Today, on my way home… I saw some amazing things.  First I happened upon a spider web.

It was beautiful.  So I had to stop and have a photo or two.  Right in the middle, were two spiders… watching a little TV.  “Hey, what are you two watching?”  “Our favorite show.  The Newly Web Game.”

What the….?   This is one weird day I’m having.

About 20 feet away, I saw a whole bunch of moths all in one area of the meadow.  It was like they were gathered there.  There was one butterfly, but it was well outside the circle.  I walked over and asked the butterfly what was going on?  “Those moths are having a dance and they won’t let me in.”  “Why not?” I asked.  “It is a Moth Ball.”

Holy Smokes….?   This is one weird day I’m having.

As I was pulling in the lane, there was a rabbit on sitting right on the driveway.  When I got closer, that thing started dancing like crazy.  Of course, I had to stop… . AGAIN.  I watched for a little minute, and then I asked that rabbit…. “Rabbit, what the heck are you doing?  All this dancing and such?”  And that bunny said… “I just love Hip Hop!”

Now.  THIS made good sense to me.  But still.  This is one weird day I’m having.

And then, low and behold, there were probably 25 or so rabbits all in a great big row… and they were hopping backwards.  Of course, I asked…  I had to ask…..  “And what are those rabbits doing over there?”  “That? …… Oh…..  That is a receding hare line.”

“Oh c’mon. What gives with this day?”
Finally… I asked the Universe…. “Okay… you want to play that way?  Here’s one for YOU…..”

“What goes 99 thump,99 thump,99 thump?”

A centipede with a wooden leg.

And there you have it.   Life can be funny.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
— Soren Kierkegaard

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
— Marcus Aurelius

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
— Joseph Campbell

A year ago today, I wrote about the hindrances, and risibility of Columbus Day.  In my limited opinion.

But it seems to me, the guy was hired to sail… to find a shorter passage to India.  He screwed that up.

As you know… he bumped his boat into a large land mass, which had not only been “discovered”… it had been inhabited and civilized by millions of people.

The peopling of the Americas…. scholars tend to agree…. happened sometime in the past 25,000 years. And here is what happened (or so those scientists have agreed upon.)  A wave of big game hunters crossed into the New World from Siberia at the end of the last ice age, when the Bering Strait was a land bridge.  So.  A long dang time ago.

If that isn’t good enough, scientists have found loads and loads of artifacts…. all across the continental United States.  For instance, they happened upon a group of very distinctive, exquisitely crafted,  projectile points…. called “Clovis points” (In New Mexico, in 1929, near a town named Clovis.  Hence the name.) With the aid of radiocarbon dating, archaeologists determined that the Clovis sites were 13,500 years old.

Okay.  So.  For argument’s sake, let’s just say 14,000 years ago.  Those big game hunters… found this place…. about 13,500 years before Mr. Chris Columbo.

And by the time he got here, the population of the Americas was in the millions.  Research by some scholars provides population estimates  to be as high as 112 million in 1492.   Other scholars put it as low as eight million.  Either way… there were a lot of people already here and getting along just fine.

Before you know it, those white men were staking claim to this place.  That would be sort of like someone who is out riding their 4-Wheeler, and they cross onto your property.  Then they say… “Well, hey… this is cool.  I shall make it mine. So…..  They kill you and take your farm.”

Now, not only is that bad form… but years later… people make a holiday commemorating Bubba, the guy on the 4-Wheeler… and his stealing of your farm.

I would wish you a Happy Columbus Day.  But.

The home should be the treasure chest of living.
Le Corbusier

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius

Home is where the heart is.
Pliny the Elder

You used to hear a lot about Campho-Phenique.  It seems like once upon time, every other commercial slot on TV was about  Campho-Phenique.  “Campho-Phenique helps to treat cold sores and relieves pain & itching associated with insect bites, scrapes and minor burn.”

The guy who invented it was names Charles Emerson.  He had a famous older brother too.  But we’ll get to that.

Oh… Those things you don’t hear about any more… but like me …. you think about them all the time.  You probably just thought about a jar of Campho-Phenique the other day.

Nonetheless.  Here is another one I haven’t heard in a while.  Transcendentalism.  It was a  philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s.  Mostly, this occurred in the Eastern region of the United States.   It was sort of…. as a protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality.

