With a jolt stronger than caffeine, I became fully and instantly awake when I saw this fellow outside my kitchen window one morning. He was more than five inches (13cm) long. He hung around for a few hours, where he may have enjoyed numerous instances of seeing a human startle. Then we got used to him and at some point he was gone.
The WordPress Photo Challenge was Angular.
Deep in the bowels of a public parking structure I discovered this modern equivalent of a cave painting:
Can you guess what it is? This is a quiz without an answer key, because I dunno. My guess: this is the glue that remains after a sign fell or got removed.
I was in the hospital recently (hip replacement surgery), where one sleeps – or doesn’t – at odd hours. This is what my bed controls looked like at 3 am:
The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is Converge.
The New York City subway system is awesome.
Awesome (adjective), causing feelings of fear and wonder – Merriam Webster Online.
I love the New York subway. Sure, it can be noisy and crowded and dirty. Subway cleaning crews are as rare as baby pigeons and they seem to keep missing cesspools like this one:
On the other hand, sometimes on the platforms there are musicians – damn good ones! – who improve your day with their music, whether or not you toss them any money. And the stations have a grimy beauty, thanks to many generations of tile art:
When I tell you I’m a writer, I also admit to being a voyeur and a snoop. The subway is a great place to eavesdrop and observe (although it never takes long for input overload to occur). I look at all the people around me – well, one doesn’t look directly, one glances and senses – and I try to figure out who they are, what they care about, what their lives are like. Trains go by, more people framed in the windows, like sideways-advancing filmstrips.
As a novice rider, I took great pride in decoding the station and route map, negotiating the turns and turnstiles and signs — in actually getting where I intended to go. Now that I’ve had some practice, most of my trips are successful, and on brave days I try tricky transfers. Nonetheless, each visit to New York brings at least one time when my target station flashes past, the train doesn’t stop and I realize, oops, I’m on an express train. I get out my subway map app to determine how far out of my way the train is taking me. On the map, white dots show stations where express trains stop.
I have always appreciated the subway, but my current interest falls between preoccupation and obsession. This began on the day I glanced out a train window and saw another train that was at eye level, until suddenly it descended. Or my train ascended. Or both. How many levels are there down here below ground? I wondered, and I still don’t know the answer. When I went to the Transit Museum (yes, I went to the Transit Museum), I asked the bookstore guy if they had any 3D models of the system. He thought that was a cool idea for a future product and passed it along to his boss. In other words, nope, no 3D model.
Use of public infrastructure requires trust and perhaps ignorance. The transit museum exhibits confirmed the engineering brilliance of the system – and showed me the decrepit-looking control box that ran the system until way too recently. When I step into electrical gadgetry that shoots me around underground, I don’t want steampunk involved, thanks.
At the Transit Museum I learned that New York’s millions of buildings and people are suspended above antique cavities that were tunneled long ago, through stone and under water, by methods crude and jury-rigged. Well, I guess if it were going to collapse it would have happened by now.
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge topic is Achievement.)
Illumination. I love that word. It feels good to say it. Illumination.
This is a post about limited illumination. You might also say it is a post about dim light. In fact, I almost did opt for the latter phrase, because as I writer I find that fewer syllables are usually better. But dim light just doesn’t sound as good.
I don’t remember where I took this photo, nor what it portrays. It failed to capture whatever I had intended to capture. The light was so poor that what was there worked overtime, streaking and bending, struggling to be seen – and in the process, creating a mystery image, full of intrigue. I don’t know what it is but I like it:
(The Weekly Photo Challenge topic is Refraction.)
Don’t tell my daughter about these photos. Every time I go to my favorite beach in Santa Barbara, I take pictures. She thinks I should stop. She’s right, I do have uncountably vast numbers of photos of the same half mile stretch. But nothing is static there, not even the eroding sea wall I’ve shot a bizillion times. On this trip, I discovered a piece of kelp tangled on the wall:
Things got interesting when I moved to the other side of the wall. Sunlight shining through and around the sea vegetable converted it to a fairy tale:
Now I saw a cascade of jewels, or maybe a despondent princess, silhouetted in the window of a castle tower.
I know a scientist who makes music on the side. He has a single CD that he keeps reissuing with new and revised songs. I’ve teased him about this but I’m doing a version of the same thing, aren’t I? A single beach, reissues of new and revised views.
My daughter is wise, but I will continue to defy her. Sure I’ve got lots of images with this sea wall – but with every visit it’s a new wall. Certainly, there’s never been a princess there before!
