Thursday, June 30, 2011
Picture of the Day - Boron Mine
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Picture of the Day - Utah Land Creep
Apartment building, hillside, retainer wall and parking lot being rifted by a landslide in St. George, UT.
Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Random Musings of a Ramblin' Fool XXXI: D'Oh Addition
Additional changes have been made to this blog page since I last commented about it. These changes are in the form of additional gadgets added to the margins of this page. I want the reader of this blog to thoroughly look at everything here therefore I won't make it easy and point out where to look for the changes.
This past day I severely hurt the feelings of the one person who is arguably my best friend in this lonely journey.
I met this remarkable human being several years ago and upon meeting this person my life was forever changed. This human being is a wonderful person and an amazing woman.
She is utterly fascinating and captivating, mysterious and enigmatic, alluring and sexually powerful. She is beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. She is kind and compassionate, funny and fun to be with. She is self-effacing and selfless in giving of herself. She is inquisitive about life and embraces life full-throttle. She judges no one yet is always judging herself. She is wonderful with children and animals alike whom both seem to sense her inner warmth and nurturing spirit.
As a male of the species to know or even meet this female of the species is to fall hard in love (and lust) with her, usually early on after meeting her as I did. It took me many years and one rebound relationship for the effects to wear off. I have seen and heard reports of legions of other men thus besotted with her. My own theory is that in addition to her own transcendent personality her body is quite naturally and subconsciously spinning off enormous volumes of female pheromones because there is something about being in her presence that I still detect although I am inured to its power now.
Being quite human as she is she also is not without her flaws which given she possesses such an over-sized personality are not insignificant and yet are vastly outnumbered by her positive qualities.
She can be utterly exasperating at times. She can be at times catty and contentious, persnickety and nit-picky as I experienced earlier this year over many days with her in close quarters.
She is also frequently self-absorbed and self-involved. She at times suffers from having in-grown eyeballs. This leads her in those times to lose perspective and have difficulty seeing past her own issues and problems and wounds. This in turn oft leads her in those times to actuate and lend credence to and empower and magnify those issues and problems and wounds with force and weight and relevance many orders of magnitude above and beyond what they actually possess in reality.
We all do this to varying degrees and I have been oft guilty of this myself in the past but given her unusually powerful mind and emotive capacity this gives those issues and problems and wounds great weight and gravity in her own mind. Thus when this happens she is overwhelmed and this feeds on itself and creates a cascading effect that causes her to circle the drain emotionally and withdraw from this world into her own.
She has made great strides in dealing with this negative feedback loop but her sometimes continuance in this behavior pattern nonetheless is quite disconcerting to anybody who loves her as much as I do because I do still love her. Indeed, I love her with the purest form of love I have ever felt for somebody. There is no lust involved although I realize and recognize she is quite physically desirable. There is no possessiveness or jealousy involved because I do not wish to be in a relationship with her and have her for myself in her current configuration. I do want her to be in a relationship or to not be in a relationship in such a way as is healthy for her and the right thing for where she is at any given moment in her development into what her Loving Creator has planned for her to become.
I have told this person on many occasions that I would gladly take a bullet for her without the slightest hesitation and would be honored to do so. She does not seem to fully grasp the depth of reality or full magnitude of this statement of fact which makes me sad as it suggests to me she does not have a lot of experience being the recipient of such unconditional and unselfish love. Christ said "greater love has no person than this, that a person lay down their life for their friends" and she is my friend.
Although I was never in a relationship with this remarkable creature I was caught up in an emotional affair with her over the course of the better part of the first two years I knew her during which time I saw her start dating and get into a real relationship flawed as it was with one of my best friends. That development alone nearly killed me on the inside. I refused to make a play for her myself as tempting as it was. Indeed I had never been more tempted by anything in my life to that point nor by anything since that time. I recognized on some instinctual and primal level that any romantic involvement with her would be a very bad idea for both of us due to the individual personal issues that plagued both of us. It is important I add the caveat that I did not then nor do I now assume or presume that had I made a play for her at that time that it would have been successful.
Like a fool I avoided one emotional land mine only to step on the next one I encountered. I met a girl (not a woman) I thought was safe for me and I fell in love with her after she first expressed interest in me. My rebound relationship as it turned out to be was also my first ever romantic relationship. Why I waited so late in life is a long story and worthy of full accounting on this blog on another occasion. Suffice it to say that I was unaware I was on the rebound during the time I was on the rebound. By the time I realized this reality late in my rebound relationship I was no longer on the rebound and the relationship was by then dead but it didn't quite know it yet. This basis to our relationship was unfair to my rebound girlfriend who just happened to be half my age. As it turned out she had her own unhealthy reasons for wanting to get involved with me (think "daddy complex") which led to quite a parasitic collaboration of overlapping overcompensations and codependencies. She is now hooked up with somebody else who is also quite a bit older than she. The beat goes on and we all tend to do what we know.
