Barnacles
In my mind my memory has accumulated souvenirs
Of the places I have been to in the past
Each one is like a tiny crystal ball
When remembered attentively
They can show a story
I recall a person's face, a landscape, a conversation
Some special instance, most anything
And then listen to my thoughts narrate
What has happened before
I am reminded of old wooden ships' bottoms under water
That after many voyages become encrusted with barnacles
Barnacles like I have seen on the sea rocks
Closed up tight in the air
Waiting for the tide to return and cover them
What a wonderful way to live for a creature
On the bottom of a ship sailing along
With tiny feathery catchers outstretched
To gather microscopic plankton
Barnacles are a nuisance to a ship
They slow it down by making the hull rough
Are my memories like barnacles? Perhaps a little
Some are surely a nuisance
Others I do not want to part with
If not for forgetfulness which keeps them in balance
My awareness would be all covered with them.
DolphinWords
Note: Wrote this out like in early seventies...my poems then, and still:), are very flat and matter of fact...thing is, when I read words, they are very vivid to me, and I just expect the reader has the same experience...so I don't embellish, use Latin/Romance Language derived words...prefer the one or two syllable anglo/saxon ones...this one could use a lot of rework...posted it up without its punctuation, which is first thing to edit...I could write kids' books!...and a post is in the works, Crystal Ball, which will have some take aways from this little poem!
:)
DavidDavid
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Puzzle Puzzle
 |
| Success! |
 |
| House, Light House, Right to Light House--one day... |
 |
| Left to Light House, Top to top of Light House, Bottom to bottom of Light House--3-4 days... |
 |
| Rocks took serious effort!--organized pieces on canvas boards--two days for rocks... |
 |
| Piece on Left goes to Right corner--colors close, and pieces too...easy to get confused!...I had miss joined edges (see Right circle edge piece)... |
 |
| I had dropped two pieces on floor...actually a whole bunch...but I couldn't find two...much consternation!...one was hidden in the egg crate plastic shelving I used for a little table...second, and last, was under the glass end table amongst dust and spiders!...finished yesterday...took awhile! |
Friday, March 18, 2016
Jig Saw Puzzle
Routine in the morning, sometimes noontime!, has changed...usually I open the back door to the Porch, and Maya my dog runs to me, jumps up on me, and we do a morning greeting happy dance...then I retrieve her red and silver metal food bowl from the Porch, and it's play time...Maya harries my ankles, nearly tripping me, as I trundle through the kitchen to the bucket with her dry food which sits on a stool in the utility room...canned food is thereabout too in the utility sink...while I fill the red and silver bowl, Maya leaves off my ankles to explore the house, looking for something, anything, anyone, to grab hold of...I have doors closed, and warnings out, so she usually doesn't find much, and returns to me out on the porch, where I set her red and silver bowl down, and she begins to eat while I fill her silver water bowl, and I leave her, closing back up the back kitchen door to the porch...
and this routine has all changed because of the Jig Saw Puzzle...now I put the dry food in a little bowl, grab a canned food, and squeeze through the back kitchen door to the Porch, and the meet and greet is as before...but no more exploring the house!...Maya is not to eat my Jig Saw Puzzle!...hmmph...
the notion of building a plastic model kit or two, to get into the routine of sitting in one place and doing hand and eye detail work, which will lead to doing small watercolor paintings, changed a bit when I sighted Jig Saw Puzzles in the Target toy section, and thought, 'that'll work too!'...and indeed it does, in spite of sore back, neck, and fear of Maya!...doing the puzzle is a lot like painting, and without the anxiety of messing up, though it has its annoyances!!!...and if Maya gets to it, as the new routine doesn't always work, not entirely without stress!
on rainy days we'd often set up the card table and do a Jig Saw Puzzle...getting the card table kicked in that memory...wish I'd thought of getting a card table, and a folding chair, when I was in the Valley!...I was always lamenting I had no where to paint and fiddle, no table space of my own...but that was all I needed!...could have set up outside under the Black Oaks and Cedars...and gotten a lamp...
Lamp was a big expense...eighty bucks with extra bulbs...and a reluctant expenditure after buying a dog ramp for Maya to climb into the White Truck's pick up bed...ramp was like 70 bucks...tried it out, but Maya slipped right out of her harness again before the effort even started...I don't know what to do about the harnesses...Maya's chest is like an egg...a steep taper to the front, and from the middle, a more shallow taper to the back...harness straps should be around the shallow taper behind the mid point...but the straps are more like AT the mid point, just behind her upper front legs, her shoulders...and what seems to happen is she throws her front legs forward, narrowing her shoulders and chest as with a shrug...pulls backwards, and slick as can be she's free of the harness...very glad I haven't taken her on walks, as I thought I had harnesses on okay...hmmph...
she watches me through the glass door window,
sometimes jumping up the window,
and watches, and sleeps, and dreams,
a puzzle...
