In the shadow

Isn't this a dramatic image?  To me it looks like a planet and the shadow it might cast into outer space.  Actually, it's an early-morning photograph of a drawer knob in my mother's kitchen.  Mom and I walked in at just the right moment to catch the sun at just the right angle and the camera was within reach.

I had to go looking for it after a conversation I had this week.  While we talked I searched for a word in the back of my mind, one to encapsulate the gist of it all.  "Attachment" didn't come to me for several days.  When it did, however, attachment ushered me past itself almost immediately.  Ha!  I didn't have time to become attached to the idea of attachment, at least this time around.

What was beyond attachment?  Where did I go?  I think I went straight to wondering about what was in the shadow, to whatever dwells in that dim darkness beyond the concept.  It was then I had to find this photograph.

What's in my own shadow?  In some ways it seems to me that our attachments keep us from taking a peek into the dark.  We're afraid of what's out there.  So, we hang on to what we know.
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I suppose if we found out, if we ventured into the murk, we would discover new things.  Maybe.  New things about the world, about ourselves.  It would change us.  And, we all know, if we change one thing, that one thing is connected to absolutely everything else.  Oh my, how messy that sounds ... 

It's easier not to look, I realize.  But, it is terribly hard to live scared.

What's out there? In that cone-shaped space?  In the dark?

Favorite image

During the early afternoon a storm began brewing.  For many miles we enjoyed dramatic blue skies with huge, towering clouds.  Conditions aligned and we encountered hard rain after Lock E-21, the first of the two descending locks before reaching Sylvan Beach.  The rain suited my sad mood every well.  But, retreating into the lounge did not.

When the rain tapered off, I stepped back out on deck and photographed one of two nearly identical bridges between the last lock and the lake -- the Vienna Higgensville Road or the Cove Road, both of Pennsylvania through-truss design.  Even with raindrops disturbing the water's surface, the light had come up sufficiently to provide wonderful reflections, interestingly only of the structure's vertical rods, not of its overall shape.

Stroll on a mild evening

About half of the "reuning" group went to dinner together within waking distance of the restaurant this evening.  It was dusk when we left the hotel and full night as we made our way back.  I had the camera with me which meant that poor Tal was stuck walking much more slowly than he might have liked -- especially since my efforts at night photography are rudimentary at best.  The image of an empty courtyard is the attempt I liked the most.

Plan B

"Welcome to Moe's!"  That was Plan B.

Plan A had been taking in the Kumquat Festival in Dade City.  (Yes, there IS such an event; check out the link for details.)  After a breakfast of sausage and pancakes we were off in two cars -- knowing, in general terms, where we were going.

Well, turns out the Kumquat Festival is a one-day, Saturday-only event, a detail not quite made clear in the newspaper article that got us interested in the first place.  We toured the center of Dade City, noting carefully stacked street barricades, row upon row of porta-johns and almost empty streets.  We weren't alone in our confusion; others like us cruising through town stopped pedestrians who shook their heads and gave us the bad news.  No kumquat smoothies for us this year. 

Instead, we had an energetic lunch at Moe's.

It was a good afternoon for photography both outside and in. 

Tal and I walked back to Alex's school where the palmetto trees have been carefully dressed.  This image is pretty in color, but I like the way the black and white treatment allows the spiral of the outgrown fronds to show.

During the late afternoon the sun cast shadows, thanks to the vertical blinds, almost the length of the living room.

And, before the start of the Pro Bowl, Mom and Lizzie tended to Lizzie's music homework.  Given a 4/4 time signature, they worked out note and rest values and even wrote properly conposed measures.  In fact, they were supposed to tap their feet and sing some of what they wrote, but both drew the line at that bit of instruction.  I don't want to sound melodramatic, but I think Dad would have taken sublime pleasure at this particular sight.