally programed to think it is normal and desirable to keep wanting new things, better things (grow the economy mantra). It is one thing to desire to improve ones life and those lives around us by care and innovation. It is another thing to judge ones own life by having. On occasion we can hear the very well-off societies and individuals claim that the poor should not complain since their lot is so much more improved than their present historical conditions suggest.

But the poor may be buying the same “achievement” orientation individuality being proliferated throughout the culture. The poor may have plumbing, when once only the rich had, but the paradigm is in lusting after easy care-free living via wealth and influence. On that; money brings the love consensus reality of economies, the poor are still treated as defacto inferior for their economic condition. While each life is a valuable as any other life.

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I am not so much about wanting things from Life of a item nature; I do not seek new cars or homes. Probably spent only a few thousand on clothes my 50 something years of life, getting a bit of clothing from second hand stores. As a guy, how much have I spent on sports my whole life? Maybe $900.00 mostly on bicycles. No sports theater, but maybe a dozen or so Chicago baseball games as a child.

In my life, I imagine some folks may have wondered what I “want” from Life? Where or what is my list of must do’s? I am mostly concerned with the nature of life in the moment, and not planning on making better moments so much by chasing them down. I will improve the situation around me to aid my life mission and experience as long as they are sustainable ecologically. I did get this computer to blog and do my writing with. I plant many trees and flowers regularly, and do things to help others. I do not require a specific scenario to play out to make my life know it is being a valuable experience. It always is.

Where ones life fits into the Whole of Life, is of paramount importance to the living context our lives are embedded in.  These environmental connections are ignored at ones peril. I am then, organically concerned how I and society think and view Life. I can see the many problematic environmental and social conflicts that issue from human presumption upon the future.

Manufactured need, as well as cultured material addiction dependency, are phenomenal issues facing human consciousness.  That there are fellow human beings so shallow in perception, that they will insist on a self destructive behavior/philosophical matrix as it interfaces with reality, is a dire, potentially humankind suicidal issue as well. Those blinded  of interconnection and relationship in their life settings, do tend to encourage others to share the myopia, to feel good about their own agendas placed upon the future.

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If these questions are not asked; as to the how I exist or what I believe I exist for, a truly conscious state of being a fully present Being may never be known. Those living in contradiction; like a flower immersed in place but worrying over what next to get from the future, may be unable to exit the negative having/getting vacuum driven compulsions, unless intelligent thought is given to what is making one worry over lack or its threat.

We are in a paradox of a sorts; knowing I should be fully present and available to what my life really is, yet existing in a cultural context that defines and treats one as a failure if I am not fully and unconsciously immersed into the treadmill. At least those who use The Commons to “get ahead”, use the lack driven focus to motivate supplication to their interest. But what of the interest of ones life in Life?

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A Late February Day

It’s late February, and we are to toy with going into 90 degrees the next couple days.  At least in the middle of summer it may not get 10 degrees warmer, certainly not 15.

From around here as of today;

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-Latest adobe/concrete project will become a small pond and plant area where one can sit and look at fish.  It will also serve as an anchor for a sitting area in the back yard with some overhead shading where vines will grow.  Maybe wisteria.  Greenhouse with tomatoes growing at left.  Some of these walls where here.  I try to keep what others have done and invent something new from there.  I have added to and altered the walls from block to softer adobe like appearance and eventually color.  The newly added area will blend in when final stuccoing is done.

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The Crystal Ball Tucson Gem and Mineral Shows 2009

The Crystal Ball. About 2 feet in diameter

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-The Great Wall of Tucson. Or. Interstate 10 expansion.

-Over my head

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And Oh Boy! I took some shaky video from my compact camera. I’ll put that up here later.

Life Goes On for a While: Aging still mandatory

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And here I was several years back in my early 40′s.

A friend showed me this photo the other day. I said; “Oh, yeah. I was all worn out when that was taken.” She said; “You always say that about your photo’s.” No. I thought. Late in the day ones, this one particularly, I know I have. I have had an amazing string of eyes closed photo’s. I keep my eyes open for the photo to be taken. Then, as time drags on I figure I can blink. Blink and hear the click. Like clock work. The sleeping through life guy. I have avoided having photo’s taken since childhood.

