a thousand words

Awake at 3:30, rising at 4:15, no point laying around when sleep has fled.

Jill was to be heard but not seen on the outward leg of this morning's constitutional. The creek seems to carry the light into the places of shadow. Water carries Light. Water carries Life.

Sycamores line the East Branch of Little Antietam Creek

Brighter Later

A cold, blustery, sunny day on the frontier of the Colonies - give or take a few hundred years.

Lotsa paperwherk, administrativia and futurism. I feel like I'm in physical therapy, getting back to what I hope will in short order resemble a viable routine - the good part of physical therapy, where you begin to sense the payoff for the hard work, frustration and sweat of ones efforts. Yeh, I've been in physical therapy a time or two - leave such for another story, another time.

Promenading with the Cinnamon Girl, a happy first - she has with perseverance, established enough trust with our friend Jill, she is beginning to take food straight from the hand which feeds her. We have mused whether she is capable of flight, perhaps her wings had been clipped. Today I saw her fly a short distance of a few yards across the stream. If her wings were clipped or she had been injured, this would be an encouraging sign she is recovering. A fine feathered friend is she. The waterlevel is still high, but clear. Were this the level throughout the year, this little creek would have the makings of some fine habitat for trout.

Cold earth and heart warmth heart and earth come together perhaps is the hearth

A grey day.
Geese and I seem to be on the wing and shanks mare in this neck of the woods somewhat regularly these days. They remind me of the passing of time, change of season and the fleeting ephemera of Life.

And then there's Jill.

When I was a young boy, I would spend hours drawing trees with no leaves - with leaves as well - yet most often bare trees.

Shepherd Julie's house.

Dusk

Rising water from a soaking rainfall.

How weeping cherry trees do their thing in Winter. This tree was a gift to us some years ago from my mother.

A continuation, albeit somewhat diminished in the level of perceived cacophony accompanying the chaos of yesterday. If one just keeps breathing and follows their breathing, things have a way of helping sort themselves out. Maybe it's just getting oneself out of the way enough to let "natural order" manifest. At which point, a lucid, sentient intelligence might recognize a way to reintegrate and re-engage in the process once again.

A strange day for me. I'm on overload and struggling to gather, grasp and address everything clamoring for attention within my awareness. Personal, business, familial, introspective, mundane and things all spinning out chaotically from the world of Stuff assail me. When I was younger, I would infrequently accord myself an indulgent I'm losing it moment when I felt hammered by stressors. Now, I just acknowledge I'm exploring some interesting territory. I'm going to need some down time to assimilate all of this and sort it out. While I am ticking off tasks and obligations on my list as I go, there remains a sense over all, of being in an atmosphere several times the pressure of the one I normally inhabit. Were this an open water dive, I would be well advised to make several safety stops to decompress. Hmm, sounds like good advice. Some people I've spoken with about this journal say this isn't the usual or suggested way to represent with a presence or extension of oneself in a professional environment such as an online manifestation of a business, business person or business entity. Then again, I've never mistaken myself for an usual example of such. Welcome to the brave new world of figuring out where the balance is, where the lines are drawn, which delineates the right measure of professionalism and personality in contemporary relationships of which business is a part. I would hazard a guess, were there to be a focus study group of clients, friends and those familiar with Heurich Photography and me, there would not be any outburst or cry for normalcy or conventionality. I'm guessing the people who appreciate what I do, what I offer, are fine with me the way I am, all in all. To quote the famous philosopher Popeye,

"I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam!"

Pity my Olive Oil, eh hee!

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." Attribution Unknown

"Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the world." From A Course In Miracles

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." From the diary of Anais Nin 1934-1939

It's tired and I'm getting late. More accomplished than I expected, less than I'd hoped. Such is life. Processing mucho data, the organic - life experience variety. Sorting out the changes of the past fortnight is one fire I will not let my dance around. The only way out is through.