East Vancouver Detours

This past weekend I went for a walk and saw things that reminded me of detours, so took some shots - click the images for full-size-view:


Waterfall in the Italian Gardens at Hastings Park


Boardwalk in the Sanctuary at Hastings Park


Pedestrian tunnel under train tracks at New Brighton Park

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images: Karyn Eisler, Canada (more)

Train to the Falls

Niagara it was this weekend - we took a train from Chicago to Buffalo, NY. It was a slow lumbering train, we passed through Toledo, Ohio and then Detroit in the night, and reached Buffalo on time. From there, it was something of a confusing run - take a taxi to the nearby Buffalo International Airport, and from there take the bus to Niagara Falls. Why not take the taxi to Niagara Falls, you may ask very reasonably? Well, the taxi all the way to Niagara from Buffalo was a huge $75+tip. One way, that too. So we took the $15 taxi to the airport, then the $2 bus to the Falls.

The whole day was just at the Falls. It was such a beautiful place. I never thought I would be so awed at seeing water falling - I am awed at the sea, the ocean but just water falling down from a height? How exciting could that be? I thought. But how wrong I was! It was just a mind-numbing sight - near one of the islands close to the falls, we turned around and saw the sky ablaze in this beautiful light.

Then it was the taxi back late in the night after seeing the night view too - no cheap options this time, since it was already past 10pm. The Amtrak train was late by just 30 minutes past midnight, so we reached Chicago on Sunday morning at around 9AM. Well, that was the easy part. After that, we lost our way in Chicago, from 9Am from the Union Station in Chicago, we spent 2 hours trying to find the nearest subway - which was like all things like these always are, just around the corner.

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words: Smitha Murthy (more & more)

Hartford, CT; June 2009

Before I went on the road trip, I was told that Hartford is "something of a hole," but the area around the state house is all open green space with monuments. In the foreground, the Corning Fountain. The spire in back is the Civil War Memorial Arch.

sky diary

overcast day on ground level.

then, some minutes after takeoff: blue sky.

.and below: the skeleton of a landscape -
and mountainssmountains, filled by clouds
an.ins,ilike by a river.

----
DL (more skies: here )

stormchased

What enticed us to walk so far down the beach? Warm sunlight on our skin, salt-scented breeze. When we got warm, we splashed in the water, where the curling waves pushed up foamy aprons of cool surf. Then we would wander over toward the dunes, where the crabs dug their burrows and lines of clustered shells had been left by the tide. But always moving toward the point. Walking in the company of black-headed gulls and groups of scurrying sanderlings. Walking to the rhythms of the crashing waves.

The point of the island had always seemed too far before, but this morning it felt so easy to just keep walking, kilometer after kilometer up the shore. So we walked far past the last of the families with kids splashing and screaming with delight, past the surf fishermen, past even the fitness walkers, until we had the entire expanse to ourselves, except for one couple far ahead of us. We meandered toward the point until the first flash of lightening and later its boom of thunder made us notice the storm that was creeping and building over the point.

We turned around, and the car park area at the end of the beach where the lifeguards and people were looked hopelessly far away. The people themselves vanishingly small. The distance yawning open, like looking through binoculars the wrong way. We began walking back as the lightening and thunder continued behind us, and soon that other couple came running past. "We have to run," the woman said apologetically. They ran ahead of us and soon grew small in the distance.

I would have run, too, but my partner was not going to run. Not that she was unaware of the hazard. "Could we be any more exposed to a lightening strike?" she asked. "Maybe if we were hugging a steel flagpole," I offered. We did walk briskly though.

The storm moved in our direction, and the clouds grew heavy with darkness as rain poured behind us. It grew, with part of it moving out to sea beside us, so that it was almost encircling us. We walked, the lifeguard chair tiny in the distance, but not quite as tiny. We walked, feeling the cool wind from the storm on our backs. We walked and the bathing area of the beach grew a little closer. Cold raindrops scattered down on our backs. The storm was gaining on us. We walked. Then I could see it, our blanket and our things in the sand ahead. Maybe we would make it.

Finally we arrived at the deserted bathing area and gathered our things as the rain began to fall. We hurried over the dunes to the car park, where just a few people remained. The danger and sensory intensity was exhilarating. But we were relieved to be snug in the cozy car, from where we could appreciate the beauty of the storm in a different way.

