photography

October 23, 2021

The Snail Trail, part 3

As I mentioned in my most recent posts, I’ve become preoccupied with a photo of a complicated snail trail.

After I traced the trail, I attempted to recreate the path that the snail took. I used my puzzle-solving skills. I used scientific strategies for interpreting geologic history, such as the principle of cross-cutting formations (if a line is on top it is “younger” – it happened more recently than the line below).

Hooo boy.

I started at one end and moved forward.

I started at the other end and moved backward.

I messed with the image contrast and shadows.

I got my other glasses.

Every time I thought I figured out one small piece of the middle maelstrom, my next choice would contradict the previous.

Only on the simplest loops was I able to (maybe, mostly) determine the snail’s path.

I stopped trying when self-combustion became imminent.

I decided the snail’s path would remain a mystery.

As if that were up to me.

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October 21, 2021

The Snail Trail, part 1

For a long time I ignored the snails at my local tide pool. Snails. Meh.

Then one day I happened past a snail that had just completed what might have been eternity symbol. After that I was discovering a fabulous new design every few paces.

Since that revelatory day, I’ve made a point of seeking out the artworks that snails have etched in the sand. Like Buddhist sand mandalas, these will be gone with the next high tide. Recently I found this lacy meanderer:

and this delicate brushwork on rock:

Sometimes I spot an artist at work. More often I find them gathered, perhaps at a cafe:

Of all the snail trails I’ve found to date, this one has most captivated me:

Most of this extensive design came from a single snail during one low tide. I’m pretty sure the artist is the dark blob in the lower right. It lacks a snail silhouette because it has seaplants on its shell.

(This is a common tidepool occurrence. Hold still for long and somebody will grow on you:

But I digress.)

I have spent weeks with the extensive snail trail. I have contemplated it, colored it, admired it. Over the next several posts I’ll share some of what I’ve learned by traveling this snail trail.

First, I cropped the trail a bit. (Not sure this made it any less complicated. Perhaps as I advance with my trail work, I will return to the full trail.) Next, I became familiar with the biggest twists and turns:

After that… well, more soon… er… Lots more soon.

As it turns out, fascination, preoccupation, obsession are all parts of the same coin.

April 21, 2020

Patience and Photo Cubes

The last couple months, I’ve been working on an oddball project that is proving quite time-consuming. I’m maybe half done, and already I could have written another novella in the hours I’ve spent on this. Sue’s folly?

It turns out that there are different kinds of patience, just as there are different kinds of intelligence. For example, I am quite happy to clock countless hours using Adobe Illustrator to mangle innocent bits of text. However, when I confront what will probably cost mere minutes to solve a print/sizing glitch, I stall out.

And it’s all for the love of photo cubes. Sue’s folly.

You’ve probably seen a photo cube. It sits on a desk with a picture on each face. Typically it lives in a cubicle. It’s a cheap plastic thing and yet. It’s awesome in a special way.

For a while now I’ve been preoccupied, pondering the possibilities of photo cubes. I used one to make a 3D collage of beach tar photos. Not an easy cube to like, apparently. Not many of us did:

tarcube

Yet my fascination with the cubes persists. Once upon a recent beach walk, I realized that I could put a poem on a cube, 1 verse on each of the 6 sides. I further realized that Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky would be great for this. (True, it has 7 verses. But the 7th matches the 1st.)

I next realized that I could combine my loves of typography and Adobe Illustrator:  I could mess with text to decorate the cubed poem. I would not presume to attempt illustration, as John Tenniel’s originals are among the greatest illustrations ever. Here is his Jabberwock (tinted by Fritz Kredel) from the 1946 Random House edition of Through the Looking Glass:

JabberColor

Armed with my realizations, I got to work. First I took the cube template from my beach tar cube and made that a background layer:

template

When I print something designed within this template, I can cut-then-fold the paper to create a cube… Hmm. Does such basic paper folding qualify as origami?

Early on, I had to decide rotations – how each verse would flow into the next on the cube:

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That turned out to be the only engineering aspect that I enjoyed.

