Splash!

This is a picture of my brother's chocolate lab in action, taken some years ago. My sense of timing isn't usually very good, but I think it worked out pretty well in this case. (Doggy's name is Brandy, btw.)

In Darkness

I decided to be brave and bold and just throw a poem into the mix here (the one I mentioned in my last post.) I wrote this many years ago, probably rewrote it somewhere and subsequently lost it, but anyhow, here it is, in whatever state - for what it's worth...

"In Darkness"

I sit here
thinking up
silly lines,
try to conjure
up an image.

Ever walk
into your mind
and find a dark
and dreary cavern?

Step on in...
lightly tiptoe...
search diligently
for that candle
to enlighten;
tripping on
some discarded memory.

Raise a voice
inside your mind,
hear it echo
through the tunnels,
spilling into
empty caverns.

Brush the dust
from off the ledges,
sweep the cobwebs
out of corners.

Come in, come in!
It's been a while
since we just sat
and thought together.

Seems awkward
how we've been
like strangers,
you and I
should be as one
my tiny, little
disjointed friend,
my mind.

by Col
............................

Well, I never said I was Maya Angelo...

Stuck in the Muck and Mire

Was it Thoreau who said an unexamined life is not worth living? I thought it was him, but a quick peek at "Walden..." didn't show me any such quote I surely must have underlined when I first read it years ago. But Thoreau is a rough skim, and maybe it was in something else he wrote. (Or perhaps someone else altogether.) I'm tempted to reread him soon - I'll let you know if I'm wrong.

Anyhow, whoever said it, I always kinda liked that idea, thought it fit right in with my way of thinking. But the older I get, the more I think the opposite might also be true: an overly analyzed - overly examined, if you will - life, is almost impossible to live. Just ask Sylvia Plath...

Seems when it comes down to the marrow of my existance, I reach a paradox - I find it’s too mucky, too sticky and gooey to pass through easily on one of these introspective forays. Or, on my more trying - or tiring - days, the bones of my existance seem dried out and hollow - any attempt at an exploration then and I just fall right through. Hello, anybody home? Reminds me of a poem I once wrote, still trying to come to terms with. (Which, being human, I probably never will.) Which brings me to my point: look too long and hard, and you’ll get stuck in the marrow, never look at all and you’ll never get a chance to see what may or may not be in there anyhow...)

Maybe its just existential anxst, or maybe I just have too much time on my hands. Probably it comes down to something as simple as this: I’ve just never been good at creating a real center of balance in my life. (Ok, I’m going to resist - that's a blog for another day...)

Anyhow, without blowing off a lot of other things I should be doing right now instead of this - and risking getting stuck more in the marrow, this little whisper of a thought has suggested to me that I try using this need for balance as a way to motivate me back to the blog page. Using a relatively minimalist approach (for me) I think I'll try simply blurting out a thought or two for the day, keep it short (again, for me...) and then, well... carry on. And that was my thought for this day.