Only in photographs!

"Van Gogh's 'The Painter on the Road to Tarascon,' 
destroyed during World War II and survives only in photographs."

Came across this clipping in the inside cover of a 2016 journal.
So poignant! 
So glad I saved this copy of a lost painting.
Not, of course, the same as a great original
by one of the world's greatest painters.
But a trace.

I wonder if my journals will be the poignant trace
left of me some day.
Could be soon, if the wildfire smoke keeps turning our skies orange!
This morning I can detect a faint whiff of smoke 
indoors with all the windows shut tight.
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NOTICE! ATTENTION! PLEASE READ!

I have been a bad blipper lately, in this my eighth year. 
Long gone, the days of 'no day without a photo, no photo without a blip.'
Today again I am stuck at home, afraid to go out beneath the orange skies.
VERY bad air out there. (And supposedly it makes the virus worse.)

My friend Renee and I have just started a Morning Pages* project together. This is a very welcome encouragement because I hadn't written in my journal for a whole month. I don't know what effect this will have on my blipping, but the writing will take about an hour a day. I may be even more absent from Blipfoto.

I am not dead! Or on a ventilator in a hospital. I am just trying to put my meager time and energy to best use. 

My computer, on the other hand, is frail, elderly, and in need of life support reincarnation. And the Apple Store is shut. That makes photo-faffing even more of a challenge. *If* I were taking pictures, which many days I'm not.

So if you don't see my avatar in cyberspace, please don't worry!
I'm going to miss you, old friends and new.
But other tasks are occupying me.
Even when I don't post, I've been enjoying yours, sprinkling stars and comments. But I need to give that up too — it's feeling like a tempting distraction from my core priorities.

I promise to pop in from time to time with "proof of life.". 
But I don't plan to comment with any regularity.
That doesn't mean I'm not thinking of you! 
May we all survive this pandemic and live to tell the tale — even if "only in photographs."

GOD BLESS US, ONE AND ALL.

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* Morning Pages ... A term from Julia Cameron's wildly popular book on the use of journaling in the creative life, "The Artist's Way," which I first read in 1993 and have 'practiced' several times since. Highly recommended.

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[Written while the West Coast of America goes up in flames, hundreds of square miles at a time, as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic rampages throughout the world, and protests erupt with deadly consequences in the streets of Portland, and Donald is plotting to steal another election.]