We paddle through a Suwannee Tipsy

Taken several years ago at the Cone Bridge landing after a trip up to the sandbar. It was a good day, the water was low, the roots from the tupelo were impressive. I deliberately turned this upside down.
If you are reading this blog, would you please leave a comment. I have gone for nearly four years posting my heart and soul and have received a few comments out of all that I have posted.
And, if you dare, please tell me why you think this is so and what I could have done differently.
It has been a one way conversation. That leads one toward insanity and narcissism.

Roline

 I recall when she was mine
 time after time
casting her line
pulling me in
time after time
at Roline...


something like that. its at Facebook. one like. post a silly sand hill at at angle and get over twenty likes. but that is how it goes. compare apples to oranges. no one cares about this.
Rick and I talked of taking a full trip down the Suwannee from Fargo or the Sill to the mouth. Kayak i suppose though a canoe would suffice for me and all the gear. perhaps in March. water levels 55 to 60 good. ideal now. but cold.
could take the sea kayak even though hard to get in and out of and take photographs from. would need to figure out how to keep batteries charged, or take a film camera. hmmm.
could be interesting, waiting to see what i got. some sort of solar charger. need to google.

into their light

trying really hard to go into another light and try to understand their darkness. why a life is continually in the dark and unhappy. why they cannot resolve issues that should long since been resolved. issues of the tongue, issues of selfishness, issues of maturity, lessons never learned while young and impressionable. a mother who allowed the issues to fester on without facing them, feeling sorrow for the child and fear at the same time of confrontation. and so the seed of the weed has spread to the daughter and what was something that needed killing long ago has taken root deep and the tentacles have spread to cut off all light from above.
it will take more than man's axe or saw now to break the strong fibers that entangle.
i feel real remorse for such souls, trying to place myself into their lives, to try and understand being them, of what life is like through another frame, another view. and my heart is burdened. and i want to heal. but i cannot. for i have issues just as entangled. issues that i should have resolved long ago. issues that fester on today in me. redemption is an ongoing thing. it comes not easily as it did Paul. trickles of light from above. mercy drops falling. no perfection upon this earth, sorry John Wesley. no overcoming here, sorry, Martin Luther.

NoN

It will eventually drive me to the point of deletion and completion with Facebook. It just is not the forum for photography and poetry or sayings or anything beyond the benign. And so another photograph went up this afternoon and as usual, only Melissa and Sam cared to notice. Melissa my #1 like, Sam from Argentina. No shares. No likes. No comment. Total silence. I post a stupid thing about bird seed and interest is piqued.

"Sometime between the offering and the doxology, the Shekinah did stir; but for a moment, as in a blink, causing dust to dance momentarily, before settling earthly and under foot swept."

And isn't that our condition? In the midst of glory, of something holy, we see it as mere dust to be swept away? Yet, in the very dust the particles of God's presence. I do not know. I know in brief, ever so brief  moments, glimpses, I am transported, transfixed. Like a prick to the heart, a wisp of a faint breeze touching cheek. We know we were in the presence of something beyond this world of dust and ordinary, but we cannot grasp it for any length.
Like the faith we are asked to live by. Not in fullness of light, always lurking in the shadow land, in the dark covering everything. Pinholes occasionally prick and little glimpses of light the other side of the wall emerge.
But the dust covers quickly the hole and into blackness we descend again.

The Gateway Gallery in moving downtown will be a good move. $300 less in rent, double the space. I have ordered 75 matts and acetate covers in 11x14 and 8x10 for 8x10 and 5x7 prints. With these, I can price the work much lower and hopefully generate some sales. I was going to stop after January with the gallery but will give the new location another go. They have asked for my man power to help in the renovation.

And so this blog is no forum or place either, as after four years, I have less than a dozen followers, as I have over and over said. A great journal compared to the old notebooks I suppose, even though I will have the notebooks long after this computer has crashed and gone.

Fence Kill

The ditches were wet and deeply rutted with four-wheel pick-up trails. The grass was trampled by the fence. Other photographers had been here I said. I looked down to the bottom rung of the fence. There, stuck half way out and in was a turtle. I said, I will free him and place him on the other side. Upon freeing him, he was dried out dead. He had gotten stuck at the point where hind legs or front legs were of no use. And so he swam in the fence until he could swim no longer and died.
And such are we. Straddling that fence between going on and going back. Waiting too long upon going through, no return. You cannot return through the square of the fence no matter how hard you may push.
And so we must go on. Leave the little pond and venture on. Most choose to remain in the pond. That is fine. Just know, if you are called to leave, no turning back after a point.
Or, by some providence a photographer comes along in time and tosses you back. In the case of this turtle, too late.

Nice Picture

One of these days I shall find a photograph that is not nice, or beautiful. But until then, I must endure the nice and beautiful photographs. But then it would simply be interesting or ignored. I just do not know. But a nice picture beats a simply liked picture any day. So, I will take nice picture. Thank you.

Last One Out

MLK day, Monday, January20. Ten days from 59. Day after REL birthday. Day before Stonewall. Melanie sleeps. No work today. I went to sisters to take mother, for her doctor appointment in afternoon, now past. 4:30 as I write. Read good article on MLK and how MLK accomplished ending the reign of black terror, the terror blacks had of living among white men who could at a moments notice, go bezerk upon them. That if they stood up collectively to their greatest fear and met it, that once the whooping was over, then things were better. And they were. Almost now to the point of reverse terror now.
Wrote a take off poem from the Association song, Never my love, calling it Navarre my love. Russell announced officially Sunday that he was moving to Navarre on the panhandle to start a church plant church. It will be sometime soon, when the house sells. He said our church, Christ Fellowship will be discussing future plans. I know our future plans will probably involve getting as far from the Baptist system as possible, having been burned once too many times like this.
Melanie said she probably would be done with organized church. Me too perhaps.
The malaise over the job prospects continues. I was going to fill out applications today but the laze of the day got to me.
Tomorrow I volunteer at the gallery, then the monthly meeting. New officers. New location. Got to come up with photographs that will sell. Melanie wants me to invest and get a tent and do shows. So do I.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.

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.