On a painful day in the recent past, I wrote of how I once heard a teenage girl speak a name and immediately fell in love with the woman named, a woman who I had never yet met but who would become my wife and the mother of my children.
The girl who spoke Margie's name was Martyna White Hawk, Lakota of Manderson, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
One week ago, I received a Facebook message from Martyna in which she told me that on January 25, she was going to hold a memorial walk for the three children of hers who had been killed one year before in a terrible traffic accident. MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving - was going to walk with her and she hoped that the Lakota Times might come and cover the event.
As soon as I learned this, I just wanted to drop everything and go. I wanted to be there.
Yet, the total sum of my business and home checking accounts, plus the one cent still left in my savings account, did not add up to the required airfare from Anchorage to Rapid City, or the rental car that I would need from there.
I checked my frequent flier miles and came up 10,000 miles short.
I sent an email to an important person in the photographic world who works at a national blog that has plans to soon feature some of my work to see if by any almost impossible chance he might be able to help me get there.
He responded that he was moved by the story but did not have any resources available to help me do it.
So I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that I could not go and to hope only that the Lakota Times would show up and they would do a good story and that I could read about it there and post a link here.
The night before the walk was scheduled to take place, Margie had gone to town to babysit Kalib and Jobe and so I had stayed up almost all night, pittering away at my computer. When she is gone, it is very difficult for me to make myself stop what I am doing and go to bed. Even so, as has so often been the case these past couple of months, once I did go to bed, I was only able to sleep briefly before I awoke, exhausted, yet unable to sleep further.
So I got up, thinking maybe I would walk to Family Restaurant - but that would be close to an eight-mile walk, roundtrip, and while I could use an eight-mile walk, I didn't have time for it.
Just as I was about to cook oatmeal, Caleb pulled into the driveway, home from his all-night shift at Wal-Mart. "You can take my truck," he said.
So I did. And here I am - at Family Restaurant, once again, eating breakfast and photographing reflections in the window.
The day must come - IT MUST COME - when this blog and its evolution gains enough resource that if I suddenly find I have the need to drop everything, hop on a jet and go to South Dakota, I can go.
In one month, Sujitha and Manoj will experience a formal Hindu wedding in Bangalore. Those who have been with me since the day that I mentioned how Martyna spoke Margie's name know why it would be important for me to be there.
Last winter, my dear and best friend down in Arizona, Vincent Craig, lay in a hospital bed, battling cancer, and I wanted to drop everything and go see him, but I couldn't, until late May, and then I got there and stepped into his hospital room just hours before he died.
While I was glad that I made it, I should have been there in time to sit down with him, talk with him, joke with him, laugh with him, cry with him, but I didn't make it and I will regret that for the remainder of my days.
And then all that happened in India in November - I want to say that I should have been able to hop on a jet at the first notification to scoot right down and then maybe that could have changed at least the final, tragic, outcome but, you know what?
After someone dies in India, things happen so fast that even if I had left on the next scheduled flight, it would have all been over by the time the plane touched down in Bangalore.
Yet, still I should have been able to jump on that plane and if I had possessed the resource, I surely would have and maybe... maybe... I can't be sure... but maybe just the knowledge that someone was coming from Alaska could have forestalled and then prevented the outcome which has now become destiny - but it did not need to be destiny.
Destiny only becomes firm once it has happened and then it seems as if it was always going to be destiny and that it was just beyond anyone's ability to change it. But before any one destiny becomes set and firm, other destinies abound in endless possibility and this could have come to a different destiny.
Anyway, I am rambling, going off track. I did not mean to go here. I only meant to state that this blog must find a measure of self-sustaining independence so that when the need arises, I can get up and go to wherever it is that I need to go at the time.
Or, if I just need to stay home for awhile, I can stay home. I can't always do that, either, you know. Sometimes, I want to stay home, but I must go.
The kids in this bus, btw, might have wanted to stay home on this, the morning of Martyna's memorial walk, but they had to get up, get dressed and go.
Not a single one of them were thinking of Martyna, or of her children, but I was.
I fear that I have rambled too much, and have missed the opportunity to delve into today's headline, "contemplating the future of this blog."
I spend a fair amount of time thinking about different options that I might pursue to find the means to fund this blog and to build it in to what I want it to be, but I think it is time for me to stop just thinking about it, to write it down, and start coming up with a plan to achieve it.
It can be done - I am certain of it - but not if I just keep going as I am going.
So, I was going to begin that effort, right here, today. I was going to write down some of what I hope to do and to contemplate the possibilities of getting me there. While I do not expect any readers out there to have the answer for me, if any had any input or ideas after reading what I thought would write about today, then I would have been very glad to read those ideas.
But I have used up all my blogging time and then some, and have already written more words than most readers are likely to read.
This is a cat, by the way - a black cat that has just crossed the road in front of me. So maybe some good fortune will come my way.
One thing that bothers me about this blog is how small the horizontal pictures appear.
So small that the cat barely appears at all.
This is the same frame, cropped. Now you can see the cat better, but I prefer the full-frame, horizontal image. It just does not work so well on this blog. It works a little better in slide show view.
Anyway, since I blew it today, I will change the title of this post to "Contemplating the future of this blog, part 1." I will continue this discussion tomorrow in "part 2".
I have run out of time to even jump into my India folder to randomly grab an image. Even so, I have been posting the India images to accomplish a specific purpose, and in this post that purpose has already been accomplished.
This image, by the way, is from the drop-in to Metro Cafe that I made with Margie the other day.