Season of Summer

I thought we were done with poppies for the summer, but more blooms have appeared.  These later blooms seem paler than the ones from earlier in the spring.    Decades ago, our landladies had a field of poppies in their other lot that seemed to bloom all Summer; if memory serves, they were orange, yellow, and red.  Maybe the seeds dropping from our pods will be viable and we will get a second round of the flowers in early September -- although I'm not sure how that works.


Tuesday, the temperature got up to the low nineties.  The house did not really cool down until something like 1 or 2 AM.  Mark had set up some air-conditioning units, but the one in our room wasn't blowing cold air; I guess the coolant had leaked out over the winter or something.  Luckily, the daytime temperatures have gone back to Summertime normals in the mid 80's.

I had forgotten how much infrared light gets through the writing pavilion after the sun visits the Solstice Station.  The trick to keeping it cool is to open up all the sides, even the west one, so that any  breeze cane come through.  It does mean that 4 PM does get uncomfortably hot.


I've been reading short stories of Philip K Dick.  Some of the more anxious scenes in "Bladerunner" put me off of the movie, so much so that I'd never had a desire to read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep."  The collection I'm reading contains "The Minority Report," (again, the movie didn't look interesting to me), which I finally read.

So far the stories I've gotten through are from the late 1950's and '60's.   The plots seem to be, Captain of Industry / Government Stakeholder encounters Cold-War-inspired McGuffin which threatens the status quo of a morally-ambigous-to-unjust social system, and must sacrifice to save an institution that isn't the best, but is the best we've got.  "It's not what you think it is," tone, not quite entering the "Jar of Tang" trope only because the characters are gravely mistaken about a great many things.

The stories aren't happy in a "good guy defeats the monster, saves the world, and gets the girl," kind of way; I'm waiting for one that doesn't feel so pessimistic -- but they do raise interesting questions like, "What would a justice system look like if precognitives saw you doing the crime before you did it?"... Which, now that I think about it, is sort of a secular take on Original Sin.  

Crescent Moon Muppet Philosophy

The clouds have moved away and the last two days have been hot.  The night sky has been clear, and the most exciting object is a very young crescent moon.  I might have seen Mercury close to the western horizon, but I can't be sure.   In a few days the moon will sweep by Regulus, in Leo the Lion, and a little later on, Antares, in Scorpio the Scorpion.

I managed to get some photographs of the moon -- the low angle made it look like it was being grabbed by a tree.

Composition wise, what interests me about these photos is that I think the farther away from the camera's lens the Moon or a tree branch is, the more in focus it is.  To me, the blurrier branches look farther away from the viewer than the more-in-focus ones do, but I think the opposite is true.  I guess we're so used to thinking "in focus = close" that, in absence of other clues (like color) can confuse things when that's not the case.

I'm sure Mark would point out the symbology of being more focused on the far away by channelling his Inner Yoda and saying, "This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing."

I think my only response would be to channel another Muppet and say, "A crescent moon in sky look like cookie, but it doesn't taste as good as a cookie!  Everybody sing!  C is for cookie, that's good enough for me..."

...You know, those trees kind of look a little like Cookie Monster...

Finding a Good Book

I received a gift certificate for books from Powell's Books and now I'm trying to figure out which books to buy.   The ephemeral nature of e-books prevents me from converting my library to electronic holdings -- and besides, the physical nature of holding a book, turning the pages, and looking at the layout brings a pleasure to reading that pixels on a small LCD doesn't.

Perhaps some day, when I am very, very old and reaching the top shelves of my library is physically beyond me, I'll convert.  One can only hope that robotic assistants able to pull books from the top shelves will be within the means of the moribund.  (And now I'm getting sad imagining 90-something me, alone in a room full of books, unable to stand without a cane, much less raise my arms above my head to pull down the red-bound, ten pound six-book volume of "The Lord of the Rings."  Obviously, I need to design a circular bed that is on a central axis pivot, surrounded seven eighths of the way around with vertical carousel bookshelves.)

But back to the present.  I started searching for the kinds of books I'd want and came to the conclusion that it was easier to find the kinds of books that I didn't want.   I didn't need any more Wicca 101 books; or Coming Out books; and searching with keywords like "Gay Witchcraft" only brought up one book, which I already own.   I already have an extensive collection of Ronald Hutton's works -- and there really is such a thing as Too Many Dion Fortune books (no, I'm not getting rid of any).  I could fill out my Ursula Le Guin holdings, but it would feel like checking off a bird-watcher's list.  And I think I've already got all the charming Wooden Books on Geometry that haven't gone over the edge into woo-woo "the Golden Mean is Magic!" drivel.  Perhaps I could get an updated and revised 2005 edition of Jane Yolen's Touch Magic (to round out the 1981 first edition currently in my folklore section).

