Neville Ronan Blog

It was a cloudy morning. I knew it before I left as the weather app just said “Cloudy” for Lakeland. As I stepped out on the driveway and looked up, the skies confirmed the prognosis.

But my morning kitty-jobs were done, so undeterred I grabbed my coffee, sat in the car and headed off to Lake Parker. I brought the 11 mm lens with me, given that there wasn’t going to be anything visually wonderful to watch, I might as well make it dramatic.

But truth is, dramatic nothing is still nothing. It is one of those wonderful math memories from when I was a child … any number times nothing is still nothing.

Makes me wonderful though about the whole infinity thing, where anything times infinity is still infinity. So what happens if we multiply infinity times nothing? Perhaps the answer is 1. The origin number.

Which, if true then the origin is something that came about in the midst of nothing, when an infinite amount of time had past.

OK, that’s my equivalent to the big bang theory … but let’s get back to my Lake Parker trip.

So, there I was at Lake Parker, staring off into a cloudy nothing in the darkness, slowly sipping my first cup of coffee for the day.

My mood was mellow. Maybe even a bit melancholy, so the scene suited it perfectly.

I had lost my verve and a rich colorful dawn would have felt out of place in my soul.

A solitary heron walked slowly across in front of me. He got so close I could almost have reached out and touched him. But instead, I just spoke softly to him and wished him well on his day ahead.

I’ve included a few shots of the scene at the end of the blog (including my little heron friend). Hope you enjoy.

As I drove home, the darkness of my mood held and I realized that the older I get, the more dark places I seem to find.

Perhaps it is that I am closer to death but in truth it is not that I fear death. It is just that I know more about life. And darkness abounds, everywhere.

Age brings wisdom and with wisdom comes the evaporation of the original fairy tale. This is the fairy tale we give to our children, where each story ends with “and they lived happily ever after”.

When the fairy mist has gone and we can see clearly, we see life unabashed with all its wrinkles. The unfairness. The tragedy. The sadness.

The darkness.

Life happens by chance. We don’t choose to get born and generally we don’t choose when we die. Nor do we choose the circumstance we are born into. Why does one life begin with a baby being born into abject poverty while another baby is born into unspeakable wealth? Why is one baby born to loving parents and the other born into abuse? Why is one baby born into a body that is healthy and lasts a hundred years, while another is born into a body that only lasts days?

Though we don’t like to admit it, life for most of us is generally a bad experience peppered with good moments.

This is why it is important to grab onto and cherish each good moment when it happens. Each is a little treasure that adds value to our life. If all moments were good, what would another good moment mean?

In broad daylight, what value does the light of a single candle have?

Yet in a dark room, a single candle can cast enough light to help us navigate from one side to another.

Regardless of life’s circumstance, as living creatures we are pre-programmed to do everything we can to stay alive. Rich or poor, our final breath is just as important to each and we fight for it with all our might.

No one’s life feels trivial to them just because of the circumstance. The rest of the world might view their lives as trivial but their drive to breathe is just as strong as the “most important” king.

There is a tiny few along the journey who experience what we call despair and it allows them to bow out. They take their own life or they just stop fighting.

To them despair is the final acceptance of darkness. That life is actually not worth living any further.

Most religions revile the notion of despair and in the Catholic Church for example it is the one sin that cannot be forgiven.

Imagine that!

Those were not my words … the one sin that cannot be forgiven.

Even the seven deadly sins can be forgiven (pride, anger, lust, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and envy). All seven can be forgiven and the path to heaven assured with such forgiveness.

But despair and you cannot be even buried on hallow ground. Commit suicide and your soul is fucked for eternity.

Can you imagine how absurd that notion is when held by so many believers and suffered by the few who give up the fight?

Just because someone has fallen into total darkness and realizes there is no way out … we heap loathing and rebuke on their act of despair.

And it isn’t just their final act of choosing to end their life. Because if it was that, then we could have no martyrs and heroes that willingly gave their lives for whatever the cause. Those who climbed out of the trenches and attacked machine gun emplacements to certain death … they would all be vilified as such.

No, it is the state of mental acceptance that we revile so much. That someone could give up hope. How dare they!

So what if they are writhing in a chronic pain of cancer … let them die naturally. So what if their loves have been lost and their life has lost all further meaning… let them live it out until the angels come to take them away.

We have all bought into the age-old concept of “where there is life, there is hope”.

And while that may turn out to be valid for many, it is not always true for everyone.

Darkness exists in all our lives. It can be periodic or it can be sustained. In some cases it can even be perpetual.

Those who have experienced happiness and the light associated with it, are the first to experience the worst aspect of darkness.

As we step out of a bright sunshine into a dark room, there is a moment of blindness as we struggle to see. In most cases, we eventually see something because our eyes respond to the low-light and find enough detail to help us see what we need to.

But what if there is nothing to see? If there is total absence of light?

At what stage do we stop squinting and realize that sometimes there is just nothing to see?

As I said, life is very much by chance and we each take our own journey through it. If your journey is at times wonderful then embrace the wonder and cherish those moments.

If your life is not wonderful and darkness abounds, then that is OK too. Many of us are in that same dark room, regardless of the fact that you can’t see us.

You see, that’s the thing about darkness … it can only blind our ability to see, but it can’t take away our knowledge that we are not alone.

… just a thought

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It feels like I hadn’t been to Lettuce Lake in a quite a while so when I had a middle-of-the-day opening, I decided that would be my destination.

The last time I had been there, they were in deep COVID crisis mode and the boardwalk which runs along the shoreline was a one-way mandate. I wondered if it would still be so.

Not because I had a problem with the extra walking involved, but because there is a lengthy stub of the boardwalk at one end that they are unable to have one way traffic on. So, they had it closed off.

It happens to be my favorite section of the boardwalk because it is the section that has afforded me my only sightings of owls there, and deer, not to mention the snakes and turtles that seem to prefer that section of the park.

So, yes. I was disappointed to see when I got there that the same system was in place. I disagree with them keeping it closed off at this stage of the pandemic, but I accept their right to do so.