The puzzle I got is Thomas Kincaid's "Rock of Salvation"...don't know but there's something to envy of artists whose works become Jig Saw Puzzles!
quote
Published on Nov 21, 2013
I was struck, recently, by the gospel music phrase "the rock of salvation" and suddenly felt myself challenged to present the phrase in one of my prints. Rock of Salvation will be the last creation in my Seaside Memories series. Though watching the "sun set" over this seven-year series of works is nostalgic and slightly bittersweet, I look forward to the "sunrise" of a new coastal series in the near future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTJ6O8tqsEE
unquote
Link is to youtube clip of Kincaid giving a talkabout about the painting...each detail being emblematic...
:)
DavidDavid
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Midnight Movies: Zatoichi
A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...
I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...
A New Tale of Zatoichi
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zatoichi-the-new-tale-of-zatoichi/
I watched the Chess Master one...and then the two beginning ones, and this is the third, end of a trilogy, but not the end of Ichi!...there's 22 more movies, and 100 television episodes!...I, I was just trying to find a couple of the old samurai movies I'd seen, on youtube, and like blind Ichi, stumbled onto his tales!...this third episode is just exceptional, and one should see the first two leading up to it to provide depth and background...a lot of the Ichi tales are on youtube at present...New Tale is from 1963...it takes some adaption for western eyes to watch Japanese samurai movies of this era, both when they were made, and when they were set in time...I just get lost in the settings, costumes, customs, and such...
I don't know how many samurai moves are available to be seen...they're Japan's 'westerns'!
:)
DavidDavid
I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...
A New Tale of Zatoichi
In this classic samurai tale, Zatoichi (Shintaro Katsu) is a legendary swordsman whose feats of skill and cunning are all the more remarkable for the fact he cannot see.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zatoichi-the-new-tale-of-zatoichi/
I watched the Chess Master one...and then the two beginning ones, and this is the third, end of a trilogy, but not the end of Ichi!...there's 22 more movies, and 100 television episodes!...I, I was just trying to find a couple of the old samurai movies I'd seen, on youtube, and like blind Ichi, stumbled onto his tales!...this third episode is just exceptional, and one should see the first two leading up to it to provide depth and background...a lot of the Ichi tales are on youtube at present...New Tale is from 1963...it takes some adaption for western eyes to watch Japanese samurai movies of this era, both when they were made, and when they were set in time...I just get lost in the settings, costumes, customs, and such...
I don't know how many samurai moves are available to be seen...they're Japan's 'westerns'!
:)
DavidDavid
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Midnight Movies: Rashomon, The Forest, Gods of Ancient Egypt
A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...
I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...
hmmph...three difficult movies to write about....so, so...I'll be brief!...take away from last post, Riddick and Boba Fett samurai, had me looking for old Japanese samurai movies on youtube...once, years ago, the little theater in Balboa did like a whole summer of just Samurai movies...I had never seen Japanese movies, and was totally taken...in all of them, Nature is one of the characters, that, and there are no chairs, takes one into an entirely different culture...anyway, I did find one, Rashomon movie 1950, and I may have seen it...it just has three sets...a gravel courtyard, which is a court!, a ruined temple gate, and a clearing in a forest...there was something about the courtyard that was in Fellini's Satyricon....a borrowing, but I'm uncertain...Rashomon has been very influential to movie makers...
Rashomon effect
A useful demonstration of this principle in scientific understanding can be found in Karl G. Heider's work on ethnography.[3] Heider used the term to refer to the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.
It is named for Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, in which a murder involving four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways.
I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...
hmmph...three difficult movies to write about....so, so...I'll be brief!...take away from last post, Riddick and Boba Fett samurai, had me looking for old Japanese samurai movies on youtube...once, years ago, the little theater in Balboa did like a whole summer of just Samurai movies...I had never seen Japanese movies, and was totally taken...in all of them, Nature is one of the characters, that, and there are no chairs, takes one into an entirely different culture...anyway, I did find one, Rashomon movie 1950, and I may have seen it...it just has three sets...a gravel courtyard, which is a court!, a ruined temple gate, and a clearing in a forest...there was something about the courtyard that was in Fellini's Satyricon....a borrowing, but I'm uncertain...Rashomon has been very influential to movie makers...
