Friday, January 30, 2009

Between this moment on Chenery:

and this moment (on Church?):

it went pop, pop, pop.

I mentioned idowhaticansnapsnap because, like several other photoblogs, it seemed to effortlessly generate improbable connections. I thought I'd write about that funny timing phenomenon some day. Well, some day's arrived sooner than planned. There came a synchronicity within a synchronicity today, soon after and oddly entwined with the last entry posted here.

This isn't much of a discussion, but at least I've introduced the subject.


Years ago, I came upon a blog called something like: Harrumph! it's all about love...

I think the word Harrumph! called to me.

Well, that blog was already finished, but there was a link to the writer's more current stuff, which at that time was a photoblog, and that's how I found Heather Champ, a most remarkable participant in the blogging world.

It's not so much the content--the words or the photos--(though all of that is excellent and has a marvelous capacity to startle). It's been her ability to keep evolving, using new and revised tools that come her way and take her into uncharted territory.

One of her early experiments was called The Mirror Project. People emailed her photos of their reflections in mirrors, puddles, doorknobs, and she posted them.

The above picture reminded me of her project. You can check out Heather's current site at the link below:

hchamp.com

One of these days, I'll write about the now defunct photoblog: idowhaticansnapsnap

Wednesday, January 28, 2009





A little broom theme happened today.

First, I heard sweeping.

Then we came upon the park groundskeeper who was working with broom and rake, and who has philosophy and stories to share for those who will take a few minutes to listen.

On the walk back from the park, I took the above pictures. I didn't notice until I loaded the images to my computer that there was a broom in the corner behind the red cycle, and that I had snagged a fellow in red farther down the sidewalk who was sweeping.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.~




Monday, January 26, 2009





Cacti
Kerrville, Texas

Sunday, January 25, 2009



I just returned from a walk to Glen Canyon. My fingers are numb with cold, I can barely type!

This is some of what I saw and experienced. (Someone else on the same walk might have noticed totally different things.)

One of those trees with the bumpy lumpy bark.

A thin man with a beard speaking from within a small crowd at Bird and Beckett Books.

Cold gusty breeze.

A geranium-like flower with bright gold petals.

Two red-tailed hawks soaring together, weaving together and away, together and away.

A small park with a circular path. I walked several times around what looked to be a soccer team of 3 and 4 year olds, and a lot of people with dogs and balls and clear plastic bags of dogshit. A woman fiercely boxing in the air while her daughter rode a pink bicycle. A portly man in black coat and hat sitting focused in on himself. A couple on a bench. I heard the phrase ‘when we do our wills’ rise from the man as I passed. The woman looked extremely tense.

I walked a few times the other direction too, with what felt like a totally different view, same path.

The woman now smiling, no longer boxing, exiting the park with her daughter riding alongside.

The couple sitting and talking more comfortably.

The sun dropping below a hillside. The bench now empty.

Another red-tailed hawk, and a smaller, striking-colored, red-shouldered hawk.

A hawk ahead still in sunlight perched in the tree where I earlier searched for some small birds I’d seen in flight. The hawk looked at me, and away, and after a couple minutes, took flight pausing over my head twice, I guess to check me out. It was a red-tailed hawk. A couple jogged by and the man asked, was that a golden eagle?

I thought about the two golden eagles I’d seen while driving through Arizona. I thought about the bald eagle that had appeared above the snow in the sunlight, something I experienced as extraordinary as I approached Flagstaff from the south.

I saw a tall, thin, dark-haired boy in black and green doing sprints in one of the baseball diamonds at Glen Park. His fierce sprinting so fascinating, I bypassed Chenery and took Paradise instead a block farther.

A little girl perched in the open back end of a vehicle, waiting for her dad to finish seat-belting her brother.

License plates and signs on a fence. White roses and other tiny white flowers with oranges and limes dangling from branchesbehind them. The roses smelled divine.

A small bumpersticker that said “I …” and there was a sea turtle with a red heart on its back. There was a JFK quote in mosaic on a church, saying something about doing God’s work on earth. Inside the church building, I saw people playing fierce ping-pong, and behind them a white silhouette of an eagle on the wall.

The voices of boys approaching me from behind. Three guys around age 15, one carrying a skateboard, passed me up. I smelled that pungent end-of-the-day boy smell as they went by, and wished I had a warm-lit kitchen table where I could serve them spaghetti.

A bright yellow taxi next to bright yellow pavement segments. A red vespa, a shiny silver vespa.

A group called Passage to India playing jazz at Bird and Beckett.

A blue plush elephant dangling from a stroller.

A washeteria that looks cleaner than the one I usually go to.

A friend drinking a beer in a brown bag in the shrubbery.

The triangle of earth on College Avenue that was trashed out two years ago and is now clean-churned earth waiting to be seeded.

How happy I am to be back.

Saturday, January 24, 2009














I'm a bit obsessed with the saguaros at Waffle House in Marana, Arizona.

When taking the pictures, it was as though I were invited in, as though the cacti were showing their true selves on short notice, as though the camera in my hands were operating itself. Sounds odd, but then it felt rather odd, almost ecstatic.

