Orchids in the house

Aliens amongst us, I find it hard to imagine anything more strange, more fundamentally alien. Perhaps when we finally encounter ET, it will look like an orchid.

Actually dancing

A bit of Burns:

Warlocks and witches in a dance:

Nae Cotillion, brent new frae France,

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,

Put life and mettle in their heels. 

Soccer fan

Monster Kitty

I never did figure out how the kitty shadow ended up that size, in that location. Decidedly odd. In retrospect it seems obvious that Bridget knew the answer. I don't recall asking. I'm sure asking now would be too late.

Aikido again - the sticks are bokken - wooden practice swords

Probably the most well-known duel in Japanese history took place between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kujiro, in which Musashi fought with a wooden sword that he improvised out of a boat oar while being rowed across to the island where the duel took place. Well, perhaps, there's no doubt Musashi was a formidable swordsman and accomplished artisan - I have seen a a tsuba (a hand guard placed between the blade and the handle) made by Musashi, a beautiful, paradoxical thing.

Entertaining afternoon photographing Aikido. Duck tape as they were doing stuff on their knees earlier on (the canvas is very abrasive).

My camera seems to have caught the Microsoft Disease - I am constantly having to reboot (dirty lens contacts - I hope).

I always love an illusion - it must be a flaw in my character.

Look at the wall to the right of the shadow below the stairs. Wonderful! Especially given that this was taken just 15 feet or so to the left of the above image.

Seattle moon - can't you tell?

Honoring the conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter - look to the eastern sky tomorrow night.

The first queen bore him and reared him; the second loved him and slew him; the third anointed him and laid him to rest in the House of Spirals. His soul was carried in her ark across the water to the first queen once again. It was five days' sail in the ark of acacia-wood across the water. It was five day's sail from the Land of the Unborn. To the City of Birth it was five days' sail; five sea-beasts drew the ark along to the sound of music. There the queen bore him and named him Jerahmeel, the Moon's beloved.

From King Jesus - Robert Graves.

Pigeons in a parking lot

There's a tremendous amount of really good poetry being written at the moment, if you just take the trouble to look for it. This, completely at random, from the following location. It's by someone called Vincent Spada - I'd never heard of him before - nice effort - though I think my picture is a little more upbeat than the poem.

There's little to say 

There's always little to say 

Things aren't what you expect

It's never a pot of gold, 

or ten good turns, 

or anything. Not anything

No gusts of perfect wind 

No moonlight walks 

Forget it. Keep dreaming

This isn't a lie 

This is the truth 

There's just nothing to say

It's only the usual 

in heavy doses 

If that's bad, well, too bad

It's nothing 

The same thing, right there 

See it, and know it, for sure

A junk of a car, 

a supermarket dying, 

and pigeons in the parking lot

That's all 

Maybe almost invisible 

But either way, it doesn't matter

There are so many things I like about piano music, especially classical piano (though I'm not at all averse to ragtime, jazz goes straight over my head). Perhaps my favorite thing is the extent to which an individual's personality comes through in the nuances of their performance, even, perhaps especially, in the intensely disciplined structure of baroque and classical music.

This was a remarkably fine performance which got mixed up in a radio show with a children's choral group. He was so relaxed and yet so precise. Great playing.

Granadilla flowers

Also Passion Flowers, granadillas sometimes being known as passion fruit; named for a spiritual passion rather than some more earthly variety.

We had an amazingly prolific plant that we causally introduced into a flower bed on the sidewalk outside our house. A friend, who was doing some work  on the house, had the idea of building a framework over the sidewalk for the plant to grow on, which it did, with gay abandon. In a single season it completely covered the framework, quite an impressive site. So much so that the City of Seattle took exception to it and after months of wrangling we were finally forced to take it down. There's a message there somewhere, though what it is seems to escape me.

Another sunset

Makes perfect sense to me that on the west coast I see sunsets, on the east coast I see sunrises. It's impossible to see both at the same time.

Jorge Luis Borges and sunsets, what could be more fitting?

You will never recapture what the Persian

Said in his language woven with birds and roses,

When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,

You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

From a very lovely piece, worth reading if you have the time.

Sunset over the Olympic Mountains

Something from Dylan Thomas. A young Dylan Thomas, he was 18 when he wrote it - a poem of his I had never read before I happened to come across it today. Interesting, very much like Robert Graves of Lollocks, Warning to Children or Babylon.

