Author: Neville

It was one of those early starts that found me out of the house before 5:15 and other than grabbing the wide angle lens for a sunrise shoot, I hadn’t really made any decision about where I was heading.

I think I was on the road about a half an hour before I finally settled on Ballast Point. The sky above had a good clarity and there seemed to be some loosely configured clouds up there too, so that’s how I ended up deciding on shooting over water.

The reality is that if there was some solid clouds there or anything that looked like it would mess with the horizon, then I was probably downtown-bound. Then the buildings would have taken the brunt of the cloud cover.

At least that’s the way my early-morning-brain saw things.

I was pulling into the parking lot by six which was still well over an hour ahead of sunrise and there were already about ten cars there. I sighed sadly because I knew that while two or three might indeed be early morning fishermen, there was a distinct possibility that a number of them were occupied by sleepers.

I parked into my spot beside a white sedan and as I came to a halt, there was a familiar face looking out at me. It was the same cat that I had seen there a few visits back. He and his owner sleep in the car and I guess this is their go-to spot for overnight quiet.

Thankfully I have gotten into the habit of always having a can of Fancy Feast in my car these days. Oftentimes the beneficiaries are the stray cats that live up at my local Walmart. But for the second time now, this little guy was about to get a nice breakfast.

I tapped on the window which was party down and though I thought he was awake, I think I woke up the driver. I apologized and handed him, through the opening, the can of Gravy Lovers Beef for his little buddy at the back window.

He remembered me from the last time and he thanked me again for this one. I asked his friend’s name and it turned out to be Edgar. Lovely name for a cat.

Camera and tripod in my other hand, I walked away humbled by the experience and the gratitude just shown me. You see, on my drive down there this morning, I had been feeling a bit cheated by life in recent times and was generally feeling sorry for myself.

There wasn’t one particular thing that I was upset about, just life in general and for a while now I have been dealing with a general level of unhappiness.

So as I walked away, it wasn’t that my own level of unhappiness went away … it didn’t. But this little encounter suddenly put a sharp perspective on how I felt for myself.

As odd as this is going to sound (and I am sorry, in advance) it was really Edgar I felt most sorry for. Clearly he is loved and that is a huge positive for any little creature, but living in a car is no life for a cat.

It would be tough on a dog too, I know, but the truth is that you would be able to get out and take your dog for walks and such and let them run around and stretch their feet. That kind of outlet doesn’t exist for a cat and so in many ways, little Edgar seems imprisoned. I just don’t know what his crime was.

Some kind of feliney, I guess. Oh come on … work with me here.

As I rattled off my early morning shots, he stayed stuck in my mind and I asked myself who was better off, the little family of young cats living in Walmart parking lot or Edgar living in a car. There was a real back and forth playing out in my head on this and it doesn’t really matter what answer I came up with, neither was perfect.

Though my heart then wasn’t really into the whole shoot this morning, I still managed to get a few pics that were decent and I have them at the end of the blog.

I hope you enjoy.

Now, this is the point in my blogs that I always depart onto the main purpose for my writing or my thoughts for the day. And right now, there are some of you reading this thinking “Oh shit, he’s going to head off into another dissertation about homeless people and the inequity of riches in America. But relax … I’m not.

No, the real thought that ran through my head as I drove home was all the little creatures that we come into contact with every day and how different their lives are from one another and from ours.

The Walmart kitties live a different life to Edgar who lives a different life to my office indoor/outdoor cats who live a different life to my upstairs indoor cats.

And the possums and raccoons that come to my food stations each evening live a different life to their buddies that have to find food wherever they can.

The baby possum that lives in my storage room gets fresh food and water twice a day and lives differently from other baby possums that may or may have enough to survive with.

The birds that fly in every late afternoon and let me know when I am late putting out their bread; they live a different life from birds that may or may not be able to find enough to eat in a given day.

And we humans live different lives from those around us. We may even look the same as other folks but none of us live the same life.

Some are privileged, others poor, some may have to dig like crazy just to eke out an existence, others may find opportunities waiting for them around every corner.

We can choose to resent those who have it better off than we do and that is one way that many people go through life. They begrudge, they moan, they object. And all that happens is that they become bitter.

Do the cats at Walmart resent the guys living with me? Or do they go about their little lives as best they can?

Going about life the best you can is a genuine path to happiness. Because true happiness comes from our achievements in the face of adversity. Happiness does not come from power, riches, or an easy lifestyle.

Is there anybody on the planet that things Trump is a happy person?

No, happiness comes from taking whatever life sets in front of us and finding ways to make it work for us.

When we make a life within our situation and do as best we can with whatever is dealt to us, we achieve real success and this in turn points us towards happiness. And every now and then an opportunity to make our life better comes along and allows us to grow with it.

Edgar lives what many outside that car might view as a tiny and tragic life. But he is loved. And the car is his domain. And he looks out through the windows at the things that happen around the car. He is not moping on the back seat waiting for life to be over.

And then every now and then, there is a knock on the window and someone hands him in a little can of Fancy Feast.

