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…

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

June 17, 2014

Stairways to Somewhere Else

Something disturbs me about an extra long flight of stairs, especially going down. Why would that be? Maybe because I’m a klutz and fear falling. Certainly the former is true! On a recent trip to New York, I snapped a couple of extra-creepy flights.

Looking down a Manhattan subway escalator.

Perhaps long staircases disturb me because I fear my subconscious. The mystical psychologist Carl Jung talked about stairs that descend to the subconscious, as I was fascinated to recently learn. Well, okay, re-learn, because I was surprised to read it in (my own damn) novel, Was It A Rat I Saw, which I wrote a couple decades ago. But I digress. Anyway, I don’t fear my subconscious, I’m fascinated by all the things it seems to know that I don’t – and there’s no question that I get my best ideas from it!

Entrance to Le Poisson Rouge, a club in Greenwich Village.

I’m joking around. I know why some staircases bother me. It’s the sense that their steps are capable of taking me somewhere else, an unintended journey to an unexpected destination. Some building entrances feel that way to me, too. I’m finally exposing their truth in my fantasy series, FRAMES, where nothing in the universe is as it seems. The red staircase above will be a location – or maybe a character – in the second book in the FRAMES series, which I have just started writing.

New York doesn’t have a lock on eerie stairs. Here’s one that hails from Echo Park in Los Angeles:

P.S. I’ve finally finished the first FRAMES novel, Nica of Los Angeles. Watch for posts about that soon.

(This post responds to the WP Weekly Photo Challenge, Extra Extra.)

June 6, 2014

An Adoration of Pelicans

A gaggle of geese. A leap of leopards. A covey of quail. My vet has a poster with line after line of phrases that describe collections of critters, in ever-odder terms. A dule of doves. A charm of finches. A deceit of lapwings. An unkindness of ravens. Perhaps my favorite is a siege of herons. (Surely the crawfish in a local pond see herons that way, even though there is only one heron that plagues them. No, wait, plague would be locusts.) Have all these phrases truly been used? Maybe not – but for a richer language, let’s start today! (To get us started, I include more of the phrases at the bottom of this post.)

If I were to add pelicans to the list of phrases, I would have to call them an adoration of pelicans. What a spectacular creature the pelican is. Sitting around a dock, it may look homely and awkward, but airborne, it rules the coast. Pelicans fly together in innovative formations, skim the waves fearlessly, dive with conviction – and always get their fish.

I’ve taken many pictures of pelicans. In most of them, the bird appears as a speck on my camera lens. Last weekend, two pelicans put on an amazing show as I walked the beach. For the first time, I saw two pelicans dive simultaneously and hit the water a few feet apart. But they were coy and whenever I raised my phone camera, they masqueraded as specks. This was the closest I got to a good picture, so you can imagine the others:

But I’ve had better luck in the past. Here are some pelicans enjoying sunrise on both coasts of the U.S.:

Pelican at sunrise, East River, NYC.

Pelicans at sunrise, Carlsbad Beach, San Diego County, CA

And here is a particularly fine squadron, which always reminds me of that Far Side cartoon. You know the one, right? Birds of prey know they’re cool.

My best capture to date was this … er ….

HOLY FRIGGING — I’ve just spent what feels like a year scrolling through endless directories of unsorted photo files, in an unsuccessful search for one of my favorite shots. Ho-kay. Check back to this post later, I will add the photo when/if I find it. Perhaps it is finally time to ~~attempt to~~ organize my photos.

And in the meantime, enjoy some more critter phrases:

A crash of rhinoceroses.
A gang of elk.
A singular of boars.
A cast of woodpeckers.
A barren of moles.
A shrewdness of apes.
A smack of jellyfish.
A parliament of owls.

(This post is slightly in response to the recent WP photo challenge, “Split-Second Story”.)

May 6, 2014

Local Color

Here in southern California, we didn’t have a winter. We had autumn, an extended spring, and now an early summer. In other words, we went from wildfire to pollen to smog season, skipping the mudslide/debris flow season this year.

They are subtle but we do have detectable differences from season to season. In the spring, the flowers have an intensity of color that they lose in summer, when it is too hot to be bright and everybody including flowers must fade and dim to survive the heat.

It is definitely still spring in the garden. The native sage is most brilliantly blue in the mornings before the sun hits:

Gray green leaves, purple-blue flowers, and a wondrous spicy fragrance - this sage has got it all!