In fact…. the doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School….. was of big-wiggy concern.

So… basically…. the transcendentalists’ core beliefs were all about the inherent goodness of both people and nature. Now… that lines right up with me, I’ll have to say.

Let’s call them TDs for short.  TDs believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual.  GUESS WHAT.  This lines up with me too.

I won’t go into great detail here, but one of Transcendentalism’s main dudes was Ralph.  Chuck’s older brother.  Yep.  As in Ralphy Waldo Emerson.

Young Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries.  He broke away from the bunch of them and began formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism.  Of course,this all came forth in his 1836 essay, Nature. Which rocks.

Emerson is one of those people I wish I could meet, once the Time Machine gets up and running.  I just think he was one of the most incredible minds in history,  with a spiritual reckoning.  I like this guy.

Emerson’s work influenced his contemporaries, such as Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau.  It also influenced thinkers and writers all around the world …. right down to the present. Guys like Nietzsche.  And on and on.

There is little disagreement that Emerson was one of the most influential writers of 19th-century America.  Maybe the most.

He, and his words, and thoughts…. were yet another gift we have been given… by being a part of this this life… here on earth… in this time.

And the part about his younger brother Charles…. well… he might have had a cold sore once,  but I am bull-crapping you about Campho-Phenique.  I just had that word on my brain tonight and had to write about it.  The rest is true though.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. – RWE

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.  – RWE

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.  – RWE

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. – RWE

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. – RWE

Geez, that cold sore looks like it hurts. I have something for you…. – CE

We humans are a curious bunch, don’t you think?  We are constantly on the move these days, hustling an bustling.

I think it all started a long time ago.  Yep.  It seems like things began moving more quickly when the Industrial Age hit the United States in the early 1800s.  That Industrial Revolution, which occurred mostly from 1820 through 1870,  was pretty dang important to the economic development of the United States.

And we never looked back.

Since that time, we are always searching for ways to make money easier, faster, better… and for things in general…  to be easier, quicker, faster, better.

So we change it all up.  All the time.  We ALL do it.
Heck, even Disney.  Did you know the Seven Dwarves were almost named Chesty, Tubby, Burpy, Deafy, Hickey, Awful and Wheezy.   If you ask me… I think Walt dodged a big bullet right there.  Good move Walt.  Live Hippos at Disneyland?  Bad move Walt.

Wouldn’t you know? Candy companies do it too.  Three Musketeers used to contain vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavor.   Now, it is just fluffy… wholesome… goodness.

There are times when we try to come up with new and exiting ideas.  Which often lead to things other than the intended purpose.  Okay… a good “for-instance” is  the inventors of bubble wrap.  They were trying to make plastic wallpaper.   Obviously…. that idea popped.

The Slinky was supposed to hold & secure equipment on naval ships.  The “device” was holding a meter on a table.  Due to rocking water, the device fell off the table… and began walking away.   “The Slinky, the Slinky…”

Here’s another.  Imagine a wounded soldier walking around with a Maxi-Pad stuck to his forehead.  Well…. as we would have it… Kotex was supposed to be used for healing and dressing wounds during World War I.  And there you have that.  You are macho with a head wound, until you stick a Kotex on it.

But let’s look at another area of our weirdness.

When places that get hurricanes… are expecting a hurricane…. the shopping in the area increases significantly.  That makes sense really.  People getting emergency supplies, water, boards, blankets, etc.

BUT… Wal-Mart recently studied their sales reports for this “period” of shopping.  They found that when  a hurricane is expected, Wal-Mart’s top-selling items are strawberry Pop-Tarts and beer.    “Earl, we are ALL set.  We got our Strawberry Pop-Tarts and Milwaukee’s Best.  Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.”

Probably the most ironic discovery gone another way is this one….
During the ninth-century, Chinese alchemists were on a big whopping quest to find an elixir for eternal life.

They mixed together all sorts of things in an effort to find such a Forever Cocktail.  They found out the hard way that mixing salt peter, sulfur, and charcoal is not a recipe for immortality.  On the contrary…. it makes gunpowder.   End of Elixer.  End of Test Dummy.

