Meditation on my 2nd D.D.

   When you consider that I just recieved my second Daily Deviation with the bird at the upper left of the page, and that my first was the monochrome dove below, you see very far into me, and as one photographer so aptly put, to "the layers of love in my soul." Roger Tory Peterson said that we watch birds because of their, "vividness," coining a word that didn't exist until then, but the only word that has ever described for me what their aliveness does to my heart. For that reason, I took to trying to capture that feeling for all I was worth, at a time when my life was due to end. "Whatever you do," said the oncologist, "don't go outside in the winter time. The cold will not mix well with chemotherapy."  But I sat outside in my bathrobe and overcoat, in spite of him, all covered in snow, looking at birds through a lens, saying to myself, "while my days last, I'll do as I please." And birds, common birds, were my cure. I took a good dose of their vividness, and stayed alive. Both of these photos have one thing in common now, besides being D.D.s, and I thought you should know. They come from a place deep inside of me where I made the sight of birds be my reason to live. Against the odds, I'm still alive.