Being But Men

Being but men, we walked into the trees

Afraid, letting our syllables be soft

For fear of waking the rooks,

For fear of coming

Noiselessly into a world of wings and cries.

If we were children we might climb,

Catch the rooks sleeping, and break no twig,

And, after the soft ascent,

Thrust out our heads above the branches

To wonder at the unfailing stars.

Out of confusion, as the way is,

And the wonder, that man knows,

Out of the chaos would come bliss.

That, then, is loveliness, we said,

Children in wonder watching the stars,

Is the aim and the end.

Being but men, we walked into the trees.

Hip-hop happens again.

We had a power cut in Celebration last night - so late today. Anyway, another hip-hop image. The odd effect of the superimposed image happened because of the strong back-lighting and the fact that I was photographing through a window looking on to the studio where the class was being held. Nice, lot of fun to photograph.

Climb a tree

I don't think there were any native conifers where I grew up in Africa. Certainly nothing like this. I have many stories associated with trees. There was a Norfolk Pine on the farm. I have no memory of it as it was, but I do remember a photograph we had of it after it lost the top 40ft or so to a lightning strike. In retrospect, an ominous event. 

I can never drive by Green Lake in Seattle without smiling about the time one of the kids called up my wife and, at some point in the conversation, informed her he was calling from the top of one of the beautiful (and very large) trees around Green Lake. Aren't cell phones wonderful? 

Witch doctor.

Well, not a real witchdoctor, though not a bad effort. This is the Fremont (Seattle) Solstice Festival, at which it sometimes seems everyone is either overdressed or under dressed (i.e. not dressed at all). 

Probably my earliest memory is associated with witchdoctors. I grew up on a tobacco farm in the mid 1950's  about 80 miles northwest of the capital of what was then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The farm was on land that was the center of a very active local cult. I remember one evening lying on the canvas top of a truck looking out over a dirt road watching a procession of witchdoctors. Imagine a dozen or so of these fellows, all dancing around in the twilight, yelling screaming their heads off. I was terrified. 

Summer tree

Hip-hop hand

Celebration cooling off.

Another inhabitant of the garden

We so admire it's erratic flight using it as a metaphor of freedom and choice. Of course, that erratic path has been forced on it by the elimination of any more predictable ancestors. Who's to say, maybe there's joy in it anyway.

They feel like shadows, even if they're not.

Projections of something more than just light, perhaps.

Shadows thrown by a light fixture.

Some nice antinomies in that.

Outdoor shower. It's the structure just NW of the hexagonal roof under which is possibly Seattle's largest hot tub (really a watsu pool but I doubt many of you know what that is).

I cannot tell you how delighted I was when someone actually asked me, "But what if it rains?"

Kensington somewhere or other (I think that might be Harrod's)

In any event, English Noughties chic (as in 2000-2010) - a sort of cross between Garry Glitter and Dr Who. Why is it so hard to take the English seriously? 

Outdoor table after the rain.

I can't leave Smullyan behind without a minor puzzle of my own:

Cold in your pocket
     No key to unlock it
     Your life cannot shake it
     Your accidents make it
     Your agonies take it
     And endlessly stretch it
               What is it?

That is why; hinc illae lachrymae - Horace. "Hence those tears". Almost as mysterious as the Knights and Knaves.

Taken a few seconds before this one.

What is the title of this post? A homage to Raymond Smullyan.

Smullyan was well-known for his paradoxical stories. This, of course, is Smullyan speaking, not me, as I have never been to the Island of Knights and Knaves, where Knights always tell the truth and Knaves always lie.

"Once when I visited the Island of Knights and Knaves, I came across two of the inhabitants resting under a tree, I asked one of them, 'Is either of you a Knight?' He responded and I knew the answer to my question."

from What is the Name of This Book?

I'm having trouble finding a Thursday image, so here's something else instead.

Also, of course, not a Friday, though loving and giving; in fact shes a Monday's child, so fair of face; surely, you can tell. For anyone who's forgotten the rhyme:

Mondays child is fair of face,

Tuesdays child is full of grace,

Wednesdays child is full of woe,

Thursdays child has far to go,

Fridays child is loving and giving,

Saturdays child works hard for his living,

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Cappuccino art

I thought it was quite extraordinary; seemed a shame to drink it.