Truckin' My Blues Away

Snow

2012-01-15T13:40:00.000-05:00

The first and most likely the only snow of the season. Just a dusting. It is kind of pretty and it is a learning experience to see the ducks not complaining because it is cold or food is hard to find.

Cheese, crackers, herb and wine

2012-01-01T14:13:00.003-05:00

Cheese, crackers, herb and wine

Cheese, crackers, herb and wine
toasting the new year
while cursing time.

A new year?
What is new, what is not any more than the residue
of the endless intent of endless yesterdays?

Or is it a refining of vision,
a quest and answering of questionings
concluding today is all there is until tomorrow?

Cheese, crackers, herb and wine,
sacraments of earth and time
are all I need today.

Holiday Tote Bag

2011-12-11T14:18:00.003-05:00

A one of it's kind design resulting from the photograph of a spiderweb beaded with dew drops. When I was done with the image I saw that it looked like a Christmas ornament.

It never ceases to amaze me how many different images can be extracted from one original image.

Click on the image below to view and purchase the tote bag.

Holliday Tote Bag by Hermenutic
make money as an artist using Zazzle.

Eyes of the World

2011-06-12T16:28:00.027-04:00

I stopped along the river to eat a sausage biscuit and some hash browns.

This individual realized it and arrived out of the blue. There were signs up saying he / she should not be fed. I have a feeling there is something in people who read signs like that and decide to feed them anyway. I've got another feeling that there's people who read signs like that and would let them starve rather than disobey.

Anyhow I took a number of pictures of this guy or gal I don't know which, this bird was sharing time with me, and I took advantage of it. This one came out the best.

A song came to mind as I worked on the picture. Click on the title to hear the song. Click on photographs for greater detail.

Pretty isn't he /she? The bible tells us we can discover the deepest parts of God in the things that have been created. You might see a little of that in these photographs and art.

More eyes of the world

Highway to the Unknown

2011-04-28T14:34:00.005-04:00

The gospel song 'You Gotta Walk That Lonesome Valley' comes to mind in this picture. In the end (spiritually speaking) we are completely alone. If we haven't learned to accept this one absolute requirement of life with peace and an understanding that provides hope for crossing over through the light into the unknown we have wasted our time and our end will be awful. We would be like the 'virgins' in Jesus' story who let the oil run out of their lamps. They imagined they were all set for the wedding, but as it turned out they were out of luck and couldn't go.

Artwork by David H. Roche Copyright 2011

Artistic Interpretation of Psalm 22

2011-02-26T15:35:00.009-05:00

Click on photograph to enlarge it

What is mankind? The old testament describes him as having the characteristics of flowers of the field that come and go with the seasons. In the New Testament the Christ figure is said to embody all the human race. This would mean that the words of the bible verse applied to all of us.

Mankind wants to deny this. He (it) wants to be here permanently and he's devised religions to slap reality in the face and say it isn't so.

However it is so. We are like flowers of the field. We come and go.

"Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.

For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;" Psalm 103

There is reason to hope, but hope only in a future dimension because this one is on the way to its conclusion.

Photograph Copyright 2011 by David H. Roche

The Shaman's Mind

2011-02-26T12:48:00.009-05:00

Click on the photograph to enlarge it

Shamanism is a way of aiding people to integrate themselves with their environment and this view of life includes the whole person in a whole environment involving healing and the restoration of balance within those relationships.

In western culture we have quite a different view of life. We view our environment as something we are at war with and must be conquered and subdued. This, I believe, is due to the influence of the Christian doctrines of the 'fall' and 'original sin' and the 'nature of man'. These declarations of what the 'Fall' meant reflect those sentiments and the result is that mankind views himself in the attitude that it, mankind, is an alien, a stranger and out of place in the environment he finds himself in. So he is at war with it and he has no peace within himself as a result.

Shamanism attempts to revise the way we look at our presence in the world. It's ultimate goal is to restore man to the condition where he does not feel afraid or alienated in the world. In the end we need to understand what this brief experience known as life is all about. If we think we are at war with everything because of the doctrine of the 'Fall' we will be conditioned to respond as if we were at war. Basically the way mankind is relating to the earth is the way a thug looks at an old woman's pocketbook as she passes by.

I found this website which describes Shamanic activity in a scholarly way. Google Shamanism.org or copy and paste the link into your browser. http://www.shamanism.org/ It was refreshing to see so erudite and acclaimed an authority speaking on the validity of this approach to understanding the relationships that life is comprised of.

This song is appropriate. Jim at his best.

Photograph is my property Copyright 2011 David H. Roche

How Did You Sleep?

2011-02-23T10:07:00.005-05:00

Art by David H. Roche

Click on photographs to enlarge them

I couldn't help but remember what it was like to wake up with a hangover when I saw this picture emerge.

This is the initial photograph.

and then I added this one.

After that I just messed around with them. I learned a new technique when I got up this morning as well.

All images property of David H. Roche Copyright 2011

Samsara

2011-02-19T15:01:00.009-05:00

(Click on photographs to enlarge them)

The description of Samsara is simply a description of someone making their way through life and understood with relationship to eternity.

The original picture is that of a kelp strand on the beach.

This one here:

It was found on my way to the wreck of the Peter Iredale.

Both are metaphors of our personal future. Eventually we will wash up on the shore. Samsara is that trip to the shore from the sea. But if anyone knows anything about the sea, what goes in, goes back out continually.

Nature is God's first book.

Photographs Copyright 2011 by David H. Roche

Floral Experience

2011-02-17T15:51:00.004-05:00

Original photographs processed with Paint.net software.

Click to enlarge flowers.

It should be obvious that the top photograph is of a sunflower.

The one below is not so obvious. The original photograph was of my flower garden just as the sun was setting and dark was setting in. Two poppies in the moonlight.

Photographic art by David H. Roche copyright 2011

The Human Condition

2011-02-13T11:05:00.013-05:00

Click on photographs to enlarge them

"As for man, his days are as grass:
as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

For the wind passeth over it,
and it is gone;
and the place thereof shall know it no more." (excerpted from Psalm 103)

I love reading the Old Testament poets and sages. The use of simple images of observed life convey monumental universal truths. The images came to life in my mind when working with pictures so I added bible texts to emphasize the image as I felt the bible text had impressed on me. The texts are from the KJV in the public domain.

The image above is a simple grass stem that has gone to seed. It was standing on the side of the pond and I imagine will provide food for the ducks at one point in its life here.

The image directly below is the same image as above with the colors inverted and enhanced. When I saw the blue appear I knew something interesting would develop.

While watching the changes occur in the image this passage from the book of Job came to mind. Job is very interesting to read as men understood life at a much more basic level than they do today. These were men who depended on the natural forces to be in order in order for them to survive. It was these natural forces to which Jesus appealed when he referred to the beneficence of his father in providing day to day necessities. He called this providence the basis of faith and trust in God, his 'Father'.

An audio recording of the book of Job is available at the link at LibriVox.org where you can find an entire collection of free audio books which are in the public domain. http://librivox.org/job-king-james-version/

This basic,'mean' way of living was also to be a means of connecting them to God in that they were directly dependent on the natural world to produce what it was they needed.

Today there are intermediaries between man, seed time and harvest. We call them money and supermarkets. They have effectively taken the role that God has traditionally held in the experience of man. I suppose this is the beast spoken of by the mystic John in Revelation. In effect our culture has become an alternative to God.

Original photography the property of David H. Roche Copyright 2011

A Time of Fire

2011-02-12T12:43:00.007-05:00

Click to enlarge picture.

I made this picture over the course of two or three days. It began with a photograph of a stem of grass and a kitchen cabinet knob close-up. There are at least two more pictures involved in this and all of them completely different from the other.

I get a sense from this picture of a mountain range involved in volcanic activity. This area is only recently not like this. There are native stories of the mountains having fights and throwing fire at each other and of the mountains moving around. It's not hard to imagine people living 10 thousand or more years ago encountering this activity and then the deluge of the last ice age.

Cataclysms On The Columbia is a book I would recommend which gives a scientifically valid look look into conditions from the periods preceding and after the last ice age.

Living here within sight of the coastal range knowing that not all that long ago this place was a lot different makes this picture real to me.

Downstate at Crater Lake is a spectacular example of the power of volcanic activity. The original mountain which is now the home of Crater Lake is thought to have been 12,000 feet in height. About 7700 years ago the top third of the mountain blew off and the lake and environs were totally changed. Debris from the volcano has been found as far away as Alberta Canada.

When I saw the image emerge I felt I saw the mountain ranges on fire again. Time and again I think of how impossible it seems to arrive at an image like this when it began as a piece of grass and a door knob. It is is not quite like creating something from a formless limitless chaos.

Original photo Copyright 2011 the property of David H. Roche

Universal Love

2011-02-07T17:45:00.005-05:00

(Click and double click on photographs for enhanced detail)

The moon squeezes
and sucks back
time after time:

occasionally it spills over.

\

Photography and poetry by David H. Roche Copyright 2011

I Offer You The Spirit

2010-12-16T20:32:00.009-05:00

(click on highlighted text for additional information)

The way I see it this life is a mystery and something designated as 'SPIRIT' is the cause. If not, 'oh well'.

What I sought to convey in this picture is 'God' the center figure delivering the 'Spirit' in the form of a bird to the natural world.

This is of course using a juxtaposition of images that refer to something but are not literally representative of what they actually are pointing to. In their entirety they represent the infinite state of existence.

In our finitude defined by our mortality we need to conceive of something like 'God'. We use the designation 'God' to explain the 'Unexplainable'.

I would agree, in that context the 'Unexplainable' is 'God'. We just don't know how this thing we are experiencing came about and what we are trying to know dwarfs us.

Maybe the Buddhists are right about the primacy of consciousness and maybe consciousness and its perceiver together make up 'God'.

(click on photograph to enlarge for detail)

Worship

All the work except the song in the video by the Waterboys was done by me.

Spirits

2010-11-26T12:57:00.014-05:00

This is a great old ballad written by Merle Haggard and performed by the Grateful Dead. Right click and open in new tab then you can simply listen without having to watch the video. "Sing me back home, a song I used to hear, make my old memories come alive, sing me away and turn back the years, sing me back home before I die." (right click on the highlighted text to open in another page and listen to the song while you watch the video. The song is a little longer than the video.) Click here for a shorter version with a series of appropriate photographs by Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers. It's time to sing me back home.
(Click on photos and highlighted text)

Jason sent me over a thousand old family pictures. The picture above is a composite of three photographs from different years. I believe I was between 10 and 12 years old at the time. The picture of my mother and father in the background was taken at their 50th wedding anniversary in 1976, the tint, is the glow of the sunset on the Pacific Ocean at Sunset Beach in Warrenton Oregon taken earlier this year.

(Click on the video to open in you tube for full screen.)

The old pictures are nice to look at for many reasons. I enjoy the mysterious sense of the unreality of that which I know was as real as this moment typing on the keyboard. I have the feeling I may yet understand it all. If something so concrete as your own personal reality can simply vanish and at the same time remain the same, what does it mean?

Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

In The Beginning: BEING

2010-11-18T18:18:00.007-05:00

(Click on photograph and highlighted texts)

The origin and therefore the meaning of life depends on how we regard the fact of our existence. I prefer to regard that one indisputable fact that 'I am' in the light that something greater than me supports this whole thing called life. A lot of people call that God. Designations have always been important but not always accurate as meaning becomes obscured and lost in a wilderness of words. Gods have taken on many different characteristics, but fundamentally remain the same. They are represented as those which impact our lives and which we must reconcile ourselves with because they are the ultimate source of our existence.

Paul Tillich referred to this indefinable something that supports everything as 'the ground of being'. I like that, it suits me. God, for me, is that which upholds and gives the impetus for everything to keep on keeping on. I do not feel separate from this alchemy. Not since I traded theology for experience anyhow.

The creation story in Genesis is just that, a story. It is not a blow by blow account of God going through the details of creation. A little bit of dust, a little bit of breath, presto Adam and Eve. No wonder people don't believe in God when they're told this is how it has to be. Six days, 144 consecutive hours that's it and that asking follow-up questions is inappropriate.

None of us can remember a time when we were not here. We can remember those who are not here and we fear not being here. But there is no record of those who are not here ever having knowledge of not being here, or of complaining about not being here. It is as if creation is eternally present.

Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

Snails

2010-10-12T13:57:00.034-04:00

(Click or right click on photographs for enhanced detail and highlighted links for additional information)

Below are some photographs that I morphed using Paint.net image altering software. Paint.net is a free software product produced in association with Microsoft. It is first class and it is absolutely free.

The ability to use layers is like opening a door that leads into another dimension. Getting used to it is like adjusting to a new interpretation of everyday events because you found out you were wrong.

I have a series of photos in mind under the title of "Dreamscape". Some of them are included here. I put them together and they seem to allude to something altogether different.

Rapping at your window.

The Shaman calling forth forms from the vast potential of possibilities.

At one point in the days experience I discovered a snail crawling up my window and took about 40 photographs. I deleted at least half of them.

Immediately below is the original picture of the snail and a second photograph. The changes made are seen in the photographs at the bottom of the page.

This is the same snail showing more of it's features. I got the idea the black fiber like thing was food. He seemed to have some kind of interaction with it in different photographs that I took. Maybe it was just in his way. But I did watch him for a while and got the impression he was eating.

Below are altered photos of the snail. I got some good effects. When I do this I have in the back of my mind the idea that I am drawing from the unlimited potential of the 'Tao'. It's a way I have come to live with every passing moment.

I wanted to see if I could make something out of it if I reversed the image and then placed it with the original. For an early attempt I was glad that it came out the way it did. I expect to improve in the future. Paint.net is not Photoshop, but it is a very good tool.

All photographs and text Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

7:02 A.M. September 25th 2010: a one time event

2010-09-25T15:55:00.073-04:00

Title picture at the end of the page. Click on the highlighted texts for explanations of persons or books referred to. Click on photograph to enlarge it.

While you read through this, links and all, here's a concert for you. Rolling Stones from 1972 courtesy of Sugarmegs. If you need longer to contemplate these things here's a live concert courtesy of the Grateful Dead and the Internet Archives with the Grateful Dead at Richfield Coliseum in Ohio near Cleveland on 1991-09-04 to smooth things out. I happened to be at this concert.

I can't find anything more important to do than engaging in the present moment. As a matter of fact I never could sing while I save. These days I find myself watching the ducks and migrating waterfowl to better understand the life I am part and parcel of.

I see they mainly need food and sometimes I feed them when it gets cold and food is hard to get. It's my 'widow's mite' of $12 dollars a month for cracked corn, my attempt to serve my companions within the source of my being.

If another creature grabs them and eats them, well is that reality or not? It is a reality that cannot be denied,it's how 'Being' has unraveled. I cannot see myself separate from this scheme of things. I'm just a player in the moment. A lot of people make a big deal out of it and they end up not enjoying it.

In many ways I see it the way Saint Paul stated it in these passages: Acts 17: 24 - 28 KJV.

