Neville Ronan Blog

Davis Islands. It sounded like an exotic destination to watch the sun rise.

Other than the nearby Tampa General Hospital, I had never been to the place. But I looked it up online and it seemed to have promise inasmuch as it showed Davis Island Beach, pointing to the east over a body of water that offered reflections.

Furthermore it had the Davis Island Yacht Club, it’s own private little airport and was home to those on the wealthier side of life. So, I headed off in the darkness of the early hours, armed only with the Maps App in the phone and expectations aplenty.

Could I have landed any further from the truth?

The place was a miserable, little hole in nothingness. The yachts were a motley collection of unkept vessels and they were afloat on a water that gave slime a bad name.

And as for “beach” … are you kidding me? I have more sand on the floor mat of my car than any beach down there and it looked more like a dumping ground for broken concrete pieces. You know, the kind of rubble you see them take away by the truck load when they tear up a road.

In the interest of getting pics, I tried to step closer to the water a couple of times, but my feet slid in the slime and the rubble moved underfoot.

Cameras lie like a sailor and mine produced a few images that seem to portray a destination worth visiting. But trust me, this had more to do with magically framing the lens away from the real and producing images from nothing.

I have attached them at the end of the blog and I hope you enjoy.

I drove home frustrated and angry, wondering why they thought it was OK to promote something so untrue. I mean, seriously, how do you use the word “beach” to describe broken rubble of concrete?

And that is what formed the basis for my blog today.

You see, “misleading” is such a common aspect of human life these days, they might even make you president if you mislead enough.

There was a time when truth and honesty were qualities we were brought up to value, but not any more.

People who are good at it, will tell you that it isn’t lying exactly … it is more about spinning, creating an interpretation, shaping a viewpoint, etc etc.

Me, I may be old school, but I still think that whoever called this place Davis Island Beach is a fucking liar. Sorry.

Let’s call a spade a spade.

From the snake-oil salesmen selling cure-alls in the 1800’s, we have developed the art to where we educate young people on how to spin and we pat them on the back when they manage to pull off a good one.

We commonly use deliberate misnomers to sell things and places. “Eagle’s Landing” sounds more palpable than “warehouse properties” and “Westshore Village” sounds more homely that “tampa southside”.

We describe cabs and multi-passenger vans as “Limousines’ when picking up important people at the airport. Loose fitting clothes become “leisure wear” and Spandex pants become training wear. Amazon has a line of Women’s Active Sweatpants Workout Yoga Joggers (I kid you not) and given the shape that many of the wearers are in, I can pretty much guarantee these folk have never worked out nor jogged.

But it’s not just products and places, we mislead when we go to an interview. When the future employer asks what failings we might have, and we reply about how we are leaning towards being a workaholic … we just can’t get enough work.

Or we go on a first date with a padded bra (oh wait, sorry, push-ups), heavy mascara, eye shadow, lipstick, and enough foundation to make our face look like it has been airbrushed in photoshop.

Misleading has become second nature, to where today’s kids see that scene out of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and see nothing funny about the preacher putting a rolled sock down the front of his pants before going on the stage.

We add weaves, fake nails, and padded underwear to “enhance our curves”.

What on earth happens when it all comes off on date night and you are standing there in your birthday suit and all your best parts are neatly folded on the chair in the corner?

A good lie is one that you can get away with. We all know that.

So conversely, when you are pitching something that isn’t real and it’s just a matter of time before everyone finds out you misled them … well, that is just stupid.

You call a pile of rubble a beach and sooner or later some old guy is going to see the truth and tell the world that you really are a fucking liar.

… just a thought.

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There aren’t many benefits to being awake before four and wondering what to do with your day. But one, was a benefit I took this morning; a trip to Ballast Point in time to catch twilight.

It was clear skies and a temperature of 61 degrees that reassured me that it was a justified trip and so I opted to forego the chance to take a nap on the sofa after feeding and releasing all the furry guys from the office.

The drive isn’t that far off an hour, I guess, but the black coffee provided that magic elixir that kept me focused on the road and allowed my mind to wander onto my adventure ahead.

I didn’t really have wild expectations but after a mediocre week, I needed something under my belt that threw the balance in my favor. Yes there were one or two wins during the week, but these were dwarfed in failures and honestly I need more than mediocre at this stage in my life.

When I got there, there were a few fellow-adventurers there ahead of me but I still got to choose my views without interruption. I have thrown a small selection at the end of the blog … hope you enjoy.

