My Mother died 22 years ago today. some pain never fades.

S

                                   My Mothers passing: 22 years ago.
                                                           By her son.

Winds hitting seldom higher velocity for this time of year in Cleveland Ohio USA. It is as if her spirit is paying a visit after two decades leaving at the time of her leaving mere humanity. She was not a violent woman except for her steely-eyed glare that often caused apprehension in most others. She so flatly encouraged my elder sisters and I to speak our minds, share our thoughts, but most of all, respect others for the same. Though she did teach us to never give up, over the decades, I have often questioned her true meaning of this. My Mother taught us to make others see our points usually displayed from point=prick pupils and the firmest of chins, aimed at those differing from us to make them see things our way.

I feel my mother returning this nite more than any other in the last 22 years since her death from small cell lung cancer, diagnosed a mere grouping of days after my second daughter was born.

　

I stepped out to buy her memory a Budweiser from the corner store. I wish to toast her when midnight hits. <<<Is the exact time and place so important?>>>

Leaving the safety of my porch, I am hit by slashing leaves, pamphlets of various languages and branches on this chilled October night. Papercut-like things cut my exposed flesh causing blood trails. I am good with this. Sandy is nailing Jersey and Manhattan. My friend Sandy is coming home. I wish I were there to meet her. Between her and I, it has been a long time. I am sorry, Sandy….



I stop for a moment and toss my arms out. Down the road, a transformer explodes with the sharpest of blue lighting, trees and dwellings take weird glows. Tiny time hits as microwaves, lighting and television goes dark. Descending those around me into darkness after candles held sway. To a time when what we see is really what there is to see.

. I walked to the still electrified store for a 24 Bud, I pay the man as others speak to me about the harsh winds blowing this night.

“It’s just my mother, nothing you need to fear, ” I tell them, venturing out into what most would call gloom and darkness. “Some souls don’t go easily. A few go hard in their wishing for us to remember them. Sorry if this hurts you. It is my Mother coming home. Her name is Marion.”

 

　

My Mother was a hard woman. She was strong in all repsects, never displayed weakness in any regard anything more than superficial fault on her behalf. She always stood proud regardless of how late she was no matter why. And we, her children, stood with her. I suppose it mattered little if we were in the church or our dinning room, she’d share something about being tardy, and the majority accepted this.

Very soon after my grandfather died in the mid 1970’s during an xmas vacation, I flipped time frames. I went from being awake in the day to living in the blackness to the night.

My mother and I shared many an odd moment as we listened AM talk radio as we sipped coffee across a dimly lit wooden kitchen table. She’d sometimes ask me if I were thristy, raising my head, I’d ask for a glass of English tea.

English tea: American version: Take two teabags of Teatly, let themsteep in boiled water for at least five minutes in a Jiffy Peanut Butter jar, yank the bags, and add full milk and sugar to make such a heavenly thing.

“Mom, my stomach hurts,” I so small a child I’d say.

“Of course it does. Just take a drink, “ her calm voice spoke.

My mother did do so much for others. She told a closet-leaving lesbian to stop shooting at her husband as she walked between barrel and targer. .This happened some Sunday night in the 1970’s as the All the Family played and gunshots rang out between hourses.



Back in the days when I was married, her and I had mutual parties that found man and woman relations to be extremely painful. They had never fully reached full event, but were worried about their honeymoon.

` Christ knows, my mother was the TV Show HOUSE character of her time. She so could give objective thinking with so little regard to how others took her thoughts. She was so brave that way. She often offended many except those of smaller mind procresseses which viewed her as being huge.

My mother went huge! I think my sister Holly has a tiny aspect of moms financial abilities which go enormously beyond what my other sister or myself had then. Mom somehow saw things and guided my father as he retired. She saw how dad should take a single payout from LTV =, the Liars, theives and vultures at the Republic Steel Corp buy out.

Had times been different before her passing, I know she would have been some monitary mogul living decades past her.

I remember my mother going down sled hills with me. So cold these days with a pisspoor 55 gallon drum for heat against the harshest of a 5 degree day. I’d lay upon her back, my arms stretched under her. Brisk air, violent bumps the spray of frigid snow hitting my face.

