Category: nature

120616JworkBOSQ3425 copy

It seems a bit of an oxymoron have to work so hard at taking it easy, but I am having to do just that. Trying to find those thermals to drift upon. That downhill part of the hike, but any hiker will tell you the downhill portions are the killers.

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” Marie Curie

Don’t get me started on the search for the gift, that can be a real uphill hike.

Peace out….monos en theos ††† jasL

DSC_5521 copy

Ah yes, some days just don’t go quite like you planned. One day your running free in the jungle and then you felt a little stick and you wake up behind bars with dry hay to eat instead of the fresh garden in which you ran free.

I just got released from the hold of a hospital bed. I felt it was just another of my familliar panic attacks, but my BP went to 247/143 with a pulse rate of 133. I took my regular meds, but just could not get it down and the need to breathe was getting harder and harder. So, we call 911 and it is off to the hospital. A bunch of nice people ( the EMT’s and hospital nurse’s were just incredible), but I would have much met them all someplace for a beer.

The cardiologist was firmly convinced I had experienced a heart attack and must have some blockage in my heart. So, pokes, prods, needles, ekgs, cardiograms of several types and the worst a chemical stress test. So strange to be injected with a drug and see and feel your heart race to 150 beats per minute in less than 60 seconds. Kind of felt like a panic attack.

And in the end, after all the tests it was what I originally thought, a panic attack.

I wonder if the gorilla has figured out his dilemma?

I”m living life free, as it should be, just as I am……peace out….jasL

DSC_7614

We watched them graze like cattle. They moved with such grace in the air. Once they left the earth they left their awkwardness behind. It was nothing but grace.

It never ceases to amaze me how a new happening becomes imprinted in the soul. I was not at all prepared when they turned and in mass headed my way, twenty feet off the ground. Directly over me. For just the time of one shortened breath I felt the brush of the soft stir of air as it flowed over and under their wings and through me.

One of those fleeting moments in life that leaves you with no way to replace the feeling of the moment into words. It became like the smell of a freshly washed baby. A smell you will always remember with that part of your heart that stores such things away for your use only.

monos en theos ††† jasL

DSC_7674s

We headed out to Hagerman once again yesterday. The ground was a flood of Snow Geese. They would at some unknown to me signal to take flight. They seemed to be doing practice flight patterns whereby they would fly in circles and sometimes a gaggle would form a loose “V” formation. Just as quickly they would break up and all slowly without any pattern or plan all land once again. Then repeat the process again in thirty minutes or so.

With the current degree of turmoil in the world, It was majestic and to say the least, peaceful to watch nature’s mystery.

Shades of Gray from Grayson Co, TX #915 – In for a closer look.

120724jwclodcro5744c copy

I have been having some lower intestinal issues now for a few weeks. Several tests looking for the problem. I am beginning to feel like a car going to a mechanic for diagnosis. You go in and the doc plugs into your circuitry and runs a machine to diagnose the problem. Only problem is, it doesn’t show up on the computer, so the doc shakes his head and sends you to another doc who repeats the process with a different apparatus only to have the same “can’t find anything” answer

So today it is off for another “procedure” for a closer look into my lower GI system. I can’t help but always be reminded of Billy Crystal in City Slickers delivering his monologue to a class of elementary age kids about how as we get older we have a lot procedures.

Anyhow, I have also been “irregular” on posting and will probably continue with that trend until we get to the “bottom” of it all.

Peace out & monos en theos ††† jas L

DSC_7007

So part two of the Metamorphosis thing. The whole process just takes my mind to places I cannot quite put into place. I am sure the caterpillar has less of a thought process than me. But I got to figure when he goes into the cocoon thing, he has to figure this it it, I’m one dead bug. And then after a few days, weeks months whatever it takes, he awakes and emerges a whole new and different creature.

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
― Helen Keller

Enjoy both the closed and newly opened doors!   monos en theos †††† jas L

DSC_6979© c

Okay, I admit this guy is a little scarey now but little does he know what he will become. Oh that we could experience such a metamorphosis.

Yeah I know we can all make major changes but to curl into a cocoon and a few months later come out a whole different creature just rocks my imagination. Stay tuned for the morphed version……..monos en theos jas L †††

Shades of Gray from Grayson Co, TX #908 – Praise from the White Heron

DSC_7337 copy

What lifts the heron leaning on the air
I praise without a name. A crouch, a flare,
a long stroke through the cumulus of trees,
a shaped thought at the sky – then gone. O rare!
Saint Francis, being happiest on his knees,
would have cried Father! Cry anything you please

But praise. By any name or none. But praise
the white original burst that lights
the heron on his two soft kissing kites.
When saints praise heaven lit by doves and rays,
I sit by pond scums till the air recites
It’s heron back. And doubt all else. But praise.

John Ciardi
Find your praise for the day! …† jas L

Shades of Gray from Grayson Co, TX #907 – The Peace of Wild Things

120602Work©7699

The Peace of Wild Things

BY WENDELL BERRY

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
It is always a draw to me as to where we find peace in our story. May you find some today!
 
monos en theos † jas L

Shades of Gray from Grayson Co, TX #905 – Henri Cartier-Bresson on The Minds Eye

DSC_7001

Untitled-1

“MY PASSION has never been for photography ‘ in itself ‘ but for the possibility –through forgetting yourself– of recording in a fraction of a second the emotion of the subject, and the beauty of the form; that is, a geometry awakened by what’s offered.

The photographic shot is one of my sketchpads.”        HENRI CARTIER – BRESSON  8/2/1994

I have been reading Henri Cartier – Bresson’s book about photography: The Mind’s Eye. It should be required reading for anyone who attempts to see and record images!    monos en theos  †† jas L