I was back out and on my way home to my furry friends a good ten minutes ahead of sunrise but it was definitely mission accomplished as regards seeing what I wanted to see.

Interestingly enough, for the first time that I can remember, it was on my way down there that I came up with the idea for this blog. It is normally a thought on my way home that delivers the notion for this blog of mine, but not today.

You see, I was thinking about the name of the place I was driving to and wondering how it came to be named so. Given the sea-faring history of Tampa Bay, I imagined that it must have been the point at which ocean-going ships took on ballast for the journeys ahead.

Interestingly enough, I was almost right. It was actually where ships dumped their ballast so that they could enter the narrower and shallower waters of the bay.

Ballast, in case you don’t know, is additional weight taken on by a ship in order to stabilize it for rough waters. It could be water, rocks, republicans, … anything inanimate that would lower the hull in the water and make it less likely to roll when hit by a lateral wave.

As is always the case in my twisted mind, I looked for the relevance of that action within our own lives. I enjoy drawing parallels between things that happen within the world and things that we do within our own world.

In this case, I allowed my mind to wander along the tracks of how important it is in life to take on this balance as we venture out into our own deep waters.

Sometimes, the balance comes from a new person that becomes important within our life; a wife or husband, a child, a mentor or a muse.

These are the people who stabilize us and give our lives greater purpose and direction. We tend to mature with their presence and we become better at withstanding turbulence that comes at us from our blind-side.

Other times, the balance come from something that we have deliberately pulled into our lives; an education, a career, a devotion, a mission. This ballast improves our focus and establishes the path to our goals as we navigate our life journey.

No one is born with ballast. It isn’t a natural part of who we are. We have to earn it and make it work for us. For example, children have no ballast and they live a life for themselves that careens from one side to another following whatever gives them joy at any given moment.

Most of us grow out of our childish instabilities by adding ballast and becoming more stable in our dealings with others and with life.

You can easily spot those who navigate life without ballast. They tend to be wildly inconsistent and precocious liars. They can be loud and brash and even intransigent, but only for the moment. For example they may be militant about a woman’s right to choose one year and a vocal anti-abortionist the next. A prominent donor to democrats one year and a republican candidate the next.

You’ve seen these people everywhere, so I will avoid the temptation to point out the dotard.

They exist in all walks of life and to the day they die, their life is all about themselves.

When we encounter people like this we should avoid them as much as possible, as they only create havoc and disunity.

But more importantly, we need to make sure that we too are not those people.

Are we solid and reliable or flaky and irresponsible? Have we decided yet between becoming a rocket scientist or a ballet dancer?

Are we someone that people come to when they look for advice? Can people count on us in a moment of need?

You don’t need to be a rock in the lives of others. Rocks are intransigent and people run aground on them. What you need to be is a stable vessel that will navigate solidly through life’s stormy waters, occasionally rescuing others along the way, and ultimately reaching your final destination with your hull intact.

… just a thought.

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It was long decided before I went to bed last night, that this morning was going to be an early-start trip to the lake.

You see, today is my Dad’s birthday and with some of his ashes occupying the waters of Lake Parker, it was always going to be the best place for me to visit with him.

I brought a candle (together with my cup of coffee and camera, of course) so that I could shine the light for him to see. Lake Parker is a dark place, pre-dawn, and I wanted to make sure he would see me.

When I arrived, there was of course no-one else there. Just me and the ghosts of my past.

It was so quiet, the little grackle in the distant reeds must have felt embarrassed for breaking the silence with her gentle chirp.

I lit the candle and sat on the end of the dock for a few moments while it was still at its darkest and I remembered the man that took a huge chunk of my heart with him, the day he left this world.

I recalled vaguely a saying about standing on the shoulders of your father and how you can be properly launched in life. Me, I was standing on the shoulders of a giant and from this height I could almost see forever. He was a truly amazing human being.

A measure of how much we love someone is the amount we grieve for them and I don’t see my grief abating any time soon. But I have tried to find soft memories of him to soothe the edge of the wounds carved into my soul by the loss. And lately it is beginning to work.

Memories are how we reclaim our past and if we are lucky, we can find happy ones that make our past worth having lived in.

At the end of the blog are a number of images from this morning. I hope you enjoy.