I want a book (or books) that will feed my soul.  Or at least be wonderful.  Or Sparkly.  Maybe a book on the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry (okay, I've got a MET publication on the unicorn tapestry), or an art book on mediaeval tiles, or a history of typeface (although, now that I think about, I already have three).    I'm thinking "Reynard the Fox," by Anne Louise Avery, might fit the bill, but it won't be released until November 2020.   I'm thinking Jung's Red Book, except the only copy currently at Powell's is almost $300.  

Or maybe...  I can't help shake the feeling that this is a CS Lewis moth unconsumed by the flame / unsatiated feaster situation.  That what I'm looking for isn't a book so much as the solace of reading from a well-crafted book a story that resonates with words of truth.  It's possible that in order to address this feeling, I have to make my own miraculous book.

Perhaps I'll have to take up book binding.

Evening Herons

The other day Mark and I ditched the dog and went for a walk through Delta Ponds.   I'm trying to remember when the last time I went was, and I think it was a month ago -- or something.  Like so many events during the COVID19 pandemic (and now the Black Lives Matter protests), past visits to the Ponds seem to have happened in previous life or on a different planet.

Since my last visit, the underbrush and trees have sprouted out and created verdant tunnels around the pond-side paths.  It's very mysterious, and good for stealing gay smooches, but it does block the view of the lake.

From an observation deck, we saw an osprey sitting on its distant tower nest, but the photos I took were too blurry.  I think there may have been baby osprey in the nest, but I only caught sight of a raised wing or two through the camera's LCD.  The song of the osprey carries far across the water.

Retraced our steps, Mark saw a rat tail hiding behind a concrete railing.  We took a few steps closer and the rat sprinted along the fence, leapt into the air, and scurried up a tree.  In retrospect, if squirrels can climb trees, and if rats can scamper up ropes to stowaway onto boats, I shouldn't have been surprised they climb trees; but it was unsettling.

Deja vu accompanied the rat, and the particulars of the morning's dream returned to me:  I had been in a dystopian English prep school; the instructors' voices came over speakers; the school itself was a maze of metal corridors, with mechanical instruments on articulated metal arms unfolding out of the walls; there was a swimming pool, surrounded by a metal railing, and steps descending down to fog-shrouded, murky water; mysterious, many-legged, human-sized insects lived in the pool.   In the dream the insects would pull you into the water, not to drown you, but to try to rescue you from the school.  It was very much like a Dr. Who episode (probably "Paradise Towers").   Looking over the railing over the pond, I half-expected to see a many-armed insect surface next to the log usually used by turtles to sunbathe.  

Later, walking over a bridge, Mark noticed a green heron fishing underneath us.  The heron had the perfect spot for fishing.  All it had to do was wait and the current flowing under the bridge would bring the fish right by its feet.   It would slowly stretch out, leaning over the stream and -- SPLASH! -- pluck a fish out of the water with its spearpoint beak.  We watched it catch five fish in as many minutes.

We lingered around the ponds and looked for more herons, but the only animals visible were ducks, geese, and nutria.  Mark enjoys the nutria, and I think they're kind of like mutant beavers or oversized water rats.  The light was fading; the last few days have been very cloudy, so instead of yellow-orange sunlight angling in over the waters, the sunset was an ambiguous smear from white-grey to shadow-grey.

As we walked back, Mark stopped again and pointed out another heron on the other side of a screen of greenery.  I thought it might be a white heron we'd seen before discovering the fishing green heron, but it was a different one.  I managed, for once, to convince the camera to actually focus on the heron and not the leaves and twigs in front of me.  The daylight had faded enough so that the local streetlights had turned on, and the ripples of reflecting light limned the heron, which was mostly facing me.   The light reminded me of a painting, "Midsummer Eve, C.1908" by Edward Robert Hughes, only now that I'm referencing the painting, in a much less twee fashion.

Interstitial Days

Another day with COVID-19 and the BLM protests.  We're still social distancing.  Yesterday, protesters on the U of O campus toppled two statues known as the Pioneer Father and the Pioneer Mother.

I am unsure when I will be asked to appear at in my office, and continue to work remotely.  Which feels kind of weird.  The other week there were some things requiring my actual presence on campus, and I had to jump through some administrative hoops to be allowed back.  The building I work in had an empty feeling to it -- it was stuffy because no doors or windows had been opened, and the steam heat was still on.    Normally, commencement events would be happening; two weeks ago, I wound up splicing together pre-recorded Zoom sessions into one mp4 file to be played off of the UO website.

