Free flow....

 

        Night dresses these coastal mountains in ethereal velvet and pearls. Down on the other side of the canyon and through a forest the Pacific throats a lullaby surf. The mind wanders.

        Someplace between the Lunar New Year, listening to Thich Nhat Hahn, and watching a rocket launch I was able to aggregate those streams of consciousness. It is a trail of amusement. 

        

        I can watch a Space X Falcon rocket take a National  Reconnaissance Office payload into the heavens,

in an age when people are again banning books.

        Those hard to see little puffy spots in the frame above are the payload and second stage heading up while the puff to the left is the first stage returning to Vandenberg and its landing pad. You can find much better video and photos from Space X and NASA, but I'm boggled that I can see it from my deck.

      Rockets going into and coming home from space while a quarter of the US population refuses to trust science.

        Seeing dancing trees makes more sense than all the voter suppression laws, enacted in the name of a fraud that did not exist, solutions in search of a phantom problem. Double down on the P's.

    

        Poor Whoopi! Just goes to show how unstudied in history we have become. She didn't mean to be a monster, but even when you care you need facts, and truth. A lack of knowledge and intellectuality infects most public discourse today.

        If we didn't laugh, we'd cry.

        Thinking about the wise advise of Thich Nhat Hahn as I showered today, looking out the window to see the above frame.

        "Happiness is not something you find at the end of the road. You have to understand that it is here now."

        Friend Jim sent the above frame from native Indiana where he is visiting, longing to be back in California. That's easy to understand. 

    

        The blooming season has begun here. Lana is still picking tomatoes and snap peas, from last year. The lemon tree is bearing well and the lime is coming on. Happier thoughts even than hearing Mike Pence has discovered his cojones. 

        So as we toddle between absurdity and amusement, I'm shopping for glasses so I can see it all.

Especially those cosmic pearls.

    Meanwhile down here, "Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet."  

    It, and all of us on it, need a lot of love.

    See you down the trail.

Atmospheres

         It is that time. 

     Tradition is we begin with gratitude. Celebrations ensue and we are to be festive. We then end the year with hope, light, and peace. 

      Nothing is as it was, still we remain children of star dust, all of us, siblings on a planet.

      I am one of those who find pleasure, maybe retreat, in just looking around. 

      The day, the light, the scene, the nuance and all paint for me a mood. We live in Atmospheres.

       Here, at the changing of the season, the beginning of Holiday, are some tones and moods of place of my California.

       

    We are people of mood, affected by so much. So, the last two frames,  Lana's blooming "Thanksgiving Cactus" and a promise of the future bring us to a thought. 

     The scene directly above is the launch of the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The reusable Falcon rocket is riding a plume of fire that ignited our southern sky. Vandenberg Space Base is 83 miles from my upper deck where I watched the rocket with its tongue of fire soar into space and take me into the future.

     It is the future we count on. In less than a year, October of 2022, DART will demonstrate it's "kinetic impactor" technique when it strikes a non threatening asteroid named Dimorphos, to see if it is effective in protecting earth from asteroid hits. Dimorphos, Greek for "having two forms," is the smaller planet moon of a synchronous binary system where the larger asteroid is Didymous. 

      DART is 1,200 pounds and the size of a refrigerator. It will pass around the sun and then stalk and hit a space rock at 15,000 miles per hour. 

       This thing about "having two forms," is interesting. Divided though we are over truth, and reality, while some respect science and others dwell in lunacy and lies it is, none-the-less, exhilarating to think what we star children can do in space, when we are our better form.

       It all gives us hope, that the season of light will someday bring us to an understanding of what we should and can do on earth to propagate peace.

       Let our better instincts, our higher aspirations, create for you an atmosphere to surround your times at the end of the year. May you see your world for the beauty it holds. 

        See you down the trail.