ellenspictures

Category: Climate Changing Signs

as slow as Christmas…but, it is not slow anymore.

Astoundingly fast the time goes these days. When we were kids, we used to say “as slow as Christmas” when we thought that something was taking a long time. We were always waiting for Christmas to come around again. The dramatic lead up to the climax of the eve before the big day. Loved “The Christmas Story” movie about the kid and the bee-bee gun – absolutely one of the best Christmas movies out there… Likely, the kid thought that things were indeed moving slowly as he wished and hoped that Santa would deliver his dream!

I was running the other day and had these thoughts, as I do, about this phenomenon of time moving faster as you get older. Well, unfortunately, I forgot it (mostly), as you do, when your endorphins go back down to normal levels after the run. Shit. I hate it when that happens. I lose some of my best insights that way. Sometimes I record these, but then I get nervous and feel like I am on radio. It completely upchucks the thoughts and garbles the original flow. I wish I could invent something that could record these important insights in my brain and not look like really screwed up garbage.

I don’t have the comic strip anymore, but years ago, Dagwood Bumstead (of the comic strip Blondie) awakened and opened up a notepad on his bed stand after having a brilliant flash of insight when he was dreaming – and what he found the next day was a bunch of nonsensical words written down, much to his chagrin. That would be me!

I get a little depressed that my time on earth is now within that realm of “realizable”, as it now has the potential to be no longer than my longest marriage relationship, statistically speaking. In addition to this, we all, as we age, begin to see each year more people taking off due to unexpected circumstances and early-onset illnesses. Big fat finger in your face, reminding you that you are not in control here.

My neighbor told me the story of asking her dad on his 70th birthday, “Dad, how does it feel to be 70?” She said he was not happy being asked that question. He told her to consider how she would feel if she knew that she had more years behind her than the number ahead. I had a similar experience with my Dad when he was in his sixties. He got really grumpy when I made a bad attempt to be humorous about his age. My bad judgment and lack of understanding got me into some deep doo-doo on that one…

Yep, it’s a fact. No matter which flavor of religious affiliation you are, generally speaking, you are mainly being prepared for leaving the planet as you listen to sermons and read about what prophets say. This time of year, the joyousness of the season is infectious and people of various faiths do celebrate The Holidays together as much as they can because it is positive and cheery – everyone feels good, mostly, when they get out and party in a positive way with people.

As an analyst, looking at religions across the spectrum, the preparation for “what’s next” in the human experience and birth-life-death-re-birth (or not) is the one common denominator. We see that some religions more focus on the here and now, and some focus on the within more than the without, and some focus on the after, more than the now, but the departure in all its forms, of leaving the body in which we are living presents a major event horizon that triggers something else in the belief systems of major and minor religious philosophies. Besides Death, Birth is that other one single event that is viewed as important, as it begins a cycle of life on the planet. It is all wondrous and never solved definitively, likely by design by someone or some thing.

People dedicate their entire lives to the solution. They go into the forest by certain trees and sometimes get so far in that they lose sight of the original point that they are trying to solve – or rather the mystery – maybe it is not a problem, just a condition, or a situation. Whatever.

The trees still have green leaves on them where I live. Some of these are supposed to have fallen off, or at least be brown or some other color besides green. We have constant change in our environment that poses big world problems or problems of the planet. We watched the movie, “Interstellar”, the other night. It was one of the physics and math will solve this if someone smart enough can do this in time types of movies with the added aspect of the explorers going outside to look for a new planet, just in case, even though most people will be dead back home because of the time warps and distance issues.

You know – it’s enough to entertain you, and make you a little anxious. Half-facts, with the seasonings and flavorings borrowed from Contact, Mad Max, and other such movies. We didn’t see aliens – they were missing. But then ahead of this, there was the boring war movie that had the alien spaceship and when I am falling asleep watching movies, they tend to merge into one plot. Or I get distracted and the movie isn’t that meaningful, so I go surf the net, or go on Facebook. I mean, how many ways can you slice and dice the plot lines? It’s all about the same thing.

Redux. Is there anything new under the sun? No, not really. It is, as I said in one of my other posts, all matter just recomposed and reconfigured. Stuff just isn’t produced – it is reconstituted. Think about it. How would anything really leave and how would anything else come in? Hmmmm. Think of the options. According to some folks who are “in the know” – it hasn’t happened that anyone can prove… At least not yet, right Agent Scully?

So, what was I saying? Slower than Christmas? Whoever thought that up was just trying to be clever. I am with you.

What I do know is that Humor IS required! Without it, you are sunk. “Bottom of the ocean…”

And before we know it, it will be Christmas Day. We should celebrate something – any aspect of our lives that has reflected positively and gives us hope – definitely, it is a time to reflect on new beginnings and try to not think about the anxieties of the world.

What do I want for Christmas? Twenty-four hours of no television, of good conversation that is not negative, with reflections of good times and gratefulness – peace for a day. Longer if possible. That is what I would like for Christmas this year. Oh, and good health. Yeah, that would be good – for the entire family.

We will save prosperity wishes for New Years!

Happy Holidays from the family!

December 1979.

December 19, 2015
what I like to do vs. what I do

What I like to do? That’s a good question. It depends on the day. Sometimes I can’t even answer that question. It’s kind of like “what do you want to eat?” – to which I respond, “What do you have?” or it’s close cousin “What are you going to eat?” A question answer for a question… Hmmmm – what’s going on there?

I need me some insight! Yeah.