Although we are having a cooler and wetter "Junuary," we seem to be in high pollen season--the household is tired and suffering from hay-fever.   I'm not sure how the plants make so much pollen between the grey and the rain, but the result is that I really just want to sleep all the time--even through the rare thunder and lightning.

Sunday is no-tech evening; I'm going to post this and then switch to books and longhand writing for the night.

Red Morning

I had a red morning recently.  In answer to cooler and cloudier days rolling in, the joints in my feet, and probably my hands, complained--but I wasn't awake.  Instead, I perceived my body from a distance, with a rectangle of red between me and it.   And the red was my body, and the red interpenetrated my body, and the red blocked me from my body.  There was no action or occurrence in this perception; only a timeless, frozen red, and a sense of being stuck trying to put a jigsaw puzzle into a whole picture.  

When I woke up for real, the joints in my feet were very sore.  They've since recovered, but I can tell you, I sure hope this was something other than arthritis, because 40-something more years of this is not something I look forward to.  At least with working remotely, I can walk around in slippers or barefoot.

In other news, I've set up leaded crystals in the Writing Pavilion.  I'm hoping that on sunny days, I'll be able to draw the sides close together and have light shine through a gap onto the crystals.  Probably the inside won't become dark enough for a rainbow light show, but at least there will be the occasional dazzle.  When I tried to take a picture of the effect I am going for,  instead of capturing the green blaze of light, I managed a shot of my tea mug lit like a beacon.  

Overthinking Photography

June 4, the Full Moon was close to the star Antares.  I had been under the impression they'd be much closer together than they appeared--and as usual the Junuary clouds came to photobomb the show--but I was happy to get the two sky objects together.   Alas, the skies were not cooperative for the conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon a few days later.

Every now and then I examine the process of photographing the night sky (okay, every now and then Mark seems a little dismayed by how many photographs of the sky I have floating around on local and remote hard drives).  Is night sky photography an attempt to own a particular moment?  Do I risk dismembering the cosmos in an attempt to measure it in a recording?  Have I somehow diminished the Moon by capturing its shadow in pixels -- bound in a 3 by 5 rectangle, is it now cut off from its greater self in the eon-long night?   I'd like to think that I'm not collecting the Moon and the Night so much as curating views of them.

Is photographing The Moon and Antares participatory?   On one level, it is, because in order to create the photograph I have to stand in a certain place at a certain time -- but the same could be said for a theatre audience.   On another level it isn't, because I have to remind myself to step away from the camera and be in the moment.   I suppose it's collaborative, and one could argue that I'm collaborating with my camera more than I am with the heavenly bodies.  (Now of course I'm thinking about that Celebes crested macaques selfie copyright issue.)  But then again, is observing (and appreciating) the alignment of the Moon and stars with photography any different than gathering at Stonehenge on the Solstice to observe (and celebrate) the stations of the Sun?  I suppose I'll have to burn incense the next time I take photos.

While I'm contemplating photo-paganism -- and moments of celebration, transformation, and communion -- does a photograph of the Full Moon over Antares have an intrinsic symbolic meaning, or does one have to know that the red dot in the photo is considered the Heart of Scorpius, which requires an attendant grounding in Greek mythology and western astronomy/astrology?   Is taking a photograph the same as marking a moment, and by marking it, does that make it a sacred or numinous one?  I guess I'd answer with "Scripture is everywhere; pay attention."

Hmm.  It occurs to me that now I can justify intoning "The ritual is complete!" at the end of a photo shoot.  (It also occurs to me that Mark may want more photographs of family members and less of inanimate objects.)

In other news, the Writing Pavilion is up.  In theory this means that I will be able to write outside more because the sun won't be beating down on me and/or light sprinkles won't get my writing space wet.   An added benefit of the pavilion, which the café umbrella before it also had, was that it reflects the sound of the fountain in a kind of surround-sound effect.   At night, I can zip up the netting and (mostly) be free of mosquitoes.

I've hung a griffin banner (the other one is packed up somewhere, and also some leaded crystals for scintillating rainbow splashes.

The poppies are mostly done, but we get the occasional late bloom.

Black Lives Matter

May 31, The Child and I marched in Eugene's Black Lives Matter protest, from the Federal Courthouse to Alton Baker Park, to protest the murder of George Floyd.  The three speakers we heard were succinct and tired and angry and rising up.  I was surprised and glad The Child decided to come along, because it provided different perspectives on racial inequality and police brutality from some of his Intellectual Dark Web sources (Thank you, Goddess, for keeping Ayn Rand off of The Child's syllabus).  

