“Settle down people! I know this is exciting, but we need to get started. I am glad so many PEOPLE have joined us to hear the plan for our new great Godly nation. So let us begin! “

The tumultuous crowd settled a bit, consolidating there excited focus on The Speaker instead of each other.

“This is the preamble: We The People …”

With those words, the energy level jumped again. Many voices exclaimed in excitement at the same time. A few caught the orator’s attention, causing him to pause and look around.

Woman: “Ooooh this is so exciting!“
Person of color: “I can’t wait for this!”
Poor person: “Things are going to change for the better now!”

“Just a moment please!” Summoning an assistant, The Speaker whispered, “who let the livestock in? They should be removed immediately! This is not for them!”

The assistant immediately signaled to roughs and toughs at the various entrances, indicating that said undesirables should be removed instantly. The rest of the crowd looked on with quite a few nods of approval mixed with laughter. Shortly the only faces to be seen were wealthy elder Caucasian gentleman and their various collections of correctly pigmented male sycophants and thugs.

One of the guardian thugs approached. “Sir, there is an acceptable looking foreign gentleman at the door who wishes to join, should we let him in? He is here with his pregnant wife.”

“If he fills out the proper paperwork and has money, he may join us. If he has lots of money, then the paperwork is optional. His wife, of course, cannot, but her unborn child is welcome too.”

A short, rather unpleasant tussle later …

“Let me begin again. We the People, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense …”

At this point, several more voices were raised, again causing The Speaker to pause. “Is there a problem gentlemen?” he asked with mild annoyance.

“We have something to say about that!” one man proclaimed with heat, and many applauded, the loudest being the roughs and toughs.

The Speaker nodded. Looking around at the sea of patriarchal arrogant whiteness before him he said, “Of course! Everyone HERE has the right to say whatever they desire. That is part of the new plan!”

His assistant cleared his throat. “Um sir, we haven’t actually included that in the document.”

The Speaker looked nonplussed for the moment. then he said, “A mere oversight. we expected there might be a few changes as suggested by the PEOPLE before us. We’ll just call this the first amendment.” Scribbling a note on a piece of paper, he continued, “So sir, what is it you wanted to say?”

“With regards to the common defense, I think we all need guns …”

AND SO BEGAN A JOURNEY INTO THE ABSURD.

The post A more perfect union? first appeared on thrumyeyes.

What does your happiness look like?

The last couple weeks have been downright enlightening for me.

Let me back up even more. I have been struggling (again?) for a while now. Nothing new to someone who has way to much time on their hands to simply think. My current (constant?) dilemma is finding (creating?) a meaning for my life … or more accurately for life in general. It is by no means a new or original thought, but I firmly believe life has no specific meaning. Much of humanity cannot grasp or accept this thought, so we create explanations that give us comfort and ease the fear such randomness generates. We create cosmic scapegoats called gods. We assign polarity to everything and call it good vs evil, then make ourselves feel important by assuming we are on the “right” side of this faux polarity. And all too many of us let OTHERS decide what determines good vs evil in the first place, giving up our own capacity for self determination.

This type of thinking has resulted in the world we live in today. A world being shattered by divisiveness and fear, often in the name of a purpose assigned by SOMEONE ELSE. And too many of us don’t even know what it is we actually seek. What IS our purpose after all? Why are we even here? Many of us avoid the question altogether (at least on a conscious level). It is so much easier not to even ask. That guy over there has a compelling answer. I’ll just go with that one.

For a long time now it has been clear to me that the each and every one of us is nothing more than a minuscule collection of energy in the mysterious vastness we call the universe. On a cosmic level, we leave no discernible impact. Those choices we struggle with at any given moment really mean nothing in this immensity. We are nothing but a infinitesimal spark in an ongoing infinite energetic explosion. In other words, our lives really have no meaning. At least a meaning we are capable of understanding.

I am not preaching nihilism here. In fact it is quite the opposite. Since to me there is no set meaning, it is evidently up to each of us to make our own. We each need to decide what we will choose to value, and how we can bring that value to life in a way that allows us to embrace our existence.