It was as I was driving out of the parking lot by the dock that my thoughts for this blog began to take shape. I realized that it was still a good five or ten minutes before sunrise and I wasn’t waiting around.

Why was that?

Was it the mosquitoes? Or the fact that there was a boat in the water now? Or did I have something pressing that I needed to be doing?

No. It wasn’t any one of those.

I realized that it was really down to the principle of diminishing returns. People who invest or engage in research will understand that in the business world there is always a point where diminishing returns on our investment (or effort) should make us question whether we continue on our path or take a new one.

While this approach doesn’t affect our decision of a simple choice of A or B, it should help guide us to whether we move on from something or stay put in our chosen path.

So, in personal life, we should also apply a similar principle in deciding on a change of course. If something we are doing has begun to produce less of the reason we were doing it in the first place, then we should invest ourselves in something that gives us a better result.

For example, this morning I could have stayed there taking pictures but the truth is, the clouding wasn’t photo-friendly and anything I might have shot, I have probably shot a hundred times before. So, I thought about the little furry faces that were waiting for me at home and I decided I would get more joy by being around them than I would if I were to stay at the lake.

In all of life we follow paths that we commit to early on based on a set of expectations. It might be a career, a relationship, or even an adventure of some sort. A key aspect of being on the right path is measuring the performance of any path in meeting our expectations and then adjusting our direction based on whether these expectations are being met or not.

I can’t tell you the number of people that I have met over the years that have stayed in a relationship many years after they realized it wasn’t for them. Or stayed working in a career that didn’t really light their fuse, the way the imagined it might. There are enough disappointments that happen in our lives, self-made ones shouldn’t be part of our life story.

As I continued the drive home, the wise old words of Confucius played out in my head: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away and know when to run”.

Beyond the catchy melody, the words are startlingly simple … knowing when to stay or move on is a very simple concept. In the vast majority of instances where we experience less of a life than we figured on, we know well enough when it is no longer viable.

So, knowing isn’t the only important aspect here. It is the action that should follow … the walking away (or running, as the case may be). This is what defines us in our life’s journey.

Are we destined to live out our life fully to our capabilities, or do we languish in something less?

Some people live in fear of change and that fear paralyzes them and they stay rooted to whatever spot they find themselves in. And they become stuck. And nothing changes until they die. Or if it does change it’s because their partner leaves them or the boss fires them.

Embracing change is an alien concept to those people.

And while all change is not good, change that is driven by diminishing returns is almost always a good move. While no move guarantees success, moving is what reminds us that we are alive and, at least partially, able to drive the direction that our life is taking.

When we settle for something diminishing, it should not surprise us when we, in turn, become diminished.

… just a thought.

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There were a couple of shoot opportunities that came and went this weekend before my Saturday morning even started.

But they were both people-related and given the wild success of last weekend’s black-light shoot, I really struggled with getting too excited about either.

Don’t get me wrong, both involved people that I really like and the topics of the shoots would have provided me with fun and enjoyment. But I am glad that they didn’t happen, because I needed something different in order to restore equilibrium and normalize my senses again.

So, I looked at the mid-morning moment that I found myself in today and decided to head off to Hollis Gardens. The skies above me were a rich blue and the temperature was in the low seventies, so it was perfect for a little wander.

There were others there; a couple of quinceaneras and a wedding group so I was far from being a lone photographer in situ. Yet, I was the only photographer lost in among the flowers. To the others, they were merely backdrops for their events.

Me, I wandered in among the blooms, savoring each color and breathing in each scent. It was amazing.

I had seen most if not all these types of flowers here before, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you the name of even one of them. Over the years, my brain has been quite decent at remembering names of birds and creatures, but for some reason, flowers won’t stick there.

I hope that doesn’t matter to you, because it mattered not at all to me. I didn’t need to know what they were called in order to enjoy them. In fact, I think that is one of the wonderful things about flowers … you don’t need to know where they originate from, what their favorite environment is, or how they vary from clime to clime … you only need to see them and breathe in their glory. At least, that’s enough for me.

I hope you enjoy the smattering of colors at the end of this blog.

Driving home is when I first began revisiting my decision process in my head. Normally Hollis Gardens has been my go-to place when the weather has been grey or rainy. The presence of sunshine or blue skies is not a requirement in enjoying the place.

But this time, my decision had nothing to do with the weather. It only had to do with the saturation level that was in my head and my internal need to reset the clock, restore the balance, and yes, cleanse the palate.

