Know Yourself and Be Yourself

We each have an expedition, yours belongs to you...

It is an act of courage that enriches your experience.

The goal is to keep going and not stop. One step a day is progress while taking none is going nowhere. Sometimes that one step is a motivating pause of reflection and in that moment we then still move upward and forward. There are other days when almost maniacally we take many steps and we breakthrough barriers in leaps and bounds. Other times the grade of the climb is so steep that every stride seems purchased at a painful price. Each type of ascent has its own merit.

It is also perfectly acceptable, actually advisable, to occasionally look back and see how far you have come. The act serves as encouragement to keep climbing. The passage in this life is not to reach the end destination but to prepare for it and make the most of the exploration. Ultimately you will get there but on the way positive steps in the right direction will make the expedition enriching and worthwhile. On rough terrain when the hike is steep and the slope slippery looking up to where you are going is more helpful than looking down. The time will come when you have gone over the jagged rock and up ahead are able look back and revel in the accomplishment.

Regardless of where you are in life you can always look around and find someone better off, someone in about the same condition and someone worse off than you are. All three should be humbling experiences to motivate you to keep going rather than to rate yourself against them and allow you to halt. Others have their own journey, the one you have belongs to you and are responsible for each rung you make on the way up. It never hurts to reach down and give a hand to help someone else over the jagged rock, it is advisable since you will need the aid some day.

Positive thinking, optimism, self-reliance and mutual help are the mental tools that will keep you going and avoid stopping. As we move along our pilgrimage we collect and gather the means to take the next step. Know yourself and be yourself, it is an act of courage that enriches your experience, as well as giving you the wisdom to help others. All roads indeed do lead to a common destination but the mission on the journey upward is to make it worthwhile.

Droplets Of Leaves

Remnants of rain...

Reconstruction Work In Progress

To reach upper levels heavy lifts are required...

Rains of Arizona

Winter rains soak the scorched urban landscape...

Hard rain hits this desert city so infrequently it gives a new meaning to the term desert pavement, which usually refers to the compacted sand and rock on the open range dry desert floor, that creates severe flooding runoff when it does rain. In the urban landscape there is literal man made pavement with insufficient man made drainage to handle the two seasons a year rain hits fast and furious in copious torrents. Just as the natural desert pavement is unable to absorb that amount of moisture into the ground in such a short time, neither can the manufactured pavement of a metropolitan area. It is an intensely exciting period of baptism by immersion and being washed cleaned.

Raindrops fall like bullets in rapid fire machine gun like from the stratosphere above assailing the ground. It happens so quickly with so much force that as it strikes the ground it quickly pools. Even the best inner-city drainage systems are unable to handle these storms. They're built for the gentler more subtle ones that are most likely to occur in between. Since gully washers are so infrequent in the desert the city doesn't have much opportunity to wash off the oil and grime that collects the dust and dirt of daily life. The combination of the two makes anything motorized with wheels float and glide above it with only perpetual motion and grace to guide them. It is a case of driver and all others beware for nature has momentarily asserted control.

These storms are a cause for celebration to urban and suburban desert dwellers. The sky, the air, the roofs, the buildings, the roads, everything is washed clean. The brief period when the storm is pelting the ground everything either dramatically slows or grinds to a complete stop. Indeed for awhile those caught driving in it may be in for as rough a time as intimidating as being stuck in a blizzard in Des Moines. Then slowly the streets and sidewalks drain into any overflow available eventually to make it underground where it will be stored during the long dry spell until the next storm. Life returns to normal only with a fresh, clean new start. The city has been replenished and reborn.

Neoteric Hieroglyphics

Groundwork of the underground culture...

Here Comes The Sun

Just in time for winter solstice...

Winter Leaves In Arizona

In the cool of evening the colors are bright...

Deciduous trees turn and drop leaves in December and January.

The Electric Etch A Sketch

Utilitarian as aesthetic matter...

The perpendicular and horizontal lines that cross the landscape of the sky are omnipresent whether or not the ground beneath them is occupied by humans. Over the decades many of these lines have been buried but still just about everywhere you travel you see poles and lines. They serve as the conduit primarily for electricity which is the foundation of the other technologies of modern life, wireline telephone, cable television and the internet.

There are very few of us that live in contemporary society that would like to live without electricity and at least one of the other services these lines carry. Even wireless is transported at some point through the path of a physical line. Some people view them as marring the landscape, some are oblivious to them and some of us see them as markings on the panorama of state-of-the-art life. We are fascinated by what they transmit as well as viewing them as sketch marks to be recorded and developed into our creative vision of what the world around us looks like. They have a useful mission and utilitarian purpose as well as serving as outlines for images to the creative mind.

The crisscrossing of utility lines, utility poles, streets and traffic lights, rail lines, medians that divide them, sidewalks and shoulders that define them are commonplace but not ordinary due to purpose. They all have function and are the underpinnings of the very civilization we often taken for granted and sometimes curse. Every facet of twenty-first century living in some way or another is dependent upon them. The allure that appeals to me is two-fold. I am fascinated by the intertwining networks that somehow connect to make it all work and the angles and irregularities of the lines and shapes that are like borders on maps in the sky around us. They evoke images for me to record with a camera and then turn into my own work of my creativity.

Against All Odds

Succulents surviving stuck in sand on stucco...

Surfacing For Light

Flower rock climbing to bask in the sun...