I’ve had tons of fun with the decorating – with interpreting Carroll’s special words and pondering the details of this fantastic unique poem.  I’m astonished at how many hours I’ve happily spent, taking unsuspecting text (mostly in the Didot font) and doing strange distorted things to it. I typically try and scrap 10 effects, for every 1 that I keep. Here is a snapshot of the current draft of the 1st verse:

firstface

On every cube side I’ve still got many tweaks to make. Relocating, resizing. For example, I need to rearrange this text, because the bloody bbs need to end at burbled (No wonder I love this project. Where else would I utter that phrase?):

newbs

I really like how I portrayed the death of the monster. Oh. Spoiler alert. The Jabberwock gets chopped by a blade. Here’s a snapshot of the death scene:

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I don’t usually discuss my work in progress, but in this case I’m going public in hopes of nudging myself to the finish line. Part of me wants to give up and set this cube aside – it feels, I dunno, frivolous. Not what I should be doing. Whatever the hell that is…

(I’m a writer, so I should be writing, right? Okay, I am writing. I’m working on the final book in my speculative detective series, FRAMES. I’d also like to be writing something that deeply resonates in Our Situation. But when it comes to our pandemic. Woah. Dude. is as far as I’m getting.)

I’m frustrated by some of the things that aren’t going well in my Jabbercube project. For example, the printed, cut, and folded draft cube has some faces that are a titch too wide. The paper cube buckles when I slide it into the plastic cube. This didn’t happen with the tar project. I thought I’d done everything the same. Sigh. I hate that kind of fussy refinement stuff.

cubefolding

Also, early in the project I knew I was making effects that were too subtle to show up on a 3.5 inch cube. I opted to keep going, to find designs that worked best, and think about format later. But now it’s time.  I need to smallify some of the existing decorations so they will play well on the cube. But I don’t want to scrap any of the existing decorations. Which means I’ll need to expand those and move them into a larger format like a poster or booklet.

So! How about that! The one enormous project has split into two branches!

For both branches, I still need to come up with the right, overall design element. Something that sets off each cube face, something that says “Hi, I am a cube face” (or “Yo, I am a page”). I’ve tried/discarded several elements already. No clue how long until I hit upon one that I like. Now, this is a kind of experimenting that I do enjoy. But. I’m starting to hear a clock tick when I sit down to work on this. I don’t have a deadline but I’ve got so many other projects I want to start!

Admittedly, part of my impatience to be done comes from a fantasy that I had, when the world went into lockdown and many of my favorite musicians began performing music at #livefromhome. This hashtag gave an open invitation for anybody to share what they’ve done while stuck at home. I love that idea! Nobody wants to hear me sing or play an instrument. However, I listen to #livefromhome music while I work on this cube. So I imagined that I would share the cube. But the rate things are going, the lockdown will come and go and I’ll still be cubing.

(I assume I don’t need to add: of course I want the lockdown to end!)

OK, maybe it’s time to go move some bloody bbs.

(I wrote this in response to Discover Prompt Day 21: Instrument.)
April 19, 2020

Ghosts of the Morning

Low-angle, early morning light in my home reveals mysterious ghostly presences where mere furniture and structure otherwise stand.

Inside the China cabinet…

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…Now, this ghost seems explicable. It seems to live in my grandmother’s sole surviving crystal glass:

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But on the wall, a graceful heraldic figure materializes from no discernable source:

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And on a floor, with no nearby surfaces to reflect or refract, an excitable presence scrabbles near a cabinet’s leg:

Meanwhile, this remarkable flying creature appeared on my ceiling today.

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None of the ghosts have yet tried to make contact. I’ll let you know if/when they do.

(This post responds to Discover writing prompt Day 12: Light.)
April 29, 2018

Lessons, Re-Learned

For me, this is a time of imminent loss. One of my longest-standing, dearest friends is fighting for his life. Now, he is the proverbial tough old bird and if anyone can beat these particular odds it will be this guy. But for the foreseeable future, the next text or phone call could bring terrible news.

As I scrap this or that “important” plan in order to spend a few minutes clunking around his hospital room or assisting his family in some small way, I’m re-reminded of the few things that matter to me.

1) My loved ones.

2) Writing.

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3) Getting my head into the present tense so I can appreciate what is happening while it is happening. Such as walking on the bluffs by the ocean and… catching paragliders taking their turns at launch… or witnessing brilliantly graceful pelicans come in for their awkward landings, right next to harbor seals who lounge unperturbed:

pelicanssunsetIMG_6329

And, oh yeah,
4) My health.

When I was younger, I knew these things, too. But when I was younger, I more often lost touch with truth.

I’m so grateful I got to get old and I look forward to figuring more stuff out. While remembering the stuff I already figured out.

(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge was “lines”.)

September 17, 2017

I’m Still Here

steepbeachAccidents of erosion.

