A DENSE LAYER OF FOG REMAINS as the morning darkness fades, then vanishes as the day moves on.

At dusk, the fog returns to melt away the horizon.

The air has been humid and thick, like the tropics. 

The sky, with colors blending like a painter’s palette, turns life into a dream.

Maybe it is.

The violet and orange of the twilight hours blend with the steel blue ocean. The world is a canvas with life as a brush.

We must paint what makes us happy. 

As the weeks go by, we’re still here, existing, growing, adapting to our new world.

In the dog days of summer, the Sun and the star, Sirius, joust to shine the brightest, one by day and one by night.

But they don’t know the difference. They just want to be seen.

These are the days to enjoy like kids, who wear their hearts on their sleeves.

Our mind does what it can to get in the way; it tells us to grow up, reason, and see the world as it truly is.

But now, through the thick morning haze and the late watercolor sky, I think I finally am.

The world is beautiful and wants us to be happy.

It speaks to us, loudly at times and softly at others, not through a voice, but a spirit of colors and powerful energy, of breathing winds and living things.

“Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” wrote Shakespeare.

I believe this to be true.

All we have is our thoughts. Our thinking takes what we know to be true in our hearts and tries to make life more complicated than it is.

Yesterday I saw a kid collecting sticks off the ground. 

He walked with his dad, looking not just for any stick, but the perfect one.

That’s all his mind was focused on; he was determined. That made me smile. 

I hope he found the perfect stick.

Throughout our lives, we listen to our favorite songs; they transport us to a time and place.

When you close your eyes and listen, the music takes you to a rainy day in the city or a summer barbecue with your best friends.

Music makes us feel something powerful, more significant than ourselves. Yet, it’s so simple.

The beauty of music lies in that purity.

Isn’t that how the world should work?

Music changes who we are, it may make us happy or sad, but at least it makes us feel something.

And that’s what we crave; we want to feel.

Life will have its ups and downs, but looking up at the sky, I feel nothing but warmth in my heart.

In the dog days of summer, I ask for nothing else.

The world is turning, although we don’t see it spin.

The earth is still, but we ask it to move.

Before we know it, fall will come and then the winter cold. 

Right now will all be just a dream.

But if it already is, I’ll strive to make it a lovely one.