why does an exit sign have so much meaning? for me at least...

'cause i pass them so many times on the 150 mile route i drive everyday...

or is it that i pass so many but only use a few...

each sign is an opportunity passed? a choice not made?

and just after posting this series of images on Flickr i recieved an email from a dear friend...

one that brought a blur of long past exit signs flooding into memory...

countless what ifs...
what if i had taken that exit?
or that one?
or this other one?
what if...

a question best not dwelled on or attempted to answer...

brings on a wave of emotion that is overwhelming and the undertow can ruin a perfectly good day/week/year/life...

like old letters... old letters to... well to people that a relationship might have worked out brilliantly...

or letters from people where it didn't work out...

it comes down to the rational clear thought:
No i don't want to go back and change anything - the fantasy of what could have happend is very exciting... but still just that - a fantasy...

nothing more...

nothing more as long as i am able to divorce fantasy from reality...

am i?

can i?

can a move to a new city near family to a better university help ground and cement that separation?

am i still safe from my self with the lack of confidence?

will i always be too weak to initiate anything that would get me emotionally introuble? or am i finally strong enough to not feel compelled even if my actions are prevented from cowardice?

a bit revealing maybe for this - but today seems right - for some reason...

Is that exit coming up on to take?

Is it a detour or a destination?

A short cut or a senic route...

will my spirit be reliable?

can it carry me through?

so many unknowns...

so much doubht...

uncertainty...

fear...

am...

I...

doing...

the right thing?

I suppose only time will tell...

more or less... thinigs are happening too fast to keep track of and even though i think i am keeping up i fear i'm letting things get past me...

the girls are back and life is okay - except for the upcoming uncertainty... how to deal with that successfully will be a problem/challenge i am both relishing and not...

will i be excused or defered from jury duty? will i get the offer? will it be what i hope it is? will it be possible to find a place to live within out means?

what to do, what to do...

take more images - take some pinhole images... do something...

the cycling was going great until the last few weeks - preparing for two back to back weekends of almost epic drives... nuked 3 weeks in a row of getting on the bike... now i'm back to where i started... the endurance challenges on the mt bike are out the window - no racing for me with these miles... no idea when i'll get back on the bike - esp with as much as there seems to be to do with the house... crazy stuff...

ah well - and oooooh

this Ratzkiller dude - "ben-a-dick to the jews" all the evil overlord sith comparison pictures and the Mr Bean ones... they seem appropriate... i don't have a good feeling about this guy - could be cause i don't know him...

but i kinda went from diggin those guys to total disregard... which is sad... PJPII was pretty cool....

What is it... well to an ecologists, forester or a field botanist the name is familiar. To me, neither a field botanist or an ecologists - not quite a forester (mostly a forest tree biologist), it is beyond familiar...

its a phrase representing the most emotional and storied trees you find in the landscape...

a nice Silvicultural explaination:

A wolf tree has an unusually large crown for the stand. Often wolf trees grew up in relatively open conditions and the rest of the forest stand fills in around it.

-from: How Do We Shape The Forest: Silviculture

http://www.thewolftree.com/wolfdef.htm
had a bit of a definition of it - not in my words... but the book looks delicious...

The power of a tree that grew in an opening, unencroached by limits to its sunlight, allowed to fulfill its complete genetic potential. Either growing in the fence row of a field, or any other natural or human influenced wide open space...

The tree literally 'wolfs' up the space around it...

They seem normal alone, out in the field...

We see them all the time driving around...

The drama takes on a rich complexity at the point when small, younger trees take over the open space... a reforestation of sorts...

The young trees grow in tight crowded packed stands... exhibiting the second genetic form, a form that results from intense competition around it, straight arrow trunks, clean and clear to the top.

from a commercial point of view these wolf trees are nothing more than firewood, their age and complexity and branches challenge the mills... however the dense stands of straight trunks make the lumber sales team salivate...

I'm always curious about the story each tree has to say... what have they seen... why are they there? Did they start off in a forest, were they the runt of the trees, the ones no one wanted? Did they then explode in a flurry of dormant buds, thirsty for the power and energy from the sun?

I think that's the draw to a Wolf Tree to me... i want to get to know them... but how... how...

