Fragments From Floyd: Picture This:

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A runner who doesn't run. A chef who doesn't cook. A writer who doesn't write.

What kind of mental state do you think they'd be in if for two months they didn't. Run. Cook. Write?

I just uploaded this image to a folder I started at the first of October. In the larger directory, there are well over a thousand images I've posted to Fragments in the past. Since starting this newest folder, there are fewer than 10. A photographer who takes no pictures. Is it any wonder I'm cut off from my air supply, my elan vital?

I've been called to task by more than one reader-friend in the past few weeks: Fred, lighten up. Get out more.

Good advice. And I will. And my center will return to the ground under my feet and the blessed now. I'll find remnants of beauty even in the bleak midwinter and words to remind me of their feel, and share it with any willing to walk with me.

But I am deeply disturbed by what is happening beyond Middle Earth where we live. My children are in the shadow or Mordor, and I want that damned ring destroyed. Oh, sorry, got lost in my own early morning fantasies. But you understand: we have to talk about this darned elephant. And more than that, we have to act.

My writing about environmental and health issues is a way of pacing the floor, muttering to myself, drawing up and then scrapping contingencies that should involve ME. Given these global issues so well supported by information so easily attainable by anyone, given an audience of kindred, quasi-kindred and even alien spirits among Fragments readers who will share a common fate, should they not pace the floor with me here, help me in my reflections and conundrums, and find their own purpose in what remains of our time to be agents of positive change here?

Just standing on the banks of Goose Creek for a moment yesterday has given me solace. There is always something about the flow, reflection, motion, and the sound of water that is calming and reassuring. Goose Creek is our surf, our shore, our riverway. We are mostly water, on a water planet. No mystery, then, we find it satisfies our thirst.

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. ~Henry David Thoreau

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. ~Annie Dillard

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea. ~e.e. cummings

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea. ~George Herbert

Comments

Sometimes you do need to stop doing something for a while in order to see what it means to you, I think. And God knows the 'elephant' rampaging ever more loudly all around our poor planet is enough to bring you up short. But important to keep doing the things that give you joy in life, or it's hard to feel the struggle has any point.

Posted by: JeanG | October 26, 2005 7:29 AM

Been meaning to talk to you about that. Like any tool, a photographer's eye rusts and grows dull when left unused. I didn't sell you all that great Nikon equipment so it can gather dust in a drawer.

While I admire your devotion to your causes you need to realize that the only accomplishment that comes from banging your head against a rock wall is that it feels better when you stop.

Take it from someone who spent 40 years out there in the trenches trying to enlighten an uncaring and unresponsive world. Humanity will go wherever it goes with or without our help. A city editor at a newspaper where I toiled for 12 years may have put it best: "What we do here, son, is blow smoke rings. We put a perfect ring up there and everybody looks at it and goes 'wow, look at that.' Then it disappears and they forget about it and go on with their predictable, self-destructive lives."

Do what you do best my friend and leave the windmills to the other Don Quixotes.

Posted by: Doug Thompson | October 26, 2005 8:26 AM

You are right about the sea. Growing up on a Gulf of Mexico beach my creativity was boundless. Maybe it was my youth but the sea had a lot to do with it. When I moved to Baltimore it withered.
Now that I've moved to the mountains it's returning. There's another quote I think of often,
"I will lift up mine eye's unto the hills..."
Then there's that classic quote from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

Posted by: Dave | October 26, 2005 11:05 AM

Photograph environmental devestation, e-mail copies to the businesses that contributed to it and say, "YOU DID THIS! Your money will NOT buy your children and grandchildren a habitable planet, and YOU are destroying this one! Are you insane? Get over yourself!"

What do you think? Maybe it would make you feel better.

At any rate, Mother Nature is liable to have exceedingly good luck at enlightening this "uncaring and unresponsive world." We DO pace the floor with you, Fred.

Posted by: M. Lawless | October 26, 2005 11:06 AM

Right there, walking that porch with you Fred. My 'knitting' blog has turned into a twice-weekly rant about our stupidity in all ways of living and thinking. Especially about the environment. On the flip side, I then try to live, show, share and enjoy the planet and life I DO have. Sunsets, herbs, health, and love. I want to remind people that we are losing these things to chemicals and wrong thought. Sigh. On the porch with you Fred.

"All things can be cured by salt water, whether by sweat, tears or going to sea." - Isak Dinesen

Posted by: Kim | October 26, 2005 12:20 PM

I would also like to contribute a quote:

"What we need is a good hurricane."
~ Heard no less than 20 times (usually from old-timers while surveying trailer parks and RV resorts used by winter visitors) while living in the Florida Keys between 1976 and 1990.

They got that hurricane last weekend.

Posted by: M. Lawless | October 26, 2005 3:32 PM

I have hardly been blogging at all recently - I have finished Thermageddon by Bob Hunter, The Long Emergency and I am now reading Power Down. I feel like slitting my wrists

Mordor indeed Fred - it is here and I have all but given up hope. The only ray of sunshine is that we may have a much less vile time here on PEI than much of North America

Posted by: Robert Paterson | October 26, 2005 4:32 PM

I spotted this image first on your Flickr pages, and without seeing any of your words, my immediate response was to think: "Goodness; when did I last stand by a stream, listen to it's music, watch it's dance, hear it speak to me? Six months ago? And before that? Another year? I should get out more." And here I find you saying just the same kind of thing - you must have somehow wrapped up those words in your photo. Thanks for the reminder, Fred. I needed to hear that.

Posted by: andy | October 26, 2005 6:06 PM

Oh, Fred. I just love it when you rage, rage against the dying of the light. You just GO, guy. I love your stomping.

Posted by: trish | October 26, 2005 9:40 PM

the earth endures, it is us wee folk who cannot. she can certainly live without us, but we cannot live without her. maybe we will remember this before we die out completely. when we look at the dead marshes we see how wrong we were to go blithely forward as if our footprints leave no mark. we will learn to step more carefully, or our steps will altogether cease. but as someone said, sometimes we do need to leave something behind in order to discover the value of it. we are, as individuals, re-discovering the dearness of nature's chaotic hold on our very beings. we may be foolish, but we aren't stupid as a whole. we will learn, and go on, wiser, knowing.

Posted by: susannah eanes | October 28, 2005 8:39 AM

"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - Khalil Gibran

I just discovered your blog, and it's already a favourite. So, lighten up and get out more, but keep up the very refreshing work you produce here.

Posted by: Heather | October 28, 2005 10:00 AM

Posted by: SawWLjiIhZ | November 2, 2005 12:07 PM

Fragments From Floyd

Personal journal of Fred First from a remote valley in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia

Picture This:

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