Groan

Exasperation –

The computer malfunctions

So again I’m lost

Fig Tree

This twenty-five year old fig tree in the garden produces some delicious figs.

Like this one.

Hope

Ever more swiftly

The days and weeks come and go —

Spring will soon arrive

The Mirror

Pores become larger -

hairs sprout from inside one's ears

winter is fast approaching

Fall Colors

Wildfires

The disastrous wildfires in Southern California have kept us glued all day to the television. The conflagrations have reduced hundreds of homes and other structures to ashes, and the end is nowhere in sight. One person has perished, and thousands have been left homeless. Whipped by powerful and unpredictable Santa Ana winds, the flames are testing to the limit the state's ability to keep them in check. Let's hope that the weather changes soon, that the winds will die down, and that moisture will give the firefighters a chance to contain the multiple fires.

Santiago

This is a shot taken when we were standing outside the Hospital de los Reyes Católicos, kitty-corner from the famous Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain. It's your typical tourist picture, and had likely been captured many thousands of times from the very same spot. The components are Old World, picturesque, with elements of history, and religion, alongside ancient and modern culture, and perhaps even myth as well.

If you look closely, you will see along the hills in the background that there are new houses either being built, or recently completed. A cluster of three of them in a row appear no different than tract homes seen in our American suburbs. A larger house in the middle distance is much higher than its neighbors, and shows the current European trend towards large skylights. Its roof tiles are modern and regular, unlike those of the older buildings in the foreground, some of which have become discolored over the years, and indeed show signs of decay and tufts of weeds along their courses.

The climate does not allow whitewash to remain white for long in rainy Galicia, and you can see the stains of mildew on the walls of the older houses, which stand cheek-by-jowl alongside houses that have, at least on their façades, a cleaner look.

The street on which the foreground houses stand is very steep and narrow. Some of the houses have wrought-iron balconies, others have roof terraces. The street lights are, of course, electric, but their design suggests that before the advent of electricity, they may have been fueled by natural gas, and maybe even tallow.

To the right are visible the decorative pillars on the outer wall of the Hospital, and the stone of which they and the supporting base are made is grey and weathered, much in contrast to the incongruous modern spy camera mounted a metre or so below, which points down towards the street, and whose coiled cable forms an elegant calligraphic lower-case letter 'g'.

On the wall to the left the pillars are of a newer design, and one might suppose that they were either added later, after the originals had crumbled through age, or the entire lighter-toned stone structure might have been erected next to the original wall centuries later; a couple of windows lower down seem to favor this second thesis.

In the street below two commercial enterprises are visible. Their entrances are surmounted by canvas canopies which appear to have been well-maintained. One is a restaurant called "Las Huertas", and the other is a pharmacy. Between them is a "No Parking" sign. A couple of people stand outside the restaurant, looking at the printed menu outside. They appear to be locals rather than tourists, who have all recently dined at the quite impressive refectory within the Hospital de los Reyes Católicos.

Trash

From outside come the steady beeps of the garbage truck as it backs into the cul-de-sac. But we don’t call it a garbage truck these days. The environmentally correct term is ‘waste management conveyance’.

On alternate Thursdays three trucks arrive, at different times, to pick up respectively 1) household trash including garbage; 2) the recyclable items, paper, cardboard cartons, plastics, glass, and metal; and 3) garden cuttings and yard waste.

It used to be that the plastics and glass had to be placed in one bin, old newspapers in another, and paper items and cardboard in yet another. Things are simpler now – mixing disparate recyclables in the same bin is permitted. Presumably sorting will take place later at the recycling plant.

The trucks are large. These days each household trash truck is operated by one man. He drives and does the picking up all by himself. In the past there used to be three men, one to drive, and the other two to run around pushing large steel bins on casters, into which the contents of householders’ trash cans are deposited, usually with a considerable amount of noise, all up and down the street.

One never sees women doing this kind of work. I am guessing that the physical strength required to lift heavy trash bins may be the reason.

I would often be awakened by the noise of trash collecting. Some Thursday mornings I would wake with a start upon realizing that I had forgotten to put out the trash container the night before. But that sort of oversight happened only infrequently, I’m happy to say.

I have settled into a ritual on Wednesday evenings. I go around the house collecting all the rubbish I can find: old magazines and newspapers, wastebasket contents, empty or near-empty plastic water bottles, plastic bags filled with shredded paper from the paper shredder. Using a hand-truck that I had acquired specifically for the purpose, I wheel the cumbersome bins of recyclable items up the driveway and over to curbside for the next morning’s pick-up.