I just wish I had known in advance, because I wouldn’t have gone, in truth.

There are three entrances to the boardwalk at Lettuce Lake and for years I have entered at the mid-point, walked all the way to the north end (the stub) and then looped back to the south end, before looping back once again to where I entered at the mid-point.

But now, because of the one-way system, I entered at the north end and got off at the south end and then walked back along the road edge to my car. The walk back to the car is tedious and you see nothing, but hey, it is what it is.

Anyway I was only 10% into the initial stage when I encountered the first people coming the wrong way. A couple my age, who should really know better. I frowned as they passed me by.

But I should have saved my frowns, because I started counting around ten and ended up counting 37 people coming the wrong way along the boardwalk. 37!!

I mean, seriously. Someone must have left the gates open at the idiot farm because they were all out. Young families mostly. Some carrying young kids on their shoulders or holding their hands.

The one way signs were everywhere. Felt like every fifty feet there was one, but that didn’t deter the idiots. Their loud mask-less faces ensuring no silence was going to be afforded to any of the law-abiders.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind breaking silly laws when I am in a public setting. Speed limits. Trespassing. That kind of shit. My actions there aren’t hurting any of those that abide by these laws.

But when throngs of maskless morons crowd the walkway and breathe their idiot-fumes in your face when they push by you … well, to me that is unacceptable.

And what were they teaching their children, when they pass by all these one-way signs in the wrong direction? I know I am using the word “teaching” in a very liberal fashion here because I doubt that the idiot-gene allows much learnin’ beyond the basic three “R”s (readin’, rightin’, rithmatic). I guess all they need to understand in life is to tick the box that says (R) on the ballot paper. Another “R” … go figure!

Anyway, suffice to say I did not have a good time and got back to the car as quickly as my old legs would carry me.

I have added a few images that I managed to take along the way, including one that I altered at the very end. I noticed a very suspicious looking burrow in the ground to my left and imagined something was in there looking back at me. That one.

So, I drove home. Fuming most of the way.

At the best of times, I don’t understand people. But I will never understand those who willfully choose to be stupid.

And I began to think about the whole evolution story and I developed my own current-view theory on it.

Evolution is very much derived from a need to survive. Those that need to lose their tail and walk on land, or grow feathers and take to the air, do so. Over millions of years, survival of the fittest drives a chain of changes within all types of creatures (almost) that allows them to survive or even excel in different environments.

But evolution is more than just physical changes. It is also a mental development. To us humans this development has been largely witnessed in a short time frame. Speech and communication drove a lot of it and so a few thousand years bears witness to how we have evolved in this manner. But there is also a significant amount of change driven by information (availability of) and we can see by the writings and theories of a short few-hundred years ago, that today’s human has been able to handle information much moreso than past generations.

Technology in particular has helped us evolve into creatures that can process information in demanding and novel manners. Information that can’t be taught to us by out-of-touch parental figures.

Look at the current generation of smart kids and the skillsets that they have when it comes to mobile devices for example. They don’t just learn, but they intuitively work their way through processes that leave us old-folks in their wake. “How did you know how to do that?”, I have often find myself asking my kids.

Now, there is nothing new in my theory so far, but here is where I diverge from others perhaps:

You see, while there is an elite learning group that is absorbing all this technology and thinking, they tend not to have large families.

No, the large families tend to come from those who have not evolved to this next level of learning. Idiot parents tend to have lots of kids. You see procreating doesn’t need any level of intelligence and so procreating without thought is bread and butter to these folk.

People who are intelligent enough to plan futures tend to limit their offspring in lines with their future plans. But idiots don’t have plans.

As the idiot what he would like to be in five years and you are likely to hear “rich” and if you follow up with a how type question you will likely see their version of a plan is to win the lottery.

Idiot evolution has taken in important developments over the centuries like tying a shoelace, opening cans, and using simple hand tools like a shovel.

But each of these developments have been directly linked to their survival.

The shoelace so they don’t trip as they walk (although velcro shoes have relaxed this development a bit), opening cans allows them to have dinner and drink their beer afterwards, and hand-tool use gives them their avenue for gainful employment.

And as I said, survival has been the main instigator of evolution for millions of years. For examples, Alligators and Sharks are perfect examples of great survivalists who had no need to evolve and so they didn’t. Fossils of both from pre-historic times show essentially the same creature, while mankind lost his tail, came down from the trees, and found a way to increase his numbers beyond all expected levels.

If dinosaurs hadn’t become extinct, we would likely still be in trees and our numbers would be significantly smaller.

In general, the survival driver for humans has largely dissipated. In the last hundred years or so, we have found food and safety relatively easy to assure for the species and so our evolution has largely ceased.

In fact, our minds have moved so far away from the threat of survival that we don’t even re-posture ourselves when the survival of the planet is raised in discussion. While thinkers will debate it and try to gain traction, the idiots treat it as white noise.

They see it as little more than a one-way sign to be ignored.

They and their children push loudly past the signs and head in the wrong way without any thought or concern.

And it is their children that become the basis for the final devolution of humanity and the destruction of the planet.

You see, because the idiot children far-exceed in numbers the children of evolved people, they will live like idiots littering and abusing the planet until she breaks. And as they become idiot-adults, they vote in more idiots to make sure that humanity loses its ability to even save itself.

Let’s dig for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Let’s dig for oil in the gulf. Let’s relax emission control on vehicles and polluting plants. Let’s frack the shit out of the shale to get at that natural gas.

Only the idiots in the world think any of that stuff is a good idea.

So, why does it happen? Because there are more idiots out there voting in idiots.

And with evolution grinding to a halt, the numbers of idiots will far exceed those who think.

This my friends, is why I think democracy is destined to fail in the long term. One man one vote only works for the good of everyone when each “man” is of equal intelligence. If they are, then political shift occur only because of social or religious viewpoints.

When there becomes a disparity, we end up with a polarized view of life, such as we have here in America. No liberal intelligentsia will ever be able to discuss with a conservative idiot that first and foremost, the planet is the most important thing on the planet.

