Pincushion Cactus with Pepper-like Fruit, Most Common Cactus In The Sonoran Desert — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Cacti come in all sizes
The nicest prize is in
the smallest package.
— kenne
Archive for the ‘Sonoran Desert’ Category
Pincushion Cactus Leave a comment
Sunset Over The Tucson Mountains Leave a comment
Sunset Over The Tucson Mountains — Image by kenne
I look at a sunset
and begin to wonder
what is the relationship
between the senses
and matters of beauty,
art and taste responding
one’s feelings and emotions?
The quality of being.
— kenne
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Tucson Time Leave a comment
A Tucson Sunset — B&W by kenne
The power of stories
and sunsets become
daily escape hatches
from the tragic realities
of human existence.
— kenne
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All Souls Dragonfly Leave a comment
All Souls Dragonfly — Infrared Image by kenne
November in the Sonoran Desert.
Land of indigenous cultures
Whose names are true to nature.
Ghosts whose shadows grow wings
Standing in the graveyard
That has become a holy vortex.
The owls of the night carry
Voices whispering death is alive.
Dragonflies rest on dead stems only
To fly away, circle, and come back
Recognizing all the souls of the dead.
— kenne
(Inspired by lines in Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Tijuana Book of the Dead)
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Mt. Lemmon Fall Color 2 comments
Mt. Lemmon Fall Colors — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Drive thirty-five miles
To mixed conifer forest
Above the desert.
— kenne
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Fall Flowers In The Sonoran Desert Leave a comment
Fall Flowers In The Sonoran Desert (Many-flowered Mentzelia) — Image by kenne
The sun has just risen
on my morning walk
shining on some tiny
yellow perennial flowers.
— kenne
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Invoking the Full Meaning of Life 6 comments
I’m Just A Traveler In Other People’s Reality — Image by a Fellow Higher On The Trail
Invoking the Full Meaning of Life
How best to express sharing new life
when each moment deserves its face.
What seems apropos for the moment,
when the next moment fosters a unique experience.
Is it in a number?
The number of days?
The number of thoughts?
The number of heartbeats?
The number of turns?
The number of prayers?
. . . you can count the ways,
only to still not know life’s score.
Is it in a word?
Loving?
Caring?
Sharing?
Giving?
Sheltering?
Words to communicate thoughts and feelings
when manifested in knowledge and experience.
Or is it in art?
Transforming thought,
expressing feeling,
experiencing emotions and
the desire to evoke life,
even when distance
appears to separate a lifelong bond.
I wrote this in the 1990s. Since then, retirement and moved 1,000 miles from where we had spent 25 years, putting distance between bonds. In the twelve years since moving, we have watched the bonds drift away, causing me to question the desire to evoke life, even when distance can’t separate a lifelong bond.
We moved to the Sonoran desert with the illusion that friends and family would be beating a path to our new home in the desert southwest — not such luck. So we try staying in touch through social media, often questioning whether the bonds were ever real — confirming that we remain tourists in other people’s reality.
I once read a posting by blogger Old Jules, “These damned ego-warts.”
Old Jules was a 70-year-old hermit, living with three cats somewhere in the Texas Hill Country and writing a blog I enjoyed reading from time to time. Old Jules, who passed away April 21, 2020 at 74, had concluded that he has spent over a third of his life “being insignificant in the lives of others.”
In 1992, after 25 years of marriage and a career of 20 years, he began a new career and life in Santa Fe.
“All secure in the knowledge the extended family and friends remaining behind were part of my life in which I’d been and remained important.”
Over time he concluded it was all an illusion.
“Kids, young adult nephews, and nieces I’d coddled and bounced on my knee pealed out of my life-like layers of an onion. Most I never heard from again.”
He began to realize that he was merely tolerated, “. . . a piece of furniture in their lives.”
Over time he rebuilt his life with a more potent dose of skepticism concerning his worth and place in the lives of others, which resulted in his becoming a hermit.
“I no longer assume I’m important in the lives of other human beings and get my satisfaction in knowing I’m at least relevant to the cats.
Because cats, though sometimes dishonest, aren’t capable of the depth and duration of dishonesty humans indulge regularly.”
