Neville Ronan Blog

There was a torrential downpour here yesterday afternoon all of a sudden and while Lola and Daisy were inside, Coco was caught outside in it. Hopefully under a car or cover of some sort.

When I am in the office, I have my door open and tied with a gap of about six or eight inches to allow the cats to come and go as they please throughout the day.

Yes, I know it really screws with my air conditioning but the cats freedom is more important to me. And yes, it means the occasional mosquito and on a rare instance (three in the past six months) a snake or two slithering in and causing mild panic in the office.

But, as I often do in sudden downpour crises, I swung the door fully open and called for Coco to make a dash to the safety of the office.

He didn’t come and wherever he was must have been providing sufficient shelter for him, that it wasn’t worth the wet dash across the drive to the quiet dry of the office.

In any event, as I stood there in the doorway calling his name, I noticed the leaf that landed into the sign on the door in this picture.

Me being me, of course I took the pic. But then I just stood there for a moment in silence and thought “what are the odds?”

I mean, think about it. This must have happened yesterday while the door was slightly ajar for the cats. So because this is the inside of the door, the leaf had to fall stem first, through a gap of of less than three inches (as it’s half way across the door), and land vertically in a decorative gap between the door and the sign of about an inch.

And the nearest tree with that kind of leaf is about 75 or 80 feet from the door.

You could stand there millions of times dropping similar leaves from directly above the partially open door and never manage to get it to stick as such. And then imagine doing that from a distance of 75 to 80 feet away.

Not a chance in hell.

While it isn’t likely to make this evening’s news, this image did serve to give me food for thought overnight.

As humans we like to think that life is somehow structured and organized and that variables and unusual happenings can be explained away.

We use science and anecdotes to help us understand everything that we may witness along life’s journey.

If we can’t explain it away, we invent a god and tell everyone that god works in mysterious ways.

I am absolutely not rejecting science, even remotely. My engineering degree is a Bachelor of Science for god sake, so yes, I am a firm believer in science.

But at some stage, regardless of science or religion, it becomes painfully aware to some of us that life is simply a state of chaos.

Chaos, simply put, is the underlying principle of everything that happens everywhere to everyone. We make patterns out of certain happenings so that we can predict outcomes. For example, if you stick your hand in the fire, you will get burnt.

We attempt to apply patterns (incorrectly, may I add) such as if you are good, good things will happen to you.

But others are simply outside our realm of understanding or have too many variables and so we simply ignore. Like an airplane explodes in the sky and a child on his swing in the back yard fie miles away is killed by falling shrapnel.

That one gets put in the old god-works-in-mysterious-ways-box and on we go.

In failing to understand that there is so much beyond our comprehension, we invariably search for answers that can’t be found. And so we come up with fake answers. The world is flat. The sun god brings warmth and the rain god waters our earth.

As absurd as those statements sound today. At some point in time, people completely believed them. And those who questioned were seen as heretics.

But that is the thing about this endless battle between chaos and human understanding. Occasionally we are able to understand something. See a pattern and predict it. And so we buy into the concept that one day we will know it all.

Yes, there are some idiots who think they know it all already, but you republicans elected him, so we are stuck with him for the moment.

But the rest of us mere mortals experience a dawning early in life that reconciles our own limitations in life. “I’m no good at math. I will never understand grammar.” Or whatever our individual limitations are.

Yet collectively we behave as if we should have all the bases covered between us. But the simple truth is that we never will.

Chaos, the possibility of anything happening to anyone at any given moment, undermines the very best of plans. We can be plain sailing one moment and dealing with some catastrophe the next.

We can be driving along a city street with our toddler in the back seat and get t-boned by some drunk idiot, killing our baby and paralyzing us. If we hadn’t stopped to put the lid on our coffee cup before leaving the house we would have been ten seconds ahead in time and would have missed the crash.

Try explaining that pattern in that to the paralyzed ex-parent!

Life is a random, unsequenced, series of events that just happen … to us, to everyone. By trying to define it the way we do, we blur our focus from the importance of just experiencing it.

Living for the moment and loving those we share that moment with. These are the things we are really in control of. The rest of it is, simply put, shit happens.

… just a thought!

I had stomach pains most of the afternoon yesterday and even though I lay down for a couple of hours, they didn’t budge.

These are the kind of pains that make you think you were in a boxing match and took a lot of body blows. They emanated from the top part of my stomach, so being a man (idiot) I figured I could just walk them off.

So instead of doing something sensible, I grabbed my camera and drove the 45 minutes to downtown Tampa to see what I could capture.

I remember about half way down when my pain seemed to be getting worse, I talked myself into continuing instead of turning around and heading for the comforts of home.

Because of parking restrictions, I ended up parking about a 20 minute walk from where I wanted to shoot and initially those steps gave me reason to believe that I could indeed walk this off.

Shoot-wise, I imagined talking some slow exposure shots of traffic in the downtown darkness. They always look neat.

But I was there too early and the sun hadn’t even gone down yet. So I figured to see what the setting sun might do behind the ever-raised Cass Ave rail bridge.

