Tempests Follow

 ​​I had to apologize to my Father yesterday, he passed away in 2000. I had just had coffee with a friend, and we discussed everything under the sun and then some. As I left I felt a strong sense of remorse, I stopped and looked up and said my piece. I don't know why either was my last thought... I have always had heroes, and even though I was too young to understand, I knew from the start that my Dad was one of them. He was a soldier and a war hero, along with all the rest of them from my childhood and younger years. The white hatted Cowboys and the colorful supermen and women. Bionic or biological, tough or just pushed too far, there were always heroes to be found. A sense of belief if not in the character, a belief in the principles are found and admired. In that framing, a belief also came that I could aspire to be anything... and that I could succeed. The heroes and beliefs I formed through those years would not leave me, rather though they would be tempered with time. ...

Hopefully soon I can get to cleaning and stirring this thing up some more. Editing pieces and getting more content typed in, I still have a stack of old stuff to add. :)

 Sometimes getting caught up in the moments of your life will paint it with colors that just don't apply to the real pigments of it. The too much of one shade or another creeps in on the carefully blended ones and it leaves a less than appealing shade. In the last few years the painting is happening around the clock and the real colors of life have taken their place and there is no more painting over them. While these colors and shades have been around all along, they have recently began to bleed out, in some cases quite literally. The atmosphere of a country at a focal point, its people ready for change, and equally ready their own personal manifest destinies. You could claim a massive lack of understanding from all corners, ignorance, and divisiveness. You could claim cronyism and unfair advantages, cheating and illegal activities, it's the government, it's those people, it's business...Whatever the basis for the blame or the belief, understanding or lack thereof, t...

The human universe is vast and varied, and every now and then I like to use my unique neuron firings to try to examine this story of us. Apologies for its length, the thought was easier to see than the explanation of the thought. Rituals, traditions, there is a definite large scale change happening to our collective consciousness and I am not sure if we can always recognize that. To do so would mean to step outside of our little spheres and look at the entirety for the patterns. We are always told not to forget history or we are doomed to repeat it. The curious thing is though we seldom rewrite that history with what we know now. The classic human reaction is to lock in those events and thoughts of that time and there it is, that's our memory of it, or our belief. Throughout life we collect a good sized pile or two of these memories and beliefs, these automatic reactions more than anything else. Most of what we learn and accept in society today has come about out of a ritual pr...

What was the most surprising aspect of this for Tom was the amount of pure unadulterated success of those companies. It was something he was going to keep his eyes on. He scratched the number down on an index card and slid it into his desk drawer for another time. Back to the Middle East accounts and Iran's in particular. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lori did not want to make a statement so she just put on her everyday clothes and waited patiently for Oliver. He pulled up right on the minute, he was a man that did what he said when he said, Lori had figured out. Maybe a little control issue, maybe just organized too though. Lori climbed into the older but well maintained truck and noticed that Oliver must use this as an office of some sort as well. He had a set up sort of like the police cars did for a few electronic gadgets and a mobile Ham radio to boot. This guy was prepared for anything it looked like to her, it was then that she noticed a few magnet...

I copied my recent piece from Yabberz here. I try to keep a lot of this separated but this is a compilation of emotions that belong here as much as anywhere. I received some wonderful replies and hardly a bad one. It is as someone said a wonderful manifesto to the way I feel and they couldn't agree more. Thanks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is not about politics, or personalities any longer. That choice has been made and it is time to move, to work, to enable, to heal, and yes, to love. You see before all this, before all of this divisiveness got crunchy and thick. There was a country and a people that I could truly be proud of. That belief has never left me in my lifetime, there was never a moment when I believed that we were a nation without a soul. It is being challenged, and pulled, and twisted and diminished by some, but there it is, a very alive, and very much a capable soul. I have come to the conclusion that I must...

Calm, deliberate and deepening breaths. If you have too many things pop up visually, then picture a white dot on a black wall or vice versa and just concentrate on that and breathing. She leaned against the large rock that a glacier had so nicely deposited some tens of thousands of years ago, it was warm with the morning sun and she began to get a little bit of "it."                                                                                                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   In December of 1974 a woman bought a copy of Popular Electronics. It was not her thing at all, but it did demonstrate the Altair 8800 computer. Flipping through the pages she found some things she understood and many she did not. She se...

The whole process of ideas, either crazy or brilliant, begins with getting them out there. From there they can be examined and molded, shaped and found viable or not. For people who write, that big delete button could be a saving grace or a destruction of some great work, I am feeling like gambling a bit today. One thing you get to see when you go from site to site online are issues. Stories, news, life, even shopping is about issues. People don't like the way something is, do not want that price on something, do not accept some facet of this person and that one. In watching this and breaking it down, seeing the political and idealistic divides deepen I look for causes, base causes. Because I don't like to rebuild an engine when the car just needed some gas added. The ultimate point of efficiency, laziness. As I watch the patterns and try to call out the bad actors, the intolerance and hate, the media and just us humans in general I saw something else. We do not learn, o...

Double Creek road she repeated again and again, having turned off the navigation system to truly be unplugged as possible. Passing a small farm just outside of "downtown" she slowed to marvel at the chainsaw carvings being offered near the roadside. Deciding not to ask for directions she drove on slow enough to catch the few and far between road signs.   The door was sticky as Bud had mentioned and she found it just as he described. It was stocked up on fresh water in the tank attached to the side of it and Bud had recently added solar powered LED lights and called it all city like now. She forgot about the dry ice for the cooler box, but could go to Beau's for that in the morning, it was chilly enough that anything she had brought with her could stay in the car just fine. Speaking of chilly, she had to get that little cast iron savior going soon, it was her everything out here, heat, cooking, hot water etc... It was no more than a ten foot by ten foot log box, carefull...

   The tone in her voice was intense as she glared out into the nothingness of a picture in her office. The man on the phone was questioning her integrity and she was not going to have it. She was once nominated for a Pulitzer for chrissake, who was he to challenge whether she asked for gluten free or not? Upset with the poor effects of her complaining she hung up the phone defiantly.   She was working on something, but she couldn't tell you where she was at in it. It was supposed to be a story of a study on women's life habits and what it means as they age. Right now it was just a pile of upcoming issues she would have to deal with in her personal life as well as her private one. This story didn't bite, it was her idea and she pushed it to her editors it just lacked any traction with her after a while. She had worked for this online publication since the beginning and this was the first time something like this had happened.  Her Editor noticed all of the delays a...