August 2, 2014

Campus Wildlife Resort

What do Caltech and Tony Soprano’s swimming pool have in common? Ducks.

In the middle of the Caltech campus is a shady oasis for people and some unexpected wildlife. Here, deep in suburban Pasadena, California, there is a small Japanese garden with a pond full of turtles and crayfish, a few ducks – and the occasional heron. Geese cause trouble nearby.

The flow of the pond’s water creates intricate zig-zagging reflections, so it might be hard to find the ducks at first. There are two males with green stripes, and one female, in the foreground of the photo below. Also note a few turtles on the rocks in the middle of the pond; most of the turtles prefer the other side of the pond – not enough sun here.

I am lucky enough to work near this campus and often walk there for lunch. Any day becomes cheerier if I go past the pond and see a duck snoozing with a beak tucked under a wing.

The ducks have been around for years. Lately, in a nearby reflecting pool, some geese have sporadically appeared. The geese leave poop all over the walkways, and chase people. I’ve yet to get close enough to the geese to photograph them. Goose drama. I don’t need it.

The ducks are better neighbors than the geese and more consistently on campus. In fact they are around so much, it seems they have ceased to migrate. Obviously, they like this safe, comfy pond, but there may be another, more persuasive reason for them to stay…

In the back of the photo, do you see those stairs? One day I spied a duck waddling around, behind the stairs. WTF, is that duck going into the building? I detoured to investigate and found the duck munching from a bowl of cat food placed behind the stairs. So – the primary reason the ducks stick around may involve Friskies.

Why the cat food? Well, there are feral cats on campus, and people feed them regardless of how many cease and desist threats the campus security issues about this dastardly practice, which exposes us all to terrible dangers. (If you re-read this paragraph carefully you may be able to detect whose side I am on, regarding the feeding of the feral cats.)

Every once in a great while, a heron appears and lurks at the pond for a few days:

Okay, maybe it’s not a heron. Egret? Anyway, it’s a large white bird that menaces the crayfish.

Campus folklore has it that the pond was first populated with crayfish and turtles (and frogs; alas, the frogs have vanished) when scientists completed experiments and released survivors into the water. Unlikely, but a fine story!

Across the pond, beyond the heron, is a sign that says don’t feed the wildlife. If you stand near the sign, turtles will flock to you in anticipation of being fed. Those Caltech-ians are a rebellious breed!

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge wanted to see Zigzag.

July 27, 2014

Transformation by Moonlight

I have always been a cat person, but these last few years, here I am with a dog. My kids knew the right buttons to push. If we didn’t take Shadow she was going to the shelter. Right away. Next week. And she was too old to be adopted, once there. I said we could take her until we found a home for her. I’m sure you can finish this part of the story without me.

Waiting for the next walk.

Shadow has been in the family for about 5 years now. She is either 7 or 12, depending on which murky version of her past is correct. All my experience is with cats, and rabbits, who are a lot like cats, except in two dimensions – they don’t usually go high above the ground.

Dogs are not like cats. Shadow doesn’t want to think for herself. She wants me to tell her what to do. I want her to figure it out for herself. Not sure how long it might take to re-train me about this.

Shadow is a sweet soul who had difficult early years. It was before my time with her, but some effects are permanent. She has fly-strike bald patches on her ears (indicating neglect, the vet says), she is afraid of young children and petite women (abuse, we speculate), and she is unpredictably psycho around other dogs. She might be friendly, she might attack. She can switch from one attitude to the other in an instant.

I walk her twice a day, and sometimes she will lunge at a dog who barks behind a fence, with such force I am lucky to remain standing. She knows the lunges are forbidden but sometimes she can’t resist. No doubt my lack of dog savvy contributes to the problem. My aging joints are getting more brittle and someday I may have to stop walking her to avoid these jolts.

During a walk I am quite willing to reverse direction, or take her to stand on the far side of a parked car, when another dog and walker appear. Neighbors who have friendly dogs are oblivious, or amused by this. Neighbors with kindred dogs have similar tactics. There was one night when I stood behind a car forever, waiting for the other dog to walk by, then finally looked out at the same time as the other dogwalker – who had moved behind a car across the street, waiting for me to walk by!

I know all the routes that let me see whether another dog is coming around the bend, I know all the streets that are wide enough to let dogs pass by without incident. And I know the times of day when the streets will be heavy with dogs, or empty of them.

One benefit of psycho dog walking syndrome is that I have discovered the pleasures of a dog walk by moonlight on a summer night. When all the other dogs are inside for the night, Shadow becomes a lovely walking companion. When I can be comfortable strolling in shorts and sleeveless top around about midnight – that makes the daytime heat worthwhile. And when the moon is bright enough to cast shadows, magic ensues. Usually the shadow images aren’t dense or defined enough to show up well in my photographs. But one night recently, they were.

