A funny thing happened on the way to therapy...

My view of human nature is that all of us are just holding it together in various ways — and that’s okay, and we just need to go easy with one another, knowing that we’re all these incredibly fragile beings.

The Art Of Living

Cloths of Heaven

William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Beach Chair Therapy

I take beach chair therapy pretty serious...it's not just some random thought with a picture of a beach umbrella or beach chair. You first have to start with a beach. Now I'm fortunate that I spend four to six months living by the sea and it's one that I carefully choose. I love white sandy beaches but I settled on one covered with crushed sea shells giving it a cinnamon color against a gray sandy background. Suits my eye for some reason and always a nice cool ocean breeze. The beach is lined by a reef and on some days if the tide is strong it will uncover the rocks and give the beach dimension and nice places to explore. It's a quiet beach with mostly residents but the usual summer crowd makes people watching more interesting.

On therapy days I try and set up around noon. It takes me that long to get all my chores done...:). I take a good sturdy umbrella that screws into the sand and tilts slightly toward the wind. A linen shirt is a necessity along with a good straw hat. I have this ole Panama Jack hat that has served me well for a number of years. It works great until the wind blows over ten then I switch to my RELAX cap. A good chair with at least three pockets is a must. I fill mine with a Coke, a thermos of rum and an insulated cup filled with ice.

Now let's talk about a few things that will make a lot of difference when it comes to set up...twist your poll into the sand until it reaches the moist layer, then take a bucket of sea water and pour around the poll. This will seal it and keep the wind from pulling it lose. I always anchor the poll with a ten foot cord and spike. Don't hammer the spike into the ground, but dig a a shallow hole and turn the spike side ways and bury it. Just a suggestion from one that has experienced many runaway umbrellas. Always, always open your umbrella into the wind. You will know if you get it wrong.

Music, if course...a selection of songs labeled Ocean on my ole my IPod and a very well placed speaker. On the last visit from my friend Jes B. Rambling he surprised me with this little round speaker called 808. Designed by a French company but I'm sure made in China. At any rate, a good one. Just place it in the apex of my umbrella and I get a rainbow of sounds...thanks my friend. Took a few pictures of Jes's last visit. When I fully recover my mental abilities and recall the visit I will share. Rather distorted at the moment.

Now how does one prepare the mind for beach chair therapy? For me I watch the children play...really don't know why, just seems in their every move you can tell what their little minds are thinking..they have a lot of free behaviors...oh, did I mention the rum and a splash of Coke...;).

Self...tell me what you are thinking...

Stopped To Ponder

"through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it...for each wave owes the beauty of its line
only to the withdrawal of the preceding one..."
André Gide

Sunday Morning...The Wall Cloud

The Wall Cloud
Walter P. Thederahn

With the ebbing of time,
It will take me back to the sea.
Scorpion, the Norseman's life,
Aurora Borealis,
no- Eldorado,
Yet,
August eyes!,
But seek the wall of clouds,
Dark, black clouds,
Holding the thunderbolts,
With echoing thunder- electrify,
The enfolding clouds.
Lighting flash,
Like northern lights.
White wall of clouds,
Of awesome might.
Still air then sudden rain,
Hail falls, this freezing vapor,
From the sky.
The windrose turning clouds,
Sets- twister from the sky.

Walter P. Thederahn was born Novemeber 3, 1930 in Brooklyn, N.Y. to German immigrants. As a young boy he started performing magic acts and later began to dabble in writing poetry. Walt was drafted to the Army during the Korean conflict where he earned his airborne wings in 1952. He served in both the 187th Regimental Combat Team and the 45th Infantry Division. Following his discharge he joined the family bakery business but left to enter the carpenter trade. He married and moved to Griggstown, NJ. The couple had four sons of whom he was very proud. He married his second wife, Mary, the mother of six children, in 1988. They settled in Mercerville, NJ spending many hours with their children who lived close by and traveling to visit their children who lived out of state. He retired from the Capentary Union, Local 1006 in 1992. Walt was a member of the International Brotherhood of Poetry and the Magician Ring of New Brunswick, NJ. He was active in the American Legion, Post 530 and two senior clubs in Robbinsville, NJ. Walter paseed away on October 31, 2009, the anniversary of the death of the famous magician Houdini. 

How fitting I find his words this Sunday morning from carpenter, magician and poet as I capture...The Wall Cloud.

The Art Of Living

I said to my soul...

"Sit without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing.” ~T.S. Eliot

Beach Chair Therapy

"No one is smart enough to be wrong all the time."

Lessons From The Sane Asylum

Daniel...Reflections on the dawn

A thousand lifetimes have passed since
my Passion first spoke unto me these words:
‘Go forth and speak that which is locked
within the timelessness of your soul and trust
the listener to understand.’

But the voice of my Wisdom answered:

‘It would be better, perhaps, to leave the Truth unsaid;
For the listener shall hear your words that clothe the Truth,
but will not see through the veil of their disguise.’

And hearing this caused my Passion to cry,
for he knew that Wisdom always spoke with
an enlightened reason;

And my Wisdom wept also, for there was no joy
in being right at his brother’s expense.
So now I come unto you that the thirst of my soul
be quenched and Truth be unveiled before the
eyes of this world.

Stopped to Ponder

"Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.” Pascal, Thoughts 1656

Observations From The Far Side Of The Glass

It appears that, compared to interactions with computers, social interaction ‘activates’ a consistent set of brain areas. These regions are in charge of making inferences about other human minds. One of the distinctive attributes of human social cognition is our tendency to build models of other minds, which helps us make inferences about the mental states of others. When interacting with other people, we automatically make inferences about them without even being consciously aware of it. We cannot help but ponder what they are thinking about, what their facial expressions mean, what their intentions are, and so on. This predisposition is what makes social interactions so demanding.

The Sane Asylum Wisdom Quote Series

"The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or a hostile universe." - Albert Einstein

My Morning Walk

On my morning walk, I noticed jeweled spider webs, strung together with tiny diamonds.

Beach Chair Therapy

"I think worrying is like rehearsing for something you don't want to happen"

Lessons From The Sane Asylum

Do our lives really matter?

 This isn’t a scientific question — there isn’t data we can collect by doing experiments that could possibly measure the extent to which a life matters. It’s at heart a philosophical problem, one that demands that we discard the way that we’ve been thinking about our lives and their meaning for thousands of years. By the old way of thinking, human life couldn’t possibly be meaningful if we are “just” collections of atoms moving around in accordance with the laws of physics. That’s exactly what we are, but it’s not the only way of thinking about what we are. We are collections of atoms, operating independently of any immaterial spirits or influences, and we are thinking and feeling people who bring meaning into existence by the way we live our lives.