Gray green leaves, purple-blue flowers, and a wondrous spicy fragrance – this sage has it all!

Spring is when this blue morning glory – a relentless, destructive weed – strengthens its hold on the neighborhood. The flowers are too lovely to remove:

Morning glory appears to encircle this aloe. By mid-summer, it will have strangled the aloe unless ripped away.

Morning glory appears to crown this aloe. By mid-summer, its vines will have strangled the aloe if allowed to remain.

No one knows where this morning glory begins, it snakes from yard to yard, along phone lines, across fences. I’ve even found runners in my dark, dry garage! It looks especially pretty with the bougainvillea, though, doesn’t it?:

Another year of morning glory invasion begins.

As soon as the blooms wither, however, the vines must go, lest the rest of the garden vanish behind their twisting tendrils. Stylistically, the morning glory and kudzu have much in common.

Clearly my days as a plant nerd are over. I once knew the common and Latin names for this fellow, whose flowers glow even in brightest sunlight:

The … er… purple plant.

I don’t know what this flower is, either, but I have a better excuse. I discovered it in a neighbor’s yard today and have never seen one before. My guess is that it’s South African:

The… er… one with tall spikes of orange flowers.

My Channel Island Bush Poppy is one of my favorite plants. It is not supposed to fare well in my hot inland location, yet mine is 15 feet high and wide. It blooms profusely and cheerfully every spring. Best of all, it requires neglect. If I water it, it will die. The plant made for me!:

Imagine these flowers filling your screen and your vision. That is the Spring experience near a Channel Island Bush Poppy.

Care for this one at its peril!

All this blogging about my garden makes me realize I am overdue to do some gardening… Well. Those that can, do. Those that don’t feel like it, blog.

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge wants to see “Spring”.

May 4, 2014

Sna-ap! Crack! Russstle…. Repeat!

In my yard, Spring is a time of great destruction. All manner of flying insects flit by to tease the cats. The insects escape into foliage, the cats go after them. Typically, the insects escape harm but the foliage does not.

I’m saying cats but the main culprit seems to be Leo, an excessively large feline:

Only great Dog knows what poor small creature Leo stalks here.

Leo’s personality spans the range between goofball and doofus. Except when an insect is nearby, he is the quintessential gentle giant:

Leo in foreground, another possible plant-murdering suspect, Arrow, behind him. Not yet trampled poppy in foreground.

Leo displaying his most common approach to life: jus’ chillin’. Not yet trampled poppy in foreground.

The other day I saw him body slam a sage to nab a grasshopper. The grasshopper popped away, and Leo shot through several feet of leaves in futile pursuit. He left behind a sage with snapped branches and a hole in its greenery:

Memorize the damage to this sage. You will soon be asked to tap this memory.

Hmmm, thought I, recalling the backyard wisteria. It is mostly dense lush green, now that it has finished blooming:

It is like a cave inside this thick wisteria.

However, there is one hole, with snapped limbs:

Does this remind you of any damaged plant you have recently viewed?

I had previously assumed that a bear had somehow entered my backyard and fallen into the wisteria, because several thick sturdy limbs are broken:

Bear(?) damage to the wisteria.

However, after the incident with the sage, Leo has become the prime suspect in the wisteria attack.

As always, even if he confesses, punishment will be out of the question. He is just too cute. Here he is cuddling with Luna:

If there exists a cuter cat picture, please comment me the link!

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge wants to see “Spring“.

April 29, 2014

And With the Storm Came Irony

No doubt this boat’s name invoked fewer jokes before a big storm beached it in Santa Barbara, California. After the storm, for days gawkers like me circled it taking pictures.

It was one of several boats that snapped anchor lines and rammed the sand.

Before the storm, these boats were moored offshore, like those on the horizon, which survived this patch of weather.

The rain and the waves remodeled the cliffs, too. All the plants draped over these rocks used to grow on that bald patch of hillside.

The sea wall, a long inverted V, was already so eroded it was unaffected.

I love the patterns as the surf flows over that wall. I could watch it for hours, to my daughter’s dismay.

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is “Letters“.

April 27, 2014

Letter Art

My son gets it. The power and beauty of letters. He used letterpress and song lyrics to make this print. I see something new every time I look at it and I’ve looked at it a lot.

By Lars Huston

This post brought to you by the Proud Mom Society (a rather large organization) and the Weekly Photo Challenge topic: Letters.

Required Writing

Just about anything by Sue Perry

Weekly Photo Challenge