Seems we have a lot of Test Dummies walking around these days.  Most of us really.  With every new study, gadget, and major advancement, we are the new lab rats for the swift society.  In 100 years, they will look back in utter shock… and Ahhhhh Noooooo.

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“It’s useless to lecture a human.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”
― John Steinbeck

There are some things I wonder about literature.

We have chickens now.   Of course.  They are not giving eggs yet.  Big drag for me.  But that’s not what I am thinking of eggs-actly.

Humpty-Dumpty was one big dang egg.  I wonder what laid him?
(And all you gutter-brains out there…. Don’t say “his girlfriend”….and that’s why they called him Humpty.)   Seriously.  I wonder what the heck gave birth to old Mr. Humpty D.

Okay.  While we are on names.  How about Winnie the Pooh.  His name is Winnie.  Not Pooh.  I am not sure what a Pooh is… some kind of a stuffed  bear, I suppose.  But the dude’s name is Winnie.

Why in the heck would Ms. Muffet choose to eat Curds and Whey?  I mean really… she was having the lumps and liquid found in cottage cheese.  Yes.   Eating her Cottage Cheese.
So…. “Along came a spider, who looked at her knees.”

The next one is sad.

Hansel and Gretel may be the first documented case of parental abuse.  I’m pretty sure of it.

Speaking of sad….

My Mom never gave me a spoonful of sugar, to help the medicine go down.  And I didn’t have a Nanny.  Unless you count my Evil Stepsisters… who really weren’t Stepsisters.  But now we are getting personal.

The Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar in Alice In Wonderland was really a Mushroom-Pushing Drug Dealer.  And was it all really just a dream?

I am surprised that I still love to eat Ham, after reading the likes of Charlotte’s Web, and Babe: The Gallant Pig.  Those pigs found out about going to slaughter, and they still liked us humans.  Animals are forgiving that way.

Which brings me to this.  Life has its ups-and-downs for everyone, I think.   We all fall off walls, and get scared by little things that may drop into our lives.  Sometimes people don’t get our names right, or treat us as nicely as we would like.  In rare historical cases, people have been sent to slaughter.

But maybe we could learn something from The Gallant Pig.

Those who can offer forgiveness are amazing. Or… as Charlotte said… Radiant, Humble, Terrific and Some Pig.

Maybe some day, I will be as terrific as the pig.

“Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together?
Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.”
― Emery Allen
We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.
— Marilyn Monroe

When it comes to God, and Religion, and Spirituality, it seems that everyone has an opinion, one way or the other.

And each person will tell you…. their beliefs, or religion, or lack there of… is right.  And. In some cases, if you don’t follow that particular path… THEIR particular path… you are damned to hell.

They may be right.

I’m here to tell you tonight, I don’t know.  About any of it.

All I know, is that it seems funny to me, that so many people, with so many differing opinions… can all be right.

Maybe funny isn’t the right word.  I mean… there have been, and still are… wars about this.  There has been mass human destruction as a result.  It all seems a little sideways to me, at times.  Most times.

I’ve been reading a lot on the subject lately.  From a lot of different sources.   From the Bible to translations of the Quran to books on various Spiritual Paths.

And I will add.  The more I read… I feel like the less I know.  If I read much more, I will be totally discombobulated and flummoxed.

I guess at this point, I feel like there are no hard, fast answers to any of it.

I think it is good that people have beliefs and follow those beliefs.  Where I smell trouble, is when people try to tell others how they should believe.

Who can say really?  There have been hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years, debating this topic. It goes like this:  My God is THE God.  No…. my God is THE God.   And no…. there is NO God at all.   This debate will continue for eons to come.

For me, I think that there is a life-force within our souls…. or whatever you want to call that energy space within us.  Where we start, is in our hearts, in our own selves.  Seeking life, and love.  Maybe if we start listening more, and talking less.  Prayers…. filled with endless chatter and requests.  We sure can “yak” it up when we pray to our Gods.

Maybe if there truly IS a greater being….  a great life force….  we will have better luck in really finding that loving energy… if we listen.  Just be still… and listen.

Maybe.

“As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.” ~ Hermann Hesse

“There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life. There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine. O’ traveller of you are in search of that, don’t look outside, look inside yourself and seek that.” ~ Rumi

“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”
― John Lennon

On any given day, I shoot a pretty fair amount of photographs.

