Community Garden
Wordless Wednesday 8.26.15
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Tag Archives: photo essay
B&W: Flowers
blossoming flowers stripped of color and fragrance still express beauty
Weekly Photo Challenge: Creepy
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: Creepy
“This week, share an image of something creepy. Unsettling. Eerie. Disgusting.”Okay, I’ll try.
It all started late one afternoon. I had gone out for a walk, hoping to get a little fresh air before the sun went down. I headed for the nearby woods, my favorite place to go when I wanted peace and solitude. As I neared the forest, I noticed something strange.
Some of the trees appeared to have been bent sideways. Not broken or blown over, just contorted, as if some unseen force were pulling the tree tops back toward the ground.
Several of the trees were oozing a thick substance from their trunks. I moved closer to inspect it.
The bark on the trees appeared to be bubbling, turning to a dark sludge that clung to the trunks,…
…writhing beneath some kind of acid that ate away at the bark. It smelled horrible.
Suddenly the sky darkened and a powerful wind thrashed the treetops.
I felt something tugging at my feet, and looked down just in time to see a black vortex opening in the ground beneath me. I was sucked violently downward, right through the forest floor.
I found myself in a dark cave. There were stunted stalactites protruding from the ceiling of the cave, emitting an eerie light that cast a strange hue about the cavern.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw something glowing at my feet. Was that a skull?
Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my arm, as a shadow flitted past me and away into the darkness. Something or someone had slashed a hole in my denim jacket sleeve. I could feel warm liquid trickling down my arm.
A green eye gleamed from the shadows, …
…and other strange creatures shifted in and out of view. I screamed.
The ceiling of the cave cracked open, and I was suddenly sucked upwards in a shaft of bright light.
I must have fainted, but when I came to, I was relieved to see that I was back on the lawn just outside my home. It was just beginning to get dark. Had this all been a dream?
A voice shouted from behind me.
“There she is!” Two men, dressed all in white approached me, and grabbed my arms as they began dragging me toward a nearby building.
“How’d she get out?” one of the men asked.
“I don’t know,” replied the other. “But it won’t happen again!”
I felt a sharp poke in my upper arm, and everything faded to black.
When I awoke, I was back in my room, lying on the bed, with the bare light bulb overhead glaring into my eyes. I sat up. I must have dreamt all those strange experiences.
Everything was just the way it had been when I had gone to bed last night. My denim jacket was lying across the foot of the bed. I remembered that it had been torn in my dream.
I picked up the jacket and began examining the sleeves. Nothing. So it had been a dream after all. I sighed with relief.
Then I felt something in one of the pockets. I wasn’t allowed to carry any personal possessions, so I couldn’t imagine what it might be. I reached in and touched it, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I pulled it out of my pocket.
A vacant eye stared at me from a still warm skull. Was that a shred of denim in its beak?
I dropped the skull and turned to run from the room, but the door was locked from the outside. Pounding on the door, I shouted for someone to come let me out. The door opened suddenly, and a white-clad orderly stepped in.
“Good evening, Maggie. It’s time for your medication. We wouldn’t want you having any more of those nightmares, now would we?”
Icon Underfoot
Iconic carpet underfoot at The PDX Project art exhibit “A Farewell to the PDX Carpet.”
We never seem to appreciate a good thing until we lose it. And sometimes things don’t even become appreciable until we face losing them. Case in point, the iconic PDX carpet in Portland, Oregon.
Granted, the old carpet at the Portland International Airport (PDX) is — shall we say — tacky. Designed in 1987 and installed in the early 90s, the teal background features a geometric pattern intended to represent the intersection of the north and south runways at PDX as seen from the control tower at night.
Original PDX carpet (1990s to 2015)
I’ve trodden the carpet a number of times, mostly to meet incoming friends or relatives, or to see them off on some adventure. And I never gave the floor beneath me a second thought. The first thought, however, was as I’ve previously stated, “tacky.” Worn and stained teal just isn’t my favorite color. Nor does it match my luggage. Which is black. That tells you how bad it is.
