Navarre My Love

You asked us if there'd come a time
When they grew tired of you
Navarre my love
Navarre my love


You wonder if this heart of theirs
Would lose its respect for you
Navarre my love
Navarre my love

What makes you think love would last
When you know that their whole love depended
on them(on them)

Navarre my love
Navarre my love

You say they fear you'll change your mind
And you won't retire from them
Navarre my love
Navarre my love

How a remnant hate to see your ministry end
When we were willing to spend our whole lives
With you(with you, with you).

Plank Walk

Today is January 17, Friday. One of those days you see coming. Started early with going out in the frost to see if I could get word on Mrs Duncan, the neighbor, in surgery today for cancer, from her son. I missed him as he sped down to Shands in Gainesville. Melanie has been in a bad way lately, stressed over finances and family. I made the mistake of saying I was going to Alligator Lake for awhile. I could tell this would lead to words. I decided to put off going, waiting until I got the dogs from the groomers and the Rx from CVS. Then I went, taking a brisk walk, not getting anything of consequence. I did meet a new fellow photographer with a D40, new in town. I told him of the Art League next Tuesday, of which he looked forward to.
Arriving home, sure enough, Melanie came in and said, I know you don't like to hear this...you need to really step up finding a job, I need someone to lean on, you could have been using your time to re-train, etc.
And so, I walk the plank. Life stinks for me. At the Pet Spot, the groomer spotted my card in the car and said she had a friend with a wedding coming up. I said, take the card with the poem on the back.
And so it is 11PM. Tomorrow we are going down to Williston to eat with Gerald and Billie Earl. I will muddle along in a funk of thought and malaise. I will continue to pray something can open beyond my ability to open it. I am at the end of the plank. The next step is coming.

Sasquatch stole it

Do not think it got across. The pines were as hands taking the moon. Thus I placed it in the Tracking Sasquatch album. I was out at the college entrance road by the airport. I could barely keep my hands out for the cold. I grew impatient waiting for jets. I was unhappy as usual with the sharpness. Though the moon looks crisp in the viewfinder, when I transfer the image to the computer, it looks fuzzy. I do not understand.
Either way, this manual focus, guess the best exposure in the dark is for the birds.
And posting it here, something really did not translate over. Terrible.

Sandhills with Will McLean

Turkey Thursday

Does a day make a difference? Hardly. Today is Thursday, January 16. Am I yet in a state of total don't give much of a damn? Yes. Last evening it was good to laugh along with the two new Duck Dynasty episodes, especially episode two with the references to the comedy movie Nacho Libre. It was good to hear again from Tina Howell, wanting to make one of my photographs into a canvas print. The honor and yet the sadness that I am not being paid for my efforts all at once. But nice to hear from her. Mrs Duncan my neighbor is in a bad condition at Shands in Gainesville with sepsis. I saw her son as he was about to go down this morning, all in tears. That bought on my tears as well. Mrs Duncan and I would meet often out front while she slowly walked Tippy the little weiner dog and we would talk, she mostly of family and all the hardships she and they have undergone. It breaks my heart Mrs Duncan has had such suffering.
Melanie has the biopsy results pending to see the outcome of it, whether the toe is cancerous or benign.
So our current calm could about to be again set adrift. I feel my lack of working or finding a decent type work will bite us eventually, leaving me to have to live with my sister or something, losing the house and all.
I see it.
Started back after a lull in reading the daily read the bible in a year in Psalms 40, which spoke directly to my condition. Then today, I do not read. I am a terrible priority setter. I do not blame the poor souls of the twenty-one days away from Facebook. I find myself as well going to it over and over, checking updates, seeing if anyone has messaged or liked. Quite engrossing. I can only image the pull for someone who has hundreds of such comments and likes to respond to.
Though I am not in the total state of depressed like yesterday, today is like a undercurrent, just a quiet desperation of Thoreau proportions. I check the jobs daily on Indeed and indeed, daily the jobs are in fast food and or jobs way beyond my qualification.
I had a gun debate with Stacy from our church. Things like her saying she hates guns comes out of the blue. Things you never know about people you assume, since her husband is in the military and shoots at the range, would be the last person to hate guns.
Perhaps the people on Facebook will help her to not have such a hatred. To me her argument, that her parents never allowed guns, even toy ones, is silly. I suppose if you approached anything from an early age and spoke in detesting ways of it, you would grow up hating knives,spoons and forks, depending what you threw your hatred toward. Typical liberal parents warping the next generation.
Well, about time to go over to my sisters and help her re-arrange her house some. See ma and how she is, take my mind for awhile off our troubles and sorrows and woes, though trivial, small and mostly unfounded.
It took all of thirty minutes to move the bed from downstairs to upstairs. Then I was off and back to the house. I see that once again blogger is acting up and photographs will not transfer directly from Picasa. Jordon is back from Allison's seeing Carson and Melanie is onto him about his room.
Like Duck Dynasty last night, I think we will have Jordon here into his thirties. 

In a flicker

Unimaginable the depth of down. Down in spirit. Down in mind. Down. What brings such down on?
Combinations. Like daily turning the tumblers. The safe opens. It is empty. The long turning for nothing.
Sameness. Routine. Thoughts. Dreams.Desires.Fears. Futures. Pasts. They come rushing. Walking.
A hollow being. Doing what is always done. Getting the same result. Fuzzy when sharpness is desired. Cannot get the right settings. Do not have the right settings. All a flicker.

