no context

These are just small pieces of where I live, taken before the leaves fell.



I loved the meeting between leaf and stone here, the advance of the leaves but how they could not help but still contain the stone, in the form of the birdbath, which in itself allowed stone to melt into water.



And here is the contrast of the harsh force of a waxy green and a delicate pink, competing and forever entwined, both hostile and dependant on each other. The contrast made me think of secrets in the past that will not fall away, and also romance inspite of itself.

strange flower

Walked to Trader Joe's through the river park, among the birch whose leaves are the skeletons of the color bronze. All of the rocks in the path make it hard to look up at the world, forcing you to stop when you want to see.



I should not say a river, but a lingering memory of rain.



There are leaves coming and this is the promise of them.



And hidden in the leaves of a dead year, a flower called strange.

no country for old men

so rare in these days of extreme profit gouging to find a film that refuses to be a movie. and yet this offering succeeded, giving a vast and event-less landscapes combined with chilling classic western violence. there are no spirits, no gods, no karma, no underlying principles that compel people towards their end(s) beyond their thinking or unthinking choices. and yet it is a moral play.

death exists without pity or appeal, and yet at heart remains capricious. a nagging moral conscious is no more likely to guide you to the right action pride or humility. community eases isolation and invites in evil. age does not give wisdom.

you do need to see this. so often you wish the world to be one way or another, you begin to see people as more good or evil than perhaps they are, more wise or more foolish, and rarely human. you imagine you see the whole life of a person in a chance encounter in a line at the grocery store. but there is clarity in a country stripped of myths, even if it is a place not for old men.

secret garden

My mother teaches elementary school, and every year her class reads "The Secret Garden." She left her copy on the table at her house a few days when I was visiting recently, and since I had never read the book as a child, I picked it up and wandered through it. Strange and gorgeous little gem, and sometimes difficult. The characters sometimes think about each other in ways we no longer do, of course. No one expects to have any masters or servants. Still, we all expect to figure out how we belong to each other. At the end, it's a beautiful message: that by creating beauty you will belong to the world and live forever.

bone horse

wandered through one of the smithsonian museums last weekend. drawn there by a landscape exhibit, but i also wandered through some modern paintings, some abstract exhibits and some folk art. in the abstract galleries, i met this fierce beastie....