　

Memories.

　

Memories.

What roads would you walk to see your mother once again? To look into her face? To wish to hug her body once again?

To Drop yourself to your knees and perhaps ask for forgiveness?

Where would you go?

　



The Call:

“Mark, Please come to the office,”

I went to the office. I knew my mom was dead. I heard my wifes voice quiver and crackle thru the headset. I got her message and told her I loved her.

　

I cannot remember how many people I passed while I hit the lockerroom to change clothes. What did it really matter after all? I knew my mother to be dead, her so to be somewhere else.



As I hit the door to the time clock, it was as if I was crossing under a grouping of outstretched arms under me. The words they spoke sounding positive, unthreatening, and totally lost on me then.

Crossing Timmy, a young driver I liked, stopped his truck by my side. “ What’s up, Mark?”


“My mom is dead, Tim.”

Tim locks the truck up and flies from its cab. “I am so sorry, Mark….”

“don’t be. She has no pain anymore….”

　

Driving the Ford LTD wagon my wife and I owned then, every fucking thing seemed to surreal. Going from the on ramp from east 55 off the marginal, the gulls, crashing waters by CPP, nothing looked similar at all.

　

I leave the freeway at some point off a nearby ramp I have no memory of which it was.

　

Lock the car and begin to walk now on total mental AutoPilot.

To the flashing enter here lights, red against browns and blacks….

Automatic Doors open before me, I stroll through. A couple of sad faces hit me. He is wearing a pale brown two piece suit, her donning a dark green dress to highlight her red hair. In pain, these two share with their faces. Clamping down hard to what I walk toward, I ask: “you folks okay?”

Off guard, the woman says,”his mother just died…”

“then he’s in good company….”

As we begin to slay hurt, pain, the beginners think. To those of us with background, this merely takes us further down paths less traveled and still important.

Talk about life flashing before your eyes. If you have never felt such an event, than you have never skied and hit a tree nor having worried about an outcome of your kids as they hit 10-15 foot ramp and its failed landing and they smashed in icy wall.

　

I walked down hallways to mothers room. Taking an elevator to correct floor, I saw the grey wall most familiar as the stainless doors opened. Room numbers placed on colored paper aiming those needing direction. I exited it, going the opposite way from mom, I met a wall, nose first and a kind RN asked me if I needed proper course.

Holding nose, bleeding freely, I told her I had misstepped, taken a wrong turn.

　

　



I fixed my aim. Passing those in wheelchairs on O2, staff pushing them to various places, some laughing, others crying, far too many blank of expression, I wondered where my mother would be….

I entered my moms rooms, alone.

I stopped before her bed, gasping.

“momma, I’m here.”

Nothing. No response. No chest movement leading to air intaike.

NOTHING.

I step toward her, slowly, desperately waiting for some of life to call me an idiot to shine from her.

‘she can’t be dead. No way no how.’

‘With ever glance at my mother I also noticed a window to her back right. It was opened about 6-8 inches. If fully opened, it could fit some my si…..’

I stepped to my silent mother, looking at the window.

Two feet from the woman that gave me life, I am freaking out and losing it.

‘I can get out that window so easily. I Know I can…..’

Inches away, I do think about killing myself when seeing my mother. I gave her a kiss on the forehead.



COLD

\

How can caressing human skin be so cold?

\

I look down with lips so chilled.

Her face, locked. Her eyes frozen behind closed lids.

　

Far worse than biting into aluminum foil paper. There is a small space that exists in the tiniest parts of us that slay pain and hurt for the benefit of others down the road. A space so small in modern life, that some…..



WAKE UP, MA!

Wake up!!!

Damn it mother, don’t leave me…..

The window smiles at me. Carrying whitish curlings like lips rising higher. AS if saying to me: “Take the Nestea Plunge! DO IT!”

　

Then some female enters the room. I wish I could say what she wore or her hair colour. That’s okay as the decades grant me less and less at every turn of my past.

She asked me if I was okay and if there was anything she could do for me. Her tone I do remember so vividly. This woman carried a tone so smooth and choral, if you will, shot me in the heart, stopping me from throwing my body out a window.

