Exfoliating Our Dysfunctional Tribes
Tribal attitudes are the cause of closed minds, prejudice, and xenophobia. Therefore, I’m a universalist. I’m a citizen of the world.~Robert Westbrook
I have spent the better part of my last years attempting to exfoliate tribal detritus from my mental alignment with the ultimate goal of being part of nothing so I can be part of everything. It is an undertaking significantly more difficult than…
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Harvesting an Afterlife
If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies’ territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers.~Edward Abbey
There is one more day to pass before the year 2023 on the Gregorian calendar, a modification to the Julian calendar introduced by Julius Caeser in changing the 1 to 46 BC. The Julian calendar was, itself, a derivation of a…
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Meaningless Fantasies
We all end up where we are supposed to be.~Robert McCall
If one believes in an omnipotent, somewhat benevolent deity whose whims can be altered by petitions then one can make a case that everywhere we are is where we are supposed to be for the furtherance of the grand, universal plan formed by said deity before creation was kicked into play and time was instantiated. It is a belief that gives…
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Disarmament by Conservatives
You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!~Dr. Who
It should come as no surprise adherents to the conservative party in the United States are reading the Hitler playbook and fighting to have books banned in schools, libraries, and even independent bookstores. It is a tactic, part and parcel,…
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Building Our Cages
Birds in a cage think flying is an illness.~Alejandro Jodorowsky
Many of us humans are born free before spending our days, weeks, years, and decades building the cage in which we will reside for most of our lives, the cage that hems us in before blocking out the light from which wisdom grows. The cage traps us so gradually that we are oblivious to the slow erosion of our decreasing…
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Tabula Not Raza
I am not sure I exist, actually. I am all the writers I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.~Jorge Luis Borges
As any engaged parent of multiple children can attest, being born with a Tabula Raza, a blank slate at birth is a complete and total myth as preposterous as the mythologies disguising themselves as religions, plaguing…
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Flying in Water
Since I could not get a crisp photo of Sandhills up close and personal, I played with my photos to add elements pleasing to my eyes. I particularly liked this creation. It looks like the birds are swimming in water and I’m sitting on the ocean floor watching them from below.
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Physical Attraction
We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the death, the wedding more than love, and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in a container culture, which despises the content.~Eduardo Galeano
There was a time, I freely admit, when I was lured in more by superficialities than substance. I was drawn to women for the proportions of their physical shape and the classical beauty…
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They Arrived on Wings
During the day, the Cranes hit the fields to fatten up. We drove through farm country hoping to see some birds when multiple wings entered the skies and landed in a fallow farm field.
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Muted Explosion
I woke up very early to see the Sandhill Cranes greet the new day. I was hoping to see the massive flock explode into the sky en masse. But, they alighted in dribs and drabs. The event felt prehistoric.
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Three Follow Me
Underexposed photos, once a bain of my film photography, can be simulated with digital and photo manipulation tools.
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What Was Before What I
In this picture, I see the world as it was before it became what it is. A time when the winged dinosaurs we now call birds filled the skies.
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A God That Answers Prayers is Imperfect
I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.~Terry Tempest Williams
I find the entire petitioning the lord with prayer phenomena to be nothing short of absurd. An all powerful entity existing simultaneously at all points in time already knows what’s going to occur with the Dominoes set in motion at…
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Come Fly With Me
A flying bird is a normal occurrence. However, when the birds are close to 4 foot tall and flying en masse, it is as much a spiritual as well as physical event. It makes one want to join the flock and head off into the ether.
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Hang the Promise Breakers
Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.~Edward Abbey, Prophet
I am becoming increasingly disenfranchised with politics in the United States which means I, having grown up during the tail end of the Vietnam…
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Fattening Up
The only reason I typically set wheel in Nebraska is as a boring landscape I must cross to get to the cool Western states or return home from those cool Western states. This time, Nebraska was a conscious destination to experience the wonder of the annual Sandhill Crane migration. There were about 660,000 Cranes present during the two days of my visit of which I spied a small slice. Still, it was…
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Legacy is Cruelty
My delight in being forgotten is rooted in the belief that I don’t matter in the larger scheme of things, only that I tried my best to be a good human, failing repeatedly, but trying again with the soul-settling knowledge that my body will return to the desert.~Terry Tempest Williams
There was a time when my ego was so fragile I cared about a legacy existing beyond the bookends of my mortal…
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