… just a thought!

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I had just gone through a miserable weekend. Friday night was terrific but the rest of the weekend was dire in the extreme.

I resisted at every turn, determined to turn things around and each time all I achieved was failure.

So by the time I got out of bed this morning, I was truly determined to get the week off in the right vein. I don’t care what the gods had in mind for me, I was going to dial it all up a notch.

So, after all the babies had been fed and cared for, I grabbed a coffee, hopped in the car, and headed off down to Ballast Point to catch the sunrise. I had my A7 back from the repair guys (who did an amazing job btw) and I was going to make this Monday one to remember.

I was on the interstate before I realized I had this dull headache that wasn’t shifting, and my shoes were distinctly uncomfortable, and to add insult to injury the underwear that I took off the shelf weas clearly designed by a woman. Or at the very least a guy with tiny testicles.

Traffic for 5:45 on the interstate was horrendous. Where were all these people going at this time of the morning? Someone must have been giving away $100 bills on the corner of Westshore and Kennedy because everybody and his mother were heading down there at this ridiculous hour.

Eventually I got there and as I climbed out of the car, head pounding, limping with a sore foot, and plucking a wedgie, that’s when I noticed there was this one band of cloud in the sky and it was sitting exactly where the sun was going to come up.

I mean, seriously. For fuck sake … who is writing this script? The Marquis De Sade?

I took some pics for what they’re worth and the few that were worth sharing are at the end of the blog. I hope you enjoy … but seriously, look where the fucking cloud is!

As I was driving home that’s when the thought occurred to me that everything I tried to make better this past few days completely missed the mark.

So would I have been better off not trying at all then?

Well, actually the answer is no. And it is always no.

Because whenever we shy away from a challenge we let ourselves down. We are left wondering “what if” and we never know the answer.

But when we try and fail then at least we take some satisfaction from having tried.

Sometimes all we can do is treat the symptoms. We know before we start that we are not going to win, but by giving it our best and putting some effort in, maybe we end up with a loss that isn’t SOOOO bad. Know what I mean?

Every ill in our lives doesn’t need to be cured. Or at least we don’t always have to find the cure. Sometimes we just take a painkiller so that we don’t feel whatever has caused that headache.

Have we cured whatever the cause was? Hell no. But did we achieve something? Hell yes.

So when I got home, I took a couple of pain pills, changed the shoes I had on, and threw the underwear into the trash can. If I achieved nothing else today, it was that my little guys will not be exposed to such cruelty again by that pair of underwear.

… just a thought.

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The kitties had all been fed and I stood there on the driveway, looking up into the dark sky. It was still an hour and a half to sunrise, but I could see enough to let me know that there must be heavy cloud … all the stars were hidden from view.

I thought about staying home, but in truth, my decision to go was made last night before I even went to bed.

You see, today is the third anniversary of my mom’s death and I needed to go and say hi.

Lake Parker is one of the three places where I spread her ashes. She and Dad had their ashes spread here and also in Lettuce Lake and in Lake Hancock.

In my list of wants as I looked up to the sky, the notion of a somewhat clear sky was by far my preference, but from what I could see (and confirmed by the app on my phone), Lakeland was smothered in cloud.

It wasn’t really intended to be a photo moment anyway, so I wasn’t too upset. I gathered three little candles and a book of matches and headed off to the lake’s shore.

I wanted to be able to light the three candles (one for each year) and sing her favorite song to her, but the breeze made a mockery of any attempts to light the candles. The longest they stayed lit was for less than two seconds.

And as for the singing, well, I wanted it to be a nice quiet visit but immediately I got there, the place was descended upon by boaters. Eight boats launched while I was there and the level of noise and clatter was distracting to say the least. I got a verse out before I left but I doubt if she heard it over the roar of the outboard motors.

When I left, I drove down the lake side and found a quiet spot where it was just the two of us and I got to finally let her know that I miss her. I don’t appreciate being left an orphan. Not cool!

Anyway, I include a few pics at the end of the blog from the morning and I hope you enjoy.

Meanwhile as I drove home, I mulled over how few of my wants were taken care of this morning. And yet how I still found a quiet moment somewhere, I still got the candles lit (even just for a couple of seconds), and I still got to sing a few lines of “My Way”. And Mother Nature even obliged with a lovely red and golden spot to shine through in between the layers of cloud.

So essentially, each of my needs were met so I have no complaints.

I know that we all know the relevance of wants versus needs and while we often focus on the former, the latter is far more important.

And sometime what we want is diametrically opposed to what we need. For example, if I had gotten the solitude for the morning, I wouldn’t have gotten my favorite shot of the morning, which is picture number four below of the distant boat in the water.

Focusing on wants is very natural, particularly when our needs are mostly met in life. Maslows Hierarchy of Needs defines beautifully how us humans react to life when we are at different levels of comfort. For most of us in the western world, our physiological needs are met inasmuch as we have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and air to breathe.

Most of us also have our safety needs met inasmuch as we have our health, income of some sort, and are not living under personal threat.