This has been my struggle. I lost track of what I value. I have simply been going through the motions, wondering why I bother at all. It all seemed so pointless that I really just craved oblivion. I am not saying I sought death. Just wanted off the ride. It was fun while it lasted, but I am done with it now. This lack of inertia had me not getting enough sleep and simply not really taking care of myself. Then memorial day weekend came and I sought further escape. Let it all go. Have some meaningless fun and just enjoy. That food was good. The couple of beers hit just right. That hit was a deep one. yes it will all go away …

And suddenly I faced an epiphany driven choice …

I (WE) am the creator of my own reality. This is a simple fact. If I (WE) do not like the current reality, just change it. Also a simple fact. So my choice was do I just give up altogether and fade away? Or come back to the reality I (WE) choose. I chose to come back …

… and ended up in the emergency room. Which opened the door for a new journey of self … discovery? … no … CREATION. Ultimately leading to a profound question that stopped me in my tracks for I never placed it before myself in exactly this way.

What does your happiness look like?

At first I really did not know how to answer. I looked deep, and said this:

I don’t know the answer to that question. Happiness is an ever flowing river to me. Refreshing, but never the same twice.
It is not a fixed thing. that is why I can’t answer the question. Many different situations might result in me feeling “happy” and every one of them could be a different experience generating different feelings within me. There is no single definition.
Happiness is this mystical being that everyone seems to think they seek, when it is simply there to be recognized. If you insist on a definition, it is the absence of negative feelings. That’s the best I can do.

Me

For some their search is for happiness, not meaning (if they have a search at all). To me happiness is just part of the whole. We are defined by a spectrum of emotions. I view it as a sphere of emotional energy. Each emotions just represents an area on the surface; each is countered by its opposite on the other side. If we seek only one part of the sphere, we are cheating ourselves of completion. So I do not seek happiness. I seek the center. Once I can find that and hold there, I will truly encounter the me that I am. And I will be complete.

If you are still here, thanks for staying. I know this was a long one. I have shared a little of MY truth. Now I give you an opportunity to explore your own, and maybe even get a little closer to it. So tell me ….

WHAT DOES YOUR HAPPINESS LOOK LIKE?

The post What does your happiness look like? first appeared on thrumyeyes.

That particular concept means nothing to me. I never thought of January 1st as being the beginning of anything other than an arbitrary month in a calendar made by man. To me the new year does not start until spring. Winter is the end of the cycle.

Yet this supposed beginning has been ingrained in our social consciousness for a couple of thousand years now, so I can’t just ignore it completely. When I was younger it was just another excuse to party. Those who embrace the idea of this being a beginning will talk about setting new goals and starting new paths. Often talk is as far as they get. Or some will jump into their new direction with focus and energy, but after a short period the realities of life and the difficulties of change will kick in, and everything reverts to the way it was before. Some may succeed in creating the change they seek.

The process is different for everyone.

I used to toy with the concept of New Year’s resolutions, but they never really stuck for me. My difficulty is that I am too now oriented. I am not really goal driven. This is not to say that I do no seek to improve myself, or change those aspects of self that no longer serve the path I am on. Rather it a choice of the moment. I don’t think in terms of “this year”. My focus is “this moment in time” which might extend as far as “today”.

Recently my energy has been on the negative side. Much is happening in my life and the world at large that does not resonate with me … or at least the me that I want to be. It is so easy to blame this negativity on outside events, because frankly humanity is on the cusp of a momentous decision on the ultimate path our communal soul will follow. But the reality is a negative reaction to what is going on outside us is a choice … even if not always a conscious one. The rest of the world is going to do what the rest of the world is going to do. WE can only change our own choices, which include how we react to what the rest of the world is doing. The is a fundamental truth.

It is also a truth that is easy to forget.

Every moment has the potential to start fresh. If the path we are on is not working for us, change direction. It is truly the choice of a moment. In practical terms, this might be a little more of a challenge. Changing direction mid-step could have unintended consequences. However, we are built in such a way that we reset every morning. Thus EVERY day is an opportunity for a fresh start.

So instead of a New Year’s resolution, I am setting a New Day’s resolution. Today’s resolution was inspired by the rising sun. For no matter how bad things may seem. the sun continues to rise every morning, even if we cannot always see it.

