davidaolson
Musings & Visions
What I See...What I Say. © All photographs and musings contained are original creations of David A Olson (unless otherwise indicated).
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Building Our Cages
Birds in a cage think flying is an illness.~Alejandro Jodorowsky
Many of us humans are born free before spending our days, weeks, years, and decades building the cage in which we will reside for most of our lives, the cage that hems us in before blocking out the light from which wisdom grows. The cage traps us so gradually that we are oblivious to the slow erosion of our decreasing…
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Tabula Not Raza
I am not sure I exist, actually. I am all the writers I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.~Jorge Luis Borges
As any engaged parent of multiple children can attest, being born with a Tabula Raza, a blank slate at birth is a complete and total myth as preposterous as the mythologies disguising themselves as religions, plaguing…
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Flying in Water
Since I could not get a crisp photo of Sandhills up close and personal, I played with my photos to add elements pleasing to my eyes. I particularly liked this creation. It looks like the birds are swimming in water and I’m sitting on the ocean floor watching them from below.
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Physical Attraction
We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the death, the wedding more than love, and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in a container culture, which despises the content.~Eduardo Galeano
There was a time, I freely admit, when I was lured in more by superficialities than substance. I was drawn to women for the proportions of their physical shape and the classical beauty…
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They Arrived on Wings
During the day, the Cranes hit the fields to fatten up. We drove through farm country hoping to see some birds when multiple wings entered the skies and landed in a fallow farm field.
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Muted Explosion
I woke up very early to see the Sandhill Cranes greet the new day. I was hoping to see the massive flock explode into the sky en masse. But, they alighted in dribs and drabs. The event felt prehistoric.
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Three Follow Me
Underexposed photos, once a bain of my film photography, can be simulated with digital and photo manipulation tools.
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What Was Before What I
In this picture, I see the world as it was before it became what it is. A time when the winged dinosaurs we now call birds filled the skies.
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A God That Answers Prayers is Imperfect
I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.~Terry Tempest Williams
I find the entire petitioning the lord with prayer phenomena to be nothing short of absurd. An all powerful entity existing simultaneously at all points in time already knows what’s going to occur with the Dominoes set in motion at…
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Come Fly With Me
A flying bird is a normal occurrence. However, when the birds are close to 4 foot tall and flying en masse, it is as much a spiritual as well as physical event. It makes one want to join the flock and head off into the ether.
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Hang the Promise Breakers
Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.~Edward Abbey, Prophet
I am becoming increasingly disenfranchised with politics in the United States which means I, having grown up during the tail end of the Vietnam…
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Fattening Up
The only reason I typically set wheel in Nebraska is as a boring landscape I must cross to get to the cool Western states or return home from those cool Western states. This time, Nebraska was a conscious destination to experience the wonder of the annual Sandhill Crane migration. There were about 660,000 Cranes present during the two days of my visit of which I spied a small slice. Still, it was…
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Legacy is Cruelty
My delight in being forgotten is rooted in the belief that I don’t matter in the larger scheme of things, only that I tried my best to be a good human, failing repeatedly, but trying again with the soul-settling knowledge that my body will return to the desert.~Terry Tempest Williams
There was a time when my ego was so fragile I cared about a legacy existing beyond the bookends of my mortal…
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The Future is Tardigrade
There is a living organism, called a tardigrade, that has survived the five great extinctions on Earth, and it can survive in vacuums in space, and boiling hot water, and freezing sub-zero temperatures.~Alycia Debnam Carey
Up until last night, I was aware of only one Earth mass extinction event. Well, two, considering the one we are in the midst of, instigated by the careless hands of man. I…
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The Center is Everywhere and Nowhere
At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.~Black Elk
I am regularly astonished at the vast number of people seeking outside themselves for the godhead that dwells within each being from the nearly permanent rocks to the ephemeral damselfly that dies within a day of hatching and breeding. So short are their lives, they are…
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Liberty Supersedes Happiness
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.~Benjamin Franklin
That liberty was perceived as more important than safety by the country’s Founding Fathers should come as no surprise considering a popular slogan in 1775 was Patrick Henry’s famous proclamation, “Give me liberty or give me death!” The sentiment was enshrined in…
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A Balanced God
Bernie appreciated Ma’ii, the being who was both a trickster and a Holy Person, a disreputable character and one who offered guidance.~Anne Hillerman
There is a certain je ne sais quoi about a being that combines holiness and tricksterness in the same personage that brings balance to the universe. A balance necessary as both fire and ice is when addressing the needs of the world, humanity…
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