Rashomon effect
A useful demonstration of this principle in scientific understanding can be found in Karl G. Heider's work on ethnography.[3] Heider used the term to refer to the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.
It is named for Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, in which a murder involving four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways.
Rashomon effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I found myself curious about the forest in Rashomon...it begins with a woodcutter walking along, and I could see it was a mix of conifers and deciduous trees, much like the Valley, and then there's a scene with the bandit sleeping up against a large Cedar tree...'oh, it's just like the Valley!'...and after watching the movie, I was off on a web hunt to find that forest....I did google search 'Japanese forest'...and that, that took me down a grim forest path!...on a google search, there's a menu selection 'images'...I clicked on images, and of course it brought up image after image of the Suicide Forest, just like in the movie The Forest, when the girl, Sara, does the self same forest search on her laptop like I did!...sort of wonder if the whole plot of the movie is derived from the producer's web searching out this forest...this forest isn't the one in Rashomon, this one is on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, and famous, or infamous, for being a magnet for suicides, like the Golden Gate bridge....a youtube search will bring up a documentary about it, which is very good...one of the forest rangers leads a cameraman about and explains the circumstances that bring despondent people to the forest...The Forest movie is a horror movie...I don't watch horror movies...too scary...and it was with much trepidation that I rolled all the way up to La Mirada just to see this movie, and the forest in it...I wasn't certain then that it wasn't the forest in Rashomon...and I sat through okay, and admission was just two dollars!...and it isn't a horrible horror movie as modern horror movies go!...jump out at you scary, yes, but a ride through the Haunted Mansion is almost as spooky...when the Park was closed, I would deliver repaired 'boogies' to the Mansion, and that was kind of scary, if one dwelled on things!...there are trailers and clips of The Forest movie on youtube, and it is interesting to compare the comments to them, and to the Suicide Forest Japan documentary...the documentary comments lament that the The Forest movie was even made, that it is disrespectful...and that's true!...and it is what Hollywood does, all the time!...so much is messed up because of our patronage of disrespectful media!, I'd say...movie has a good twist though, and even its kind of own take on the 'Rashomon effect'...
there's more of such disrespect in the movie Gods of Egypt...I saw this last night, after a no luck trip to Petsmart to find a ramp to help Maya my dog get up into the White Truck's bed...local movie theater is next to Petsmart...paid like 12 bucks...and was only one in the mini theater to watch!...put the plush chair in full recline, adjusted my three D glasses, and wth!...Hollywood has made more than a few outlandish movies about Ancient Egypt, and this one goes beyond even Katie Perry' 'Dark Horse'!...much fun to watch!...God's of Egypt too!:)...movie title is changed to Kings of Egypt for showings in Egypt, which is a kind of Hollywood bowing to another culture's foibles...but I don't know if any modern story tellers have gotten anywhere close to the story tellers of Ancient Egypt...I mean the whole civilization was like a theme park with everyone in character, down to their sandals!...and we haven't a clue what they were about, I'd say!...Plutarch writes a bit about the story of Osiris and Set and Horus, but by his time, it had many versions...it's like a four or five thousand year old story...Plutarch tries to offer a key to how to understand it, like an eclipse of the sun might be turned into a story of a dragon swallowing it, and such...
anyway, anyway, I found the forest in Rashomon...it was filmed in the Primeval Forest in Japan near Nara...this was set aside as a sacred Forest/Grove in 900AD or so for the Temple thereabout...and hasn't changed since, so it is all old growth...it is filled with all kinds of fauna and flora...even has a sacred Deer park, much like the one in India...
one last curio...the Gate in Rashomon...I thought it might be a real gate, but it was a set made for the movie...
Rashomon
The gate was growing larger and larger in my mind’s eye. I was location-scouting in the ancient capital of Kyoto for Rashomon, my eleventh-century period film.
Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/196-akira-kurosawa-on-rashomon
Even a cursory look at the Shinto temple in Nara, and one will see the similarity to ancient Egyptian temples...a monumental gate at the east...the sacred sanctuary in the west...don't know but Kurosawa's movie set half ruined Gate, with the Rain falling, might be the best ever!...the ninth gate, or was it the tenth?, in Gods of Egypt movie, a bit much...but it did get the Feather of Maat into the mix!...Kurosawa did it with an abandon baby in a basket at the Gate in the clearing Rain...
:)
oh, the reflected closing credits in Gods.. are cool...