(footnote: not all liberals are intelligentsia nor are all conservatives idiots. Just at the extremes, they tend to be.)

In the meantime, we can put up as many signs as we want but if the idiots can’t read them, who exactly are the signs for?

… just a thought.

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A few days ago I set out to go to Ballast Point. It was another early morning and the skies were clear so I settled into a real low-key decision, grabbed a coffee, packed the camera in the car and set off.

It was one of those moments where you have no pressure and no real expectations.

… where you are just heading off to do something enjoyable, not necessarily aiming to get anything from it.

I was probably doing ten below my normal speed as I crossed Tampa on the Crosstown and in that cruising mode I noticed that the riverwalk lights were on (it’s been a hit and miss with them lately) as I passed over the Hillsborough river.

Most unlike me, I just took an immediate exit. I don’t even know which exit I took and I made no conscious decision to do so. Just all of a sudden I hit a quick stop sign off the exit ramp and realized I didn’t even know where I was.

I mean, yes, I knew I was downtown. But what road and which direction … well, that was anyone’s guess. And of course without the sun to guide me, I relied on intuition rather than a legitimate sense of direction.

A few turns later and I found myself driving down beside a TV channel building and it came to a dead end in a roundabout that gently brushed the river bank.

So, I just jumped out of the car, grabbed the camera and climbed over a small railing, I found myself presented with a view of downtown that I hadn’t seen before and I was thrilled.

I lead off the little collection at the end of this blog with two images taken from that view and I hope you like them.

No one bothered me, no one made an issue of a car just parked on the roundabout and no one seemed upset that I was climbing over things and possibly being where I was not supposed to be.

Done, I climbed back in the car and found my way back onto the Crosstown and continued to Ballast Point.

It was gorgeous down there. But there were a group of fishing folk at the end of the pier and they had clearly been there all night. One or two seemed drunk, they seemed very disheveled and they had pretty much trashed the place.

You can’t really tell in the pics, although there is a fish head left in one and a tail … just lying on the railing as if they belonged there.

And it annoyed the fuck out of me. I don’t really have time for fun fishing anyway. I am very against anything that humans consider a sport where some innocent creature has to lose their life.

But for god sake … if you are going to savage some creature at least do them the respect of returning their head and tail to the water. I don’t expect you to be empathetic to the needless pain you have caused, but I do expect you to show a little respect for the creatures that you mutilate.

Is that too much to ask?

Someone commented on my camera and asked a question but I pretended not to hear and just walked back to the car.

So I seethed a bit on the way home and mulled over the whole lack of respect that certain people have and how accepted it has become in certain circles to just go through life as if life owes you something.

Empathy, humility, appreciation … traits that our parents generation displayed in abundance have slowly evaporated over the years and been replaced with entitlement, bravado, and selfishness.

Traits that used to lead to a person being ostracized for their display can now even get you elected president, for god sake. And I am not trying to take a pot-shot at the dotard, I am trying to make a statement how so many of what used to be negative qualities are now actually lauded.

But I don’t really want to talk about all these things. I know I have touched on many of them already. I just wanted to talk about the one … respect.

Respect requires a level of modesty and appreciation in order for it to be legitimate. A braggart or someone who takes everything as their due will never show real respect.

I mean, you can tip your hat, bow your head and call someone sir as much as you want. But that isn’t real respect. And frankly I am not even concerned about whether humans respect other humans any more. It’s questionable how many humans deserve it anyway.

No, I am talking about respect for the natural world. It requires us to take off our superiority-jacket and stand there among the creatures of the planet and be humbled among them.

It requires us to see a little beetle crossing your path and even helping him on his way. it requires us to pause and take in the majesty of a hawk as he soars on high. It requires us to treat all creatures with dignity and understand that regardless of what idiocy we might have been taught, creatures are not there for our disposal. Nor use. Nor entertainment.

Opposable thumbs don’t make us masters of the universe. It’s more likely that they evolved in that direction from incessant masturbation, than any other kind of mastery.

Respecting our planet requires us to accept our part in it. Not to imagine we can master it. Even a modicum of respect would have us on a road to preserving and not destroying it.

But humanity just doesn’t care. Some people do. But humanity doesn’t.

Killing off the planet that we live on tells you that humanity doesn’t even respect our very own children and the future we are making for them.

… just a thought.

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I broke the law yesterday morning. I trespassed.

It wasn’t even five o’clock and my camera and I ignored the multiple Do Not Enter and No Trespassing signs and found myself on the train tracks in Plant City, behind the old train station that is now a museum.

Sure, I could have stayed in the well-lit areas out front but I wouldn’t have been able to get the shots I hankered for and all my fans (LMAO) would have been disappointed.

I imagined conversations with the arresting officers, if I had been discovered. And I don’t think the “all my fans” excuse would have held much water.

Plant City Police are a pretty unmovable force but at least I am white, so hopefully I wouldn’t have been shot before I gave the chance to explain.

The pictures from the track-side captured the pre-dawn blueness to the arriving day, so I was happy with the overall shots.

They are at the end of this short blog, so I hope you enjoy.

As I stood there alone in the presence of some small elements of history, I thought for a moment about rail. And as I drove home, I imagined how big a deal it was at the time.

Rail opened up Florida for commerce and is credited within being the lifeline that developed what would ultimately become one of the most populous states in the union.

And I thought about how big a moment to America, driving the golden spike was. This was the spike that was driven into the last rail tie needed to connect the east of the US with the west.

The year was 1869 and rail was the biggest thing happening in a post-civil war America. It must have been a topic of conversation in every household and twitter feed of the time.

I can’t imagine the difference it made to the functioning of a country which up to that moment relied solely on wagon trains to carry goods and people from one side to the other.

150 years later …. no one even thinks of rail. The vast majority of the population here will have never even been on a train.

There were many other huge moments in history that are now so insignificant that we don’t even teach them in school. Running water and toilets. Telegraphs. Automobile.