So when I started seeing photos appear on Instagram and Facebook of people’s feet on the carpet, I didn’’t get it. I went to my source of all things trendy quirky (my daughters), and learned that there is a cult following of the PDX carpet, and that that’s a “thing” now, photographing your feet as you pass through the airport.
Foot photo on the original PDX carpet.
The PDX carpet has its own Wikipedia entry, its own Facebook page with 13,000 likes, and its own Instagram hashtag (#pdxcarpet) with almost 64,000 photos to date. Oh, and it was the Grand Marshall in this year’s annual Portland Starlight Parade.
The recent spike in popularity of the PDX carpet seems driven by the fact that the 25 year old design is being retired as a new carpet installation is underway. Yes, the 14 acres of teal carpet are disappearing as we speak. Well, not disappearing. As is typical of many outmoded items in Portland, the carpet is being repurposed. The grottiest parts will be recycled, but the remaining pieces are available for sale in various shapes and forms.
Carpet-adorned piano at The PDX Project art exhibit “A Farewell to the PDX Carpet.”
While the carpet has been referred to as a “hipster icon,” I find myself climbing onto the nostalgia bandwagon, too (and I assure you I am not hipster). So of course I had to go to the art exhibit that was set up in Portland to honor the retiring carpet.
Not a very large exhibit, and not overly impressive, but oh-so-Portlandia. I got to photograph my feet on the carpet one last time, play the PDX-upholstered piano, and check out other carpet-inspired art.
I haven’t seen the new carpet yet. In the shadow of the original PDX carpet, it will have some pretty big shoes to, um, underlay. My guess is that, while it may never reach Grand Marshall status, it will probably eventually be embraced in its own right.
That’s just the way Portland is.
Panel from The PDX Project art exhibit “A Farewell to the PDX Carpet.”
Weekly Photo Challenge: Beneath Your Feet
Bugs-Eye View
Coming to my Senses: Touch
About five days into a summer cold and partway through my evening meal, it dawned on me that I couldn’t taste or smell the food I was eating. I was too congested from the cold. How long, I wondered, had I been impaired in those senses without even noticing?
I began to think about how I really take my five senses for granted, and I decided to try focusing on one sense for an entire day and see what I noticed that I may have otherwise missed. I chose the sense of touch since it wasn’t being effected by the cold.
I think of all the senses, touch would be the most dangerous one to lose. Feeling pain helps me pull away from potential harm, helps me realize that I need to realign my back when I am sitting improperly, helps me enjoy my pets, and helps me connect with others. Just for starters.
Here are some observations from my day:
Too hot, too cold? Shall I take my tea warmed or iced today? (Trick question; I only drink coffee).
Some branches are better for swinging on than others.
It might behoove me to wear gloves when pulling this weed.
Feeling the spiral wiring on my notebook, the ridges caused by my pen on pages I have used, the smoothness of clean pages waiting to be used, all adds to the pleasure of writing my daily journal entries.
Parched? Waterlogged? I talk to my plants on occasion, but so far they have suffered my neglect in silence. If the brown leaves aren’t a “dead” giveaway, I can feel the soil’s saturation level to determine their needs.
Petting my soft cat is comforting and pleasurable. Plus I can catch him when he tries to use my leg as a scratching post.
Some water temperatures are more conducive to singing in the shower.
I discover sooner rather than later when I should scream and do the get-that-creepy-thing-off-me dance.
Soft carpet, soft hair, soft skin.
It’s been an interesting experience to focus on the sensation of touch. I’ve decided to try this with each of my five senses (maybe even my sixth sense). Stay tuned!
Muse – Weekly Photo Challenge (photo essay)
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge theme is “Muse.” The question posed is “So what’s your muse — what subject do you turn to frequently, more inspired each time?”
Hmm… that’s a tough one. Not! I suppose it’s the subject that’s appeared in about 10% of all my posts so far. That would be my dog Chihuly.
I usually call him Chules on social media as a courtesy to the glass artist, Dale Chihuly, after whom Chules was named. I don’t want search engines confusing the two. People looking for gorgeous glasswork and finding a gorgeous dog instead might be confused, because let’s face it, Chules sucks at glass art.
