365 Photo Project - Day 142

Taken: May 22, 2010, noon
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

Yes, I know, another vineyard and sky image. But look at those clouds. How could I not take this one?
Life, once again, seems to be filling my days with too much to do and too little time to do it. I've been trying to stay abreast of this, but I can't seem to keep up. Tonight, I'm putting up three days of posts. So there won't be much writing.
As you can see from the image, we've had a lot of weather. It's been an odd month of May, with days on end where the sun and the clouds seem in a constant battle for supremacy. I've seen two rainbows this month and twice, have driven through a pouring rain one moment that turns to sunshine minutes later. I don't want to make too much of it, but it's hard not to believe in global warming plan you experience such rapid-fire changes in the weather.
It's not that I don't like it. Believe me, after more than a decade in Los Angeles, a change in the weather within even a five-day period is welcome. Down in LA, anything besides sunny and 70 degrees is just weird.
But even saying that, I'm ready for summer. I want to sit on my porch and look out on the view and feel the warmth of the sun on my face. I don't want to be cold at night, not at least until late September when the hot weather will be what gets on my nerves.
I love describing weather and of course, finding a way to link it emotionally or psychologically to whatever it is I'm writing. It's a great way to set certain kinds of scenes as well. But I don't check the weather daily and I'm often surprised when I wake up and it's raining.
And as much as I like a little change in the seasons, I don't think there's anything that could get me to move back to the East Coast, or any place that has real winters. Hell, I love snow but the slush and slippery ice, the brutal cold and chilly winds -- you can keep all that stuff. I want nothing to do with it.
When I moved out to Los Angeles, my father told me that he was sure I would return to the East Coast within two years, three tops. He had been out in Southern California when he served in the Navy in the 1950s, and like any experience that happens to you when you're young, it left an indelible impression on him. That impression wasn't a good one. A born and bred New Yorker, my father didn't quite understand the West Coast temperament. I think it felt too new to him, too much like it was temporary.
This is a rap that has dogged Los Angeles even as it has grown into a relative middle age. Like any cliché, it is not entirely untrue. Certainly when my father was there, it undoubtedly felt a lot more like the reality. He has only been out there I think two more times, both of them to visit me. I'm here to report that it did not change his opinion. My one regret is for the first time they arrived. I didn't know Los Angeles as well as I would come to know it and I wasn't sure yet how the relationship would turn out.
When I first arrived, I immediately started a job that put me on the road for most of the next 2 1/2 years. I hardly had a chance to stop and get to know my neighborhood, much less the city itself. A combination of factors, including, ironically, the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, forced me to discover the the City of Angels and began what has been an uninterrupted love affair.
When the 10 Freeway went down during the quake, it forced many of us who relied on what was one of the busiest freeways in the country, to take surface streets. Up to that point, I was so concerned about getting where I needed to go for work -- and I was working seven days a week -- that I didn't bother veering off the freeway or learning shortcuts. My days off were spent catching up on sleep and TV and reading, I had very few friends outside of work and not much time to spend looking for any. Suddenly, I was having to learn how to navigate all these streets I'd seen only as signs on the freeway. It changed everything I knew and everything I thought I knew about LA.

I am sure everyone who moves to a new place has this same experience, one way or another. And eventually they get to the point where I finally did when you can close your eyes, and see the once complicated seeming grid of streets and buildings and skylines and know exactly where most everything is -- more or less.

But when my parents arrived, my knowledge of LA wasn't that much more than your typical tourist.  I didn't really know where to take them or where to eat or even the best way to get there. And while I covered a little bit of my Los Angeles on their second trip, which was in the early part of the last decade, I was a different person then. I was living with someone, we'd bought a house, got a dog. It wasn't the same LA I'd discovered as a single working woman, unattached, free to roam.

I think there's only one time in your life when you fall in love for a place and a friend or parent or a sibling will come to visit and you are in that perfect mode to share what makes it magical for you. With LA and my parents, I think I blew it.
Had my parents come to visit me a year or two after Northridge, I would have shown them the Los Angeles of my dreams, the one I came to write about in my novels, the place that will occupy a little room in my heart forever. I believe I may even have won over my father, if only a little. I would have totally done it different that's for sure.
Even so, I know they understand a little because my Los Angeles is also in the pages of my novels, at least I hope it is. Of course, for my father to admit that he was wrong about me, is something else entirely. It's been a bit longer than three years since I've moved out to California and I'm sure he knows by now, I ain't going back. 

I will always be a New Yorker, but I'm now a Californian too. And I'm totally okay with that. I know he is too.

365 Photo Project - Day 94

Taken: April 4, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

I love baseball. For me it's a state of mind, like a brilliant memory sparked by a sound or smell, like breathing in a perfect spring day or the crisp salty air of the sea.

