Back in the day and probably as we speak a child in a class is hot and tired from recess. Leaning on a desk with elbows, hands supporting chin, the background is the sonorous drone of a teacher as bored as the child.

It makes the eyelids heavy.

Soon the mind casts off the mooring lines of everyday life and sets sail on the sea of imagination and possibility. The mind sails the seas where the weather is always fair, the sun warm and the breeze strong and cool.

It is where talking dolphins glisten as they break from the liquid glassyness of the blue green and great white and gray seabirds with obsidian eyes follow and chat cleverly with us.
Where we always have what we want on board, always feel good and never seem to get hungry or tired.

Dream sailors we were. Dream sailors some of us still are. What a blessing of freedom. What a joy to leave a world of drama, anger and hate.
We try so often to bring that joy into our life. Sometimes not too successfully.
It is hard to be a dream sailor when we are in pain.
As adults we are told that it is bad to dream, we get fired if we dream at work, but it is the dreamers that bring so much to our world.
Dreamers who express in invention, in art, in building, in compassion,
in support, in knowledge, and in understanding.
Cast off and sail away on your ocean. Let the sail of possibility overcome impossibility. Dream of a better world filled with joy, compassion and care.
If you set sail you will always be in sun light and those that don't will live in darkness of dreamlessness.
Ahoy!

Islands are objects surrounded by something other than itself.
To go from one island to another we have to cross what is not an island.
The more distant each Island is from another makes it harder to see and sometimes the islands are so far apart they are not visible. They become lost.
Trust is an island.
In each of us is our world and in our worlds we have lslands of trust. When we let someone land on that island of trust we risk.
That risk is what makes us human.
When our island is invaded or damaged we put more of what isn't an island between us and other islands and others with their islands.
We find it harder to find the island of trust. We find it harder to risk. And when we stop risking, our humanity may be as lost as that island.
No matter how pretty an island might be, when it is lost and we are on it we are simply a castaway.
Let's leave islands as a place to visit but not to live at nor become lost below the dark waters of suspicion.

St John, U.S. Virgin Islands

The disembodied voice on the other end says "Your call is important to us, please stay on the line for the next available....".

Now I don't want to be called a nit picker but if my call is so bloody important then where is the human voice on the other end?
Seems like the bigger the business the less they want to give good customer service. Instead we are left on hold. Like over booked airlines these business are more interested in making sure they have customers waiting on them than waiting on their customers. Seems like both government and big business feel we should be privileged to buy their products or line of bull.
Making us wait to make us small and them large? Is arrogance a sign of success?
Where is the romance? Where are wooed and charmed to buy a product, retain a service, or support a candidate.

The romance is gone.

Big business is like the alcoholic parent that uses arrogance, threats and patronizing disdain to control, manipulate, and suppress.

It is time we get a little romance, even if it is only on the phone or they can't have our business.

"The best laid plans of mice and men" Who the heck wrote that?
The plans we make are all too often altered by the situations that arise.
I remember a Professor Hiakawa who said something to the effect "The map is not the terrain". Another quote, referencing a map as part of a plan, having merit and yet how do we use it effectively?
Plans are just what they are.
Sometimes a plan will have you dancing on quicksand. This is especially true when we startup a business or enter into a relationship.
Other times no plan will land us in the same situation.
We find our selves at the mercy of impulsive actions.
But there is a third way.
We learn to dance on quicksand like we are doing the tango or ballroom dancing.
It is style, a skill for surviving the situation that has altered the plan.
Knowing how to deal with the unplanned is learning the fine art of quicksand dancing.

Memories can come in many forms but most are lit by objects in our past.
And, if only for a moment, we are transported to time where no past or future would burden us.
This was taken on the deck of the retired Carrier Midway. A place filled with ghosts of the past.