I recently decided to take the Myers-Briggs test again, just to check and see if I have changed. Well. Actually, I haven’t much. It was of some comfort to be reminded of all of my blind-spots. It reconfirms what some people tell me about myself, either frustratingly, or sometimes gently, but mostly in the former way, as I may have pushed them to the brink of whatever. I guess that I am hard to be around sometimes, especially when I am not in my comfort zone, which can be a lot of the time.

What happens is that I think that everything should fit into Planet Me. Anything else is illogical. I have to ask God to help me with this and give over to the higher power as I traverse into the land of the overwhelmed. When I was in deep grief after losing Rob, and yes, he was lost, no matter what anyone has told me otherwise, on my planet, he isn’t here – I can’t find him, so he is lost… As I was saying, when I was in deep grief, I had to give over to God. It wasn’t possible for me to feel in control of anything – it was like something else had taken over me and was driving from deep inside me. Hard as hell to ride those waves, but I finally managed to stay on the surfboard and not fall into the sea. I kept looking for some dry land and eventually, I did land on a beach somewhere – still on my planet. I have learned to live on “survivor island”, as it is impossible to return to the old place where I was. Forever changed, but not gotten — that old place… Yep, it didn’t get me then — and I pray for peace all the time that this will be settled for at least a while (in geological time).

As with most of us humans, I believe that I am programmed to worry about “the end” of life on earth – my life, everyone else’s “who are dear to me” ‘s lives – not so much that I have any control – but that I pray for not painful transitions – All the horseshit with suffering is not a good deal for anyone. Enough of that. FIDO. If you want to know the acronym meaning of FIDO, search the inter-google. You’ll find it eventually.

So much of life is living through one’s days, not knowing when days will no longer be, and trying to enjoy life, love others, feel somewhat satisfied and successful at what you do, interact with those around you and your world, in a positive way – and not be fearful of being alone… Once I am by myself in quiet solitude, it isn’t so bad.

It helps to have the dog here with me. She is somebody. Until my special somebody comes home again and we are together, she is here and remains here until such time as she isn’t – but that hopefully is on down the road some.

I do worry about this enough that it enters my dreams, and so I know that the worry baseline contains this worrisome stuff. I think it is because of my intuition and its strength. God only knows why He gave me this. It must serve some purpose. Here, Dearie, have an extra helping of intuition, thank you very much… Hmmmm… Does that come with salsa?

My f***ing intuition drives me nuts sometimes and I want it to go away or just tame down some… I pray over and over that I can be more wrong that right and just “normal” on the intuitive front. Using intuition for good – that’s okay.

What is interesting today is being up at 4:30 AM, or thereabouts – and being here at 6:40 AM, having been awake for two hours already! It will make the day seem earlier, and then the evening will, too… It’s fall-ish outside (finally) and yet it will get warm again before it doesn’t for awhile. Typical weather for these here parts, plus a little bit warmer – thanks to climate change…

I plan to take this road trip tomorrow which will be an experience I have not had in a good while – road trip by myself. My vehicle and I will traverse the roads of the hill country and try to avoid accidents and incidents with texting drivers who think it is their entitlement to text while driving, regardless of how it makes them drive. ugh.

Straight shot. All the way to the midpoint (well maybe more than the mid-point!) have lunch, go again to the destination.

Birds are chirping, sun is rising – once again, it’s morning…

October 4, 2015
Rangitoto

We visited Rangitoto. Rangitoto is a volcanic island that has been used in war-times and in peace for various purposes. It has been set as a nature reserve, being reset back to a more original state and enabled to collect and grow species native to New Zealand unconstrained.

We walked to the summit and had these fantastic vistas of the surrounding area – gorgeous New Zealand as always.

As stated, Rangitoto is a national preserve. It is an extinct volcanic island where the lava field has been left to evolve naturally over sixty years, to re-foliate and attract birds and host the only reptile in New Zealand, the Tuatara.

Unfortunately, we did not see one. There are reasons for that. I will explain.

According to the New Zealand Department of Conservation,

“Tuatara are rare, medium-sized reptiles found only in New Zealand. Adult tuatara range from about 300g to 1kg. They are the only surviving members of the order Sphenodontia, which was well represented by many species during the age of the dinosaurs, some 200 million years ago. All species exept for the tuatara declined and eventually became extinct about 60 million years ago. Tuatara are therefore of huge international interest to biologists. They are recognised internationally and within New Zealand as species in need of active conservation management. Tuatara once lived throughout the mainland of New Zealand but have survived in the wild only on 32 offshore islands.”

I have my theories about noticeable increases in tourist populations. I think that commercializing sites such as these actually contributes to harming the very populations of species that these preserves/reserves are trying to protect.

We have the environmental damage that exists today due to the human footprints that have moved into areas not occupied originally by humans. Damage comes from sound, light, weather, erosion, fire, air-pollution, and any other land-use that is out of balance such as over-foraging, hunting, commercial fishing and agriculture, the taking of animals – birds, reptiles, amphibians included, for their body parts for either edible or non-edible use and other invasive actions on the part of civilization.

I don’t consider myself a “tree hugger” – but, I do have enormous respect for nature – and that saying “we know not what we do or have done until it is too late.”

When it is a question of balance, we intuitively understand, like it or not, that if we are arguing that “we have the right” or should be able to exploit… just the argument is a bad sign. As our television character, Maude, said, “God will get you” – whatever she meant was essentially, the KARMIC forces will make it right.

We harvest too much we starve later. Or somebody does. Or great storms or waves will come (ask the people in Indonesia or victims of Katrina). Yes some of that happens anyway, regardless of humankind’s boots.

What we do not understand is whether “we” are part of the natural process – and our emotions lead us off the path in our pathos.

January 9, 2015