And so we begin to develop our wants beyond what these basic needs are.

We reach for the stars and want success, want a real feeling of worth, want to be loved and to love, and so on.

But take away one of our lower level needs and immediately we couldn’t give a rats ass about our wants. For instance, the moment we lose our health, our lives revolve around getting it back or at the very least restoring what we can of it.

There have been times in my life when all my needs and many of my wants have been met and life has been good. It has allowed me to reach into a mode of self-actualization, where my goals in life revolve around becoming the best person I can be.

In recent times life has undermined me on a couple of needs and more primitive wants, to where I have abandoned that notion for the moment.

I am sure that this happens to almost all of us and it behooves us in times like this to be able to strip away the veneer from something in order to be able to identify if it really is a need or simply a want.

This requires us to examine our motivations in doing things and to make sure we are not distracted away from something essential, all because of glitter and sparkle.

We can follow that sparkle when everything is going well, no doubt. But when things aren’t, we have to be very selective on what we are chasing and why.

That is one of the reasons why I often self-reflect. I ask myself routinely why I am doing something and what I hope to achieve from it. I examine the motivations regularly and there are times when I have spotted motivations that were wrong or at the very least poor.

No one holds us accountable for our lives, at least not to the extent that we should. We should be our own biggest critic and regulate our actions and interactions accordingly.

Because for everybody there will come a moment, when some of life’s needs will be taken away and we can’t be off chasing windmills when that happens.

While some who are privileged might follow their own silver-spoon lives and not have to care about their most essential needs, the rest of us need to keep a watchful eye on the realities of our lives.

I firmly believe in setting goals and living a planned life. I understand that things happen along the way that takes certain elements of that out of my hands. But by sorting out wants from needs, I can make sure that successful or not, at least my efforts will be in the areas in life that they need to be.

Life will pursue its own plans regardless of what my intentions and efforts might be. And that’s when it is most important that I am able to identify wants versus needs.

Even for the richest and most powerful of us, at the end of the day life comes and takes away the most important of all our needs … breathing.

… just a thought.

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It’s a virtue I don’t have. But when you at least accept that there is a shortcoming that you are aware of, sometimes you can do something about it.

This morning, I set out early and decided on the north part of Bayshore where I would be looking at the sunrise as it came up behind Tampa General Hospital. I know that isn’t necessarily an idyllic view but I was hoping that the skies might add some drama and generate some wild colors that could have drowned out the foreground.

When I got there, it was yet an hour before sunrise and as the sky became a little clearer to my view, I could see that there weren’t enough clouds to add the drama I needed.

At that stage, I could have left that viewpoint and headed further south towards Ballast Point. I even had time to head across the bay towards St Pete. But last week’s disaster over there and my own laziness and reluctance to move, worked together and made me stay.

There were a couple of guys hanging out to my right who were smoking a little weed and enjoying the early morning quiet. There were a few joggers that occasionally went by. And there were a couple of cormorants diving for breakfast, hoping to catch a sleeping fish or two.

But, all told it was a nothing morning. I’ve said it before, I am not a fan of clear sky sunrises. Although they are pretty, they all look the same and for someone like me it always seems like I have been here before.

I got it my head that I would leave and go home to the cats, but I chided myself for my impatience and made myself stay for a bit.

That’s when the unexpected arrival of a dolphin broke the routine and drove my excitement factor noticeably higher. It was still too dark to get clear shots of her, and I didn’t have a zoom lens anyway, and I didn’t have a notion of where she might even surface …. so it was never going to be a photo moment.

But nonetheless I was thrilled that she chose that moment to swim up the bay. I felt privileged.

There are a couple of shots of her breaking the water surface among the sunrise shots at the end of the blog. They aren’t anything special but it was a special moment to me.

I hope you enjoy.

As I drove home a little later, I was happy to have stayed and nature seemed to have rewarded me for doing so.

It made me think though, why is impatience such a trait that I always seem to have to battle? Why is it not yet something that I have conquered?

I realized in thought, that impatience is something that extends well beyond me and my shortcomings. It has become a pronounced trait across the world we live in.

For generations of mankind, we have removed the virtue of waiting from the values we teach our children. We give them what they want, when they want it. Not all the time, but enough to cause the loss of patience in the arsenal that they approach life with.

America is worse than most places in the western world in this regards and I suspect it is a direct result of the affluence and laziness that has infected us in this last hundred years.

Why wait when you can afford it now?

Why save when you can get instant credit?

Why wait for something to get repaired when you can replace it immediately?

Why wait in line at the grocery store when you can have someone shop for you and bring it to your car?

Why make a healthy dinner for everyone when the drive thru is so much faster?

The byproduct of all these choices is more waste, more debt, more laziness, and more damage to our health. And across the board, less patience.

So maybe I am being a fool to try to fight against what I see as a personal failing. Maybe I should just go with the crowd and only accept instant gratification.

This level of “instant living” is reflected in everything we do and far from slowing ourselves down in this decline, we accelerate willingly towards wherever it all ends.