You got it. Wednesday, January 15th. The daily walk along the trails of Alligator Lake. There was Brian again. Like a Truman scene. Deja vu. It has been done. A re-run. The same cypress. The same egrets. Coots. Hawks. The same focus. The same out of focus. The same struggle. The same composition. The only variable was in the clouds. Today, all of mans making from jet streams. Under-expose, over-expose, flash on, flash off. Yadda Yadda Yadda.

Back to the computer. Pop in the cord. Download to Picassa. Cheap mans Adobe. Limited manipulation. Lack of raw. Jpeg. Lazy. Unimaginative. Facebook driven. Ten or less likes. Is it any wonder? And so it goes.

Poor flicker was over manipulated as a result. This mostly stems from seeing another photographers work on Facebook, the Russian lady with the photographs of her children with farm animals. Absolutely amazing and beautifully done. The Canon full frame Mark 2 that every photographer of any meddle uses. She with a 135mm. Interesting in that when I first got started in the early 70's(I should be a master by now) that was my first and only lens.

As I have been saying all this year that I turn 59. This is it. It is getting down to the too late. To the wire. To the no turning back. To the do or die. The final act. The about time you do something. And I look for some lottery like salvation to come along and in a moment, in an instant, make all things well, successful, right.
It will never happen. I will die in the process. And the Flicker will fly to another rotten tree.

Croft's hearth

It was the last set of photographs from the long day of January 11th. I was about home on Columbia County Road 241 near the Family Road when I spotted the lone chimney off to my right on Dicks Road. I drove over and a fellow was working with his puppy in his front yard. I asked him if he minded if I took a photograph of the old chimney. He said go ahead. I climbed the gate and took about two dozen quickly, working around the curious black angus cows. I returned and asked the young fellow who lived in it. He said his grandparents, his mothers people, the Crofts. His dad was a Johnson. He said the old house had recently been torn down. I thanked him and started to shake his hand but he said he didn't want to get blood on me. What in the world was he training that puppy for?

Neighborly Emergency

Last evening late, nearly one AM, the Rescue vehicle quietly drove into Mrs Duncan's yard. I waited quietly outside to see if she had passed away. But fortunately, though in much pain, she walked to the porch where they put her on the stretcher. I trust whatever occurred, that she will recover.
She is our neighborhood prayer warrior, saying a prayer for us each morning when she walks the little sausage dog to get the mail.

Crossing Points

Sat down at the Gateway Gallery today from 1 until 5. As a participating gallery member, we are required to volunteer 8 hours per month or 2 four hour shifts. I got no sales but one compliment, a visitor telling me he liked the photograph, Where the Circle Met of the Circle church, the only print I have sold.
But, this past three month span, I have sold zero so I go 45 in the hole, the amount the 4x8 space rents for the time.
I do believe when the end of the month arrives, unless I sell anything, I will not continue this venture.
Like Mrs Zecher said today, anybody can take a photo, you have to do something extra special.
What would that extra special be? Larger size, better frame, different subject matter?
I think the displaying of art and photography is a thing of the past. The only thing on our walls are mostly our own faces and our own family. Even the poorly composed shot will go up before one will purchase a fine print. The images are now the realm of the computer and television. A continous roll.
In the meantime, the Gallery Board of Directors have made the decision to relocate downtown. That is a good move that should have been from the beginning. It should help build the foot traffic which is so lacking now. During the Olustee Festival it was gain great exposure.
And with Olustee upcoming, as I have said over and over, I need a presence there. Large,well-done photographs framed in grand double matted archival type paper.
Which leads to the next bridge. A job. All is fine and well if one can afford it. In my case, I am doing well just to purchase 11x14 frames with 8x10's printed on my own Kodak printer.
Hardly worth it.

Palm Reader

Posted this today, saying, I miss my friends who would laugh while getting me out of my messes. And messes I did get into as a FPL meter reader for a year. The job was only for a year and a month, coming to an end as the Smart meters were finally installed, cutting the meter reading force down to a few of the long timers.
Safety and speed were the oil and vinegar under which we mixed. Often in my haste, I would make rash decisions that proved costly. This was one such incident that took two vehicles to get me out. The fellows were always good natured about it,me being the old guy who needed help, the source of much ribbing.
But, there is ribbing and good ribbing. This ribbing I could take.
It was the ideal job for the time it lasted. Suited my personality to a tee. Out and about, reading a route, seeing countless photo possibilities. Being there when weather changed, when things happened.
After the first few months of total confusion and frustration, like Bill said, things did improve greatly.
It was pure joy in the fall to walk the route downtown and in the neighborhoods, making friends along the way.
Today, January 14th, Melanie is about to go to Gainesville to a dermatologist to get her big toe checked she thinks has a melanoma due to radiation from 2009 H1N1 ordeal. We pray not.
I am to work at the gallery from 1-5, otherwise I would go with her.
We wound up ordering Kens BBQ last evening instead of going out to Longhorn. We were still full from the Shirley's we had at lunch. It is raining steady here and so the gallery will be a slow venture.
Peace out.

A Winsome Proposal

It was Saturday around noon and the wind was blowing in off Newnan's Lake Park in a vicious way.
This couple was off to my right trying to take wedding proposal photographs.

Smitten with Jeanie