Thursday, January 22, 2009



Love isn't the wanting
it's the burning being
the radiance that staggers us
with its mystery

we mistake desire
-the emptiness-
for the abundance
that defines love

love is not the appetite
but the food
not the thirst
but the water

it's not the romantic angst
the hand-wringing and sleeplessness
but the tenderness
the eruption of laughter, passion, song

yearning is the infant's need for feeding
it's through being
-burning one's own true light-
one becomes the lover

There are moments
(lit by tall tall lights
on a damp January night
in a park's green grass
looking across at congenial others
leaping beyond their own frontiers)
when it shyly taps into my awareness
how lucky to have this being here,
this doing what we're meant to be doing

Wednesday, January 21, 2009




Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Snow geese

Sunday, January 18, 2009




Saturday, January 17, 2009




Friday, January 16, 2009


A spring stores energy.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Nest in Waffle House saguaro:

Over two years ago on a Saturday afternoon, a toll taker at the Bay Bridge greeted me as it seemed he was greeting everyone ahead of me: 'How are you today, Sister? I love you, Sister.'

I only saw him that once, but as I arrived in San Francisco a few hours ago in my weighted car, there he was, the gatekeeper to the city, wearing a warm hat that covered his ears: 'Hello, Sister. How are you this evening, Sister? I love you, Sister.'

It's a big beautiful bridge, the structure, the views, the lights. It's a beautiful city. How much the man's welcome means to me.










Driving north in central Arizona-

Tuesday, January 13, 2009





For the third year in a row, I'm participating in a five-day new year meditation at sunrise. It's a marvelous tradition to start the year, and I'm appreciative of the Shintaido teacher who introduced me to it. The first year was a most mysterious experience, practicing with others in San Francisco. Last year, it was a source of inner support as my father and I helped my mother navigate her last weeks.

This year, the meditation started later than usual; day 2 was today. This has been the hardest year for me to get up before dawn. I guess I'm just tired. I've been packing to move, then loading the car and now, I'm traveling cross country to a new life with my car packed with so much unnecessary stuff. I don't know in each new setting exactly where to meditate, and in the stress of the travel, I'm not as organized in what I do.

This morning's meditation took place at the window in my motel room in Las Cruces. It was unorthodox, but ended with a sense of surprise and joy at the first witness of the sun.

After leaving Las Cruces feeling very good, I drove way off track, so off track-several hours-I felt sick.

I pulled off the interstate and called a friend to discuss options. After the call, I got out of the car to take a look at the paired saguaro in the Waffle House parking lot where I'd pulled over. I don't think I'd ever seen one in its home habitat before, and didn't remember them from the I-40 route I'd planned for today. The saguaro seemed so amazing to me that I wondered if the reason I'd gone so astray wasn't just to have the experience of meeting this one lifeform.

After the Waffle House, though, I was to have a high-traffic and tedious stretch of I-10 driving on the day that should have been most pleasant. My faith in myself was damaged, I felt deflated.

But some odd luck (associated with the phone call) intervened. I ended up off the freeway onto Tangerine Road in Marana. This led to Oracle Road and eventually to Globe, Arizona where I'm spending the night.

I found myself within ecstatic vistas of mountains covered by saguaros, all the way through sunset. I'm in new territory.

Monday, January 12, 2009


The speed limit in much of west Texas is 80 miles per hour.

I stopped for gas in Fort Stockton. As I returned to the car, a bus pulled away with a mascot emblazoned on the back and the words Fighting Owls. I wished I had my camera in hand! So when the second bus pulled out, I had it ready to capture the Fighting Owls, and this is the blurry, through-the-windshield shot I got:


A different kind of birding! I also saw two real life red-tailed hawks along the way and a roadrunner. I saw an American kestrel, and a red-masked hawk on a pole that I couldn't look up because there's too much stuff in the car to reach the guide. I saw way too many dead deer along the way, including one that looked quite large and full grown, but with white spots like a fawn.

I'm reporting from a Comfort Inn in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and there's a very tired baby crying in the next room.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Saturday, January 10, 2009














Today was likely my last practice on the beautiful, rugged field on Lamar. There was a gusty north wind. An armadillo showed up again, taking the same route from brush to bamboo. The great blue heron was perched in the pond in the apartment complex. (The pond was cleaned this week of styrofoam cups and other litter by a man in a red jacket. It looks much better.) A bright male cardinal was on a bare branch of a tree when I arrived, and was still there when I left.

Ball moss fascinates me. It's quite lovely and intriguing in its tangled design, neutral colors, and pale little bloomings. When adhered to a tree limb, the blooms dangle below. But when the balls fall to the ground, the flowers seem to land upright. Many people in this region worry that ball moss kills oaks, but the articles I've come across over the years suggest ball moss just parks on the trees, and lives off the moisture and nitrogen in the air.

I never would have called it pretty until these past few weeks.

I'm curious about the benefits of its design. I'm interested in its reputed potential to shrink tumors, and combat HIV. I hope to learn more.

(Only pictures 1, 3 and 5 have ball moss in them.)

Friday, January 9, 2009


Partings are not sad when we know there are no partings.

I'm sowing a few words from today and yesterday, since I don’t seem to know where they fit in sensible sentences: Angel, Wild Rose, Michael the Archangel, taco, crow, panther.

They contributed to delight.

Thursday, January 8, 2009


...there were small sculptures, dark and bent, by Rodin, their shoulders and fingertips shooting afternoon sunlight. The kinetic feats of George Rickey sliced through the air. Even the watertower, huge white and pillowy, was a work of art, with the gibbous moon against afternoon sky behind it.

(afternoon at the McNay in San Antonio)

Wednesday, January 7, 2009













You don't have to be shining and new to have street appeal.