Quote de jour
"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is being interrupted by the man doing it."


I'm back on line by the magic of tech support, a new motherboard and a brand new virgin hard drive. A delightful guy named Faisal breezed in, installed the stuff in two minutes and handed my dead hard drive in a plastic bag.  It boggled my mind that every important file, photo, document lay inside a piece of metal no bigger than a paperback novel. It's now up to another guy to recover what he can. I have no idea when he'll be ready, after all it is a holiday weekend. My external hard drive mal-functioned as well and I'm facing incalculable losses. I don't want to think of the months and years of manuscript writing gone poof. That's unlikely, but my heart goes out to all the writers who have lost manuscripts before the advent of computers, scanners or copy machines. Does anyone remember carbon paper?

Weirdly enough, there's a liberating quality to loss. A kind of tabula rasa, a clean slate facing a computer with nothing on it.  For now, I'm downloading a bare minimum: anti-virus software, photo download and editing software. For me, blogging without photos is like writing without an alphabet. I've downloaded the scant 77 photos I'd shot in the past week including this odd melange of round objects. Little did I know they would provide my inspiration during this transitional time. There is a crystal ball, an antique Burmese elephant bell, an heirloom tomato from my garden sitting on an antique tray with a sign I made. They remind me of the transitory nature of all things. The elephant who wore this bell is long dead, the tomato is digesting my stomach, the crystal ball reminds that the future is clear if you have a vision, and the sign reminds me every day to stay on course. Life throws us curves. It's up to us to boomerang back.