I stood there taking unappealing shot after unappealing shot as the skies refused to oblige me with any color worth capturing. And my pains were now at a level where I really couldn’t bear to stand still any more, so I hoisted camera up in my arms and headed back for the car.

Aborting a shoot is something I almost never do, so I recognized immediately that I was in some health-trouble. This was not good.

As I painfully retraced my steps to the car, about half-way I looked back over my shoulder and saw the beautiful reds that had come out of hiding as soon as I left my post. So, I hurried close to the river-walk and snapped a few shots which I include here at the end of the blog.

Yes, it was a gorgeous scene, but I missed most of it.

I continued to the car, sweating profusely and was so glad to get there that I momentarily got a false-positive feeling of being OK.

It was only when I drove to get back on the interstate at Ashley Drive, that I realized the trouble I was in. I never throw up. I just don’t. But as I got onto 275, it became clear that the convulsions in my stomach were not going to be tamed.

So I pulled my shirt up from its normal tucked in mode and proceed to empty with force the contents of my stomach. While the shirt was actually the only good decision I made, it still managed to get everywhere.

And so I drove home with a combined feeling of ignomy, embarrassment, and a genuinely ill-feeling.

That I managed to repeatedly throw up while driving in the dark on a crowded interstate at 50 to 60 miles an hour, while not hitting anyone, was simply put a miracle.

We have a saying in Ireland that “the devil looks after his own” and apparently he was guiding my steering wheel last night. I felt so faint that I nearly passed out behind the wheel, and my vision became a mix of blur and swimmy to where I couldn’t really see where I was going.

But I have traveled that particular stretch of road enough times that the lanes were well know to me and I somehow made it to I-4 without dying in a wreck.

Morgan took care of me when I got home and she even managed to clean out the car, poor soul. No one should have to do that for another person. But love is love and we do things for people we love that we would never do otherwise.

So, the good news is that I am still alive and this is not being ghost-written by one of my “fans”.

I feel completely drained and will take a very slow day today to heal. It is almost certainly a case of bad food-poisoning and having followed all of Toria’s telephone instructions, I am comfortably ruling out COVID for now.

But this morning as I slowly ate some plane bread and butter with black coffee, I mused over the sequence of truly bad decisions that I made yesterday and that’s what led me to wanting to write this blog.

I should clearly have never left the house yesterday evening. I should have turned around when half-way down there and gone home. I should not have parked my car so far away from where I wanted to shoot. When I left the bridge area, I should have walked directly to the car and not be distracted by the red skies behind me.

I should not have tried to drive home but stayed parked safely until whatever happened, happened. I should not have gotten on the interstate in the dark, with fast moving traffic all around me. I should have found a place to pull in when the first wave of throwing up was about to start. I should have recognized that I was about to pass out and that I couldn’t see safely enough to continue driving.

But no, being singularly focused on what I wanted to happen, I completely missed what was happening!

Our lives are filled with moments of decision. We make hundred of decisions every day from the simple to the important ones.

It is very important when we are making an decision that we do so from a sound basis in fact rather than a wish or intention.

From eating that one more cookie, even though we are full, to drinking that one more beer even though we know we are driving; decisions abound.

Bad decisions are what leads to mistakes. Not being able to fit into your jeans without an overflowing muffin-top isn’t likely to cause your world to end. But climbing into a car when you are anything but sober, certainly can.

None of us are perfect and some of us are a lot less perfect than most. So, thinking that you are an excellent decision maker is conceited and one that is likely to blind you to realities that you are faced with.

When I am clear-headed, I often refer to the practice of asking yourself what would you advise your friend or loved on to do. In other words, to put some objectivity between yourself and the decision. This approach will often lead to better decision making.

Being objectively positioned on any decision is almost always the best vantage point from which to determine which decision to make.

There are factors (such as stomach pain) that force our hand in bad decisions. For example, haste is a big one. So too is a biased interest in the outcome. Influences that force our hand should be called out for what they are and discarded if at all possible.

I remember many years ago taking management accountancy courses in Canada and being exposed to the guiding principle that past expenses should never be considered in whether we should proceed with something as a future endeavor. But it is exactly that failure that makes the gambler decide whether he should stay at the table when he already thousands down.

So too our decisions that have nothing to do with money. Recognizing the factors that might distort our ability to objectively something is critical to decision success. Do we stay in a relationship with a partner that beats us because we had some lovely years with them before the first punch landed and we hope for things to return to how they were?

The obvious answer we would guide our sister or friend is that minutes from that first punch, you should have your bags packed and be starting a new life somewhere.

But do we make that same decision for ourselves. “Aaah, but he didn’t mean it. He is under such stress and he loves me.”

I have reviewed my own decisions from yesterday and can pretty much guarantee they will never be done again. I know why I made each decision and what the factors were that persuaded me to do so. That allows me to build on the experience and adjust future situations where similar situations might arise.

Analyzing your decision making is a very good process to put your brain through. Look at some of your bad decisions and see what led you to them. If you are still under the same influences today, then you are very likely to have learned nothing and inevitably will repeat the errors.