Earn your four-year-degree in three.

Buy now pay later.

Instant messaging.

There is no waiting any more.

Unless of course you are a black person on polling day. Those folks can wait seven hours in line, but god forbid anyone tries to give them food or water. Let’s arrest those election-stealers … OK, sorry, that is a tangent.

I blame technology.

I love technology.

But I still blame it.

You see, technology is smarter than us humans and though we know how to use it, we never learned how to control it.

There are now generations (yes, plural) who never used a rotary dial phone and had to wait a couple of seconds for the dial to rotate all the way back from the “0” so you could enter the next number.

There are generations who have never experienced the act of changing a TV channel or adjusting the volume by having to get off the sofa and walk to the TV set.

There are generations that never had to plan to take the meat out of the freezer the night before in order to be able to cook it for dinner the following day.

Digital phones, Remote Controls, and Microwaves took away the need to wait and while we happily consumed these “innovations” our waste lines expanded and our patience depleted.

The phrase “patience is a virtue” has long since been forgotten and has fallen into complete irrelevance.

We no longer expect it from anyone any more, least of all ourselves.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting sir.” even though it was only a couple of minutes ago when I joined the line to buy the fast food.

It is to the point where you must be a complete loser not to have an express pass at the theme park. “Keep walking kids. Don’t make eye contact with those sweaty people. They are probably those F-word people. Foreigners”

OK OK, slight exaggeration, I know.

But my point is simple. While recognizing a short coming within myself, I see that the world around me not only doesn’t see it as a shortcoming any more, but in fact lack of patience is often praised and rewarded.

“He’s a real go-getter. Won’t take no for an answer. A highly driven, results oriented person. What a guy!

Let’s promote him, let’s reward him. Let’s elect him.

Virtues of past generations like integrity, honesty, decency, and patience are exactly that … in the past.

But then again, I can only effect change in me. So, I will continue to strive for more patience … you should too. It really isn’t that hard.

What are you waiting for?

… just a thought!

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it is funny sometimes how you can have a thought at one moment that only has genuine relevance in a past sense. But then life circles back around and bites you in the ass with a more current relevance.

That’s exactly what happened to me this morning. Let me explain.

I was out of bed early enough that by the time all kitty chores were done, I had a real choice in where I might go to watch the sunrise.

I went back and forth in my head for a bit and decided on St Pete, looking back over the bay from the north shoreline.

Getting out of bed at 4:30 has its benefits, I guess, and with so much time on my hands, I dawdled a little at home and even had some cereal before I took my coffee on the road with me.

So by the time I was on the interstate and ran a real ETA calculation, it came up with a tighter (but still ok) arrival. I was slightly annoyed at myself and processed the times again in my head, because originally I imagined I would get there in gallons of time.

However I originally figured it out was clearly wrong as all the slop time I thought I had was gone and there was no way I took that long eating a bowl of cereal.

Clearly something was wrong with my original calculations. So much for being smart … not as smart as I thought I was, I guess.

So while I was driving over, I pondered over the whole miscalculation thing and while I admonished myself for being so wasteful, I arrived at the consoling “we are all human” answer. I was still going to make it on time. So, I needed to stop beating myself up.

I did get there just in time and got some neat images that I have attached at the end of the blog. Hope you like them.

Where the whole miscalculation thing came back to haunt me was a point where I moved from the sandy beach onto a little concrete pier. You can see the pier in pic 5 below.

Anyway, as I moved the tripod onto the concrete at the pier, I didn’t check properly that I still had the tripod base fully extended. And a strong gust of wind coming in from the bay, blew it all over and my new camera went crashing to the ground.

Cameras don’t do well in drop tests onto concrete from heights of about 4 feet, so I’m afraid this new A7 is pretty unrepairable. Apart from broken glass, rubber and plastic, the frame itself is cracked and that is a showstopper.

It was one of those moments where you look at your self and realize how stupid you can be at times. I am not an idiot (well, most of the time, anyway) but a dog with a mallet up his ass could have calculated that the base of the tripod wasn’t set right. Not to mention that I was already aware that there was a seriously strong breeze coming in from the bay that minutes earlier had been howling around my ears.

So, while I am upset and disappointed at the fluky nature of what happened and how it was the only time I was actually on concrete, it was completely my own fault. A simple and stupid miscalculation.

As I drove home in annoyance, I recalled other miscalculations of mine in recent times. Most notably there was the broken wrist incident at Ballast Point the day after Christmas. That one smashed up a camera and lens too albeit a not so expensive one. In retrospect the decision to walk across the slimy rocks at low tide in the dark, wasn’t the most solid calculation ever made by mankind.

One small step for mankind, one huge slip for Neville Ronan.

And then for whatever reason, my brain decided that it had had enough of my feeling sorry for myself and how all these decisions seemed to be coming home to roost in damage or injury to me. I recalled many years ago when I lived in Ireland, I was driving in on a two lane highway from Shannon Airport one evening.

