Picture Day

WORLDVIEW 101

I am just coming to realize the essential visual quality of online engagement.  I have always loved to take pictures.  I enjoy seeing a moment in time memorialized forever.  The people who come after and look at my images have a point of view that is filtered through their own lives and experience, so photographs provide an ever-changing creative interaction.  I don't even have to be around for it to happen.  I am represented as the picture-maker; the one who set you up for this unique interaction with my world view.

 Reflections are a magical gift from God, as far as I'm concerned.  They let you know that nothing is as it seems.  Reflections often provide me with a creative spark. I realized that I could see myself, the fallow field behind me, the interior of the room, and the life beyond the door, and capture it all in a single frame.  Awesome.  When I consider this image with a creative mind, it tells me that much of life is illusory.  There are a myriad of options available to me at any given moment.  I just need to take the time to reframe them into something practical, beautiful and creative.  My perspective changes.  My attitude changes.  My life changes.  Excellent.

Life is made up of chores.  Things to do.  If you bring your native creativity to the most mundane of tasks, something happens.  You see beyond current circumstances, and take in a broader horizon.  This blog is supposed to be about my son.  He cannot see how it is going to help him get to Europe next summer, so there's very little of him in it, at present.  I'm looking beyond the current landscape.  In my mind's eye I see Malachi boarding that plane.  I see him boarding that plane when I'm about to fall asleep, turning ideas over in my mind for this blog and other fundraising efforts I am doing.  I see him boarding that plane when he is staring at me, obdurate and entitled, in spite of the fact that we really have nothing.  He looks like a spoiled rich kid.  Let me help him grow into that persona, at least a little.  Sometimes Malachi runs into situations with his more affluent friends.  He says, "My friend is jealous." "Jealous?" I am stupefied. I am confused.  The kid he refers to seems to have everything.  "You talk to me," my kid says simply.

Indeed I do.  Sometimes I wonder if it does much good.  But, there's no point in having children if you won't talk to them.  Everybody should spend time laughing with their kids.  It's how you see who they really are.

Art is everywhere, in everything.  When you find the art in things, no matter how ordinary they seem, you find the divinity inherent in all things.  Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

#FriendsofMalachiMaxwellGlass

I Need a Do-Over

Ever wish events had a reset button?  I do.

If I could turn back time, like Cher, I would do my homework before starting this blog.  I would have a clear direction in mind.  I would make it the travel/fundraising blog it is supposed to be.  Fortunately, I do get a do-over.  It's called sunrise, and I was here for it this morning.  Relationships can be clarified.  That is a do-over.  Apologies can be offered and accepted.  That is a do-over.  I can avail myself to the sum of human knowledge as it resides on the internet, and subsequently do a better job with this here blog.  That too, is a do-over.  I can believe in myself and my abilities.  That is a reset and a do-over  I can give and be given another chance at relationship with another.  That is a do-over everyone needs.
Every interaction has value.  The ones that upset us are more valuable than most, if we would choose to see that.  The seeds of our disaffection are in them.  They are the basis of a worthwhile "do-over," rather than the definition of insanity.  I don't want to do the same thing in the same way all the time, no matter what the result!  One of the most profound life-lessons I have learned came from the life and death of Princess Diana:  One cannot stand out and fit in at the same time!  A choice has to be made.  The choice to stand out forces us out of our comfort zones.  The choice to examine every interaction for personal culpability does the same.  If I know that I am out of my comfort zone and am subject to the instability that inheres to that, I can know when and where a do-over is required.  I know I need to fix this blog.  There's a do-over ahead.  I know I need to ask for help. That's a do-over, and over and over!  I know that I need to address each day and the goals I have for it in a more methodical, analytic fashion.  That is a timely and necessary reset, to be done-over daily.
I need a do-over.  When I sat down to make this entry with my hands poised over the keys like Rachmaninoff, the phone rang. My baby son has a sore throat, and doesn't want to be in school anymore today.  I should have started this post earlier, maybe.  Some things don't get a do-over.  I am going to finish this entry and then go retrieve the boy.

Lastly, if anyone at all is wondering why I think Miss Edythe Wright may be a descendant of the Wright Brothers, it is mostly because her ancestral family home is next to a lumber mill that has been in operation since the early part of the twentieth century--literally right over the fence.  The lumber mill is a brisk walk from the former Cochrane Brothers furniture manufacturing plant, all on the same tract of land. The house is on the edge of town, closer to Warren Plains than Warrenton proper.  A coincidence? There are a lot of them. I asked her about the racket the mill was making.  "Oh, honey, it doesn't bother me.  I've lived next to a sawmill all my life.  I lived near to Bugg's Mill that was right up the road before this one!"

What would Orville and Wilbur have needed a steady supply of to replace those experimental planes they were crashing?  Who would have built them? How did they do preliminary tests in secret before they tried at Kill Devil Hills?  How they would have gotten those airplanes to the beach is another issue.

I love visual puns and pictures, and Miss Edythe has photographic portraits of four of her six brothers lined up in a corner of her exquisite parlor.  My higher self prodded me gently as I stared at them: "They're the Wright Brothers, by God!"

I grew up on Long Island, near the old Westhampton Beach Air Force Base.  I can tell whether the bay doors on a C-130 are open or closed just by the sound overhead.  I know that subsequent to events, only one Strike Eagle now flies screaming over my house each week.  I know a lot about testing airplanes too, because the Grumman Plant made Tomcats all through my childhood ("Anytime, Baby!").  You didn't need a lot of land, just a broad, flat strip.

I also asked Miss Edythe how she felt about living long enough to see a black President in office.  A sweet sigh and a little jig was her heartfelt response.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.  #FriendsofMalachiMaxwellGlass