Time is circular, look at the Mayan calendar. We humans repeatedly return to the starting point, some full of insight, some not. The Mayans might have knew that beginnings and ends are interconnected. As 2012 shakes hands with 2013, I am thinking that I’m a bit more knowledgeable about some things than I was last year. However, the adage, the more I learn, the less I know, increasingly comes to mind.

I’ve been thinking that I might put together an e-book, write an introduction to it, and have Red Horse Press publish it. Last night I began working on this project. It was late, I was tired, and I have a cold. But I read the January

entries. They seemed to stand the test of a near-years’ time.

My putting Alaska Dispatches: Images and Words, 2012, in book form was also influenced by my readers, some of whom include Fran Bundtzen, Heather Ash, and BritLively. They often referred in passing to an idea or passage, and so this too made me think this was a sound idea.

This is just one project of several that I’m now working on. Ideas beget ideas. For example Fran read the dispatch in which I made a comparison to Squalor Holler and Noah’s Ark, and then extended upon it, saying that Noah’s wife must have turned the poop into compost. Fran said this was highly unlikely, that she most likely just dumped it overboard.

This got me to thinking about the more implausible nature of a mere mortal building an ark, and then loading up the ark with two of each kind of animal, and then remaining out on the flood waters with these animals for forty days and forty nights.

I continued to think about this -- the Old Testament is a fantastical document; logically, much of what happened during this time could not have taken place. Or, so some say. I finally decided to test the waters (pun intended), and write a novel about this. My goal was to slow time by writing, and while writing, determine what was plausible and what was not. I’m now working on a novel entitled Noah’s Life, which is about a woman’s going back in time (via an egg-shaped time machine) and spending 40 days and 40 nights on the ark with Noah and his son, who is named Son. (Noah named him Son because he’s a very literal guy.) I ought not have started this project – I have many others to finish. But it’s now taking shape, so I won’t abandon it.

My writing dispatches have also motivated me to keep up with the photography. My forays into this area have been forays. I learned that it’s easy for me to put images to words and words to images.

Lastly, and most importantly, I had verified the importance of writing every day and not being overly critical of what I write. Some dispatches were better than others. But it was not for me to judge. Pete often surprised me by noting he liked some writings that I thought should be trashed. So you just never know.

No, you just never know. That’s why we keep coming full circle.

End of dispatches for 2012. Check out 2013 Dispatches