I also on occasion refer to him as Fuzz Butt. My dog, that is. As you can see in the photo below, that is an apt nickname.
“What’s going on? Let me look!”
He’s a dog of many faces.
Someone on Facebook referred to him as a chameleon. He has his tender moments…
Friends forever.
but he can be macho, too.
Nothing like a good toothpick after the evening kibble.
He can be silly…
Tap. Tap. “Is this microphone on? Okay, great! I’d like to dedicate this first song to my house mate, the tuxedo cat. Buddy, this one’s for you…”
He watches out for me.
Chules is checking out the deep end. He heard I’d gone off it.
And at the end of the day, he’s just a great companion.
So you may be seeing more of my muse around here, but I’ll try to control myself and keep it under 15 percent. And for good measure, I’ll toss in the occasional photo of Sebastian, the tuxedo kitty.
“Chules is such a show off, he gets all the attention. That’s okay. Everyone knows I’m smarter. And better looking. And I have a fuzzier derriere, too, but that’s beside the point.”
Weekly Photo Challenge: Muse
Signs of Summer (photo gallery)
wild rose
Oregon grape
rose hip
lavender
wild rose
thimble berry
Memory Chip
I remember when a chip was a piece of wood that fell from a lumberjack’s axe. The wood was used to make paper which was used to make books which were stored in libraries.
This is a lumberjack made out of wood.
A library was a building where people could come to borrow books and take them home to read. The books were due back on a certain date, and there was a fine charged if the books were not returned on time.
This is a torture machine used on people who didn’t return their books to the library on time. Just kidding! It’s actually more lumberjack stuff.
The library in the town where I grew up was housed in a building that took up an entire city block. I read many books that I took home from that library. Unfortunately my memory did not retain very much of the information that was in those books.
I could have driven this caterpillar to the library, but I did not. I drove an Oldsmobile Delta 88. It was gray.
Now chips come inside of computers that are smaller and weigh less than a lumberjack’s lunchbox. The amount of data stored in the city-block library in my home town could easily be stored in memory chips and accessed at any time virtually anywhere in the world with a smaller-than-a-lumberjack’s-lunchbox-sized computer.
Here’s another lumberjack. He’s probably never been to a library. Not because lumberjacks don’t go to libraries; but, you know, he’s made of wood.
I may have known how all of this computer stuff works at one time. I probably read it in a book. But my memory dulls faster than a lumberjack’s axe at a logging camp. Maybe someday I can upgrade to a memory chip that will help me recall all the books I have read.
That wood chip away at my memory problems for sure!
This cat crawling around on logging machinery probably has a good memory. I wonder if his fur is naturally brown, or if that is dirt he acquired while crawling around on machinery. I think he’s supposed to be gray. Like my Oldsmobile.
(Photos taken at Camp 18 Logging Museum in Elsie, Oregon.)
Dancing Water (photo essay)
Along a street that I have driven hundreds of times in the past, my eyes were drawn this morning to a water feature in front of an office building. The early morning sunlight sparkled brilliantly off the cascading stream that cycled through a structure of concrete, rough boulders and river rock. I pulled over to check it out.
The fountain itself isn’t much to look at. With a casual glance from the street, one sees a sheet of water pouring over a concrete crossbeam and disappearing amidst some nondescript boulders.
Closer examination reveals that the water has been intentionally channeled (“choreographed,” one might say) to flow in streams that dance and glisten in the sunlight as they freefall to the rocks below.
I am reminded of the phrase “water over the dam,” which implies that something is over and done with and cannot be retracted or reconsidered. How many of us live as though the decisions and actions of our past have left us in a freefall of dire consequences over which we have no control?
Maybe water over the dam should mean that whatever happened in our past, “good” or “bad,” served to push us beyond sitting stagnant behind a wall of mediocrity, and has freed us to dance and sparkle in the sunlight on our way to something new.
We can choose to see the fountain as half empty or half full. Oh, wait, that’s an entirely different analogy. Never mind.
I’m glad I stopped to look at the fountain, and I’m going to try to be more observant of my surroundings in the future. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll find some water under the bridge.
What Rhymes with Stanza? 