In honor of April 1st - a bit of ancient computer history. Sorry for the non-geekish amongst us, but believe me, this is really, very funny.

Creatures of the light

Look carefully, you'll see them. The picture was taken within minutes of yesterday's in the grounds of the Good Shepherd Center.

One of the things I love about Seattle is that it is so much a part of the Pacific Rim and at the same time has an odd sort of Edwardian aura to it. This picture speaks of both, the woman doing Tai Chi (I imagine) and the ghastly purple cast-iron pillars in the background (I did ask, and she said "sure..."). She was a real treat to watch and photograph. I was waiting at the time to go and photograph a yoga class, also a lot of fun, not really my pictures, so I can't post them.

Oriental grace in sneakers, how appropriate, so Seattle. By the bye, I know practically nothing about such things, but can you see what she's doing with her legs? I have a suspicion she was very good.

Something for Palm Sunday.

What a complex web of symbolism it is. There is the whole iconography around Mary and the morning star, the colors associated with Mary and how they tie back to Isis and Osiris and the old stories of dismembered gods reviving the earth. The connection between Easter and the idea of atonement, particularly Aquinas' view (I was reminded of at the dinner table this evening) of the inability of man to atone for sins on the grounds that man sinned against God, and man and God are not morally commensurate beings; in the same way (so Aquinas argues) that commoner and aristocrat are not commensurate beings. A commoner could not repair an offense against an aristocrat, some other aristocrat would have to do it for him.

Back in Seattle - back to my recurring themes. The image shows two different sets of tables and chairs, with the odd secondary reflection thrown in. A nice self-reflective image.

Here's another nicely self-reflective artifact:


This sentence uses the word sentence and mentions it.
This sentence uses the word sentence, mentions it once and contains it twice.
This sentence begins with this.
This sentence ends with that.
This sentence is like life, it must end at the end.
This sentence ends as it begins this sentence.
This sentence sequence ends with the next sentence.
This sentence is the last beginning with this sentence.
The end is not the end of this sentence.
This is a sentence of…
This is the end.

Leaving illusions behind, heading home to Seattle for a bit. Here's  a wonderfully ugly picture, redeemed by the fact that it is also a subtle illusion.

It looks as though the orange surface is at right angles to the observer (i.e.flat on) but it's actually at better than 45 degrees. The reason it looks flat is because the light washes out any shadow or variation in color or texture. It was taken late in the afternoon, the sun transforming the wall into pure color, transforming our perception along with it. An image obscured by light, contrasting with this one, an image revealed by shadow.

This lovely pair are American Wood storks. Apparently quite rare, so what they're doing hanging (perching perhaps) around in Celebration, I'm not sure. There were at least six of them up in a tree with these two in particular either arguing or making out; they're storks, it's hard to tell.

The one on the left had a red spot on his chest revealed when he ruffled his (her?) feathers the right way. I have an image but found it disturbing and chose not to show it. I wonder why?

I have a picture of what he was taking a picture of. Perhaps I'll post it some day (I have an irresistible urge to take photographs of photographers and what they photograph).

There is a profound difference between the SLR fraternity (looking through the camera to see what you're photographing) versus the LCD on the back sorority (looking at the camera to see what you're photographing). I could extemporize on the theme but resist the temptation; I look through these comments to try and understand the world around me, not at these comments to try and understand what I'm saying.

A trail in the mist: Blue Springs is a magical place so it seems appropriate to have a magical image to show for having been there. Look carefully and you can see the trace of the bird's wing beats in the mist (if you click on the image, you will see a much larger version).

I don't think I have every seen anything like it before; a beautiful, serendipitous image. Pebbles on a beach of course, pick up enough and the odd good one's bound to turn up.

Venus de Milo of the egrets; pure, fragile and truncated.

I suppose the truncated image focuses our attention on the parts that are there. The absence of arms is a telling cultural indicator. Perhaps birds appeal to us as beings that never use their arms to manipulate the world and the Venus de Milo has a similar appeal, as a woman without arms, a disturbing thought really. Though birds do spread their wings and fly.

