It’s alive and moving across the sky, this section of brilliantly-lit cloud.  It dominates the scene, stealing the show from the ocean once again.  But perhaps I notice it even more just because it is right there above the demanding water, the water that moves and stays, that is constant and yet ever-changing.  Quite a pair, the ocean and the sky!

And it didn’t rain.  All those clouds — maybe they went elsewhere.  Red sky at night is indeed sailors’ delight, so why did I expect rain?  And why did the forecasters?

So small we are.

I can imagine a series of photos of these pale, bleached out roots, branches, twigs that I’m drawn to.  They feel very Japanese to me.  Quiet and subtle.  I think they might belong in my [imaginary] pale, minimalist house.  A horizontal series of five, maybe a square format, each in a light gray matte frame.  I keep coming back to these images. They have a serene richness — not my doing, but Nature’s.

I may go back and print the others in this series.  On matte watercolor paper.  Soft.  A bit of blur — because of the texture of the paper — wouldn’t be bad.  No wonder I can’t figure out what art to make these days; it’s the less common burden of too many ideas.

It seems I don’t tire of these.  Reminding us that the sun is a star.  And the star of this show, with ocean and sky as best supporting.  Three elements.  That’s all it takes.

Surveying his domain.  And ours, sometimes, too.  When we go to La Jolla for an event, we like to walk around in Scripps Park, and watch and smell the sea lions, and check out the cormorants and the gulls and the pelicans.  This guy (?) was perching and seemed to be posing just for us tourists (tourists we mostly are, from both near and far.)

It was a stunning day, and we had a great dinner, some fine walking, an excellent gelato treat, and a book arts lecture at the I-can’t-believe-it,-it’s-like-the-library-of-my-childhood Athenaeum .  The latter has old ashy brown wood floors, real wood and metal-handled card catalogs, perfectly worn oriental rugs, a  grand piano, and is dedicated to house art and music books of many sorts, as well as art exhibits, concerts, and lectures.   It even smells right.  It has high ceilings and the right balance of dark coziness with big old windows that treat the sun with respect.  If you woke up dead there, you’d be sure you’d landed in heaven.

That red center just did it for me.  Only one of the other purple flowers had a red center.  I wonder if it’s a variation or if it means the flower is younger or older or ???   Maybe younger, given that there are new-looking buds above it.  This was on a shrub in a coastal shopping center.  Well, not quite coastal.  Maybe two or three miles inland.   Pretty thing, isn’t it?

The surf was doing this weird thing where it forms these beautiful adjoining planes of mirror-like or quiet water instead of white waves.  Along with the setting sun, I thought it was quite dramatic and distinctive.  Don’t you like that long ray of sun shooting out over the water?

The horizon is crisp and clean.  So is the air, although not crisp for long; as the sun comes out, the humidity seems to rise rather than burn off.  I wonder why we’ve had such lengthy and intense humidity these past few months.

I yearn for autumn –weather, not just the calendar month.  I find autumn the most invigorating and thoughtful season.  Others find the renewal of spring inspiring, but I find the energy of autumn more satisfying.  The pelicans are back!  Is that a sign of autumn in SoCal?

And shadows.  And how it feels looking down the cliff.  You can see how very dry it is.  There’s not much ground cover hanging on.  I worry sometimes about the overlook decking and even the stairways down (60-100 wooden steps, varying.)  But aren’t those angles and shadows glorious?

By the way, the clouds of yesterday delivered their rain.  It actually poured this morning, a real downpour, steady and lasting for hours. The power went out.   I wore my rain boots!  Hurrah!

…it would have rained.  But it didn’t.  It might tonight.  It was still cloudy when I went to watch the sunset that wasn’t.  It was cloudy enough that the setting sun wasn’t even visible near the horizon. I forget what rain sounds like on the roof, smells like, feels like.  Well, we did get some earlier this summer and the forecast says showers tonight and tomorrow.   But around here no one holds their breath for rain.  Maybe we should?

Clean and crisp.  Geometric with just a little softness, for the bedroom, for a cheerful morning.  Purple and blue and green and white, the colors of the ocean.  Just enough going on without being too active or jangly.  White bed linens.  Soft wood floors.  Big windows with wide white shutters.  Purple accents.

