"Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it is against the wrong wall." ~ Joseph Campbell This is an image called "Tele Time" that is included in 40x41: Midlife Crisis Postponed. It's one of a series of telemark skiing collages I've created over the last few years. It's a mobile (originating photograph and doodle were created via mobile phone and tablet) mashup (digital ...
Pause
It's still Saturday—slow, slothful, slightly soulful—Saturday morning. For another hour. I awoke early and discovered the weather to be incompatible with plans. I went back to sleep and reawoke late. Really late. Then lazy breakfast with bride and nephews and nephews' companions. Revised plans. Excursion for them; rainy day water coloring and poetry editing for me. Calm. Mostly quiet except for ...
Courage to Live the Dream
Do you have the courage to live the dream? Your dream? Or is it okay with you to live crisis-to-crisis, to muddle through your one brief existence reacting to the ups and downs as you find them? Never Truly Lived You've probably heard about elderly people who look back from the final stretch and regret the risks that they did not more often that the risks that they did take. Regret the dreams ...
Creativity on Tap
The creativity spigot runs cold. It runs hot. And sometimes — the worst of times — it runs not. Better to run cold than not at all, but best when fluctuating between a hot gush and a tepid trickle. Floods of inspiration punctuated with marathons of perspiration. Starts. Finishes. Creativity Caveat Enough with the how of creativity and on to why... Why court the muse? Why seduce and sing and ...
Hazmat
What?!?! Have I totally lost the plot, you're thinking, right? One might well wonder lately if we've all lost the plot. Tempestuous times. Wacky ways; weird days. Too much vitriolic verbosity. Too little tolerance. Too little curiosity... Beware the tox- ic rumor mill, which sits unground, on dusty sill. The lines above come from a reflection on toxicity and tolerance and combinatorial ...
Ideals & Enthusiasm
As my parents adventure through their seventies I frequently contemplate the differing ways that we age. Some people fixate on the numbers, the statistics, the chronologically worsening odds. Others defy the odds, not so much by fighting age or existing outside of the real world continuum, but by mentally and emotionally transcending the pull of time. My mother is one of the best examples of ...