Anyway, it’s not like I’m wasting film. Which makes me uncomfortable, realizing that younger readers may not know what film is.
(The Weekly Photo Challenge topic is Refraction.)
On a recent road trip, I caught a spectacular sunset out the car window… and reflected in the car window… and out the back of the car… as seen in the side mirror.
(The Weekly Photo Challenge topic is Refraction.)
A sister-in-law: “Have you read Wild by Cheryl Strayed? I think of you as I read it, because of your adventurous spirit.”
Me: “No, but I am thrilled that you think I have an adventurous spirit. Wonder if I agree.”
A sister-in-law: “Are you kidding?”
Adventurous? Moi? I wish! I do like to try new things but I generally fall short of earning the honor of that adjective.
I can be a big chicken, but that’s not what prevents me. It’s my tendency to dwell in the past and on the future. I know I’m not the only one with this problem. It afflicts most adults of our species.
Adventure can only be had right now, in the present. Kids are good at living in the present tense. So are critters. It’s a skill I’m trying to re-acquire.
When you first learn to walk, every moment is an adventure:
A few years later, adventure is as close as your next idea, such as this tandem go-cart constructed of cardboard boxes, plywood, and skateboard wheels:
Red and Luna would head out each morning to patrol the yard and explore anything that might be new since yesterday.
And of course, when you’re a dog, like Shadow, adventure is always in the air – especially through a car window:
Shadow and I go for walks twice a day. I vary the route but we’ve lived here for years. No matter which way we go, we’ve done it before. Many times. Yet, each time we step out the door, Shadow’s enthusiasm is as fresh as ever, and she’s always in a hurry to get going. It’s not that she needs to go – she’s got a backyard, she’s not cooped up inside. She’s eager because you just never know what might happen next.
That’s the attitude I aspire to. Except without the affinity for cat poop.
Nica, the main character of my latest novel, is completely comfortable with adventure. I’ve never written another character that I want so much to be like!
Do people yawn when we are bored, or does that only happen in fiction?
Do cats yawn when they are bored? Do cats get bored? How could we tell?
My cats yawn at me pretty frequently. Should I take it personally?
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge said to juxtapose two photos to engage them in dialogue. I remain clueless about what that means even after it sparked several posts!)
Everything weathers or wears or frays, each according to its materials. It is such a commonplace process yet produces so many extraordinary results, including the intricate silhouettes of mountain ranges and beach sand that massages your feet as you walk.
I am especially fond of rust, provided it is not my stuff that is doing the rusting. A stairway in the U. Colorado, Boulder, athletic stadium is doing the rusting here. The pooled water is surely causing yet more rust, plus an artful reflection of a railing that was boring in real life:
Nearby, the stairs come with cartoon faces (I promised myself I wouldn’t mention beings from other dimensions again):
And these stairs suggest star nebula images from the Hubble telescope (if you ignore the yellow non-skid tape):
Out in West Hollywood, CA, I’m pretty sure this brand new sidewalk tree root cover is not supposed to be rusting already, but I’m glad that it is!:
This rusting sea wall in Santa Barbara, CA, looks very much like my daughter’s knee after a horrendous scrape, but let’s not talk about that and I will resist the urge to post a comparison photo:
Here is the sea wall with a little more context:
In the low-slung light just before sunset, even a rust hater would have to enjoy this view of the same sea wall:
The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is Fray.
Which came first, the idea or my belief in it? I’m not sure. I am deep into writing of the second novel in the FRAMES series, in which seemingly inanimate objects like books and buildings are sentient beings. And – guess what? Everywhere I look I see objects that appear to be more than objects.
Is this a new perspective? Or did I always see things this way but have no reason to think twice about it? Certainly, I’ve always been fascinated by shadows and reflections and silhouettes – their ability to reproduce while distorting, maintaining the familiar within the strange.
Case in point. Below is a staircase banister at the Egyptian Theater, a deco movie palace in Hollywood, CA. In silhouette, the banister’s reptilian underpinnings become apparent. I see a head in profile, facing right. The iris bisects an eye that narrows to a point, into an elongated snout that slopes down and to the right, out of frame…
You see that too, right?
Right?
How about this one? The ocean has carved creatures in this eroded beach wall. You see this furry guy with the long nose, right?:
In this post-apocalyptic sunset, the creatures line up looking frail:
You see them, right?
This WP Weekly Photo Challenge was Silhouettes.
Required Writing 