Yesterday we saw a
dead skunk in the wash on a steep slope and appreciated its beautiful black and
white mottling.  I noted its location,
thinking I would watch the process of its return to the earth.  I am particularly fascinated with bones and
skeletons that I might run across.  This
morning it was gone, it had taken a fast track to earth through a scavenger’s
digestive tract, I imagine.  But its
smell still lingered.  I bet it smells
great to whoever ate it.  It got me
thinking about these incredible homemade pickles my Hungarian grandmothers and
great grandmothers used to make.  We
called them Stinky Pickles, and the only way to ‘get’ their awesomeness would
be to eat one.

Before our morning
walk I was reading about an image of a well and was reminded of how powerful
that archetypal form is to living things. 
When I have thought of a ‘well’ in the last couple of years it has been
feeling dry and almost totally related to the flow of money.  Wow, what a very narrow vision of such a rich
symbol.  Today I am overwhelmed with the multitudinous
resources flowing from the well into my life.  Things as
simple and sacred as the lingering odor of a desert creature or the memory of grandmother’s
homemade pickles. 

I am particularly blessed with images that get themselves photographed around here.  This sunset was two
nights ago and could bring me to my knees.  You can see the telescopes on Mt. Lemmon.  The other is this incredible baby
lupine wildflower here in winter struggling to ‘be’ in the crevice of the limestone
fossil rock.  Love the sahuaro seeming to pop out of the top of the crack.  Sorry for the shimmy in the third, but I barely got the camera outside to take this, not yet have the tripod set, but the red color was amazing.  Looked like something was on fire at first glance.  Oh no, my well is certainly
not dry, it is overflowing. 

I woke in the
middle of the night to the sound of rain, yeah! 
I rolled over on my back so that both ears could take in the sound.  My kitty was waiting.  She pounced lightly on my chest, massaged her
way in to the perfect spot to snuggle and proceeded to purr with tremendous
force, engulfing my heart in her purr. 
This was knowing an unconditional love.

Many hours later it
is raining again, yeah!  But we got our
morning walk and the smells in the wet desert were heavenly.  I visited the fossil and photographed the
tiny shell near it and could not resist peering into some flowing water.

Full moon tonight too!

Very nice. Loving the rain, too. Watching the deer on the ridge huddle near bushes.

Yes, that’s it…I knew it was something, thanks!

Reminds me of the ocean upside down.

Lots of thoughts passing through, but none seem worthy of posting.  But here is the awesome sunrise this morning:

If I see a sunrise someone has died (literally). Happily, I can enjoy this sunrise through your lens, since I’m a late riser. I am thoroughly enjoying the pearl grey sky right now, and the sound of raindrops!! on my roof. Thanks, Gale.

It was one specfreakintacular sunset for sure!

The other thing
that I got lost in recently is studying the periodicity and various rotations
of the planets and planetoids of our solar system.  This is a very fundamental structural pattern,
some sort of fractal repeated over and over, of our universe.  Most everything on a larger scale than right
here with me right now has this overlay of something rotating around another;
the planets around our sun, the moons around their planets, the galaxies themselves
and everything in them. 

And at the other
end of the scale, we have electrons rotating around their nuclei.  Their path and behavior is not over and over
in the same path or ecliptic, like the planets. 
It is erratic and though we can guess a general orbital area, we can’t
predict their exact position like we can with the large scale stuff.  Clearly, humans are more like electrons than
planets.  Maybe we are even at the exact tipping
point between predictable and not.

But it is very
comforting to know something will BE in a certain way in the future.  Perhaps this rotational pattern IS the fabric
of time itself, a giant cosmic clock, with an endless number of dancers always in
an absolutely unique position that will NEVER be repeated again.  This brings up appreciation for this exact moment
for me. 

Another great twist
on time has to do with how it is totally based on PLACE and where you are.  On Mercury, closest to our sun, a year, the
time it takes to make a complete rotation around the sun, is only 88 earth days,
less than three months.  But interestingly,
to compensate for that quick pace, a day on Mercury, the time it takes to make
a complete rotation around its axis, to have a day and a night, is 59 earth
days.  They have one wacky calendar there.