"God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Neither is worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."

It's hard to believe Saint Paul deliberately separated man from his environment making him supremely important while denigrating the rest of creation after the reading the following statement. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead;" Romans 1:20 KJV.

The sentiments involved in uniting these relationships of the seen in the outside world with the eternal are convincing to me. Who can watch 60 seasons come and go without assimilating something from the flow of time that reveals the imprimatur of the source of 'Being', most call it God. I prefer not to. Each passing year brings a deeper realization that something really big is going on?

The various ecosystems explaining the unseen make more sense explaining life than the Seventh-Day Adventist description of a 6 day creation week of 144 straight uninterrupted hours from start to finish.

Today the black magic of language is used to obliterate the perception of the self evident unity that is apparent in the processes of nature. Contemplating nature enables a person to contemplate himself apart from any name or title he might be designated by. When the linguistic boundaries erected by convention do not influence him, man is able to understand that he and nature are not able to be separated. Proposing such a separation would immediately be understood as absurd. It follows then, that if we are out to conquer nature, we are at war with ourselves.

I see a strong connection to the Hindu thought and the Buddhist thought that we, everything, comprise a unity, all one. Paul specifically represents the 'Christ' figure in his gospel in this way as being a universal factor unifying everyone as 'One Blood'. One family. Saint Paul made special note of this unity of the human race and the meaning of the Christ event as "peace", and "good will toward men."

I recommend 2 books. "Love's Body" and "The Denial of Death". These two books influenced me decades ago. They gave me a way to appraise human history.

The book of Revelation in the new testament suggests an economic totalitarianism to come. Economic systems are made by man. They tend, ultimately to nullify the spiritual nature of humankind's relationship with God through creation. Jesus referred to the processes of nature as the means by which his father provided for his children on earth. It is the divinely appointed means of knowing God. The understanding of the monetary system in the 1st century as an incipient and growing obstacle between humankind and his source of being is an idea that could only have been an immature plant in the soil of the human mind at the time it was written. We will very likely see the blossom shortly.

It takes a blind man not to see the ultimate conclusion of the capitalist experience. Humankind's decision to irrevocably conquer and separate itself from the source of life and replace it with a factory, is like a prisoner hanging himself in the prison whose construction he superintended.

In the bible God is represented as bringing seed time and harvest with the coming and going of the seasons, and rain. This is what God does, he,she,it, whatever the combination, is involved in sustaining the life process. That is how Jesus referred to his father and his kingdom. God is that which is responsible for life continuing. Compare that to the current debacle of the American food supply due to factory farming required by the monopolistic impulse of the free market.

I'm not religious. I've got no axe to grind. I don't care what you think is gonna transpire, you and I have no details we can rely on. We may have a foreboding, a premonition rising up within us, telling us something is about to happen. I think it's grand that we don't know what it is.

But ultimately, whatever happens, well it happens. I can tell you this with certainty; those that have, are not going to let go of it, they are not going to share it with the 'have nots' without killing a lot of 'have nots' first.

Everything I decide in a moral or ethical sense I attempt to do, first of all, in a Taoist / Zen influenced context. These influences ground me in the present.

After the existential confrontation with Taoist and Zen thought I place Jesus first because he was the first spiritual teacher that I was introduced to. I gained from Jesus the realization that we should look out for each others needs on the same ongoing basis that his Father sent the rain to grow the crops that fed everyone. This visible providence of the source of being is analogous to the 'way' that can be named. According to St. Paul we are capable of understanding the most profound aspects of God by contemplating the natural world.

Buddha is not second except in the linear way I have to express myself with language. The concepts of Impermanence and Emptiness are not out of harmony with the application of life experience or Jesus' teachings.

Krishna corresponds to a concept alluded to by the eternal quantum flux described by quantum theories and the present experience of impermanence that is called 'living'.

Krishna's dialogue with Arjuna reveals that life is eternal and that not to engage in it the way you feel you must is to suffer loss. Fight he says. Do what is required of you where you are.

I place the Taoist / Zen interpretation first because I am confronted head on with experience I have to deal with.

Paul Tillich, perhaps the last century's premiere theologian, redefined the concept of God, the source of our existence, as the 'ground of Being'. I am being led to recognize as myself. After that I have to react to this conception with the moral and ethical guidelines I impose on them. That I believe is the humans moral responsibility

Finally my stream of thought has wound down to a trickle. The pictures below are what I did today. I'm satisfied with my labor.

Photography Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

As The Geese Fly: Discussions of Mortality

2010-09-24T21:13:00.011-04:00

(click on highlighted text and photograph.)

The title is from a poem I began as many as 5 years ago, maybe even more. The poem has changed over the years. However the idea or concept that made it appear did not change, it was refined to this point. It is representative of a theme I contemplate.

I tried to put all the images that affected me into the composition. The geese I understood to be a symbol of eternal return. I recognized an association with the 'Tao'.

Time is the medium in which we experience things in the face of certain mortality. This adds a Zen / Taoist capricious melancholy when it has wine added to it. Li Po 701-762 AD Tang Dynasty. At the link is a brief look at his life and delightful poetry.

I chose some rock songs that describe the human condition in a way that reflected reality and yet find hope.

As much as I like the Doors for their celebration of the human condition. Representing a unique way of thinking that appeared briefly and blossomed in the late 1960's and early 70's. The Doors expressed an irrepressible, lustful out of control way of engaging life in the moment through their music that was representative of the life around them . Many others at the time were baptized with the same spirit expressing it in their own particular way.

But 40 years hence my priority is to be left the fuck alone. The power is there, avoid the power. You are either free or not free. Because this is what we're dealing with. A great song by Robin Trower on this horrid condition of life

A wise man in the bible had these words of advice:

"saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." "Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity."

The Preacher comes to terms with his existence in the book of Ecclesiastes. This is similar to the literature in the book of Job.

Both men, the Preacher and the writer of Job attempted to take on some way of understanding life. While completely different in content and approach, both old testament books speak directly to the topic of how to relate to being alive without delving in a unrealistic supernatural state of relating to what is in front of his eyes. That way of thinking just complicates the process of dying. Ain't that right Ma?

it's inevitable. All you can do is play the game the best you can and try not to worry about it.

In Krishna's well known dialogue with Arjuna in the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita the heart of the human condition is explained. "The soul that with a strong and constant calm Takes sorrow and takes joy indifferently, Lives in the life undying! That which is Can never cease to be; that which is not Will not exist. To see this truth of both Is theirs who part essence from accident, Substance from shadow. Indestructible, Learn thou! the Life is, spreading life through all; It cannot anywhere, by any means, Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed. But for these fleeting frames which it informs With spirit deathless, endless, infinite, They perish. Let them perish, Prince! and fight!" Krishna speaking to Arjuna who is questioning the value of fighting if it results in killing members of his own family. Krishna's response is not the usual response a westerner hears to such a situation.

When you take it all into account, all human experience we are victim of the fury who are always trying to break on through to the other side.

This goes to underscore the underlying human predicament: "What do you do about dying while you're alive?"

Photography and poem by David H. Roche Copyright 2010

The only image that is mine is the initial photograph.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

2010-09-20T18:42:00.007-04:00

(Right click on highlighted texts. Open youtube videos by right clicking and choose watch in youtube or they will not appear as they were made.)

I find it strange that people in so called democratic societies want self determination and then get together in groups and decide who will make the most fundamental life affecting choices for them. In my understanding a 'democracy' is a state of affairs where people decide for themselves and if it is a personal decision no one can interfere without committing a crime against them. The decisions others make for them include sending the voters children off to wars they had no idea needed to be fought, or placing their own bodies off limits to them via drug prohibition, or prostitution laws etc.

I suppose this phenomenon could be considered a mental illness if some outside observer were to analyze their behavior. The observer might also conclude that the people had come to the conclusion that they were completely incompetent and needed a 'great white father' in Washington to decide things for them.

The way it is now with the congress of the U.S. leaving it's voters hanging out to dry it seems reasonable that some of them might get the idea they can do a better job.

I'm sure not many people along the Gulf Coast would be willing to kiss the ass of the people that destroyed their way of life. There is some talk that the behavior of those causing the catastrophe was reckless. The elected governments in the area however seem content not to raise a fuss about it. The people gave their power to those officials. I hope they take it back and find justice.

Most people do not rationally make that decision. In fact if they do they should be understood to not be rational, intelligent beings capable of running their own lives. So you get what's coming to you. Keep choosing others to make decisions for you. See if it goes the same way it has so far.

Impermanence

2010-09-12T14:18:00.018-04:00

(Right click on images and highlighted text)

The ocean, rivers and mountains of Oregon speak to me at a spiritual level. Sometimes right out of the blue when I least expect it something subtly, quietly, spectacular appears that takes my breath away and makes me say, "Oh".

When photographing nature lighting is important to the goal and idea behind the impetus to take the picture,'coming back later' to the same place will not work. A few hours later on the way back the incandescent blanket of fog was gone and the scene did not resemble what had made me stop in the morning.

Thoughts like that speak to me of the impermanence of life. Impermanence is what keeps everything going. It is good news if understood correctly. When we see change we are seeing the processes which guarantee that the process will continue. It's good to feel a part of the process as if I belonged. Perceiving change in nature has immense possibilities for contemplation. I try to examine change with my photographs.

I was on the way to Portland on U.S. Route 26 about 8:30 in the morning and a valley expanse opened. I pulled over.

The valley was almost filled with a frosty white fog illuminated by the sun. In the distance the peaks of the Coastal Range stick up over the tops of the cloud of white fog contained in their hollow.

I tried to arrange the images in the video to give a sense of looking out over the fog covered valley in one direction and then the other. Allen Ginsberg's poem "Wales Visitation" came to mind. You'll see why when you read the poem at the highlighted text. I had heard him read that poem at Hobart College some time around 1968. He had written it a short time before and it had not been published yet. You can see him read it for William Buckley on national television here.

The Columbia River

2010-08-29T12:17:00.010-04:00

(Right click on highlighted text and photogaphs)

I fell in love with the Columbia River the first time I saw it at the Bonneville Dam. It had long been neutered by 450 dams and brought to its knees, as rivers go, by the time I saw it. But still the river focuses my attention and holds me in awe. It continues to be a mighty statement of endurance and continuity in a human world where all that is held dear may vanish at the stroke of a pen in an office on Wall Street or Washington.

The photograph below is of the Astoria-Megler Bridge in Astoria Oregon, (eight miles from the mouth of the Pacific Ocean)and is my attempt to represent the eternal nature of the river and the creatures that live from it. Long after man is washed off the shoreline out of existence this river will keep rolling and the life that remains will regroup and reorganize itself by virtue of the intelligence that brings life from inert materials. Some may think this gives them the right to pursue activities that harm it. Others see the river as a moral responsibility that begs them to treat it with respect. Thankfully the river is going to outlast the 450 dams and anyone that may build another dam. I’m gonna sit here and watch it as long as I can.

The Columbia River has quite a history. The gorge was formed after at least a hundred pre-historic floods the size and cataclysmic violence of which the world had not seen before or since. These floods are now known as the Bretz floods. This designation is for the geologist Harlen Bretz who proved to the satisfaction of his scientific rivals after decades of debate, how the area got its topography. These floods came and went during the last ice age over a period of more than two thousand years. The result today is one of the most breathtaking places on the planet. Not only does the gorge offer spectacular vacation sights, but it allows you to see how it was swept clean and easily inspect layer upon layer the rock formations as they were laid down in lava flow after lava flow. I recommend buying this book.

“Did you know that the largest floods to occur on the planet happened here? During the last ice age, ice sheets covered much of Canada. One lobe of ice grew southward, blocking the Clark Fork Valley in Idaho. This 2,000 foot (600 meters) high ice dam blocked the river, creating a lake that stretched for hundreds of miles. When the lake was full, it contained 600 cubic miles (2,500 cubic kilometers) of water. How much is that? Imagine a block of water a mile high (as high as the mountains around Bonneville Dam), a miles wide, and stretching from Bonneville Dam to San Francisco!

Eventually, water traveled under the ice dam. The water drained out of the lake in two or three days, flooding eastern Washington. The flood, moving up to sixty miles per hour, scoured out hundreds of miles of canyons called coulees, created the largest waterfall to ever exist, and left 300 foot (90 meter) high gravel bars. At Bonneville, the water crested at 650 feet (200 meters). If you look on the cliffs southeast of the dam, you will see a transmission tower (the one with three poles) that is 200 feet (60 meters) above the high water mark.

During a period of 2,500 years as many as 100 of these floods scoured the Gorge.” Quotation from the USGS at the link above.

In the United States, the Columbia River is rivaled only by the Mississippi / Missouri river systems. The Mississippi, however, does not offer the spectacular signs of the geologic past that the Columbia River gorge offers even the casual tourist

Traditionally designated "The Great river of the West", scientists who think about these things categorize the Columbia as an endangered river. Its huge flow of water has been harnessed by as many as 450 dams. No other river system in the world has as many dams. At one time the area was an almost unlimited source of food and fur products for the entire world. Now those resources are inconsequential at best when compared to what appeared to be an inexhaustible quantity.

The witness in the diaries of the Lewis and Clark expedition tells of an amount of fish so staggering that it was almost beyond comprehension. Today the fur trade is negligible if not absent, salmon fishing is reduced to the point that the salmon is endangered, and the river itself, choked with more than 400 dams bears no resemblance to the river that carved out the 3000 foot walls of the Columbia River gorge through which it passes.

This land is our land. Let’s not shit in our own bed anymore. If we do we have no reason to ask why it stinks.

This is a
Never forget, never again
4 / 20 / 2010
Production

Copyright 2010 with thanks to the sources referenced by my links and in quotes.

Whitman's Dog

2010-07-25T20:08:00.037-04:00

(right click on photographs and texts for enhanced information)

I wrote this poem while thinking of the Walt Whitman reference. Click for reading of Whitman's poem. I was thinking how stupid it is to hope for more than the present on the basis of a Christian explanation. If anyone doesn't love this world they would hate 'heaven' too. Both are said to be made by God. To sing this world is not my home seems to be the ultimate sacrilege from my point of view.

God, the universal principle, did put us here. I doubt that the universe changed it's mind and cursed us to extinction. That, I believe, is a 'religious' explanation for our circumstances. Religion has always been the refuge of governments and kingdoms. But religion bears no resemblance to the world seen with the eyes and experienced with the senses. Some say the religious have their heads in the clouds. I suspect they are doing a visual search for hemorrhoids on themselves.

The ultimate mystery is the alchemy of sunlight, moonlight and the response. That response is seen in my garden.

Whitman’s Dog

I would rather live and die as a dog
going from one thing to another collecting,experiences
senses full of all around him,
who, knowing his time has come,
finds a place to lie down alone
without fears of judgment and hell,
thinking only of closing his eyes one more time.

Whitman reference below

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania
of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands
of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."

If You Want to Dance ...

2010-06-25T18:00:00.010-04:00

you have to pay the fiddler.