I don’t really wake up and say, “I am going to shoot a crap-ton of photos today.”  But as the hours filter by, I find that I have reached for a camera…. any camera…. on numerous occasions.

Most of the things I photograph, are inconsequential to most people. But for some reason, those “things” have caught my eye, caught my interest, or caught my tiger by the toe.  So I capture it right back.

Maybe it is genetic, this “photo-taking” thing.  My Mom was a Camera Bug.  I am not sure how many photo albums she has compiled in her lifetime, but it is close to 100.  All labeled, all sequential… with little tags on the photos telling who it is, or what they were doing.

Oh.  Bet me.  I hated this when I was a kid.  I’ve talked about it here before.  But we were on the receiving end of the camera lens… every time we passed gas, went bowling, or got muddy.  If we were really sick, or had just won the big game… we were forever emblazoned on the pages of those albums.  But.  That was then.

And this… this is now.  I don’t create albums.  In fact, I am pretty messy when it comes to keeping track of my digital stockpile of images.  I have tens, and tens of thousands.  All saved to nameless hard drives, all stacked together in a banker’s box in my office.  I guess it is my version of hoarding…. in a cardboard container.

On this day, I started shooting at sun up.  I went to feed the chickens, and the morning sky was something out of Oklahoma!  I could almost feel the wind… a-sweepin’ down the plains.  So I pulled out my iPhone and shot the sky.  Ten minutes later, I was taking a photo of the chickens as they ate.

An hour passed and I was grabbing a screen shot from my phone.  Time Warner Cable had called from Afghanistan.  Yes.  The South-Central-Portion-Of-Asian Afghanistan.  Hell, we can’t get Time Warner Cable down here in Camden, but they are alive and well in Afghanistan.  At least their Telemarketing Department is.  Go figure.

But back to it.  Polly and the Click.  I don’t know what drives me to do it, but I find myself reaching for a camera.  A lot.

Truthfully, I think most of us do some of the things we do, without knowing the why of it.  I was going to compare it to a creative preference.   As in, some people have interests in gourmet cooking, or painting, needlepoint, knitting, pottery, and on.

But really I think it is more like a bad habit for me.   Like biting nails, binge eating, smoking, cracking knuckles, comfort shopping, or chewing on pencils.   The old camera crutch.

Or it could be a little bit of both. Either way…. I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. Unless things stop catching my interest and my eye. … … or I end up in camera rehab.

Again… Either way…. I really hope that NEVER happens.

“The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.”
― Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red

I don’t know why my brain thinks these things.  But it does.  And when it gets this way…. I can’t help but to speculate.  To wonder.

One of the things I am pondering is this.

Unknown Contemporaneous Events.

The thing about these is…. most of the time… we will never know about them.  Here is what caused my quandary.

When we were kids, we used to get to go “out” for dinner on our birthdays.  This happened a little more often once the older kids started flying the nest.  At any rate, our “go to” birthday spot turned out to be Bill Knapp’s Restaurant.  On Shiloh Springs Avenue, in Dayton.   I think this became our standard restaurant, because we felt like we were getting a deal. Whatever your birthday age was, that was the percentage you got off your bill.

This photo is from my 10th birthday.  At Bill Knapp’s.  Hence… 10% of the bill.  But holy smokes, I am WAY off topic.

So a couple of weeks ago, WHIO-TV ran one of their special series of local “Unsolved Mysteries.”  I normally don’t give it an ear.   But the woman murdered was killed in the mid-1970s.  She was a waitress at Bill Knapp’s Restaurant.  She had worked the evening shift on  the night she disappeared.  And as I watched the piece, I thought I remembered seeing her.  In fact, she could have been our waitress from time to time.

Now, I can’t find the article on Channel 7’s site, to match up dates.   But at any rate, my mind is teeming with “what ifs” about all of this.

Did we know her as our waitress?  Were we there the night she disappeared?  Were we nice to her?  Was the killer sitting at the table next to us… stalking her?  Is that the guy I dumped my Coke on accidentally, when I went around the other side of the table?