I was in a rush and there were two farmers (well they probably weren’t real farmers, but I imagined they were) occupying both lanes and driving at 50 mph without anyone overtaking anyone.

However long it played out, it played out long enough to irritate a younger, more impulsive, Neville.

I was driving a very speedy Fiat 124 spider that had a remarkable acceleration right about that same speed. While these two farmers were parallel, I calculated that the gap between them was wide enough for me to get through, if I did it quick enough.

So I hit the gas and zipped through, leaving them both in my wake.

It was a moment of pure insanity and in today’s rear vision, I shake my head at the pure lunacy that made me even think of doing it.

So, yes, it was a calculation that I got away with but it was nonetheless a genuine miscalculation from a common sense perspective.

We perform calculations and commit miscalculations at surprisingly regular times in our lives. Much of our decision making process involved some kind of calculation as part of arriving at our next step.

In some cases we are right and others we are wrong. And some times when we are wrong, we get away with it.

But getting away with it is not the same as it being a good calculation.

It just means that in that instance, we were lucky.

Sometimes, because we get away with something we don’t even acknowledge the luckiness of the result.

But we should.

Because if we acknowledge the luck, then we admit to a bad decision and we can learn from it. We won’t always have luck on our side.

Each decision we make requires us to process whatever information is available in order to come up with our best step forward. Part of the information we use is always historical to us. Something from our past that was either a success or a fail.

The fails are easy to recall for most of us. They often carry scars into our memories to where they are easily recalled.

But any success that we use in our process should be asked if it was because of something we did correctly or did we just succeed despite ourselves.

I am not the most intelligent person on the planet (that’s my Victoria) but I am no fool. But, you don’t have to be a fool in order to make mistakes in calculating your next move.

And if we assume that we can’t fail just because of how smart we think we are, then we expect lady luck to fill in where our lack of smarts leaves a void.

While there have been times when she has stepped into my life and bailed me out of some stupid scenarios like that drive from Shannon Airport, most of the time she leaves me sink or swim on my own.

And that’s OK, because at the end of the day relying on being lucky is no way to plan out your life.

… just a thought.

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I wandered through my own back yard
among the fallen trees,
I came across some innocents
that brought me to my knees.
I wasn’t bending down in prayer
or feeling sad or broken
But closing in to get a view
Of nature’s little tokens.
For there among the wild debris
soft beauties did abound.
And even Coco stopped to see
the magic that I found.
Sometimes that’s all we need to do
when looking for escape
Is take a look at close-to-home
to get a nature break.

… hope you like this little collection from yesterday.

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and here are a few more from today.

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With a weekend upon us, I had everyone fed upstairs and fed and released downstairs by 5 or so. So, I looked at myself and asked what did I want to do.

At that time in the morning I could drive almost anywhere and still be in time for a sunrise. It hasn’t been a great week, so I was a little emotionally low and physically a bit sore, so it would have been an easier choice to stay at home and get back to my book.

But it was obviously a clear sky overhead (I could see some stars up there), and even though we get a lot of those in Florida, I didn’t feel comfortable wasting one.

So, I guess it was fair to say I pushed myself out the door, cup of coffee in hand and decided to head off to Ballast Point on the south side of Tampa Bay.

Ever since I broke the wrist down there the day after Christmas, I feel it owes me one. So, maybe today would be the day to collect.

It was quite dark when I got there, but there was still a surprising number of cars in the parking lot. it wasn’t quite six and an hour before sunrise and the parking lot was half full.

The bigger surprise was that I was the only one with a camera at that time, so the others must have been there for a different reason than I.

Later on there must have been a half-dozen of us camera people and then twice as many using their phones for the same purpose. But, for now at least, I was on my own and I enjoyed the unobstructed views and the silence afforded by my subject.

It was a beautiful twilight and sunrise and I have put a number of the images at the end of the blog for you to check out.

Hope you enjoy.

While photographically it was a very joy filled start to the day, emotionally it wasn’t quite. I had been low already so it was easy for the day to pull me into sad mode.

And the very first action of the morning pulled hardest.

Like I said, the parking lot was half full but there was an empty spot facing the water about half way in, so that is where I parked. I realized I was parking next to someone who was sleeping in their car.

I soon became aware based on all the stuff in there with them, that they were actually living in their car. And from the back seat, a sad little cat face was looking out at me.

I could hear my soul cry a little and I was struck by the contrast between the beautiful place I was in, surrounded by some of the most expensive of homes in Tampa, and the poor soul that was reduced to this as their life.

The cat’s eyes followed me as I walked past, camera in hand, and I felt a lump in my throat as I could make out a shape sleeping across the front seats.

By the time I got to where I took the first pics, I passed by three of that exact same scenario (minus the cat) and I was genuinely so sad.

Whatever it is that causes a person to fall so, it is a sad reflection on us as a rich society that we can’t catch them.

I tried not to dwell on it as I got into my shoot mode, but I don’t think it really left my thoughts.

As I settled into the final viewpoint that I took the last eight of those shots from, I found myself a few feet away from a young lady with her dog by her side. You’ll see her in some of the last shots.

