Category: personal

Categories
nshrine personal

nshrine.com sees a milestone

Over 25,000 candles have been placed in public shrines (and now private shrines) on nshrine.com. Though it was a public candle in a well-traffic shrine, I don’t feel quite okay about linking directly to it here, as it was a candle of mourning.

So I have mixed feelings about the milestone. Though if you browse a few shrines, you’ll see that there are many playful and even goofy shrines, most shrines and candles are for people to mark or share the sorrows and losses they’ve experienced. So I can’t really jump up and down–“Yay! Another moment of mourning!”–I can be pleased that there’s one more moment where someone expressed something probably best not left unexpressed.

Categories
family glove personal

Going To Have To

Me: Hold on. Glove.
Flora: Daddy, you don’t have to take a picture.
Me: No, I don’t have to. I’m going to.
Flora: Same thing.

Categories
personal walking

On The Other Side

I’m looking mostly for provocation to see myself differently. My life has changed a lot lately, and now I need to make even bigger changes. I’m exhausted emotionally and spending most of my time seeing how high and how low the mood swings can go.

I have enough to think about when I walk and though I’m looking, I’m not giving myself the opportunity to see. I snap pictures without really acknowledging what I’m looking at, or thinking about what they mean. After I loose the context and I see them on the screen, I give myself the time then, and I get it, sometimes.

Categories
divination personal

Finding Ground

Where and how I fit in has been in a swirl lately. I’ve had plenty to think about, too much to think about.

Normally I look for signs to provoke new thought and to think differently. The most striking things I see now are those that stop thought. A light pole on a freeway bridge next to a bus stop has a twisted, half-painted ground wire. It’s home enough for a cluster of moss. It’s home enough to say ‘shhhhh’.

Categories
divination personal

Healthy Trick

I was wandering around, waiting for the phone to ring when I found a great place to talk. As soon as I saw the bench, I saw the coyote. It walked by the bench and then into cover and turned to look at me. I was able to get the camera out before it left.

The space others leave behind by others can welcome us in ways solitude can’t. Knowing that the coyote had been there seconds before made the phone ring clearer and my greeting stronger.

Categories
divination interpretation personal

Holding The Blade

I gained some resolve recently. I’m not sure how, but it feels good. At the moment it hit I was between appointments, rushing between pleasures, a little lost and late.

I saw this toy sword on the cramped landscaping of some business or another (a car lot, I think). The blade in the sun and the handle in the shade. Which to choose.

Categories
personal technology

Finding Voice

I went to Wordcamp Portland yesterday.  Though I couldn’t stay for the whole event, and I’m far from a wordpress power user, it was still quite inspirational.  I met good, positive people and saw some shining examples of people doing what they loved with good tools.

Though I learned something immediately useful, and somethings that helped me rethink my weak approach to blogging, it could have been a day long conference on fly-tying, or quilting, or chain-saw sculpture. In my current situation, I just need to know that things can work.

Categories
interpretation personal streetfinds

Find Love First

I’ve troubled myself a great deal recently wondering whether or not I’ve missed opportunities that could of made my financial situation better. I think about the professional ambition that I avoided thinking that it was either dishonest or too prideful, or at least something other than the love of good work.

I found this sign while fretting. No doubt it fell off of a sofa or exercise machine while someone was hauling it off the curb, but out of context it was a great find. I realized that I have worked hard to get what’s most important to me to be ready for what’s free to me now. It’s hard to remember that because it’s all around me every day. I’ve got a great wife and great children, and that wasn’t even remotely possible to me in the past.

Categories
interpretation personal streetfinds

Paperclip

(No pictures this time.  My camera is dying and I can’t afford a new one just yet, besides, it’s just a paperclip.  Imagine it.)

On my walk, I was being overly concerned about money.  About a block a way, I saw something shiny in the gutter, something certainly metal.  I’ve found jewelry plenty of times before and this seemed a possibility.

A paperclip holds paper together by being bent, and clinging to a bent shape.  Its grip is relatively loose, and temporary.  A staple holds by piercing.  I will think about staples.

Categories
personal walking

Meditating

I was remembering a time when I meditated a lot, sometimes for most of the day for days in a row. I saw this several blocks later after my mind had already drifted away.

What I had remembered most was that, near the end of my practice of meditation, I had read something about a form of walking meditation. I think what I do is the opposite of that now.