Creek Running North

Be happy Chris, Becky, Zeke and Thistle.

We’ll wait a month before starting the WeMissChrisClarke blog (a la Fafblog).

aw this sucks; i guess it is what i get for going to Vegas and not staying around online paying attention.  Well i hope you catch some salmon and steelhead.

that is one noble dog.

take care, chris.

Thanks for the excellent writing, Chris. You enriched my internet life and I wish you well.

Happy trails.

Enjoy your extra time with your family and please give Zeke an extra ear scritch (or belly rub or whatever he likes best) from me.  I’ll miss your writing.  Take care.

I’ll miss you, but it sure sounds like you’re doing the right thing. If it’s no longer fun and feels like a command performance for your fans, it’s time to go for a while and take use the time in ways that feel most meaningful to you.

If and when you do return, I hope it will be for the same sort of reasons: it has meaning for your life, and seems a worthwhile use of your limited time and energy.

And I hope this is taken the right way: no guilt. Any guilty pangs are just the same force that you feel draining energy from you. Thousands of people will miss seeing new writings of yours, but at the end of the day, how many of them will actually miss you the way the people you sit face-to-face with and break bread with would miss you?

Thanks for all you’ve given us. Your leaving in no way takes any of that bounty away.

Be well, my friend.  Hope you’ll still come by and check out what the rest of us are up to every now and again.

Let us know when your book comes out.

Y mándame un postál de La Paz cuando estés allí, no?

Good luck and God bless (and you know I mean that in a very ecumenical and humanistic way).  Please keep us up to date with occasional Zeke posts?  Pretty please?

Ever since he visited me in a dream (and don’t believe that dogs don’t do astral projection) I’ve felt very attached to him.  Give him a hug for me.

I come back from Illinois, and this is what I see?

No, though I’m very sad, I’m not at all surprised.  I know you’re doing the right thing, even though the Internets will be less warm and less witty without you.  And I know very well that I will have occasion to miss your expert troll-skewering.  But even the most delightful troll-skewering is not good for the soul, finally, whereas Zeke and Becky and the desert certainly are.

Now who didn’t see this coming?

Will miss the Zeke news (I come her for teh Zeke!).

Be well, Chris, my rock star!

what they said.

If this means that, after a rest, you can pour some of these creative energies into a book of some kind, then I don’t think anyone here would count this as any sort of a loss.

Be well.

Good luck. Thanks for all the great writing.

There’s no love like the dog love, as DMX says.  Don’t fear the burnout; just think of it as chrysalis time.  (Or maybe not.  Well, you know what I mean.  “Transition from one larval stage to another” is probably a better analogy, without the implication that the upcoming time is time when you won’t be doing anything, but it doesn’t sound as good.)

Thanks for the wonderful writing.  Be well.

Only lurked until now, but must say I’m both saddened and happy to see you take time out.  I’ve told my 13 yr old Boxer Annie about Zeke--she sends her best wishes with mine.

November 6, 1877. (_Geneva_).--We talk of love many years before we know anything about it, and we think we know it because we talk of it, or because we repeat what other people say of it, or what books tell us about it. So that there are ignorances of different degrees, and degrees of knowledge which are quite deceptive. One of the worst plagues of society is this thoughtless inexhaustible verbosity, this careless use of words, this pretense of knowing a thing because we talk about it--these counterfeits of belief, thought, love, or earnestness, which all the while are mere babble. The worst of it is, that as self-love is behind the babble, these ignorances of society are in general ferociously affirmative; chatter mistakes itself for opinion, prejudice poses as principle. Parrots behave as though they were thinking beings; imitations give themselves out as originals; and politeness demands the acceptance of the convention. It is very wearisome.

Language is the vehicle of this confusion, the instrument of this
unconscious fraud, and all evils of the kind are enormously increased by universal education, by the periodical press, and by all the other processes of vulgarization in use at the present time. Every one deals in paper money; few have ever handled gold. We live on symbols, and even on the symbols of symbols; we have never grasped or verified things for ourselves; we judge everything, and we know nothing.

How seldom we meet with originality, individuality, sincerity,
nowadays!--with men who are worth the trouble of listening to! The true self in the majority is lost in the borrowed self. How few are anything else than a bundle of inclinations--anything more than animals--whose language and whose gait alone recall to us the highest rank in nature!

The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, and nothing more. Virtually we are men; we might be, we ought to be, men; but practically we do not succeed in realizing the type of our race. Semblances and counterfeits of men fill up the habitable earth, people the islands and the continents, the country and the town. If we wish to respect men we must forget what they are, and think of the ideal which
they carry hidden within them, of the just man and the noble, the man of intelligence and goodness, inspiration and creative force, who is loyal and true, faithful and trustworthy, of the higher man, in short, and that divine thing we call a soul. The only men who deserve the name are the heroes, the geniuses, the saints, the harmonious, puissant, and perfect samples of the race.

Very few individuals deserve to be listened to, but all deserve that our curiosity with regard to them should be a pitiful curiosity--that the insight we bring to bear on them should be charged with humility. Are we not all shipwrecked, diseased, condemned to death? Let each work out his own salvation, and blame no one but himself; so the lot of all will be bettered. Whatever impatience we may feel toward our neighbor, and
whatever indignation our race may rouse in us, we are chained one to another, and, companions in labor and misfortune, have everything to lose by mutual recrimination and reproach. Let us be silent as to each other’s weakness, helpful, tolerant, nay, tender toward each other! Or, if we cannot feel tenderness, may we at least feel pity! May we put away from us the satire which scourges and the anger which brands; the oil and wine of the good Samaritan are of more avail. We may make the ideal a reason for contempt; but it is more beautiful to make it a reason for tenderness. (Amiel’s Journal)

To you, the extraordinaire...thank you....

vaya con dios

If you leave the blog field fallow, maybe some pretty flowers will grow on it.

Great shot. Happy trails, Chris! You’ll be missed.

Zeeeeeeeeeeeke!

Thank you for leaving us with such a nice picture.  Enjoy your time.

Thank you for sharing your writings with us.  Whether you resurface here or stay in the three-dimensional world, we’re lucky to have you around.

Cool runnings.

Warmest wishes to you and a gentle bear hug to Zeke, who has captured my heart with his dignity and grace.

vaya con dios

I agree with the sentiment, but how would you say this to an atheist?  Personally, I like “Vaya con nada.”