Celebration in the rain

I grew up on a tobacco farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia. The rainfall was governed by a phenomenon known as the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. This is a seasonal weather system that occurs when warm moist air from the Congo basin meets cold dry air coming up from the Kalahari and the south. Where the two meet, the cold air pushes up the warm air and it rains.

It is a capricious system at best; if you're on the cold side you get nothing; if the ITCZ is south of you, you get occasional rain, but not enough. I can remember my parents (at the time, not a very religious pair) almost literally praying for rain. Playing in the rain was something I looked to as the highlight of the rainy season. Rain is always a blessing for me (just as well, as I've lived the last 17years in Seattle).

An Ashinga catching its dinner in the lake near down town Celebration

He has a strange appearance in the water, as he often only shows his head. Out of the water he has to stand around shivering to dry his feathers out as, apparently, he is not a real water bird. I assume the shivering is to shake the water off, not because he's cold.  For all that, he makes a compelling image when he pops his head out of the water.

Sea and sky. Dusk on a beach west of Tampa.

Moon shot

It's very hard to take a satisfactory picture of the moon and something else. Moon on its own, no problem, but the moon and something else, very difficult. Perhaps she resists sharing the frame with anything else. Anyway, I rather like this one.

"She walks in the beauty like the night "- not too keen on Byron, but what a great line. "Flies" would be better in this instance. Bridget is coming to balmy Florida for  few days.

A picture of a web. I especially liked the way the colors echo each other from one part of the image to another. It is regular and simple, in some ways, but remarkably complex.

It put me in mind of Grave's "The Cool Web"

There's a cool web of language winds us in,

Retreat from too much joy or too much fear;

We grow sea-green at last and coldly die

In brininess and volubility. 

One can only marvel at the discipline and precision of his language, who else could manage "brininess" and "volubility" in a single line and still it scans?

While I'm on the subject of illusions, ran across this today, which I thought was very funny:

"Believing that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus." Terry Eagleton

Here, you go - someone running for a bus.

Beautiful day - suitable occasion for a nice illusion

Or at least a question. Why is the reflection in the middle on the right apparently superimposed on the building in the background, but apparently behind the building on the lower left? I could almost believe it isn't a reflection, but I can assure you, it is.

Self-portrait.

I am reminded somewhat of T.S. Elliot's Hollow Men, which always seemed to me to be a very personal statement.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 

Alone and palely loitering? 

The sedge has wither’d from the lake, 

And no birds sing.

from Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I have often wondered about that phrase, "sedge has wither’d " - perhaps this is it.

But no, this is Florida. The only armored objects are the alligators, though I suppose the manatees might do for the Belle Dames. A happy thought

I saw their starved lips in the gloam, 

With horrid warning gaped wide, 

Sounds like alligators, so cruelly abandoned by their manatees...

Three reflections and one bird. Early morning, Merritt Island.

Oh, by the way, the picture's upside down. Even knowing that, my eye rebels at the notion that the thing at the bottom is the real bird. The original is a rather odd picture as it has the two birds in the foreground (that in the upside down version are in the background), although they are just reflections in the water. The fact that you can only see their reflections seems odd. At least it does to me. Really, my mind only works in two dimensions. I wonder how a bird would see it?

Visiting the land of the terminally cute ("world" perhaps, as we have Disney World on this eastern side of the continent, Disney Land is on the western side). Here's a cute picture from Seattle. What makes something "cute"? Perhaps a promise of better things, the potential of the young. There is of course a darker side to it. "Cute" also equates to "vulnerable", "dependent", "fragile". How many of these survive to adulthood?

It's lake Washington, Seattle, at least there are no alligators.

Now even falls

And fresh, cold breezes blow

Adown the grey-green mountain side

Strewn with rough boulders. Soft and low

Night speaks, her tongue untied

Darkness to darkness calls.

From Robert Graves, The Mountain Side at Evening, his first published poem. The picture was taken just east of the Columbia River a minute or so after this one. It was a wonderful flight.

