Tag Archives: photo collections

February 20, 2016 · 3:42 pm

A Growing Collection of Sunrises

I have been moaning and complaining in this blog for a couple of weeks.  I don’t have bad days.  I have bad weeks… bad months… bad years.  And making fun of my pain, making light of my suffering, is a way of making myself feel better.  Making light of serious stuff… it occurs to me that that is what God does every single morning when the sun rises.

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My most recent sunrise… 2016

You may be aware if you have read about me making light of my raging hoarding disorder that not only do I collect things that normal people don’t keep massive quantities of, but I also collect photos I have taken of sunrises I have seen.  As I woke this morning with an ache in my chest I really should see the doctor about again (I have seen a cardiologist twice in the last five years about the same nagging pain, and the best they can tell me is that it might be an arthritis pain in my lower rib cage) I thought melancholy thoughts again about my personal end of days.  One of the reasons I continue to collect sunrises is to celebrate the fact that I am still here, still witnessing God making light of the serious universe.  I really think that may be the most important thing in life… to live, and love, and laugh… to experience existence.  I am a tiny little creature on one small blue planet in a vast and seemingly never-ending ocean of space and stars.  The iron in my blood was forged in the centers of distant stars that were born, grew old and died, and littered the universe with their element-rich guts when they finally exploded in an amazing super-nova of stellar fart-gas that it is possible no living intelligent being ever witnessed.  I am insignificant.  And the universe will not miss me when I am gone.  And it may not even know I was ever here.  But I am here to see the sun come up.  That is a duty I continue to perform.

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I know it may look like I am endlessly snapping the same picture over and over again.  But every day the subtle pinks and purples and blues… the oranges and reds… make a different Jackson Pollack painting of the sky.  And I look at it carefully while the dog is impatiently tugging at the end of the leash because she wants to go piddie-paw and poo.  It is a beauty to be bathed in… and I apparently have earned one more to add to my collection.

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January 6, 2016 · 4:22 pm

New Dawns for 2016

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You may recall that one of my obsessive-compulsive collection-addictions is pictures of the dawn sky over eastern Carrollton and Dallas.  So far I have only taken two.  Through Sunday I was still sleeping late with no children to drop off at school.  Just so the numbers match, here is number two;

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So, why not three, you say?  Today is Wednesday after all?  Well, I can’t take a picture of the sunrise when it is overcast and threatening cold rain.  We may have our share of clouds on the horizon this year, with El Nino raging to the West and the jet stream dipping down to Mexico to deliver freezing Arctic blasts thanks to climate change.  Does that mean I expect bad things to be coming my way?  Of course I do.  I am old.  I have six incurable diseases, and I have survived cancer once already.  I am closer now to the day I will die than I have ever been in my life.  And now Donald Trump has the technical possibility of being elected President of the United States.  Who says Jehovah God and the Greek goddess of History don’t have bizarre senses of humor?

But despite the ill omens and the badness I anticipate, life is still good and will not be repressed.  I intend to live for all I am worth.  Have I not earned it, being a public school teacher for 31 years?  Have I not earned it by raising three wonderful kids, one of whom serves this country as a US Marine?  Have I not earned it by picking up dog poop in the park four times a day, and sometimes more off the carpet in the house for the last four years?  I believe in savoring what we have been granted, and using the gifts and abilities given to me by God.  That is why I am still blogging every day for the fourteenth month in a row.  And, miracle of miracles, I am not talking to the wind with no one really listening any more.  When I was blogging on Xanga from 2005 to 2007, I only had one or two followers that even read my stuff… and they didn’t tune in every day.  Some of you have started doing more than just looking at the pictures.  I have evidence in the comments that some of you read my posts all the way to the end.  I thought I was the only blogger that did that.  And I had 276 views last week.  349 the week before.  9651 people viewed my blog in 2015.   I have 87 views in just the three days of this week so far.  I can no longer claim to be the best-written blog that nobody ever reads.  I have to compete now with the other writers who write good stuff.  Ooh… I am doomed.  But I intend to enjoy it.  I have at least one novel in the works to be published.  I have another one already published that should be available at least on Amazon until well after I have curled up my toes and went for a final bye-bye.  Bad things are sure to happen.  But for now, the sun is still coming up every morning in my little world.

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