Hell, we don’t even have to go that far back in time. How about my very first PC at work. I was at Rockwell International in Chicago and was given a brand new Compaq 286 with a 20MB hard drive. I remember the disbelief in the typing pool outside my office, that I might actually be able to type my own memos. What is the world coming to!

Humanity is nothing, if not innovative.

It is a characteristic that in many ways distracts our parasitic effect on the planet. Particularly our technological revolution … that provides the world with such a distraction that we become blind to the damage we are doing and the scale of how irreparable it is.

We see these doomsday and post-apocalyptic movies, but we are unmoved. I don’t think that it is really that we don’t believe what we are doing to the world. But rather, it is that we don’t care enough to stop doing it.

The lure of our capabilities (travel, technologies, consumption) is strong enough that we are distracted from where we are heading.

It’s kind of like handing out soap as we head into the gas chambers.

So, trust me, I am as infatuated as much as most with our endless developments. I love my digital camera. I enjoy the internet. And without my car, I would be driving my horse crazy with all these early morning starts.

But I do recognize what some of these developments are doing to us and the world. And I am concerned.

While the golden spike connected peoples on both sides of the country and automobiles enabled our ability to get out and experience the wonderful country we live in, developments like the internet and the mediafication (new word, ladies and gentlemen) of opinion on it, are significant.

We have not just effectively isolated large numbers of people away from direct contact with other people, but we allow crazy opinions and conspiracies to polarize them.

(Mediafication – channeling opinions and conspiracies as if they were legitimate and verified news.)

Just because something is an advancement technologically speaking, doesn’t mean it is an advancement for humanity or the planet.

As individuals, we can’t really stop the advancement of anything but we can be careful on how we use them and how we allow them to affect us.

When handed the bar of soap, it is ok to say “no thanks, I’ll wash later.” Being clean is over-rated anyway.

… just a thought.

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It was one of those mornings where you are determined to try something new but don’t know exactly what.

In my world that translates into a question of looking for a new place to set up my camera and being only 5 am and my need being a sunrise, my options are somewhat limited.

I furthermore normally look for a body of water for that kind of shoot. Because reflections are very important (to me anyway) in trying to enhance whatever the skies are doing above the horizon.

So that means I am always looking for a vantage point that looks east for sunrise and west for sunset.

East for sunrise in the Tampa area is somewhat limited as the natural body of water is the bay and that is to the west.

If it is a weekend, I am OK with driving across one of the bay bridges and shooting back from the St Pete side. But during the weekdays, if I do that, then I run into rush-hour traffic heading into Tampa after my shoot as I endeavor to get home.

So that means that lakes present my best option at these moments and Lake Parker is not just the closest, but it has a public road running almost its entire circumference, so my access to a viewpoint there is really quite good.

Lakeland is teeming is with lakes (hence the name) but access to many would mean I have to go into someone’s back yard, as homeowners control the shoreline when no road is present.

Breaking into someone’s back yard at 5 am (in fact, at any time) in Florida is quite likely to result in a shoot out. And it is quite difficult to take steady shots of a sunrise when there are bullets flying around your head.

I’ve actually been run off twice from lake fronts at sunset by property owners telling me they own this frontage and I need to move. So, I already know that Floridians are not the most friendly of people, even when their sleep hasn’t been interrupted by a weird old guy with a camera in their yard.

Anyway, all of this preamble was just to explain why I found myself back at Lake Parker early in the morning, camera in hand. But this time, instead of being on the east side or west side, I found a little boat-launch spot down on the very tip of the south shore.

I had never been there before and my hopes were that I could get enough water between me and the horizon to make the shots acceptable.

And I did. So, I was happy.

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But only for a while.

You see, Mossy Kito and his entire family found me and even though I had sprayed myself with repellant, apparently none of them could read the label. So, they attacked me in swarms.

It was insane. There must have been hundreds and the flew at me from all sides. I moved and they moved. I ran and they ran. I swatted and they laughed.

One of them even flew up under my glasses and into my eye.

So, I retreated quickly to the car and drove away from there long before I had intended to. When I looked at the photos later, the last ten or so were so blurry (taken while running) that they resembled a scene from the Blair Witch Project.

Anyway, I have attached some of what I did manage to salvage at the end of this blog so I hope you enjoy!

As I drove away, defeated and angry, I wondered what on earth the purpose of a mosquito is. If you believe in creationism (and obviously I don’t) then their arrival on the planet was some some divine inspiration and definitely intended.

They have been around forever and apart from being in the food chain (for dragonflies, etc) they serve no purpose. They don’t pollinate. They don’t help break down waste.

No, apparently their only purpose is to chase weary old photographers from what would otherwise be a decent spot for taking a photo. I must have looked like a right lunatic; running through a parking lot in semi-darkness, carrying a tripod larger than me and flailing wildly with the other hand at an invisible enemy.

When the anger subsided I continued with my thought of “purpose” and began to self-examine.

And I decided that there really are two separate kinds of purpose for us all. I called them Purpose for Life and Purpose for Living.

They may sound like the same thing but in my mind I was able to justify the divide as follows:

Purpose for Life is something very identifiable and very tangible. Why was I born? What positive have I given the world that justifies my having been born into it.

I’ve known my answer to that one for years. It was quite easy for me. You see, I didn’t invent any cure to something, or bring more happiness than misery to those I encountered along the way. No, my purpose for life is simply put. My Girls.

I have been partly responsible for bringing two amazing talents into the world and the world is a better place for them. I won’t get into the why’s and wherefore’s but suffice to say they are both brilliant. They are my gift to the world. Enjoy.

So when any of us look for our purpose for life, we need to be able to identify something tangible that we have left behind in the world after we are gone.

A tiny percentage of people accomplish something obvious (like a cure) but for most of us, it is less dramatic. However, purpose for life doesn’t need to be dramatic. It only needs to be a net positive.

No one is grading us and giving my life a 7 out of 10 but the guy next door only a 6. It isn’t about that. There is no competition.

