Category: Uncategorized

(Old) Man Down….

~ Live & Learn ~ 81 Comments

Yes, a Rant. It’s been a while. And in my current condition, it seems to be rolling from Mind to fingers to keys to page. If you are highly sensitive, skip this post, whack me with a comment, or toughen up. While I lean Liberal, I do believe that those that borrow, should pay it back, like the rest of us who passed on vacations, lived within our means, and don’t expect the Government to clean up our bad decisions.

But I digress..

This all started a few days back. The event was a harbinger of things to come, a dark cloud hanging low and tracking. Ouspensky says: “The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them.” And in the Negative, lies this Agnostic’s God.

I digress. Back to the story.

I shared a comment on a photo series on Instagram. Oh, Sorry, it’s “Insta” as the younger generations call it. More evidence of doing anything to cut corners, do less work, get Govt handouts and make my Generation look like Pterodactyls. And I don’t want to hear this crap (kernels of truth that may exist), that our Generation ran up the debt, polluted the Oceans, dumped forever chemicals in our drinking water, and cut with abandon the carbon producing forests. Always some stupid shortcut — it’s Instagram you lazy scoundrels.

And again, my apologies, I digress.

After sharing some constructive feedback in an INSTA comment, the reply was, “WTH do you know you old Coot.”

I mean really, that escalated quickly.

I had to look up Coot, figuring for sure this was some form of discrimination that I can litigate on. Old-white-Man-Coot. Sounds offensive to me. “Coot” – simple and harmless.

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Why I Have Decided to Live (High School Student!)

~ Live & Learn ~ 32 Comments

Spoonfuls of moonlight. Cold air. Her knit blanket
tugging at my body to stay.
The fog resting on my shoulders, hugging me.
Summer rain through an open window.
Thunderstorms & how they change the world momentarily
unafraid, or even better, unaware of humans.
Because I left my country broken.
Because I saw the first reflection of myself in a candlelight vigil.
Because I was flickering.
Because we made promises.
Because I can keep trying & no one can stop me.
Peaches.
Stars.
Willow trees.
Acoustic music with a trembling voice.
The kinds of poems that give me shivers.
Trains to nowhere in particular.
Our sweat sweet bodies colliding on wet grass.
Her hands & the way they cradle my heart
as if holding something precious.
August night drives.
Singing along to “Riptide” & eating cherries out of buckets.
Because we promised to return.
To mend a broken thing.
How laughter colonizes the lungs.
To think of myself as something larger than myself.
Because I can love every small thing..

— Kyo Lee, “Why I Have Decided to Live.” (Washington Post Book Club, April 12 2024). Kyo Lee, a student at the Laurel Heights Secondary School in Waterloo, Ontario, won first place in the international High School Writing Contest sponsored by the nonprofit literary publisher Narrative.  Entrants responded to the prompt: “My note to the world.”

Listen to Kyo read her poem here.

Walking. Like a Pissant.

~ Live & Learn ~ 44 Comments

3:30 am.

Wally skooches (sp?) up from under the covers and gives me kisses. How does one not smile at this wonderful creature, even this hour. Wally needs to go wee-wee. He races out to the end of the yard, does his business, and comes bolting back, doing a full body shake in flight to shake the cold off — Wally wants no part of what’s outside at this hour. And I can’t blame him.

I shiver, look up, and there’s Moon, in her full glory. I grab the camera and take the shot— best to have something to show for this unexpected Call-of-Wally-Duty at this hour. (Shot here.)

5:30 am.

1,416 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a Row.

Susan reminded me last night that it’s the first day of Spring. I wondered if I forgot to push the clock back a month with the time change. The thermometer reads 29 F°, but there is no way in Hell it’s remotely close to that. Wind gusts up to 25 mph are blowing (I mean BLOWING) off Long Island Sound, and miraculously finding every exposed piece of flesh, which is a miracle in itself given that I’m 4-layered up. Shiver, again.

There are only 4 of us out in the Park this morning, the Regulars, with King Lunatic out front. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Well, mostly true here, except the gloom or sheets of rain can present temporary obstacles.

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A World Below – Gold Winner

~ Live & Learn ~ 37 Comments

New York Photography Awards, 2023, Category: Black & White Photography – Nature. Gold Winner, Eric Kanigan.  See Eric’s winning submission here.

Walking. 1,299 times.

~ Live & Learn ~ 37 Comments

6:00 a.m. Two days after Thanksgiving, feeling heavy. I skip the morning weigh-in, and elect not to share with you all the carnage, the humiliation is just too much even for me, and no point adding to the World’s disappointments these days, there’s enough of that.

Weather App: feels like 22° F. Too damn cold. My body instinctively leans South to Miami (75° F). We miss Miami, and we’ll miss it more in January.

I pull on my double lined snow pants, which feel tighter from last winter. Has to be the fabric shrinkage from the washings. Has to be. Can’t have let myself go that far.

I turn left off Post Road onto Weed Avenue, 1.5 miles from Cove Island Park. This will be my 1,299 consecutive (almost) turn onto this street, on my daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

I pull off the road onto the shoulder, leaving the car running. I jump out to take the shot, careful to crop out the highway and the street lights on the right, and the homes lining the cove on the left — doing my best to remove all human constructed scars from the view.

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