The photos below show the moon-shadows of a tree and a chicken-wire fence on a yellow garage door, transformed from mundane to mysterious. The dog was reasonably patient about my stopping to take the photos. There are things we need to accept about each other on walks. I stop to take pictures. She stops to sniff every frigging molecule in the universe. (One of us is more accepting than the other.)

Anyway, here are the photos:

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge was Summer Lovin’.

July 25, 2014

But It’s Not a Dry Heat

I once left southern California because of the summers. Three months of baking heat, plus smog and wildfires, plus people saying at least it’s a dry heat. I had enough and I moved to Oregon, where the summers brought morning dew, long warm days, late evening sunsets. Yes, Oregon summers are delightful, but the other three seasons are atrocious, and the sun disappears some time in October then does not return until May. Only people from Michigan and North Dakota like Oregon weather; in Oregon, they are trading up.

At some point I realized I had swapped 3 months of bad weather for 9 months of bad weather, and I returned to southern California where I belong. Nowadays, I no longer mind the long hot summers. I can even sort of tolerate the humid days, with the mantra sweat is a good thing. Southern California is usually in single digit humidity, so when we’re at, say, 70% humidity for days in a row, everyone fusses and the weather becomes the lead news story.

With high humidity come more interesting cloud formations than we usually get.

And of course clouds can do such nice things to a sunset:

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge was Summer Lovin’.

July 23, 2014

Bossy but Classy

With my kneejerk rebellious streak, I am usually offended when somebody tries to control parking on what is, after all, a public frigging street!

However, when I see this tilework sign, which graces my day with additional beauty, I am much more willing to comply.

July 19, 2014

Cadaverous Cliff Face(s)

I can’t decide what I think about these images in a cliff face. Look at these photos and help me decide…

Walking along your favorite beach, you pause and think, “Gee, almost looks like there are faces in that cliff. Never noticed them before.”

You step closer and confirm. Yup. Faces.

Or maybe skulls. Eek.

What does this tell you about how the faces formed? Is this rock emerging after erosion? Or did Mom call Junior to come along, before he finished digging this one out?

What about this hole with a rock in it? Does this tell you how the faces formed? Is this rock emerging after erosion? Or did Mom call Junior to come along, before he finished digging out one last face?

1) Are these accidents of erosion that coincidentally look like faces? Or did some beachgoer dig out rocks in an act of 3D graffiti?… or ….

2) Or — do these suggest creatures escaping from the rock? Or have I been spending too much time in the universe of my new book series, FRAMES?

3) Are these faces cool, or creepy, or c), both of the above?

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge topic? Containers.

July 14, 2014

Four Answers, Then Tag, They’re It!

Folks, you are about to witness my first participation in a blog tour, a newfangled invention by which indie writers help spread the word that they exist. Lisa Voisin invited me to join. Lisa has followed an interesting life path and it’s no wonder, perhaps, that she now writes young adult paranormal romance.

The way this blog tour works is that I answer four questions, then tell you about a few writers whose books I have really enjoyed. They will continue this tour by answering the same questions on their own blogs in two weeks.

Q1) What am I working on?

I’ve just started writing the second novel in the FRAMES series, the follow-on to Nica of Los Angeles, a speculative fantasy with detective and dystopian elements. Book 2, Chapter 1: my most recently completed sentence reads “As I returned to the street, the air pulsed in a series of quick blasts, punctuated with the deep screams of grown men.” Maybe we should have a contest and the winner will correctly guess what that sentence will read like by the time this new novel matures into a final draft.

Q2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Frankly, I think the author would be the last one to answer this question well.

Q3) Why do I write what I do?

I write what I feel compelled to write. The trick is to sustain that drive through the long haul of finishing a novel. More than once, over the years, I have fought the temptation to freshen my characters mid-book, by sending in a bus to run over the first bunch. Fortunately, I am having a great time writing Nica, and her second book looks to be more fun than the first.

Q4) How does my writing process work?

My subconscious has all the best ideas, but its contributions are scattershot and unpredictable. It’s my conscious writer that keeps plugging away, day after day, to draw the inspirations up to the surface and the page. Screen. Keyboard. Touchscreen.

I write first drafts on my iPad, and love sitting on a summer patio in the dark, illuminated only by my device. However, for editing and formatting, I have to return to my laptop, with its full-service software.

And now I’d like to introduce…

One benefit of being an indie writer is getting to e-meet other indie writers, all over the globe.

Hock Tjoa has this to say about himself: “Hock is a retired teacher and banker and writes as part of his mission to make more widely known traditional Chinese values, but he makes digressions. He lives in northern California.” I read a play that Hock wrote, based on a Chinese folklore detective, and much enjoyed the dry wit and cleverness of the piece.