As long as your life is a net positive, that is all that matters. And I use the phrase “net positive” because if the negatives associated with you having been born outweigh the positive, then I’m sorry. But the world would have been better off without you.

So, the second purpose I mentioned is Purpose for Living. And unlike the former, this is a transient and changing aspect of our lives. Literally it just means, at any point in time is there a reason to go on living?

This is normally something that it is in the future or present (whereas purpose for life is often in the past as you grown older). It may be something you are doing or planning to do, someone you are with or planning on being with. Something like that.

At different points in life I have had different purposes for living and sometimes a few at the same time. So it isn’t a singular thing. We may be enjoying our career, madly in love with someone, and fully engaged in our favorite pasttime.

There may even be different levels to our purpose for living. Things that are seriously important to us while other things might be less important but nonetheless worth living for.

And that is the essential part of what I am trying to say, I guess. Purpose for living gives our present and future a value. A reason for hanging around. A reason for putting up with all the other stuff that makes life a misery at times.

Some people check out, when they lose their reason for living. Others just fall into a going-through-the-motions mode while they “wait for god”.

This past year after my marriage plans fell through and my little business descended into failure, my own purpose for living dwindled down to little more than the cats and a few responsibilities that I have to stay living for. So I can’t check out.

But suicide is painless (for any MASH lovers out there) so I understand why some people do. As my favorite lines from the song say “That game of life is hard to play, I’m gonna lose it anyway”.

So, it isn’t the living part that is important. It is the purpose for living. Without it we are aimless.

When our living is with purpose, we oftentimes take it for granted. Not even knowing why we are doing what we are doing. And that is altogether fine. We don’t need to over-analyze things.

But when living no longer has a purpose, we need to understand why and if there is something we can do about it, then we should. Some people suddenly find a new pastime, a new lover, a new career. They reinvent themselves for whatever portion of their life they have left. And they can find happiness therein.

No one can force you to do this. You have to want to do it. You have to want to have a purpose for the rest of your living. And if you don’t want to, then your happiness factor is going to be dramatically reduced until the Grim Reaper pays you a visit.

And he doesn’t seem like the happiest of characters…. just a thought.

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If you haven’t figured it out already, all these early morning shoots recently are initiated by Rocky. Around three each morning he decides I have had enough sleep and starts jumping heavily on me, running from a distance and landing on my back or chest, and if that doesn’t work, pushing me on the face with his paws and meowing at me.

So, needless to say, it was another early shoot this morning. This time, Lake Mirror in downtown Lakeland was the venue and while the clutter on the opposite shore makes it an imperfect spot for a sunrise, it was close, I had my coffee, so what the hell.

The lights from the far shore can give a lovely source of reflection in the event nothing happens on the horizon and so I played with short and long exposures to try to get something of value.

The low-lying bank of cloud that smothered the horizon provided a neat effect though inasmuch as it gave a split-sky aspect to the eventual twilight, where the cloud bank ended. Shot four below is what I mean and essentially the sky holds its blue where the shadow of the cloud beneath is, while the rest begins its orange-pink glow.

Eventually (as you can see in pic 5) it all becomes too much for the cloud bank to constrain and the colors leak out over the entire sky.

Anyway, it’s only a small set but they are at the end of the blog and I hope you like.

So, as I wrapped up things and was about to set off back to the car, I threw my back pack over my shoulder. I hadn’t zipped the top pouch up though and battery backs and a lens cover fell out onto the pavement below.

I pulled the back-pack quickly back off (before something more serious fell out) and the strap caught on my arm and opened up a cat-scratch on it

Now much worse than the original scratch (it officially fell into the wound category), blood started to dribble down my wrist and onto the ground.

So, I was feeling a tad frustrated at myself by the time I got back to the car and headed home.

Thus, the blog thought evolved from the whole notion of things that wound us to how we deal with all of life’s wounds and bruises.

You see, physically speaking we normally get wounds that are either self-inflicted or third-party caused and we tend to treat them based on the severity of the injury.

Some (like cat scratches) we might even wear with pride. I happily explain my cat scratches at the store as being just playful babies and Morgan is quick to point out the possum bite marks that left loving scars on her arm.

Other third party wounds we might even exhibit with a loud amazement “Wanna see where they ripped out my heart and put in a new one?”

And self-inflicted wounds are normally hidden away from the embarrassment of having self-injured.

But really my thoughts this morning were on the mental or psychological wounds that we all get while navigating the turbulent waters of life.

To most of the world, these are invisible wounds. Only our closest friends might even know they exist.

Some might be so extreme that they become a source of PTSD and then others see our pain out in the open and in the bright exposure of daylight.

But thankfully, that level of emotional injury is relatively rare. Relative, that is, to the normal battering and bruising we get on a daily basis.

As in the physical side, some injury is self-inflicted, but the majority are experienced either from another person or an event. Situations that are largely out of our control.

We might be dumped, ridiculed, demeaned, abused, fired, demoted … there are a range of things that can wound us.

Most wounds aren’t fatal and time in these cases is a great healer. We move on. People recover. Things are put into boxes and a lid put on them.

But some wounds leave scars. And though the cut itself may have healed, we are affected on a deep and permanent level.

No one sees these normally, but when we look in our mental mirror, we see them. We know the baggage that we are carrying and where the damage is.

It is important to know this about ourselves. Not just because it explains our behavior in getting into new relationships, navigating new situations, or reacting to certain behaviors.

But also (and I would argue, more importantly) it allows us to better defend ourselves against whatever caused that level of pain in the first place.

Once bitten, twice shy is only relevant if you know you were bitten.

So, whenever we look in that mirror, we need to find the scar and add a label on it. Who gave it to us, how they did it, and why we were vulnerable to it.

Understanding ourselves is a major component of being able to successfully navigate our lives. At least, without repeatedly getting wounded by the same type of sources that have done it to us before.

The odds of a wound being fatal increases with the number of wounds we get along the way. Band-aids can only cover so much.

… just a thought.