I love the languid pace, the poetry, the bright white of home uniforms against that perfectly cut green grass, the strategy, the sound of a baseball crowd - so distinctive and punctuated by the calls of the hotdog and beer vendors. The crack of baseballs off bats or landing in leather are cliches yes, but for me they resonate deep in my soul, they warm my heart, for me they call me home.

I'm a big fan of other sports but baseball is my favorite, the game I most love and love to play.

And this is the season of my heart's content. Tomorrow is opening day for my game and my team, the Mets.

The word is my boys aren't going to be very good this year but I'm a true fan so my hopes are alive and well, hopeful. Everybody is in first before the opening pitch after all. (Well not the Yanks and Red Sox who played tonight with thr Sox winning which warms my heart because a) I hate the Bombers and b) I spent my summers as a kid on Cape Cod before cable and the world wide webs and the only baseball games were Sox games.)

But I digress. I remain one of the last true believers. I know the game has changed and I know the changes mostly suck. I know and I don't care.

Each spring I'm lured back to the game like a salmon returning to its spawning grounds. Each spring I fall in love all over again. I believe once more.

I shot this with my K100D, edited in Photoshop. Hope it doesn't rain tomorrow.

365 Photo Project - Day 84

Taken: March 25, 2010, Noon
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

I'm afraid I don't have much to say today, either. It's Thursday and I had to really bear down to get my allotment of pages done so I can make my personal deadline by the end of the week. Now, I'm running home to make dinner. For anyone who knows me, this is a risky venture to say the least as my cooking skills border on the nonexistent. But my husband, the gourmand of the family by a good measure, put down the gauntlet. He challenged me to make the sweet and sour stuffed cabbage rolls that I used to make when I was in college. The best way to get me to do something is to say I can't do it. I'm a sucker that way.

Credit my parents. They made me a believer, always telling me there was nothing I couldn't accomplish, always reminding me the world was my oyster, out there for the taking, out there for whoever wanted it more. So okay, I'm way more cynical about life now. I'm not going to ever play shortstop for the New York Mets. I realize there are forces at work that want to crush your spirit, that do not care how pure your heart or noble your cause. People lie, they cheat, they fail you. They also die. Shit happens and it happens at the most inopportune moments and lightning, when it's bad, does strike twice. At least. Assholes and dickheads get rewarded. You can work hard, leave it all there on the page and still end up unemployed at the end of the day. The school of hard knocks spares no one.

My friend says everything, good and bad, is an opportunity for learning and growing. I realize there's a bit of Zen in that, that it requires a view of the world that isn't beaten and world weary. It requires a certain amount of charity for humanity, which if you've lived through the Bush Administration for example, you know can be a very hard idea to wrap your head around. Seriously, it's hard to view the world that way. Everybody knows the losses can suck and suck the life out of you. And the really bad ones can drag you down with their weight until you're trapped at the very bottom of the cold and dark ocean floor of your life. Some days it seems impossible to swim upward. Some days it's just easier to stop fighting. Some days it feels like the rats win.

But where's the sport in giving up? I mean as corny as dusting yourself off and picking your ass up actually sounds, if you consider the choices out there, it's not like there's better options. The hard way highway is the only way.  But that's the whole point. As Garrison Keillor once said when he was still writing the Mr. Blue column for Salon.com, "It's a shallow life that doesn't have a few scars."

Remember my favorite 13-year-old? The one who loves baseball? Well, his Mom told me today that he likes to say, "If you're having a hard time, just think of kittens. There isn't anything bad about kittens." Now that's a philosophy I can get behind. That's a view of the world worth having.

I shot this with my K100D. It's a shot of one of the oaks in our "backyard" at a very interesting time of the day today. It was sunny and yet still raining and the storm clouds were sitting low -- above them you could just see the coming rush of blue skies and sunshine. A lovely thought I think. That and kittens.

365 Photo Project - Day 54

Taken: February 23, 2010, approx. 4:15 p.m.

Location: Healdsburg, Ca

It rained today. And rained and rained some more. Buckets and buckets. Just when we thought it was safe to think warm thoughts of spring,  Mother Nature drops cold temps and a shitload of water on our heads. Bum-mer.

When you live some place rural, rain can be lovely, even spectacular but it's almost always a big mess. Like the ceiling of your life is leaking. Like you're dragging all your problems in from the storm. Seems fitting these days when I've felt as unsettled as ever. Like I'm living in a limbo between where I was and where I'm headed, waiting for my own private Godot.  For me, rain hastens these feelings of uncertainty and just like the mud, nothing feels solid under foot. I slip and slide and even the progress is a fail, like moving ahead is just keeping from going backward.