That’s how my first geology teacher explained the surface of our world.  He was talking narrowly, as scientists do, about seeing the history of the earth in its current landforms.

Landforms like this shoreline cliff and creek bed:

 

The phrase stuck with me. It covers so much. All the stuff I used to try to understand, that no one really can. Why why why I took the jobs I did, moved the places I went, lost these loved ones, saw those illnesses recur, effortlessly vaulted to success here, bashed my head against failure’s wall there. How it came to be so important for me to try to understand.

When I look at my life geologically, I see that things fall apart, and they form again in new ways, and what it looks like, well, it just depends – like erosion – on the weather.

What’s that the Buddhists say? You are the sky. Everything else, it’s just weather. (- Pema Chodron, maybe quoting somebody else).

Recently I moved, to be closer to the ocean. The move surprised people, including me. (More about that at some point.) My new neighborhood has spectacular views of the beauty of erosion. I especially love the trees, in varying stages of change.

This one I call Nessie:

Jurassic predator tree:

The alien and the protector of the cliff (you get to decide which is which):

(The WordPress weekly photo challenge was Waiting.)

June 25, 2016

Habits of the Unwatched Bee

Like many a gardener, my appreciation for insects was transformed when I began spending time around plants. I’m downright proud that so many plants in my yard have bees buzzing around them all day.

My impression has always been that the bees browse and linger over their meals.

But I’ve never tried to photograph them before.

Turns out they move all over the damn place.

My mad plan to photograph bees at a variety of flowers began while out for a walk this morning. A distant neighbor has a spectacular hedge of Matilija poppies (a southern California native plant), which tower ten feet tall, invade for a few weeks each year, then disappear. But I digress.

Anyway, I liked this bee. See it? On the yellow globe center of that Matilija bloom:

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So then I wanted more photos of flowers with bees. I kept my camera/phone ready, but for the rest of my walk, I saw nothing but yards devoid of bees. Why would bees ignore all those flowers? Perhaps those yards use pesticides?

(If only someone would invent something like the internet so I could investigate such questions.)

Back home, there were plenty of bees around my plants but. They. Would. Not. Hold Still.

I took a whole lotta photos and got two that sort of included bees. Can you spot the bee butt near the bottom of this photo?

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Zoom in he’s going to land no, wait, ahhh, there he goes…

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Perhaps my next photo project should involve snails.

(The WP Photo Challenge is Partners.)

June 11, 2016

Facing the Moon Again

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On the whole, I prefer cats to people and through the years I’ve been lucky to know many amazing felines. Especially Leo.

I lost him last summer. Through at least some fault of my own. He was only 3.

 

 

 

LeoyawnLeo gave his all to everything. He was enthusiastic, eccentric, hilarious. And above all, loving. He adapted, accepted, and enjoyed whatever came his way, to such a remarkable extent that I began to see him as a spiritual guide. He was always purring about something, with a motor that could be heard across a room. He purred when he ate, he purred when you looked at him, he purred as he walked around.

 

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When I scratched the side of his chin, he would invariably lean too deeply into the experience and fall over. At which he’d shake himself and lean just as deeply, again. And again. I don’t know how long he would have kept it up – I always stopped first. During the scratch-lean-fall episode in this photo, he repeatedly slid off the arm of a chair and came back for more, purring all the while. I’m probably the only one who wants to watch this video of a chin scratch session, but you’re welcome to join me…

 

 

 

When we got a rescue dog, all but one of the cats soon figured out that the dog was afraid of cats, and made nefarious use of that knowledge. Leo never got the memo and fled at any sudden movement by the dog (who in turn would flee because Leo made a sudden move). Eventually Leo discovered that dog tails make fun toys and that launched a friendship between those two exceedingly cautious individuals.

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Leo was enormous, standing a head taller than the other cats. He was galumphing yet graceful. One of my favorite things was the way his spine undulated as he strolled.

Another favorite was how he reacted if I tried to hold him. He didn’t like to be held, but he wouldn’t squirm away. Nor would he give in to it. Instead, he would stand stiffly on my chest until I released him.

 

 

 

He’s been gone for nearly a year yet it still hurts to talk about him in past tense.

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Can you spot Leo in this picture? He started life as a tiny feral stray kitten. I’m grateful to the shelter worker who devoted extra hours to handling him, to give him a chance at adoption. The feral kittens don’t often get out of the building.

As Leo grew – and grew – he maintained the view that everything was larger and tougher than he was. Tougher, perhaps was true. Such a gentle and humble nature – not descriptors that often get applied to cats.