(Right click on highlighted texts and photographs)

The 'fiddler' and the 'devil' have a scam going. It's called capitalism. It is characterized by placing profits at the top of the list of priorities while placing human well-being way down on the list.

I keep thinking of Jesus and 'the Kingdom of God' in which the eternal process is set up to keep on keeping on. The 'Father' sees to it that everything gets what it needs to keep on keeping on. That is how Jesus describes the 'Kingdom'.

The interlude we are experiencing now in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by people whose sole purpose for existence is the acquisition of 'mammon', wealth, stands in direct contrast to the 'Kingdom of God' which Jesus spoke of. Luke 16 seems quite applicable.

There are crazies in this world who have suggested that God blew up the Gulf because the President indicated U.S. policy would not approve of everything that the Zionist state of Israel does any longer.

How crazy can these whacked out evangelicals get? They are used to magic people and hearing voices when no one is there and they kill people on command. Now they want us to believe that no longer kissing a Zionist ass has lead to their God precipitating the Gulf crisis. They seem oblivious to the information in Luke 16. For them profit and gold are good, and what the bible said about those things does not fit into their way of looking at life.

The Beauty of Nature

2010-06-20T13:49:00.015-04:00

(Right click on photographs and highlighted text.)

I noticed last week that one of the hens had 4 ducklings. A couple of days ago I noticed that there were only three ducklings.

I had witnessed them developing confidence. When I first saw them and went out to take their picture they would disappear down the side of the bank into the grass and I couldn't see them.

It didn't take them long to give up their timidness. After just a few exposures to me they now continue to eat on the banks if I enter my yard.

The hen is interesting to watch as she protects her brood. A larger white duck approached the young ducks and the hen went after it. I snapped this picture of the action.

The last photo in the video was associated with an article on the Gulf Oil Spill. I've been thinking about the business philosophy and system which encouraged the conditions for catastrophe to exist. I added the question 'Have you thanked a corporation today?'. The article, 'Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world', was written by Naomi Klein and was published in Op Ed News.com

This song by Steve Forbert is appropriate to get you thinking.

I find it disconcerting that many citizens seem to be as isolated from a clue to the underlying cause of the catastrophe, as the CEO of BP is from the reality of the lives his choices have ruined.

In all of this a trail leads from Cheney energy policies right to the Crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.

'Remember The Gulf' Tee Shirt

2010-06-18T15:10:00.006-04:00

(Right click on photograph and highlighted links)

My new Tee Shirt design and concept involving the use of the concepts of 'laissez-faire' and the way it has become Laissez-Unfaire.

The Gulf of Mexico is analogous to a domino. The oil industry with the help of host governments have produced a discernible pattern of collusion in the leading up to and the aftermath of the calamity of major oil spills. A recent oil spill in Australia has left the same fingerprints at the scene.

If BP has not created a problem that is uncorrectable this incident should be a wake up call for those who have thought 'corporate irresponsibility' is just another phrase for simply conducting business as usual.

Now that BP enjoys the status of a natural person those in BP's employment who actually made the decisions to skip the safety procedures, as well as those carrying out directives they knew were improper, must be held criminally liable as if they simply killed the eleven men with their own hands while creating the greatest man made environmental disaster in history. If what has been reported is correct, that required safety precautions were bypassed, there is just cause to hope for convictions and hard prison terms rather than simply the payment of a fine.

The use of the new legal designation of 'person' in this relationship must be applied rigorously and logically in the courts. If corporations have rights the same as a person because they are a 'natural person' before the law, then it must follow that along with the status of 'personhood' there come corresponding obligations just like those any other 'natural person' is amenable to.

What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico by a corporation whose desire for profits allowed it to engage in practices producing the resulting disaster should never be forgotten. But even more importantly the causes for arriving at the decision to act with such disregard must be re-evaluated, talked about, and their virtue made a topic of public conversation.

A Trip to Crater Lake

2010-06-16T15:19:00.029-04:00

(Right click photographs and highlighted texts)

My eldest son came to visit. We hadn't seen each other since Christmas in NY. He arrived on the 11th of June and left today the 16th. June 13th was my 1st anniversary here alongside the side of the pond.

It is anniversary of another kind as well. In 1993 on June 13th both of my sons and I were here. I asked them both to truck on down to Buffalo and see the Grateful Dead with me. My youngest son and I had gone the previous year, this year all three of us went. It was the last time I got to see the Grateful Dead. We had a good time.

Matt came out last year right after I moved, this is the first that Jay has been here. I had anticipated his arrival since the end of winter when he said he was able to make it. I had wanted him to see how gorgeous the area was and how comfortable my new home was.

We set off on a trip that had too many goals in relationship to the time allowed us. This resulted in changing plans on the fly. We had set out to drive down the coast from Warrenton, stopping to see the sights and taking photographs when we saw something interesting. Truth be told there are many interesting things, far too many to be seen in the time we had to allot to this activity.

We left the driveway thinking we would ‘drift’ down the coast on Highway 101 and see the different lighthouses along the way. But after two lighthouses, an idea we had earlier and had not been able to accommodate in the time we had, came back. Crater Lake!!

Two lighthouses were enough, we could always come back. We decided to go directly to Crater Lake. The decision wasn’t made because the drive was boring, but my son had wanted to see the lake. So we went.

It’s a long drive. We left Warrenton before 8 and arrived at Crater Lake at sunset. All by chance we stumbled onto a scene that blew my mind.

It was the middle of June and there was a lot of snow still on the ground. Behind us on the ’rim’ drive was Crater Lake.

Finding this felt like a serendipity. We didn’t know where we were going and then it was there! That was my impression . But my son has a gps thingy and in retrospect I suspect that played a part in getting there. I was unaware of it being a factor at the time as he was driving and I was lookin’.

We took a lot of pictures and saw a lot of scenery that left me feeling humbled.

We came down from the lake on narrow roads that lay in front of us like a long series of ‘S’ curves in the dark, mountainside on the left, a sheer drop-off on the right. We were tired and exited onto route 62 fully expecting to drive another 50 miles to Klamath and the nearest motel. But about 5 miles from the park entrance we spotted a sign that said ‘Wilson’s Cottages’ and decided to stop.

Wilson’s Cottages turned out to be one of the pleasant surprises of the trip. It is an authentic 1930’s style tourists camp. It has individual cedar shingled cottages placed well apart between tall trees. The cottages are authentic because they were erected in the 1930’s and remain pretty much they way they were when new; you can’t get any more authentic than that.

I experienced the old wood work with a sense of nostalgia having been brought to places just like this by my parents as a child. Clean and neat and a hell of a lot better than driving another hour and then another hour back in the morning.

When I woke in the morning I discovered that we were in a forest of very tall trees.

There’s a path, if you look hard, down to Annie Creek which exit’s the park and runs behind the cottages. I heard it before I saw it while walking the path in the morning. The air was fresh and sweet, the only sounds I recall were those made by myself and then as I drew close the sound of water gurgling rapidly in Annie Creek.

One thing that struck me was that the 1930’s comforts acted as a catalyst to put me into a slower pace, a pace disconnected from the hyper fast society demanding more than can be reasonably expected. This is a good place to ‘get away’ and find your bearings. About five mile from the entrance of the park is a real plus too.

Crater Lake sits over 7000‘ above sea level. It is 1900‘ deep at it’s deepest spot. We went back up to see it in the daylight. There was still a lot of snow on the ground and it had snowed the week before. The sky was clear blue and the lake was as pure a blue as you can bring to mind.

It's a strange experience looking across the lake to the other side while realizing that at one time the 7000' peak rose to a height of 12,000' and that a third of it was literally blown up and scattered to the winds. The tranquil blue lake that remains is the empty shell of Mount Mazama that has quietly refilled itself with water over the intervening years. It sits there as one in meditation.

I had gotten some sore muscles from all the walking, but by my return the soreness was a memory, and it was a good soreness in that it awakened my sedentary body. Nothing like walking in the sand, over rocks and leaping rivulets to take it’s toll on a body that has done nothing but sit around for a year. It gave me the idea I had better keep walking.

On our drive down the coast we passed Cannon Beach and stopped first at some of the Neahkahnie view points overlooking Manzanita and the Pacific Ocean. Today it was overcast and it remained a sodden gray not quite daring to rain until mid afternoon when the skies became higher and gave way to broken patches of blue and white allowing sunlight to shine.

This is not abnormal weather behavior. It keeps the North Coast from getting boring.

I took a lot more photographs than I posted here. Way too many to post here. But on the way back to Warrenton we discovered another really pleasant surprise called Yachats. I'll have some pictures of that next time.

Sunset and Sunrise: a resurrection poem

2010-05-22T19:22:00.008-04:00

(Click on highlighted texts for photographs to illustrate each line)

The fading light begins to blend the colors with darkness
smudging them like paint across a palette
before becoming the darkness of the womb
from which morning births the day
and I rise again.

Texts and photographs Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

Consider the Lilies

2010-05-20T14:40:00.009-04:00

(click on highlighted text)

Black scud, sun, hail
and sun again
all in a few minutes;
such is coastal weather.

“Sparing indeed is nature of its talk:
The whirlwind will not last the morning out;
The cloudburst ends before the day is done.”

Ducks, sparrows and doves (video click)
appear unperturbed
whether pelted with ice
or warmed by sunshine.

Having abandoned the ‘Kingdom’
fearing the future has become a way of life,
while those secure in the province of the King
are carefree.

Quotation from Tao Te Ching Translated by Raymond B. Blakney 1955

Title taken from Matthew 6:28

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6&version=KJV

Most people, even Christians, think Jesus is foolish when he encourages people not to worry about the future. When he encourages a life that does not envision tomorrow most are prone to laugh. Believers will explain the words away declaring he does not mean what he says.

Jesus came teaching about the kingdom of God in which natures processes were Gods method of maintaining life and order.

Do the lilies grow, are the birds fed? Does God care for you? Well according to Jesus God cares and has a system that shows it.

For most Americans this concept is meaningless. Common sense says there is a future to prepare for and that gold, the symbol of creature comforts, is the solution to the fear of the future.

The God of Jesus,which he called 'Father' has become irrelevant to most Christians because they have accepted the explanation of modern society whose confidence relies on politicians and manufacturers to provide the needs of life.

The God of Jesus is the one who brings the seasons. Seed time and harvest are his province. However present society populated by Christians and atheists alike have abandoned trust in the 'Father' of Jesus.

Jim Hightower has shown just what some of the consequences of abandoning trust in God are.

America claims to be a Christian nation. When it organizes itself the way it has is it possible to maintain such a view with any credibility? The result of lacking faith in the 'Father' results in the consequences Jim Hightower has pointed out.

Does God Have A Future?

2010-05-18T20:12:00.018-04:00

This post is a reaction to a debate between two evolutionary thinkers who do not believe in God, one an atheist and one an agnostic, and two who feel there is a guiding force for human improvement which they conceive of as God.

All agree that the tyrant authoritarian God of Islam, the Bible and Pre-Christian mythology is a bankrupt system of perception.

The debate is set up with the following for participants: Sam Harris and Michael Shermer on one side vs. Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on the other side. I am familiar with three of the debaters on the basis of their literary work; Harris, Chopra and Houston. I had not encountered the ideas of Shermer before this debate.

This debate was hosted by ABC and broadcast on the program 'Nightline'. I have to say there were some dicey moments but all participants responded honestly without much rancor as I would have hoped they would. It is a two hour program, but can be watched in 10 minute segments and it is worth your while. If you are familiar with the debate about God and religion in society this 'Nightline' presentation will bring it into focus. You can follow it on youtube from the initial video on through to the end. I found it the best debate on the topic I have heard.

I was pleasantly surprised to conclude that the concept of 'God' does have a future. Some may not conclude that but my reasoning relies on the teaching of many sages, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu and others.

The main thing for me has always been to see what is. My criteria for judgment is if it doesn't conform to experience it is suspect and deserves to be examined critically in order to know what's up. Of course the point in life in which information and experience intersect may bring up different conclusions for each person. This is what evolution is all about and what brings about the questions we need to examine.

Conventional religion, which is a one size fits all concept, does not allow that insight. Conventional religion is a packaged affair. It comes with a book and a creed which at all costs must be followed exactly or else. In the Christian context you will be killed if you decide contrary to the precepts in the book.

In pre-Christian contexts you will suffer calamity and grave misfortune. I have no idea how Islam deals with 'wrong' concepts about Allah other than my father telling me of his trip to Morocco and telling me of women who had their fingers cut off for shoplifting. (Were these laws protecting private property?)

Anyone who has ever accomplished anything at all knows trial and error is the way to arrive at a working proposition. Believing authority figures without criticism doesn't seem to be the best way to approach an understanding of what the hell this life is all about.

If God has any purpose for man 'It's' purpose hopefully should be to give those 'It' is trying to communicate with an understanding of how they arrived here and what it means in order that the 'believer' may find some kind of way to co-ordinate and live his life.

If you are shown that the 'Godly' way is to kill people, even your own children, who make a single transgression of your will what kind of a society can you expect to be derived from that concept? You can look to American society for an example of those consequences. It's not pretty. American society stands as one of the last bastions of the death penalty in the modern world. This is due to the Jewish / Christian influences that have formed the American consciousness.

I'm looking out my window. In the yard there is a dove, a sparrow, a pair of grackles and and several pair of mallard ducks. In the pond across the street a pair of nutria continue going about doing the things necessary to their life carrying grasses back and forth to a nest and babies I haven't seen. I'm betting that they don't have these questions.

I'm left with these thoughts. Man is different from them. But not in the way the Christian church says. Man is different because in the mind of 'God' man is meant to be a superlative being. A being that has the potential to create something good as well as to fuck things up.

Christianity maintains that man will only fuck up no matter what he does. This of course is an attitude, if accepted, which will end in fucking things up. If you convince people that all they can do is fail, well they will fail. It is the nature of the effect of information on consciousness. I deny that man can only fail.

It seems to me God put us here to figure things out. Isn't this the crux of the 'knowledge of good and evil?' We all want the same thing. We all want to be free of enemies. We all want to just raise our families in peace with a degree of comfort.

Micah, the Old Testament sage, had these concepts: "But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.

And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.

For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever."

The sage Micah tells you outright. There are different Gods and we can get along in peace. We can sit around the fire at night eating figs, watching the women dance and sing, talking, and cracking the marrow bones for their sweetness while listening and singing along in appreciation of the good life as a prelude to retiring to our tents. It is a human situation, a sensuality inherent in human experience that since the Christian Council of Nicea summoned by the imperial government of the roman empire , contemporary Christianity hates.

In the present I've got strong gale warnings. The ducks are in a feeding frenzy over the cracked corn I have put out for them. My fence has blown down, the weather report says it could get bad. I suspect that the ducks understand shit may be coming down the pike.

They always survive and keep on keeping on. As humans are we any different?

The Nightline program is very worthwhile if you have an open mind. If you do not have an open mind it is heresey.