OK, I am heading back to the sofa now. Time to lay horizontal for an hour or two.

Have a wonderful week and try to make only good choices … just a thought!

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As weeks go, this one won’t have won many awards in the Ronan family. Negative energy abounded, bad news broke, and demoralization seemed to be “modus operandi” for most of us.

So when the chance to do a sunset shoot came along last night, I jumped at the opportunity. The babies had been fed, work completed, and responsibilities all ticked off. Even the heavy threatening clouds above couldn’t dissuade us and we cavalierly jumped into the car and headed off for Picnic Island.

My dear friend Kelsi is visiting at the moment and she is as adventurous as her name is unique. So risking witnessing only a downpour rather than a sunset, she hopped in the car with a “ready when you are, Neville” and off we went.

It was about an hour of drive and the dark horizon with torrential rain happening in every view, played second fiddle to the wonderful music and the great conversation.

Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” very much sprang to mind as lightning to the left and thunder to the right made the journey feel very much like a fools charge.

But we didn’t care. Our optimism in catching something outshone the dark skies and even if we didn’t what was the worst that could happen … being stuck in the car for a couple of hours with a lovely young lady? I can live with that one.

As we reached the beach at Picnic Island, the heavy rains seemed largely to be on the opposite side of the bay and they gave a lovely perspective to the horizon as they fell from the cloud cover to the shores beneath.

While the cloud cover did in fact mostly stay there as the sun fell, fortune would have it that there was one section of the sky that lit up beautifully as the sun fell to earth.

I managed to get a few shots showing its better moments and have attached them at the end of the blog for you to enjoy. I hope you do.

We certainly did. There were several moments where there was no click of shutter and we just watched what was happening in front of us while breathing in the evening beauty.

So, it was really first thing this morning when I awoke and began to process the thought in this blog. It dawned on me that I had had a restful sleep for the first time this week and my mind wasn’t haunted to awakening by incessantly negative thoughts.

All the week’s prior issues had been bathed in the warm colors of a friend’s company and an invigorating sunset.

There is little doubt in my mind that without both, my sleep would have continued to be disrupted and so in every sense of the phrase, last night was certainly a life-saving moment.

Life saving can be literal inasmuch as our physical life is endangered and then rescued, but more importantly the life we want to live can be threatened by negativity and therefore equally needs saving.

In the past couple of hundred years, life-saving medicines and surgeries along with foods and living practices, have extended the lives of humans to where we now routinely live twenty years longer than our grandparents.

Yet, in many ways we have taken much of the quality from our life in the process. Family meals are almost a thing of the past (at least in the sense that they used to be) and productivity pressures from an increased workload have added untold stresses to our suddenly longer lives.

Little things such as bonding with nature, family time, relaxation and reading time, have arguably been replaced with fast-food-entertainment and the farming-out of family time to third parties (such as TV, video games, internet).

We have become the proverbial rat in the rat race as we rush from wakening to sleep trying to be as productive as possible.

Kelsi quickly pointed out to me earlier today, that while we try to maximize every living minute, cats manage to rest and sleep on average 16 hours per day.

Meanwhile, I truthfully believe that one day, humans will invent an alternative to sleep and the “Open 24 hours a day” sign will apply to more than just Walmart.

So is sleep and rest the enemy? I don’t think so.

I think this is part of the system of balance that keeps a quality of life in consideration and not just a quantity as a goal.

For life to have real quality, we need to offer more than simply productivity. Multi-tasking is not necessarily a positive development, even though our brains can typically handle it.

No, quality of life is largely about doing things in our life that we enjoy with people (or creatures) that we love. Like last night for me with Kelsi. Photography, sunset, beach, and the company of a special friend. At the end of my week, it was most definitely life-saving.

I hope your weekend affords you the chance to step away from the rat race a little and find your life, share it with someone special, and breathe it deep into your soul.

Just a thought …

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I was outside a few minutes ago, gathering the dishes from last night’s raccoon-possum-party-fest.

There are four different stations that I set out the dishes in and so my daily routine of gathering dishes, washing dishes, and then setting them back out again, leaves a well-worn path across the wilderness otherwise known as my back yard.

Last night’s end-of-world rain storm washed away surface dirt and exposed a couple of mutilated barbies on that path. Now, if this were an episode of “Bones”, the crime scene team would already be there looking for the heads that were clearly decapitated from the bodies of two shapely young debutantes.

I took this one picture, because as I stood there I realized these most likely have been buried in that spot for at least fifteen years, maybe longer. The legs and arms showed the deterioration of time more so than the torsos but even so, they still hadn’t degraded much over that space of time.

But, in stopping there and musing over the circumstances that led to these two young ladies being buried there in the first place, I wondered how many of life’s things that were important to us as one stage, but are now buried and irrelevant?

I am sure that when their boxes were first opened and their locks of golden hair released into the real world, both of these ladies became the treasured objects of their new owner.

