Lake, Saguaro

Took the opportunity to leave work a little early last Friday and went to the lake with the wife.  While we don't have any toys for the water, as such, it was still refreshing to picnic on the shore and take a few pictures along the way.  

Old trail, yellowed grass

🚥

A few weeks ago, I posted a photo of myself perched atop a small cliff on a beach in Southern California. I attributed a quote underneath this picture, which said this:

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking out new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -Marcel Proust

Fast forward to today, when upon my morning readings I found this quote by Jack Kerouac. Often venerated by swaths of individuals for his immense cultural influence and his ability to draw upon society's innate desire to break free from structure, I too have fallen more than once for these simple yet honest takes.

As I took a moment to reflect and ponder upon this text, I paused upon each word in turn. Especially the word "travel". You see, dear readers...I am not yet a traveller. I haven't embarked on any great journeys on God's green earth. Have I been to a few places, seen a few beautiful scenes? Absolutely. Immediately, it comes to mind a time in my youth when I backpacked 10 miles into the Havasupai canyon. Never before (and never again since) had I seen such wonderful unified structure and chaos in nature. 

I do possess with me an innate stubborn streak as deep as the canyon I visited then. I also feel that to travel now would be folly...I am an addictive creature by nature. And seeing how my means are, at this time, meager...I get the sense that it would become prohibitively expensive and an unforgiving vice.

So I dig my heels into the dirt directly beneath me and stay firmly rooted in Arizona.  For what it's worth, I find great beauty and realize great satisfaction from the smallest of excursions within these borders.  But still, there is a great portion within me that winces with each passing year.  I both do and do not wish to travel.  It's a vexing place to be.

Fresh leaves

Taken with my old iPhone 5s, of course. The weather this weekend was absolutely superlative. 

Walls

 There are times when I feel the walls closing in on me. Suffocating my ability to garner rational thought. Rendering my soul into a compressed, fractional portion of what it should be. 

Today is one of those days.  A day when two decade's worth of retrospection yields few positive outcomes in learning from my own mistakes.  When the feedback of a dozen past leaders falls upon my back as the screeching of a legion of malcontents, hell-bent on seeking my endless misery.

My drive into work felt light as a feather; in fact, I remember thinking that exact fact.  How crazy it felt to have all the past weeks' stressors melt away.  They had all felt so intensely heavy not 24 hours previous.  

I was literally lost in the music I was listening to...Depeche Mode's "Memento Mori" album, fresh off the proverbial presses this very morning.  I felt hopeful, jaunty, energetic and full of a desire to replicate this sunny fervor that had captured my vision.  

Several hours later and I am defeated and flaccid.  Like I've spent the last week at the back of the refrigerator, forgotten by my benefactors and waiting for my expiration date. 

Somehow, this silly web site is still around after 23 years.  It's still here to capture and process my thoughts and moods and whatever analog photographs I choose to upload.  Simply having it around is like a warm blanket that softens the daily blows...a balm of healing to ease the friction of an endlessly anxious mind.

Thanks for visiting.

Time to fly

44 approaches

Just before flight

Salt

They say we're made mostly of water.  

So how come we can't find the sea?

Steep winter

Had an absolute bugger of a drive back from Utah early this week.  Simple fact is never to attempt a drive through Flagstaff during a winter storm.  You think you can beat it? Fine.  Reap your rewards.  

Thankfully, we made it back in one piece.  And it looked like the lion's share of our adjacent travelers did, as well.  Those who slid off the road were, at best, mildly inconvenienced.  For the worst, they might have had to catch a ride back into town.  We did see one poor fellow who careened off the 17 and tore his entire bumper off.  

Glad to be back in the Valley of the Sun.

Chill change

The chilly weather has settled fully upon us here in AZ.  Those trees who would cast their leaves on the ground have days left to complete their ritual.  

The next few weeks should be fairly mild but frigid at night.  

Downtown Phoenix

Lol, typo

Credit, @lettersofnote, Twitter

Wake me when…oh, wait

Life passes much too quick for my taste. I've glanced at the "update site" button on my computer nearly every day, while September blew by with nary a whisper in the back of my addled mind.

Here's hoping that each one of us has a blessed holiday season, rapidly approaching.

Too long

Truthfully, I am getting older. Many regrets I have already laid to rest, happily exercising my rights to introspectively assign value to actions vs their outcomes.  There have certainly been a great share of youthful fantasies that never bore fruit.  I have identified and cataloged many instances of arrogance and suppositional rhetoric in my years.  

I can't look back at what might have been, because I did what I did at times for a colorful tapestry of reasons.  At some moments, survival was paramount. And still others, I was interested in the thrill of change, of spontaneity that would surely drive the winds behind the sails of my life.

I suppose that, given a bit of temperance, I can entertain the thought that life still holds much in front of me.  Mid life (in all it's sundry machinations, pock-marked with exhaustion, financial insolvency and straight-up dehydration) has me by the scruff of my neck right now, and it's hard to see above the trenches at times.  I am paralyzed with fear at forever screwing up more lives around me than I have hairs on my speckled head.  I often press the pause button and wonder, in the words of David Byrne, "Well, how did I get here?"

Yes, yes...the days go by.  Racing, forever racing because no matter how hard I try, I cannot exist for learning, and to slow down time is a fruitless exercise of sentimental futility.  Dry and brittle are the new hobbies that sink their atrophied claws into my soul; I continually reach backward to draw old pleasures into the present-tense of my life.  Perhaps that, my friends, is why my right shoulder has seemingly drawn its last ping-pong ball from the tumbler of life's lottery.  

I carry with me so much passion, so much hubris.  I sometimes explode with such unannounced and unfocused tremors of anxiety that I cannot help but wonder where it all comes from.   I was told all along that I ought to break the cycle of generational trauma, but which character traits do I carry in my psyche that, if lopped off with reckless abandon, would sever ties with lesser-developed but internal sensitivies in my soul?  Who knows.  

Anyway, here's a picture of the Sonoran desert that I took while I was punishing my body during a 41 mile bike ride this past Saturday morning.  As for the rest of the words in this entry, I have no idea where they came from, or why the savory picture of a morning's sunrise caused them to protrude with such fervor from my nervous soul.  Enjoy this fine Monday.