The Way of Life

2010-05-17T18:19:00.026-04:00

(click on photographs then click again for expanded detail. Click on highlighted texts for reference information)

A fledgling on the grass is brought to the cracked corn in the yard and fed by his caretaker. Then it is left alone.

The little bird is one who survived ravens, eagles, cats and other dangers. I imagine a number of hatchlings did not survive. This one made it to May 17.

As I watched the scene seeing it left there by itself I wondered what it was thinking; clothed only in it's fluffy fledgling feathers. I am certain there was an intelligence within it and it's caregiver that is directing its future.

It's a big world now little fledgling, you've got a life to live.

Despite all the mating activity of the ducks I have yet to see one duckling in the pond, but I did see a mallard hen leading a number of ducklings down the banks toward the pond. Never saw them again. There are coons, cats and coyotes that find ducklings desirable as well as ravens and eagles do. Out the window now grackles are still chasing ravens from the pines on the far side of the pond.

Some christian teachers have said that nature is a lesson from the creator. What is the creator trying to tell us? The American mystic, Ellen White had this to say in a book titled 'Education':

"Upon all created things is seen the impress of the Deity. Nature testifies of God. The susceptible mind, brought in contact with the miracle and mystery of the universe, cannot but recognize the working of infinite power. Not by its own inherent energy does the earth produce its bounties, and year by year continue its motion around the sun. An unseen hand guides the planets in their circuit of the heavens. A mysterious life pervades all nature--a life that sustains the unnumbered worlds throughout immensity, that lives in the insect atom which floats in the summer breeze, that wings the flight of the swallow and feeds the young ravens which cry, that brings the bud to blossom and the flower to fruit.

The same power that upholds nature, is working also in man. The same great laws that guide alike the star and the atom control human life. The laws that govern the heart's action, regulating the flow of the current of life to the body, are the laws of the mighty Intelligence that has the jurisdiction of the soul. From Him all life proceeds. Only in harmony with Him can be found its true sphere of action. For all the objects of His creation the condition is the same--a life sustained by receiving the life of God, a life exercised in harmony with the Creator's will. To transgress His law, physical, mental, or moral, is to place one's self out of harmony with the universe, to introduce discord, anarchy, ruin."

Lao Tzu many years before Ellen White wrote these thoughts down on the application of the lessons of nature:

Verse 37 Tao Te Ching, Translated by Raymond B. Blakney 1955

"The Way is always still, at rest,
And yet does everything that's done.
If then the king and nobles could
Retain its potency for good,
The creatures all would be transformed.

But if, the change once made in them,
They still inclined to do their work,
I should restrain them then
By means of that unique
Original simplicity
Found in the Virgin Block,
Which brings disinterest,
With stillness in its train,
And so, an ordered world."

I know some who would say nature teaches us that life is cruel. However I don't fault the predator; what would it do if it did not eat? I know some who will say the Creator has shown us the beauty of nature and be unwilling to make further conclusions.

What I see is an entire process able to keep on working and an intelligence that guides it despite the interference of humans. The mystery is the process. I call this process God for lack of a more comprehensive description. Lao Tzu understood observations such as this as to be analogous to a correct concept of God.

God is a process I am glad to be part of. As far as I am concerned there will always be spring after winter. The sun man has depended on will turn on him. In a few billion years it will evaporate all the water on earth and eventually go out. Until then the seeds fall onto the ground and die. But they will rise, as seeds do, from the ground, to become what they are ultimately destined to be.

Thoughts On The Gulf Oil Spill Caused By Congress, Corporations and Capitalist Principles

2010-05-14T17:49:00.014-04:00

(click on Highlighted texts for more information. Click on photograph to enlarge.)

Click # 16 'Oil Song' by Steve Forbert.

Congress and BP with help from other corporate entities have created the greatest environmental catastrophe involving oil in U.S. history. At one time it was a crime to poison someones food supply and destroy their way of making a living. Activities like this have traditionally been regarded as terrorist in nature and generally allocated to acts of warfare. Now it is all part of doing business on the cheap and this incident is correctly interpreted as an act of warfare supported and promoted by Congress against the American people.

The Gulf area and beyond will most likely be harmed by the scandalous activities of those who have brought this disaster into being. We will hear about the extent of the damages in the Alternative Press first. And then most will be informed by the 'official version' on television and the main stream press in which the victim will still be dead, but for a good reason that benefits us all. Just like the reporting of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, and Afghanistan.

It is indeed a scandal and it is indeed a war. BP was virtually told they could do this by being reassured they would not have to compensate anyone fairly for harming them and now they are trying to avoid paying the cost. This is an example of recklessness on the part of Congress. It is similar to giving a child a loaded firearm and telling him to go play cowboys and Indians with his friends while simply telling him to be careful not to hurt anyone.

The substantial difference in this analogy is that a child has limited understanding of what he is doing when he points the gun. Industry standards known by BP and friends in Congress make it clear that the act was done knowing full well the dangers involved in proceeding the way BP proceeded. The legal terminology 'criminal negligence' comes to mind when it is understood that commonly accepted industry wide safety practices were abandoned.

It is scandalous because the government agencies whose purpose is to see these things will not harm the public gave their approval to the techniques which failed. As a result it can be said they let it happen on purpose. Those involved are virtually the same bunch of scalawags that dominated the Bush / Cheney debacle. Obama kept them on to continue their purposes so he too is at fault, as is congress who agreed that 'drill baby drill' was good for America. It is obvious Biden was wrong, it has been less than ten years and more than a drop has come from the well. Profit is always good for America, but it's Americans themselves who are often hurt by profits.

Reported in the Huffington Post: "President Barack Obama has said that the oil giant will foot the bill for the massive clean-up effort currently under way, and indicated that the environmental and economic damages associated with this spill will be severe stating, "The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time...It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home."

So they clean up the oil. What about the people whose health is affected adversely or die? What about those already killed in this conspiracy against the American people for the cause of corporate profitability? What compensation will be given for that? How will those consequences be set right by BP and friends?

For the well being of the consumer all seafood taken from the Gulf since the spill should be labeled as such. I wouldn't buy it. Would you deliberately eat food you felt might be contaminated? This labeling will aid those harmed in assessing the amount of damage they have suffered when seeking redress. It will limit the collateral damage of the spill by warning consumers that they may be at risk eating Gulf seafood.

This song from the 70's 'After The Gold Rush' came to mind written by Neil Young is eerily prophetic.

"Look at Mother Nature on the run In the nineteen seventies"

The Doors from the same era put it this way:

Click for video.

"What have they done to the Earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down

I hear a very gentle sound
with your ear down to the ground
We want the world and we want it
We want the world and we want it now"

GOVERNMENT IN ASSOCIATION WITH CORPORATIONS MUST BE REGARDED AS AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE:

Click on highlighted texts for full text of the famous play by Henrik Ibsen, 'An Enemy of the People' published in 1882 and an analysis of the play and social situation involved. The principles involved are the same principles involved in activities surrounding the Gulf oil spill.

Every member of Congress who agreed to let BP approach the project in the way they were granted permission should be considered an enemy of the people and be ousted from their position. No one involved in allowing this to happen should receive another paycheck from the people. They should be put out on the streets with the rest of the out of work people their policies have created. They are 'An Enemy of the People'.

Photograph and text by David H. Roche. All other information is from the sources alluded to. This has been cross posted in 'Gitmo Dave's Journal of Politics and Public Policy'.

I'm A Drop Of Dew

2010-05-02T21:02:00.015-04:00

I wrote this poem in the context of the transience I understand the present experience to be. I have never found anything to remain permanently. All that exists will cease to exist. Show me one thing that is not like this.

Do you know of another reality? Can you imagine, something that never changes? Something that is the same all the time? If you can refer to something like that I want to know about it. (click on photograph for detail)

Consider Indra's Net when you look at the spiders web.

Photographs and text Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

Bird Watching

2010-04-27T23:49:00.009-04:00

Click highlighted text for feature length PBS documentary about ravens.

Ravens are fairly common here. They tend to be slightly larger than the crows I left in New York. They're fun to watch. Their movement is hilarious, sometimes they will leap sideways or backwards. It almost looks like the bird is attached to an invisible string that is yanked suddenly, jerking him. But his movement is done with precision, timing and bounce in his legs. The raven is a a genuine acrobat on the ground or in the air. I have watched one chase a small hawk and steal its prey. It is quite a sight.

They are always inquisitive. When I throw corn out for the ducks they will often show up in pairs within a few minutes. Not much goes on they are not aware of. I guess its their business.

In the last few weeks I have seen a raven being pursued in the air by 6 or more grackles on several occasions. They pursue in what appears to be a well thought out attack scenario; they dive bomb from above, strike from all angles on the sides and come up from underneath simultaneously and always end up chasing the intruder off. I imagine they were guarding their homestead.

Today I videoed a pair of grackles on the ground harassing a raven. Their persistence tells me this is non ordinary behavior. Ordinarily they would not associate at all.

I know the grackles have been building nests and I think that is the reason for their unrelenting harassment of the ravens.

King Bee

2010-04-17T20:16:00.006-04:00

(click highlighted texts and photos.)

I didn’t pick your cherry
but I’ve buried my face in your blossoms

where the nectar is sweet;
I’m your king bee.

Text and photograph Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

All Occasion Greeting Cards

2010-04-09T21:46:00.020-04:00

Here are greeting cards appropriate for all occasions. Be it grief or joy, these cards will put a smile on someone's face. Smiles are generally a portent or expression of a positive event unless it is on the face of a Bush family member.

(Click on Photographs for greater detail)

If you prefer we offer holiday specific greeting cards for any occasion.

Our new line of Valentines Cards for special friends.

Or for no reason at all.

All photographs and text by David H. Roche and Copyright protected 2010

The Heron Illusion

2010-03-02T15:18:00.012-05:00

(Click on highlighted texts and photographs for further information)

I saw the heron alight on a partially submerged tree. I got my camera and went out.

The light was muted. It was cloudy and even though the sun was up it was not a large presence. (a feature I find desirable about the area is the way the weather creates different light scenarios.}

The pond is connected to the Skipanon River, which is affected by the tide as the Skipanon is connected to Youngs Bay and from there to the Pacific Ocean. As a result there are smolt to feed on.

This is what I found. A hallucination of ripples in the water; heron and ducks going about their business at sunrise.

The ripples in the water speak to me of time passing and of my own impermanence.

Copyright by David H. Roche 2010

The Eternal

2010-02-28T22:21:00.017-05:00

(Click on photographs for detail and highlighted texts for additional information.)

Verse 16 of the Tao Te Ching
Translated by Raymond B. Blakney

The Way and Immortality ...

Touch ultimate emptiness,
Hold steady and still.

All things work together:
I have watched them reverting,
And have seen how they flourish
And return again, each to his roots.

This, I say, is the stillness:
A retreat to one's roots;
Or better yet, return
To the will of God,
Which is, I say, to constancy.
The knowledge of constancy
I call enlightenment and say
That not to know it
Is blindness that works evil.

But when you know
What eternally is so,
You have stature
And stature means righteousness
And righteousness is kingly
And kingliness divine
And divinity is the Way
Which is final.

Then, though you die,
You shall not perish.

______________________________________________________

The sound of the sea filled me. I had to stop and listen. At first there was just a constant roaring and then it modulated itself. There was a sound like that of a subway train entering the station. And then it returned to a constant roar.

I listened, being as charmed as if it were a bird chirping on the windowsill.

All audio and visual by David H. Roche
Other text as credited in the body of the blog post.
Copyright 2010

Walking To The Bar

2010-02-24T16:36:00.013-05:00

(Click on the photographs for greater detail)

It was a warm Saturday morning in late February. The sun was shining and I decided to go to the the river. I had intended to go to the South Jetty. But I got lost and went past it and ended up at another location. It turned out for the better.

I ended up walking for several hours without even realizing it. You can come along.

More Photographs.

I could here the deep slow rumble of the engine of this ship as it went past.

Driftwood, I always find wonderful designs in the driftwood.

Stingray on the beach. He was a good size. At first I thought it was an old tarp. But it was covered with flies, definitely a dead sting ray on the beach. Probably put up a hell of a fight for some fisherman.

You can see his innards bursting out and the flies coming for their sustenance.

Invocation

2010-02-04T16:34:00.028-05:00

The shaman dances;
in her frenzy
she passes through the crack
between the worlds
and returns.

The people come.
She speaks of what she’s seen:
“Have no fear;
you are formless
and eternally becoming."

Photographs and text Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

Tillamook Head Trail

2010-02-03T11:19:00.009-05:00

(Click on photographs for greater detail.)

Six tenths of a mile from The Cove

in Seaside is a small nature trail that winds up Tillamook Head.

Tillamook Head is a striking feature. Approximately a 1000 feet in height it can be seen from many miles away along the coast. Often it is obscured by mist or clouds.

The trail is simply that a trail. There are no railings and anything that appears to be a 'step' is part of the trail. The trail winds up like a large serpent. Down as well of course.

I was deeply impressed by the forest. It is predominantly a lush green. The landscape is rugged and ferns are the predominant land cover. What struck me as I walked among the tall trees was the ruggedness of the terrain and the quietness.

There is a wide variety of colors which are soothing to the eye. Orange clay, green moss, pink mold; the whole spectrum of subdued soft earth tones is omnipresent.

You can see for yourself in the video I made of the trip.

Lilac Bud Encased In a Droplet of Ice

2010-02-02T23:33:00.009-05:00

(Original Photographs by David H. Roche)

The original photograph above is of a lilac bud in a droplet of ice photographed in the morning sunlight. Click on the photograph for detail.

The photograph below has been changed with the use of image changing software.

What amazes me is how the image processing tool allowed me to bring this vision out of it.

Life is never a single, unchangeable thing.

It is always changing.

I am convinced that what is, is simply and inexorably something becoming. All life is continually changing, continually becoming.

Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

A Walk With Mr. Hemingway

2010-01-23T21:51:00.005-05:00

(Click on highlighted texts for videos)

I put the chicken in the freezer,
it's there when you come.

We won't get to say good-bye but it's okay;
I always planned to die alone.

Our spirits and flesh have mingled;
both were good.

Take the chicken from the freezer
and please take care of my cats.

Copyright 2010 David H. Roche

The Other Side Of The Health Care Issue

2010-01-22T22:17:00.012-05:00

(Click on photographs and highlighted texts)

When it gets as bad as it can get
I will put stones in my pockets
and walk down the lane
to the beach.

I will not be long term profit
for a nursing home,
doctor or hospital.
Not when there is a sunrise
on the other side of sunset.

Text video and photographs by David H. Roche music by The Grateful Dead 'jammin at the edge of magic'.

Two Poems In The Zen Tradition

2010-01-09T22:20:00.014-05:00

(Click on photographs to enlarge them)

Nothing More To Say

Day is leaving,
slate gray displaces blue
across the surface of the pond.

Light shimmers,
wild ducks approach
expecting corn,
while the President and congress
wage war for profits in the future.