I needed a break from the intensity of feeling from my prior success … something that was not just different, but calming.

Flowers were it today. And it worked.

Oftentimes in life we get so busy chasing and doing, that we get caught up in the intensity of each moment. This is particularly true if we are experiencing successes and the rush that they bring.

We can go through a cycle where each success is taken on board as something that was earned, due, and frankly expected.

When we are running in such a vein, we elevate our mind to a level where successes become the norm and can even get to a level where we don’t fully appreciate them. We might even take them for granted.

This type of conditioning not only sets us up for the obvious “fall” when success doesn’t come, but even without the fall, we are reducing our success-benefit. We shorten the thrill. We mute the joy.

So we don’t enjoy each success for all it is worth.

In a way it is similar to the shell shock that was first seen in World War One, as trench-emboldened soldiers lost sight of what normal really was and daily bombardments and such became the new normal.

So, in good times (and bad) it is important for us to be able to step back from whatever is happening about us. We need to get off the ride and sip a relaxing cup of tea.

In doping so, we restore some of the perspective in our lives and we appreciate what is happening more, once our tea-break is over.

This is why life can’t be all about work, no matter how demanding work is. It can’t all be about partying, no matter how many friends you have. It can’t be all about playing the slots, no matter how much you are winning.

You have to step back occasionally and take a rest from work, forego the party for a good book, or leave the casino and sip a Starbucks while people-watching.

It really isn’t important what you do, only that you don’t keep doing the same thing.

Our journey through life needs to be savored. It doesn’t all need to be wonderful adventures. Sometimes it can just be stepping away from the race and catching your breath. (Perhaps even among the flowers)

… just a thought.

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It was another early morning and what else would a wayward photographer do but grab his equipment and head to the lake.

I wasn’t in a particular rush as any sense of time-related urgency was assuaged by the fact that I had shot this many times before.

So, when the train crossing lights turned red and began their incessant flashing, I dutifully stopped and avoid the temptation to gun it before they were fully down. I never understand the idiots that do that, by the way. Life should never be risked for the sake of a few minutes.

I captured this image while waiting …cool colors, right?

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Anyway, once the train had passed I continued on my journey and made it in plenty of time to catch what I was looking for.

Cup of coffee in one hand, camera mounted on tripod in the other, I strolled out to the end of the little boat dock and set myself up to begin taking shots.

But then I paused and just stood there for a little while. I stared off to the horizon, spoke a few words to my mom and dad, sipped the coffee a few times and just breathed it all in.

Peaceful is a word that comes to mind but in truth to use it here feels quite an understatement. Serenity is probably a better choice.

As I stared off, I recalled having the question as to whether I should go down to the lake at all. Particularly having been here so many times before. The feeling of serenity more than answered that question.

I have put some of the images at the end of the blog. Enjoy.

It was while driving back that I began to muse over why the older we get, the more habit performing we become.

Some might think it is a lack of adventure. Some might proclaim it is laziness. But it isn’t either.

Experience through growing older puts in our path, certain things that we truly enjoy. We establish our favorite foods, our favorite activities, and our favorite places to go.

This favoritism is a result of having explored avenues when we were younger, in order to find what it is we like or enjoy.

So, why wouldn’t I go there, is the real question. By exploring other places, I have found this to be the quietest, the least amount of artificial light, the most expansive view of water before the horizon … all just fifteen minutes from my front door.

For twilight, these are the important ingredients, not just for my shoots, but for my peace of mind. No matter what else has gone on the day before or how bad a night sleep it might have been, I know what is waiting for me at that boat dock and I just plug in and recharge.

As I have said before, it doesn’t even matter if it is cloudy or foggy … I still get such a boost in starting my day down there.

But there is a balance and I need to remind myself that there is.

A balance between comfort and exploration. Neither one by itself is the right approach to life. To stay on either end of the spectrum makes our lives too sedentary to where life hold no further challenge or too thrill-driven and therefore unable to appreciate the things we have learned along the way.

When we analyze ourselves and look at our habit behavior, it is a good idea to firstly ask how much of ourselves is driven by habit and how much is not. (A secondary question is to examine our habits and ask if they are good habits or bad. We all have bad habits of course, but they shouldn’t define us. If they do, then we need to break them.)

But I can look back on a given period of time (a week for example) and ask myself how many out-of-the-ordinary experiences did I seek during that time. And how many habitual things did I follow.