On the outermost
planet, Pluto, a year is equivalent to 248 earth years.  Humans would live an entire life in a third
of a year if they were lucky.   And a day
there is a long 153 hours.  I would get
tired of light or no light, each lasting 3+ earth days.

So earth is poised
in a sweet place around the sun, where we can enjoy the variety of many yearly
cycles, winter, spring, summer, fall, in a life time.   And it rotates at a sweet pace where we can
have around 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark, over and over.  We belong to this pace and this place.

Gale, clearly you are unique and special (I know the Catholic girl in you cringes hearing this).
This post reminds me of my seven year old self who cut circles and pasted them onto colored constuction paper, then drew circles and more circles – The Solar System! I love it. Your posts are reminders that it’s Great To Be Alive!

I have gotten lost
in a few things in the last week….one is fire.

It has been
unusually cold to go along with the unusually hot this past summer.  it seems everywhere I look there is evidence of
extreme polarity right now.

It has been sunny
to go with the cold and during the days we bask in the warmth and slanted
sunlight for our 18 foot high south facing passive solar windows.  I feel so blessed when I walk barefoot across
the warm brick floors.  But with short
days and freezing nights, we have a fire going almost all the time.  I can’t total all the time I spend tending
fire and just sitting and watching it, hours and hours and hours.  It is a meditation, has a calming effect,
helps me drive the chatter out of my head, and I can just be with fire,
occasionally feeding it.

I think about my
ancestors, tens of thousands of years back at the dawn of conscious humanity
and how incredibly important fire was to them. 
They spent as much time gazing at fire as moderns spend at their
computers or in front of TV.  I
personally prefer fire. 

Once in a while, I
think I should write about it and I may even start, but then the fire calls me
back and I realize a week has gone up in smoke. 
I also notice how I feel security (or not, before we bought this last
cord of wood) around having ENOUGH RESOURCE for the cold season.  I can see how ‘not knowing’ could cause me to
hoard and accumulate, another thing moderns humans have taken to an extreme,
including me.

The thing is….there
are so many basic tendencies that come with being a human that come to light
(hahaha) when tending fire.  It is as if
it is telling me, in super slow motion, or a different language, the story of
the evolution of humanity.  I am tapping
into a primal field.  Did we steal fire
from the gods?  Or is fire teaching us of
the god within?

Fire feels sacred.

The fireplace is my
altar.

Its tending is a ritual.

My silent brain is
a prayer.

It tells stories of
humans

sitting at fires
long, long ago.

what drives me to fire:

What a wonderful, old term to remember when the crunch of life is hitting me as well. My business and all that went out this year is hitting me hard but like your dogs we need to find time to just ‘dig it’ ! Let go and do nothing but with passion and wild abandonment. Thank you for this right now!

I have been blocked
the last 5 days and because I am incessantly looking for patterns, have been
wondering why.  I think it is about the
beginning/end of year bookkeeping, bringing all accounts for our 4 micro
businesses up to date& reconciled, ready for the quarterly & year end
reports.  I sit at the computer for way
too many hours and crank out way too many reports to try to figure out what we
can do to change things.  We, like most
people, are squeezed economically right now. 
So I’ve been in this mind state of ‘want, lack, not enough’ and surely
that blocks appreciation and beauty for me.

Decades ago, we used
the phrase ‘dig it’ all the time and it has fallen out of fashion.  This morning I got a kick out of watching the
dogs get a whiff of something, something they wanted, then dig like hell, with
total exuberant abandon.  All four were focused
and dirt was flying and you could hear them snort as they thought they were
getting closer.  (I guess they are
probably also clearing their noses which get caked with dirt in the process.)  Man can they DIG IT, body, heart, and soul!!  But here is the lesson for me:  then they just stop and walk away, tails
wagging, back to walking and grooving on whatever.

In the context of
wanting more solid cash flow, or wanting whatever…really dig it, for a while, snort and
clean out my nose, than just move on…dig it?

first – really juicy actual color and yes that is cow shit

second – natural orange bumped up a bit; love the dog butts in the background

third – psychedelic colorization, hahaha

I really liked that painting and the poem too. ….. and I don’t always like poems!

Gale, yet again I am blown away.
The juxtaposition of knowledge of feet, starting with humans, moving to elephants, the Inspired painting & poem do bring sublime appreciation for the richness of Life–not least of which is you! And, amazing fossil!