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It was a stunningly clear sky as I made my way down to Tampa early morning. I was in plenty of time and decided to seek out the Bayshore Blvd stretch of road that got its name by running alongside the bay.

It’s a part of Tampa I seldom journey to, the closest that I get to it being Ballast Point which is a mile or so south of its southerly stretch.

I had exhausted Ballast Point in recent trips, so this time I thought it might be nice to capture the twilight as it lit up the pavement railings and the runners that frequent the pavement.

And I wasn’t wrong. The horizon played a magical role in giving me the backdrop I sought, runners dutifully obliged, and I was even graced during the shoot by some cars that left blazing trails of red behind them on a long exposure.

I’ve put a little collection of shots at the end of the blog and I hope you enjoy.

As I retreated to my car (once the skies had paled), I began to take in the area that I had parked in. The most stunning of homes in a most desired neighborhood that according to Zillow are worth from 1 to 5 million.

Now, compared to prices in the North East, these may sound “normal” but in Tampa the mean house price is somewhere between $250K and $300K, so I was definitely standing among the privileged.

The lavishness of these homes made me question if they could even be single-family homes in the first place … but they are.

As I pulled out past the building I had parked right beside, I noticed three cars immediately inside the gate; a Mercedes, a BMW, and something that looked extra-expensive (I have no idea what).

And I shook my head. Not in jealousy, but in annoyance.

You see, I have a real problem with social classes and the wealth gap between rich and poor in America.

The haves and have nots, couldn’t have been more obvious as I came to the traffic light just before I got back onto the expressway. There was a guy, sitting off to the edge of the sidewalk, resting in a cardboard box. Must have been just getting up, because he hadn’t pulled out his “Homeless. Please Help” sign yet and was just watching as the occasional car drove by.

Memories and the enjoyment of my twilight capture, took a backseat as I began my drive home. Replaced by annoyance and despair.

The despair was winning as I mused about how long this gap in wealth has existed and the universal-ness of how it plays out the world over.

From the dawn of humanity, when strongmen bestowed royalty on themselves, we have been happily dividing ourselves into numerous classes underneath. Each class being subservient or envious of the one above, while using and abusing the class below.

The English, god bless their black souls, coined the word Gentry, which became the ceiling that non-noble rich folks could elevate themselves to.

Then the Gentry developed sub-classes beneath that they would live off. Middle-class, working class, and of course the outcasts … the poor.

This is a pyramid system of wealth and is so ingrained now that barring a French style revolution, will never erode. But there can be no revolution. Unlike France in the 1790’s, today’s upper classes are well protected by police and and private securities, by militias and armies.

And within each organization designed to protect the system, we elevate and promote different ranks to make sure the lower ranks follow orders.

History has proven time and time again that vertically designed security can protect even the most corrupt and vile organizations. Don’t believe me?

The SS implemented such a system in the concentration camps using a organization of Kapos to keep “the sheep moving on the way to the slaughter”. Kapos were (in the main) as vicious or more so than the SS guards and callously steered their fellow jews to extinction in order to get better food and living conditions for themselves.

Drug Cartels and Dictatorships only exist because those at the top are able to structure organizations that allow each layer to use and abuse the one below it.

And in a more subtle and less dramatic fashion, our Capitalist “democracies” use a similar approach to keeping the masses under thumb and creating wealth for the few at the top.

(By the way, I used the word “Democracies” in parenthesis because many of these are structured so that the will of the people who vote is manipulated in delivering results. How else could the last two republican presidents, for example, have been elected with 1/2 million and 3 million less votes, respectively. America likes to think of itself as a democracy, but it isn’t. Sorry, folks.)

Anyway, I digress.

Western European governments tend to be closer to true democracy and as a result, they tend to provide better social programs that take care of the “lower” classes. Free education, free health, free housing. These are very common throughout these countries.

The right wingers reading this will immediately think “damn commie bastard” because they have been programmed to think that way by the capitalist overlords and frankly, they haven’t any idea what socialism is.

“If you’re not one of us, you must be a commie.”

“Yes, Mr McCarthy, I understand. Let me get back to you with that list, straight away, sir.”

Us Irish tend not to call anyone “sir”. It is a British-manufactured acknowledgement of inferiority. And while I am clearly significantly poorer than all the nice folks on Bayshore, I am most definitely not inferior.

Nor is the guy in the cardboard box inferior to me.

Inferiority and superiority are notions created to control and abuse us. We should never accept anything less than what the constitution endeavors to proclaim. That “all men are created equal”

I have a problem with the word “men” and “created”, so let me paraphrase as being “All are equal”

Men, women, rich, poor, intelligent, or republican. It shouldn’t matter.

… just a thought.

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It was four something this morning and all the kitties had been tended to.

I checked the weather app and it said “clear or mostly clear” for the next couple of hours and I decided to make a run for somewhere to get a twilight/sunrise view.

So, given that time was firmly on my side, I opted to drive to a little park in the south side of St Pete. I had never been there before but it seemed to be facing east over water and offered a chance to catch something, if the skies would oblige.

It was going to be a little bit of a drive, but what else would I be doing at that time of the morning anyway, right?

To say I was thrilled with the outcome would be selling the experience short. I began shooting in darkness and twilight shots that were noteworthy revolved around some wonderful cloud formations that were hugging the horizon behind the St Pete Pier.

Though they weren’t spectacular, by the time twilight ended I was happy with my shots and felt that they were worth the drive and a lovely way to start my day.

But then some soft clouds started to work their way across at a different height and they began to catch the soft pastels from the arriving sun.

So I clicked some more and even made a short video and was super-thrilled with what I got.

Thinking that was it as the skies began to pale, I began to walk away and if I hadn’t looked over my shoulder on the way back to the car might have missed the sudden surge of orange and reds that the low clouds provided as the sun cleared the horizon.

Anyway, I have uploaded all three phases at the end of this blog … hope you enjoy the changes it all went through.

I certainly did.

As I drove away home, the worm-like thought that made its way into my brain really originated with the name of the place. It was called Demens Landing and it wasn’t a huge leap in my head to take it into Demons , which at the best of times I have plenty of. They run wild inside my head happy to undo any moment of happiness, if I let them.

