Back to the basics is good….and yes, know you’re a Christian and totally respect and honor that….and glad you had a “Buddhist period” some truths are just universal……desire is….interesting…..simplistically, yes, it’s the cause of suffering, and yet, the Buddha actually showed how to hitch your wagon to right desires and qualities like compassion and sympathetic joy with others…..desire has kicked my butt my whole life (whose butt hasn’t it kicked?)….I fought it as a mighty spiritual warrior, and got my lance and visor handed to me….thankfully, I’ve learned how to sit down with desire and deal with it another way…didn’t Jesus say, “Resist not evil?” I don’t imagine he was telling us to indulge evil and compromise with it….so, my dear Christian friend, we are both learning non-resistance, I imagine.

I’ll re-send those images…thanks for wanting to give them another shot, amigo MadDog!

I know a man
He came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman
Like a thorny crown
He said Dolores
I live in fear
My love for you’s so overpowering
I’m afraid that I will disappear

That’s, pretty much me.

The first half of Vonnegut’s work was gut-wrenching. After Breakfast of Champions, I dropped out – just couldn’t get into it. Start with Player Piano and read until you’re bored. Don’t miss Slaughterhouse 5.

The older I get the more I keep going back to the basics. You know that I’m a Christian. However, I remember great truths from my Buddhist period. The Four Noble Truths taught me that desire is ultimately a bummer. The less I want, the less I’ll likely suffer. I’m simplifying my life dramatically. Having no money helps, but it goes further than that.

By the way, I wanted to do your ladybugs and clouds shots, but when I downloaded them and ran them throught Photoshop I got “program error” messages from PS, so I couldn’t do anything with the. Want to try again? I have the lizard. I’d like to have the cloud shot with the pine trees and the ladybugs.

One of my “to dos” is to learn more about Vonnegut…..love the quote. Of course, if you do fall over some “cliff,” enjoy the view on the way down!

Your cliff references got me thinking about something one of my Zen teachers wrote that takes this thread nearer “the edge,” or perhaps even over the cliff. As usual, it’s a koan – no answer, just one more questions that asks, “What will you do with your heart.”

There is an old story about the person being pursued through the jungle by a fierce tiger. She runs as far as she can until she reaches a huge precipice—there is nowhere left to run. She spots a slim vine and, holding onto it, climbs over the edge of the cliff, inching down as far as she can go. She looks up and sees the tiger, drooling at her hungrily. She looks down and sees another tiger waiting beneath, licking its chops. Then she notices that, just out of reach, two little mice are gnawing contentedly on the vine that is her only lifeline. At that moment, she notices, just to her left, another little vine with a strawberry growing on it. She reaches over, plucks the strawberry, pops it into her mouth—and it tastes so sweet! This is the end of the story as it’s told, and is in a sense what every dilemma demands. Yet, we then take that and ask, “Well, where is my strawberry?” We see the tigers, the mice, the life-and-death peril, the angry spouse, the bills, the arthritis—and we want the strawberry!

No one can give us that. No one can tell us. Yet what we are seeking so desperately has never been absent. It’s not just about you and the taste of that sweet fruit. There is someone turning to you each moment and saying, “I can’t taste it. I can’t feel it. I don’t understand. Please, help me.” What will you do?

My wife and I both used to take crazy risks. I remember that last time we went caving she rappelled down about 20 metres into a sinkhole, crawled through the cave with us and climbed out hand-over-hand without a belay. She was four or five months pregnant at the time.

I’m a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut’s earlier work. I like one quotation in particular: “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

Now are risks are “calculated”.

I know you’re careful, and at a profound level, “no risk” would mean “no life,” and neither of us are about that!

I was going to mention Steve Irwin, but I think that the world is ready remember the lesson and move on. The family certainly has. I’m as careful as I can be and still get the shots. I don’t lead a risk-averse life.

Time never changes here. It’s Paradise.

Finally, I think your “cleaned up” site looks great, and I it does seem that everything works more crisply. The images load in a flash on my iMac. Nice work!

Btw, we went back on Standard Time last night…and I woke up, happily, to find I had an “extra” hour…which is silly, if you *really* think about it….have a good week, mate!