It was at that point I heard a most audible ‘SNAP!’ sound. I know it was born in my head alone, and that my mind had created it.

When you read or hear about other people losing their minds and hearing some sound like a ‘tree-branch snapping, quickly tearing newspaper, or the <BEEEDUNK!!” chimes of a declined debit card, you might want to believe them nuts. There is a point when the human brain crosses barriers. The precipitant subjects sense this, know this, and live on it. They can grow and flourish on this. Too bad so many dismiss this crossing over of a terminator as a full-fledged jaunt into insanity.

There was a ‘SNAP!’ in my head. Christ, I wish I could convey the speedy spirals that made this occur in me. I am sure this goes back to my father and I trying to find my mother a good death-place. My father and I spent a week to find her a nice place to die.

　

NICE PLACE TO DIE!!!!!!!

I AM SUCH A FUCKING COCKSUCKER!!!!

This Is my mother…..

　

Did it matter back then as you helped your father? Mark, He needed you to by his side. He needed a man next to him. His child. His son. Did you think for a moment you weren’t strong for him? Mark, Please, hear us, stop this…. You stood by your father, Mark. Your mother knows this.;.. You’ve nothing to prove. Mark, for some sake, hear us!!!! You found your mom a gentle place to die. Granted the minister of her church infuriated your sisters with his words saying, with so little knowledge of her life, that she’d lived a ‘full life’.

Mark, your mother loved you. You did what you could with your dad as your mother was dying. Sorry she died angry, but her anger was not with you. Mark, no were little else than a car crash witness. You saw it, smelled it, and fuck you, made it a part of you.

‘You should know by now I’m not going away, Mark.’

“What happy things do remember about your mo-mo-mo-mo-mother?” these voices echoe through my head. I more often than not awaken in the chilled grip of night sweats, my bare limbs covered in persperation, my tiny pillow drenched.

Being an asshole during such splendor, I usually say something to the affect of: “M-muthurrrr wuzzzz a prit flllluer.”

These educated fools would say crap like: “Very nice, why is that?”

I so loved cracking their heads in two when I said she was a homicidal maniac responsible for at least twenty deaths as a result of poor economic planning. Well, that or a hasty gardening accident.

My mother was no murderer. But she did teach me in areas of humanity. She taught me the how to manipulate, to become perceptive and exploitive, and the value those things can bring.

　

Mom, I miss you and dad.

If you have a sense of me, mom, we’ll hit Bakers Motel when I meet you. I soooo loved giving you a near heart attack as I dove into the deep end when you couldn’t see sis with the life preserver.

I could cry, but I somehow think that would mean nothing to you, Mother.

Your son, Mark William Darus


I hope you are proud of what I have I done with my mind and what I see. I give these freely as instructed. .

I miss you.

The Children of Today.

 

 

                                
            The youth of today: A contrast of what the mass media gives us.
                                        by Mark William Darus

　

　

Most people watch television news, be it local, Fox, CNN broadcasts, you get a skewed portrayal of most aspects of humanity and the world we live in. These news elements mostly give us the sensational and usually the worst of what is going on. Having Internet friends across the globe and what they‘ve shared with me, I’ve come to the belief that such things occur more in America than everywhere else.

I’m not completely dense and understand where this comes from. Ratings mean everything here. What good is a reporter that grants us beauty, which by most, equals boring, uneventful events we so quickly toss to the side of the road.

As a society here, we love scandals, outstanding crimes, murders and teen violence. Sure, we have gangs as most countries do, some of which are incredibly organized and ruthless in their endeavors. Yet we in the USA tend to give such things more attention. Why is that? Are we so lacking some adrenalin desire that we feel lifeless with out it? Have we allowed ourselves to give more credence to others pain, anger and sufferings that it has eclipsed all else within us?

It would seem we are utterly caught up in others lives and happenings that we have neglected so very much around us. So held by American Idol, Cops, and the myriad of pawn-shop programs <those p-shop things growing only from America’s desperation to gain coin by casting off things precious to merely maintain life.> We want to hear about the deaths at corner stores, car crash victims where bodies are tossed thru windshields spattering on the pavement and suicide bombings in other lands, not to mention the occasional school massacres and drive by killings. We crave these things as perhaps they make us feel lucky that we weren’t those that perished or those left in the the leaving traces of fallout emotionally obliterating.