She and I engaged in conversation and she shared with me that her dog was 15 and had lost all hearing and almost all his sight. She likes to bring him to the same spot that they have been coming to for much of his life, as she feels perhaps the smells will help remind him of a time he could see.

It was a lovely thought of hers and he seemed genuinely peaceful. I rubbed him behind the ears (even though I am not a dog person) and he seemed happy with the contact.

This is where the term “Paradise Lost” came into my head, which I will talk about in a moment. But as much as the beauty here was heavenly, it was indeed mostly lost to him.

As I went to get back in the car, I saw that my neighbor was awake and sitting up in the driver seat. He was an old man, my own age, and somehow that struck home even moreso.

The cat was watching me with interest as I threw my stuff into the car. And before I got in, I tapped on the window and gave the man a can of Fancy Feast for his best friend behind him.

By the way, I always carry a can of cat food with me these days in case I see a stray that is in need. There is a lovely little guy in the Walmart parking lot that I have fed a couple of times with one, so I try not to miss those moments.

Anyway, as I drove away, my mind went back to the dog and that poem Paradise Lost and I extended the thought to the people sleeping in their cars, the poor little cat in the back seat and the cat(s) that sleeps rough at my local Walmart.

When John Milton wrote the poem 350 years ago (it was the first epic poem every written in English), he had lost his sight. And in his mind he found an equivalence in the loss that the fallen angels must have experienced as they lost the war with god and took up their place in hell.

Before you ask … no I don’t believe any of that stuff but it is still a good story.

Anyway, the point he was really making, I believe, is that while heaven exists for some, it does not for all and therefore the magnitude of the loss is huge.

He lived the last 20 years of his life as a blind man and I think we all understand that to have had sight and lose it, is likely much worse than never having had sight.

Hence, Patton (that was the dog’s name) is brought to the same place and lives as much of the same life as he can, but without either sight or sound. The loss must be greater than a loss of any heaven.

And I think it is fair to assume that this man and his cat once had a place to live but now find themselves in a parking lot in a crowded car. At some stage he must have had a family, even if it was just a parent or two. But whether through his own device or fate now is alone.

This story no doubt repeats everywhere … every city and in every country. So, I am not trying to pretend anything here is remarkable or unusual.

And maybe that makes the point I am trying to make even worse.

There is a paradise here. There is a life that plays out every moment of every day.

There is beauty everywhere and there is peace and fun and laughter.

But the problem is, not everyone has access to paradise. Some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths and want for nothing until they die of extended old age. Some cats are born into a Fancy Feast home and showered with love and care until their days finally come to a soft ending.

But some people and some creatures live awful lives, struggling from birth to an abject and unnoticed death.

We humans, as supposed guardians of the planet, live in a world where disparities exist all around us and we are ok with that. We are ok with excesses for some while others have nothing.

We accept disparity as being life.

We don’t even look to add balance. If someone proposes anything that tends for the poor, the indigent, the hungry, at the expense of the rich, they are labeled a socialist as if that is actually an insult.

There will indeed always be some imbalance in life. Some creatures will always have a rough one.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to mitigate that with kindness.

Life is not a good thing for most people or most creatures. It may encompass some happy moments along the way, but life is generally a struggle that eventually results in death.

I look at people and creatures for whom life is a struggle and I try to help make it less so, even if just in a tiny way.

If I were a god, I could make some grand changes that gave sight to blind dogs, but in the absence of being able to fashion a paradise for anyone at least I keep a cat of cat food near by.

Kindness … costs so little and could mean to much.

… just a thought.

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Last night, the sun had gone down and the night sky was taking shape.

There was no lightning in the area but just in case all the weather maps were wrong, I hopped in the car and drove the short ride to the ball fields.

I set up the camera and pointed it at the only part of the sky that there might possibly be some action and waited.

There were a couple of teenie flashes 30 to 40 miles away but nothing I could catch. All was quiet where I was.

Typical. The one time I want the weather app to be wrong and they’re right.

I stood there for a while and the only thing I was getting was getting bitten by mosquitoes. I had sprayed myself on face, head and arms but their nasty little selves decided to bite me on the back through my shirt.

Anyway I wasn’t far away from calling it a night when I noticed that the practice field in the distance still had its lights on and presented a cool contrast to the darkness around it.

Right above it, the moon was trying to find a way through some random clouds.

I took three pics and added them below this little blog. The first is very close to what my eyes were seeing. The second was just me playing with some manual settings like exposure time and aperture and the third was the same but using a very high ISO setting.

I hope you enjoy!

Anyway, the thought that came to me after I saw the differences was how the very same scene can be perceived in dramatically different ways just by a few small changes on a camera.

But when I stand there and look at something and you stand beside me, do we see the same thing?

What if your eye settings are slightly different to mind. What if your perception of blue is my perception of violet? I mean they don’t have to be startlingly different, just enough to make our experience not quite the same.

That thought has plagued my mind ever since I first picked up a camera and I have extended the thought beyond us humans to where I wonder if a bird sees the sky as blue or a frog see the lily pad as green.