This morning it was quite visible to me.

The post A fresh start first appeared on thrumyeyes.

momentous

mō-mĕn′təs

adjective

Of utmost importance; of outstanding significance or consequence.

From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

A few days ago my morning started as it always does. I woke up because for various reasons my body decided it was time to wake up. On this particular morning my reaction to waking up was one of pleasant expectation. It varies depending on the quality of my sleep, the nature of my dreams, and the weather. The mood being appropriate, I set out doing the morning rituals with energy (not always the case). These rituals include getting my self started on the day’s journey and attending to Her Most Royal and Beloved Majesty, Brown Dog. Of course she has her own rituals as well. A quick(?) timeline of the morning:

• Wake up
• My ‘Behind closed doors’ stuff
• Bribe Brown Dog to take the medication she is currently taking
• Turn on the computer, and make sure all the tools I am likely to use during the day are current and functioning
• Stimulate my mind a bit (translation … play some games)
• Notice Her Majesty is demanding my attention, meaning it is time to give her a Dental Chew, one of the collection of goodies that qualify as Doggy Crack
• Enjoy watching the dance of pure pleasure Brown Dog performs when I give her said yummy
• Go back to what I was doing
• Notice Her Majesty is demanding my attention, meaning it is time to go out on the deck with Brown Dog so we can “meditate” together

And so the post actually begins …

I have seen the view to the left countless times. I have take hundreds of photos of that view …so many that I thought there was no point in taking any more.

EPIPHANY

Stillness does not exist. Every aspect of EVERYTHING is in constant motion. On a macrocosmic scale everything is constantly moving, even if from a local perspective it does not seem so. On a microcosmic scale the ‘stuff’ that everything is made of is always in motion. Stillness does not exist.

What follows from this is that we can never view something the exact same way twice. Thus a new photo would be a NEW photo. Our perceptions might not agree. And so we limit ourselves.

PERSONAL STAGNATION IS A STATE OF MIND

If everything seems stale and repetitive, that is because we choose to perceive it as so. But it can’t be. So we need to change our perception. How? Embrace the moment. I’ve said it before. The past is past, unalterable. The future is a shaping idea, not realized until its moment comes. THIS moment is the only real truth.

All of this hit me in a glorious moment of release. Suddenly all that went before was gone from my awareness, and the yet to be was … well … yet to be. I simply breathed in THIS moment, and it was pure bliss. Then I took out my phone/camera/whatever the hell it is and took a few NEW (new New nEw neW) pictures. The two above and a couple of Brown Dog’s

MOMENTOUS DECISION

Do I lie down?

Yes. I do.

The only thing that creates equivalence between THIS moment and THAT moment is that we will be inevitably faced with a choice. The choice may be to simply be or not. Or maybe it will be more involved than that. Every choice we make determines the qualities of the next moment. This ultimately means that

EPIPHANY GROWS

EVERY choice we make is the most important decision of the moment. In other words, it is a MOMENTOUS decision in the purist sense of the word. The very NEXT moment is determined by what happens in THIS moment. This is a basic fact of existence ( at least if we have a linear view of reality. It could be that all these moments happen simultaneously, but that does not really change what I am saying here).

SIMPLIFY

Embrace THIS moment. Make MOMENTOUS decisions. Find the inherent peace and joy of doing so.

Live a momentous life.

The post A momentous life first appeared on thrumyeyes.

• This website is fully functional now that it has been remade.
•  Start with the body → the website has also been completely remade and is now fully functional.
• thru my eyes by taochild → I had to rebuild the site from scratch. it is fully functional now but far from complete
• The odd ramblings of a mind that does not quite fit → the website has also been completely remade and is now fully functional. Now I just need to post something!
• PAX Nation → It is again fully functional, but it also needs a lot of work and probably a lot of modification.

The other websites either do not need much done to them, I have yet to get to them, or most likely I do not know WHAT I want to do with them. My momentum is still strong, so it is likely all of them will get a least a superficial makeover. The next challenges include actually posting things and then getting others to read what I post. The first I have already begun (even if mostly here). The second might be more a matter of luck or accident than anything!