Enough already. Let’s go to the area of what the media doesn’t want us to see. This perhaps gives about 50 seconds a week to in local realms and less nationally unless related to sporting events.

                                    

The very same school systems that make up the last four school massacres, pipe bombings and other nasty things that make the news, where kids and faculty were wasted because some kid/kids felt bullied or used. Go figure, what is better than eye-witness reports of the injured dead and better yet, the last breathing of the dying. As those shot in the shoulders and legs amble out with blood covered clothing, leaving their schools passing major doorways, don’t reporters descend on them like starving vultures?
                   

                                               
                                    

Perky breasted blond, tall and slender, running toward the first crimson splattered human to leave the place. She yells to her camera man: “You best be filming this!”

“What did you see?!?!” a tiny red haired reporter asks?

“Did you see them shoot anyone and what was it like?” a male covered with so much hair spray a hurricane could not make his hair move.

“What was it like having pipe bombs shred your classmates to bits????”

                                           

It is so easy to get swept into such tragic things that it leaves most of us blinded to all else. Some occasionally think of their children, but I believe that to be a minority here in the USA. That is, unless parents wish to try for huge coin by suing school systems for lack of security and so forth.

Sorry, but I believe most of us are fucking Idiots, discarding the obvious in relation to our children and would be willing to blame anyone else for out lack of being attentive to our children.

　

Why I would say this is so easy to share?

 Sorry, I have found most people to be so sucked into television programming they miss the best points of their kids, nephews and to a lesser extent, grand parents lives that they forget or pass them off as they share things with their friends.

“Oh my god, did you hear about School X’s killings?”

“Okay, hon, my kid got lead trumpet in marching band, but did you hear about Chardon?”

“Babe, of course Jeremy took a solo. We knew this… Damn, did you hear about Columbine? It’s all over the news, darling.”

And the people ramble on…

When do any of us get a glimpse of the B-side?

How often do we hear something positive?

Once in Blue Moon do we hear about someone that made a great difference with humanity.

Bernard Goetz stood up and beat abuse. The media hyped this to no end. Set your way-back machines people and remember this from 1984.

Going further to areas I should not have gone, I am sorry.

                              On Thursday October 25 of 2012 I saw another aspect of positive youth events not regarding ground acquisition games. . This took me backward to days when my youngest daughter played trombone in the marching band of her high school. So fragile the children stood before us. Moving and expressing themselves as they sang or played, caring little about appearance as they did what they did, without smashing into no one to gain yardage, goals or points. They just played or sang for our benefit. Isn’t it sad so many school systems in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA forget these kids as they don’t bring denari >Roman solid status currency< to the table.

                                         

Our United States school systems so easily forget music and the arts for lack of dollars  as want more cash for sports teams as those events flourish. Come on people, tell me how this country isn’t acting like a herd of cows heading for a cultural slaughter we so richly have earned? Football team: 30 to 50 kids, basketball team: 20-30, baseball team, 20-40. School bands, orchestras and choirs, several hundred per school and suffering from continual cutbacks.   All we like is aggression. This, physically speaking, and how we express ourselves, via the mass media, love the pounding and crushing of others to win no matter what.

Last night I was proud to be in audience of young men singing proudly. This reminded me of how my daughter and her marching band years ago captivated half-time and blasting from the grandstands during many a game.

These young men, stretching vocal chords to their fullest, reaching out proudly to be heard in harmony with their brethren, struck me so very hard. <fine, I shed tears as I remember and write this.> These young men know there is little or no financial future in this, yet they do it all the same. They fully know this is not opera, movies, yet perchance a shot at Broadway though they do not dance.

Seeing their faces as they sang, each expressing areas vastly different than others around them, gave me a view into what they felt as they sang. As one held a note, his face looking sad and forlorn with closed eyes, body slumping, another next to him shined , stood tall, exalted, upward curling lips and eyes wide open. These kids, young men, bobbed about and held all those in audience captive as they shared their vocal souls.

