SRV ~ Little Wing

We had a relaxing weekend despite the unsettling news in the local paper about the unemployment situation in California wherein Job Seekers Exceed Openings by 6-to-1 Ratio. The Employment Classifieds section amounted to less than three two-inch columns. Of course, modern folks don't search the newspapers for a job any more, but it is a gloomy indicator. No, this is going to take a much more creative approach.

I realise that I am not begging for a job but offering my services. This is the required mindset and I may have to work more than a couple of angles.

Kathy Paysen writes:

Unemployment blues
Is when you toot your own horn
And no one listens

Oh, yeah man, I'm feelin' that.

I am really loving the Ken Burns PBS series on National Parks. We have a book of John Muir's Meditations on our coffee table if that gives you any idea how much we love, honour and respect this fellow Scottish American, local and national hero. Muir's contribution in shaping this country is incalculable, his legacy is boundless. His greatest magic lies in the fact that all he really did was to point our noses in the direction of wild beauty. He didn't build great buildings like a Frank Lloyd Wright, he didn't invent things like a Thomas Edison. He simply showed us how to see what was already right before us. His passion for the preservation of the environment spread as a wildfire igniting the hearts of all sympathetic soul-searchers.

Reminding me to re-posses my own wild nature.

"And so I might go on, writing words, words, words; but to what purpose? Go see him and love him, and through him as through a window look into Nature's warm heart." ~John Muir

Why...?

Why do I feel compelled to explain myself here so often? And why do I feel so guilty about not blogging more regularly or more originally? I've declared this blog to never be monetized so I shouldn't feel the need to account for any lapses of original blogging. I crouch in fear from a Cerberus of writer's block or apathy, the wonder of who, if anyone, would want to read what I write and the disquiet of a relative stranger using my own words against me to his own malevolent ends.

I admire those hardier (not to mention prolific) bloggers who just put it all out there; they don't make excuses for themselves or their opinions. While I have struggled to even find a voice. And for five years this blogger has scrambled to find a consistent theme. But there can ultimately be no purpose to this blog. That has been the one constant, no purpose and no rules, just whatever and whenever I feel like it. I do it for myself. If someone should happen to find a nugget of value submerged within, then all the better. But that's not the goal. The only goal is to keep exploring, to keep re-opening and re-discovering even after being bitch-slapped and nipple-twisted by those pernicious powers that be. Even when those powers are the very voices in my own head.

I'm at a cross-roads in my life where uncertainty is the over-reaching worry. Losing an income I thought relatively secure and the attendant health benefits. But with this change comes the opportunity to change within, to reclaim that self that had become neglected over the past few years while concentrating on making a living and surviving the day-to-day banality of the workaday world. Perhaps some new-found time for blogging about that process. Maybe that's the new theme. Let's see what happens shall we?

The Bronze Buckaroo

Happy Birthday to the great Herb Jeffries. Herb is an inspiration to me. Many happy returns, my friend.

The Approach by Nisa West

A poem for Autumn by my StumbleUpon friend Nisa West. Thanks Nisa.


Caws increase to fall

in the approach

Of shorter days.

My weather dial set on stun.

It is amazing how much I feel

Without the sun.

Weary ticking of the clock

It takes longer for you to return

Home now.

The stillness of the day,

Closer and closer to me

A child longing

For summer vacation

To begin again.

Webs of light linger through

My eyes shielded by the clouds.

Opening the search for a sweater-

a simple cardigan.

No more whites,

My sights increase

To fall.

All of the above photos have one thing in common. Not only are they fantastic and iconic, they were all shot by New York Times photographer Doug Mills. Mr. Mills is a talented and gifted photojournalist. And he was my crush in junior high school. And that's all I'm saying about that.

Obama visits my (would-have-been) alma mater

This week President Obama addressed school children on the first day of school at Wakefield High School in Arlington Virginia. It was to have been aired in schools across the country and raised a brouhaha with the closed-minded fear mongers accusing the President of attempting to indoctrinate the defenseless children. As someone who went through America's public schools most of the curriculum is pure indoctrination. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is indoctrination. But that is not the most significant thing about this speech to me. Obama will always have his detractors unfortunately. But Wakefield High was to have been my high school had my family not moved to California after my seventh grade. Many of my friends continued on to Wakefield. Home of the Warriors.

With thunderclubs and tomahawks,
we'll make your name and spread your fame.
Wakefield, we're all for you!

All Things Must Pass...

My time at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company is nearing an end. After a stressful week, no month, no years, well, you get the idea, we are finally nearing the part in the road where they stand still in the rear view mirror and eat the dust in my wake. It's been a long tortuous road. Oh, there were moments when it all seemed like it was destined for sweetness, maybe even greatness but those moments grew fewer and farther between until they become non-existent. Silly me kept thinking that the loyalty on both sides should have grown deeper through the years but it actually became more and more distrustful. Not a recipe for success. And so the inevitable has come to pass.

Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that,
and living alone won’t either,
for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love.
You have to feel.
It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart.
You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken,
or betrayed,
or left,
or hurt,
or death brushes near,
let yourself sit by an apple tree and
listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps,
wasting their sweetness.
Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

~ Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum: A Novel)