With the passing of PJPII i've been rather more attuned to his legacy and message, and overwhelmingly, due to my propensity towards the direction, i find that Peace is really where he focused.

Peace and the message of peace is what separates modern societies... His Message for the celebration of the world day of peace on the first of january this year is profound and could verywell be seen as his ulitmate message, a final appeal to the world to realize the teachings and meaning of christ and what it means to be a christian...

full text is here - please read and pass it on

a few other comments/qoutes that can help to clarify the path to peace:

Instead of loving what you think is peace, love others, and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetite and disorder in your own soul, which are also causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed -- but hate these things in yourself first, not in others. ----Thomas Merton

Once you can overcome and vanquish those things in yourself... does it become okay to hate the warmongers?

actions are more powerful than beliefs... if you believe in peace yet make no effort to quell the violence in your soul and to extinquish your hateful actions/reactions then your beliefs are inconsequential... If you manifest love and peace, you are doing more..

This morning on the way in i was listening to NPR and they had a peice titled: "This I Believe"... that link will take you to one of the more touching and relevant essays... the most striking passge to me is:

I have a simple faith in the Deity and a hope that my attempts to live a decent life are pleasing to Him. If I were to discover that there is no afterlife, my motive for moral living would not be destroyed. I have enough of the philosopher in me to love righteousness for its own sake.

Has the power and the meaning of PJPII's life touched me? I think so... however i was saddened and angry when i gave in to the pressure and attended catholic mass on Sunday... but for a brief announcement/prayer prior to mass and a line at the community pray, and a brief comment at the end... there was no mention... maybe good for those children recieving their first communion, but a homily about Thomas and doubting left me angry and bitter. The logic and rational to say you must believe because the person sitting in front of you does, and the person sitting behind you and to your right and left all believe, you must also have faith and believe. Thomas should never have needed to 'see' to believe, the homily went on...

I got back and did what i should have done instead: got on my bike... and on the bike i started thinking... is there a direct line from the Apostles that "saw" the miracle of the resurection, or is there a dissconnect in history and we are all left with a gap, and to that point and the end, the message is intensely valuable, but is the logic and the "validation and reason to" properly routed? I doubt it is... I believe strongly that Marx was correct, religion IS the opiate of the masses, without a God and without an Afterlife the human community gives way to evil and the passion and intensity of living in the right now...

Why is it that humanity needs the promise of an afterlife to carry out a message of peace... Why does it seem to require that something more powerful than humanity is needed to enforce a code of morals?

I am going to borrow from Elizabeth Deutsch and take her: "Sometimes, in a moment of mental despair, I think of the words, "God loves an honest doubter," and I am comforted."
And for me make it say, I am an honest doubter, there is no mental dispair on my part, and i can take comfort in God's love for an honest doubter.

and with that, as Elizabeth did, i will end this today... and I will strive to read PJPII's message at least once a day this week...

[quote]So, tell me, what's the point? At that age, if they did, indeed, find cancer, would he be a candidate for treatment? Why put him through almost an hour of pain on a hard x-ray table, turning and twisting and positioning, just to say "Well, yep, I guess you do have cancer after all"! [/quote]

Well the dude probably has money, and insurance... he'd be a money maker for the hospital.

so what if he wants to know? And maybe he's got unwavering faith in the medical communty (nieve old fart) and believes that modern medicine will cure him if he is sick, and maybe he feels that even an extra 6 months with his grandchildren is worth it?

And who are you to judge what others want to do? :P are you the omnipotent sage of the x-ray machine :lol:

"look you are just too old - don't waste an hour of your time on this cold hard x-ray table... it won't matter if you know if ya got it or not - go home - save yourself and the insurance company money"

As for the whole TS crap... she wasn't the first like that, she isn't the last like that, she's just the only one that made national attention because her parents are sick sick people who worked hard to attempt to manipulate the courts and the media for their own benefits.... The Detroit paper a while back ran a front page article featuring 6 high profile cases that went to court over feeding tubes... But the actions of one side specifically were anti-peace, and purely selfish motives...

Ethically in terms of the elderly patients... we need to say does this treatment only benefit them? Or will it benefit their loved ones...