　

I’ve heard things like the below statements and questions over the years…

Call me a fucking lunatic, but I’d rather hear harmonic vocals and marching bands as opposed to human demolition derby’s to gain mere feet while many a child end up in a hospital.



Why should we fund a marching band five times to size of the football team? Would there be a reason for a marching band without a football game?

To this I would say: Did you ever really watch one? Did you see them march as they played? I have. I am sorry to say you‘re a moron. These kids and their enthusiasm, the belief of their directors hard workings toward them, make them a massive whole far greater than a football team. These marching bands hold a unity thru diligence and a reason to share their talent with one another as they give us. Besides this, who really pumps up a crowd like a drum corps or the blasting of a horn section?

Choirs? You can’t be serious? For god’s sake, what can they do for schools?

<<<I eventually asked this highly anorexic looking female in loose fitting royal blue dress, bra less nipples far too inappropriate for a high school shindig. She was covered in serious gold and diamonds when she expressed herself.>>> “ Why are you here then? Some obligation to sister or brother?” I am what I am, and further probed her head. “Is it the cost of the dry cleaning of their uniforms that upsets you? Y’know, they either own or rent their instruments. What hurts you so? <at this point I usually give a strong glance at their mate as I ask, “Did you have a rough childhood?” Yeah, sure fine, I’m a prick…

　

　

Did you ever watch kids play instruments and play before a crowd of strangers?

Did you take a tiny space of your life and listen to our future as children sing to us, give themselves freely to us?


Sure, they’d like a compliment, an atta-boy, perhaps a smile from us. They normally get this as some of us share with our kids.

　

I find it so damn sad these events, concerts, State Fairs and National Pride endeavors make little or no impression on my Country. They so seldom ever gain any mass media attention whatsoever. It is as if the media in the United States tell us this: If it doesn’t feed fear, a quest to lock yourselves further indoors or create the desire for the wanting of a better alarm system, you just don’t meet the Jones. They have theirs, why don’t you?



“Forgive this interruption of your normal broadcasting! We’re cutting live to Joanie Manshedsiton for a live report!”

Slightly shaking camera, albeit poorly focusing, thus displaying an urgency for this, focusing on reporter Samanthia Horde and the madness amok behind her. Children and adults running madly about, crying, violently shaking, gasping for air.

“are we live?” Joinie firmly states.

The Desert Storm camera man’s head nods up and down.

“This is Samnthia Horde, reporting to you live at the stabbing here at Beachwoodsmont Mall. There are people running behind me! I hear screaming and shouting! There are people rushing around me to get away!”

Camera pans from right to left.

A lone teenage female is focused on.

She takes the barrel of the gun into her mouth and pulls the trigger and blasts her skull to the ceiling.

While this one person went berserk and made headlines, how many good, amazing children were disregarded?

How many hours would blanket us with speculation as to why this kid went bonkers?

Think about the avenues your own life traverses. What is important to you in relation to how much emphasis you place on childhood sports which breed violence in one form or another?

There are more children in the United States of America interested in music and art than there are with sports. These brave kids, so willing to put up with the snide remarks and outright ridicule, by the jocks and cheerleaders, their peers, believe in their dream. They spend hours every day honing their ability to, perhaps, say: “HERE I AM!”

　

Are they not worthy of our support and praise? Our financing???

Fine, they didn’t win ‘THE BIG GAME.’

Shit, the lackey drum player failed nailing a ‘three-pointer,’ as she bobbed about and felt music fill her, pounding out, never missing a beat with her clan.


Across a street, some freshman team loses. There are hundreds of people in the stands and more on the grounds surrounding the playing field. There are women and men alike shouting, screaming, and even crying. “OH MY FUCKING GOD! HOW DID THEY LOSE?”



I’m on the other side of the road. I am serene and one with the non-violent aspect of humanity.

In the United States of America, we so hold high sports teams. Be it Pro, college or high school, we fuel them, buy their jerseys and give them much coin.