Louise White has had nearly as many career paths as I’ve had (!) and has covered both ends of the service spectrum, as a waitress and then a cop. She lives in Scotland and writes a young adult series about a kickass teenage girl who fights demons in a world that is … almost… just like ours. I love how normal and teenage her heroine is, in the midst of all the fantasy.

Tennesseean (?) Fran Veal also writes YA. She mingles teen drama with crime and just a touch of the paranormal. I am one chapter away from completing my first novel by her and it was painful to set it aside so that I could meet various deadlines like posting my blog tour entry on time. But hey, I’m a grown-up, right?

I sense some sniggering, somewhere. Grown-up? Reading a bunch of Young Adult books? And how! It’s one of my favorite genres! Let me know if you want some more YA recommends!

July 13, 2014

A Vertical Tide Pool

Let’s face it, erosion is inevitable. In the pictures below, what you will see was once a sea wall, that is, a futile attempt to keep sand where we humans think it should stay. The ocean moved the sand, as it always does; and the ocean removed pieces of the wall, one chemically weathered molecule at a time. The result is a relic that charges my imagination every time I visit its beach, in Santa Barbara, California.

This former seawall now evokes a line of creatures.

The creatures have tide pools growing up their sides!

I’m guessing that the tidepool growth protects the remaining wall from more erosion.

Detail of a creature’s “leg”.

At the feet, anemones are open for business.

The dense organization of shells makes complex designs in the creature’s hide!

Sunset instills its own magic on the scene.

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge topic was “Relic”.

July 6, 2014

Sinister Gaps

Walking in downtown Los Angeles, I came upon a troubling view. The multi-story granite facade on a fancy new building had a hole smashed between two of the slabs. The gap was as wide as my hand could span, and about two fingers high. What kind of forces could take such a small yet through-going chunk out of this wall? Is the building flimsy or were the forces powerful?

Not an everyday flaw.

Looking more closely, I sensed something inside the facade. Had I put my ear closer, I would have expected to hear breathing. Or moaning.

A hint of the world behind the facade.

Instead, I hurried down the block, aware that the nearby homeless guys were wondering what the heck I was photographing. As I strode away, I imagined one of them coming to investigate and getting sucked through, into that world behind. The other homeless guys would describe what happened, but no one would believe them because they’re just homeless guys.

A couple blocks later, this empty freeway onramp had a similar vibe, offering a trip to parts unknown – or unknowable.

On ramp? Or entry to a parallel freeway?

Would a car on this onramp ever reach that freeway?

At the time, I believed I was creeping myself out in preparation to write the second volume of Frames, which opens with an attack from other dimensions. But as I look at the photos now, I’m less sure.

(A recent WP Photo Challenge wanted to see Between.)

July 5, 2014

More Than States of Mind?

I like my absurdly early, outdoor exercise class because it lets me watch the sun come up. To me, every sunrise offers hope and promise – so seeing the sun rise starts my day right. I do my best to appreciate sunset, too, which brings me calm, an easing of the day’s stresses. When you think about it, it really is amazing that we have these glories to enjoy every single day!

Given the difference in psychological impact between sunrise and sunset, I would expect the two events to be readily distinguishable in my photographs. But I don’t think I could tell one from the other if I didn’t remember when I took the pictures. So maybe it’s not sunlight at a low angle that makes these times of day so special. Maybe it’s the quality of the air that has such distinct impacts on me each morning and evening. Or maybe it’s the sounds of all the birds who are so active as the sun rises or sets.

Or maybe the difference is all in my expectations.

Or maybe I am missing some obvious distinguishing feature of the photos. How about you? Can you tell which of the photos below show sunrise, and which show sunset? (Answers on page 2.)

Sunrise or sunset?

(The topic of a recent WP Weekly Photo Challenge was contrasts.)

Pages: 1 2

July 4, 2014

A View That Ne’er Was?

I love this view, at once homey and exotic, a hipster modern remembrance of times long past – or maybe times that ne’er were: when I look at this I see a scene from the Bartimaeus* books.

Can you guess what you are looking at? Don’t answer suitcases, rugs, desk. Explain the why. The what’s it all for? Have a guess while you look at the photos, then scroll down below them for the explanation.

The full view.

Detail, looking left.

Detail, looking center.

Detail, looking right.

This scene was a window display, fleetingly, at an imported rug store on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. I am so glad I stopped to get these photos, because the store is gone now, vanished as quickly as it appeared. Out of business? Or transported? I like to think of it as thriving, Elsewhere.

* I refer to Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy, in which a precocious teen conjures a wisecracking demon to take on the magician power elite in a London that ne’er was. I lo-ove those books; in fact, they inspired me to try my own hand at writing fantasy…