Old Jules had come to believe “. . . that life is entirely too important and too short to be wasted in insignificance.”
His new awareness of life is now in teaspoon measurements, “. . . measured in contracts with cats not equipped to lie. A determination in the direction of significance measured in teaspoons of reality,
as opposed to 55-gallon drums of dishonesty and self-delusion.”
“Teaspoons, I find, don’t spill away as much life in the discovery
when they’re found to be just another ego-wart of pride and self-importance.”
Bonds, illusion or not, have difficulty being when the moments are separated by time and distance, becoming gleams of light, for an instant, in the long night.
I understand where Old Jules was coming from and feel his disillusionment. There is, however, a binding force that comes from a homesick longing to be whole, to have completion, as Plato described in the myth of the human halves passionately striving towards one. Like all mythical totalities, humans are subject to the triple dramaturgical rhythm of primal completeness, separation catastrophe, and restoration. The most significant attraction effect occurs between the second and third acts of life’s drama, which is where I find myself today — maybe this is also where Old Jules is. I am learning to understand myself from a new divide, one half experienced, the other inexperienced — in such a way that I’m learning to understand myself in new ways.
But then, there are the darn cats!
Kika, what do you think?
Kika (She passed away December 10, 2011.)
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The Sonoran Sun 2 comments
The Sonoran Sun — Image by kenne
the Sonoran sun
bringing on the summer heat
monsoon to follow
— kenne
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Greater Earless Lizard Sunning On Rock Leave a comment
Greater Earless Lizard Sunning On Rock — Images by kenne
“Mad dogs and Englishmen,” said British playwright Noel Coward in his famous ditty of 1932, “go out in the midday sun.”
So, too, he might have added, does the greater earless lizard, which seems to relish the midday sun of mid-summer
in the rocky, sandy desert terrain of the northern Chihuahuan and northeastern Sonoran Deserts.
— Source: desertusa.com/
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Saguaro Blossoms — They’re Popping Out All Over Leave a comment
Saguaro Blossoms, They’re Popping Out All Over– Image by kenne
saguaro blossoms
they’re popping out all over
a southwest symbol
— kenne
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White-lined Sphinx Moth In Black & White Leave a comment
White-lined Sphinx Moth in Black & White by kenne
Designed for rapid flight, Sphinx Moths are shaped like airplanes and can clock speeds just over 30 miles per hour.
They’re also known as a hawk or hummingbird moths for similar flight patterns. Various sphinx moths
have been mistaken for bats and bees. Some can hover like hummingbirds while feeding. Sphinx moths
have the world’s longest tongue among moths and butterflies. They can draw nectar from narrow, tubular flowers
that are too deep for bees to reach. When not in use, the tongue rolls up. Many moths are a mottled brown,
but some have very colorful wing patterns. — Source: Discover Nature Notes
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Doubtful Canyon Coyote Fence Leave a comment
Doubtful Canyon Coyote Fence — Image by kenne
“Some nights we can see light of fires as Indians dance
And the eyes of God shine through the coyote fence.”
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Crested Saguaro Leave a comment
Crested Saguaro Upon The Saguaros — Image by kenne
Cristate or “crested” saguaros form when the cells in the growing stem begin to divide outward,
rather than in the circular pattern of a normal cactus. This is an unusual mutation that results
in the growth of a large fan-shaped crest at the growing tip of a saguaro’s main stem or arms.
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More Cactus Blossoms 1 comment
Prickly Pear Cactus Blossoms — Images by kenne
Most people, when asked to identify a yellow spring flower would probably identify daffodils.
But, in the sunny Tucson area, most people would say the prickly pear cactus blossom,
or the palo verde blossoms.
Yellow is a warm and friendly color and most associated with is the sun. During spring,
it almost seems like the sun changes its light from a cold white to a warm and glowy yellow.
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Quote From The Four Winds Leave a comment
“As we know, there are lessons to be learned from history.
Hope to be derived from hardships faced before.
We’ve gone through bad times before and survived, even thrived.
History has shown us the strength and durability of the human spirit,
In the end, it is our idealism and our courage, and our commitment to one another
–what we have in common–that will save us.”
— from “The Four Winds” by