Now, I am not talking about things that happened to me. These are outside our control, so I am really more interested in the things I sought out. This is a truer measure of balance.

These sought-out activities will be mired in the middle of mundane commitments. So, again don’t confuse things you have to do, with things that you seek to do.

If you can look back on a given period and create a short list of unusual activities and habit-based activities, you will have a sense of where the balance is in your life. The younger you are, the more the balance will be in favor of the unusual. The older you are, the more habit-based your activities will be.

But remember, young people who are living a life based on continually unusual activities are generally flaky and unreliable. Older folk who always follow a habit-based schedule are stodgy and boring.

I found out years ago that by virtue of my circle of friends (most are in their 20s and 30s), there is a very real influence of the unusual and the experimental that works to keep me living younger than my years.

Similarly younger people who have older-influence within their friend base, tend to get more stability, responsibility, and reliability into their lives.

Before humans segmented into age-based groups, they lived within family-based structures and influences between the age groups were more real and evident.

My belief is that we live fuller lives when we have a balance that is flavored with the experience of age and the adventure of youth.

… just a thought.

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It was only a web.

It wasn’t why I had stepped onto the trail and some might question whether it was even worth stopping at, at all.

But I was there. The web was there. And I was lost in a moment of low and needed a lift.

The beauty of the web in the early morning light and adorned with thousands of droplets of dew might well have been the thing that caught my eye. But it wasn’t what kept me there.

No, it was actually a source of intrigue as I stared into the complexity of what that little spider had created. I saw her pattern of course and they do create the most eye-catching patterns in the natural world.

But it was only when I stared into the maze and tried to imagine her process of creation, that I began to take on board the many times she went back and added in strengthening strands and supports.

It was no mean feat and while I don’t know how long it took her or how long it would last, I do know that her efforts and ingenuity deserved to be noticed.

I stuck a few images of her web at the end of the blog, in case you are interested.

On a given day, there must be millions of webs all around us. Spectacular or not, they are testimony to the creative process of some of natures most invisible little creatures.

Spiders know we don’t like them. They know that we often kill them when we see them. They know that birds will eat them, when they find them. And yet they hang out the evidence of their existence for all to see.

Do they want to die? Or perhaps they just don’t live their lives in fear of death. Living in fear is often the domain of humans, I suspect. Particularly with respect to death.

The rest of the natural world seems to understand that life and death go together. They are just a stage of the neverending process of existence on this planet.

Everyone dies, but not everyone lives. And some that live, live a small life … small minded, small ambitions, small reach.

Yet some who are small, live big. They stretch as far as they can, spread out their web of influence and coexist with loves whose lives are better for their existence.

Some who are money-rich and big people of power, live small lives that enrich no one around them. They only take, not give. Others who are money-poor, allegedly insignificant, touch the lives of those around them in a way that leaves an indelible mark of love.

The biggest spiders do not make the most impressive webs. The most industrious and committed do.

So as I thought about the highs and lows of my own life and how they can affect me, I shook off the feeling of defeat. As the little spider had carefully revisited the strands of her web, giving support where needed, I too needed to shore up the weak points in my own life.

Life is not a “build it and they shall come” experience. It is something that must be continually tended to and adjusted.

We need to tie off the loose ends that periodically unravel, and move forward in strength knowing that one day, our little web will get blown away and nothing will be left but the loves that have shared it with us.

At one stage this morning I stopped myself and said “imagine you are dying. Right now. Not tomorrow. Not the day after. Now.”

What would we feel about the life we have built and the loves we have shared along the way?

Would we be ok with dying? I don’t mean, do we want to die. I mean, would we lament the loss of life to where we chastened ourselves for all that we left undone?

Because if the answer is that we have so much undone and unsaid, then shame on us. Because we need to be confident that we gave it a good shot. Did our best.

Even though we may have failed at things, it should not be for the effort put in. It is a fools game to assume you have tomorrow. Stop putting things off until tomorrow.

If tomorrow comes then be grateful for it. But do understand that if it comes, then it becomes today and we need to get done whatever we put off from yesterday.

I have asked myself several times, would I like to know in advance the day of my death. Would that certainty help me make sure I got everything done and said, that I felt important.

But the reality is that unless you are on death row reading this, you don’t know when your last day is going to be.

Maybe it’s today. Maybe you won’t even get to the end of this sent…

…ence. Oh, you are still here?

… just a thought.

