October 08, 2025

Dandelion

There is no quit in a Dandelion. And no stopping them. They come up in the cracks of sidewalks and through the roadways of hot asphalt. Smiling and waving in the breeze. They have wanting and caring figured out. They know it is possible to want the wrong things for the wrong reasons in the wrong ways. And that it is possible to want the right things for the right reasons in the right ways. That comes down to Right Wanting and Wrong Wanting.

They understand the same thing about caring. It is possible to care about the wrong things in the wrong ways for the wrong reasons. And it is possible to care about the right things in the right ways for the right reasons. Right Caring and Wrong Caring make all the difference in our lives and in the world. Right wanting and Wrong Wanting make the world what it is and what it can yet be.

If we live in the service of the right kind of wanting and the right kind of caring, we will be aligned with the Tao of Life and Being, and we will spend our life doing the right things in the right ways, at the right time, in the right place, and that is all it takes to make the world a better place, so why waste another minute not doing it that way? Not even a Dandelion can do better than that!

October 07, 2025

December Moon — Lake Brandt, Bur-Mil Park, Greensboro, North Carolina
Striving to make things better makes things worse
in a lot of ways. The moral of this story is to sit it out.
Ride it out. Bear the pain. And the best way to do that  
is to develop a sense of humor. The people in the worst pain
rarely have anything in the way of a sense of humor. And just
because comedians kill themselves doesn't mean they they had
a sense of humor and it didn't do them any favors. There are
comedians who make their way laughing at other people, never
at themselves. The joke is on us more often than we can bear.
Gets to us after a time. Having enough is all it takes. Having
a short fuse is not a good start to a long and happy life. So,
where do we go to get the right attitude? Everybody thinks the
way they see things is the right way to see things. No one thinks the problem could be with the way they see things. Take 
the people with money, for instance. The multi-billionaires whose problem is that they have more money than they know what 
to do with, and they think, "Why am I miserable with all of this money lying around?" And they start thinking of ways to buy happiness, and begin, say, with a few Supreme Court justices. And maybe a few members of Congress. That ought to do it. The problem is that they have confused having what they want with being happy. There is no correlation at all. But they cannot understand that. All their life they have confused having what they want with happiness everlasting. That's the way they see things. And that's the way they think things are. If you want to be happy everlasting, start with the way you see things. Change that first. Everything falls into place around that. Just sit down and start changing your mind about what is important and keep doing that until happiness everlasting moves in with you. It probably won't take long. Of course, it will be longer than you want it to be, but nowhere near as long as you are afraid it will be. Everybody owes it to themselves to find out how long it takes sitting it out, riding it out, bearing the pain before happiness at last comes calling. Patience comes to those who wait.

October 06, 2025

From the Foothills to the Piedmont–An overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina
We build a life around ourselves simply by doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, when, where and how it needs to be done.  

The key in being able to hold the line against diversions, distractions and denial is maintaining our focus on the twin keys of wanting and caring.

We can want what we have no business having.
We can care about the wrong things in the wrong ways.
There is wrong wanting and right wanting.
Right caring and wrong caring.
Once we are capable of discerning right from wrong in the spheres of wanting and caring, there is only maintaining our focus on right and wrong the rest of the way.

Emptiness, stillness and silence (One thing, not three) is always at hand and is a "very present help in time of trouble."
Taking refuge in emptiness, stillness and silence, and waiting there for reflection to lead to realization and insight is one of the best ways to spend time there is. 

With the right kind of emptiness, etc. at hand, it is Psyche, Tao and us all the way to the end of the way, which is the endless adventure of being alive.

Let's be off, shall we?

October 05, 2005

Sunrise at Penobscot Bay — Stonington Harbor, Deer Isle, Maine

Construction presupposes destruction. Destruction implies construction. Construction/destruction are not two things but one. Yin and Yang are not two things, but one. Light and dark. Right and wrong, Good and bad. All dualities are unities, combos, partnerships. It’s all one big mutuality seeking its partner in the dance of life and being.

What help do we need to be who we are? I need silence for reflection and examination. I look for ways opposition is also assistance, remembering Mike Stanley saying, “Jim, the only way I can be quiet is by playing the drums.” Playing the drums is a way of engaging the art of a self-induced trance state, which is the essential element in all silent reflections. How can I take noise and find silence? By allowing it to disappear into the background and become the essential element in here, now. It is only a matter of focus and concentration and I can enter into contemplation wherever I am.

I see this is an aspect of what Jesus may have had in mind when he said ”Pray always.” And can “drop into silence anywhere, just by shifting from opposition to cooperation, “Letting be what is,” “Going with the flow,” “Being here, now,” “Peacefully abiding, here, now,” and “Seeing where it goes.”

