Sidetracked Charley

Wheeler Peak Blow Written on one of my bathroom mirrors, I have three in the half bath downstairs, in eyebrow pencil is the affirmation, "Manifest power, prosperity and energy in your life today." I feel powerless, broke and sapped today so maybe I noticed it for the first time in the months since I wrote it there because I need that message. Another affirmation I had years ago because of a certain time in my life was, "Breakdown comes before breakthrough." Sort of goes along those lines of it is always darkest before the dawn which is one of those things people say after you have poured your heart out to them about life not working. Which is just before they tell you that you are a survivor. Wheeler Peak, the tallest mountain in New Mexico, is an obvious survivor too. But it is often battered by storms and winds and miners in its foothills. Yesterday it looked as if it had hunkered down under the latest onslaught of winds. The winter has not been gentle...

Image by J. Binford-Bell The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.  Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth. Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”  ― Rabindranath Tagore The Master calls the Butterfly There seems not enough time and too much. Some times it creeps at a slow and ponderous pace and the next moment it has flown the coop. Life is not about the time you spend but how you spend it. And it seems of late I am wasting too much of it. But by whose definition is it waste? Is the worth of our lives measured in the buildings we erect, the money we bank, the education we obtain, or in the joy of a single conversation, noticing the dawn, petting a dog, making a cat purr? Is success evaluated by the number of friends we have on Facebook or the number of attendees at our funerals? Or the tears people shed when they think of...

I ran with scissors when I was a kid. Now a days we call it hyper active attention deficit disorder - HAADD. My late brother-in-law always said of my sister she had trouble monotasking. I do not know if the name is important. The bottom line is sometimes if you are running with scissors you miss what is going on around you to avoid tripping. Since Lent began I have been occupied in two exercises I thought were previously unrelated. First I was giving up trying to reduce my life to status messages on Facebook. I undertook that exercise because I believed I was playing to my audience instead of being real. Any artist, actress, musician, performer or writer is prone to do that. Maybe it is why some very successful comedians like Johnathan Winters lost who they really were. It is certainly why some authors begin putting out formula mysteries and us readers drop them from our reading list. Be limiting my Facebook participation to comments and responses to others and links t...

Religious Hatred Song of the Bird by Anthony de Mello A tourist says to his guide, "You have a right to be proud of your town. I was especially impressed with the number of churches in it. Surely people here must love the lord." "Well," replied the cynical guide, "they may love the Lord, but they sure as hell hate each other." My father used to say it was the difference of opinion that made horse racing possible. I always liked the image. And often wondered why it was humans could not always solve their problems with a horse race or a flip of the coin or a chess game. Or just agree to not agree. Not agree is different than disagree as I found out during the recent political season. I was blown away with the hatred put into words in the Ether of social networks because people held different opinions. It became all about make wrong. One of my best friends from clear back in the days of Hippies ended up somehow on the right side o...

Buddha once held up a flower to his disciples and  asked each of them to say something about it. They gazed at it in silence for a while. One pronounced a philosophical lecture on it. Another produced a poem on it. Yet another made a parable about it. All trying to outdo one another in depth. Mahakashyap Looked at the flower and smiled and said nothing. Only he had seen it. We sometimes rush to judgement in our effort to label the new around us. I have been dealing with inquiries about the apartment I have to rent and I find myself sorting people by the nature of a few words they email me in response to my ad. We are told not to discriminate in housing and jobs and in life in general and yet we all are looking for those roughly like us to be near us. And we avoid unpleasant experiences or want to. So if a young couple did not complete their lease or pay us promptly we shy from someone sounding young. So young is out. Some label thems...

The Devil and his Friend The devil once went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick up something from the road. 'What did that man find?' asked the friend. 'A piece of Truth,' said the Devil. 'Doesn't that disturb you?' asked the friend. 'No it does not,' said the devil, 'I shall allow him  to make a religious belief out of it. ' People that cling to a nugget of truth make no progress because they are sure they have found it all. They know the way. And the more their way is questioned the more hostile and dogmatic they become. They are blind to the whole. It is wise to not rush to judgment but live within the question. And yet that is a difficult place to be like balancing on the point of a boulder high up on a cliff. Everyone will jump in to try and tell you where to put your foot so you can climb down. They never ask if you wish to come down or even what the view is fr...

Patience is not my long suit. I sometimes wonder if I am here on earth this incarnation to learn patience. My life seems to be so much about it and that I do not have it. I am chronically on time or early and every friend I have but one is chronically late. I live in the land of manana (btw that does not mean tomorrow but some as yet specified future time). And I am a self-starter which means that everyone else is already behind. That makes life frustrating. I have learned to cope by always bringing entertainment with me - once a book and now the Kindle or my tablet or a sketch book. The camera is a constant and I can take pictures waiting in the line at the drive through or on the corner waiting to meet with a friend or sitting in the restaurant waiting for the wait staff. Note: if you read a book they think they can ignore you longer, but a camera annoys them and you can get faster service. I began this modified vow of silence on Facebook just five days ago and I already goog...

