Goes to show Steemit is totally superfluous or entirely works a treat on a way that saves electricity one way at least: I woke up to the balloon hanging over my head. Lightbulb moment: THAT had to be the thing rising from the swamp. I had at that point still not read the title of that photo! (let alone this reply). Which in and of itself is a peculiar miss of something printed loud and clear.

In fact, it took my interfering Google "desktop" collection of images telling me where I've been to show me. A "spread" I totally ignore as a factory setting I do not require: but reading "the cards" thus anyway for a change, I am handed a free bit of fortune telling. Abort the search. Apparently what I am looking for WILL lie somewhere amongst all that I already know=posess in excess. Time to burn more and petrify less.

Also that same old: time to trust yourself, even if nobody else does.
Don't forget as a woman you seriously (still in this day and age) have a lot of lost expectation for yourself to make up for. There is a woman in the harsh North Cascades living (by herself) on a bit more that 10 acres Lynx Vilden and another ultra liberated Barbara in the Kimberly Region in the Australian outback. Inspiring and cautionary series with the trusty Ben Fogle, whom I cannot help but always imagine infront of his cosy fireplace in some English country house. (Probably not quite contentedly, judging by insane filmography).

And THAT is how anger (entrapement/impotence, futile aspirations, pride?!) turns you into stone so that you don't even remember to LOOK UP. And THAT is the wake up call my mother tried to give me gently (utterly chained to her own radiator) and what more could she add? AND that is what retiring young at heart does for you: it liberates you by degrees (of cars and boats and cabins).

Defence is something I spent years on (something I was doing while you were retiring) but had to let that go. I saw how resistance is futile and stealth allows you to be ahead of everything and then what? There you stand on the corner of every street, well aware of the lamp, waiting for them to pile into the chemist's shop and realise they are being watched (over). True they can't hurt you back (always upset for being "caught out" and reminded of themselves) but game over. Defence turned out to be offence after all. Retreat actually even more so (because you are showing them you are okay and implying in their rabbit caught in headlght eyes they are not. You weren't meaning to, but that's interconnection for you. We are like trees in a forest. One big happy little family.)

So we are left with your true morsel of wisdom: Freedom is taken.
One takes one's head and turns it up.
It would be superflous to add that hot air balloons are my mother's only romantic fantasy. And if it hadn't been for her wish to be an owl rather than a person I would have grown into a person intimidated by owls. And so we find our teachers.

An odd parallell, is that the balloon scene in the film "Enduring Love" frequently kept passing through my mind this year. (Haven't seen the film since it came out). I'll have to get cracking on decoding that one....

Is River still paddling with you? My mother always warns me: dogs tie you down. (So? Aint going nowhere anyway.) But the world traveller River might testify to the contrary - for all your (pecunary) limitations you hardly feel taken hostage by your pet. Just adequately domesticated perhaps, with a bath, an amble and a scrambled egg on time? Dogs do wonders on that front for the ageing. Hence my weighing up the pros and cons.