Reluctant Lesson
Browsing through some pictures I took earlier this year, I found this one from The Great Kokoweef Adventure.
In the middle of the mountainous high-desert region of the Mojave Desert in southern California are vast fields of gravel and sand almost entirely devoid of life. The silence and seemingly unending horizon paint a vivid metaphor of both spiritual and corporeal despair.
But if you look at the ground very closely, as in the above picture (look in the center), you might occasionally see the smallest glimpse of color, a tiny flower in the middle of the desert. These flowers are so small that they almost defy imagination and so spread out that it might be impossible to find two within 20 feet of each other. Solitary, minuscule, and intricate, they are made all the more beautiful by the struggle they must have endured to take root in such a harsh, lifeless environment and push their way up to the surface, fighting against all odds not only to survive, but to thrive.
There’s probably a deep life lesson in that, but I’m really not in the mood to learn it right now.
The lesson is: No matter how hard life is and how much you struggle to be seen or heard, you will be ignored and alone all the days of your life.
I’ll be one of the people ignoring you. I’m a part of that lesson.
OMG your photo is out of focus!!!!!! It’s driving me crazy!!! Do you not have focus on your camera? Even an automatic focus? Or (here’s a crazy idea) don’t post an out of focus picture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your driving the photographer insane. I don’t want to go back to that place. The purple penguins are not nice. I must now go and cower in the corner……..they’re after me again…..
It’s not out of focus, it’s pixelated because it’s an extreme blowup of the center of the top picture and then blurred by the software I used to scale it.
Unless you’re talking about the top picture in the first place, in which case I blame John for some vague and undefinable reasons which are possibly insulting to his personal hygiene.
Hey, creating stink waves that ruin the focus of Mark’s 2 megapixel HP point and shoot is no easy task. I’m personally a little offended by this whole post and would like to point out that the first photo shows very clearly on the left and the right a couple of spiney bushes that we were fighting through each day we hiked. The lesson here is not that life is precious and delicate, but instead that Mark’s petunias and Kentucky bluegrass get killed straight up by the better adapted, thriving, and successful biota of the desert. It is a fool that looks for the oasis in natures garden.
Hmmmm…
From the lack of comments, I’d say that those who used to read the internet’s first and only website have completely given up hope because of lack of updates.
Am I right people (whoever may be left)?
Huzzah to that, my brother and/or sister! Mark should update more frequently, maybe on a weekly basis! Rise up in arms, my compatriots, and let us cast off the shackles of non-updatey oppression! Today we stand united with an ultimatum for Mark of The Shrap: Update or Die!
Oh, wait. Crap.
No need to say crap, we got the Die part covered.
Yay for updates!