Sidetracked Charley

Self-portrait of Photographer  Last Sunday I left to go visit my sister in San Fidel, New Mexico. I had intended to do my TW3 blog Sunday evening but one thing led to another. Have cameras and will use them. Monday we were in Albuquerque and upon our return too the great cloud/storm photos featured on Creative Journey .  Tuesday we went for a walk at the El Malpais National Monument . We chose the Lava Falls walk on the youngest of the lava flows in the area. Only 3000 years. It occurred to us that recent news of earth quakes in New Mexico and Colorado and upgrade of this "dormant" volcanic field to could be active without warning made this not the wisest of outings. But, hell, what is life without some risk. One of the biggest risks on this walk was losing your balance on the uneven footing of the rough basalt and falling. I frankly began to look at the cacti as soft. Reading of the hike brochure (after our return to the car) said that the following picture is smo...

The late season humming birds are in full flight. According to most bird books the vast majority of humming birds I feed on a regular basis are only flying through on a long migration. And some bird books maintain that New Mexico is not their major flyway but Arizona. I think that has been wrong for a decade but never more wrong than this year when the Arizona fires pushed them west. Now, whether it is two species or twenty, is when they head south. I will be filling up my quart feeder at least once a day until almost as suddenly as they came they are gone. The cliff swallows are gone. Again as suddenly as they came. They hatched out a brood and got them all flying and for about a week hung around on insect catching lessons or some such. I got to watch them with their just above the ground aerial antics and then silence. I remember my dad and his love for Purple Martins. They always arrived to set up house keeping in the elaborate Martin houses he built on my mother's birthday...

When I was a kid I called them nightmares. Today I relegate them to the realm of disturbing. They do not contain monsters borrowed from a late night show my parents told me not to watch but from a odd arrangement of reality. They dwell in the area of the possible from which there seems to be no escape. Per Wiki: A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear and/or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time. These days I can no longer connect my disturbing dreams to bad food or bad movie or bad news. I more often see them as heralds of a bumpy road ahead or a signal that I have overlooked something important I need to attend to. I can describe them more by the terms despair, and anxiety and sadne...

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. The Big Book Acceptance seems to be a strange subject as we are in the beginning of Mercury in Retrograde. But oddly enough last week had a lot of acceptance in it. And I once again saw the magic of it. Because until you accept things as they are you cannot even develop a game plan for dealing with it. You can waste a lot of energy denying a situation or trying to wish it away. And you can miss a lot that is good by not letting go of what was. I was so into Astro Van withdrawal I really hadn't accepted the good of the Corolla. The price was right - I traded a painting for it. For a standard car it holds a lot of stuff especially with the fold down back...

Door of Cimarron Jail I stepped on this scale this morning and realized I had gained four pounds in the last week. How that happened I am not quite sure as I certainly did not enjoy myself that much. Nothing noteworthy stands out in my menu. But then I admit to not paying much attention. This last week seemed mostly about taking photographs and then sitting on the computer downloading and reviewing them. And there were some noteworthy photos. Inside Jail Cell Where Antelope Play And it is not like I have been totally inactive. Having camera, will travel does take some traveling. I drove to Raton and of course stopped in Cimarron. And then I walked with the fur kids and camera. Barbed Wire And did deep squats to get up close and personal with flowers and twigs. Thistle blossom And sometimes just wondered restlessly about the studio trying out various settings on my D90 to capture the flowers and plants drafted into posing as subjects. Crown of Thorns buds ...