I try to manage them as best I can. Sometimes I win and sometimes they do. But that’s another story.

Anyway, where my mind drifted onto was the whole notion of angels vs demons, and ultimately good vs evil.

And I thought how we humans love to identify almost every conflict in those simplistic terms.

Every war ever fought has been good vs evil (or so they would have you believe) and given that Hitler was correct when he said that history is written by the victors, then we reconcile the losses of each war against the comfort of at least a belief that good won.

But I love how everyone thinks they are the good ones and the enemy is evil. And I love how they all think they have god on their side.

America is the great satan in the eyes of many in the arab world but unless there is something here that I haven’t seen, I doubt that.

Anti-abortion people describe pro-choice people as pure evil which makes their extermination less of a sin in the eyes of the good christians.

For my part I shake my head at the pure evil that lurks in the loins of each republican or nationalist that puts guns and profits ahead of the poor and the infirm.

But in truth, I know there is nothing such as pure evil. Nor is there pure good.

No… people, groups, political parties, countries … they all live in the grey zone of having some good and some bad. Whether they choose to admit it or not.

I remember seeing a skit on TV in England a number of years ago, where two nazi officers are sitting down late in the war having a dialog and one asks the other “are we the bad guys in this story?”

But the truth is never black and white. Never clear cut, no matter how it is presented.

Good people do bad things and bad people do good things. Which translates quickly to there are no good people or bad people. Just people.

Actions can be bad or good, but not the people that commit them. But yes, by the way … actions should be punished or lauded. I have no problem with that.

I am sure a night of tea and biscuits with Mrs Bundy would include some lovely stories of Ted as a boy and how good he was to his mother. And old Mrs Hitler would recount all the lovely times she had with Adolf as we laughed together through her lovely memories. And surely Mrs Trump would have something good to tell us about her Dotard … well, maybe not.

But seriously, our viewpoints are only that. They are not a statement of fact no matter how right we feel we are.

And forcing our viewpoint on anyone who doesn’t believe the same as us, or see things the same as us, is just that … force. It is a force that enslaves others to our will. Forces them to be less of a person than we are and invalidates their own right to be right.

But activists will never see that point. They need to be able to turn their issue into white and will accept no black counter-point.

In their minds everyone should be able to buy a bazooka if they so wish, should accept only their god at the true lord and savior, and be sterilized if they are on welfare. “popping out babies on my dime!” … yes, I hear it now.

And in case you are thinking that because I am a liberal and in the above paragraph only hit conservative issues, I also don’t believe every black victim of a police shooting is innocent. You resist arrest, make a run for it, or reach for something that looks like I gun, then I’m sorry. But, you’ve created your own epitaph.

So, next time you hear an argument being made for war, or action, or even just a strong political position that uses, god, good, righteousness, or any other asinine justification in its argument … understand that you should be taking a healthy dose of salt along with whatever you are swallowing.

I have lived long enough to have a long list of bad things I have done. They have colored my soul a healthy shade of grey. These are the shadows that give refuge to the demons that every now and then make me question myself. They are the flavors that certainly take the sweetness off the life that I can claim to have lived.

While I sometimes struggle to remember them, I am sure I have also got a list of good things. Somewhere, I think.

Hopefully by the time I die, both lists will be more or less equal length.

But however long each list, neither makes me a good or bad person. They only make me a person.

… just a thought.

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It was another early morning start and the lake was calling.

I took the weather app on the phone at face value. It said “clear skies” and from the stars overhead as I stood on my driveway, that seemed about right.

With the cats all fed and free and the hour hand still not at five, I grabbed my trustee camera, took off the wide angle and threw on the zoom lens, and then I headed off.

Where I was heading off to, I hadn’t figured out yet. I just knew I wanted to be somewhere that I could enjoy the coffee and maybe catch some colors.

At that time of the morning, the world was my oyster. There was no time pressure and everywhere was within reach before twilight just after six.

I figured that I would go down walker road to the gas station and buy myself some time in the decision process, while I filled up the car with gas.

As I passed the ball field, I noticed some soft slivers of low cloud drifting across the lights, so I did an about turn and for a few minutes, took some aimless shots as the soft trails of vapors drifted past each light.

The first shot below is from that moment.

By the time my car was filled up, I had talked myself in and out of several destinations. Until finally, I determined that trusty ol’ Lake Parker was where I really wanted to be.

I know I have been there a million times already, but the truth is, I find an awful lot of peace there. Particularly at the little pier and boat dock where I poured some of my Mam and Dad’s ashes as I drifted unwillingly into orphanhood.

I argued that the change of lens would give me a different feel photo-wise, so I wasn’t really repeating something I had just recently done.

When we seek to convince ourselves, we often find the most willing of audiences.

Anyway, it was still quite dark when I first got to the lake, so I went to the farthest point on the south shore so that I could watch some of the light reflections from buildings and such nearby.

Most of the time there in all honesty was spent chatting to a Great Blue Heron who was standing knee-deep in the nearby waters. As conversations go, it was pretty one-side and eventually he had enough of my idle chatter and flew away.

That’s when I decided I would head back up along the shoreline to where the little pier is. Whoever opens the gate, was early and even though it was only 5:40, I was able to drive right in no problem.

The horizon was as yet colorless (unless you count “dark” as a color) and so I took the first ten or fifteen minutes just sipping the last of my coffee and breathing in the morning noises.

As a tinge of red/orange began to define the horizon and accentuated the early morning blue skies I pointed the camera east and began taking shots.

I’ve assembled a few of what I got at the bottom of this blog and hope you get to enjoy them.

An older guy with a fishing rod appeared while I was taking them and he became a main feature of my shots from the morning.

As I drove away, the sun still had not risen, but I wanted to get home to the furry babies and was satisfied that my work here was done.

The thoughts running around my head were not just related to my belief that I had gotten some decent shots, but how certain variables had played out. Firstly in my decision process and secondly in the actual end product that I had produced.