The rain will stop. I know this. The sun waits behind the clouds, it's warmth a promise of a bright new day soon, maybe even tomorrow. Still, it's the moments I need to consider, to focus on. They are here and gone literally in the blink of an eye. Poof, goodbye. That's not news. Hell, I think I'm gonna leave the big picture for someone else. 

Taken with my K100D and edited slightly in Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 42

Taken: February 11, 2010, appox 7:15 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, CA

This road sign is on my street. I pass it every day and at night, it's impossible to miss -- always sparkling reflective yellow in my beams of my headlights. That railroad bridge I shot on Day Two of this project is a mile or so north of here but the trains don't run here anymore. There's long been efforts to build a commuter rail from the Bay Area out here that would include this right-of-way. But while the movement has gained some momentum in these greener days, it's not that popular on the other end down in Marin.

I shot it tonight in a brief, heavy rainstorm with my high-beams on it trying to capture the look and feel of what it's like in the rain. Shot it with my K100D and edited gently in Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 37

Taken: February 6, 2010, approx. 3 p.m.
Location: Palisades Park, Santa Monica, CA

I have always lived on one coast or the other, never in the middle. I've found homes in big cities and small towns, in suburbs and planned communities, in urban neighborhoods and at the end of cul de sacs. East, West, North, South. Upstairs, in the basement and at the end of two-mile dirt roads. Wherever  I've called home has brought a degree of tranquility. Yet I have found that I am never more at peace than when I can be near the sea.

I didn't grow up on the water but my parents used to take us to Martha's Vineyard every summer (and often for one- or two-week trips in between) and it was there I came to love living near water. I'm not a classic seafaring type. I don't much like swimming in it and while I admire surfers, I'm not coordinated enough to do that. I love to sail but I'm no expert and I'm too impatient to be good at fishing or even sunbathing.

What I love is just being in the ocean's neighborhood. The smell of sand and seaweed, of fish and salt and that particular way a good sea breeze can clear out your sinuses and cleanse your soul. I love sitting on a creaky wooden dock, listening to the pinging of halyard on mast, the slapping of the wake against fiberglass hulls, the soft cooing of birds, the whoosh of the tide. I love getting lost in the endless layers of things that float in on the wind. If I can dip my toes in the ocean at the same time, well that's just gravy.

Our house in Santa Monica was just close enough to the beach that you could hear the waves at night. Off in the distance, it would mix with the sounds of the traffic on Pico Blvd. Perfect sleeping weather although I often found myself lying awake, staring at the ceiling, quietly listening. In the morning as the marine layer would slowly burn off, the scent of the sea was everywhere, reminders of our proximity to the Pacific. I miss that.

These days, I live close enough to the water -- 35 minutes by car -- that the longing to be near the ocean isn't piercing and there's always my regular trips to L.A. to quench my thirst. But I know without a doubt that someday I'll have to return to my sea and my sea-gazing for real.  For now, I'll take fleeting moments like today when I stood out at Palisades Park in between (and during) the rains and marveled at the way the sun sparkled through cloud patterns, how the surface of the ocean rippled gently in a cold breeze, seemingly stretching out forever, endless.  Even a passing storm's fat drops of cold rain couldn't interrupt the magic of the moment.

This image was as close as I could get to capturing it. Taken with my k100D, 55mm lens and edited in Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 18

Taken: January 18, 2010

Location: Healdsburg, CA

Taken: January 18, 2010, approx. 5:15 p.m.

Location: Russian River, Healdsburg, CA

Today was about rain. And wind. And thunder and lightning too. We woke up to a grey-white sky, the entire bedroom dulled by the darkness of the morning. The kind of weather that’s made for the snooze button. The rain came in drips and drops around midday but then just before three, the skies opened up and it started to rain horizontal. It slammed against the windows, brought down branches from the blue oaks in the back, so many that I had to move my car.

Within an hour, water was streaming off the roof in big ropes, splashing off the porch railing in thunks, like baseballs off wooden bats.

And then just like that, it was over. The sun didn’t quite make it to the show but there was a gorgeous shimmering light that could be seen through the clouds, oddly splitting the horizon; to the south the sky was bright. But to the north, it was dark with ominous clouds as far as you could see.

The two images today represent the yin and yang of the day.

The first shot was taken in my backyard in the bright of the after-rain, the moment where you instinctively scan the horizon for a rainbow. I was standing on the small back porch off of the guest room, which looks east toward a stream that is gorging itself on the recent rains. I’m told these trees are rare blue oaks and when it really pours, the lichen on their barks shimmers like green glitter. I almost didn’t post this today because it’s so close in style and tone to yesterday’s shot. But when I looked over today’s stash of pictures, it stood out. So, here it be.