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This past weekend saw my camera and I experience a new aspect of my photographic journey … shooting in black light.

Black light paints and bubble mixture, really challenged the ability of my A7 to capture what was going on in an otherwise dark environment. To say the experience was fun would be a dramatic understatement of significant proportions.

Both of my co-conspirators braved the shoot in pursuit of art and between their own artistic painting skills and a true sense of derring-do that left modesty at the door, they delivered on a scale that you had to be there to witness.

Brittany (that’s my A7) worked her magic in too hostile an environment for lesser cameras and produced some excellent shots. In the space of less than two hours, she managed to grab over 1,600 shots, almost all in focus, that took me two full days to just sort and process, afterwards.

Choosing between such a large number of seriously good shots, is no simple task and while each model got well over a 100 keepsakes, I have chosen the ones shown here as being modest enough to hopefully offend no-one, while showing some of what the camera was able to capture.

As one of the young ladies expressed to me, skin tone was captured almost as if we were shooting Avatar, and the paints popped to the camera even more than they appeared to the naked eye. Then there were things that I could see with my eyes that were completely invisible to the camera.

The whole setting, black-lighting only, beautiful and adventurous young models, and a definite feeling of being engaged in an art project, translated into a win that more than met my dreams for the evening.

I hope you enjoy the tiny selection at the end of the blog.

As I drove home after the shoot, I was on a creative-high and I marveled at what I had witnessed in the form of black-light-sensitive paints and bubble mixture/liquid. I thought about how important it was that these liquids reached a level of luminescence that allowed the camera to work some of her real strengths in the area of low-light photography.

And I began to think about how in life we are so well served to have someone bright and luminous in our lives. Someone, who brings out the best in us and makes us want to reach our own new heights.

Some people are so bright, they cast a shadow behind us.

I have been so lucky in life to have found a few of those people and I cherish them as being precious to my soul.

When someone in your life shines so bright, it is hard not to want to be a better person. We improve our performance and we live more meaningful lives.

They become an accelerant to the fire within our souls that drives us to new heights.

Some people shine out so bright that we can see things more clearly than we could without them. We see new avenues, new possibilities, new opportunities. And we feel emboldened to explore them.

And once we see something that is possible, we need to aim ourselves at it and reach for it with all we are worth. Because in many ways these sources of light in our lives are our guides, our mentors. They show us what is within reach and they lead by example to reach for it.

Yet sometimes, these sources of light are our muses and their light is designed to shine within us, inspiring us to find something within us, that we have kept in the dark.

Either way, we should definitely seek out those that illuminate.

Whether guide, mentor, or muse, their light shines our path ahead and strengthens the shadow we leave behind. I have often thought that you can see a person best for the shadow they leave behind.

… just a thought.

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Over this past year or so, I have learned a lot from cats.

I have never been a pet owner, per se, and it isn’t so much not wanting the responsibilities, as I have plenty of those.

No, it is the belief that no creature should own another. In many ways it makes a slave of the “lesser” creature, loved and taken care of as they well may be. The notion that any animal can only eat at another’s will, or poop where they are supposed to, or stay when they want to go out … well, frankly, it all smacks a little of slavery to me.

Which is why the kitties down here in the office are free to come and go. The door is open all day and at night they are given a choice to come in for food and protection from the night, should they wish. Mostly they choose to but occasionally they choose not and I have to be ok with that.

Daisy was the first of the feral cats to live with me as such and her first litter had many of the qualities that you associate with ferality (there you go, I invented another word. Meaning “having the behavior and characteristics normally associated with wild creatures”). They have a marked level of independence, a strong degree of jittery (necessary in the wild), and an acute skill for survival.

Last week’s loss of Fluffy, who unlike his feral friends here was a domestic kitty, was incredibly hard for me to take. I doubt that I will ever get over the loss and I curse those that abandoned him in the first place along with the murderer that ran him over. But, it reinforced in a way the strengths that ferality brings and the advantage that it bestows on the bearers.

Lincoln came in yesterday afternoon while I was working on the PC and I looked over and saw her with her hand in the water fountain, cutely playing while she drank. I ever-so-quietly grabbed the camera and was just about to take the first shot when she turned around and caught me.

I swear that I made no noise. But her sixth sense kicked in and she knew she was being watched.