And even before that, while in their boxes on the Toys-R-Us shelves, they were coveted by several passers-by before ultimately being dropped into the shopping cart.

And before that, during their manufacturing process, each component had been carefully quality checked and boxed, after an assembly operation that kept some 6-year-old Chinese child employed.

I guess what I am trying to say is that at several stages prior to being exposed by the Florida rains last night, they had varying levels of importance, wants, and even needs associated with them.

Material things generally follow that same path. Even the ones that don’t end up in my back yard.

They are designed, assembled, bought, and used, in varying degrees of importance. And the coveting and yearning that is associated with getting them into the hands of the user creates industry on a level that only humans could.

Other creatures don’t really produce material things like we do. We call that evolution. I call it consumption.

And hand-in-hand with consumption is one of the seven deadly sins … greed. We can all define greed in ways that suit us best but I have a simple equation in my mind for it.

Want minus Need = Greed

Humans are insatiably greedy. There are those of you now who are dismissing my equation above because you know your drawers are full of things that you wanted but didn’t actually need. And you don’t want to be called greedy. So you will assign to word “greed” to a level of excess of things beyond what a normal person might want.

If humans weren’t inherently greedy, there would be no fat people on the planet and wealth (or resources) would be fairly evenly spread. Now before all you thyroid activists start jumping up and down on me; I know, I know. I am only making generalities and I acknowledge there would be exceptions.

But when we live on a planet full of morbidly obese and super wealthy people while others are starving and poor, that, my friends is GREED.

Unfortunately there is a sad aspect of human character that makes us very unlikely to correct our greed anytime soon. Humans and particularly well-off humans, don’t like giving up something they already own.

They would much rather keep it in a drawer that have someone who needs it, use it.

So they die with burgeoning bank accounts consisting of huge numbers on spreadsheets and statements. While others die with a pain in their bellies from no food and disease.

The disparities between the have’s and have not’s are gaping and the divide is growing wider. There is no trend to reduce it.

Politicians or activists that try are generally ridiculed by the have’s and vilified as being left-wing nut jobs or god forbid, socialists. Even Christians for god sake use the word “socialist” as a put-down when their very founder was himself a socialist.

Building walls and getting rich off the back of poor labor are methods of normalizing greed and making it an integral part of our way of life.

The morality of excess has been explained away as god’s reward to the good and allows these “men of conscience” to sleep on their eiderdown pillows dreaming no doubt of what else they can acquire tomorrow.

The American Dream has become an all-you-can-eat buffet for some, but if your skin isn’t the most perfect shade of Aryan White, then just wait in the alley out back, we’ll be throwing out the leftovers soon.

Can you believe all these rambling thoughts came on the heels of a couple of headless Barbies suddenly exposed by last night’s torrent?

Oh, if only we could have a torrent of conscience that exposed the world for what it has become.

Is there anyone in the world not brought to a smile by looking into a box of kittens?

A few minutes ago, I wandered into the back of the studio to see how Daisy and her babies were doing and was greeted by a collection of babies just beginning to open their eyes and climbing all over each other.

I have never raised baby anythings before. Daisy arrived on my yard pregnant so my hand was forced into being there for her. She was so young herself, how could I not?

Her mothering skills are second to none and these two weeks have been a real eye opener for “yours truly” in how much the natural world works … no need for midwives, nurses, gynecologists, hospitals, or the bevy of post-partum specialists that teach us how to raise our babies.

It just Daisy on her own under the lawnmower by the side of the house. And she took it all in her stride.

I moved her indoors immediately and gave over my studio to however long she needs it for child-rearing. Coco and Lola didn’t necessarily agree with my decision, but they have slowly gotten used to having a third cat down here and all her babies keeping them company overnight.

Here is the little collection of shots I managed to get a few moments ago. Hope they bring some smiles to you, like they have already given me.

So the whole “kitten thing” this morning got me thinking about life’s pleasures and how we find them.

Except for psychopaths, most of the rest of us instantly gravitate towards little creatures and a general sound of oohs and aahs fill the air when we pause our lives for them.

What is it about these little creatures that provokes such a response?

Kittens are so gentle, and playful, and beautiful that they create an instant feeling of well-being in us when we encounter them. Is it those qualities then, that takes our attention and interest?

Baby animals the world over, tend to be show-stoppers in the mad life race that we occupy our days with. We can be truly busy and even stressed with all the negative around us and yet a little gasp of kitten-breath will bring us to our knees.

But not all creatures produce beautiful babies. Human babies all look like Winston Churchill for god sake. So it can’t be just beauty that stops us.

I suspect vulnerability and innocence might be the draw.

Life weathers us pretty quickly and shapes us all into what we eventually become. Along the way, our innocence is lost and most vulnerabilities are shut off.

So when we see this in little creatures, our own thoughts are brought back to when the very essence of life was pure and the only apparent complication was what nipple to grab onto.

Life’s complications can make old folk of us all, very quickly in fact. We become “wise” to the way of the world and even within the first few weeks a baby human has learned that when it screams, it gets fed. So, the manipulation begins even at that very early age.