This photo was taken by a this friend while I was visiting. I am wearing a second hand store shirt in it, and trying to recuperate after 9 or so hours of outdoor construction work. The afternoon temperature was well into the 100′s in those Tucson summers. I remember the first time I saw this picture. It appeared in a 2×2 inch frame. Good, it is tiny, was my first impression. Oh, I thought it was OK. I was not blinking as so often in my photo history. Yet I could see how exhausted I was. I had showered and all that after work, but those summer days can be very draining, even after coffee the energy level did not recuperate.

I bring this up, for now when I looked at this little photo, I could barely tell I was tired then. I can see it around my eyes a little, but now, I do not think of the photo as being as bad as I always thought. I wondered why this perception has changed?

Now that I am somewhat older and grayer, does the fatigue I was feeling at the time not register cause I feel more fatigued more often now? (I am writing this while I am trying to avoid having my back go bad from doing a bending over project for a few days.) Then again, now I am older, and older caries its own kind of appearance changes. Maybe I am associating a younger me with a more energetic me, so the tired part from then is less familiar now from the old context. Could be.

Enough about me. Or the photo thing, anyway.

Life does go on in our awarreness for this while we are here. I remember wanting to get older while a youth. I’d wonder what the mature me would appear as. If lucky(?) one gets to discover the changes of being older. The reverse, however, the waiting to get younger, now lingers in photo’s and movies, perhaps in writings and in stories of what one was like before, before more recent history came with its paintbrush and axe.

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It seems weekly now, that someone I know, or a close friend of theirs, has a parent die. My generation is entering this last run in general terms; most parents will exit and be gone before long. It is different for me. Add up my parents deaths in years ago, and compounded, they’ve been gone for well over 80 years. I grew up with this part missing, for I faced my parents deaths in differing dates as a child. And no, there was no actual substitute for them. I feel much empathy for my friends elder parents losses.

Other elder parents we are are monitoring, are accidents happening; monthly incarcerations into hospitals (falling a number 1 issue), hips breaking, parts being removed, hospital stay creating new health issues. This, while for some of these seem not to be acknowledging the wall coming; that “for a while” eventually comes to an end. It will be right here at hand, immediate, one day. Many are always at that day. The; “It’s a blink of an eye.”

Those of us who have close brushes with death, can sometimes come away with enhanced values for common things great and very, very small. We live in a dynamic Creation, where everything relates to us. What we do does effect all else. We cannot grasp the exact magnitude of our connections and relationships. Close connections often loom in proximity. These days, I would go so far a to generalize that we often try to deny our connections, thus stemming any pressing needs to review responsibilities and accountability’s. This seemingly evasive need to avoid awareness, endemic to the ME individualism paradigm, has cosmological consequence as well.

All this said; love, or passionate connection and awareness for well-being, is something we can be certain this Life needs for a while. No matter the abuse, the loss, the betrayal, the times love seems taken away, in the simple act of returning It by giving it, there is restoration. For a while, I can always offer something up and into Life in this way instead of taking something out. I can discover all the new dimensions to the same Big Life I am a part of.

I can seek to make myself indispensable, for a while. I can know now with confidence; after this while is passed, Life and Love, the same “things” I am a part of, will persist. What I can add to these is the mandate of the eternal now.

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…trying not to blink-

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So Many Wonderful Bloggers

From these leaves; evidence of a tree.

I was just trying to get some self education about blogging; what trackbacks and pingbacks are. I decided to hit the readomatic new tag search instead. There seems to be a lot I do not want to know about blogging, or being a machines apprentice while trying to relax my oxymoron’s.

Anyway. I ended up at a Blog Catalog; http://www.blogcatalog.com/ , where I could just pick my interest and check out spiritual and philosophical blogs. The BC made that easy. I did not register there yet. My blog is eclectic in many respects, so fitting into one category is odd for me. After looking at some philosophy blogs there, I thought maybe that would be the place. Not sure if you can spread yourself around, or if that is a good thing. there is a limit to getting on growing list. Alphainventions is fun as a roller-coaster ride, where you can be surprised about the view. I put that in there so all those Alphainventions folks I noticed dropping by don’t think I moved on, so to speak. We’re all exploring. Anyway’s.

All kinds of us out there, telling it like we see it, know it, wish it, insist it, and every other angle on being a human with an open mind and a willing heart. And yes, for some, just energy and an attitude. What a resource we all are, so many lives we would have never known; thoughts we would not have given. All now at pushes of a button or key.

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