She doesn’t trust me at all and she has been through some horrific wars that she is holding me responsible for. There was the time she was stuck in the engine compartment as a kitten as I drove the 20 minutes to Walmart. How she survived that I will never know, but she hates me for it. She definitely used up one of her nine lives on that adventure.

And most recently was the hand-to-hand combat that I had to engage in catching her to bring her to get spayed. She bit so hard and clawed with all her might. After that, she got into some savage exchange with someone outside that left a nasty gash on her cheek. But I was never brave enough to try to put cream on it. It healed slowly … but it healed.

So yesterday, though I bribed her with some treats on the ground, she watched me with every bite, ready to run if I encroached our 2 meter demilitarized zone.

There are a few pics of her here at the end of the blog. Hope you enjoy.

Lincoln is now about 10 months old and from a time when I couldn’t tell her apart from her identical siblings, she has blossomed into a uniquely wild little lady.

She climbs trees higher and faster than anyone else here and is continually chasing squirrels. The squirrels think they can outrun and out-maneuver her but I am not so sure. One day, we will probably see, much to the chagrin of an over-confident squirrel, methinks.

There is always an hour or two where she stays outside chasing things, rather than coming inside for the night and occasionally it becomes an all-nighter.

Much as she hates me, I adore her. I see all the lovely qualities that a wild little creature should have. Her independence is entirely feral and she is acutely tuned in to what is happening around her. If you have heard of a cat sleeping with one eye open, it is her. She is razor sharp.

So it all got me thinking about why humans seek to domesticate and breed away all the wild attributes of creatures that they wish to empet (there you go … another word. Means to turn something into a pet)?

We take little creatures from their own habitat and get them used to ours. We spay them. We train them. We groom them. We then assign human characteristics to them. When Disney includes them in movies they have almost entirely human characteristics.

Is it their independence that we fear? Does it remind us of something that we humans do not have? An animal in the wild is entirely free. Only humans capture them. Other creatures may kill them for food and occasionally different creatures have a symbiotic relationship with each other, but they remain free thinking, free behaving … totally free.

We have traded our freedom for certain comfort and socialization aspects.

In America we proclaim ourselves as “the land of the free” but it is just words. No human is truly free.

And maybe that is why we try to eradicate freedom everywhere we find it. We are jealous of any creatures that we haven’t enslaved … “why should they have the freedoms we can’t have?”

So we destroy their environments, kill en masse, and rehabilitate the survivors so that they can function within our environment with the rules we set for them. “No, Rover, bad boy. Hold your pee until my show is over and then I will take you for a walk over by the neighbors yard.”

Can you imagine a world where you were only allowed go to the toilet when it suited some other controlling creature?

So, I look at little creatures like Lincoln and I admire them for their ferality (I really love my new word).

They may live by their wits and their longevity in life may be determined by factors related to where they are on the food chain. But they live THEIR life. Not mine.

Our ancestors determined thousands of years ago that humans were weak and unable to survive as solitary individuals or small-pack groups. So we learned how to live in larger protected groups (safety in numbers) and our socialization characteristics came from there.

We had to establish rules in order to live together in large groups … rules that were able to protect the weakest among us from the strongest (in theory).

But it is important to understand that this civilization was therefore fashioned from fear and not freedom. Fear is what kept us safe within our caves until we could develop weapons and numbers that helped establish a superiority. Freedom is what the creatures outside the cave experienced.

… just a thought.

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It has been a pretty miserable week, all told. Losing one of my favorite little furry people in the world was very hard to take.

I am not over it and I honestly don’t know that I will.

When I open my heart to someone, I tend to leave it open, long after they are gone.

So, I sat here this morning, in a sulk. Not really ready for my week. And I remembered these few pictures from Lake Parker earlier in the month, that hadn’t seen the light of day.

So, I figured now was as good a time as any.

Losing myself in the images for a few moments, I was able to remember a better moment and even if just for a moment, I felt better.

It had been a chilly start to a spring morning down at the lake and it was interrupted too quickly by arriving boaters for me to consider it a real shoot.

But, interestingly, two of my favorite shots of the collection involved a trailer engaged in shedding its boat into the water. The first of these (pic 3) had the tail lights of the trailer lighting up the near side of dock with a lovely red tone. While the second one looked like a UFO was moving under the waters beneath me (pic 4).

They are here at the end of this blog. Enjoy!

Meanwhile back in my present mode, I have noticed that each time I have shared my sad story with friends or family, there has been a rush to console and reassure me that things will get better.