Unaware there is a future
the sun sets as they grunt
and eat at my feet.

What Is A Ruby Worth?

Today I learned
the eye of a coot
shines like a ruby
held in sunlight.

That was all I could bear
for one day.

All photography and text Copyright 2010 by David H.Roche

I Remember Loving You

2010-01-05T22:06:00.014-05:00

I wrote this story a few years ago after hearing a song sung by Fred Holstein titled "I Remember Loving You". When I went to look for it on YouTube I could not find it, but found this version that goes even better with the story. (Click on highlighted texts for uses of words highlighted) The story and characters in the story are completely fictional, which means completely made up. Any resemblance to anyone you know or may have heard of is in your imagination.

Hauling himself up into the swaying freight car as it began to move he stumbled and sprawled against a far wall where he turned, pressing himself into the corner and slid down to the floor. He blew slowly on his fingers, warming them and drew his suitcase close to his leg as he hunched forward to save the meager heat of his body within his coat. The glare of the freight yard lights flashed through broken slats in the boxcar door. He shivered; attempting to pull inside of himself to escape the cold. But it was impossible.

Across from him there was another passenger huddled against the wall. At first he had noticed just the bright orange dot from the drag on a cigarette suspended in the darkness. As his eyes adjusted to the absence of light in the recesses of the car he noticed a small dog next to his traveling companion.

He shouted to be heard above the rattle of the train. The figure in the shadows acknowledged him with a wave and an inaudible greeting. He settled back and tried to control his trembling.

The train slowed and creaked, jerking to a stop and his companion rose, swaying crossing to where he was and sat down next to him. The dog followed and lay alongside of him, resting his muzzle on the man’s thigh.

"Name's Jack," he said.

He looked at Jack. They were about the same age as far as he could tell. He reached and stroked the dogs head and said: "Gabriel; call me Gabe."

The two sat next to each other, their shoulders rubbing as the train jerked again and lurched forward. Jack reached into his pocket drawing out a bottle and handed it to Gabe saying: "This'll keep the chill off."

Gabe took it without answering, unscrewed the cap and took a swig. He felt it burn going down his throat into the pit of his empty stomach where it settled like a pool of hot lava. He savored the burning in his belly and quickly took another swig before handing it back. "Thanks. I don’t touch it often; sometimes it gets out of hand."

“Yeah, that can happen. But here's to a merry Christmas anyway."

"Christmas?"

"Yeah, it's Christmas Eve.” Jack looked at him: “You didn't know?"

"No. God, I didn't know. Christmas? Well, merry Christmas I guess." Gabe sat quietly, rocking and swaying with the motion of the train. The whiskey went from his stomach into his blood and into his brain the way a mellow summer afternoon on the back porch becomes an all encompassing ambiance. After a while he asked: "What's the dog's name?"

"Harry. I named him after the President. He's tough as nails ... an honest old pup. I can always count on him."

"Got three of these," Jack said patting the bottle. Found a box sitting behind a truck outside a liquor store, snatched them before the driver came back out. Figured it would make for a nice Christmas." He sipped from the bottle and passed it to his companion. "Glad I got someone to share it with. Christmas and all."

Gabe repeated the word to himself, "Christmas." It was more in wonder than anything. Wonder that he hadn't known. Wonder that what had meant so much before, could pass unnoticed now.

They drank together shoulder to shoulder sharing the warmth in the bottle and their bodies as they rocked in place with the motion of the train. Gabe took a half empty pouch of tobacco from his pocket, removed a pinch and spread it along the crease of a rolling paper. He'd done it many times and none spilled as he moistened the seam and put it between his lips. He struck a match and then as an after thought he handed the pouch to Jack who took it and said; "Thanks," and rolled one for himself.

The two men sat talking while they smoked, passing the bottle back and forth. Jack was coming from New York and heading to California or maybe Oregon hoping to find warmer weather and pick fruit and maybe get a room. He had wanted to get going earlier in the year but ended up in jail in New York and had just been released a week before.

"I’m not really going anywhere", Gabe replied. "Just some place warm enough for these clothes."

"Any family?"; Jack asked.

"Yeah, I got…”, then stopped, “no not really. None I can go and see, so I guess not."

Gabe pushed back into the crevice with Jack where the corners formed a ninety degree angle and settled into a golden whiskey drenched summer. Already the sensation of numbness from the frigid night was vanishing and a sensation imitating warmth suffused him. He felt a mellowing of his surroundings as the amber liquid radiated like a hearth inside of him. "How's it going Harry?" He stroked the dogs head absently while his thoughts drifted without his will back to another Christmas Eve.

It was a Christmas Eve four years before that Gabe recalled as the whiskey and conversation released him from his preoccupation with the cold night. The first bottle was emptied and the second opened. Jack talked absently to Harry, not pursuing the family connection any further while he stroked the dogs head. Harry nuzzled his snout into the man's lap and let out a sigh. Gabe's thoughts went their own way as the three sat together rocking in the darkness.

He remembered the Christmas Eve that had brought him to this place in time. He didn’t want to. It was much too painful, but the thoughts flowed from within like a stream that had no end. He remembered his mother, and Sherry; both gone from him now.

The ring that was to be Sherry's had been his mother's engagement ring. It was a single carat diamond in a platinum setting. It was the only thing of value that he had. But he had come on hard times and had to get a loan against it at Goldfarb’s pawn shop. He had made weekly payments. As Christmas approached he made double payments from October on and had it all paid off except for the last payment he was going to make that Christmas Eve after work so he could take it home to Sherry. It was an engagement ring for the second time. The thought of Sherry's face when he would put the ring on her finger that evening had made him smile all day. That's what he told everyone when he stopped at O'Leary's for drinks after work.

He had gotten carried away and forgot the time. When he looked at his watch he knew that he'd have to hurry. By the time he got there it was just past closing but he saw Goldfarb locking the door and turning to go down the street. He ran up behind him and called: "Sol. I'm glad I caught you. I need to get my ring."

Goldfarb continued walking and didn't turn to acknowledge him.

"Hey Sol," he called again as Goldfarb continued without responding. "I was afraid I'd miss you, wait up."

Goldfarb turned slowly and looked at him with eyes absent the light the living have and said: "I'm closed. See me after the holiday."

"Sol. It's me, Gabe Walker; I've got the last payment. Just open up and let me get the ring. It won't take more than a minute." Gabe grabbed Goldfarb's sleeve, "I need to get my ring tonight. It's an engagement ring for my fiancé. It's Christmas Eve."

"I know who you are and you're late. I'm closed and I'm going home. We have a celebration tonight. You should have gotten here earlier. See me after the holidays." He brushed Gabe's hand off of his sleeve and walked away.

Gabe grabbed him again and held on.

Goldfarb turned to him with the same lack of emotion he had cultivated during 40 years behind the counter in his shop. He looked at him with the eyes of a dead animal, the same eyes he used to view those whose humanity he refused to recognize as he took their money and sold their possessions when they couldn’t redeem them: "It's not your ring until you make the last payment. It's my ring until then. I'm closed. Good night, have a merry Christmas."

He yanked his arm out of Gabe's' grip, turned away down the sidewalk into an alleyway leading to his car behind his storefront. Gabe watched him as others hurried home to celebrations and families. He felt his anger rising and turn into despair. "The hell I will you god damned piece of shit." He had run after him down the darkened alley screaming 'shyster' and leapt on his back dragging him down.

The two men struggled but Gabe was stronger. Goldfarb, older and weak from decades behind the counter was no match for the younger man whose strength came from manhandling swine carcasses in the slaughterhouse five days a week. Gabe subdued him quickly and went through the older mans pockets. Finding the keys he ran to the pawnshop leaving Goldfarb on the ground.

Once inside he went right to where he knew the ring was and grabbed it. He placed the last payment along with the keys on the counter, and left. He gave a fleeting thought to Goldfarb as he passed the alleyway and almost went in to see if he was alright. But then said to himself: "The hell with the god damned pick," and walked past.

What had made him snap? Whether it had been the afternoon drinking, the anger at Goldfarb or the thought that he would come home empty handed to Sherry who deserved more than he could ever give her he didn't know. He had never been able to figure it out and he had run it through his mind a thousand times. But what he did know was that he had brutalized him and taken the ring and left him in a bloody heap gasping for breath in the dark.

Sherry had been as happy as a girl is when the man she loves gives her a ring. But the day after Christmas Goldfarb's murder was front page news. Apparently there had been a witness and his description of Gabe was accurate. The police had also lifted a fingerprint from the jewelry counter. He had a record and it wasn't long before they knew who to look for.

A few weeks later there was a flashing red glare across the walls of their flat. He nervously pulled the curtain back and looked out the window. There were two Chicago Police cars stopped and two cops in the street below were looking up at his apartment. He didn't have time to explain to Sherry. And in the cold rumbling box car he saw her standing there trembling and scared repeating: "What's going on Gabe? What's going on?" He had run out the back door of the apartment and down the stairs. She had heard a knock at their door and found the police standing there.

Running for his life, dashing through alleys, across busy streets, and over railroad tracks he ended up in the freight yards and found himself in a boxcar. The next day he was in Idaho. He had been riding the trains and moving on ever since.

Jack nudged his ribs rousing him from the reverie and offered him the bottle again. He took it gladly, gulping it. Settling back more memories filled him. The rocking of the car settled him and the cold seemed only to be outside. The warm glow inside gave him comfort and distance from everything.

Behind his eyes he saw Sherry again and now she was telling him she was pregnant. He remembered how she was scared. But he had taken her in his arms and swung her around in the center of the parlor, they ended up giggling, kissing and laughing. That was the summer before Goldfarb's death. They would be married before the baby was born and they began to make plans and choose names.

But by the next summer he was in California and by October had made his way back to Chicago hoping to find Sherry and their child. He found out where she was living through friends who told him where she was, warning him that the police were still asking about him. They told him something more. She had married one of his friends who promised to look after her. And the baby was a boy.

In the frigid night images passed behind his eyes and leaked down his cheeks. Memories echoed in the emptiness that he had become. The plans they had made and the happiness they had felt were like the leaves of autumn after a glorious summer. But summer was gone, none the less.

He had gone to the neighborhood where he was told she was living. After walking the street all morning he saw her pushing a carriage and stop at a market. From the doorway of a tobacco shop across the street he watched her talking with Graziano, the grocer. He felt a forlorn sensation in his chest as she bent and lifted his son from the carriage. She jiggled him on her hip as she talked with Graziano and selected produce. He wondered what she had named him.

He wanted to rush across the street and take her in his arms, but caution kept him where he was. In the cold night air he felt the desire as vividly as he had felt it that day and finally he bent his head, his body shook and he wept uncontrollably.

Amid the racket of the freight he felt Jack's hand on his back.

When he opened his eyes, he saw in the strobe of flashing lights from outside the expression of the most supreme kindness. Without words Jack’s eyes conveyed the deepest sympathy and care. At that moment a sense of otherworldly tenderness bonded them in their circumstance like a glue surpassing comprehension. Grace, if it means anything, is love shown for the other when he hurts.

In the grubby, rattling boxcar traveling through the night a transcendence of some sort had taken place. A light in the darkness was turned on. He pressed his face against the filthy fabric of his companions coat and cried until he couldn't cry anymore. The comforting arm was a refuge. As his sobbing slowly ended he heard Jack's voice: "Christmas is always hard for men like us." He offered him the bottle again.

"Yeah, Christmas is always hard," Gabe answered. He took the bottle and drank deeply finally passing into something that resembled sleep.

When he opened his eyes his head hurt, and he was cold and hungry. The train was stopped in a yard. He couldn't tell where it was; only that it was a little warmer than the night before. They rolled cigarettes and sat side by side smoking silently. Jack opened the third bottle, took a drink and handed it to Gabe.

Around daybreak the door of the car was drawn open and a disheveled form appeared in the opening struggling to climb in. It was a woman. Jack scrambled to the doorway grabbing her and pulling her into the car as the train began to move. She sprawled forward onto the floor and sat up. Harry went to her cautiously, wagging his tail slowly, and sniffed her.

There was a wild look in her eyes.

"Merry Christmas", Jack said.

She said nothing until after looking back and forth between the two men and the dog, ascertaining they were all who were in the freight car with her. Her first words were: "I could use a cigarette".

Gabe handed her his pouch. "I'm Gabe, he's Jack, and that's Harry." He pointed to the dog that was sniffing her with interest. "Jack's going to California or Oregon. I'm just going."

He waited for her to say where she was headed, but she offered nothing. Finally she said; "I'm Angel. God it was cold last night." She trembled, shivering as she looked back and forth at each of them. "The bastards in the jungle wouldn't keep their hands off of me. Every time I went near the fire they started pawing me. You know, like I’ve got time or interest in that!” She made her point clear by fixing her eyes on theirs as she spoke. “I couldn't sleep all night, because I had to keep my eye on them. Finally I had to knock one out with a rock and I left.”

"The jungle can be rough if you're a woman and got no one to watch out for you." Jack pulled the bottle from his pocket and handed it to her. She took it from his hand.

"About thirty, had been pretty ... pretty beat up now." Jack thought. Her face was smudged and darkened lines filled the creases below her eyes. She was thin as a reed looking ravished the way a milkweed pod is in tatters at the end of summer. She sipped, shuddering at the burn of the whiskey. Then waited a moment and took a larger sip and another before leaning back against the side of the car between the men.

Becoming comfortable with her new companions she said: "I've got some food." Saying that she took a mashed loaf of white bread from inside her coat and laid it on her lap. Then she took out another equally misshapen loaf and laid it next to the other one.

The men's eyes opened wide. Jack said: "That looks awful good Angel. I’ve had nothing but whiskey for two days now."

"It's better than nothing, here." She picked up the loaf and broke off a piece handing it to him explaining: "The grocer chased me down the street, but I never looked back. I just kept runnin'. I'm not gonna starve when someone's got more food than they need."

"There's a lot who don't have anything and a few that got more than they need;" Gabe said.

Jack took the hunk of gooey white bread and pulled it apart with his fingers letting it dissolve in his mouth. Angel took another piece from the loaf and passed it to Gabe. Jack passed the bottle. They ate and drank silently together.

"Here Harry." Angel put a piece of the bread in front of the dog. He devoured it and looked up into her eyes intently when it was gone. She gave him another piece and he ate it just as quickly. She patted him and he lay down resting his head on her leg, never taking his eyes from the remaining bread.

"Angel remembered you Harry, even if I didn't. Sorry old boy." Jack stroked the dogs back and Harry sighed deeply.

"Got a family Angel?" Gabe asked.

"I had a man and a son; a baby boy."

"Had?"

"His father killed him, the son of a bitch. He shook him cause' he wouldn't stop cryin'. He was only hungry and the bastard couldn't afford a place for us to stay or a meal. He just shook him till he snapped his neck.”

"Bastard is right. But why are you here?"

"I couldn't stay with him after he did that and he was all I had after he killed my son. I buried my son in a jungle in Idaho and left the bastard there.”

"So where are you goin'?"