By the time we reach the Methuselah age, like me, life can have weathered us to the point where we go through it in a weariness that eventually stops with the last beat of our heart.

But here is the trick to avoiding all that negative and wearing effect folks. It’s really quite simple.

Keep little creatures in your life and every now and then breathe in some kitten breath.

Neither will stop whatever negatives hit you, but they infuse a soft memory and feeling of innocence within you that provides a bit of balance against life’s harsher realities.

As I started writing this, I had to momentarily stop to pick up an adventurer who climbed out of the box and was screaming because he couldn’t find his little siblings.

The moment he felt the warm furry cuddles of others by his side, his screams stopped and happiness returned to his world.

As I sat back down to the PC, happy with my little brush with the pure innocence of it all, I realized “damn, he has probably already figured out now that when he screams, this old fur-less creature will stop whatever he is doing and come find him.”

And so, the manipulation starts … but hey, if I am going to have anybody manipulate me over anything, I think I would choose a kitten!

Have a wonderful week.

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I have no idea why, but I found myself completely awake at 3 this morning. Lying there in the darkness of a quiet room, my mind seemed consumed with memories of the past.

I was thinking about my folks, our Irish home. I was thinking about mistakes made and times gone.

I was thinking about wrongs that needed to be righted. I was thinking about frustrations that had to be endured.

And I was thinking about smiles shared.

It was a wild ride of busy thoughts that consumed my brain and refused to let my body go back to sleep.

I am sure we have all had nights like that and apart from having to eventually crawl out of bed in a state of tiredness, they can also leave us with a sense of longing. Longing for when times seemed simpler and less fraught.

That was me this morning, making my way down to where the kitties impatiently needed to be let out and another day begun.

Despite the stresses though, there was a sense of visitation that was actually calming, believe it or not. With both my parents now gone, there is no reason for me to take a physical return to Ireland. So, better just to go there in my dreams.

Reminds me of that song “Spancil Hill” which begins with:
“Last night as I lay dreaming,
of pleasant days gone by.
I stepped on board a vision,
And to Ireland I did fly”.

The writer obviously shared similar dreams with me and dreams are probably the best way to revisit our past. Our home.

Thomas Wolfe in his 1940 novel wrote “You can never go back home” and a wiser word has never been written. We enamor the past and select pieces that we choose to remember, while leaving others to be forgotten.

And when the ties to home (aka parents, for example) are gone, even the very nature of home changes on us.

So home is best reserved for memories.

But the word “home” isn’t restricted to a physical place or time. The old adage of “home is where the heart is” extends the concept to a place that may only exist in our mind. A moment that made us happy or gave us a feeling of comfort, achievement, fulfillment, or whatever.

Even if it is nothing more that a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie that we ate in a diner on our way somewhere. It is never the same when we go back to find it again.

Life is full of experiences that we encounter along our journey and the good ones should indeed be cherished but there is no need to try to relive them. We should keep them in our memories and keep moving forward to encounter new experiences before our journey’s end.

One of my trains of thought this morning brought me to a memory of the very first nature picture that I took. This is the very first pic that started me down the path of photography.

It was almost twenty years ago and a rain storm had drenched everything. It was just after I moved to Tampa from Ireland. There was still rain falling but I could see that there were drops caressing the edges of roses just outside our home in the flower bed.

So wearing just a pair of underwear, I went outside, lay on my back in the muddy flower bed and got the shot I wanted. It was a moment. I felt achievement and I often revisit that feeling even today when I am looking for inspiration.

I found the picture from then, a few moments ago, and attach it at the end of this blog.

It will always be a special moment for me. It started me on a path for certain. But there were also funny little attachments to the memory; like coming back indoors to find both my teenage daughters laughing at their soaked, muddy, almost naked, old-man.

I know I have taken images that are better since then, but they say you always remember your first. And I have such a soft spot for this one.

Oftentimes we look back on the past and see it through rose colored glasses (no pun intended). We see it the way we want to remember it. Or even perhaps we distort the memory into something that it wasn’t.

For example, one of my real problems with family pictures is that they are innately deceiving. Uncle Charlie pulls out the camera and says “Smile” and we all smile. Then we come across the picture in an album many years later and crave the days when we were so happy. I mean look, we are all smiling!

Photographs do indeed tell more than a thousand words. But many of them are lies.

Memories will recreate themselves within the shadows of our minds and step out from the darkness even at three in the morning. And the ones that carry fond thoughts attached to them, should be embraced and relived because they are indeed a feel-good moment.

Returning to such a moment is in many ways better than the original moment and such a visit can leave us with a positive feeling with which to launch into the new day.

I have had several visits with my folks in the past few years I would never forego even one of them. Invariably they bring my heart to a happy place and that is worth losing sleep over.

So, whether it is a person, a place, or a moment in time, we should indulge ourselves in these moments and take that trip home.

Our mind is taking us there for a reason!

Just a thought …

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it was still dark. Somewhere around 5:45 this morning and after throwing some cold water on my face, I knew it was time to let the kitties out from their overnight prison.