October 04, 2025

Appalachian Trail through the Roan Mountain Highlands — Roan Mountain State Park, Carver’s Gap, Tennessee, mid-June, 2012

How well we live is how well we respond to our environment–how well we do what is called for in each situation as it arises.

We live to do well with our life. To do right by our knacks and abilities and the gifts of our original nature, our innate imagination and inherent intuition.

We are born with everything we need to find what we need to do what needs to be done in each situation that arises our entire life long. We have what it takes to do what it takes to deal with life as it comes throughout the time left for living.

Our life expects certain things of us, requires us to be who we are, doing what is ours to do. When we let our life down, things begin to fall apart. Parents have to do right by their children. Husbands have to do right by their wives and wives, their husbands. People have to do right by other people. When we don’t do our part, it goes from bad to worse in a hurry.

We keep things on an even keel through regular returns to emptiness, stillness and silence, but who does that these days? There is nothing but noise on all sides all the time. When we retreat, it is not to the silence, it is to addiction and denial. And we do not come to terms with ourselves, grow up, make amends, change our way of living and of responding to life as it is lived. We plow through the days like we have done with all the days that have gone before.

The requirement of Psyche/Tao of doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, where it needs to be done, how it needs to be done is ignored by everyone all of the time. And it is the only thing that can get things back to the way they should be in the time left for living. Turning things around starts with us and how we respond to the next situation as it arises. Let’s do it as it needs to be done, shall we?

October 03, 2025

Silver Lake Serenity 04 — Ocracoke Island, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, North Carolina

There are two things standing in the way of happiness all the time and ever after: Caring and Wanting.

When we stop caring about and wanting the wrong things all, of our troubles disappear like that (snaps fingers).

Figure out your Wanting/Caring ratios and you have it made.

Stop wanting Trump to grow up, for instance. Don’t care if he is making things terrible for everyone not a billionaire, and your day is lighter, brighter already (And like what good does all your angst do for any situation anyway?)

Glad to be of help, any time.

Speaking of being of help, any time, allow me to encourage you to use my photos as places of refuge and retreat through these times. Do an internet search for my name and all the places my images are available (ClickASnap, for instance) 24/7. Or how’s this for instance, you know your favorite images? I’m totally serious here: Take screenshots of all of them. Print them out on your printer. Hang them on your wall. Load them on you cell phone. Take your refuge/retreat with you wherever you go. Contemplate the images. Meditate on the images. Allow the images to work their eternal magic on your system/Psyche all the time everywhere. Don’t go disarmed and unprepared into any situation in any day!

All of my photographs offer refuge and retreat to anyone who cares to see them as sources of peace and tranquility, serenity and sanity in all times and places. Drop into the silence any time any place and use your favorite image as a portkey to calm and carefree and you are on you way to balance and harmony like that (snaps fingers). And you would be wrong to not take me. up on this.

On a Mac, you can take a screen shot with Shift/Command/5 and you get handy little handles to control exactly what portion of the screen you capture. Save it to where you want it. Copy and past it to anywhere and you are set for life. What a deal. You are now armed for anything all the time, taking your refuge with you wherever you go.

Tell your friends. Sanity freebies, yours for the taking, Yippie-woopie.

October 02, 2025

A Daisy and a Swallowtail Butterfly become art, not photography

I took the image of the daisy at Pike Nursery and disappeared the background in Photoshop just by asking it to “select subject,” and copy/pasted it to a black background. Then I asked Generative Fill in Photoshop to give me a “Swallowtail Butterfly” in the space I had drawn on the background, selected the one I preferred, and here we are. I could have asked for a “yellow daisy,” as well, but I already had a perfectly acceptable image of the daisy.

Cheating? I can manipulate images using only my camera by slowing the rush of a waterfall adjusting only the shutter speed, and change the “depth of field” by adjusting the aperture. I can make far away bison appear to be close up by using a telephoto lens, or make everything appear to be in focus by using a wide-angle lens. And where does the line lie between acceptable artistry and cheating? I am going to do what I need to do to produce an image with impact.

There are several ways of producing a mirror image with water. I can walk up on a waiting scene, and I enhance my chances of doing that be getting there early in the morning before the breeze begins to stir on the pond or lake. I can wait for the wind to die down or the children to stop throwing stones in the water. I can come back another day. And I can take the picture of the image I’m after with ripples and waves in the water, select the subject without the water, flip the subject upside down and attach it to itself on my computer, creating a mirror image, and there we are. Every sunrise/sunset is a mirror in the making. “Is it real or is it Photoshop?” Where does enhancement become lying, cheating, stealing?

I can remove distracting power lines and add desired reflections. And I will to produce an image with impact. Let the viewer beware.