"Hadn't thought about it. Right now I'm just goin' I guess. I'm sure I’ll find out." She spoke as one who accepts her situation as miserable as it is and yet can remark on it with the possibility of hope when there appears to be no hope.

"I think we always find out," Jack answered as much to himself as her.

Gabe said: "Yeah, I guess that's what I'm doin' too. Don't know if I'll ever find out though." He was silent for a moment: "I try to make sense of it all and I can’t. It doesn’t make sense the way I see it."

The train jerked abruptly and picked up speed. The freight yard passed in a blur and the morning light brightened, flickering through the door of the car illuminating Angel in the midst of the men and Harry. She passed the second loaf to her companions. Each man took the loaf and tore a piece from it. The loaf passed between the four of them until it was gone.

"You got to keep goin,' " she said. “Ain’t no use in stopping cause it seems everyplace you stop is bad’.”

Gabe answered: "Some people's got a place to go. Jack's going to California, or someplace out there to find work. Others like you and me are just goin'. Goin' away from everything, not to somethin'."

"Well" she said, "the way I see it we're all goin' to something. Sometimes you can't tell from where you are but that’s what you’re doin’. I think you don't find out till you get there. Maybe we're always there and don’t know it. In any case we just got to keep goin’ and take what we got now. This might be all there is. We'd be mighty poor if we threw it away lookin’ for something else if this is all there is.”

They sat silently together until she let out an agonized cry and crumpled on her side in pain rolling over with her head landing in Gabe’s lap. Her long coat opened. It wasn't until then that the men saw she was pregnant.

"It's time!” she cried. “Oh God no, don’t let it be time.” Her face was distorted with fear and pain.

Jack helped her stretch out on the floor and took some soiled clothes from his bag and placed them under her head. He spoke soothingly to her: "I know what to do. I delivered two babies in one night in a jungle in South Dakota. As long as nothing goes wrong there ain't nothing to get excited about. You're gonna be alright Angel." He stroked her matted hair and his voice reassured her as the train with its cargo traveled on.

Gabe watched as Jack tended to her. The fear in her eyes vanished by degrees as she listened to Jack’s voice. Slowly she realized that he knew what to do. Every so often she screamed and her body contorted. Sometime in the afternoon before the sun went down she gave birth. Jack poured the remaining whiskey on his hands and rubbed them together catching the babe as it was pushed out into the world.

He opened Angel's blouse and laid the baby on her chest and quickly covered her with her ragged coat. She clasped the baby to her. "What is it?” she asked.

"It's a boy," Jack told her.

"A boy, a baby boy!" Angel began to cry but her tears turned to laughter and she clasped the unnamed infant tightly to her chest. She laughed and cried on the floor holding her precious son as the train rocked them back and forth taking them to an unknown destination.

"What about the cord, Jack? Don't you have to cut it?"; Gabe asked.

"Didn't cut them two in the jungle. They just seemed to dry up and everything was fine. This kind of thing seems to do itself.”

Gabe went to another corner to give her privacy as she nursed. He sat and rolled a cigarette, gazing in astonishment at Angel and the baby boy lying in a pile of dirty clothing on the filthy floor of a freight car on Christmas Day.

They were going that’s for sure; he still didn’t know if they were going someplace or just moving. But it seemed to him now that they were going together, all five of them; Angel, Jack, Harry, the unnamed baby boy, and himself.

Something had changed. Something had happened in the freight car. They had been thrown together with their separate needs and had helped each other with the little they possessed. He wasn’t able to say what it was he felt at that moment. But it was something to do with hope and the inherent quality of the human being to do good or evil.

Copyright 2010 by David H. Roche

Coming Home

2009-12-31T13:43:00.011-05:00

I’ve come back to my hometown for Christmas in my 63rd year.

The stereo is playing Bing Crosby; nostalgia is sought for as some kind of assurance that everything will return the past for a short while, if only in the way we feel.

Some would quickly return to the safety of the days evoked by the music, feeling that there must be some refuge from the excruciating pain of the present and the inevitable horror waiting them in the future. Still, death, ‘the king of terrors’, waits patiently. We feel it in our bones, and see it in the faces around us framed with gray hair, wrinkles, pain relying on a timetable to take the daily, ever growing, allotment of pills.

The underlying unspoken thought is of who will be here next year for Christmas and who will be missing. It is a cultural imperative to be filled with angst over this. The thought of death in our culture is couched in language designed to fill us with fear.

As far as I can tell the reasons for fear resides in the way in which we understand ourselves as persons. I have the feeling, in fact I’m fairly convinced, this fear is the result of the misunderstanding of the nature of the human being and that the fear is unnecessary because it is based on a misunderstanding concerning what and who they are.

I’m sitting in PDX with 4 hours to wait, my mother born in 1907 on this date. I’m left to figure out what it means and it is difficult because the explanations handed down to me have not made any sense.

I have begun the 63rd year of my life in a different place than I began my first and subsequent 62 years. Every other year began and ended in the same place; Cayuga County New York. This year I am in Oregon waiting in Portland for flights to Atlanta, Cincinnati, and finally Syracuse. I’m returning to New York for the holidays. I no longer think of it as home.

______________________________________________________

Teenagers in the nearly empty terminal with time on their hands and energy to release ‘moon walk’ back and forth on the ‘people mover’. I watch from the perimeter wondering what I will find when I get to my destination.

What does it mean to be going home? What does home mean? Who are you? What am I? What does all this living business mean? These are the questions on my mind tonight as I watch people with colored lights in their eyes and in their memories passing me. I have an answer that that satisfies me, or perhaps I have simply found another way to approach the questions. Answers, I have found, continue to change.

Ordinarily people don’t ask these questions, they accept the answers and explanations given them because it provides an entire scenario ready to be believed. They have built a world from it.
_______________________________________________________

In Cincinnati two young couples stand in the main aisle directly in front of me. A long haired boy and girl and a boy in camouflage with a crew cut, his face adorned with a forced smile in an attempt to disguise his emotions. His arm is around a young heavyset girl as photographs are taken with cell phone cameras. None of the group appears old enough to buy a beer. The heavyset girl is unable to hide her sorrow and is finally overtaken by tears throwing her arms around the camouflaged boy while the other two continue to take pictures. When it’s time to board three leave together, the fourth, in camouflage, stays behind.

The boy in camouflage boards the same plane I do for Syracuse. As he passes my seat I see four letters on a strip over his pocket. They spell ‘Fink’. It is obvious to me he is going far away from home for Christmas. I can only imagine how he feels. I wonder if he knows he’s being used and that his life has only a very narrowly defined value in the minds and contexts of those who are sending him away from home for Christmas.

A fortyish woman in jeans, pretty but tired, with three teenagers in tow explains to them that they will be able to get on the plane as she hands each a snack and a ticket. They appear weary too, but not as weary as their mother.

_____________________________________________________

In New York my son meets me. He loves me and I see it in his eyes and feel it in my heart. My grandchildren hug me at my other son’s house. I marvel at how well they have been raised and how they are growing.

My sister’s family has partially arrived. Those from Australia on an around the world trip get here first. Her eldest daughter with her boyfriend have been stuck almost a week in Paris due to snow in Philadelphia. They arrive minus three pieces of luggage that are still in Luxembourg.

My brother’s family is continuing to arrive from Florida, Georgia, California, Maryland and New York. It appears that the offspring of my mother and father have produced 50 or so additional offspring and connecting nodes. Some I have never seen before. This is the way it is supposed to be; we expand, multiply and become diverse; strengthening the human race by diversity. In a hundred years we will have expanded even more having spent our strength and become memories to be recalled in conversations over photographs on Christmas Eve.

No one wants to talk about death even though it is in everyone’s thoughts as we look at those around us with wrinkles and pain who have become mere shadows of the images in our minds from years gone by. Most are waiting for Jesus to come and take them home. I suppose I am too if I can be allowed to understand it in my own way.

For better or for worse we are a religious family. Most if not all have broken the restraints of the faith handed to them by their parents in order to forge a belief that makes sense to them. All our lives have changed and are changing. Thank God for that.

A man can only be home when he is at peace with himself. I am finally home despite the distance from the place of my birth.

My Journey: part 1

2009-11-19T11:09:00.014-05:00

(Click on highlighted texts)

More and more 'pie in the sky bye and bye' has fewer and fewer charms for me when compared to the way the sun lights the grasses at the end of the day and how the breeze makes the grasses sway. I saw the rich colors out the window and had to stop and look.

Moments like this draw me out of myself to meditate on what is really there and to think of what it means. And while I am thinking, the sun sets, the colors leave and I am in the dark. But I have swallowed the seeds of illumination.

It is odd that I should feel the way I do because everyday I am closer to dying and being 'lost'. These are the 'ultimate' concepts impressed on me as a child and all through my adult life. (They are still being impressed on the minds of children in the care of Christian fundamentalists.)

But, shouldn't I cling to something' in this situation? Is the reaction I was taught appropriate to a situation like mine? I was taught that holding on to something; the future, the past, something other than this slippery mercurial moment that can't be held would make me safe.

Asking questions in the context of time elaborated on by Albert Einstein was the key that allowed the door to remain open for me. When reality resumed I realized I had been taught many 'well meaning' ideas, but that they were fundamentally incorrect in the way they were presented. They were not only incorrect, but harmful to me as a person.

The idea of despising the moment of God's providence was the way I learned to be unfaithful and ungrateful for the day by day sustenance Jesus said his 'Father' provides for all of creation. I learned to trust in another 'Father', one in the 'future' whose throne is on Wall Street. In that context Jesus' words are just foolishness.

But Jesus said this: Matthew 6.

"24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?"

Similar thoughts are here in Verse 16 of the Tao. Click on the 'Tao Te Ching'.

"Touch ultimate emptiness,
Hold steady and still.

All things work together:
I have watched them reverting,
And have seen how they flourish
And return again, each to his roots.

This, I say, is the stillness:
A retreat to one's roots;
Or better yet, return
To the will of God,
Which is, I say, to constancy.
The knowledge of constancy
I call enlightenment and say
That not to know it
Is blindness that works evil."

Jesus explained the providence of his 'Father' in the same way Lao Tzu described the providence of the 'mighty Way'. Everything keeps on keeping on. Food keeps growing, rain keeps falling, the sun keeps shining and we keep falling in love to keep the world from being uninhabited. According to Jesus and Lao Tzu that's what keeps things rolling.

The key to all this is to trust that the present moment will bring forth what is needed and that to meddle with it and try to pull more out than it wants to give up is somehow wrong; a denial of the 'Father', a misuse of the 'Way'.

From verse 29 of the Click here: Tao Te Ching'.

"As for those who would take the whole world
To tinker as they see fit,
I observe that they never succeed:
For the world is a sacred vessel
Not made to be altered by man.
The tinker will spoil it;
Usurpers will lose it."

Everything we try to hold onto to, to keep, to preserve, dies in our grip and becomes a corpse we carry with us. Hauling the past around is an unbearable burden. Hoping for a better day 'bye and bye' is the thief that breaks in and steals the treasure the 'king' bestows every passing moment inasmuch as it makes me want to ignore the providential divinity present in the moment. Holding on to the past or grasping for the future means we have turned our back on the ways and means of the Kingdom of God Jesus spoke of.

We as a society have done it and we've got the culture to prove it.

Below is a video I made involving moving away from my house on 'the hill' in New York to the north coast of Oregon. It will be a multi-part attempt to make sense of everything.

Strange Days Have Found Us

2009-11-10T23:44:00.003-05:00

My friend Bill and I did this. The music is slow smoldering blues and jazz. Bill made the music, I made the photographs.

They're in the past now. I saved them for you to see.

Moment by Moment

2009-11-07T16:57:00.016-05:00

(Click on the photographs to enlarge them)

Early this morning there was a thunder storm with high wind gusts and torrential rain. It began abruptly. The winds blew part of the awning of the deck off. It was brief but violent. The amount of rain was incredible given the amount of time it rained.

I unplugged the computer, disconnected the internet cable and decided to write a poem about the squall on battery power. As I began to write I thought illustrating it with a video would be effective. The videos and still photographs below is what I came up with.

The thought inspiring the poem is that one moment leads inexorably to the next. The future and the past are connected by the present which makes the moment take on a great importance.

Also in my thoughts was the transitory nature of experience. It didn't rain all day. It changed from one moment to the next. First one thing was happening, then another thing. Both experiences even though different were organically connected by the preceding moment. This is the process of creating the future and it indicates to me the 'oneness' of experience, reality and time.

The video is below the text of the poem.

Moment by Moment

Thunder comes in a long continuous rumble
like the sound of an approaching freight train
but richer with a more melodious timbre,

lightning stabs at trees on the hilltop.
Rain and wind appear fierce, suddenly
suddenly ripping panels from the deck
and dropping them on the steps.

The next moment the wind is gone,
rain falls quietly having no memory
of the moment before.

Later today there was this:

And sunshine. What do these moments say?

Poem and visual elements Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

In The Temple of the Elk

2009-11-03T17:12:00.006-05:00

A herd of a hundred or more elk came to graze in the pasture next to trailer park. Some left the confines of the pasture and ambled out onto the adjoining lawns. There are said to be three herds of elk in the area. Two of the bulls had racks of at least ten points and maybe twelve. There were several bulls with smaller racks.

It is impressive to see these elegant statuesque creatures. They go where they want to go. I was more impressed with their quiet animal spirit.

They noticed me and were aware of my movements with the camera so they kept an eye on me. I came within twenty to twenty-five feet of them with nothing between us but grass. They seem to be quite well adjusted to the infringement of noisy trouble makers like me and my kind into their primeval world.

I wasn't the only one to come and gaze at them. When the word was out that the herd had come to the pasture, occupants released themselves from their houses, computers and televisions and came to stand on the grass and watch with awestruck fascination.

Why can an event like this wrench us from our domestic routines to gaze in wonder at wild things that we have long parted company with? My personal feeling is that it is like getting a long distance phone call from the home we ran away from and for which there is an unrecognized need to return to.

I hope you enjoy the visuals and the poem.

Photographs, video and poem Copyright 2009 by David H.Roche

It's A Circle

2009-11-02T01:26:00.009-05:00

I went to sunset beach at sunset. I found the sun just touching the rim of the ocean when I got there (an illusion, beautiful none the less)

I took the video and the photographs and when I came home and looked at them I wondered. Strangely what came to my mind were verses from the creation myth in Genesis:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

It made me think; is life a circle or a line that terminates? So I let one track run over into the next to indicate the succession of days. Another thought came to me as well. Day and night light, and darkness are the same thing. They've been separated. Before the separation they were one.

Here's the video:

The Grateful Dead have always encouraged the taping and distribution of their concerts. So I don't think they'll mind me using this track.

Photos and videos mine, the music is by the Grateful Dead 'jammin' at the edge of magic'. the song is Dark Star (crashing).