I think we all do that. So, I am as guilty as anyone.

But the truth is that things oftentimes don’t get better and we have to learn how to cope with that.

If we stand around waiting for them to improve and they don’t, then we add frustration and a sense of disappointment to our hurt and sadness.

Humans developed this “and they lived happily ever after” ending hundreds of years ago. It became a standard phrase to cap off children stories.

Yet, we try to attach the same ending to adult lives, when we know it isn’t true. I don’t know why we do that.

Is it merely because we don’t have something useful to say, so we insert stock phrases like “time will heal” or “it will all work out in the end” or “hang in there, there are good times ahead”.

Phrases of promise can sound wonderful in the moment they are being said but they offer little real remedy. And as time plays out, they inevitably ring out empty, when time fails to heal, it doesn’t actually work out, and the bad times continue.

In reality, these platitudes are little more than a segue, as the speaker looks to escape from the condolence into another topic.

There is another phrase (the one I have used as the heading for this blog) that is truly a better thought in how best to handle these situations.

When we are miserable, there is often a real value in just having someone experience a misery with us. It can reinforce our feelings of sadness and upset and we realize that we are not experiencing this emotion on our own.

Better yet, if their source of misery is different from our own. We get exposed to other miseries and are aware that we are not the only one hurting in the world right now.

In the company of others experiencing misery, we can often find that our own source of misery is even less than theirs and in turn we start to feed on their misery and feel a little better from it.

While the platitudes above try to create a hope within us, a mere condolence does not. It only expresses a pity which in itself can be a soothing lotion on our wounded soul.

It is an interesting coincidence then that the phrase “misery loves company” originated from the 1592 play of Dr. Faustus, where the main character sells his soul to the Devil in return for having all his desires met for a 24 year period.

At the very end of the play, when the devils drag him away to pay his price, the man who had everything now begs for just one more thing … pity.

Spoiler Alert (in case you didn’t know) … he doesn’t get it.

I find it interesting how over the years, human pride has refashioned the word “pity” into something demeaning and therefore something we should avoid.

Yet, pity is actually the experience and expression of sympathy for someone who is going through a bad experience.

It is a totally natural human emotion and in fact is one of the dividing principles that separate some of us from the sociopaths and psychopaths in the world. People who are unable to feel pity.

So, an expression of pity and a recognition of misery is both real and enough. No need to enhance it with meaningless platitudes. We all understand the “hope” angle. But hope is a hollow vessel to those in pain, bringing a promise of change that frankly, almost never happens.

… just a thought.

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Life changes sometimes … within a split second a day goes from ordinary to disaster.

Such was yesterday. I was sitting on a phone call with Toria when a man came to the door and told me Fluffy had been run over and was dead.

My world came crashing down and everything just stopped.

All the prior thoughts of the day had vanished and my only thought was how such an awful thing could happen to such a wonderful little guy.

Fluffy was the most beautiful, gentle little soul that ever graced my life and I never imagined for a moment that fate would treat him so cruelly.

I rescued him on my property about six months ago, when some miserable excuse for a human abandoned him and left him to find his own way in the world.

He was clearly a house pet but now found himself living among ferals and relying on his wits to survive.

That he found his way to my yard was lucky for him, but much moreso for me. He brought such an amazing air of unadulterated love and gentleness with him. He quietly took his place among the other cats and never once tried to assert any dominance. At meal times, he was always last to take a dish, as the hungry mouths around him consumed their fancy feasts left, right, and center.

When he got an eye infection a couple months back, Morgan and I were in a routine of applying eye ointment to his eye every few hours day and night and he never once made it difficult for us. Never resisted, never fought against us, and always forgave us immediately it was done.

That he should die at the wheel of a careless moron yesterday morning, speaks volumes to how unjust this world is at times.

Fluffy deserved the world, but instead got fucked by it.

If I am wrong and there turns out to be a god, then I would gladly rip his heart out for the hurt this world piles on so many undeserving souls.

I can make no sense of it and burying Fluffy yesterday afternoon was one of the most soul-destroying moments in a long run of such moments.

I went down to the lake this morning and he briefly returned in the singular cloud formation or at least my mind convinced me so.

I guess we see what we want to see, when it comes to clouds. And I want to see little Fluffy ok and knowing he was greatly loved.

But all I see is clouds and unfortunately like Fluffy, they fade away far too soon.

I will never forget him. RIP Fluffy.

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