Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog

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.     Suffering is universal; we are all part of the totality of it… and (together) we can go beyond it.  

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.   Sometimes going beyond mere representative images and symbolic patterns (as what thoughts are)… is a fundamental way of truly transcending suffering.  Such a “going beyond” is silent, perceptive, non-fragmentary, and devoid of mere separation and indifferent distance.

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.     from Walt Whitman:

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I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer
of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
hid—I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look
out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

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(Left click on image to enlarge it; hit left “return arrow” to return.)

Purple Passion… photo by Thomas Peace 2013

eternalfountainofyouth.com

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.     (Somehow, the two always belong together.)

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.     Universal order eternally smiled at the limited, rather barbaric,

.     miseducated, ironclad notions of entropy… as certain minds,

.     after tha debate, star t ed 2 d tear e oar eight 2 knot in 8 all… & fine

.     alley dis hip it 8 Ed a wwwwwwwayyyyyyyyyyyy..y..y..y………

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Praying Mantises will make a quick meal out of other insects within their vicinity, which is a rather entropic situation for the prey, but a rather non-entropic situation for the Mantises.  (Universal order, by the way, isn’t going bye-bye.)

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.   I love handling Mantises in the wild.  Most, when caught, will tame down within a few minutes… after they bite the living daylights out of you!  Most will tame down so quickly that — after several minutes, when you put them back down on the ground — they actually zealously try to get back on your hand; they love to climb the wiggling fingers; to them it must be a fun sort of activity or exciting experience.  (At least that’s the case with the ones I’ve encountered.)  In our area I only found one Mantid that would not tame down, no matter what.  That one I called “a bronco”… and I hope not to experience another one like it for a very long time!

At one time, I had a Praying Mantis as a pet… in a large terrarium.  I fed it thawed frozen brine shrimp (daily) from my fingers.  It lived for a very long time and laid huge egg sacks full of many eggs (that I put in our backyard).  Female Mantises can lay fertile eggs even without ever coming into contact with a male Mantis; in such cases, the babies are exact clones of the mother.  (If they do mate with a male… the females sometimes eat the male’s head off… or consume much of his body.)  My pet Mantis really enjoyed climbing around on my fingers often.  I was with my pet Mantis on the day that it died; it continually kept kissing its arms/legs all around… as if it were saying “good-bye” to itself.

Mantises truly look “alien-like” in appearance!

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(go figure)

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.      from E. E. Cummings:

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.      yonder deadfromtheneckup graduate of a

.      somewhat obscure to be sure university spends

.      her time looking picturesque under

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.      the as it happens quite

.      erroneous impression that he

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.      nascitur 

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(Left click on the images to enlarge them; hit left “return arrow” to return.)

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Mantis (1)… hanging out with Tom…by Thomas Peace 2013

Mantis (2)… hanging out with Tom… by Thomas Peace 2013

Mantis (3) by Thomas Peace 2013

Mantids are meticulous groomers!

Mantis (4) by Thomas Peace 2013

Peeking over the antenna… right into the camera eye!

Mantis (5) by Thomas Peace 2013

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eternalfountainofyouth.com

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.      (Note:  The following is rather subtle… and may be difficult for many to grasp.

.      Please examine it carefully… and with a mind that has dropped — at least for a

.      while — its ironclad, conventional background and inherited prejudices.)      😉

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.     One safe and quiet blade of lofty, unconventional grass,

.     withstanding the traditional rain, soars higher (to the truth of

.     her) than millions of trampled, overpowered, fallen 

.     “blade-unawarenesses.”

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.      from E. E. Cummings:

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.     the people who

.     rain(are move as)proces

.     -sion Its of like immens-

.     ely(a feet which is prayer

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.     among)float withins he

.     upclimbest And(sky she

.     )open new(

.     dark we all findingly Spring the

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.     Fragrance unvisible)ges

.     -tured together-

.     ly singing ams

.     trample(they flying silence

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(Left click to enlarge; hit “return arrow” to return.)

Leaf of Grass by
Thomas Peace 2012

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eternalfountainofyouth.com 

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