If this old guy was a bachelor, had no family and just wanted to live long enough to spend the rest of his money on hookers and at the casino... withhold treatment - but then why withhold it then? Isn't it his money? Isn't it his right to seek treatment even if it only means he will spend it at the sex shop just looking at nekkid women and playing roulette? I dunno....

i dunno...

I look at how my grandfather went. I was supposed to spend the summer with him - working on his house and skippering his B-40... Everything was supposed to be great... but a stroke kinda messed him up and one Sunday he ripped me a new one for something... and then took my shopping - well i drove him and got a stern lecture about two hands on the wheel when i'm driving anyone i care about - doesn't matter what i do in the car when i'm alone but with anyone else - i'd better be prepared... anyway - after we got back from that trip... he took a nap, and was unusually sedentary... i went off to work (dishwasher for dinner run) and he proceeded to go to 4 parties saying hello to everyone he knew in the area.. he came home and died... i went up the backstairs and missed the glass he dropped and the spilled water on the frontstairs... He had died before i got home early that morning...

He chose his time... turned out he hadn't taken any of his medication that day... and with what he was on, the results were well and clearly explained to him. It was his choice...

I pray for everyone that they can have the dignity to make their own choices about the end. Even if it is the way Hunter S Thompson went.

Make the choice for yourself. This old guy getting xrays... let him make his own choice... give him the information he needs to make it, but don't presume to be judge and jury for him. If it comes to the point where a medical guardian has to make the choice, be at peace with the choice and pray that it is in the patients best interest, as often it is.

Something that for me is so inter-related and tied together...

How can people dismiss it out of hand...

What are they missing?

How do they exist? What do they use to fill the void?

Like music? How can anyone go through life never 'liking' music?
-- I can't go a few hours without having music on somewhere its a part of me - always there... right now: http://www.king.org/ with MOZART: Symphony No.41 in C, K.551 "Jupiter" playing... yesterday i was listening to DJ Tiesto - Live from Samfundet Trondheim... pretty opposite types of music but - music none-the-less.

Art is the same, I need some visual feedback, and maybe its just the appreciation of the landscape around, or the way the sunlight is falling across a tree/farm/barn on the way home. I can't imagine what it would be like stumbling through this life of mine without it.

I had a discussion with someone here at work the other day. They were talking about molding pottery and making clay replicas of gourds and turtle shells and what not, and that they were going to get a kiln this summer and go into buisness making custom art tiles... maybe i've been too specific, anyway, i've never had a very high appreciation for art that is actually practical, in some respects there is beauty in it but pottery has always struck me as a bit crafty (a word that i used and that struck this person with intense offense - like i'd just slapped them). Photography is different but not as different as scuplture and painting and other more manual expressions.

Does that make sense? Sure the question is: "well sculpture could be using clay and thus be pottery?" Yes but somehow i have a very clear distinction. Art can be made from clay but what is art then? Ithink maybe the difference is in the creation process. And maybe final application...

Painters and other media artists that take a 'snapshot' or even a great photograph and paint from that... not art... thats photocopying with error... Collecting an image latent or digital takes the visual interpretation out of the art. Its already been 'captured' and expressed and the artist is just expressing that again... not really art.

Adding digital effects to digital images is borderline art... but in a way acceptable to me somehow, mostly because i think that you aren't trying to translate an analog of what you captured, you are adding the emotion and what you feel to the image... enhancing the artistic value of it.

I make no appologies for my positions and opinions. Its part of me. Maybe i'll change as i get older, or maybe i'll beable to define these ideas even better later in life.

But the creative outlet is something i have mentioned here before... yeah this is linked to flickr and there are a few random blogger links but most of the traffic comes from P... and P's got a great eye... for selecting great images...

One comment i made over at flickr gave me the concept that i may or may not have outlined here: Is a good photographer one that takes a perfect image everytime or one that has enough money or patience to take 300 images and sort through for one or two amazing ones. And then if its the latter, are the good photographers? or as it may appear just lucky and are able to recognize a stunning image. Which most people can. ... I'm somewhat conflicted about that...

but i put these six images together as a study... kind of a - maybe they make more sense in one frame as a study... than as individuals...

a full size version of it is: here

well there - that only took 3 hours to get done between interuptions and all that... not so bad...

live life with love and compassion