One of the things my now-ex-girlfriend is wont to do is to be the center of attention and to be affirmed and validated and rescued which requires creating drama and establishing herself as some sort of victim and then get others to respond to her rescue. Apparently, she got her mom all stirred up the other day. Her maternal unit contacted me out of the blue via email over the weekend and made some off-the-wall remarks that screamed loudly that my ex is once again manipulating somebody (this time her mom) in this fashion and for this purpose. I responded to it cordially but forcefully as I won't indulge that sort of malarkey any longer now that I'm not in a relationship with a living breathing source of it.
Quite unfortunately, however, this event picked the scab of healing of my still-wounded heart caused by the death of that rebound relationship to which I was so fully emotionally invested to the extent it felt like I had been married. Although hopelessly incompatibly mismatched I really did deeply and genuinely and unconditionally love my now-ex-girlfriend with all my heart during the time we were together, her many flaws notwithstanding. It nearly killed me after we broke up as necessary and healthy as it was.
Consequently, this bizarre email from her mother disquieted my spirit and got me off-center more than I would have liked. Since that relationship was linked to that which immediately preceded it with my best friend who was the original vampire of my heart it exhumed all my past emotions relating to her. It also dredged up some growing angst-driven frustrations I had been lately feeling in regards to her over both that which I have already more generally mentioned here as well as some more specific things I will not get into here.
Feeling frustrated and unable to talk to the ex who no longer responds to my communications and feeling unable to talk to my best friend for fear of simply hurting her for naught as well as her not actually being helped due to her general tendency to ignore my advice on such things as I was frustrated with her regarding, I decided to in very vague and general terms articulate my angst-ridden frustrations on my Facebook Wall to get it off my chest and perhaps receive some beneficial insight and feedback. In other words, I needed to blow off some steam and oh did I.
As it turned out I greatly miscalculated because that move did indeed hurt my best friend rather profoundly. Also at least three people quite inexplicably to me did figure out to whom I was referring, to wit, her twin sister and her best friend being two of them with a mutual friend being the third. My best friend now feels embarrassed and betrayed not to mention hurt and confused. The things I stated on my Wall needed to be conveyed to her at some point not only for her edification but for my own well-being as I needed to get them off my chest. However, hurting her was furthest from my intent. As we all well know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
To state that I feel badly over the outcome of this matter would be a grave understatement. However, what is done is done and I cannot undue anything I have done. I choose to focus on what I can do and have already done it. I have profusely apologized for embarrassing her and hurting her. I have not apologized for in general articulating what I feel or for feeling how I feel. Had two people not deciphered my quasi-encrypted message this would be a non-issue tonight.
If our friendship holds any soundness and solidity then it will survive this episode, the first serious such storm in our friendship that I can recall. In fact, in the long run it could even help our friendship move forward and grow as it has become stagnated of late.
Here is an Allan Roberts lyric to the song "You Always Hurt The One You Love" that came to mind as a result of this episode:
"You always hurt the one you love
The one you shouldn't hurt at all
You always take the sweetest rose
Crush it, till the petals fall
You always break the kindest heart
With a hasty word you can't recall
So, if I broke your heart last night
It's because I love you most of all."
Fini
You Always Hurt The One You Love
This past day I severely hurt the feelings of the one person who is arguably my best friend in this lonely journey.
I met this remarkable human being several years ago and upon meeting this person my life was forever changed. This human being is a wonderful person and an amazing woman.
She is utterly fascinating and captivating, mysterious and enigmatic, alluring and sexually powerful. She is beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. She is kind and compassionate, funny and fun to be with. She is self-effacing and selfless in giving of herself. She is inquisitive about life and embraces life full-throttle. She judges no one yet is always judging herself. She is wonderful with children and animals alike whom both seem to sense her inner warmth and nurturing spirit.
As a male of the species to know or even meet this female of the species is to fall hard in love (and lust) with her, usually early on after meeting her as I did. It took me many years and one rebound relationship for the effects to wear off. I have seen and heard reports of legions of other men thus besotted with her. My own theory is that in addition to her own transcendent personality her body is quite naturally and subconsciously spinning off enormous volumes of female pheromones because there is something about being in her presence that I still detect although I am inured to its power now.
