Making one's own way

  I took this picture outside the side employee entrance to my job. I see many beetles slowly moving in this area, particularly during the warmer months, and recently, have been seeing quick glimpses of quite a few mice as well (their many holes in the ground are much more visible than the creatures themselves are). All these animals help me to prepare for the work day ahead, as I find myself dreading entering my job at times. I find looking at the beetles particularly helpful because their small size forces me to look at them closely and intently, helping to free me from the negative and cynical ideas which can flood my mind quickly and pervasively.
   The beetles long trek across the concrete path that you see below is particularly moving for me, as they slowly make their way in a world which would seem like a terrifying world of giants if I was their size.

My hero

Fog

   We've had some summer-type days here in San Francisco, where the temperature reached around seventy degrees, and the skies were pretty clear, on some days in the morning time, when the marine layer usually dominates. 

   Even though I've now lived here more than nine years, I still tend to forget that there are warmer clear days at all. My wife and I reside closer to the Pacific Ocean, in the north midwestern part of the city, we are more vulnerable to the chilling winds and moisture that it tends to help form. It still is odd for me to be out in the morning and witness clear, blue skies, when those don't usually appear until mid afternoon, if at all.

   So after a few clearer days where the temperature thirty miles east reached one hundred, the fog has returned to my neighborhood, and this morning it was dense and beautiful. The fog blankets the landscape with a blue-gray light that is thick and moist. When I am out in nature, I tend to prefer it to the light of brilliant sunshine.

Welcome back

Claw

   This is a picture that I took some days ago in Golden Gate park, near Stow Lake. It is the claw of what I believe to be a crawdaddy, who has met an untimely death, probably at the hands of another animal (most likely a pelican). There it was, in the middle of the walking path, looking strange being dismebered from the rest of the small body it had come from, The rest of the body was nowhere to be found, and was possinly mostly being digested at that very moment.
   At first, I was saddened by the this sight, because although I had previously seen this creature in the mouth of pelicans, seeing the severed claw seemed more disturbing to me, till I realized that its' death provided food for another animal, and seeing this image was really only a visual manifestation of an occurence which I trust happens often and regularly at this location. In a way, it gave me hope by reminding me that the world is such an organic place, that life ebbs and flows, begins and ends, with or without me.

Dirty mouth

   The Canadian Goose pictured below had momentarily finished munching on some grass when he looked at me suspiciously as I passed. These animals can be nasty, and I always steer clear of them as I walk in the park, and was careful when photographing this badass as well.
   I was drawn to this particular goose, obviously, because he has a piece of grass hanging from his bill, which it may or may not be unaware of. It made me think of human beings in my culture, and how we rely on others to tell us, if we're so unaware, if we have food in a culturally frowned upon place. I admire the fact that this goose is not constrained in the same way that I am.

You've got something, uh, there.

In or out?

   I took this picture at the Presidio in San Francisco. The body of water you see here, called Crissy Field Marsh, often has some interesting wildlife in or near it, so I was looking for these things as I walked by it earlier today, when this unusual sight caught my eye. I looked at it first at the angle that you see here, then walked past it to get a better look at what was there to see. I was trying to determine, firstly, if the chain attached to the small metal pole sticking out of the ground was actually attached to the large wood trunk, and secondly, why it would be attached at all, which it was.
   It initially looked to me like a piece of art, a sculpture, because it didn't appear to have any other reason for being than that. I then thought about it a bit more, and realized that it must have some other relation, though it's not at all clear to me what that is, which is why I'm writing about it here.
   Is that small chain and pole trying to somehow hold that large object, trying to keep it from ending up in the marsh? Or maybe it's like a boat's life ring, giving the trunk something to grab on to, though it has no arms (the wood actually is shaped a bit like a four-legged animal's trunk with severed limbs). I looked around me and saw many dogs both on and off leashes, and wondered if it wasn't a bit like a pet.
   After ruminating more about what is in the picture and writing about it here, I'm still not really any closer to understanding what I see; possible meanings come and go in and out, and it's this quality of mystery that I find so moving in the world of objects.
   Come to think of it, I think it may be the very type of art that moves me after all.

Cowlick

   This is a picture that I took at my job some months ago, and it got buried deep beneath other pictures that I have taken since, so I had forgotten how much it moved me till I unearthed it earlier today. In it you see the hair on the back of a a Peruvian guinea pig (if I recall the breed name correctly), and the normally very long hair on this one has been cut to remove numerous knotted-beyond-repair areas, thus revealing this endearing cowlick (I should note that I work in a nursing facility, and this is one of a number of therapeutic service animals that live there). This breed has long hair, but it does at times need to be cut because of the tendency to knot, and although this often forms a cowlick, there was just something about the way this one was cut, stood up, and changed color sat the cowlick that attracted me.

   I recall in the films of Sergei Eisenstein that the director would often show close up camera shots of the tops of workers hats and heads as a way to (in my opinion) have the viewer empathize with them, focusing on their humanness. This picture strikes me along those lines, though it wasn't intended to. I did hastily crop the picture after I took it to better highlight the cowlick, but never intended to talk about it with anyone, let alone ruminate on it here.

   Besides the hair belonging to an incredibly cute guinea pig, the cowlick represents to me an imperfection, a wildness, and a laid-back quality that I wish that I embraced and possessed more of.

Untamable

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