Toecaps and whitecaps

Feynman by the sea

At the west coast.

from Bali to Iberia

I saw a fan - a butterfly, a glimmer - flutter around a poised dancer whose arms slowly moved to define sacred space around her body and whose legs moved within a long train of a dress to maneuver its placement in her path. The butterfly alit on her hand, then slowly fluttered near the head of an approaching dancer who held out her hand, received the butterfly, snapped it shut, then snapped it open again with a different life.  It fluttered with a stronger pulse as the dancer's arms crisply announced their presence and her legs directed and flipped the dark heavy train of her dress so that it swirled and carved her path.

A View

It's raining tonight.  Unusual for this time of year.  The Tour de California bike race starts in the Sierras today or tomorrow and snow is forecast.  Downhill at 50mph on "fat" one-inch racing tires?  Nein danke.

I tended the small garden plot, performed the annual irrigation check (giving rise to tonight's rain, no doubt), made a few repairs, and planted a few tomatoes, alyssums, and marigolds.  A month ago I pulled the offspring of the summer wild ones, and I haven't seen too many since, which was a relief until I wondered if there was another less desireable reason why the ground is more barren than usual.  It was confirmed that the land had been sprayed with herbicide.  My heart sank with dismay.  Time to extract the skeletal carcasses, heal the land with compost, replant, and post "no poison" signs.  Bah.

Been awhile since I've traveled.  So I go vicariously, over oceans through the sky.  14g of merino were spun on the Kundert perpetual motion spindle before and after gardening.  7g of cobalt-blue merino were spun woolen and andean-plied.  Similarly, 7g total of the cobalt-blue and turquoise (equal amounts of each color) were produced.  These are calm oceans and clear skies viewed on a sunny day.

Mapping through Immersion

I read everything, without selection..I borrowed from the public library...I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another. Safe in my room...I disappeared into inner space. The real world dissolved and I was free to drift in fantasy, living a thousand lives, each one more powerful, more accessible, and more real than my own.

-- Frank Conroy