Being quite human as she is she also is not without her flaws which given she possesses such an over-sized personality are not insignificant and yet are vastly outnumbered by her positive qualities.
She can be utterly exasperating at times. She can be at times catty and contentious, persnickety and nit-picky as I experienced earlier this year over many days with her in close quarters.
She is also frequently self-absorbed and self-involved. She at times suffers from having in-grown eyeballs. This leads her in those times to lose perspective and have difficulty seeing past her own issues and problems and wounds. This in turn oft leads her in those times to actuate and lend credence to and empower and magnify those issues and problems and wounds with force and weight and relevance many orders of magnitude above and beyond what they actually possess in reality.
We all do this to varying degrees and I have been oft guilty of this myself in the past but given her unusually powerful mind and emotive capacity this gives those issues and problems and wounds great weight and gravity in her own mind. Thus when this happens she is overwhelmed and this feeds on itself and creates a cascading effect that causes her to circle the drain emotionally and withdraw from this world into her own.
She has made great strides in dealing with this negative feedback loop but her sometimes continuance in this behavior pattern nonetheless is quite disconcerting to anybody who loves her as much as I do because I do still love her. Indeed, I love her with the purest form of love I have ever felt for somebody. There is no lust involved although I realize and recognize she is quite physically desirable. There is no possessiveness or jealousy involved because I do not wish to be in a relationship with her and have her for myself in her current configuration. I do want her to be in a relationship or to not be in a relationship in such a way as is healthy for her and the right thing for where she is at any given moment in her development into what her Loving Creator has planned for her to become.
I have told this person on many occasions that I would gladly take a bullet for her without the slightest hesitation and would be honored to do so. She does not seem to fully grasp the depth of reality or full magnitude of this statement of fact which makes me sad as it suggests to me she does not have a lot of experience being the recipient of such unconditional and unselfish love. Christ said "greater love has no person than this, that a person lay down their life for their friends" and she is my friend.
Although I was never in a relationship with this remarkable creature I was caught up in an emotional affair with her over the course of the better part of the first two years I knew her during which time I saw her start dating and get into a real relationship flawed as it was with one of my best friends. That development alone nearly killed me on the inside. I refused to make a play for her myself as tempting as it was. Indeed I had never been more tempted by anything in my life to that point nor by anything since that time. I recognized on some instinctual and primal level that any romantic involvement with her would be a very bad idea for both of us due to the individual personal issues that plagued both of us. It is important I add the caveat that I did not then nor do I now assume or presume that had I made a play for her at that time that it would have been successful.
Like a fool I avoided one emotional land mine only to step on the next one I encountered. I met a girl (not a woman) I thought was safe for me and I fell in love with her after she first expressed interest in me. My rebound relationship as it turned out to be was also my first ever romantic relationship. Why I waited so late in life is a long story and worthy of full accounting on this blog on another occasion. Suffice it to say that I was unaware I was on the rebound during the time I was on the rebound. By the time I realized this reality late in my rebound relationship I was no longer on the rebound and the relationship was by then dead but it didn't quite know it yet. This basis to our relationship was unfair to my rebound girlfriend who just happened to be half my age. As it turned out she had her own unhealthy reasons for wanting to get involved with me (think "daddy complex") which led to quite a parasitic collaboration of overlapping overcompensations and codependencies. She is now hooked up with somebody else who is also quite a bit older than she. The beat goes on and we all tend to do what we know.
One of the things my now-ex-girlfriend is wont to do is to be the center of attention and to be affirmed and validated and rescued which requires creating drama and establishing herself as some sort of victim and then get others to respond to her rescue. Apparently, she got her mom all stirred up the other day. Her maternal unit contacted me out of the blue via email over the weekend and made some off-the-wall remarks that screamed loudly that my ex is once again manipulating somebody (this time her mom) in this fashion and for this purpose. I responded to it cordially but forcefully as I won't indulge that sort of malarkey any longer now that I'm not in a relationship with a living breathing source of it.
Quite unfortunately, however, this event picked the scab of healing of my still-wounded heart caused by the death of that rebound relationship to which I was so fully emotionally invested to the extent it felt like I had been married. Although hopelessly incompatibly mismatched I really did deeply and genuinely and unconditionally love my now-ex-girlfriend with all my heart during the time we were together, her many flaws notwithstanding. It nearly killed me after we broke up as necessary and healthy as it was.
