Explorations And Wanderings

Writing, prose, spilled thoughts, photography and some observations on life: Putting it out there just to see what happens

[outtherenw]

Wandering the deserted streets surrounding the skeletons of a once vibrant community now collapsing into the sea.

Winos and wanderers living in the shadows…
I’d sometimes drink with them, looking for something…. 
A glimpse of wisdom A taste of the past.
Ghosts of a lost era 
Steinbeck, Doc Ricketts….. 
So much history here

And now It’s more like Disneyland

………………………

Cannery Row, Montery, California. Mid 70’s

[purplebuddhaproject]

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius (via cyclicality)

[michellepsychologist]

Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.

Albert Einstein / Awake Society (via awake-society)

[michellepsychologist]

Drop the craving for self, for permanence, for particular circumstances, and go straight ahead with the movement of life.

Alan Watts, Become What You Are (via awake-society)

[alanwatts-blog]

[wnq-anonymous]

Bad things are always going to happen in life. People will hurt you, but you can’t use that as an excuse to hurt someone back.

Anonymous (via wnq-anonymous)

[purplebuddhaproject]

Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.

Gary Snyder (via purplebuddhaproject)

[fiftyyearstoolate]

[outtherenw]

What an amazing portrait!

[outtherenw]

Flirting with darkness, dancing with death

So…. I search Tumblr looking for blogs related to wisdom and aging. One blog, sparse in content. Not bad, but not much! “Getting Old” has a handful more- by teens and twenty somethings…

In another blog, I’ve been sharing my photography, to a very appreciative audience, of the beauty sometimes found in cemeteries.

I scan the blogs of many that “like” or reblog my photos, and many are penned by young, dark, creative types, some, by typical ‘invincible’ teens…. Some are very much a reflection of my former much younger self, others are very dark souls, seemingly filled with obsessions of violence, gore and serial killers. These are the ones that really frighten me.

I scan the written word blogs and 98% of the content is about falling in and out of love, with all the gut wretching and nearly indescribable flights of emotion that dwell in those young lovers hearts.

I’m approaching death from a very different angle now. In my work, I’m on the front lines with those that are in hand to hand combat with our dark companion….

Many of my friends are gone now and there’s only ONE relative left from my parents generation, and she’s unsound.

Yes, while many of my followers are flirting from a distance with our dark companion, I am dancing with him.

[jumblepusher]

Herman Leonard. “Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, Club Downbeat, 52nd Street”. 1948. New York, NY, USA. (Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Hasselgård, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman & Jack Robbins).

[outtherenw]

Ohhh. to go back in time and be THERE!!! What ecstasy....

[michellepsychologist]

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (via awake-society)

[observando]

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein (via observando)