Everything we see is defined by shape and color. But if our perception of color is slightly off or just different from others, are we really seeing what we are seeing?

Bees for example see in a lower and more narrow spectrum to ours, so while they are impervious to reds, they can see UV light that is entirely beyond our ability to see.

And spiders don’t just see better than us in high definition, they too can see UV light we can’t.

And what about my beloved cats? Their vision may be a little blurrier than ours and not able to focus on things that are beyond 20 feet, but they have a wider view in peripheral vision than we do and of course they have receptors that allow them to see in the dark.

Even our perception of shape differs. Not so much between humans but between humans and other creatures. The obvious one that we all know is the fish-eye view. Where the lens in the eye is so wide that it distorts a straight line into a curve. Or are we distorting a curve into a straight line?

So lets return to the bees. They have five eyes and form shapes based on an input that is far different to the stereo view we get.

Not to mention spiders who typically have eight but some have as many as twelve eyes. Imagine how their composite view of something differs from ours.

So the very things we see and define by color and shape are actually so subjective to us because we only have two eyes and only see in a set range of colors.

That makes the “I saw it with my own eyes” statement far less factual than you might imagine.

Because even back in the land of us humans, our perspective is likely different enough to where you can have two people see the same thing and describe it differently. Try getting five people to agree with an exact definition of who they saw running away from a crime scene.

And even if we were to agree physically with what we have seen, our interpretation can be wildly different. Try getting a republican and a democrat to listen to the same incitement speech and come back with explanations that match.

Yet still somehow, us humans seek to define things in absolute terms. Battles rage between good and evil, black and white, right and wrong.

We look to define where the act of definition itself is a flawed concept.

We write laws as if each situation or each person is living the same life and should behave in the same way.

We make statements and give commands as if an instruction can be absolute and agreed upon. Does the person on the other end hear and understand the command exactly as it formed in your mind when you issued it? Highly unlikely.

Try asking your kid to take out the trash only to find several hours later that it still wasn’t taken out. “I was just about to”

You forgot to say the word now.

“Take out the trash now” and ten minutes later it still isn’t. “i was just finishing the end of this movie. It’s almost over.”

Even when we try to narrow the possible ways a command can be interpreted, it is received through their filter, not yours.

The word “now” may mean one thing to you but I can guarantee you it means something entirely different to a sixteen year old boy watching a movie on his laptop.

Just this past week I asked a friend a specific question about whether we were meeting or not, what time, and where. Her response in text was “Let me think, Give me a few”

The following day I still didn’t have an answer so when I heard “few” I assumed minutes but maybe in her mind it was days.

Anyway, the point to all this ramble is that though we can try as much as we want to define life in narrow and absolute ways, it cannot be so defined.

Life is not black and white. It isn’t even shades of grey. It is a broad spectrum of colors, some of which we can’t even see.

So when we hear a viewpoint that is not our own, we need to hear it. We don’t necessarily need to agree with it, but we need to at least understand that it is based on a perspective that is real to the person offering it.

… just a thought!

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It feels like a while since I went to watch a sunrise. A lot had been going on in my life for the past number of weeks, so I had allowed myself to drift away from those early morning events unintentionally.

That thought just occurred to me as I fell out of bed this morning around 4:45 and began my morning routine just a little early. With the indoor kitties fed and then the office crew below released and fed, my first cup of coffee was brewing and it was only 5:30.

Sunrise was to be just before seven, so I had time to go somewhere if I wanted. With the gurgling sound of the Keurig taking its minute or so to fill my mug with the black stuff, my mind kicked into gear and I decided on Lake Parker.

It wasn’t likely to be anything spectacular (and it turned out not to be), but there was a comfort in my head for taking the short drive and standing on the boat jetty absorbing my first caffeine injection.

So, I found myself at the boat dock before six and the coffee took care of the final cobwebs still occluding my thoughts. I was a little pissed at the smoke pouring from the power plant on the other shoreline, but hey there was nothing I could do about that now.

I took some shots anyway and spoke to a couple of the guys launching boats as they began their own adventures for the day. To each of us on our own journey, the day held its own promise. And for just that one moment our adventures intersected as the skies began to brighten.

Between the smoke opposite me and the commotions beside me, I decided to head away and we bid each other a good day.

I drove down to the half way point on the western shore of the lake to see if perhaps the view from there might have less intrusion from the smokestack. And to a certain extent it did.

There was just the one guy there, legs hanging over the concrete edge to the water, fishing line before him, and a cigarette in his mouth.

We spoke for a few and I rattled off a few more images as the imminent sun cast some red glare across the clouds far away.

We spoke for a few and he explained how he loves to come to this spot. How it is his special place. He had been working a lot recently and he needed to find himself and that is how he ended up here this morning.

I went back to my picture taking and he went back to his silence. After taking a few more shots I drove away again. Nothing spectacular but I hope you enjoy the little selection at the end of the blog.

