Seal Rocks

   I have always loved the beach, especially when it is not hot or crowded. As an adult living in New York City, getting to the beach wasn't very easy, and so I rarely went. When I would go, it was generally with a group of people, and even if one of them had a car to take us there (instead of schlepping on the train), it was still a trek, and because this group would generally go doing 'beach season', the traffic was usually horrendous.

   Where I now live, I'm just a little more than two miles from the beach, yet I haven't been going there of late as much as I have in the past, yet when I am there I usually ask myself why that is so. The cool, sometimes cold air invigorates me, and the open expanse imparts to me a feeling of temporary freedom from the limits that I set on myself and the world I live in.

   In the picture below are a group of rock outcroppings called Seal Rocks, located at the western edge of Ocean Beach here in San Francisco. Although there are never any seals here that I'm aware of, I'm told that this used to be a favorite spot for Steller's Sea Lions and California Sea Lions. I now often see Cormorants here in large numbers, and this is also the place where I tossed my half of my father's ashes after he died (my sister is in possession of the other half of his body).

   In his will, my father asked to be placed by the sea after life, and I couldn't think of a better place to fulfill his wishes. I also can't imagine a more scenic grave site to visit.

Formerly for seals, now for my father

A Great Highway

   I took this picture earlier today as I was driving up from a place near the beach where I had gone to try to see passing gray and killer whales (I had overheard a conversation of a man who said he worked as an artist near the beach, and had been seeing them regularly during the day there over the past couple of weeks). Unfortunately, I didn't see any whales today, but will try again tomorrow, and I did get the opportunity to take this picture as I drove north towards my apartment.
   I've driven this road many times, and it rarely fails to instill in me a feeling of freedom and openness. It's usually foggy and cool (to cold) here, and when I'm in my car with the window open a bit, the chilly air rushing in makes me feel like I'm on vacation.

A week for blooming

   I hadn't been to my usual Golden Gate Park spots for one week after having surgery on my toe. During that time (and in fact during the entire winter) we've had very little rain here in northern California, and the temperatures have at times been unseasonably warm. Yesterday, when I returned to my beloved early morning spot and slowly rounded one of my favorite corners I came upon this sight, which you see in the picture below. The (what I believe to be) apple blossom trees there, especially the one shown, was suddenly in rather spectacular bloom. Although there are sometimes pretty wonderful changes that can occur here on a nearly daily basis, especially after a good rain, this one I found quite remarkable.

   I sometimes feel emotionally that when I am 'out of the loop' for awhile the world and its' people are or will pass me by, and will become something that I don't know or recognize. I know rationally that this is not usually so, but it seems that I may in fact mistaken.

   

Life abandoned and life taken

   During my morning walk in Golden Gate Park today I witnessed so much life;  I also felt the allusion to it. I saw animals hunting, the remains of animals who had been killed (apparently for food), and heard the sounds of the world around me waking and starting the day.
   In years past, I might have found the sight of the dead body of a Muscovy Duck to be too sad to take a picture of, but now I have what I think is a better appreciation for the ebbs and flows of existence. I believe that my advancing age, my daily walks, and the work that I do (where I am so aware of the sometimes fragile state of the living) have all contributed to a more comprehensive understanding of mortality.

An egg left at the side of a walking path

End of the line for one and a meal for others

Behind the bison paddock

   When I first came to live in San Francisco almost nine years ago, the bison paddock in Golden Gate Park was a refuge for me. I loved to watch these animals, admired how docile and peaceful they seemed, loved how tourists would come to see them, but not so many that it would disturb the quiet and peace of the place. I would bring visitors to see them, and even managed on one occasion to leave ecstatically with a clump of their stinky fur that had become wedged in one of the fences containing them. I also saw my first wild red tailed fox here.
   Over the years I have become enamored with other parts of the park (especially Stow Lake), and have visited the bison less, but over the past year or so have regularly been visiting the North Lake, which is just west, across Chain of Lakes Drive East, and crossing back over east, one finds themselves behind the bison paddock, as pictured below.
   It was here that I had my longest encounter with a coyote, and I regularly hear owls calling when it is nearing dusk. It's behind a paddock, and outside of it my mind tends to run freer than usual.

There are bison yonder in those fields

It's stuff dreams are made of

   I took this picture at a place called the Sloat Garden Center here in San Francisco. The combination of the writing on the man's shirt, his back, and his ponytail appearing from below his baseball cap formed a message with I found, and still do, both funny and obscure . On the one hand, it seems amusing because the dreams that the shirt is referencing seem from this rear view of the man seem to be about his style, which seem to me more like a nightmare; but the 'dreams' may also be a kind of half-sleep state where the kind of meaning being offered in the picture may only be imagined in that state, leaving me with an overly simplified reading.  

   I hope that the very act of my trying to understand the image helps me get closer to the the second type of understanding.

Tree top

   This is a picture of a tree that I pass almost daily, and when I do, I invariably find myself looking at the top of it. I do this partially because much of it's lower portion is obscured from my sight from the angle I generally see it, but also because this very obscuring steers my eyes up into a different visual field, a view illuminated by the early morning light. This time of day produces colors that I find soothing and beautiful, no matter the weather.
   I wrote in another blog earlier about my shoes, and how they are significant for me in the space where they connect me to the ground. This picture illustrates for me a similar feeling, in that it suggests another meeting point, one which feels less personal and more ethereal than where my feet meet the ground, but no less significant. It points to the difficult relationships between objects in the world that I see.