 

 

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Leo adored and admired my older cat Luna, who became his mentor in cat behavior. Luna is innately a cool feline dude and he was patient with Leo, but Leo never quite got it. The cool feline thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leo was friendly with all other cats. When I left Missing Cat flyers on doorsteps I heard from more than one neighbor, ‘I used to see him all the time, he hung out with our cat(s).’

 

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It’s safer, of course, for cats to stay indoors, but they’re so much happier outside. So I let them out during the day then locked them in at supper time. Every morning I’d get a knot of anxiety when I opened the cat door, and breathe a thanks when they were safely back inside. But I knew that if they could talk they’d tell me they’d rather live short interesting lives outside; so I honored those preferences. Until recently.

Last summer I was away from home for nearly 3 weeks, on work trips with a vacation sandwiched between. Leo, especially, hated it when my suitcase came out and I left home. I was the only human he had any bond with.

 

A few days into my trip, I got a phone call that Leo had stopped coming inside. He was hanging out down the street but wouldn’t come home.

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When I got the call, I was enjoying a lazy afternoon by my brother and sister-in-law’s pool. The trip took on a taint after that call. I was thousands of miles from home. I’ve rarely felt more helpless.

I love traveling but I am a complete homebody and always get homesick.  When I’m away from home, I use the moon to connect with my absent loved ones. I look up, know I’m seeing the same moon that they are, and with that can better enjoy my time away.

 

On that wretched trip, my last night away there was a gorgeous full moon. That night, like every night since the phone call, I tried to send Leo thought messages while I stared at the moon. Silly, of course, unless it wasn’t. Go home buddy, I’ll be there soon.

When I woke up to catch my pre-dawn flight, I was swept with dread, a certainty that something terrible had happened to Leo.

I’ve got a lot of if onlys.

If only I’d kept the cats locked in the whole time I was away. Sure they would have been miserable and driven my daughter crazy. But.

If only I’d flown home early, right after I got that phone call about Leo. Sure it would have cost lots of money I didn’t have. But based on neighbors’ reports, he was around, people saw him – until right before I got back.

If only I’d paid more attention to numerous indications that the drought was driving more wildlife down from the mountains and into my neighborhood. Once I got back home from my trip, I learned from neighbors that on every block, multiple cats had gone missing of late. Coyote sightings increased from occasionally to daily. I could have realized some of that earlier.

I could have done so many things differently.

If only.

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Our neighborhood is empty of cats now. Some are now forced to be indoor cats, like my unhappy campers. Actually, mine now have a giant dog-run cage thing that lets them go slightly outdoors. One of them thinks the cage is cool, one is indifferent, and one of them thinks it’s a cruel trick.

 

 

 

 

They used to love to hang out on this patio, as Luna and Leo are doing in this photo. Leo was always in one planter or another. He was rough on the plants.

A couple months into Leo’s disappearance, I took down the signs I’d posted around the neighborhood. It wasn’t intentional, my putting them in his favorite planter.

I found myself incapable of trashing the posters. They sat in the planter through the winter. Finally, after the rain ruined them, they no longer felt connected to Leo and I could recycle them.

I don’t know what happened to Leo. No remains have been found. But then that’s how cat disappearances go. Certainly, no one has called about his microchip number. I’ve been searching shelters and Craig’s list ever since; although sporadically now, eleven months later. I’ve been blessed with volunteered help, well-wishes, and miracle reunion stories from numerous wonderful strangers; and I’ve been harassed by  ‘we found your pet’ scams.

Perhaps a coyote didn’t get Leo. But that’s by far the most likely scenario.  Beautiful warm night, full moon, Leo chasing bugs, doesn’t notice the pack until… 

Every damn time I walk outside, I still have a flash instant’s fantasy that he’ll come running up from god-knows-where he’s been.

I hate being outside in my neighborhood at night now, especially when the moon is bright. I need to get my moon-gazing back. It was one of my favorite things about being alive.

I usually honor my animals with memorials when their lives conclude, but I haven’t been able to manage one for Leo. For almost a year, I haven’t been able to look at photos of him and have shied away from my memories.

But I need to get past that. Avoiding memories is worse than losing him. It’s like he never existed, never graced my life at all. Nothing could be more wrong than that.

Leo, your presence in my life was such a gift. I miss you so much.

Hope to see you on the other side.

(Written for WP Weekly Photo Challenges Admiration and Pure.)