October 01, 2025

Julia Lake Attraction — DuPont State Forest, Brevard, North Carolina
How far up the ladder did the Pier builders have to go for permission to do it this way? There should be a plaque with the details, no?
Here is to humor wherever it is found!
There is no difference, to my way of thinking, between heresy and reformation. Jesus was executed for heresy, but he was leading a reformation of the Jewish church of his day, not a rebellion against Roman occupation. The Romans could find no reason for executing him. They were doing the Jews a favor to put Jesus on a cross. The Jewish leadership threatened the Romans with revolution if they didn't comply.

The church is always threatened by reformation, and is quick to claim "Heresy!" to justify orthodoxy's opposition to reform. Orthodoxy killed Jesus. And has led the charge of "Heresy!" against everyone opposing one aspect of doctrine or another throughout the centuries from then to now, denying the need to "enlarge the tent" by "lengthening the cords" and "moving the stakes," which is always needed and always opposed by hierarchy.

It is the way the game is played. No?

October, 2025

Riding on a Dirt Road — Looking for Senes in Rural North Carolina near Winston Saleam
A woman on a black Horse has been my metaphor for my intuition guiding, directing, me through my life, from where I am here,  now to what is called for and what is calling me to do in each situation as it arises. I know it when I see it, sense it, the way I knew a woman on a black horse was the photograph that needed to be taken as I sat with my wife in Tom Phillips' pickup truck driving through the desert in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. 

Tom was the Zen Master of Navajo photography guides in 2006 and he was driving us to the first stop in his list of "shooting locations" in Monument Valley when we met a Navajo woman riding a black horse. I didn't tell him to stop for the photograph of her on the horse because he was the one who was supposed to know these things, and because I had no idea of what the etiquette was with me taking personal photos of Navajos in their native environment, so I let the opportunity pass. And remembering it has kept it as the sole failure to listen to my intuitive recognition of the situation at hand. From that moment, I have been quick to do what I know cries out to be done. I live to get the picture no matter what. And the woman on a black horse is in every photograph I take, and she is even becoming visible from time to time to commemorate every time that she is present in my mind as the shutter clicks and the photo is taken.

What is your metaphor for your own intuitive sense of what is called for? How do you make your intuition real in the time and place of your living? Live to know these things and to serve your intuition above all else in the time left for living, no matter what!

September 30, 2025

Eno Reflections — Eno River State Park, Durham, North Carolina
Psyche and the Tao commune with each other,
share a common language, 
and an environment that includes us
in the work to be what is needed and do what is called for
in each situation as it arises.

We only need to get on board with them
and bring our gifts--the things we do best
and enjoy doing most--to life in the here, now
for balance and harmony, rhythm and flow
to come to life in our life
and for things to come together for the true good of all.

It only takes a quick Look around to see how far away
we are from that,
and know that the entire country/world is long overdue 
for a return to emptiness/stillness/silence and sitting there
as an attentive presence tuning in to Psyche and Tao
and participating in life together with them for the common good of all concerned.

This isn't woolgathering, daydreaming or building castles in the air. It is returning to the center and foundation of life together with Psyche and Tao, regaining the balance and harmony of life together with them and the time and place of our living,
in order to see and serve what is called for here, now as one with each other and all others who are living as one with all others and with Psyche and Tao.

As the Buddha would say, "It only means peaceful abiding here, now."

What is too hard about that?

September 29, 2025

The Tree on the Hill — Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina
I hired Tom Phillips, the Zen Master of Navajo Photography Guides in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. My wife and I were crowded into the only seat of Tom's pickup driving through the desert on the way to the  first stop on Tom's list of "Shooting Locations," when we met a Navajo woman on a black horse coming toward us through the sagebrush. "There is the photograph!" The realization hit me like a physical blow to the body and I ignored it as we passed the rider and Tom nodded to her. This was the experience I needed to have had before our trip to Monument Valley, and what I came to Monument Valley to have and learn from.

I have carried The Woman On The Black Horse with me ever since. She has directed me to a life time of photographs, and is part of every scene I walk through, and smiles back at me from every photo I take. Here she is in this one--she was kind enough to pose from a distance and wink at me before disappearing back into my memory cache. Of course, I winked back and waved. We have a thing going. Every time she gives me an intuitive nudge, I give her a Namaste bow and do what at the situation calls for as the situation calls for it, around the clock throughout each calendar year (And we have been doing this since 2006).

I'm able to bring her into the here and now of photographic reality thanks to Photoshop's AI feature, "Generative Fill." 

Create a space in an image to be filled with whatever you want placed there and type in the directions, like, "Navajo Woman on a Black Horse," and the Ap gives you three choices. If you don't like any of them, you can request three more choices. And here you are: The Tree on The Hill with a Navajo Woman on a Black Horse, both of them winking to you and laughing. My secret partners in every photograph I take.