There were some counter-protesters; the only ones I was aware of where the folks who revved their motorcycles to try to drown out the speakers.  The speakers told the protesters not to engage with counter-protesters.   (They also said, "Thanks for your support, but I'm afraid you're going to fall and hurt yourself." to some protesters who had shimmied up a rainspout and onto a roof.)

The march was peaceful (other events in Eugene have not been), and while we wore masks the whole time, it was difficult to maintain social distancing.   Folks really wanted to chant and shout, which was great, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about entire church choruses who had infected each other with COVID19 during practices.  

I guess I've read too many protest accounts by Starhawk (witch and political activist) and Gilbert Baker (gay rights activist and designer of the rainbow LGBTQ pride flag), because my crowd awareness observations about narrow choke points in the march's route becoming potential protester-arrest points, who-is-behind-us? moments,  and questions like, "Would you turn back or hop into those briars if a flash-bang started a stampede?" were received with I'll-humor-him tedium.

But we weren't tear-gassed, no-one fired rubber bullets at us, squads of armored police did not beat us, and no outsider provocateurs appeared with fire accelerants or bricks; for which I am thankful.

Say his name:  George Floyd.

Now I have to choose something from https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234  to do as follow-up.

Breitenbush River Hike

The other weekend, we went with some friends and hiked along the Breitenbush River, near the Breitenbush Hot Springs.  The Hot Springs were closed, and we would have needed reservations to get in, so we didn't visit them.

We'd done the hike once a few years ago, and I'm remembering the river being lower and the air being hotter, so I'm thinking we went in late July or August (I'm not finding an entries in the blog about the hike).

This time around parking was a little challenging -- everyone had been chaffing under the COVID-19 lockdown, and the usual pull-over at the trailhead had been commandeered by a bunch of folks for camping (?and dog training?).

The hike is a little challenging in places, as one has to go single-file over fallen trees which have been repurposed as bridges.   For the most part, though, the trail meanders alongside the river, alternately winding between evergreen trees and brushing up to embankments.

Eventually, we had to turn around because a flood had taken out a bridge over a major tributary to the Breitenbush River.

The wildflowers we saw were mostly finished, I'm thinking if we'd come the first week of May we would have seen more blooms.  The only ones I recognized were trillium, (I want to say) larkspur, and columbine.  There was a lot of Oregon grape.

Another semi-washed-out trail led to an overlook above a deeply carved gorge.  There was a kind of ladder, really a downed log with some notches carved out of it as anti-skid holds for one's feet, but they were slippery.  Just as I finished saying, "Well, this isn't so bad; now watch me fall on my butt," I slipped and nearly landed on my camera.

The view was cool, though; it was the sort of place you'd expect a re-enactment of "Das Rheingold."   It was also the sort of place that you wouldn't want to fall into.


Along the way back, I took a ton of photos of the shadows of trees, and flowers, and mushrooms, and leaves.  I only got a little behind everyone, no more than a minute or two.  Or maybe five.

Aoife Likes Bubbles

I thought it would be fun to take some early morning photographs of her with the bubbles.  Or some morning photographs.  Okay, early afternoon.  It was the afternoon.  (Checks photo time signature...)  Evening.

Mark took out his super-mix of solution and blew a exhalation of bubbles all over the yard.

I thought Aoife would go a little more crazy than she did, but she was more interested in Mark's bubble wand and bottle of solution than in the actual bubbles.

It turns out that it's difficult to get a good photo of a dog who is randomly lunging at bubbles as they float by.  I had a lot of blurry photos, or photos of a dog tail or foot, or a photo of a headless dog.

I'd hoped to get a majestic photo of her in mid-shot, teeth millimeters away from a soapy sphere.  At least I got one of her in mid-air.

Perhaps some other day.

Curb-side Poppies

Up the road a bit there are poppies growing out of a crack between the curb and an alley driveway.

They look like California poppies, except that they are red instead of the usual orange.

The neighbors aren't sure which is more amazing

• that the flowers are going there in the first place, forcing roots between the matrix of chemistry and stone,
• that no car has run over them, or 
• that no one has come along and picked them.  

I'm pretty sure the metaphor of flowers from a rock has been used on multiple occasions in sermons about faith.   The picking of the forbidden flowers sounds like a folklore motif, and now I need to find  a good on-line FolkLore Index.

The best time of day--okay, it occurs to me that I'm usually not up at dawn, so make that the best waking hours--to photograph them is around sunset.  Which is tricky and early, as they're on a east-facing slope.