Rock, Poem, Photo II

Beneficent Rays

The light is getting thinner these days. I like this photo if only to remind me how thick and bright the sunlight can be.

Golden

I very nearly went tidepooling this weekend. Fog deterred me, but by noon the fog had lifted—and the early burnoff  generally means it's clear on the coast.

This is a shot from the tidepooling trip on Rich's birthday. Funny, oily-slick yellow stone, pockets from snails or sand or both. The photographer leaning over the rock to break the glare, and finding a dozens of little self-portraits in the final product.

Itchy

Said hummingbird, fluffed. In all my other photos it is twisted, scratching its back and wings, or, like below, giving a good long stretch. A bit like a bat.

Crest

A few years ago I tried to photograph what I love about the summer/autumn hills. On one ride—possibly the one when I took this photo—I crested a hill to find an army of wind turbines, very Lucas films, the low, swooping sound of the blades humming for miles.

OPR

This composition, at an open house last weekend: someone's weathered and hole-bored stone on slate flagstones under a rusty little stove. My kind of people.

Fallen

Burning Man approaches. I couldn't help but anthropomorphize this piece of driftwood on the beach at Bolinas.

Family Photo

This weekend I got the chance to photograph a small collection of oil lamps, minus one. I arranged them in  noon light and spent a couple of languid hours in the sun just looking, considering the shot and the shadows, clicking away.

Shine

Yesterday was a beautiful, blazing hot, high-contrast day. I spent it puttering around a dusty garden, deadheading, watering, sweeping. Deliciously barefoot. Recalled that the most often heard phrase of my childhood was: 'Christine. Put some shoes on, your feet are going to get filthy' (replaced in the winter by 'Christine, put a sweater on, you're going to get cold.') Spoke to my mom yesterday and reminded her, teasingly, of all this; she groaned, recalling, amused.

Remembered too my first summer in Ithaca, carrying a five dollar pair of black Chinese slippers in my backpack for when I had to enter the museum or a cafe. No one to protest. The long path up the slope from dorm to studio. The smell of linseed oil in Tjaden Hall.

I tried to take a picture of my happy, dirty feet yesterday, but that magic barefoot feeling eluded the photo. So here is a tomato, looking pretty happy too.

Red Hair & Black Leather

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952

There's a line in this song about favorite color schemes. This is mine: rusty iron and wood.

Something else that caught my eye here. Some sort of irony: this graceful, intricate blade, dusted with cobwebs, hung just inches from raw wood. Stuck in a sort of tantalizing purgatory.

Rabbit, Rabbit: Magnifique

Last night: Senegalese in the Mission. A cluster of seats at the bar, one clearly the ringleader. Good color, crowd, curry. C'est magnifique.