Apartment for rent The good news is that at about 3:30 pm today I finished the last of my tasks on the rental unit. The prospective tenants who had put down a $500.00 deposit were suppose to move in tomorrow. That is the bad news: they had not called to make arrangements to sign the lease. So I called them to say the apartment was ready on schedule. And they called back to say they were not moving in and could they have their deposit back. There are times in my life when a question or statement leaves me speechless. This was one of those times. They were scheduled to sign the lease in less than 24 hours and they think they should be able to get the deposit back? Probably no more crazy than the tenant I evicted for non-payment wanting a reference from me for another prospective landlord. What are they thinking? Obviously they are not thinking.  Which is where the bad news becomes the good news. Always nice to know how irresponsible a person is going to be before they mo...

THE TEMPLE BELLS  From The Song of the Bird Anthony de Mello, SJ The temple was built on an island and it had a thousand bells. Bells big and small, fashioned by the finest craftsmen in the world. When the wind blew or a storm raged, all the bells would peal out in a symphony that would send the heart of the hearer into raptures. But over the centuries the island sank into the ocean and, with it, the temple bells. An ancient legend said that the bells still rang out ceaselessly, and could be heard by anyone who would listen.  Inspired by the legend a young man traveled thousands of miles, determined to hear those bells. He sat for days on the shore facing the vanished island and listened with all his might. But all he heard was the sound of the sea. He made every effort to block it out but to no avail; the sound of the sea seemed to flood the world. He kept at his task for weeks. Each time he got disheartened he would listen to the village pundits as t...

Window Pane Acid Trip by J. Binford-Bell Long time followers of my blogs will know I am not a religious person, but I like to think I am very spiritual. I think most artists are whether they know it or not. Life, however, can separate me from my spiritual connection with the universe and ergo the muse which directs my creativity. Life can be challenging and annoying and downright irritating at times. The month of February has been that in spades with slaving to get the apartment refurbished and cleaned, the dog issue which gets close to life and livelihood threatening, winter in general, and a dear friend facing the end of days for a loved one. Oh, and my sister running over her cell phone. What does all that have to do with the price of tea in China, you might ask? Well, it just seems that when I am most personally challenged and at a loss I am placed into a position where communication is sparse, difficult or nearly impossible. Get thee to a mountain top s...

Mardi running from the neighbor's dog I live in an often delightful rural area. I moved here because I love dogs and cats and at the time owned llamas and a horse. I fenced my property responsibly and sectioned it off between hooved animals and pawed ones. I believe in obedience training and every dog I have ever owned is a responsible citizen. They do not chase, they obey without leashes (voice control) and are only out of my yard when on a walk. Let me say that is not true of all my neighbors like the dog in the background chasing Mardi, my 14 year old standard poodle. Nor is it true of Augustine's dogs that every morning are out beyond my fence killing prairie dogs or getting into the hooved animal fence area and chasing my cats. Nor does Butch keep up with his Great Pyrenees, Isis, or aging hound, Suzie. Those two have been kept from starving and freezing by my immediate neighbor opening her covered porch for them. I have little by little stopped walking my dogs on...

Washing Tiles Finally got the court mandated release of lien on my property in the mail today. The lien was placed by the contractor from hell on November 9th 2007. I had a partially finished studio and plans for a refurbish of my attached rental apartment and several remodel projects I wanted to do in my residence. It seemed important to finish the studio if for no other reason than to generate income. And I did - from the sheet rock on. I even laid tile in the 16 x 21 foot interior. I like laying tile. But the studio floor was not the small project I told a friend recently she should begin with. Up to that point I had only tiled a small bathroom counter top and my mudroom floor. Floors require yoga and gymnastics. And doing small projects (not the studio floor) means you can pick up cheap (sometimes free) odds and ends of tile. I had several projects I wanted to do that would fit into that small project concept and so I accepted tile odds and ends. But because of the lien whic...

Federal Highway Stripe Yellow Another of those long empty stretches of highway on the road to Raton. Though if you look very closely there is another vehicle up there heading the same way. And even though there were no buffalo out I made myself stop and take a picture or two. I had told myself I was going to practice on taking pictures of vast open spaces and trying to capture that feeling. Today when I was editing my pictures I played around with the panoramic effect that can be achieved by cropping your photos. Below is what the picture looked like before. Before Okay so I upped the saturation some too but I will argue that the top picture is how the particular sunglasses I was wearing made the road look. It was one of those warm afternoons for the 1st of February and I actually turned off the heater in the car and toyed with the idea of putting on the air conditioner. The warmth of the car was making me sleepy and I was playing my father's mile marker game. He w...