Like 4-Star General George S Patton said: “Americans love a winner! Americans can’t stand a loser. The thought of losing it truly painful to Americans. We have never lost a war and never will!” <<<this is an ironic statement for Patton to say as his grandfather fought for the South during the American civil war. They surely lost that war…>>>>>

We also keenly support reality TV programs. Tell me, please: when does Stephan Kings <aka Richard Bachman> Long Walk or Running Man stories hit us as someday? I have little doubt we will watch someone have their head blown to bits by a 50 caliber when they stagger from the pack as the desperate numbers dwindle for the sake of financial freedom. In bars, households and handhelds will elated jump about as we watch this. I believe this to happen in the next five to maybe ten years if not sooner. Sure, we’ll justify its beginning broadcasts using those on death row as the first subjects. Cannon fodder to us. They would’ve died anyway, right? Doesn’t this cost us less in the long run? Kill the sinners…

　

As America sits back, praises sports teams, reality programs degrading themselves for a hope of cash and >>>and this hurts me to say this<<, the History Channels filling air time with such epic programming as Pawn Stars or the like, how are we not being pacified?

　

I wish I could say I am sorry to say this: If I we’re granted asylum in another country, citizenship, I’d take it in a heartbeat.

The children I saw Thursday night were amazing. Their music awesome.

This country I live gives good children nothing. Our government chucks them unless they need food, <WIC program> .

How sad is that? Aren’t we the richest Country on the damn planet? Aren’t we told this repeatedly? What good is that as our kids get cut left and right in schools? What good is being the richest country mean when our children going to college take, on average, over one hundred thousand dollars debt for a further education? I hope they studied a popular foreign language. They need it as we send more jobs overseas.

Don’t we hold the whole friggin’ world captive with our arsenal of NUKES and autonomous planes that can carry destruction anywhere in a matter of moments?

\

How stupid are we as a people?

Didn’t the USSR and communism fall?

Didn’t the Carthaginians collapse?

The Persian empire?

Wake the hell up, America!

Didn’t the Roman Empire fall?

　

Our ego’s and the propaganda we eagerly eat make us fools.

　

I saw a choir on Thursday. They sounded great, amazing, enchanting.

　

Too friggin’ bad kids like this will never make the news and seldom be heard…

                   Children such as these will go higher, place their hearts and souls forth, and in unison: FLY AS ONE leaving all behind.

May such spirit live on forever.

                                           
                                    Mark William Darus 10272012

At the Cleveland Zoo. Always a good time...

                                             A day at the zoo.
                                       by Mark William Darus

     Mondays are free at the Cleveland Zoo to residents of Cuyahoga County, so I figured I'd take a walk with the animals, perhaps talk to the animals.

      Keep in mind: People are animals too. Talking with them was interesting to say the least.

      First off, I took over 700 photos. I'm not sure how many I'm going to post here but I know I'm going to try not posting the same ones I did on Facebook.

Listen to song in the link below this as you read this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID239PytIEM

The elephants have a new area to romp about. This area made possible by taxes I gladly pay for.  It is quite large and well planned out. They seemed very happy with plenty of room to move about. What wonderful animals they are.

 

 

Who doesn't love baby animals? Even those babies bigger than a Volkswagen?

 

 

On to other areas.

 

 

 

These are so hard to photograph. There movements are so quick and bouncy!

 

On to the birds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above I would title: Freebirds.

 

Waterfowl lake. There use to be an ice cream shop in this building. I guess they now use it as storage area.

 

                              Title: No chains, fences or borders on me.

 

              At the point the above shot was taken, I had already taken just over 177 photos...

Fulton rd Bridge as seen from the Zoo. Not so many years ago, before its rebuild, chunks of this would fall, causing the Zoo to construct heavy nets and structures to deflect debris.

 

 

Statue of a wolf.

 

 

Sorry the above shot is so not good. They were not close not moving and the glass shot through  was not clear.

 

 

I caught it's eye! When seen full sized you can even see its pupil! I was blown away when I saw this on my 'puter.

 

Just napping...

 

 

 

 

 

Title: Ahhh, to be Roaming free in Bedford Ohio this time of year.

Bear face-palm.

 

"Why are you making grunting sounds at me? Hoomans, you are strange beasts!"

 

 

 

Do they feed Bengals deer? Sure looks like antlers in the background, doesn' it? Well, considering the over-population of deer in Cuyahoga County, it makes sense to me.