Illumination In A Plastic Chair

2009-11-01T01:10:00.007-04:00

What follows is a series of photographs taken of a plastic chair. The images in the video are of the same chair, but have been altered by photo imaging software. The still photographs are the product of time exposure. The purpose is not only to show that the ordinary things of life often have immense beauty if we look at them the right way. But more importantly they are not always what they seem to be. The later is something not often understood.

(click on the photographs for greater detail)

Photographs and everything else Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

Giving Thanks To A Chicken

2009-10-27T13:21:00.014-04:00

I was cooking a chicken, observing what was left of it's features and wrote this poem.

(Click on highlighted texts for photograph and video)

Looking at your dismembered body in the stew pot
I see the place your head had been
and think of your tortured soul.

Bread and wine have done nothing for me;
but your flesh gives me life.
I take it, but forgive me, I didn't know what I was doing.
Amen.

Text and photograph Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche, Videos from you tube.

Transience

2009-10-22T14:03:00.011-04:00

Mountains disappear
behind a scrim of mist;
I am also disappearing
but no more or less
than mountains dissolved by rain.

Photograph and Poem Copyright 2009 By David H. Roche

The Transcendental Sensuality of the Orange

2009-10-19T14:43:00.025-04:00

(click on the highlighted texts and photograph)

Ice cold from the fridge I hold you
and my hunger rises with my desire
as your perfumed flesh
opens to me

I have need for discipline
while I peel you
disclosing what I crave.

If I give in quickly
my haste will spoil the feast you offer.
Instead I linger, gazing,
anticipating your sweet juices.

This poem is inspired by the Song of Songs in the bible.

This poem is the product of David H. Roche. It is private property. You are allowed only to look at it and form your own conclusions.

Summer Rain

2009-10-17T11:49:00.010-04:00

(Click on Photographs to enlarge them.)

Without warning wild winds and black scud
replaced serene blue sultry skies
violently thrashing the maple by the porch.

Icy rain stung, pelting the dry earth
before passing as quickly as it appeared
leaving a bouquet of pungent, funky, earthy scents
rising from the grassless dust

worn bare by Boo in summer vigils
waiting for rabbits to venture
from the hedgerow.

Photographs and text Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

Whatever Happened To Owasco Lake

2009-10-03T00:58:00.000-04:00

My first attempt at using 'Movie Maker' and my photos to make a movie.

The Lake: a video reading of a short story

2009-09-21T23:18:00.001-04:00

'The Lake' is a short story I wrote in 1987. I just learned how to use the web cam my son gave me so I tried it out. It worked the first time.

Form Without Form

2009-09-19T20:36:00.004-04:00

(Click on highlighted text and photograph)

(title from verse 35 of the Tao Te Ching)

I’m not a follower or a leader.
I’m not a believer,
or a patriot paying with his blood
to play someone else’s game.

All explanations for life are false:
to see the sky,
hear the surf,
or peer into your eyes
is enough.

An Afternoon At Sunset Beach

2009-09-18T23:37:00.007-04:00

(click on photographs to enlarge them)

One of the nice things about the beaches on the North Coast of Oregon is that it's difficult to find them crowded. Oh there's times when you'll find more people than you want to be with. But most times there's no trouble finding yourself by yourself and alone with your thoughts.

But you might want to bring someone.

I found this creature heading west. I assumed it is a caterpillar and have no idea what it thinks its doing.

I suppose it could be some sort of creature I have never seen before but it looks like a caterpillar to me. Anyhow I followed it for a long time and it kept right on headed toward the ocean.

It eventually turned back, or else I got tired of watching it. The tide was going out faster than it was moving and if its goal was the ocean I could see I didn't have the time to wait. I left it there with the sea gulls.

Canada Geese

2009-09-12T19:45:00.039-04:00

(click on highlighted texts and photos)

I saw the familiar ‘V’ passing overhead
and heard their broken woodwind voices.
I’ve watched them in New York for most of 62 years.
Today they were in Oregon with me.

Their destination is the same as always,
and some will fall on the way.
They can’t know I am flying with them.

Some Thoughts I Got From A Common Slug

2009-09-10T13:00:00.005-04:00

(Click on highlighted text and photo.)

I was on the way across the street to the duck pond when I saw this fantastically beautiful creature right in front of the garden gate. The morning sun was shining on him as
he was going about his business being a slug. Click the highlighted 'slug' for an Oregon Public Broadcasting video interview with the 'Slug Lady'.

The majority of people regard these creatures as pests. I believe this is indicative of a particular view promoted by western civilization based on a faulty starting place in the thinking process. Click here to find what I regard as the proper starting place to begin thinking about ourselves and our place in the universe.

My thoughts on the slug I found at my gate.

Here he and she is. He and she is the right designation because slugs are hermaphrodites. And he and she is going about his and her business doing slug stuff.

From a parochial human point of view that business involves destroying 'my garden'. Which is a very nearsighted view. This nearsightedness is an all to common human tendency. That concept is explored in the highlighted links above.

The conventional approach that exemplifies the traditional western philosophy of regarding oneself and ones environment is basically that of domination and subduing. Slash, burn, conquer and if deemed necessary destroy.

There is another way to consider the relationship humans have with the earth. It's described in this brief video.

Enjoy our slug today. The ducks across the street will find him tasty. Which is the way it should be. The coyotes in the hills often come and grab a duck at night. Which is the way it should be. Someday I'll be unable to walk out my gate; which is the way it should be.

Enjoy our slug today.

A Video, Photographic Interview With A Nomadic Van Dweller

2009-09-04T18:34:00.025-04:00

(Click on all highlighted links and photographs for further information.)

I've met two very interesting and non-conventional people in the last two weeks. Neither have a conventional residence and neither considers themselves to be homeless in the way society might be tempted to label them.

I met Charlene while coming off the beach at Sunset Lane with my car as she was attempting to enter with her van. She asked me from her van window if it was safe for her to drive out onto the beach. It was the first time I had gone out with my car because all the other times it was not passable for a two wheel drive vehicle. But today the way was clear.

I noticed that she had an ocean Kayak on top of her van, and it seemed incongruous as she does not appear to be a woman who would be doing this. So I turned around and went back out to the beach to see if she would tell me about it. I found her to be an engaging and interesting person.

Charlene is a warm friendly woman. The first thing she told me was that she was going to travel through all fifty states and Kayak in each one. It's not anything I want to do myself. But to each her own.

We exchanged email and blog addresses. Her blog is at this address (link click here).

I got an email from her the next morning. She said she was going to the wreck of the Peter Iredale at Ft. Stevens Park and that if I showed up she would give me a metal detector. Yesterday she showed me a metal detector that she had. I remarked about a friend in New York that had one and who found all kinds of neat things with it. So she gave me one that she had bought for another purpose. If I recall correctly she told me she had gotten it for a grand-daughter who had not used it. So it will be fun to see what I can find.

Following are some photos from the beach at Sunset Lane and two video interviews with her about her trip and her lifestyle. I just came away thinking how nice it is to have more than one way to involve myself with the trip to the grave.

Charlene is completely self sufficient and as far as I can see is content with her life.

Her van is computer active. She powers her electronic needs with a solar panel mounted on the roof of the van. This powers a television and computer and allows her to cook. She charges a battery pack in her van with the solar panel and augments it with the generator of the car while she is driving. She showed me the control module. Today on the North Coast of Oregon, the sun was doing all the work.

The wreckage of the Peter Iredale remains on the beach in Ft. Stevens Park.

I am one who looks with fascination at decay. Decay for many means death. I see it as the necessary attribute associated with this impermanent reality that guarantees the continuance of life. The highlighted texts below look at the wreckage of the Peter Iredale up close disclosing the beauty of decay.

Click on them one by one, there is an immense beauty in this decay. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Meeting Charlene and understanding that there are other ways to live in America made me wonder at the providence of the Universe.

Below are two video interviews with Charlene:

1. Inside the hull of the Peter Iredale.

2. This interview took place alongside her van.

Not Reformed Theology

2009-09-03T00:30:00.010-04:00

Not Reformed Theology
(Click on highlighted text.)

I will not pray for mercy
to the God who condemned me in the womb
and sentenced me to death
before I took my first breath.

I will not fear the hell
said to be coming my way.

I was here,
I suffered;
isn’t that enough?

Reflections On Indra's Net

2009-09-01T18:39:00.024-04:00

Reflections on Indra’s Net

(Click on highlighted text and photographs for greater detail.)

When I look down I know
there’s not much time left,

you’re wasting away in front of your bowl
while you look up into my eyes.

In my mind I hear you say: “I'm leaving.”
Stooping to pet your head

you purr and I say out loud:
“We’ve been together to long for me to let you go alone.”

It Has Nothing to Do With The Coffee

2009-09-01T15:01:00.006-04:00

(Click on the photos.)

It Has Nothing to Do With The Coffee

You woke me.
All night the bench was hard
and I had to move to the scrub pines three times
when headlights shined down the prom.
The sun is warm now
and I don’t have to move no matter who comes.

It’s a beautiful day
though I did wish I could have
the remainder of the coffee you
threw in the trashcan next to me
while you were speaking into your phone
to someone in Portland about being on vacation
and how ‘they’ could go fuck themselves.

I didn’t feel bad for you even after a pause
when you said: “I’ll be there this afternoon god damn it.”
It has nothing to do with the coffee,
I can get their cans.

What Are You Waiting For?

2009-09-01T14:35:00.003-04:00

(Click on the highlighted texts.)

What Are You Waiting For?

Death,
I can hear your footsteps on the porch.
Don’t bother to knock,
come right in.

Believing Is Seeing

2009-07-14T15:43:00.017-04:00

(Click on highlighted links for more information.)
Hawkweed, dandelions and slugs provide a look into the nature of how we understand what is happening around us.

Basically we see what we believe should be the normal state of affairs. We determine normality through a variety of information inputs which we have agreed within ourselves or in concert with others to be the way things should be. That becomes what we expect to see.

Imagine that you live in an area where you might come upon a poisonous snake in the road. In the moonlight you see something stretched across the path. Your immediate thought is of a snake and you react as if it were a snake. Your blood pressure rises, you feel a surge of fear immediately, and your mental state completely changes as your heart rate accelerates and your face warms up. Then you realize it is a rope. I saw a dog turn into a stump in just this way recently.

Even though there was no snake, you reacted as if there were a snake. It was a genuine response because you were convinced by being prepared to see a snake so one appeared and scared the crap out of you. But now you know the snake did not exist anywhere but in your mind. The snake was something you created. It was an illusion just like the dog I saw that turned into a stump.

The people in this area are living under the illusion that Hawkweed is actually Dandelion. I know better than that. I've determined it by examination. I know why they call Hawkweed Dandelion. The plants are vaguely similar in appearance, and the people looking at them do not look close enough. They have agreed together that these plants are Dandelions. However I know for certain they are Hawkweed because I have taken the time to examine them. There's an application of this to democracy as well. And here is is a slug feasting on the bottom parts of a hawk weed plant . This shows you the way he and she became a duck.

I started thinking about the insistence of the locals here on demanding that Hawkweed be called Dandelion. Their authority is that they grouped together on the basis of collective ignorance in order to enforce the idea that Hawkweed is actually Dandelion. But if anyone of them had been required to look closely at the two plants they would recognize the differences fairly soon. But collective opinions are very powerful.

The video below will explain in more detail than I have related regarding the reason we experience the things we experience.

Invocation: Ceremony by the Sea

2009-07-06T11:54:00.022-04:00

This is at the end of a short road named 'Sunset Beach Lane' in Warrenton Oregon. There are many roads like this along the coastal highway that offer mouth dropping surprises if you go down them.

(Click on photograph to see what I mean)

Sunset Beach Lane is only about a mile long. There are a series of very large rolling sand dunes between the highway and the ocean. As you see it cuts through the first dune and opens out onto the beach. Vehicles are allowed out on the beach.

At the entrance to the beach there are tracks in the dry sand that give the illusion of safe passage but can, under the right circumstances, bog a 4WD drive down and get it stuck if it doesn't keep moving.

To say there are ruts would be misleading. It appears that there are ruts. But a rut implies a stable structure such as frozen mud or snow would produce, which in turn leaves a stable area for the path of the tires. The walls of these tracks in the sand are continually sliding in on top of themselves and what appears at a distance to be a stable track is actually fluid sand.

As I was walking in I watched a 4WD coming out. I remarked to myself that he was not moving fast enough and sure enough he slowed even more due to the resistance and lack of stability of the sand, and then it was all over. The wheels begin to dig in and rather quickly it just stopped. It was like watching a cheetah in the final stages of pursuing a gazelle in the sense that it was a forgone conclusion that the 4WD didn't stand a chance. I helped push him out. He could not have gotten going again without being pushed.

Being stuck in sand is different from being stuck in snow. The snow can be moved out of the way, but the sand will continue to simply fill in so that the tires are always on a bed of unstable sand. I didn't take the Saturn out there. Some have had the experience of losing their cars to the tide.

This is a nice place to spend the day digging clams, meditating etc. But many people come here for the sunsets to have some beers and party almost every night when it is clear in the summer. It's hardly ever crowded. This is a beach as untamed as it could possibly be. There's nothing commercial to interfere with what the ocean offers up.

This is noteworthy because the Pacific speaks profoundly with great understatement as it simply continues its unending chant. For those who listen it offers a purely primal encounter at this part of the universe. Take a look. (Click on highlighted text.) Stop and listen to the still small voice within your 'self'.

An Update on the Industry of the Ant

2009-06-26T18:38:00.009-04:00

(Click on highlighted text for additional information)

The writer of the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament made a comment on the virtue of the ants habits and encouraged his son with the example of being industrious for his own well being. Proverbs 6:

6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:

7 Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,

8 Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

9 How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?

The father is urging his son to take command of himself. 'no guide, overseer, or ruler'. She does it by 'herself'.

But she eventually dies and then all the hectic labor she has been engaged in becomes ingredients for the recycling center.

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That was Solomon's view and Jesus comments on it in Matthew 6:

24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

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Just what is Jesus saying here? Is Solomon wrong for encouraging industriousness and accumulation for the future? Is there another,better, way to relate to being here now? How does it fit in with this?

Mind Expansion: learning to see what IS

2009-06-06T14:34:00.008-04:00

(click on highlighted text for further information)

Think of this as an aid for meditation; as a springboard for your thoughts. Try to imagine what it means if this information is correct. If this makes sense to you after you take in the information you have the necessary tools to put this information to work in transforming the knowledge you have of who and what you are as a person. When you do, for your purposes, a new world replete with perceptions consistent with that world begins to develop.

CLICK HERE FOR THE BEGINNING.

Fantastic trip

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by manfrombiology | Upload your own presentation

Imagine the real nature of matter being intimately associated with consciousness. Imagine yourself not only being here, but being an actual constituent working element of what is being expressed now. Imagine being able to conceive of yourself as intimately associated and involved with the inner nature of life itself by virtue of having co-existed eternally with it. The sense of separateness, fear and estrangement felt by failure to recognize this fundamental facet of experience has vanished. The feeling is like you walked into the parlor of your childhood home after many years and everyone was there just like it used to be.