Driving away, his words about this being his special place ran around in my head and I thought “What is my special place or do I even have one any more?”

I am not sure I do. But I should.

Special places can be a physical place or a place we go to in our minds. A place that gives us serenity and the chance to regroup and plan our next forward move.

With some of the people that I have lost over the past few years, I think that the appearances of grief has robbed many of my hideaways and turned them into something else.

Don’t get me wrong; there are still special places that I go to. Places that have a lot of meaning and places that are in many ways go-to places for certain functionality.

For example, if I need a sunrise or a sunset, I have a list. If I need people or action, I have a list. If I need beauty or creatures, I have a list.

But that is not what I am talking about in this instance.

There are too many sad memories associated with so many of the physical places in my life, that I doubt if I have a special place in any of them.

But most younger folk than me tend to have physical places where memories haven’t yet followed you.

There is a trick I learned only after mine were gone and it is quite simple: Never bring anyone with you to your physical place. Never celebrate or mourn your physical place. Keep that place just for you.

If you can do that, then it will be there waiting for you …. waiting without any heartbreak and happy to hear your thoughts.

When you run out of physical places, it is important to at least come up with a mental place.

Some people find their mental place through meditation. Some people find it through a song. Or a poem. Or even just a singular thought. An outlook on something that is simply yours.

I have lost mine for the moment but I fully expect to find another soon. That’s the wonderful things about mental places. Because they are a place you conjure up in order to be alone, the power to do so lies totally within you.

And if like me, you periodically lose your place, just hang in there. You can find a new one … perhaps a new melody or a scent that takes to where you can be alone. The vehicle itself isn’t particularly important as long as it carries you away from real life every now an then.

Being alone with the world temporarily shut out can be a true source of peace and one that can restore some balance in the midst of the most unbalanced of times.

The power of peace lies within us.

… just a thought.

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It was late morning and I was in my daily routine of gathering the bowls from the prior night’s Raccoon and Possum buffet.

It is an act I don’t even think about any more. I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t doing this. I know it has only been a few years but it feels like forever.

So much of life just passes us by when we operate in routine mode, but out of the corner of my eye, as I approached the main feeding area near the big oak tree, I spotted a couple of tiny pleated parasol mushrooms as they broke through the canopy of the green ground-cover.

I have seen these little guys a few times before but they are so fragile and fleeting, I think it behooves us to pause and pay respects to something so temporary, yet so beautiful.

Their life cycle is less than 24 hours and they reach wonderful peak about 8 hours into their life.

At that moment, they have fully spread their pleats and stand proudly and pristine above whatever lies around them.

Their stalk is as fragile as their parasol and picking them (for whatever obscure reason you might have) is pointless. So, the right course of action is to simply stop and admire.

I took a few shots to help these little guys achieve some measure of immortality if only in this silly little blog. They are at the end of the blog and I hope you get the chance to enjoy.

Four or five hours later, as I went back out to place the newly filled bowls near the base of the tree, they were gone.

Not gone as in someone took them, but all that remained were two tiny little shriveled threads that were almost impossible to tell from their surrounds any more.

Though I fully expected, even knew this would happen, it still saddened me.

Only I, perhaps a cat or two, and maybe a bird that passed overhead … only us even knew that such wondrous beauty had once existed.

To all else, there was no clue. No knowledge that once a loving pair had once existed.

I have added the “loving pair” comment to my thoughts, because in a life so brief, I hope each was somehow aware that they were not alone. I hope that as they gazed out over the green surrounds that they saw each other and maybe even smiled.

The short cycle they went through made me pause and think of our own lives and our time here on earth.

We think of 80 or 90 years as a really long period of time and we imagine our story is somehow known and maybe even told to others when we are gone.

But our time is also so brief when held in comparison to the millions of years that this planet has acted as our garden. And it will still be here (in some form) after all of us are gone. In fact, the arrival and duration of mankind’s presence on the planet is barely a blip on the timeline of eternity.

Which in turn makes our own life cycle little more than a micro-blip.

Our importance is only a sense we give ourselves and in the grand scheme of things is quite laughable.

When Patty Pleat looked out yesterday and saw that she was the tallest pleated parasol for as far as the eyes could see, did she give herself a sense of importance commensurate with her discovery.

Did she lord it over Polly Parasol, the one nearby soul she saw a few inches away? Did she think she was so much better than all those green ground cover creatures beneath her?

In the time they were here, did they write a good book that commanded how they should behave and promise eternal life in return for compliance?

Did they struggle, argue or even fight over whose version of their creator was the more correct?

Did they dedicate their hours of life to an obsession with the eternity that would follow in the arms of their one true god?

Did they deride other mushrooms that were a different color or seek to destroy any creatures that were not as elevated as they?

Walk with me today through the overgrown ground cover that I call a yard. Look for a single trace, if you wish, that these wondrous little lives were ever here.

“What the fuck, Neville. They are only mushrooms”, I can hear you say.

“But feed us enough shit to grow up on to where we elevate our own level of importance, and I’m sorry … but so too are we.

… just a thought.

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