The first time I saw a sign like this, I jumped to an easy conclusion. Typo – need to add an s, guys!
Then I saw a second, similar sign, and my outsider complex kicked in. Had my English teachers withheld a critical piece of information?
Or does one local signmaker get a lot of work, despite gaps in grammar education? Anybody else seen signs like this?
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is Signs.)
By the time I got to the beach, the flowers had already started to shed petals into the sea. I don’t know what went down before I arrived, but a lovely bouquet in the surf can’t be a good sign.
Too bold on the first date?
Thanks for the birthday flowers, shame my birthday was last week?
Flowers can’t buy forgiveness, you @#$%^?
Graduation celebration run amuck?
Miss Runner-Up?
Or… ?
What do you think happened?
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is Signs.)
DMV counter, 2013:
Same counter, 2014:
New sign, same outcome. I think I see where the problem lies. When you put kids on the counter, they squirm around and hurt the sign. That’s why the sign is needed. To protect the sign.
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is Signs.)
Can you guess what this is? (To learn whether you guessed right, keep reading.)
Nighttime has always been my special time. For years, I complained that I was a night owl trapped in an early-bird world, until I got tired of hearing myself complain about it. My natural clock wants me up until 3a every night, but that never jived with the schedules of my jobs or my kids’ schools, and over the years I’ve been ruined by those demands. Given half a chance, I still stay up way too late – but I am now incapable of sleeping past 7a, no matter how late I go to sleep. No fair.
Actually, nowadays I get up at 4a, to work on the sequel to Nica of Los Angeles before I go to exercise class and start trying to outrun the steamroller that is my day. I was surprised at how quickly I adapted to this horrific new alarm clock time, and how much I love writing that early in the morning. Then it hit me – getting up at 4a is almost as good as staying up until then! Maybe better, because I’m fresher to enjoy the spooky magic of darkness.
One thing I like about nighttime is how often it lets me take cool photographs in dim light, provided all I want to shoot are the lights themselves…
I love this shot across the East River from Manhattan to Queens, as seen through the rooftop bar of a skyscraper. The cluster of lights at bottom are the candle at my table, reflected in the window.
This next shot makes me think of water in moonlight. But it – like the teaser photo at the top of the post (did you guess right?) – are reflections of lights on a glass table on my patio:
The table was reflecting these lights. (For the reality mongers out there, it was the camera and not my patio that was tilted.):
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge topic is Nighttime.)
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!)
How do I smell the ocean when vehicles drive along the sand? These signs need to talk more. (Admittedly, they are on opposite edges of the United States, but that is a technical detail.)
While we are on the subject, maybe it’s just me – and my sheltered Californian upbringing – but…
Dear Florida, it seems so very wrong to drive on a beach.
(left sign: Oxnard, CA; right sign: New Smyrna Beach, Florida)
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is to establish a dialogue between two photos.)
My feet don’t often get a chance to talk to each other, because the toes are always gabbing. Well, nine of them, anyway. The right big toe is a pariah – a source of shame, according to the others. But then, as is common among toes, the nine suffer from an excess of conventionality.
(This WP Weekly Photo Challenge: juxtapose two photos to create a dialogue between them.)
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 