Amit Goswami, Ph.D. is at the center of a scientific revolution. There is a new way of evaluating ourselves and it is becoming increasingly clear that the current perception we have of ourselves has just about played out its usefulness. Enjoy.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

I Love To Watch Her Strut

2009-05-30T23:48:00.001-04:00

LIFE

There's always the chance of breaking through.

Breakfast on the Beach

2009-05-29T20:23:00.014-04:00

(click photographs for detail)

There's so many things I see and say: 'I think I understand'.

Like this breakfast:

...on it goes.

Retirement Pieing

2009-03-28T08:48:00.003-04:00

(Click highlighted texts)

Last Thursday morning the 26th of March I got pied as part of a going away tradition in the place I used to work at. Its a strange concept, getting used to not working. I have lots to do here to get ready and I have to begin today. After breakfast.

I don't know how the pie-ing tradition came into being. Other stores in the chain do not celebrate leaving the job in such a way, and in the store I was working only the night crew department does. And if you've been there a while and then leave you get pied at some point in you last night.

Don't trust anyone that night.

For My Steps Alone

2009-03-18T13:35:00.035-04:00

(click on highlighted text for photographs.)

This has been my last winter on the hill here and I am enjoying the annual return of spring in a way I could not enjoy it before because I am leaving. I plan to return here to this place that has been home to me since 12/26/1973. But I doubt it will ever be home to me again. When I return I will come for the memories: they will teach me the truth of the present.

The song of the red winged black bird is a defining marker of the change of seasons. 'Purple-dee' they sing at sunrise. My ex told me the words of their song.

The following has happened in the last few days. The warm weather has coaxed entities from the soil. The blossom below is a flower from a root that my ex wife decades ago, planted with her hands and which we enjoyed together for a time. That experience has passed with the continuing seasons. I still enjoy the flowers without her.

I found these in the yard. daffodils and tulips. They still have something to say.

The crocus blossoms were barely there yesterday. (click to enlarge them)

They arrive every year right on schedule when the winter goes through its changes.

What do you make of that?

I've given up the idea that the natural world represents a stupid, mindless, machine like process working to an inevitable result as the knowledge of western science has lead us to believe. I am certain there is a creative intelligence motivating this planet and the rest of what is. I call it God. I refuse to define it. I refuse to play politics with the notion or make a religion out of it.

Check this out.

Meditate on this.

Text and video of sunrise along with still photographs Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

Zen

2009-02-10T16:42:00.025-05:00

The wild geese
announced themselves, waking me

with broken reed notes …
Zen masters honking bop at sunrise

having flown through the night
with directions gathered from every aspect of the cosmos.

I am a shadow on the same screen;
leaving no trail, but going on.

---------------------------------------------

Images of the swan constellation and the other obviously not original material are the product or property of those attributed at the source link.

The remaining text video and photograph are by me, Hermeneutic etc, Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

Today and Tomorrow

2009-01-25T16:57:00.010-05:00

(Click on highlighted text for photographs.)

The woodpile is smaller than yesterday
and today is colder.

Even so, the fire burns
and the house is warm;

I do not hope.
Hope is for the unbelieving.

I know death is a hoax:
When does the universe take
without giving back?

Text and photographs Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

Redneck Tales: The Redneck As Sports Narrator

2009-01-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

"The ring necked pheasant is
one of the world's most beautiful birds.
The striking multi-colored vest has
lead it to be called
the peacock of North America.

The name comes from
the bright white ring
around his throat.
It is especially eye catching in the sunshine
against the contrasting plumage."

The redneck spoke
and his boots crunched
on the bird's neck as he bent
to remove his arrow.

I suppose he subscribes
to Hustler too.

Photograph,video and text Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

I Saw God Today

2009-01-22T11:35:00.021-05:00

The first of the three Gatti - Ward fights was the best. The other two were simply money makers for HBO. The first was an honest all out brawl that lived up to the pre-fight hype. The 9th round represents everything good about boxing and the human spirit. (Click on highlighted segments for videos.)

The look on Gatti's face after the left hook to the liver early on in the 9th round says it's over. The spirit in his heart says it isn't. He got up at the count of 9 and a half.

Gatti up to this point in his career was noted for having the shit beaten out of him, fighting with both eyes swollen shut and coming back to score a knock out. His handlers, most likely for pecuniary reasons, took control of him and changed his style. It prolonged his career and earned him a lot of money. This is representative of turning boxing into a politically correct sport where the human spirit takes a back seat. Promoters have different agendas.

Boxing has from its inception, at least in the fighters heart, been about the human spirit. Men fighting with their ears almost torn off and dangling, men climbing back into the ring, men not giving up. If you are a real human, man or woman, you're a 9 and a half count human and you get up.

God is manifested in the human face.

I saw God today.
Both of him in an 18
square foot ring.

Gatti - Ward 1.
He died and was

resurrected in
Round 9. Both
of him.

I knelt.
and worshiped.

Text © David H. Roche 2009

Dancing With The Moon

2009-01-17T14:33:00.007-05:00

We’ve always been leaving
or arriving,
flotsam on the tides
of a great sea:

our ‘selves’ like
driftwood,
and broken shells;
bits of things once whole
now fragments collecting on an unimaginable shore …
you and I under the spell of moonlight
called to dance the only dance there is.

Text, Photographs and Video: Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

Tides

2009-01-09T15:54:00.028-05:00

The tide is the evidence of being connected to everything else.

The implications of this are immense.

The tide is the dance of the earth, moon and sun. (Click on photographs to enlarge them)

On the beach At Lincoln City 11/09/05

The heaving and rolling
is constant.

The Pacific:
a Zen masters Koan.

A smile in the gray dawn at the recognition
that the universe both sings
and dances.

The tide is a returning and a continuing. The photos that follow are a representation of that eternal notion. Nothing leaves but that it returns. The tide is continually recycling the contents of the ocean and depositing them on the shore. It is a metaphor that speaks of something.

Having come from somewhere near Idaho in ages that have no history attached to them this monolith, Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach Oregon, stands as a representative of change and the tremendous forces associated with life on earth. Eventually it will be smooth sand and no consciousness will have noticed it occurring.

This is the reality we must accommodate ourselves to because it is the only reality. That being said, I believe there is more here than meets the eye. Something is going on.

What a wonderful mystery.

Text and photographs Copyright 2009 by David H. Roche

Midnight Repast

2008-12-13T20:45:00.004-05:00

Your skin on mine,
tastes we offer each other;
morsels plucked from the coals we've kindled into flame.

What I feel leaves me in wonder
as you take my cock in your fingers
and face to face our eyes contain each other...

Having lost our boundaries,
we are the universe,
complete.

Text and photograph Copyright 2008 David H. Roche (click on hyper link to see photograph.)

Shamanic Lover

2008-12-12T17:32:00.005-05:00

Her voice charms me saying:
“Enter through
my garden gate.

Inside are lush jungles,
and the creation of
supernovas

where you will disappear…
be annihilated
and reborn whole at dawn."

Text and Photographs Copyright 2008 David H. Roche

What Are You Missing?

2008-11-26T09:28:00.006-05:00

Zen Humor

I’ve been thinking so much
I miss a lot.

While I’m thinking about what happened
something else is always happening.

So I tried not thinking
and began to think about that…

Tonight, waking, half asleep
I found this.

It was there,
a delight.

I’ve been up since
writing this damned poem.

Thinking about it.

Text and photographs Copyright 2008 David H. Roche

The Root of Compassion

2008-11-25T07:04:00.011-05:00

I remained…
terror stricken
until seeing
‘I’ does not exist
separate from shooting stars,
raindrops, meadows,
rivers, redwoods,
springtime, harvest
the sea or you.

Text, photographs and videos Copyright 2008 David H. Roche Click highlighted links.

For My Children: I Believe

2008-11-21T23:28:00.010-05:00

(Click on photographs for detail.)

I choose to die alone;
there’s no need to cry.
I will cry for you.

It won’t be easy,
not with all the memories.
If you remember me,
that is enough.

You have a heaven waiting
while I see galaxies unborn.
I believe they are the same;
I’ll meet you there.

Text and Photographs copyright 2008 David H. Roche

360 Degrees

2008-11-09T20:22:00.010-05:00

(Click on photographs for greater detail.)

What I see: The first 180 degrees.

Autumn leaves in the rain:
the melancholy
of summer gone.

The Universe replies: The second 180 degrees.

I’m getting ready
for summer again:
it’s time to settle back.

Text and photographs Copyright 2008 by David H. Roche

Illumination

2008-11-02T16:44:00.026-05:00

Sunlight is a means to illumination
on many levels.

(Click on photographs for greater detail.)

The ordinary moment is often
filled with astonishing beauty.

Light!

Intensity!

And surprises.

Text and photographs Copyright 2008 David H. Roche

Immortality: two poems for my atheist lover

2008-10-16T09:56:00.027-04:00

Immortality

(click to enlarge photograph: Columbia River opening to the Pacific Ocean. Washington on the right. Oregon on the left.)

When I die;
take my ashes to the river
remembering that I said

do not cry; the current will carry me
to the sea;
from there, home, to the sky…

(click "sea" for video)

For My Atheist Lover

I want to die with your face fixed forever in my eyes…
I don't want your tears the last thing I see.
If you don’t believe the years never end
I can’t dry you eyes.

Text and photographs Copyright 2008 David H. Roche

Daybreak and Dusk the Geese and the Moon

2008-10-10T18:46:00.019-04:00

Daybreak and Dusk the Geese and the Moon

On this hill
it seems to change...
but it doesn’t.
(click on photographs for detail)

There is daybreak and dusk;
transient geese that pass twice a year
with the sound of woodwind flutes overhead.

The moon changes daily;
coming back with a different face
only to eventually return the same.

You are the daybreak and dusk,
you are the geese and the moon.
I am as well.

...........................................

I saw these things today and they moved me.

Text and photographs Copyright 2008 David H. Roche.

My Creed

2008-10-08T11:03:00.020-04:00

I'm a believer
but don't ask me any questions;
I don't have any answers you'd be benefited by.
They are my answers and true for me;
they may not suit you.
In fact I'm sure they won't.

If you ask me about God
what can I say about a topic generally agreed to be unknowable?
Certainly I have a vague idea,
but my idea comes from everything I've ever experienced;
and you have not experienced what I have.

Perhaps this makes God a personal God in some ways that are not generally agreed upon by those intent on making iron clad definitions
and caricatures taken from stories in books found in every land and culture.

That God is in every land speaks loudly to me as proof that 'Something' exists beyond the edges of this little world I call myself.

It does not matter if 'It' has multiple arms, blue skin or a white beard.
'It' has appeared in the minds of mankind all over and is essentially the same despite the cultural details ascribed to 'It's' nature.

My Creed...So Far

I believe in God on the basis of intuitive not logical evidence.
I believe there is 'Something' outside the edges of my understanding leading me into the future.
I believe there is 'Something' orchestrating things.
I believe the Universe is a friendly place.
I am not afraid of what happens after the grave;
I believe I am traveling on without end.
I believe a 'one size fits all God' is an oxymoron.

When I am quiet I 'Know' these things;
at those times I feel God is speaking to me.
I listen, but I cannot tell you what I hear.
It is personal, constructed for me alone
from everything that has gone before in my life.

Peace and hope are what I feel at those times.
All I can say is:
"I seem to understand enough for the present."

Text Copyright 2008 David H. Roche. Links attributed to those who left them to be read.

A Question About Circles

2008-10-03T13:15:00.007-04:00

A Question About Circles

Autumn sunlight
spackles fallen leaves and seeds together
on wet pine slats.

(click on photos to enlarge.)

Is it the beginning or the end?

Text and Photographs Copyright 2008 David H.Roche

Ten Words

2008-10-02T18:56:00.004-04:00

(Click to enlarge photo.)

Ten Words

Life is crossroads.
Sunset and daybreak.
Things that never end.

Text and photograph Copyright 2008 David H. Roche

Humanist Vision

2008-09-14T16:24:00.016-04:00

Humanist Vision

When we were young we had rights
and speaking our thoughts
was not a crime.

Even so they shot us down
on the streets
and campuses for speaking.

When we were young
we had horizons in our minds;
but they had boxes designed to keep us busy.

We struggled;
not conforming because
we believed our prophets

who pointed to the horizons.
A few fixed their eyes on the vision
and started off.

(Click to enlarge photo.)

Text Copyright 2008 David H. Roche

Contentment

2008-09-13T17:12:00.018-04:00

Contentment

I know where I’m headed;
its through a door called the grave
that opens to starlight.

(Click photograph to enlarge)

Nothing ever ends … it merely changes.
I’m content with that.

Text Copyright 2008 by David H. Roche

Some Thoughts on Cottonwood and Culture

2008-09-05T10:36:00.000-04:00

There are a number of uses for cottonwood. The most common use is for bathroom tissue. But it has medical uses too.

The ways that the same type of tree is harvested for the different things they are used for is an eye opening look into the nature of two different cultures. And perhaps they provide a reason for the development of counter cultures among people for whom co-existence and co-evolution have precedence over exploitation.

Commercial production and harvest of cottonwood trees. I have only seen this in Oregon where I was told that they grow it to be made into bathroom tissue. When harvested for this purpose the trees are maybe 60'or taller and approximately 8 inches in diameter. The plots of cottonwood that are harvested for these purposes are planted so that barely a foot of space is between each tree.

There are three varieties of cottonwood. All are not used for toilet tissue or harvested in the same manner, some are used for crating and the manufacture of pallets. It is the least desirable wood to use for heating for a number of reasons ranging from the difficulty in splitting to the water content in the wood which promotes rotting while waiting for it to dry.

The video below was taken in my car from the side of U.S. 30 just outside of Clatskanie Oregon and shows how the harvest of cottonwood for toilet paper goes on. (I forgot to turn the car radio off so the music is unintended.)

Another culture approaches the harvest with a somewhat different attitude. Attitude is what makes the differences in the world.

For good or bad that's the way it is.

Life Lane

2008-09-04T14:06:00.000-04:00

(click on photograph for detail)
Life Lane is in a rural location a few miles off of U.S. 30 along the Alston - Mayger road. It's just a few miles past the Lewis and Clark bridge and Rainier Oregon if your heading towards Clatskanie or Astoria.

On a visit I saw the sign and the cemetery across the road. Their juxtaposition was something that I could not help but think about. Death is always rummaging around in the back of my mind. It's become the perennial 'boogie man' that religions use to keep people in line.

Life and death, yin and yang, black and white: these comprise the spectrum of differences that make up everything. You've got to get to know these things before life makes any sense. If you don't you'll look and wonder and perhaps cry. If you do you can smile confidently in a bitter sweet kind of way because life is nice, and the unknown is, well, unknown. So talk to death until you have your answers.

The Teacher

Make friends with death.

Take his hand; invite him to walk with you.

Listen to what he has to say, he's wise.

When you've talked,

say goodbye and go your way;

you'll meet again, and you'll be ready.