Consequently, this bizarre email from her mother disquieted my spirit and got me off-center more than I would have liked. Since that relationship was linked to that which immediately preceded it with my best friend who was the original vampire of my heart it exhumed all my past emotions relating to her. It also dredged up some growing angst-driven frustrations I had been lately feeling in regards to her over both that which I have already more generally mentioned here as well as some more specific things I will not get into here.
Feeling frustrated and unable to talk to the ex who no longer responds to my communications and feeling unable to talk to my best friend for fear of simply hurting her for naught as well as her not actually being helped due to her general tendency to ignore my advice on such things as I was frustrated with her regarding, I decided to in very vague and general terms articulate my angst-ridden frustrations on my Facebook Wall to get it off my chest and perhaps receive some beneficial insight and feedback. In other words, I needed to blow off some steam and oh did I.
As it turned out I greatly miscalculated because that move did indeed hurt my best friend rather profoundly. Also at least three people quite inexplicably to me did figure out to whom I was referring, to wit, her twin sister and her best friend being two of them with a mutual friend being the third. My best friend now feels embarrassed and betrayed not to mention hurt and confused. The things I stated on my Wall needed to be conveyed to her at some point not only for her edification but for my own well-being as I needed to get them off my chest. However, hurting her was furthest from my intent. As we all well know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
To state that I feel badly over the outcome of this matter would be a grave understatement. However, what is done is done and I cannot undue anything I have done. I choose to focus on what I can do and have already done it. I have profusely apologized for embarrassing her and hurting her. I have not apologized for in general articulating what I feel or for feeling how I feel. Had two people not deciphered my quasi-encrypted message this would be a non-issue tonight.
If our friendship holds any soundness and solidity then it will survive this episode, the first serious such storm in our friendship that I can recall. In fact, in the long run it could even help our friendship move forward and grow as it has become stagnated of late.
Here is an Allan Roberts lyric to the song "You Always Hurt The One You Love" that came to mind as a result of this episode:
"You always hurt the one you love
The one you shouldn't hurt at all
You always take the sweetest rose
Crush it, till the petals fall
You always break the kindest heart
With a hasty word you can't recall
So, if I broke your heart last night
It's because I love you most of all."
Fini
Monday, June 27, 2011
Picture of the Day - Root Farm Treasures
Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)
Root Farm Rockhounding Adventure 2011
This past Saturday the Santa Lucia Rockhounds conducted its annual field trip out to the Root Farm off Creston Road east of Paso Robles, CA. There we hunted for quartz crystal clusters, chalcedony nodules, agate, brecciated jasper, colorful pastel jasper and chert, petrified whale bone, petrified wood, late 19th Century into early 20th century American artifacts as well as Chumash artifacts from arrowheads to scrapers to manos to sandstone bowls. The farm itself is centered around the restored farmhouse originally built by Colis P. Huntington in order to make the property more salable after he purchased it dirt cheap knowing the railroad would pass through the area and then turned around and sold it for much more. The restored farmhouse is located atop an old Chumash campsite. Our members in attendance had a great time as we did last year which was the first year we visited this site at the invitation of the owner of the property. Just about everything on the list of things to find here we found other than sandstone pots of which one of our members (Jason) found one last year mere feet from where I was standing. On this day he found a gorgeous black chert arrowhead in a location I had already searched. That being said I did just fine today. For a look at all my finds check HERE.
All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)
Club members preparing to search the creek.
This creek is the focus of our search and runs next to the farmhouse.
An especially rich section of the creek from which I retrieved multiple agates.
The creek features odd erosional features like shown here.
This creek is partly fed by a spring which was what drew the Chumash to this area.
Some of the chalcedony/agate I found this visit.
The colorful cherts I found this visit.
Brecciated jasper I found this visit
Horse tooth I found
These cherts I found sure look like petrified wood but are probably just radiolarian chert.
Sandstone bowls and a mano found in the creek a few weeks ago.
The aforementioned bowls and mano and an abalone shell likewise found in the creek.
The house that Huntington built (now the Root Farm house).
All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Virgin River Gorge & Environs Westbound Passage
I am so fascinated by the Virgin River Gorge that I decided to photographically document my entire passage through it westbound on my journey home this past Monday. My hope and intent is that this visual travelogue will convey as accurate an account as possible of what the passage is like for the traveler. The first image below was taken near the Arizona-Utah border on the outskirts of St. George, Utah, and the final image below was taken just outside the western end of the gorge on the eastern margin of the Mojave Desert.
All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)
All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)