Typical cats, they behave as if they have been locked up for years; screaming in anticipation as I struggle with the keys to the office door. And barely sixty seconds later, they are back inside again screaming at me for being a little late this morning.

I exaggerate slightly, but it’s a morning routine that I love and I get some lovely cuddles and scent-rubs as I clean out their food dishes and fill them with some breakfast fare.

Now that Daisy has her five kittens in the studio part of my office, my access to water for cleaning the dishes is really courtesy of an outside hose.

And as I stumbled through the darkness, this morning, I noticed a “shape” on top of one of the tires on my car. I genuinely had no idea what it was until I grabbed the camera and took a couple of quick pics.

Flashing on a night creature must be dreadfully scary to them so I didn’t want to take more than two or three shots. So, forgive the fact that the two shots at the end of this blog are far from perfect. After the first one, I could see he was a bug but I didn’t want to flash directly in his face as it wouldn’t be fair. So, I got what I got, ladies and gentlemen.

When dawn had finally broken, he was long gone. So, I looked closely at the pics that I got and marveled at this amazing little creature. I can see his pupil in one of the pictures looking at me and so it is fair to surmise that he was more than aware of my presence.

Not everybody is going to have a wondrous response to such a creature, I know and some run screaming into the brightness at the first sign of a creature with an exoskeleton. So, if you are one of those people, don’t bother checking out the images at the end of this.

For those who don’t know, he/she is a Cicada and their family is responsible for many of the sounds of summer that we in the southern climes experience as we walk among the trees.

At the first mention of “bug” a very dear friend of mine breaks into song, with refrains of “the ugly bug ball” quickly overtaking our conversation. It was a song from a Disney movie in 1963 and really harped on the notion that a bug might feel as ugly as we see them to be. In fact, Walt Disney didn’t want to include it in the movie until it was explained to him that “bugs don’t know they are ugly”.

And that my friends, is what started my mind today down the corridor of ugliness.

Ugly is a human concept. Of that I have no doubt. We behave as if our definition of beauty is the gold standard by which all else can be measured.

It is a truly conceited notion that allows us to rate each other out of ten and to describe some creatures as being so ugly that we have to recoil.

I reject the concept of ugliness. At least on the level of what we see when we look at something or someone. The old adage of judging a book by its cover comes to mind when we make instant decisions on those around us (human or not).

Furthermore it is a mechanism by which many people assess and judge. It can even be a critical element of determination of hire/don’t hire, love/don’t love, listen to/ignore.

It can even be a determination of let live or kill as we step on a cockroach but cradle a butterfly.

I for one, see beauty in every creature. There may be some that scare me, but that doesn’t make them less beautiful. Just makes me less understanding. There are definitely those that I have difficulty in holding in my hand, but again that is a reflection on my squeamishness and not their beauty.

There is a wonderful moment before Burl Ives begins to sing that song to a little eight-year old kid. The kid says “but he has such an ugly face” to which the Burl Ives character replies “he might be thinking the same about you”.

It is very much a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

So, yes, on one level I have real difficulty accepting that any creature is ugly.

Ugliness is a concept that humans created and while it was originally intended as a means to demean or degrade the physicality of those we encounter along life’s path, the real ugliness in humans is far from obvious.

We all know by now that beauty at best is skin deep and therefore quite frivolous. Ugliness on the other hand is truthfully more related to character and therefore of much more significant substance.

I know some truly beautiful people. I have been truly blessed in life with some of the most remarkable souls on the planet. Their beauty shines out in how they treat others, how they treat creatures, and how they treat the planet.

I have learned so much from them that my life has warmed while basking in their light.

Ugly people that I have crossed paths with are filled with hate, disdain for the less fortunate, disregard for those in need, and eternally self-focused.

Some of those that I have encountered have been very pleasing to the eye and to all intents and purposes seen as living “the beautiful life”. Some have even been wildly successful, at least in riches and career.

Outside our circles, we can more easily spot ugliness. Narcissistic rich that grow richer off the backs of the working poor. Leaders that sow hate and division in order to play to their racist base. Child molesters, Spouse abusers. Prolific cheaters.

The list is long.

This is where true ugliness resides in life.

And we are absolutely right to recoil from it. Ugliness like that should cause a revulsion within our souls that makes us want to have no part of such a person. There must be a gag-reflex that makes us want to vomit when we encounter hate, cruelty, narcissism, or whichever brand of ugliness we encounter.

When we tolerate or enable such behavior, we too become ugly.

When it comes to hate and racism, there are not “good people on both sides”. There is only good and bad. Beauty and ugliness.

There is no excuse for ugliness. It is a failing and unlike the poor cockroach, it most definitely needs to be stepped on.

Just a thought …

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For months now, life has been throwing lemons at us.

Politics of hate, pandemic like none of us have ever seen before, racial disharmony, social dissolution, and a crumbling economy. And those are just the top five in a long list of maladies that came in with 2020.

Whatever we each have been dealing with individually, these are the additional levels of destruction that have made many of us wince at the start of each new day.

