Jump and Dance.  What exactly that means I'm not quite sure.  As I write my morning pages required of the artist way, there is a recurring urge to write jump and dance.  I imagine an artist date of standing in a parking lot jumping, knees high.  the crashing of my shoes landing again and again.  For an hour... could I last that long, jumping.  Jump and Dance.  to shake the tethers that hold me down.  Jump to break free and then dance the new dance of a happier me.  Not a dance of grace, the three beats of waltz ,but a silly free form of kindergarten class robots and shaking and twisting and laughter unbridled.

I'm not much on word origins, but I'd guess that yawp became a word as a result of someone actually saying it ... yawp.  So, tonight as I walked along a ridge at sunset, I contemplated yawp.  I had  just run across the word again  while reading Into the Wild.   It's  not a commonly used word and if I had ever said it aloud, it was only while reading a passage to myself.   A yawp is not softly spoken.   So, what does a mighty yawp sound like from my lips.  I tried it a number of times while hiking, using slightly different inflections ... but none seemed quite right.  Yawp needed volume.   I had to wait until I got back to my car...the engine running, windows up, puttering down the road.   Yawp!  Yawp!!  Yawp!!!  Yawp!!!!  Yawp!!!!   

What a colorful word I thought as I finally found it and yawped a mighty yawp.

Cars.  I sit at the traffic light watching as they come off the interstate, one after another, big and little, red and green and yellow and one person sitting behind the steering wheel.   America's transportation choice.  I sit in traffic among them...no better.   I think the world would have evolved into a better place without them. 

I grew up in a small town in Southeast Florida.  The interstate stopped at Fort Pierce about 30 miles north and didn't resume again until Palm Beach Gardens 10 miles to south.  As a result, Jupiter lagged behind the rest of area in regards to growth.  It was my senior year in high school before the first McDonalds opened and shortly after that the interstate was completed.  The main drag in town that I remember having only one traffic light is now eight lanes wide.  The stores are a homogonized blend of national chains that now define most towns that I visit.  Boats clog the sanctuary where I spent most of my youth.  Housing developments of cookie cutter homes now occupy the cow pastures and woods that were so familiar.  Most of the people I knew from my youth have either died or moved away.  I miss my hometown.  I don't know who made this video, but I wish I had footage of the bonfires at the football games, the ropeswing, the hundreds of things that made my hometown special.

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly. ~ anonymous

My last couple of years have been spent going through some major life changes ... a metamorphisis occurring in me.   After plodding  through life in a less than spectacular existence, I now labor to free myself from my protective coccoon and prepare to spread my wings vibrant and colorful.  The winds of life gently breathing in my ear, "Fly high....Fly high!"

Halloween night is full of frightful things.  But according to the Advocate, its the one night of the year when an otherwise peaceful rabbit gets a little out of sorts.   Be careful out there.