finding the lake of healing

the sunsets on Lake Huron

I have spent the last several days up at Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes, which we have the privilege of using when living here in Ontario. For my local friends: I spent it at the Pinery Provincial Park.

It’s been so blistering hot here as of late that we almost dare not go outside for fear of melting with temperatures that feel like 42 Celsius because of a combination of temperature and humidity or what they call the humidex reading. It has been brutal.

I really enjoyed the lake because it changes your whole perspective on this unbelievable heat wave we’ve been having this last month. When you feel uncomfortable, you jump into the crystal clear water, swim around for a few moments and you’re good to go for another hour or at least until your hot again. That’s all we did for the last week and while normally I would see this as self-indulgence, I have to say I really enjoyed myself.
No computers, no city, no hassles, just swim and eat and swim some more.

I wish depression had a lake to jump in, swim around a bit, until you’re good to go or until you need to jump in again. If only life were so easy but then if it were maybe people would only spend their times on the shore of that lake and not do anything else because it would be so tempting not to leave. Like the fountain of youth, I’m all for finding that lake. You know that I’d just open my eyes and it would be the lake already in front of me.

Pas' Pensees

I’ve been on a bit of a mindbender lately and well it’s no fun. I’ve always used my art as a catharsis to exorcise those demons that from time to time cling to me not wanting to let go, depression being the biggest threat these recent years.
I have never been happy in the role of victim and I don’t want the closing words on my life to included that word depression. So this is my attempt to claw back. I’m not much in the mood to write a long lengthy diatribe so to start I’d like to just write some Pensees in the same vain as Blaise PAScal who wrote "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me." Here’s my first then.

I used to pride myself with the intelligence that I had acquired until I realized by it that I was as stupid as the rest of us.

_____________________________

These delicate Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odoratus) grow in our gardens. I don’t know who they are but they say the Iris is the poor mans Orchid. If that is true then Sweet Peas are the Orchid of the complete destitute as they cost the price of a bag of seed or free if you pluck them from the vine. If you look at the top image, you can how I come up with this conclusion as this small string of Sweet Pea look as though they might very well be Orchids.

GP

depressed but still flying

I regret I haven’t been writing much. I haven’t been doing much of anything and I think it’s because I’m feeling terribly depressed. I haven’t been taking pictures, doing my own work; I’m just at a complete stand still. It’s not good.

Just to add to my frustration, I’m at loss for words to describe why. Yes, it’s exceptionally hot out just now with humidity we’ve been reaching temperatures that feel like 40 Celsius everyday. My studio is 34 and too hot to work in but that is no excuse because I’ve worked in hotter temperatures while in Africa. I haven’t been feeling well and my blood sugars are a little too high lately. I haven’t been able to shake this cold and still have a nasty cough and runny nose. I feel like shit and the world outside looks shitty from my air-conditioned house. Maybe my medicine isn’t working, I don’t know. All I really know is that I feel very depressed.

All I really feel like doing is flying jets in virtual reality and killing other combatants online by dropping ordinance on their heads or sending a heat-seeking missile up their derriere / engines – in the end it matters not to me as long as I get the kill. I’m a relatively good if not excellent pilot and usually win top aviator in any round I fly playing EA Battlefield games.

I’ve been piloting these aircraft:
F-15 Strike Eagle - Fighter Bomber, two seats (pilot and weapons officer)
F/A-18 Hornet - Single seat strike fighter
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) - Single seat fighter bomber
MiG-29 'Fulcrum' - Single seat fighter
Su-34 'Fullback' - Fighter bomber, two seats (pilot and weapons officer)
J-10 - Fighter
Su-30 'Flanker' - Fighter bomber
I’ve been a gamer since I had my first computer a 1984 – 8086 IBM Laptop back in 1985. I was a “real time strategy” player for the longest time but in the last 5 years, I play only “Online First Person Shooters” like Battlefield 2 Modern, which has aircraft. I get a thrill out of flying supersonic jet fighters. My online pilot name is die2soon.

Why is it that when I feel this way all I want to do is fly and kill?

Jet comes to a stop but the missle…

…just keeps on going. Whoops wrong button!

Maybe the 2 sequence images above describe how I feel, in this case I’m the out of control missile. I think I need help not with online killing but with my head as it’s killing me.

One other thing which has delayed my posts has been that I couldn't figure out why my image software was not uploading to this site. Today I looked around and realized the Blogspot now has it's own upload interface which makes life that much easier to compile these posts.

Anyway I suck how about you?

GP