If anybody is reading these posts other than myself (and maybe my family), they might be wondering why I have so many sites. The short answer is: “That is a very good question!”. The long answer is really too long not to require a rather wordy post of its own (which maybe I will do at some point), but suffice to say each site represents a specific area of interest for me, and it seemed easier to me to separate those interest instead of combining them all into one extremely extensive site. I have enough of a challenge getting people to my simpler sites!

Now that I have made a level of progress that even makes ME feel like I have accomplished something, I might have to slow down on the design side an maybe start POSTING a few creations!

Until the next time!

P.S. I am still pretty sure I am talking to myself.

The post And so it begins … first appeared on thrumyeyes.

The combined result is the ME I am today. This ME often has me double taking when I look in the mirror. This ME has me wondering not only about what is next, but what WAS that led me to be … well … ME. In one sense I have not changed much at all. I have simply shed layers of illusions that “defined” the me that I thought I was, leaving me closer to the ME that I AM.

One of the changes has been a loss in interest in many activities that (I thought) used to define me. Among these was the blogging I embraced for a while. I kept my many blogs alive, but only in a “plugged into respirator” sense of alive. Three years ago I was going to restart this project along with others related to it. It seems I am just getting around to it now.

I am starting over with all of these ideas. I am incorporating what was, but shaping things differently, and approaching everything with a new perspective. This site is no longer anything more then me reintroducing myself to … you guessed it … ME.

As with the last time I restarted this site, I am announcing it with a new logo. Actually the whole site is a complete makeover. Only fitting, since the same applies to ME. I do not know if anyone will actually visit this site. I do not even know if I will maintain any continuous presence here one I am done with the current makeover. But in this moment I want and need to write this post. And so a new journey begins.

The post Maybe I should re-re-introduce myself first appeared on thrumyeyes.

Three or four years later it finally sunk in that I did not have the social skills, aptitude, or even drive to make any kind of living doing this, so it shifted more towards a hobby. As social networking blossomed, blogs became more about branding than expressing oneself, and my interest waned even more. Yet I kept the blogs alive, partly because I didn’t want to lose the content that I had already created, some of which I was quite proud of. I posted increasingly less often, until I was essentially just paying for storage.

I finally realize how pointless this was, so downgraded my various blog related expenses, but keeping minimal setups (and learning ways of consolidating) to keep the content. Unfortunately this often resulted in me having to rebuild from scratch and probably losing content. The world, technology and I started to change very quickly (in many ways NOT for the better), and I stopped doing anything except constantly updating the associated software. Of course this almost always broke the blogs, so periodically I would step up and fix them all again, and maybe even make a post or three.

Being as slow in the uptake as I can be, it again took me a while to realize how silly this was, and I firmly told myself: “Self! Either commit to the hobby again or call it quits and find a new project that you CAN commit to!!” I cried for a bit due to my harsh tone to myself then sucked it up and made a commitment and a plan. I would remake my blogs (at least the ones that I still valued)! I would make them more functional, prettier and start posting again! I had clear ideas and a heart of fire. LET’S DO THIS!!

Three years later:

True to my word and intent, this is the first post of this particular reworked blog. It just took me a few years. The above images are comparing the old logo (left) to the new one (right). The whole look of this site has also been changed. This “blog” will give updates to what has changed in all my blogging projects for anyone who is interested … basically writing for myself.

I have re- worked, imaged, started, thought  several of my other projects, though there is much work to do on all of them (and some have yet to be started). I won’t go into THAT much detail right now. Being the only viewer of most of these blogs, I would only bore myself by doing that. Suffice to say I have FINALLY begun my overhaul.

It remains to be seen how long this new found drive and motivation will last.

ADDENDUM (July 29, 2022) 2 years and 1 week after posting this. I have now ALMOST done what I said I was going to do here. WOOHOO! Progress!

The post Reinventing the wheel first appeared on thrumyeyes.

Saint Augustine has been quoted as saying “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page”.