The second was a shot I got when I drove into my office in the late afternoon – toward the threatening clouds. I crossed the Russian River and couldn’t believe how much the weekend rains had changed it. It was moving fast, dyed brown from loose mud and debris. Near the dam, it was rolling like serious rapids. I tried to capture the moment but I was racing against the light and losing. The shots I did end up liking were almost an afterthought. A few final snaps of the shutter before getting back in my car. They were of the bridge itself, taken in the very last moments of the day, big fat raindrops falling on my head like a leaky faucet.

We’re do for another several days of this weather and the locals tell me it will make the river even more dramatic. Since I pass it nearly every day, I’ll be paying close attention. Maybe I’ll get a shot worth sharing.

Both of these were shot with my K100D. Edited in Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 17

Taken: January 17, 2010, approx. 3:20  p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, CA

It's raining today. Just like yesterday and according to the weather report, it's gonna be raining for days. I like shooting in the rain. I like the way water reflects off the trees and the pavement and I love the way the light works with the water.  Days like today are ideal because there were breaks in the downpour (like in this shot) and everything clears up just enough to give you great detail if you can catch it.

Unfortunately, today required a trip to the mall and to Costco, both for specific reasons. The mall was no fun (I'm going to beat you AT&T!) and Costco was, well, it was Costco. Normally I have a pretty good plan of attack and I'm in and out in no time but it's been awhile since I've been at this Costco and they moved everything. It was a treasure hunt except all that was waiting at the other end was a 24-roll pack of toilet paper.

Today's shot was taken at the foot of my driveway using my K100D and the 18-55mm lens. I'm having a little trouble with my camera -- only, I'm ashamed to say, because I lug it everywhere and I'm not careful about it --  and the focus isn't working great. It's forcing me to make adjustments manually which means I'm getting a lot of junk pictures. I didn't even like this at first but it grew on me. I added a little more contrast in Photoshop (thanks to my friend Glenn for making one tiny adjustment that really makes the photo pop).

What I do like about this shot is the way it suggests the lonely solitude of the place where we live, a feeling heightened on a rainy day like today.

365 Photo Project - Day 12

Taken: January 12, 2010, approx 2:30 p.m.

Location: Healdsburg, CA

I took a walk today.

Sometimes, I forget I live in paradise. Don’t get me wrong; every day I drive around my little town I see something new and wondrous, mostly as designed by Mother Nature. Bashing L.A., where I lived the 15 years prior to moving here, isn’t the point. The City of Angels has its own story to tell, it’s own kind of beauty and I don’t knock it. A person could easily get used to sunny and 70 degrees or as a friend used to say a total lack of weather.

But L.A. changes at the rate a super tanker turns, which is not very fast and the differences are almost indecipherable, especially if you're part of the scene. That’s how you end up waking up one day and realizing half your life is gone and you have no idea what you did with it. The price of chasing your dream in a city of dream chasers, I supposed. I’m not knocking it. Really, it works for some folks and I honestly thought it was working for me. Until I left, that is.

Life and by life I mean the natural life, changes here daily, even minute-to-minute. A heavy winter rainstorm supplanted by a partly sunny day, you know the kind where the sun’s rays poke out through half-dark clouds, reflecting off the pavement like the way they illustrate God in the movies? It’s important to pay attention around here and it’s also educational too. The turn in the seasons is hard evidence that you’re changing with it. It’s not just about getting old although that’s a large part of it. It’s a reminder that everything has it’s moment, that life itself has cycles and you’re part of the whole lot of it, as important as the smallest molecule, and as insignificant too.

I know that sounds depressing but there's other ways to read it. Maybe it's a reminder that you need to get busy doing, living, breathing, exploring .... doing your thing, no matter what it is. Find your passion, follow your bliss, get on your road and walk it, sail your boat or as the ad says 'just do it."  The problem with pursing your dream is sometimes the end becomes the means and you forget about the value of the journey itself. You forget the love. I find sometimes just taking a walk around here is all I need to remind me that passion is true and the pursuit is fully part of that.

Pretty heavy for a rainy Tuesday afternoon but like I said, taking a walk around here ain't like taking a walk down Wilshire. We rent a little house at the end of a road that’s surrounded by cattle pasture, bordered in the back by a small stream. My husband is always on me to take a walk up the hill in the back, a path that ends on a ridge that overlooks the valley below. There’s two large redwoods up there locals call Adam and Eve. I haven’t seen it in person yet but today I took the first few steps on the way. It was pouring rain and riding my bike was out so I decided to grab my camera and take a walk.

This shot was taken with my Pentax K100D with the 50-200mm lens. Edited minimally in Photoshop.