We can think of the end of the world 
in a number of ways. 
Apocalypse is one way to do it.
Drop enough atomic weapons,
creating a "nuclear winter" 
and all life would cease to exist,
ending the world for all living things.

An esoteric could end the world 
for her-or-him-self
by taking a vow of silence and poverty
and closing themselves off from all 
association with the world of social interaction.

We could end the world by limiting or stopping
our primary associations with the world as we know it.

We could identify certain aspects of life in the world
which we decide to no longer engage in
and effectively ending the world we lived in yesterday
by going on a diet, say, and starting life in a new world today.

"The end of the world" can be a metaphor,
and it can be an event.

What are some of the ways the world as you know it
need to end for you?
What are some of the ways the world as it could be
need to begin for you?

Today is Easter Sunday.
In what ways could you "rise from the dead"
and begin living life anew?

We are familiar with the phrase "Turning over a new leaf."
We could also think about transforming our life 
by living in a new world.

People do it all the time. 

Most of the people who voted for Trump 
did not vote FOR Trump. 
They voted AGAINST Democrats. 
They will vote against any Democrat.
It's a problem for every election.

The Extreme Right Propaganda Media Machine 
is at work 48 hours a day spewing out
the twenty-eight ca-billion reasons
to not vote ever for a DEMONCRAT!!!
And people are raised on that from birth
so that voting is not what it once was
before the Newt Gingrich era
and the politics of polarization changed
the way business is done with propaganda year-round
and gerrymandering ongoing in every district
tilting the table in Republicans' favor in all elections
all the time.

The age of Democracy is past 
and even the pretense of Democracy is on shaky ground.
Where do we go from here is the question 
for the foreseeable future.

Spiritual reality is numinous in the sense
that it can be sensed but not said.

Physical reality can be weighed, measured, seen, felt,
defined, said...

I don't know if Psychic reality is the same as spiritual
or on a different level all its own.
I lean toward different all its own,
in that it can announce its presence
by splitting wood and knives,
and slamming doors among other things.

How many levels of reality are there?
And why do we think we know all there is to know
about things that matter?

And reading stars and tea leaves?
Do they warrant serious consideration
when it comes to knowing things beyond the obvious
and taken for granted things?

It is all a mystery to me.
I have no idea how it all ties together,
or if it does.
And I don't know who does.

But, I know plenty of people
who think they know it all,
and that the way they see things
is the way things are.

I call that arrogant and self-centered.

When Trump was running for his first term of office,
I lived in South Carolina
and Lindsey Graham was stumping for Trump
not far from my house. 
His most memorable line in that speech was,
"I know he's a rascal and no Boy Scout,
but at least he won't take our guns away."

His speech was not pro-Trump,
but anti-Democrat.

Nothing changes over time.

This is the strategy that will get Trump elected
for a third term, and a fourth...
Assuming he doesn't just declare himself to be King of America
before this term is finished.

The Extreme Right Propaganda Media Machine
has been at work for a generation or longer
laying the groundwork for "Anybody but a Democrat"
mentality nationwide.
The indoctrination has been effective and is complete.
No Democrat can run against it and survive/win.

And when the country goes to hell,
at least it wasn't Democratic.

The western landscape overwhelmed me. 

Canyonlands, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde, Arches, Yellowstone, Death Valley, the Tetons, Bryce and Zion, Yosemite, Mesa Verde, Glacier and Grand Canyon, and Crater Lake in the US, then Banff and Jasper in Alberta all left me with the feeling that I missed too much because it was too much for me to experience and frame with a 35mm Camera. And even though I made multiple trips to several of the parks, I am not finished, and cannot imagine being finished.

I was able to spend late October and early November for ten years running on Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and returned each year for 12 or more years to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway, Shenandoah, Acadia, Baxter State Park in Maine, Congaree National Park in South Carolina are all I feel like I "did right by," and cannot imagine what I would photograph that I haven't already photographed in these "close to home" parks.

The Western Landscape eludes me. And I'm planing passing on heaven and spending eternity walking through the western parks to my satisfaction before moving on to the Cosmos and all it has to offer. I can barely wait to get started.

In a land where money rules
everything is owned by the one
who has the power to cut money off from
and provide money to.

Which makes everything in the land
subject to the caprice of the person
in charge of the distribution of money,
whose greatest pleasure is the power
of his position in pushing people around
and making them bow to him
and tell him loudly how majestic and wonderful
he is.

The irony is that everyone knows how pathetically 
mad he is--how sad and tragic he is,
and what a comedic presence he presents as a shadow
that goes with him everywhere he goes, which he knows not,
thinking only that he is great beyond measure
when the truth is that the King is wearing no clothes.

There are people who take religion seriously.
Qualifying them for a psychological diagnosis of delusional,
if not schizophrenic.

They sometimes hear voices and see visions,
and frequently speak of "God's will."

What starts out with them
"taking things on faith,"
quickly morphs into certainty and conviction,
leading them to transform  things they believe
into factual reality in no time at all.

People who have been "brainwashed"
have to be "deprogrammed"
and are sometimes slow to transition
back into "normal reality."

How does religion escape the designation
of psychological abnormality?
Perhaps because of the large percentage of
the worldwide population who are so affected?
Which means we are living in a certifiably crazy
environment wherever we live. No?

We are on our own from the start,
and our life is a reflection of--
evidence of--
the quality of the company we keep.

We are walking/talking exhibitions
of who has influenced us throughout our life.
We are who we hang with.
From the books we read
to the coffee we drink.

When you look at us,
you see where we have been
and who we have been with.

I am proud of my crew,
which includes all of you!
And I look forward to the rest of the way!

You are the best sounding board I could hope for!
And sounding boards are the most important
addition we can hope for in our life.

Sounding boards are mirrors with a plus.
The plus is reflecting what we say,
enabling us to hear ourselves talking,
and enabling us to correct what we say
to better express what we mean.
That is the kind of help that 
makes it possible for us to 
be who we say we are.

You are helping me find my way along the way!
Where would I be without you???

It occurs to me that we have all had the same problem from the first of us to here, now, and that is coming to consciousness in a world that requires us to make sense of what’s what. 

We start with hearsay to work with and mesh that with our experience of life as we find it, including what other people tell us about what they have done with it, folding it into a “reasonable,” to us, frame work and calling it “how things are.”

Reality becomes what we say it is, and should always have quotation marks around it as “Reality” because it is never more than we make it out to be, and we have no way of grasping it "as it is," only as it "appears (to us) to be," here, now.

We tell ourselves stories which we repeat to one another throughout generations, embellishing it over time.

The hermits in their huts and caves have their way of seeing things, and the rest of us have our way of seeing things, and that is all there is, how we see things.

No one knows what they are talking about, or what to make of any of it. It works for us for a lifetime, or not, and then we die.

Until then, we are just passing the time as comfortably as possible, like Black Elk and Chief Seattle did before us. I think the best we can hope for is to find--and be--good company along the way.

Reality comes with implied quotation marks attached.
We impose our interpretation/understanding/bias/presumption/etc.
upon everything we look at and "see" what we think is there.

We cannot help it.
We cannot do anything about it.
Projection is what we DO!

If you don't think so, tell me this.
How much of what you see do you think
is the way things are?

Where do you think you get that idea?