To All the World

“A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!”
Charles Dickens 1812-1870

Peace on earth.

Sigh

“The hill pines were sighing,
O'ercast and chill was the day: 
A mist in the valley lying
Blotted the pleasant May.”
Robert Bridges 1844-1930

A misty Mendocino morning last May

Upward

“I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”
Charlotte Bronte 1816-1855

A recent sunset over San Francisco

Nine Out of Ten Doctors Agree

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”
Lily Tomlin

Enjoying the end of the day on Maui.

BLISFL

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls”
Joseph Campbell 1904-1987

Or get a vanity plate so your bliss will follow you.

Birds of a Feather

“You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.”
Chinese Proverb

If these are birds of sorrow, I may be in for trouble. Luckily, no hair nests.

California Dreaming

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
T. S. Eliot 1888-1965

A man with a sun head creates a very temporary winter wonderland in downtown Livermore, CA.  

Modern Art

“Do not strive to be a modern artist.
It's the one thing, unfortunately, you can't help being."
Salvador Dali 1904-1989

Shadows and shapes and angles and reflections and light and dark-
a small section of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Experience

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 1881-1955

Looking towards the heavens in Taos, New Mexico

Enough Said

“Every answer you ever need lies within your own silence..”
Ian Tucker

A Requirement

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times,
always with the same person.”
Mignon McLaughlin 1913-1983

This is my daughter Shannon and some guy named John. They’re
getting married next year! They announced it on Thanksgiving
and this is the picture I took a few minutes later. I cropped off
the ring because it was blinding me. Woo hoo!

The Edge

“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.”
Rachel Carson 1907-1964

And always changing.

Self Portrait

“The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try
and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson 1908-2004

It’s not so hard when it’s my skin and my shirt. The soft shadows
are cast on the side of a water tank.

Long Term Parking

“We need not destroy the past. It is gone.”
John Cage 1912-1992

But this old truck has turned into an ever present sculpture in the garden of
Osmosis Day Spa Sanctuary in Freestone, California.

A Conjugation

“The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat,
in the active and in the passive.”
William Ralph Inge 1860-1954

Today we are active. Happy Thanksgiving, USAers.

Hemispheric

“Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature
because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.”
George W. Bush

In fact, I found this product underfoot in my neighboring hood
of San Francisco (Western Hemisphere).

In Deep

This would be a much better world if more married couples were
as deeply in love as they are in debt.
Earl Wilson 1907-1987

A man and a woman (seductive French music in the background)
and their monthly car payments (scraatch).

Said and Done

“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”
Oscar Wilde 1854-1900

This sign was posted outside a local church. The quote is attributed to Lou Holtz,
the football coach although some say it originally came from Alfred E Neuman.
What, me worry?

Pattern

“Painting is the pattern of one's own nervous system being projected on canvas.”
Francis Bacon 1561-1626

Or on brick and aluminum.

Attention

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
Luciano Pavarotti 1935-2007

My neighbor is enjoying a pre-Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, minus the pie part.

The City

“It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
Oscar Wilde 1854-1900

The San Francisco skyline (the current world).

Happy

“Happy as a duck in water”
Proverb

Better than the other way.

The Moon Becomes the Sun

Shake it 'til the moon becomes the sun.
Rihanna -Pon de Replay

You may have seen this dancer before in a different light.

Solitude

“I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so
companionable as solitude.”
Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862

This is Coit Tower in San Francisco, separated from it neighboring
skyscrapers by the incoming fog.

Deep In Vines

“To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines.”
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) The Dunciad

Harvest time in wine country has arrived. This vineyard near Petaluma
is ready to make its contribution.

Pumpkin Brains

“I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.”
Harold T. Stone

But if they did it might look something like this. Happy Halloween everyone!

Gourdgous

“Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.”
William Shakespeare 1564-1616 Romeo and Juliet

And I will make thy gourd a swan.

Pile O’ Pumpkins

"Men are like pumpkins. It seems like all the good ones are either taken or they've had everything scraped out of their heads with a spoon."
Anonymous

These pre-scraped-outs are from the 2012 collection.

Hang Twenty

“How seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves”
Thomas à Kempis 1380-1471

It does happen occasionally.

Carmel Sunset

“How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled!”
Thomas Hood 1799-1845

A good time for a stroll on the beach 

As the World Ferns

"No tears dim the sweet look that Nature wears."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

The leaves are dropping like... leaves.

Time Out

“Time is not a line, but a series of now points.”
Taisen Deshimaru 1914-1982

This is the Berkeley Pier at dusk, stretching out towards Alcatraz Island. The Golden Gate Bridge is in the back, underneath that little squiggly exclamation point cloud.

Deadly Combo

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
Muhammad Ali

These sea nettles can do both. Their long tentacles sting and paralyze prey.

Autumn Heart

“Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower”
Albert Camus 1913-1960

Don’t ya love fall.

No Obligation

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
Margaret Mitchell 1900-1949

Life is a mystery, no?

Relative Values

“Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues
all the utilities of the world.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

In My Humble Opinion

“Where id was, there shall ego be.”
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939

We’re number one.   Aren’t we?

Heaven Knows

“Not in Utopia, -- subterranean fields, --
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, -- the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!”
William Wordsworth 1770-1850

The distant island below the dark clouds is the Hawaiian island of Kaho’olawe also known as the Target Isle. It was used by the U.S. military as a place to practice bombing and warfare from World War II to 1990.

Character and Reputation

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
Abraham Lincoln

How to Sell Bread

"If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a lily."
Chinese proverb

A friendly banana bread vender in Upcountry Maui.

Discipline

"My mother used to rock me — and she used big rocks."
Rodney Dangerfield 1921-2004

This is a different perspective of the same pile of rocks you
may have seen on my August 16th post. 

Bring It On

 "You can't fight Mother Nature."
Proverb

But you can have fun trying.

Wheels Revealed

“The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise”
Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790

But which one makes the loudest color? I found these bright wheels
in a barn in California's gold country.

Setting Sun

“The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire.”
Pamela Hansford Johnson 1912-1981

The end of the day on Maui.

Banyan Tree

“I think people tend to forget that trees are living creatures. They're sort of like dogs. Huge, quiet, motionless dogs, with bark instead of fur.”
Jack Handey- Deep Thoughts

And you don't need to walk them.

Good Morning

“My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.”
Cary Grant 1804-1986

This was the morning part.

Searching

"Abstract art is part of the constant change and vital searching that energizes every art."
Leonard Brooks 1911-2011

This abstraction is an aerial view of the coral reef off the South Molokai coast.

The Vault of Heaven

“Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven,
Curtain round the vault of heaven.”
Thomas Love Peacock 1785-1866

This is a view from upcountry looking towards west Maui
where clouds are constant companions.

Glory

“Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?”
Charles de Lint

St. Joseph Catholic Church at Kaupo, Maui, Hawai’i was built in 1862 by the missionary Catholic priests who evangelized on Maui beginning in the mid 1800s.

In the Sea

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It’s always our self we find in the sea.”
e.e. Cummings 1894-1962

Big sea, little self.