 

The two people in this shot were embracing each other as they walked. This took me firmly as they were the only couple to show any affection to one another the 6 hours I spent at the Zoo.

Titled: To dream!

 

 

On to the Rhinos! Granted, they were sleeping. I did get a good shot of the babe lay next to its mother. On that one, you have to view the full shot to see. I did not catch this when I took it.
                                                      

 

 

Title: Just gimme shelter...

 

 

Hmmm, kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?

                                              On to Monkey Island.

 

 

 

I loved the teeth shown on this one. Apparently he saw the left paw of the other aiming its head.

Left nailed him, sending him back.

 

Title: Oh, Hell no!

 

Well, I am a male. I liked her hair and everything else from this angle.

She was talking to some animal I could not see. Besides that, what nailed me was the look on her face and stance against the background and foreground. Beauty as my eye and my Fuji caught it.

 

First lion shot. I captured better ones I'll show later.

Riding the tram, this child was always looking about. He was so happy and amazed at everything his eyes happened on. He so often said: "LOOK, MOMMY!" It took me back to long ago days when my own daughters acted the same.

 

A word on this shot: All I was interested in was the 'No eating, drinking...' stuff on the Tram. What didn't notice until I reviewed it was the word 'WAR' in the upper right hand corner. Sure, it must have fully read 'WARNING!' Call it some form of Photographic Freudian slip, yet....

Sitting on the Tram, this wonderful woman waved at us. What I didn't see was the sign to her left. In my opinion, truly words to live by.

 

She also waved at the Tram, it was her eyes and dancing locks that hit me.

Their faces, different emotions crossing them. Contrast.

 

Enlarge to understand this caption: "What the hell is Rubbermaid?"

 

The Jelly Fish. One of the most deadly things on this planet. As they floated about in their dark realm, their own constellation.  Look them up and be amazed as I was.

 

 

Coral and Fish. Don't ask me the what fish these are, but they sure are beautiful.

 

Above: some movements should never be in complete focus.

 

 

 

 

Not fish. In all honesty, I don't recall what animal this is.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                        A feline.

 

Please enlarge this one.

                                                      Couldn't quite capture this one in full focus. Full sized you can see its pupils.

 

 

 

Post to Nature.

 

Boardwalk from the Aquatic, Cat and Primate area. It was on this very walkway that some kid decided to climb its rail. I saw this and responded, aiming toward him seconds before his parents, way ahead of  him realized he was gone. I yelled at the kid "GET DOWN NOW!" This caused his parents, the mother pushing a carriage with one hand and texting with the other and the father talking on his cell, to turn and look. As the kid stepped down, only then did they say anything. I looked at both of them. Granted, my gaze was not the most friendly, but they could have at least said 'thank you.' Like most people these days, they didn't and I quickly called them assholes via a loud whisper as I passed them.

 

She was singing Michael W. Smith as she passed the carriage. Love it!

 

 

Being a Leo, born July 26 1962, that's a Tiger in the Chinese calender, I was they finally awoke before I left.

Bliss?

 

 

 

Enlarged, yet another pupil. Damn, I was so graced this day.

 

 

 

 

The two shots below I was so amazed at how quick my Fuji caught these!

 

 

"He sleeps too much, doesn't he?"

 

 

"Hoomans, stop killing us and taking our lands from us! Give us room to be free."

 

Other great animals. Prairie Dogs!

 

 

 

Hoomans!

 

The pale blue shirt, blond hair, lower back sway and arms that held me against its dark contrast.

Again, contrast. What she wore, leaning again brown wood against the background. 

 

Another bird

 

                                       And yes, fellow Hoomans, they can give us the raspberries!

 

 

Another given to me by my higher power, my god, I believe this shot above to be my best shot of this day as I walked and talked with captive animals no different than us. They held in concrete and metal cages as we are held by the want of coin to sustain us.

 

Sometimes I think we have to stick our tongues out and say: "Thhhhb-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b!

 

Fellow humans, I have to ask this: If you knew you had less than three months to live, what would you share with others?

 

I thank you for your precious time reading this.

Listen to this if you have further time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bHsZLfVg4Y

 

Mark William Darus. 10252012