The job is harder if we had a house party the previous weekend, as we just did.

Old Friends

They are those

who listen

and help where able

when needed

They are those

whose voices

are the most pleasing

on the phone

They are those

older now

who once were children

beside us

Overcast

Today the sky is overcast, cumulonimbus and stratocumulus extending a gray aspect to the afternoon. Showers are forecast. I have set up my video camera on a tripod out on the deck to record at 3-second intervals so as to speed up the cloud action.


The sun is filtered through the clouds, and here and there it does shine through. The resulting light is quite marvelous, giving the landscape a glow that can best be described as ethereal.

P.S. Good thing my wife was alert when it began to rain. She got my equipment back indoors just in time.

Dragonflies

Through the long summer

they came to visit our pond –

but where are they now?

Art Show

It’s been some years since I exhibited any of my oil paintings, and it’s gratifying to have three of them on display again. They are at the clubhouse of the retirement community across the Bay where we have lately been spending time. I do not yet have any photos of them for posting here, but one day I’ll get around to it. There is a very active art association at the community, with talented artists in various media whose works are also being exhibited. I plan to spend more time over there, and do more painting. It’s the time I need, always. More time.

* * *

There you are, sitting in a small restaurant enjoying lunch, when a car stops outside. You do not hear the brakes, nor the car’s motor. Instead what you hear is a deep, gut-numbing boom from supercharged loudspeakers from within the car, a steady throbbing that seems in close sync with your heart rate, and is no doubt intended to emphasize certain sounds that pass for music. Or singing, or, yes, the thing they call rapping. The words are unintelligible, as though barked in an alien tongue, but there are those for whom the words are consequential, even meaningful. The bombardment continues for the better part of a minute, until mercifully, the traffic light changes, and the car moves on, leaving us poor diners to finish our meal in the welcome, and quieter, hubbub of the restaurant.

Autumn

A leaf from the maple

falls upon the deck

with a solidity

that surprises –

not a rustle

nor a whisper

as you might expect,

instead there’s

a robust

plop.

Paintings

This is an oil painting that I made after visiting Italy in the nineties. It's the pretty town of Orta San Giulio, right on Lake Orta in the Piedmont.


This is a view looking north on Kearny Street in San Francisco. That's Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower at the top.

Home Again

Unsteady and slow

thrilled to leave his bed at last –

he takes his wife’s hand

The Moth

Clinging to the window glass

with the light from my room reflected

in its incandescent eyes,

the little moth displays five,

and only five, skinny legs.

Why five? I wonder, leaning closer

to count again –

where is number six, little moth?

how came you to lose one?

And will you, like a crab,

grow a new one in time,

as strong and nimble

as the one you lost?

Soldier on, little moth,

may courage

be your companion

while you still

have life.

Landscape awaiting rain

Look, Columbus - Cumulonimbus

Today's skies as seen from our balcony

Generations

How quickly they grow up. It seems like it was just a couple of years ago that they were babies. But one is in her second year of university, and the other in her final year of high school. And we see our future as their future.

Styrofoam

We bought a couple of lamps recently: a floor lamp and a table lamp. These were manufactured, of course, in China, where else? But proudly designed to U.S. specifications, and containing so far as we can surmise, no toxic ingredients.

The lamps, like so many other household appliances nowadays, come in large cardboard cartons, and are kept in place within the cartons by molded blocks of lightweight white material which help protect against breakage or damage. This material is generally called Styrofoam, but that is a brand name which has taken on a generic life of its own, like Kleenex and Band-aid. The correct term, as I was able to discover on the Internet, is polystyrene foam.

It is used for things like single-use coffee cups, life jackets, insulation, and things of that kind.

In the course of opening the cartons and assembling the lamps (yes, there was some assembly required, though the task proved not to be too arduous for your average senior citizen), bits of the Styrofoam came off and flew all over the floor, like crumbs. These tiny bits of material are very difficult to clean up. They are ultra-light, and they tend to be attracted to almost any surface in their vicinity: upholstered furniture, trouser legs, fingers, shoes. Trying to sweep them up is a hopeless task. The little beads fly every which way except into the dustpan, and the act of sweeping seems to generate a stronger static charge, making it even more of a chore to shake off.

And to make matters worse, Styrofoam is not ecologically friendly. It may not dissolve back into the earth for hundreds of years, though there now appears to be a way to use bacteria to assist the process.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Some beautiful cumulus clouds today.

The Rudest Travel Book Ever Written

If you have never heard of Mrs Favell Mortimer, this is a good introduction to her travel writing.

Non-PC travel writing