Another picture of departures. It's not immediately obvious what's going on. The tree reflected in the building (on the right)  is the tree in front of the building (on the left) only it seems to be in the wrong place. The clue is the side of the building visible on the extreme right. The building is actually at an odd angle. Nice little visual puzzle, something to ponder while leaving the city behind.

Flying picture. I'm traveling tomorrow. Another one from Vancouver (BC) harbor. For those of you from elsewhere, the 'BC is necessary as there is a Vancouver, Washington. I can never understand why Americans find it necessary to recycle names. Naming things is such fun, why not take the opportunity to make up a new one?  Anyway, nowadays, everything has an IP Address, even airplanes.

A local recommendation, if you ever have occasion to travel round the Puget Sound, ferries and float planes are definitely the way to go.

Nice picture, by the way, bright plane, dark ship, what's more, dark band on ship, person on deck apparently indifferent to oncoming airplane (pity they weren't talking on a cell phone).

Perhaps it's Canadian air, or Canadian water, or just Canadians (three probable subjects of the Dominion reflected in this picture). I have taken many pictures of reflections over the years but never quite like this. There was something about the surface of the water, or the quality of the air, that gives it a startling clarity and yet you can see the water is by no means still. I just love the odd shifted geometry of the thing.

In case you were wondering, this was not a fluke, the reflection actually looked like that. I have several more images taken at the same time with the same quality to them.

As a little tribute to the Canadians and their Olympic campaign, here is a Canada goose, actually photographed in Canada. What's more a gravity defying goose. Perhaps a goose guru, posing on a carefully chosen goose rock.

On the subject of Canada's (gold medal) triumph at the Olympics, the real winner was the United States of Europe with 46 golds and 140 overall (versus USA 9 and 37, Canada 14 and 26). I use this statistic to annoy my America born kids every time the Olympics come around. I can hear the whining already "Oh but they had more people there!" Maybe each of the states should send a team. I can just see it now, "And here we have the Florida Winter Olympics Team!" (If that doesn't elicit a few comments I don't know what will).

What we miss is probably more interesting than what we see. Rather like trees falling in forests, it's hard to tell if it matters. It's been on my mind for the last few days. Listening to a choral performance on Tuesday, it struck me that the most beautiful voice is probably lost in a choir somewhere, which lead to a whole series of similar assertions: The most beautiful lily is in a field of flowers, a tree in a landscape, a pebble on a beach, an image in  a motion picture, an experience in a day, a life in a galaxy. You get the idea. Along the same lines this is a picture of reflections on water, Saint Edward's Park, lake Washington.

What could be more visually delightful than something made visible by shadow? What you are looking at is a piece of shade cloth, looking west towards the lowering sun. There is a branch behind it with some leaves on it. The leaves cast their shadow on the cloth. Where the shadow falls, the overpowering light of the sun is dimmed and you can see through the cloth to the what is on the other side. Because you, the cloth, the leaves and the sun don't quite line up, you see both the image of the shadow and the disjointed images of the leaves beyond, made visible by their own shadow. Wonderful, just wonderful!

Here is Roger, a multi-dimensional, assymetric cat. He measures his dimensions in terms of his desires, go outside now, come inside now, where's my dinner? I say assymetric not simply because of his appearance, also because he is astonished, at times, that dinner is not in his bowl and yet he will sit at the window staring at me until I come and open the door, not in the least astonished that I might not notice him for a while (so you see, not all dimensions of desire are alike). I am considering devoting an entire week to Roger and his many dimensions.

Some other determinants - Is it raining? Are there raccoons under the deck? Is Morwenna home? Am I sitting in the middle of the dining room table? He never looks behind him, never strives for the impossible (except for entertainment). He is the initial value and the increment, the sequence that knows no end (a little nod to Christopher Smart and Jeofry).

This was taken at the chapel of St. Ignatius, on the campus of Seattle University. A beautiful building and well worth a visit if you happen to be in the area.

The chapel was the setting for one of the most memorable musical events I have ever attended, It took the form of a service at which Andrew Carwood was the cantor. He is now the director of music at St. Paul's in London, the first non-organist to be appointed to the post since the 12th century. You only have to hear him sing to understand why.