I want to be an avid reader, and there have been times that I have been. But these days I seem stuck on the same page. The book got a little darker than I wanted, and I put it down weeks ago. Until recently, I simply did not want to pick it up again. But as scary as the story might get at times, if we don’t keep reading … we will never know how it turns out. It is really silly to hide from a book that hasn’t even been fully written yet. I made the mistake of getting caught up in other people’s chapters, thinking that the pages I am writing are inextricably tied to  said chapters. My mistake.

One I often make.

But I found my courage again. Or maybe my inherent stubbornness has had enough of my hiding under the sheets. Either way I am back again for the nonce.  I will not whine about my journey stalling, or make big promises about where it is going, for neither is particularly productive at the moment. Nor would there be much truth to the words.

No journey ever truly stalls. Even if we seem to stay in place, it is only in a relative sense. We are a small speck on a tiny planet that is both revolving and rotating in a small galaxy that is also constantly moving; said galaxy part of a moving cluster of galaxies; all part of an inconceivably large universe that is also in constant motion, How can we say that our journey has stopped. Each moment we are in a different point in the space-time continuum, and we will (probably) never cross that point again.

When seen from this perspective, stagnation is purely a mindset.

Time for me to shake that mindset. Bold words. Let us see if I can turn said words into action now. My journey is far from over, unless I call it over. I do not know what is next. Perhaps I will continue the promised book, for even if never read there is power in the writing. Or maybe my wander lust will find another outlet that is beyond sight for me right now. Wherever my path takes me, I will begin reading (and writing) again. The Book of Life; The Book of MY Life, is far from over yet.

The post Here be dragons … so I’ll move over here instead first appeared on thrumyeyes.

So far, it is mostly none of the above.

The photo site is bursting with photos, with many more to add. There are two issues there. 1) There are about as man people who visit THAT blog as visit THIS one. And that person isn’t all that interested in buying photos. B) The software that allowed me to actually SELL my photos randomly stopped working. Good thing my fan doesn’t want to buy anything!

My Don Quixote complex is running strong. It doesn’t help matters that I actually made a good call recently, not only giving PAX Nation the illusion of exposure, but gaining a few new members, no doubt as crazy as I am. This has encouraged me to push harder, to the point that PAX Nation has now become my main focus. I still want to wander the world. I just might be tilting with all the windmills I encounter along the way.

I also continue to not write my books. By the time I write The Tao of Picnic, my memory of events might border on fiction … which may actually improve said events. Ironically, much of it is already written, since a lot of it will come directly from this blog. I just need to catch that disease called discipline. Unfortunately to catch something one needs to be exposed to it, and my social circle (which essentially includes me and Brown Dog), is severely lacking of infected folk.

I am not sure if I should be proud or ashamed that I managed to make an update for any interested in this blog into a commercial for some of my OTHER blogs. I may not be infected by discipline, but apparently the advertising bug has gotten into my system. Until the next time folks! Maybe I will have something more interesting to share!

The post The digital journey continues first appeared on thrumyeyes.

Part of the extra weight was a hard drive, to store all the evidencephotos. By the time I got sidetracked to Ohio, I had about 4000 (yep … thousand) pictures on that hard drive. Unfortunately, due to the constant, unplanned uprooting of my life at the time … the hard drive got … misplaced.

As one might expect, I was a bit devastated by this. I had access to copies of many of the photos, but the originals … let’s just say my character grew three times that day. In a way it seemed I had invalidated a few months of my life. But ya can’t change what ya can’t change.

In the past few weeks, I have been upgrading my photo site, to make it more functional, add more photos, and add the capacity to (gasp) sell said photos (had to be done). Despite my “loss”, I still had a couple of thousand pics to sort through and upload … the vast majority NOT on the site.

It turns out … 2 years later … that I in fact did NOT lose most of those photos. I … surprisingly … did the smart thing and actually backed up the back up drive, without even remembering I did it. I may have lost a few photos, but the vast majority were actually hiding in plain site right here on the computer I picked up in my travels. Most of these photos are now available on the photo site (or soon will be).

It just goes to show you that if you let things go, they might just come back to you.

P.S. All of the original photos form this site are available on the photo site. You can even BUY them if you feel so inclined … but either way they are often higher quality versions than displayed here. Swing on over and take a look.

The post Stop seeking and ye shall find first appeared on thrumyeyes.