Chasing fire for hire

This time in 2012 i was roaming the countryside reading electric meters for Florida Power and Light. It was a great job. I had thirty routes that went all over the countryside surrounding Lake City. Some routes I drove, some I walked, some a combination. One such route I really enjoyed took me out on Gum Swamp Road and into the Osceola National Forest to read a cell phone tower. Along the way I read all the dwellings along Gum Swamp.
This afternoon, after everyone had left for the week-end at Disney, I was riding over to get the mail and check on my sisters in town when I saw that the Osceola was being controlled burned. So instead of taking the left on 100 I went straight and into the forest via the Still Road and onto Gum Swamp. I wound up at Ocean Pond where I went out on the dock, the cold wind off the lake quite shivery. I then went into Olustee looking for the dwelling of Geech Brown, the old black man I photographed for the Tallahassee Democrat in the 80's. Then, Geech, an Ogeechee black from Savannah, Georgia and a pulpwood worker, claimed to be the oldest living active worker in Florida, in his 80's then. I drove all around and through the black neighborhoods and saw nothing that looked like his shanty. I am sure it has been torn down long ago.
Only one black person was out with a brown paper bag bottle, sitting next to a fire, but I did not stop and ask. He or she, I could not tell for the bundle, looked too young to know of Geech.
And so I came on back and continued on into town to do what I meant to do several hours earlier.
Such was the afternoon chasing fire, of which I actually never found, only the smoke all about.

take a hike

So, my old friend Wolfie wants me to accompany him on a walk of the Appalachian Trail, the entire 2,000, 3 month walk. Sounds enticing. If I were actually retired, wonderful. I can just hear Melanie now, what? While we are barely making ends meet, while I am working twelve hour days and week-ends, and you want to do what? Oh, bucket lists are wonderful for the Jacks and Morgans and Mikes of this world, who have accomplished about everything there is to accomplish, and then need more things to accomplish.
I am just at this point trying to get up the nerve to hike down to some employer and seek a job among the land of the young and stamina filled. I am just trying to keep from sitting at this same Sheldon spot on the couch and contemplating naval lint.
Wolfie, I promise in the next few weeks I will ponder it deeply, go out and daily play the lottery, and if perchance, the numbers roll for me, then yes, I will lace up the Danner's and pack the Kelty full of MRE's and accompany you the entire way.

Alone

Oh its a sign for sure you're grown
When they can leave you all alone
To fend for yourself and survive
Trust you even to drive
While off they go to Disney
For a week-end of happy
The cats and dogs I am told
Are not liking survival mode
And wouldn't it be cold
As out the house they are throw'd
Not gonna share my mre's
With some over fattened kitties
Its a long, long way to Sunday
When we will watch Downton Abbey
Or is it the Walking Dead
Probably, without being spoon fed.

Easy Rider

There we were. March of 2012 heading back from Daytona Beach from my FPL physical fitness test passing through Flagler Beach. Alongside us came the Easy Rider with his easy passenger, bed roll in search of a sandy, secluded spot. And then they were gone. Like ole Chevy Chase on the journey to Wally World, leaving me, in a sweat of journey in a Camry. Open wind and back lit sun trying to get in.
I was just content in the moment to be heading home to finally a job. It was a let down of grand scale when I got the job when David, the supervisor said, it would only be for a year you know....No, somehow I failed to notice that. I will take it. I need a job. Any job.
And so, parenthetically, I am again back in that Camry and the Easy Rider is somewhere in the sand doing what we all wish we could be doing. Goading the blokes who never had a clue in Camry's.

Signs

No fishing between the signs

Would that it was that simple. A place to go and get a sign. But no such place exists. Oh, they said, go to the Bible, it has all the answers. I been reading there daily lately and all I have read lately are the Kings that rebelled and the kings that were slain. Every now and then a sign comes along, but mostly to the virgins and little old ladies in their nineties having babies. A donkey here and there.
It is a toilsome thing to wade through the cliches out there. I am admittedly in a shallow spot run aground lately. This job situation and this life situation. Sandbars are pretty places but not good for journey's when the destination is supposed to be beyond the shore.
It would be such an easier way of living I suppose, to accept the cliche, to live in the sweet now and now, letting the word guide me, taking up swords and killing Kings. Prosperity coming abundantly.

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.