Optimism seems difficult to embrace and the horizon seems smothered in dark clouds.

So this morning, when I found myself on a property in Bradenton, trudging in tiredness across endless asphalt, taking picture after picture, the last thing on my mind was finding something of beauty or intrigue.

If truth be told, the weight of the camera was almost overbearing in the early morning Florida heat and there was little reason to think kindly of the instrument that normally brings such joy my way.

And then, from nowhere, my eyes caught a shape that was largely silhouetted against the low rising sun. I had stumbled upon a treasure trove of Bird of Paradise flowers and their sudden appearance transformed the morning into one of awe.

When my Mom and Dad visited Tampa around ten years ago, they embraced this flower and marveled openly on its audacious style and colors. They had only seen them in photographs or on TV as Ireland’s climate wasn’t really conducive to such a loud burst of beauty.

And for a moment my mind found a home in 2010 and I relived the memories brought on by this early morning bird.

I took some shots and have attached my favorite at the end of this blog, along with one that had a stylish collection of shadows, shapes, and reflections from lakeside at the back of the property.

I hope you enjoy them!

Anyway, as I stepped away from the treasure and my eyes returned to focus on the more mundane aspect of the property I was there to photograph, there was a distinct pep in my step and the horizon began to take shape in my heart.

A few minutes later around the back of the building, I caught myself singing, subconsciously I might add. The only reason I even noticed that I was making a noise was because it disturbed a gathering of Ibis and Wood Cranes at the water’s edge and they moved quickly to put distance between them and this strange humming creature.

I apologized to them of course and spoke soothingly to them and they settled down to a level where they tolerated my uninvited disturbance.

Yes, I did take pics of them but it was the wrong type of lens for decent pictures of creatures, so I decided against sharing here. I also came across three rabbits that were chomping on the recently cut grasses near the water’s edge, but for much the same reason, their images don’t appear here.

They too allowed me to engage in quiet conversation with them and they saw no reason to move away from me while I continued my perimeter walk.

It was just after that, I seem to recall, that I realized how my mood had changed distinctly from when I had set out on foot originally.

That first glimpse of paradise saved my heart from a wretched day and my soul took flight as life’s lemons began to taste quite palatable. In many ways it felt like my parents had joined me on the journey and pointed out all the wonderful sights and sounds around me.

I think it’s important to recognize that we ourselves shape how we receive the world around us. If we want to get depressed by all the shit, then we will. And by the same account, if we want to acknowledge the lemons but make something better out of it, then we get out the juicer and some fresh water and sugar.

There is sweet f#*$all we can do about the amount of negative stuff happening all around us. Maybe even TO us. But what we can do, is decide how we deal with it.

Do we lick our wounds and moan about the loss of happiness, or do we actively seek out happiness wherever we find it. Clearly, the latter is the better option.

And I am not naive enough to think that we won’t occasionally buckle under the weight of negativity. We all experience that. But the key word in that sentence was “buckle” not break.

Lemonade is a wonderfully refreshing drink. It isn’t something you want to be drinking every day, but when you do drink it, it can revitalize your body and refresh your soul.

… brought to you, by the folks at Minute Maid.

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Selfish. Uncaring. Easily amused.

These are just some of the words that occurred to me as a few hours ago the afternoon descended to a base level of humanity that is frankly, embarrassing.

Even though it was still bright daylight, some of the less-patient folk found that they couldn’t wait any more and so random explosions began to fill the late afternoon air as flame hit fuse.

The Chinese have a lot to answer for and while some of the red sheep instantly think of “kung flu” as the dotard-in-chief called it, I am actually referring to fireworks.

As the first explosions began to go off, Marty came slinking into the living room with tail to the ground and as low a crouch he could get into, while still making forward progress.

By the time eight o’clock had happened, he was huddled frightened in a little ball, under a sofa.

So, I went outside with the camera and visited the locations where I had placed the food (as I do every day) for wild creatures to enjoy and these pics (at the end of this blog) are what I got.

Most of the food was uneaten. Trees were empty of the normal singing birds and squirrels, and even the bread pieces which I had scattered across the back yard were only attracting attention from the ants.

Now, to put this into context, normal evenings by six or seven, all the dishes are emptied. Raccoons, Possums, and Squirrels will have filled their little bellies on an assortment of healthy foods and sweet and savory treats.

Cardinals and Blue Jays, who normally appear as I throw the bread across the yard, will have polished off all they see and what they don’t see is carried off into the trees and eaten on high by happy squirrels.

But twice a year, the yokels discover fire and proceed to terrorize creatures all over the country. In the name of what?

Independence from britain or the arrival of a new year.

Really??? These ridiculous events are worth terrorizing countless numbers of little creatures, who have no fucking idea what is going on and flee for their lives from the torture that goes on for 5 or 6 hours.

They don’t know why it is happening. They don’t know when it will end.

But do the morons care? Not a bit.

They selfishly and without concern light fuse after fuse and gape in awe as if they have never seen a fucking firework before.

