Looking at a scene like this (Tampa Bay, just west of yesterday's bridge), can we honestly say that we appreciate it, truly see all of it? It is a little like reading Dylan Thomas. Looking hard doesn't help. You have to look at it some other way in order to understand it. You can't take it in, it is too large, you can only immerse yourself in it.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

(from Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas)

Who can pass by a bridge and not think of bridges to another world? I certainly can't. My earliest memories are bounded by bridges, the Birchenough bridge to the west on the road to Umtali and the Mozambique coast, the Otto Beit bridge to the North East over the Zambezi, the Victoria Falls bridge to the South West, again over the Zambezi and Beitbridge to the South over the Limpopo (great, grey-green, greasy and full of crocodiles).

This is a picture of the beautiful Tampa bay bridge, spanning the southern approaches to the bay.

It is like some great mythical beast rising up out of the sea. Unlike the bridges of my early memories, this one seems to me indifferent to the traffic it carries. It is not a bridge to another world, it is a bridge out of this world. I go to Tampa just for the experience of crossing it.

Of course, "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River" (all set about with fever-trees), is where the Kolokolo Bird sent the elephant's child to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner. The discovery very nearly killed him.

Celebration again. Fireworks this time, only this is a picture of the smoke, rather than the fire. I had a grandstand view of the 4th of July display last year. It was a lot of fun to watch and photograph (if you click on it you will see a much larger image).

I would go on about the "rockets bright glare", but as I said this is a picture of the smoke (and the moon). Looking at these photographs I was amazed at how substantial the effects of the fireworks were. How tangible does the insubstantial have to be before we consider it real? Anyway, I really liked smoke and don't require the fire.

Celebration again. The town is a completely artificial environment. An odd place to live in many ways. This is a picture of some roofs in the main street area, looking quite exotic but also very substantial.

A beautiful study in planes and lines on a grey Florida day. I am reminded of Kiplings "old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea." But his old soldier didn't find a happy end. Better think of something else, though still Kipling calls to us (or me anyway)

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but what do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and ---
Law! Wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin' fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!

I have always been fascinated by optical illusions and was delighted to find this one right outside my front door in Celebration (well, balcony, it's an apartment). The illusion is produced by shadows on the bricks, the shadows coming from stairs that spiral round the outside of the building (you can see the building, courtesy Google Street View here). At least for my eye, the effect is quite startling.

You can only see it at certain times of day and certain times of year. At the moment, for example, the sun doesn't get high enough for the effect to show.

I wonder why these images are so compelling? Perhaps they serve as an ironic reminder of how fragile our grasp of reality is. Plato has us living in a world of shadows, rarely if ever seeing things for what they are. I like Fitzgerald's translation (another shadow) of Omar Khayyam

For in and out, above, about, below,

'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,

Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,

Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

Continuing the family theme for a bit, this is a picture of my father and I taken in 1956 at a place called Ramsgate, in what is now Kwazulu-Natal. Note the suit and pipe, both very much his trademarks. All kinds of interesting things about the picture, for example, he was left handed and always wore his watch on his right wrist. A remarkable man, he pursued at least six quite different careers in his lifetime, one of which was dismal failure (tobacco farming) the rest were all spectacularly successful.

Goodbye to Folk-Life till next year (or whenever we can work up the energy to go again). This is the family (at least four of us) heading home past the new Seattle Opera House. Yours truly not in the picture.