But what would I do with all the art I love?

Went down to watch the sun set.  Happy New Year!

This may not seem to be related to the ocean, but it is.  I was at a quilt show today, and I photographed only two quilts.  They each had white backgrounds.  They each had few colors.  They each had a graphic punch and deceptive simplicity.

The ocean makes me want to clear things out, get clarity, get simple and basic, and, really, elemental.  My eyes are too full of pattern and complexity and busy-ness and objects and too-muchness.

There’s too much clutter in my life.  Too much stuff, too many constraints (often self-imposed), and therefore not enough space.  Space for what?  Space for thought, appreciation, reflection, creativity, equanimity.

I would like to move everything out (again?!) and bring in only what I truly need and love.  When I saw this quilt, I said I wanted the house it would live in.   A white space.  A clean, uncluttered space.  Some wood, some not-shiny metal, and light, and high-ish ceilings, and one or two pieces of art, and breathing room.

And then again, I saw a wall in a photo, a wall containing perhaps thirty pieces of framed art.  That was wonderful too.

Which is why I have such a hard time with getting clarity.  Perhaps I need that emptier house, with just one wall somewhere with all that art.  The ocean is just what it is.  I need home to be that way too.

Where we came from, roots.  Where we are going.  September 11.  Just a date .  Just an arbitrary name for a flash in cosmic time.

There’s light in among behind those roots.  Follow the light.  Honor the light within, the light of the one facing you, the light not yet seen, the light behind you, under you, piercing you, bathing you.  The light that may be dimming, the light yet to be found.

We were on our way out…and had to stop for this.  Oh my.

Right in our front yard.  The humidity is thick enough that you can blow bubbles, almost.  It feels worse than it did in Kansas, perhaps because it is so unusual and unexpected.  We went out and walked at 8 am and it was still much too hot, wiltingly hot.  Yes, ‘wiltingly’ is a word, because I just used it and you knew what it meant.

The undersides of mushrooms (?) look like piano strings or those accordion file folders or maybe how I wish my life would line up.  Aren’t they lovely?  And don’t I ask that a lot?!

A bit blurry, and how it would look to my eyes were they unaided by corrective lenses.

How many shades of blue?  I love how the sky gets darker as it climbs above the horizon.  And I didn’t know until now that the sky “climbs!”

New and yet old, age-old.  It never pales; tonight I was wishing for some amazing powerful camera that may not exist,  because about 15 minutes after sunset, the whole horizon was a wide band of washed pink.  The foggy grayness just emphasized the delicacy of that pink in a way that would have been tricky to paint.  I get a shiver when the whole of the beach/sand/water/sunset is clothed in cool soft gray almost-cloud.

The water beneath them was lovely, but they were the real eye-catcher.  Been in them, above them, below them.  Wish I could reach out and touch them.  They are cool to the touch, cool to the eyes, yes?

It’s a bit like getting a new car: you start noticing your model everywhere you go.  Well, making glyphs leads me to finding glyphs where ever I go.  Or so it seems.  Nature drawing here with a double-barreled pen, and I’m probably the only one who noticed it.  But someone else undoubtedly noticed something else that I didn’t.  So it goes!

The setting sun seen from behind/through the shrubs.  Almost like a pair of glasses, but maybe a bit sinister.  There are so many views at the beach, so many vistas, so many viewpoints, so much growth and activity and movement, so many effects of wind and people and animals and tides.  The sand has been washing over the rocks at the base of the stairways.  The rocks seem to come and go; the sand comes and goes; the water comes and goes; the pelicans are back!  The birds come and go, as do we.

So, any botanists out there, or someone with more patience than I have for searching online?  I saw this on my walk today; it’s about the size of an anthill, but Google isn’t telling me anything.  It’s a bit spooky looking, all white and fibrous.    Someone’s nest for sure, but whose?

Pink sky.  Brushed so delicately.  Would be hard to do with paint.  Nature wins!

And it’s plenty.  Just the water.  Enough.  Gorgeous.  Enchanting.  Moving.  Colors and waves and depth.  Wind.  Foam.  Blue, purple, green, gray, white, and everything in between.  Quiet places, active places.  The scent.  The breeze.  The air itself.  Ahhhhh…