Puget Sound at sunset, near Golden Gardens

It's hard to imagine a better light.

Courtyard in the rain

I lingered, naturally, on the sentence: "I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths." Almost instantly, I understood: `the garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel; the phrase `the various futures (not to all)' suggested to me the forking in time, not in space. A broad rereading of the work confirmed the theory. In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pen, he chooses simultaneously-all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, is the explanation of the novel's contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a secret; a stranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts'ui Pen, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of de­parture for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend. 

Jorge Luis Borges - Garden of Forking Paths

Down by the Salley Gardens
W.B.Yeats

DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Signs

Flower shadow - at least there are tulips for me. Throughout his life Robert Graves issued a number of editions of his collected poems; weeding out anything he considered unworthy, including only what he thought best. This is one that didn't make it. The rest of us can only marvel at his craft and be grateful for the tulips. 

Double Red Daisies By Robert Graves

Double red daisies, they’re my flowers,

Which nobody else may grow. 

In a big quarrelsome house like ours 

They try it sometimes—but no, 

I root them up because they’re my flowers,

Which nobody else may grow.

Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn’t plant it; 

Ben has an iris, but I don’t want it. 

Daisies, double red daisies for me, 

The beautifulest flowers in the garden.

Double red daisy, that’s my mark: 

I paint it in all my books! 

It’s carved high up on the beech-tree bark, 

How neat and lovely it looks! 

So don’t forget that it’s my trade mark;

Don’t copy it in your books.

Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn’t plant it; 

Ben has an iris, but I don’t want it. 

Daisies, double red daisies for me, 

The beautifulest flowers in the garden.

Christmas tree

Jacaranda and Baobab seed pods

Someone else's deity

Mannequin heads - hard to look at - a poem I find hard to read.

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.  
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for  
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes  
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Poppies in October by Sylvia Plath

Islands

Look, stranger, on this island now

The leaping light for your delight discovers,

Stand stable here

And silent be,

That through the channels of the ear

May wander like a river

The swaying sound of the sea.

From On This Island by W.H.Auden 

Bamboo - all look black, but all are actually green.

From the Plumed Serpent - D.H. Lawrence


Huitzilopochtli gives the black blade of death.
Take it bravely.
Take death bravely.
Go bravely across the border, admitting your mistake.

Determine to go on and on, till you enter the Morning Star.
Quetzalcoatl will show you the way.
Malintzi of the green dress will open the door.

In the fountain you will lie down.
If you reach the fountain, and lie down
And the fountain covers your face, forever,
You will have departed forever from your mistake.

And the man that is more than a man in you
Will wake at last from the clean forgetting
And stand up, and look about him,
Ready again for the business of being a man.

But Huitzilopochtli touched the hand of Quetzalcoatl
And one green leaf sprang among the black.
The green leaf of Malintzi
Who pardons once, and no more.

Black plastic alive with figures

Flower fragments

Photographer Bridget

This is for the 19th...

Bridget

By Bridget - shades of Mary Poppins

Grooming, nails, ears

The "ears" are a good clue, you need four legs not two. These four seem to spend most of their time either in the window (as you see them) or lying on the couch.

Photograph by Bridget

The Zambezi

Photographer, unknown, though the guy with the hat is my wife's father. You wouldn't get me in that water, crocodiles, hippos bilharzia, snakes galore.

Italian garden

Bridget

Basketball sunset

Photograph by Ben Schultz - what a wonderful shot, taken with a cell-phone apparently.

Lion in Italy

This is a week of other people's photographs - Photographer - Bridget

Seattle winter scene - it has its compensations.

Seasonal sentiments perhaps:

Over the mountains

And over the waves,

Under the fountains

And under the graves;

Under floods that are deepest,

Which Neptune obey,

Over rocks that are steepest,

Love will find out the way.

Anonymous 

Sisters

Under water

Tudor choir - a picture of fellowship. Seems appropriate for the time of year.

The person who's face you can't see is the directory Doug Fullington. Happy Christmas Doug and thanks for all the music.

You may recalling hearing of the "Great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo river all set about with fever trees" where the elephant got his trunk. Well this is it, or at least Beitbridge going over it.

My mother in the front, my sister in the back, I believe it was a Peugeot. I think I still have the trunk that's on the top of the car (either that or one exactly like it). I just noticed, that's me looking rather disgruntled in the back. Hence, no doubt, the smug look on my sister's face.

Image on a dancer

Self-portrait

Hop, skip

Who's that?

Golden birds

Originally posted from my iPhone. But really, Apple and Google just don't see eye-to-eye. I look forward to the day when they either join the revolution or both find themselves up against the wall.

High school band again

What fun. Whole crowd of them this time.

It's definitely feeling a  little nippy even here in Florida. Here's a nippy image.

 And something personal for a personal sort of day, "Between" - a rather chilly poem:

Between the edge and the abyss,

Between the air and the sky,

Between the picture and the frame,

The beginning and the end,

The thought and the word,

The anguish and the cry

There is nothing.

Between the ground and the weight,

The sight and the vision,

The loss and the sorrow,

The closing and the shut,

The humiliation and the idea,

The ice and the cold,

The second and the hour

There is nothing other than ourselves.

Between word and consolation,

Between love and response...