Incoming surf overtops a sinuous retaining wall.
East Beach, Santa Barbara, at sunset
(Posted as part of the Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Froth and Flow
travel
Too Close? Or Just Close Enough?
Summer in Chicago. The sculpture is Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor.
When you get close enough to this…
The same view, under scrutiny…
… it looks like this!
See me? I’m in the middle of the bright bottommost triangle, head titled to my right. To my left is a tall person with a camera. That’s my daughter, who took this spectacular shot.
(Posted as part of the Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting – Naked Graffiti
Took these photos in September, 2012, in the Bowery in Manhattan. Wonder if this building still looks like this?
(Posted as part of the Weekly Photo Challenge.)
An Ode to Repetition
On one level, I hate routine. I’ve made important life decisions based on a futile attempt to avoid repetition. Changes of jobs, homes, cities – and probably relationships. I have to fight feeling trapped once I exhaust the options for fresh experience. But that time will always come. There are only so many ways you can drive to the store, if you are going to the same damn store from the same damn house.
Yet, concurrently, repetition and routine provide essential foundations to so much that matters to me. While it is always great to share a new experience with my kids, the comforting patterns of family life are constructed of routine. There is no question that I plan most of my writing during mundane tasks like toothbrushing or weeding. And one of the richest benefits of travel is how much I appreciate home when I return.
I have a friend who talks about Buddhist intent to stay fully present in each moment – aware of the give of the keyboard as I type, conscious of the flow of water and the scratch of the scrubpad as I wash a plate. She strives for this awareness to feel grounded and calm. I try it and discover subtle variations that make each repetition unique. Doing this seems to be as close as I can get to meditation -with all my Western impatience and resistance to organized faith.
Travel Dreamstate
I just returned from a family reunion, which was terrific – I was an adult before I met this segment of family and I so enjoy them. But that is another story (partly told in my novel Scar Jewelry).
Cannot decide whether this post exhibits advanced or naive blogging technique. Chapter 72. Starting a Post with a Digression.
Anyway. As I was not yet saying.
I reached the reunion via a 2 hour plane flight. Same time zone. That is unfortunate because jet lag makes the displacement of travel more tangible and credible. This kind of travel creates such a sense of unreality. Drag a bag through an airport, sit in a cramped seat surrounded by engine drone and the coughs of strangers, drag a bag through another airport. Suddenly home and family and critters and friends are gone. New sights new tastes new sensations. Reverse the airport – cramped seat – airport regimen and then I am back on familiar ground, enjoying reunions with family and critters. I lay down in my own bed and the whole trip seems like a particularly realistic and lucid dream.
Required Writing 