Compositions

The Coke Truck

Composition in blue, black, gold, and red

Commentary

On this beautiful day in late July in the great and financially burdened State of California, a guy on the radio made a comment that blogging can be narcissistic. I suppose it is possible sometimes to agree with such an assertion for some blogs. But I would venture to say that The Occasional Muse does not fall within the purview of this judgment. Instead for the record let us simply say this : introspective, perhaps, but narcissistic, hardly.

Disposal

He felt it was high time someone did something about it. It had been sitting there for several days, and no one had bothered to touch it, much less move it. The fungus had not yet penetrated the outer skin, but he knew it would not take long for the bloom to spread across its glossy surface, which had remained largely intact except for some irregular purple striations across the top. Once that happened, things would get out of hand very quickly.

He did not want to use a respirator, but he had to have gloves, the heavy duty ones. A shovel and a garden wheelbarrow would have been useful, but he knew he would not be able to find them, or for that matter, anyone else to lend a hand.

The thing was heavier than he expected, and it could not be rolled. He picked it up and lifted it to his shoulders, feeling it vibrate gently as it emitted little hisses through the twin vents at the crown. What had once been eyes had long since withdrawn within the folds of its carapace, and the vestigial feelers were no longer functional. One antenna was already withered.

He had many steps to climb before he reached the disposal area. Once at the top, he uttered the usual incantations and then, with a great heave, he flung the quivering object into the seething cauldron below.

(fragment from an unpublished science-fiction story)

1993 as seen from 1893

What the Future looked like in 1893. Click on the link.

feb-16-judge-magazine-.jpg

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Corfiot scenes

Weathered walls and windows

Bread & broad

Corfiot lady and tourists

Shoe and boot repair

Neighborly laundry

Lady walking past Georgios Theotokis statue

Bikes in a courtyard

Roof stack and antennas

Fleming - Strauss - 'September'

Here's the link to Wikipedia's entry for Richard Strauss's "Four Last Songs" of which "September" is one.

Four_Last_Songs

The plaintive horn solo at the end is enough to bring a person to tears.
Renee, as always, is lovely.

Monologue

One never really knows, eh?

I mean, how can you really, really know?

I mean, some things you just gotta, like, take on faith.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, a bit lower.

Yeah, like that.

Yeah, yeah, right there.
Right there.

Ennui

It wasn't as though he was looking at anything in particular, sitting there on the bench in the sun. On his head was the old fedora he had picked up at the Goodwill many years ago when wearing hats was still in fashion. There was a hole in the crown just above the headband.

Several pigeons strutted around his feet, pecking at the crumbs that had fallen from his pastrami-and-rye sandwich. It was four-fifteen of a winter afternoon, and there were few people out on the street.

At the bank across the street, a young man was hunched over by the ATM, perhaps wondering how come his bank card was not working. He wore an orange sweater and hiking boots.

So that's how it goes, the old man thought, reaching in his jacket pocket for another Lifesaver.




(to be continued)

All Over Coffee

This is the Madonna whose works I enjoy.

Paul Madonna

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Tre Sbirri Una Carrozza

After a Shower

This might have been posted before -- I'm not sure. But I thought the chiaroscuro effect was kinda neat.

Tool

No, this isn't a kid's Transformer toy (minus the steroids). It's a Leatherman Wave tool that my son gave me some years ago for Father's Day. American-made, it has more finely-machined stainless steel parts than your average Swiss Army knife. There's a top-grain leather case that came with it. I haven't used it much. Except to accidentally cut myself a couple of times, when trying to push all the sharp parts back into their storage positions.

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For the Bulwer-Lytton Contest?

He was at that time trying to learn enough Uruguayan Portuguese or Brazilian Spanish for his trip to South America. There his family had a cattle ranch near the border that needed attention, having fallen on hard times due to mismanagement

It was a difficult enough task to find a teacher who was a native speaker, but to find one who knew Flemish was almost impossible. After a lengthy search and a series of classified ads in the Brussels newspapers, he found a young woman with a degree in comparative linguistics who had recently graduated from the University of Ghent. She accepted his offer of a job to accompany him and to act as interpreter.

Together they traveled by train to Friedrichshafen, where they had booked a flight on the "Graf Zeppelin" on her maiden voyage to Rio de Janeiro. Except for an electrical storm off the West African coast that provided some excitement, the flight was pleasant and uneventful.

From Rio, they went south by train to the railhead at São Brás da Fonseca, and then by car and by oxcart, arriving at their destination, the small village of Pedras Negras, in a drenching tropical rain. The land portion of the trip had taken as long as the Zeppelin flight across the Atlantic.

Over the course of six months, under the manager's care and the young interpreter's skill, the cattle ranch showed clear signs of improvement. Better quality cattle feed was imported from Argentina, new wells were dug, and the spring crop of calves exceeded in number the total from the three prior years'.

(To be continued)

Euro Dime

This is a Euro ten-cent coin. How it appeared among my spare change I have no idea.

It happens to be a Spanish Euro coin, as the obverse shows the word "España" and an image of Cervantes, along with the year 1999. What initially interested me about this coin is the depiction of the different countries of the EC at that time. Their shapes are separated by spaces, in a sort of exploded view, but are readily identifiable as to what they represent, even down to the Mediterranean islands of Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and one of the Balearic Islands. (I suppose the other Balearic Islands, and the state of Malta are too small to be shown.)

Also interesting is the inclusion of the Hebrides west of Scotland in the British Isles, the Danish Islands of Zealand and Fyn (but not the tinier ones, of course), and the Swedish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. The shape of Germany is what it is today after reunification. The two large pieces at the top represent Sweden and Finland, but Norway, not being in the EC, is not represented here.

The separation of the Iberian countries of Spain and Portugal is also worthy of note, for it reminds me of José Saramago's novel "The Raft" where the Iberian peninsula is detached at the Pyrenees, and floats away from the rest of Europe out into the Atlantic.

The coin is about 2 centimetres or ¾ inch in diameter, larger than a U.S. dime but roughly the same as our copper penny. Like our own coins, its intrinsic value in terms of its metal composition is probably higher than its stated face value.

The coin's designer has discreetly placed his or her initials LL to the right of the figure 10.
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California Landscape

View from on a hill overlooking Tice Valley