Circadia

Sandy thoughts blowing in
Solitude is a companion coming
With the shadows of dreams
Encircling the sky

Candy rocks dot the lifescape upon
That one is thrashed with perception's sweet deceit
Harder than the waves that break upon stone
Then rejoin to form new wholes

A barbed wire of stars prick the sky
Even as sleep begins to bleed in search of light
In a long silence, filled with the screech of sanity
Voiceless and hungry
It seems the only escape

From underneath a cocoon shines
The blinding brilliance of normalcy
The secret of the myth that is life
Woven with Time's imperceptible hands

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words: Swati Nair, India (birdy's world)

Marine Fog

I watched the marine fog roll in yesterday.
At first it was just a tongue tip up the straight,
but over the course of the afternoon,
it fingered it’s way in to every orifice,
between every island, until it breathed
it’s way up the bank, onto my street;
tickling me with it’s wetness
and causing gooseflesh bumps.
The evening became stage lit
with sudden inspiration and I laughed
with pleasure as I walked in the fog.
Some force-field of silence
veiled all sounds and cloaked my whereabouts,
so I could fancy myself alone.
Thinking accordingly, and acting accordingly,
I touched myself to prove that I was real
and that the fog was real,
and we were.

---
words: Shelley Haggard, Canada (video poems)

Tracks

Yesterday on the beach, I walked along the tire tracks the beach ranger left. Those tracks now were gradually erased by the tide. Just like time erases our tracks and traces. Some of them are not important, so it seems, so it doesn't matter. Some are better erased. But there are some that we wish would not be erased by time. All part of the cycle, though, like leaving a year to enter a new one.

But some things linger. Like a conversation may be over as soon as the sounds of the voices dissipate into space, but the ideas expressed may stay with you. And of course, art of the visual kind and words written, those can stay a long time, from year to year, like in this blog, too. Tracks that are not erased, but that instead can remind us of lessons of years past.

Also I thought of people in my life, and remembered those who are no longer alive. It seems as though their tracks in my heart will always stay, as long as there is my heart.

And I wonder what tracks will be made this year.
What poems will be written? What sunsets will astonish?
What blossoms will be so fragrant that they pause us in our hurries?
What lovers will meet for the first time? Who will be born this year?
In other years to come, what tracks will remain of this year just begun?

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by: Steve Wing, Florida
originally posted in January 2007

counterflow

The Hearse

you deserve a good paddling...

rain
flooded
prairie
sometimes
lake

West Coast paddling trip

1.
Purple-shaded sky
Twin engines fly overhead
Crabs crawling sideways

2.
Raining at sunset
Broad circles on the water
Seagulls standing still

3.
Two seagulls fighting
I sip my red wine alone
waiting for moon beams

4.
Seventy-nine steps
I am down at the water
The tide has come in

5.
Step in gingerly
The craft sways from side to side
No one is around

6.
Loose leaves swirling down
You and I in the Tea Shoppe
Sipping Lavender

Haikus for You

conversing in the night tense

she speaks of the ocean
as if it happens only at night,
like stars

Sheets

in that sunlit room
we are not alone
between the twilight gloom
eyes that are not my own
you took a hold of my need,
weight in a corner of your mind
allowed me for a split second to feed.
to your cruelty we are blind

within an inch of our lives
this cannot be quick
to this burning confusion we arrive
the sweet poison is thick
tearing the flesh clear off the bones
it seeps in like the tide
into a passion that is full blown.
eroding my skull from inside

in the aftermath and the wake,
you vanish like a vapor
a kiss and a curse I cannot shake,
as a lingering dread of dolor
wash me up on this forgotten shore
resting its head where once you lay
one I have visited a thousand times before.
begs the heavy expense of passion I am left to pay

one

one drop of water
falling into blue
creates perfect
centric waves

why can't we
be like water
when we fall
down?
.

calm

quiet as a canoe
gliding on lake water
silver and placid

boundless

today is not bound
by yesterday's sorrows
or joys
.

morning question

could a raindrop
choose where to fall?

palm journey

lone palm, deep in quiet
morning steam, journeys
through changes in one place
.