You've been here before. M is for Mask came from Zocalito. I knew this was my ABC Along Z when we turned the corner into the alley on a snowbound, cold, windy night, and saw riotous color.
My hands became numb as I took picture after picture. I had no worries. I knew a margarita was waiting for me. The illusion of warmth is fine with me, because the real thing is not far behind.
The food is great, too.
The sound of tinkling glass woke me this morning. Disorientation rapidly coalesced to comprehension. Ice was falling off the roof as I listened to the sound of rain.
The drive to work was watery, but without skids. This far east in Massachusetts escaped much of the chaos. Patients arrived late at the hospital, docs were also late, but most had come from New Hampshire where life was slippery.
We pulled into our driveway after dark, tired. The Fates have their ways. We did not escape unscathed. Icicles coated the needles of the top half of a pine, lying straddled across other trees, the lawn, and the asphalt. There is more damage obscured by the cold drapes of night.
I'll think about it tomorrow.
It took a ravenous migrating hummingbird to show me what my camera could do. Our birds were two weeks gone. You could tell she was a stranger, not from these parts. She fed on different flowers, and ignored the feeder.
I had tried to get a good hummer shot for two years. They are so fast, so easily spooked. This one was brazen.
She didn't care what I did while she ate. Get the right depth of field, focus, shoot. OH! Look! If you hold the shooter button down, it puts the camera in sports mode. You get rapid fire pictures. Mr. Etherknitter laughed at the noises the camera was making. He laughed until he saw the beautiful alien bird that I had caught in my camera.
I love these odd, unusual, ethereal creatures. I love that they are so different compared to the other birds. I'm a xenophiliac.
Grand Central Station was where trains from my childhood arrived into the City. I remember my fascination with the constellations painted on the ceiling.
My mother admonished me to look where I was going. I suppose I bumped into someone.
Mr. Etherknitter and I were back in the City during the holidays. I love the new markets in the old station. We came to see the laser light show. She was in the crowd, and I remembered being young, and looking up in wonder.
Mr. L has been a member of the wine society forever. That's partly because Mr. L is as old as forever. He will be 85 next year.
He retired years ago in name only. He worked as an engineer. You know one of his designs: the HumVee. Before you curse the gas-guzzling behemoth adopted by the upper class as SUV oneupmanship, I'll point out that he designed it for the Army. He shakes his head sadly at the thought of his wonderful beast chained to city streets. Many of his best stories are descriptions of the terrain he drove to try to get the vehicle stuck in the outback.
He always motored on. It may have been a self-described three miles per hour over V-shaped crevasses, with a wheel on each wall of the ravine, but he always made it home.
Mr. L has made it his life's work to visit every UN protectorate. There are 192. His only remaining trip is to East Timor.
I sat next to Mr. L two weeks ago at the Annual Dinner. I got this picture with a crummy digital POS, and sent it to my Photoshopping BIL to sharpen it up a bit.
This is how to be 84.
Texture. Color. Feng shui harmony. Organic form. Sweeps and swoops on a floor in a bistro in Boston. A lone female diner of a certain age whips out her toy camera, and inexplicably takes pictures of the floor. The Millennial male waiters won't understand for years.
January, 2006
The earth took a deep breath in, and held it.
Acer griseum (paperbark maple), front yard.
S isn't always for skiing.
The days of summer are gone. I remember a clear, warm sun-washed day with Mr. E's cousins. This was happy hour on their small sailboat, moored in Quissett Harbor.
Wine and cheese, waving at other people as their boats cruised past, sun and colors reflecting in fractal waters, we enjoyed the window into a subculture we have not known.
Mr. E, to me this morning, as I whined about NaBloPoMo: "Surely you can't give up after the first day??"
No worries. Day #2 done and gone.
The painter was a cheerful man. He was the guy who painted around the robin's nest in front, because he just couldn't destroy someone else's home. Morning tea in the kitchen, and I caught this view out the window. I couldn't resist. I was using the flash setting.
"Did you just see lightning?" He queried his painting partner. I could hear them scratching their heads, looking around at the sunny day.
I turned off the flash, and continued to shoot. The second picture looks less like a guy being hung, and more like a happy painter, content with the world, just doing his job while sitting on a scaffold.
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