I mean surely by now every person on the planet has already witnessed every possible combination of colors and shape that the buy-one-get-one-free brigade in tents have to sell.

As in almost all other holidays, commercialization has long since taken over what the holiday was actually about, but presents under a tree or chocolate eggs with pastel colored wrappers, don’t normally cause widespread panic in the wild world.

Our reckless abandon of everything decent in how we deal with the non-human creatures on this planet is simply stunning.

They don’t have voices for their injury. They can’t hold protest marches. They can’t elect animal-friendly governments.

No, they require that humans have some sense of decency and responsibility for the creatures that share the planet with us. And unfortunately for creatures, human decency has long since left the building.

I am not railing against community or nationally organized events that are generally conducted in safe centralized areas, where consideration to wildlife and the environment has been carefully considered.

But I am against the reckless and overpowering back-yard explosions that only cease once the children’s allowance has been blown. As long as it doesn’t interfere with their beer money, more fuses keep getting lit.

Terrorizing wildlife twice a year is by no means the worse things that humans do to animals every year. Atrocities abound daily and typically reside under the radar. Only when something mind-numbingly awful is done, does it even make the news pages.

Interestingly enough, there are 10,000 emergency department injuries to humans every year from July 4 fireworks. That doesn’t even make the news either.

With their own association and lobby group protecting an annual sales number of almost $1.5 Billion, is there any wonder that animal interests, or human injuries (often to young children) don’t even figure in the equation?

And with 98% of all fireworks sold in the US being made in China, is it any wonder that tariffs mysteriously missed the fireworks coming in after $1.5 million in fireworks were donated to the dotard’s fireworks extravaganza last year?

Yes, it’s a big business. And like all big businesses in America, they manage to shape the rules in their favor.

And while you could argue that the human casualties (the 10,000 ER victims) are somewhat self-inflicted casualties, the millions of creature-victims are purely innocent collateral damage.

So pardon me, big industry. And pardon me boozy yokels. But for god’s sake haven’t we done enough damage to wildlife already?

Can we not just show a little compassion to the poor little souls that unfortunately have to share their planet with us?

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It was 7 o’clock on a Monday evening and like every good worker bee I was sitting on the sofa at the end of my day’s work.

I might well have stayed sitting there for the evening before climbing off to bed but at the very end of the show I was watching, one character asked the other if they believed in redemption.

Now, that was enough to stop me in my tracks and I turned off the TV and just sat there for a while; not moving, just lost in thought. And so after a little while, I decided to head off to Lake Mirror to release the bad thoughts into the night sky and find some peace of mind.

So, I grabbed the camera (as always), along with the little glass globe that Morgan got me and a few wall tiles and headed off to see what I might be able to conjure up in the process.

At the end of this blog are a few pictures. The first two have been turned upside down, because with the globe acting like a lens, the image ends up upside down in the first place. The third one is as-shot and then the fourth shows my set up for the shot.

I was very pleased with the end results and while there isn’t really much variety to show off, I was really just looking for a single shot.

Hope you enjoy!

Anyway, back to the point of today’s blog. Redemption.

In a true religious sense, the concept of redemption is very much aligned to atonement for prior sins. It is the belief that a person who has committed some grave sins can actually find forgiveness in future acts.

On a wider level, redemption applies to any past errors that we have made and the belief that we can return from even the most serious of errors through determination and positive acts that restore our former position.

Like most of us, I have made errors, wronged people, broken promises, and hurt loves. It is humbling to see that in yourself but I suspect if you live long enough, then you get to witness your own failings on a giant screen in Technicolor.

Unless life cuts a person short though, we all get a chance to recover from our past and build a better version of ourselves that moves forward.

There may be those that don’t even recognize or acknowledge their past failings and I genuinely feel sorry for them. Because there is a wonderful sense of freedom that comes with seeing yourself as an imperfect soul.

Yes, it can be a source of self-pain and self-disdain. But once you have recognized the imperfections, it gives you a chance to redirect yourself and strive to be that better person.

Whatever the “sin” there is forgiveness. But in the first instance, you have forgive yourself. If you don’t forgive yourself, then how do you reasonably expect those you have wronged to do so?

And in truth, self-forgiveness should be earned. Not easily given. It should only come on the back of constructive changes that take you away from your errors. You have to be able to objectively step back a distance, point a finger at yourself and say “I am not that same person”.

If you can do that, then your life ahead becomes one of redemption.

In watching the sun go down last night, I resolved to move forward on a couple of things that inaction risked losing myself to. So I used the setting of the sun as a symbolic way of drawing a line in the sand and closing our the past.

Sunsets have that wonderful ability to bring closure to your day. And then if you are lucky (and you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t), the following sunrise gives you a chance to start all over again.

Yes, they are only symbols of closure and new starts, but most of what actually goes on in our minds are symbolic. We look for guides and reasons, signs and indications. This is how we plan our forward life.

Our past life, no matter how bad it played out, is our past life. Other than it got us to the point we are at today, it plays no part in how we move forward.

Troubled souls seek redemption in their future. Imperfect souls that accept the imperfection, find it.

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