We Are All Connected

Do stuff. 

be clenched, curious. 

Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. 

Pay attention. 

It's all about paying attention. 

attention is vitality. 

It connects you with others. 

It makes you eager. 

stay eager. 

~ Susan Sontag

So much in my mail, my email, my texts, and other sources has been junk. Sometimes - especially after a little adventure - I'm so frustrated with the piles of junk - virtual and physical that I feel overwhelmed and pick up a book or turn on a mindless movie. I do have ACTUAL work demanding my attention, but the junk interferes with my focus.*

But today - voilà! - there was an email from someone from iNaturalist wishing to use a photo of mine.**

This is how it will be in the article. Isn't it a fabulously weird creature?

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This is the second time I have had someone - a stranger - ask to use a photo to illustrate their work. The first time was a lovely fellow from England who asked to use a photo taken of the Catalpa tree at Coole Park in Ireland (he found it on a post in the earlier iteration of this blog).***

This request was from a scientist or educator (or both) from Brazil requesting the use of my photo of a Suragina water sniper fly taken along the banks of the Frio River in Uvalde County, Texas.****

Of course I granted permission. 

Was this not yet another lesson in "connectivity?" We are all connected in this world - in this life.  Most of the time we will not see how this photo, this act (of kindness or anger, friendship, rejection, or rebuke), this moment will have any lasting impact on anyone or anything. 

But it might. 

I woke up this morning to find that email request (which also took me back to the river and the moment I found that strange looking fly resting on a senna leaf, I believe AND then, remembering the catalpa my mind went to Ireland). 

Then I stumbled into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and saw the paper plate full of loofah seeds and the other detritus of a happy moment with the neighbors. These eager and inquisitive children are such a gift as they ask questions about everything. The older of the two wanted to know about loofas and I had saved a dried gourd to show him how they "work." His sister joined in as we dissected a young gourd fresh from the vine and then "processed" the dry gourd. The prize was a promise of planting seeds in their garden in the spring (and the loofah they uncovered was theirs to keep).  

It was a sweet moment...to see the light in their eyes as they learned something new. And it connected me to the times Daddy grew the gourds in our garden, harvested them, and saved the seeds for the next year.

We are all connected. It's not a secret. Knowledge and love never die. Moments live on.

Pass it on...

NOTES (here for further information or explanation, if needed):

*I might have a procrastination problem as well. This is no surprise to me either.

**iNaturalist is a database for citizen scientists to log observations of living things world-wide. We jokingly call it Facebook for nature nerds. I use it for many purposes - to remember this place, this experience, this creature... It is a bit of a journal for me.

*** The photo was used in an article in the August 2018 issue of The Irish Garden. He sent a copy of the magazine and I also lucked into purchasing a copy on the newsstand in Shannon Airport. https://walkinthepark-padimus.blogspot.com/2018/09/where-were-wandering-women.html

**** For use in an article on freshwater invertebrates :  http://www.planetainvertebrados.com.br/index.asp?pagina=especies_ver&id_categoria=28&id_subcategoria=0&com=1&id=294&local=2