Weekend Random Thoughts and a Poem to Boot

It was hot here So Cal this weekend.  O-T-Hot, as my great aunt would say.  Never figured out what the O-T stood for.  Another question I should have asked while she was alive.  Anyway, we have been in an ungodly humid, broiling hot wave of fire from hell (it seems) for about four hundred days (it seems).  But it may have broken like a horrific fever.  Fingers crossed.
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As I wrote the above, I kept thinking about Hurricane Harvey, Texas and Louisiana and folded my hands and remembered how blessed I am.  Godspeed the recovery for all those who have endured this latest rage of mother nature.
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Have you notice we don't call it Mother Nature much any more?   And I think Father Time left the building.  guess it had something to do with sexism and equal rights?  
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On another note, I took an artist date today to the Redlands Glass Museum.  What a fantastic place.  I needed a receipt for some windows I facilitated donated on behalf of an estate recently, so I decided to tour the place.  Glassware is utterly fascinating!  All glittery and sparkle and sass.  Beautiful shapes and cuts in utilitarian and art-for-art-sake design.  Check it out: historicalglassmuseum.com/
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After that, I delivered a photograph for the new exhibit at the Riverside Community Arts Association.  www.rcaaarts.org/  It is of my Carnival Hibiscus .  Quite nice, I'd say, but the real point was to stick my toe back into the sea of art.  
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Mostly it was a quiet weekend.  With some help, I cleaned the gutters and swept up pine needles and sycamore leaves, only to have them fall again and fill the gutters once more in a sudden wind.  Such is life, I guess.
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A workshop with the Inlandia Institute I have been attending for several years, begins again this coming Wednesday.   It really is a great opportunity to be amongst actual, for real, creating, writing writers.  It inspires me to get moving on my projects and move along.  I was sitting on the porch, trying to think what on earth I could get together in time for the midnight deadline for submissions tonight.  The following poem "popped out" and, my friends, is what I will leave you with tonight...

​Nothing At All


There are times
I sit in the dark,
thinking about nothing,
nothing at all.


The moon looks down,
all full and bright, not
saying a thing, nothing at all,
letting me know
it is just that, just
nothing at all.


Simon and Garfunkel sing
of the sounds of silence,
crooning hello darkness my old friend.
as if they put my words to song,
I’ve come to talk to you again,
I lean back into the deep dusky night
and am comforted in knowing
its all nothing,
nothing at all.




Rob McMurray
Sept 2017

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