You see, there was no way that I could have known those traces of cloud were there, but their presence played an important part in my decision to head to the lake. I wanted to see if there were some over the water and what they might look like to the camera. But there weren’t any there.

And there was no way I could have counted on that guy with the rod deciding to pick that moment to head to the pier.

These were variables that affected my morning without any input from me … other than just being there, that is.

The only constants in my morning were the clear skies and the impending approach of sun to the horizon. Even the early arrival of the guy opening the gate was something well out of my control. But if the gate wasn’t open 20 minutes ahead of schedule, where would I have gone?

These kinds of variables happen all around us almost every day of our life.

When we open our eyes in bed and begin to think about the day ahead, there is always the unknown, the variable, that can alter our plans or present us with something unexpected that we have additionally to deal with.

Variables have the wonderful aspect of adding originality to each of our days and in many ways they make our life interesting.

Some variables are disasters and can alter our days in miserable ways. Some are wonderful and enhance our experiences in ways we had no right to expect.

But either way, being variables, we cannot count on them … we can only react to them.

Yesterday evening as I finished work, my AC failed and as everyone living in Florida knows, that is quite a disaster. It completely altered my plans and made for a miserable night in stifling heat and a costly (and time-consuming) morning getting it fixed.

As adults, we get used to responding to such instances and they are very much just a part of our lives.

Similarly I took a booking for an unexpected shoot in two or three weeks that will not just be interesting but will provide a nice financial windfall that was nowhere in my immediate plans.

So when we encounter variables it is not just important that we deal with the negative but that we acknowledge the positive. Together they form the intricacies of life’s journey.

The constants are very important. They form the basis of our life’s plan and they give us the direction and the means to progress through life’s end.

Constants can be a place we live, a work we do, family and friends that fill our lives and give us purpose.

Without constants, life is without direction and overly spontaneous. We experience a reactionary journey that is oftentimes wild and unmanageable.

Without variables, life travels its path in a droll and steady pace. It can be boring and predictable and while in many ways, safe, creates fewer memories that we take with us as our life experience.

No, life is about balance in all ways. And having a balance of constants and variables is what makes the journey truly rewarding and rewardingly true.

… just a thought.

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I had a wonderful moment yesterday morning down at Lake Parker.

it was one of those “where will you go to” moments, where you pull off the driveway in the darkness but haven’t really set a destination in your mind.

All that I knew as I drove east from my house was that maybe somewhere on the edge of the lake might be a good place to drink my coffee and watch the horizon expose some colors.

I was too early for the north section where the boat launch and pier is, so I drove down along the lake edge to the south side. In fact the first two pics are from the south side of the lake, before I gave up and headed half-way up the edge.

I could have stayed there but something told me to move on from there, that something better awaited me further up the lake.

The rest of the pics at the end of the blog were taken about half-way up the lake’s edge.

So, when I got to the second stop, I pulled in real close to the water and just stood there for a few moments, finishing my coffee and leaning against the car watching the colors form on the horizon.

That’s when I noticed the hawk to my immediate left. To the naked eye, it was still too dark to make much out so while I saw the shape in the tree about twenty or thirty feet away, it was only when he took off that I understood what he was.

I was also distracted by something that moved in the dark near me and jumped into the water just in front of me. I don’t know for sure what it was but it was large, based on the sound of the splash it made.

It could have been an alligator, or a large turtle, or an illegal who had made it over our beloved wall. Who knows.

But the splash not only startled me, it prompted the hawk to take off from his resting spot and I was sad that I might have missed him.

You see, I associate hawks with my Dad and an astonishing number of times, when I have visited with him on a trail or at a lake, I have been greeted by a hawk. So I feel his presence there too.

Anyway, I needn’t have worried, because not only did he stay around for pics (and video even) but he flew so close to me several times, I felt he was saying hello. I spoke to him on a couple of fly-bys but he never answered. I guess he just let his wings do the talking.

So, other than the first two, the rest of the images at the end of the blog were taken there. One of the images is a compiled 12 shots that showed his swoop as he came in close. I was using an ultra-wide lens, so he looks much farther away from me than he really was. At his closest, he came to within 10 feet of me, I would say.

I hope you enjoy.

Anyway, I drove home, pleased as punch. I felt safe in the knowledge that I had all the shots that I needed. And in truth, even if I had screwed them up, I would still have the memory of the visit locked safely away inside my head.

I thought about the little voice in my head that made me go to the lake in the first place. And how again it spoke to me when I needed to move on to that second location.

Obviously, I would have been none the wiser if I had stayed put and missed the hawk. The horizon shots and the colors would likely have been something similar.

But sometimes, it pays to listen to our inner voice.

Especially when like in this instance, there was no other motivation to move from where I was.

Because this is the part of human nature that we don’t really know very well. People refer to it as a “sixth sense” and perhaps they are right.

But in my mind, a sixth sense implies that the voice is coming from without. Whereas I suspect it is coming from within.

Being intuitive is an important skill (or sense) that we seem to have evolved away from. Much like a cat knows when to jump just before someone gets them, when we were cave dwellers, I suspect intuition was an important survival tool for us.

But being removed from the food chain has muffled this inner voice and in general we pay much more heed to our other senses.

It’s the voice that makes us look up when we “feel” someone looking at us. it’s the voice that says “don’t get in the back of the van, with that stranger who is trying to move a sofa with a broken arm”. It’s the voice that tells you not to walk in the dark across the slippery rocks.

Sometimes, we listen and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we avoid becoming victim to a serial killer and sometimes we slip and break our wrist and smash our camera.

We won’t always know when we avoided something by listening to our inner voice, but we often will know when we don’t.

How many times have you said to yourself after doing something “I knew I shouldn’t have done that. I had a feeling it would … ” whatever.

Not listening to your inner voice or over-ruling your gut instinct, is selling yourself short in your decision making. We may not know exactly why, but when we hear the voice or feel the influence, we should at least pause and consider it.

… just a thought.

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