Here is how this is going to happen. I know the lack of postings has been disappointing, but I am going to try to begin posting again as often as possible. They will probably lack order if not finesse, but I  will do my best to start putting out material again. sorry for the confusion due to the lack of order that I will be using to put posts up, but hopefully once my life has settled, order will be had once more.

Thanks to those of you who have stuck around, lets start producing again

Only life’s most beautiful artifacts can be found were no one would expect life to thrive.

It is always the most interesting type of beauty that can be found within the dead and withered objects. The things you believe are beyond the beauty of life and have passed over into a place where only death is. Often, however, it seems that these dead things carry their own beauty. A distinct majesty from the living beauty that stands far a part from any normal type of beauty. It seems there is even beauty in death. The withered and the dying, a beauty that is not from a world we can fully understand. Instead, a beauty that awaits us for a certain time and until then we can not fully understand this withered and dead beauty, just what it could mean.

You stand on one side of a bridge
The other cannot be seen
Hidden behind a veil of fog
Stretching on indefinitely
As you place your hand on the railing
You feel the pull of ghosts at your shirttails
The whispers in your ears
The fog’s fingers gently wrapping around you
Caressing your face pulling you step by step
Onto the bridge that will take you away

You feel consumed by the fog
As it wraps you in its loving arms
Like a mother and her child
You feel safe, you feel the calm
That you never felt before
As you are pulled step by step
Away from the world you once knew
You welcome it, accept it
As your new home

You feel another pull
as you reach the middle of the bridge
A sadness nipping at your heels
Like a child grasping onto her fathers legs
As he walks away forever out the door
A heaviness that not even the fog can lift
Pulls you back to the edge of a world you have almost forgotten
You look back over your shoulder
A sorrow only known in this world
Mirrors in your eyes

The fog pulls you forward
Those you loved pull you back
You are lost in the middle
Of two very different worlds
Pulled by the sweet numbing of pain
On one side and on the other
Pulled by the sweet feel of pain
To remind you that you are alive

There is no going back
Once you cross the bridge
There is only silence
Only a choice to make
To leave those you loved behind
Or take the chance
To live again
In a world that might not be so sweet
But to feel pain means
That your heart is still beating

Even flowers cry sometimes
What do they have to cry about?
They are so pretty
But they won’t stay pretty for long
And it isn’t about being pretty
It is about loosing life
Where did they loose it?
I laughed softly
Resting my hand on her shoulder
I don’t know
Maybe they left it under their bed
And forgot it was there
I did that once
She said with a sad sigh
I know I said smiling
Maybe they lost it
In the playground
Hidden under a sandy Everest
I think I get it
The flowers have lost their petals
And that is why they are sad
Exactly and they cry for each others loss
Then why doesn’t it make me sad?
Different things make different people sad
I say with a frown
Watching the poppy’s tears
Roll down its face
You will understand when you are older
But I want to understand now!
I know, I say with a smile
I know as I guide her away
To happier things
To flowers with open faces
Smiling at the sun
But she will never forget
The crying flower
Knowing that every flower she sees
Will cry someday
For what it lost in the sandbox
Or under the bed
We all loose something in the end

Can you find me in the contours of every word
Molding my body to shape of the letters
That makes up my very essence, my very soul
They are my children that have one by one left me.

Can you search for me when I am lost in this forest of words
When they consume me and leave me for dead
Will you be there waiting to help pick up the ruin of who I have become
Or will I be left alone with the whispers of the words begging to be born.

Can you distinguish the person who I used to be
From the creature that the words have made into me
I am afraid of the darkness that hides within the words
Lurking in the shadows of every line I write. It is watching me.

Can you read the words imprinted on my heart
That left burning scores tattooed in my skin
As I tore the words from my body
And lay them down as a sacrifice to you.

Can you understand the agony I have suffered
From you merciless gods who pick at these words
That are pieces of my being and lay them to ruinous waste
Leaving me in tatters only to rise again to create.

Can you believe me when I say this is my purpose
This is the reason I live and breath
The words that I breathe life into
Breathe life back into me.

At Natural Bridges State Park in California there is a spectacular little lagoon that looks like the ground it is so filled with mosses. The entire water is green and looks solid enough to walk on even though there are ducks swimming in it. Life seems to spring from it, with long stretching reeds that reach outward like arms and old logs reposing in the green water. There is something about this green lagoon that is erie and beautiful, maybe it is the illusion, or maybe it is just the presence of life all around. I hope to go back very soon and see it again.

There is a relationship between all living things, a dependence, a connection that you have to look very closely to find. Yet at times it is so obvious you would have to be blind not to notice. A bee’s romance with the flower it seeks life from. A child’s connection to its mother as they grow old together with a bond that surpasses that of genetics. Or the look in an animals eye as it looks upon a potential predator but neither make a menacing move. It is a dance, a balance between one beings life and another’s. Can you see it, the connection, the relationships of the world around you. If you can’t now, start looking before it is too late to look at the harmony in the world around you. It is beautiful.

I always call chipmunks chippies now from a summer of hearing them being called that up in Northern Michigan. It is almost instinctual but after I saw it I always stop and wonder, did I really just call that chipmunk a chippy? Then I remember, yes, I have spent way to long using Yooper slang.

Anyway, this cute little chippy was in Yellowstone out by the confluence of the Yellowstone River and the Llamar River. He was definitely the smallest chipmunk I have ever seen. You can sort of tell by the proportion of that piece of grass to his entire body. I just love how he is precariously perched in the bush just munching away.

It is interesting that some of the most common wildlife can still be so extraordinary at times. I ask myself how I can appreciate this little guy so much when I have pictures of other more rare wildlife like a red-tailed fox and a black bear that seem so hard to compare to this picture. Still, I find even the most common of wildlife amazes me. It isn’t the animal, or its rarity that appeals to me but rather the idea that it is life in its most raw and savage form. Even these little cute guys, it is nature, it is life, and to capture any level of life within the eye of my camera is an extraordinary experience.