DavidDavid
By Akira Kurosawa
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/196-akira-kurosawa-on-rashomon
Even a cursory look at the Shinto temple in Nara, and one will see the similarity to ancient Egyptian temples...a monumental gate at the east...the sacred sanctuary in the west...don't know but Kurosawa's movie set half ruined Gate, with the Rain falling, might be the best ever!...the ninth gate, or was it the tenth?, in Gods of Egypt movie, a bit much...but it did get the Feather of Maat into the mix!...Kurosawa did it with an abandon baby in a basket at the Gate in the clearing Rain...
:)
oh, the reflected closing credits in Gods.. are cool...
DavidDavid
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Midnight Movies: Riddick
Bandai Tamashii Nations Meisho Movie Realization Boba Fett Toy Figure
by Bandai
Perusing youtube, I happened on clips and trailers from the Riddick movie, 2013...I had seen the first two of this series while in the Valley many times...seemed they were always on cable, and I always watched them...but I missed the third in the series, Riddick...thought to buy it at Target or Best Buy, but not in stock...so checked Amazon...and tried their rental...$3.95...that's okay...I'd watch it without the Alien Dog sub story, but seeing clip of Alien Dog on youtube, I felt an urgency to see the whole movie!...Alien Dog steals the show...much of the dialog in the later half of the movie is stilted...scenes too...and a caution for the language and such...like it's two movies...like a kind of 'man against the wilderness'...then a redo of Pitch Black, as many note...they're might be a tv series sequel being made, and the movie ends looking to a following story...don't know if these will make it to production...Vin Diesel has gotten a 'daddy bod'...as many note...not a problem with Hollywood's "300" photo shopping...but in any shape, he is a compelling taciturn actor, in the tradition of such, and he reminds me of Boba Fett, whom I've been pondering of late!..."I needed to get back my animal side..."--Riddick...reminds me of the Beastmaster too...and as it happens Riddick movie is about bounty hunters...
so, so, I spent the morning shopping in a hobby shop...picked up a card table at Target, and will use the kitchen chair Maya my dog chewed the cushion off after I sat outside awhile brushing her to sit at the card table, and by the big sliding glass window, opposite of which Maya can be on the porch...and watch...just watch...while I make a plastic model or two...this is preparation to make some watercolors...model making has a lot of sophisticated skill sets...for instance, both watercolorists and modelers make use of salt...thought WAS to have Maya at my side when I paint...maybe someday...for now she eats the paint, the brushes, the chair...me...making the models I'm thinking will get my detail hand eye coordination going without the stress of messing up...so, so, anyway, in the Hobby Shop, I'm overwhelmed...but came away with a start...already have some things like an airbrush, and Dremel tool set...and just getting everything, and me, in one place, is the immediate task ahead!...and, and I go on youtube this afternoon to study out 'how to' sites for modeling...and peripherally sighted in the thumbnails a different looking Boba Fett...a Samurai Boba Fett!...it is just way cool!...and over the top expensive...apparently there is a whole culture of over the top expensive Hollywood action figures...and the Samurai Boba Fett is just the coolest!
:)
DavidDavid
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Three Poems
Bee
Flower has all Bee's
Bee has all mine
Who has all yours?
Tiger
Tiger did what Tigers do
Ran for freedom from the Zoo
White, and dreaming of Himalaya
Only to wake to bullet, and "Heya!"
Tricolor
Where oh where, I looked and looked
Here and there, there and here,
For my lost dog among hundreds and more
Tricolor, Tricolor, where are you?
No, no, oh, maybe, not so,
Resting waiting all
On the grassy Elysium field
Tricolor, my Tricolor, I'll find you.
DolphinWords
Notes:
I was on the front porch watching Bees.
News story of White Tiger escaping from Zoo in Canada. Update: It was a White Lion...there are Tigers in the Himalayas in the same location as the Snow Leopards...
A dream...I dream about my dogs...and dreamed of Tiger this afternoon... too...thought I'd be eaten, and huddled, but Tiger all playful.
Flower has all Bee's
Bee has all mine
Who has all yours?
Tiger
Tiger did what Tigers do
Ran for freedom from the Zoo
White, and dreaming of Himalaya
Only to wake to bullet, and "Heya!"
Tricolor
Where oh where, I looked and looked
Here and there, there and here,
For my lost dog among hundreds and more
Tricolor, Tricolor, where are you?
No, no, oh, maybe, not so,
Resting waiting all
On the grassy Elysium field
Tricolor, my Tricolor, I'll find you.
DolphinWords
Notes:
I was on the front porch watching Bees.
News story of White Tiger escaping from Zoo in Canada. Update: It was a White Lion...there are Tigers in the Himalayas in the same location as the Snow Leopards...
A dream...I dream about my dogs...and dreamed of Tiger this afternoon... too...thought I'd be eaten, and huddled, but Tiger all playful.
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