Probably none of this. Or maybe all of it.  Either way, it is no longer an Unknown Contemporaneous Events.  Because, by happenstance, I heard that I had been there… possibly at the same time.

So how many of these do we have each day?  Not necessarily murder mysteries… but other things.

Like the guy who killed my fish today.  He is probably clueless how upset I was, but I chose not to go out and tell him about it… for fear I would lose it.

Or maybe you cut somebody off in traffic today, and the guy got explosively mad.  As a result, when he got home from work, he took it out on his kid.

Or the lady at the grocery store, who works the cash register.  Perhaps when you went through the checkout you told her what a nice job she was doing there.  Your comment was enough to give her a spark.  You see, she was thinking she could do nothing right in life, and was contemplating suicide that night.

All of these, Unknown Contemporaneous Events.

I can only say… that as we go through our day… it may be best to walk on the side of kindness, compassion, forgiveness, gentle actions, and good deeds.   We never know who we may be affecting, and to what degree.

Or if we could have made a difference to just one single person, on any given day.  Any difference.

I just wonder.

“You see, the what ifs are as boundless as the stars.”
― Sally Gardner, Maggot Moon

“A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”
― Thomas Merton

We are all bright and shining stars.  But sometimes we get a little lost in that big night sky.  We don’t always shine quite as well as we should.  For me, it could be any number of reasons.

One of the things I think we are supposed to be doing, while we are here on earth, is to learn.  Learn, learn, learn.

Learn how to be better people.  We are, after all, just spiritual beings in a warm body.  Sometimes it is difficult to remember that.  For me at least.

My physical attributes of being human, cause me to have selfish needs.  Or selfish wants.  So I try to learn.   To be less inhibited by my own self-seeking needs.  You see…. when I get selfish… everything else gets distorted.  I guess in some aspects, all of us would like to have our own way.  But I can be pretty absorbed in it.  I’m not crazy about this part of me.  But at the same time, I get preoccupied with being the creature of comfort that I am.  I don’t like to be discontented.  Not one bit.

So.  Back to the spiritual part of us.   I believe we are all spiritual entities.  And because of that… we all have the ability for seeing things as they really are.   To learn to see around all of this.

But with me…. it is a big old process.  And it takes practice.

Perspective is a funny thing.  Don’t you think?

But, when we practice giving to others, it somehow becomes easier to live an honest life.  One where we try to see things for what they are… and not how we would like to control them to be.

I think it takes trust.  In goodness.  And that which is right.

Oh.  There’s so much more on this little brain of mine.  But the long and short of it is learning to overcome these obstacles.  They are the obstructions that keep us from finding our true, good selves. And, finding the ultimate honest, caring, spirit-filled life.

So learn as I may, and learn as I might.   …. ….. I should probably wish this on the first star I see tonight.

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“We learn from failure, not from success!”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Study the past if you would define the future.”
― Confucius

Some things I thought about today.

We have three dogs.  When they sleep, they are frequently dreaming.  I wonder what they are dreaming about.  I wonder if I am ever in their dreams.  Sometimes they are in my dreams.  Maybe they overlap.

There is a lot of talk about us, Earth People, eventually colonizing Mars. So let’s say we do it.  Everybody, moves to Mars because we destroyed this place.  But… while we are there…. what if something goes wrong on any given day?  We won’t be able to say… “What on EARTH is going on HERE!?”

I wonder why they don’t make “White Chocolate” Milk.

While we are on the subject of sweets…. I think Candy Makers could do a better job.  I think they should make the Lollipop sticks out of candy.  Maybe candy wrappers too.  I bet Willy Wonka had it going on.

I think Elevators should be called UpAndDownAvators.  They do so much more than perpetually elevate.

After all these years of being on the Internet, I still don’t like Acronyms.  Except for LOL.  I LOL at all the other Acronyms.

Today I stood outside in the cold for much longer than I wanted to.  My feet went numb.  But I could still feel my knees.  My feet were dressed better.  I wonder what gives.

I like words with silent letters.  Like.. Honest.  And Knowledge.  It is sort of like the letters are in Zen Meditation.  I think it makes up for all the Acronyms.

I still wonder why they don’t make “White Chocolate” Milk.

“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.”
― Erol Ozan

“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.”
― Albert Szent-Györgyi