Just another day, but…
Winter does have some beauty.
Just when we may think winter does us in…
Spring shares hope.
Everything to see, smell, hear and feel.
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Nothing To See Here
Category Archives: landscape
Real Life or Dream
I have had a difficult time writing this. Not only because it is personal, but because it is also unsettling, unique, even frightening. Some of you may be aware that I suffered a stroke just about a year ago. Lots of people suffer strokes. I have been fortunate in my rehabilitation. I can talk. I can walk. I can write. I can take care of myself. These were not the case in the first three weeks following the stroke. So let me say to all my medical support, nurses and therapists thank you very much. Now, it is just me and the daily mental battle of rehab vs retrogression. No big deal. Humans seem to need battles to excel, to live. Strange as it seems.
For me, it is the first three weeks that perplex me, that put me into some kind of twilight zone between dreams and real life. It had been signed off at the time as stroke induced dreams but they came in such volume, in such intensity, with such fear. Then a couple days after a full night dream wherein I had violently struggled to free myself from entrapment, I noticed an horrendous bruise on my thigh at a place that could have easily occurred in my dream, so I had to ask myself dream or real life? And if it was real life why do I not recall my activities that night? I only recall the ‘dream’ and that ‘dream’ did not occur in the hospital.
Because of these uncertainties, I feel obliged to recall them in detail. Those ‘dreams’ in detail will become a series of short stories, if I have the fortitude to work through them. Fortitude? Well, since the stroke, one of the lingering effects has been my inability to even come close to multi-tasking. So I have stepped away from what many of us see as the natural multi-tasking complexities of the modern Western world.
The following set of photos exemplify what I find as simply satisfying in life these days. And when I try to resolve the awkward and fearful complexities of the first three weeks after my stroke…I rarely have the will power to remember or the endurance to examine. Rather I go out for a walk in the fresh air. The therapists call it looking to the future instead of the past. I can live with that; but the dream versus real life intrigues me.
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I just can’t help myself
Where oh where can the apples be?
It is the middle of the northern hemisphere winter.
The time of death.
The time of life hidden.
Yet when I look at these mature apple trees, smiles of hope well up inside me.
My imagination sees apple blossoms;
Smells apple blossoms;
Tastes apples off the tree;
Tastes apple pies;
Tastes apfelcheuchli;
And having had my senses gratified, I sleep peacefully.
Please share your apple thoughts and memories.
Action
Action? Most of us get no closer to the Arabian Peninsula than King Solomon’s medjool dates, and why not? If you had a choice between your home town and anywhere in the Arabian Peninsula, which would you choose?
My disclaimer is that previously I have lived 20 some *odd* years in and around the Arabian Peninsula. Gimme some of that Dubai, if you will. Go light on the Empty Quarter. And one thimble of Arabic coffee with the dates, please.
Almost Winter Haiku
Where black forests white
Winter pushes at the edge
Unleashing colored dreams.
What happens under the cover of forests? Unpredictably dreamy grays become colours.
HaikuNotSure
Luxuriant greens,
Frothy browns, golden moments,
Uncertain threat chills.
Which way is life?
Catch
…if you can!
Mature Imagination and Youth
Wisteria floribunda gently stirs…youthful fragrance…mature strength.
Imagine
late April
Northern hemisphere
Spring moisture
17 degrees centigrade
cloudless sky
mid morning
faint breeze…
…just enough to stir these sweet fragrances
and you will have no doubt…
as you gently and deeply inhale…
A mature spring is about.
Black Bird
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About this time of year, the early spring on the northern slope of the Swiss Alps in the Jungfrau Region–as the grasses first turn a full green, as the first wild primroses bloom, as the forsythia and magnolias bloom, the farmers bring out the sheep and cows–the bells and their random mystical ringing. At this same time a unique spring melody plays as the sparrows and the blackbirds greet the animals and the warmer sunny days.
If you try, you can almost add this photo plus the bird song to discover the briefest moment of fresh, sweet, spring air in the Swiss Alps.
Walkable Neighborhoods
As The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling might have said: …a street in any town…
My two cents worth… What is at the heart of a comfortably walkable neighborhood?
1. Public ways that have human scale. Like the above.
Comment: Originally built before autos—but still able to accommodate wagons and animals. How can these be built today and meet your local and regional health and safety requirements? Maybe it is time to rethink health and safety requirements?
2. Social communities where people are truly respectful of neighbors. Like the above.
Comment: Where true respect exists, people do not worry about personal effects (see lower right above) being defaced or stolen. Or covered with graffiti and tags which often these days are the first signs of disrespectful neighbors.
Care for a walk?