choosing and choosing again.

these three vines look as if they were destined to be wrapped up together into almost a single strand. but really, at any time, one of them could have elbowed out away from the others, and struck off on its own. that’s what makes a family, i guess. always having a choice, and choosing, then choosing again, to come back home.

(unidentified) intertwined vines

war and peace

thistles grow up prepared to make war. they bristle and threaten, and make their enemies pay with piercings, blood, and pain. but then when they have mellowed into old age, and their flowers of dynastic purple have faded to a lavender gray, they shed seeds soft enough to stuff pillows with. i like both incarnations. the warrior and the domestic peacemaker. i have a little of both in me.

dried musk thistle heads

wedding day

my nephew marries his amor today in santa barbara. i will be there to celebrate the fact that they each have a new family, and that we all have a new family member, and that the world still runs on a fuel as unlikely and insubstantial as love.

spill of fall smoke bush leaves

fall is easy

STILL blog in many ways has gotten harder over its nearly seven years of existence. a lot of options that were available to me in 2012 and 2013 have since been taken and lodged in the archives, which means i have to find new subjects or new ways of seeing old subjects every day. it’s a kind of constructive poverty that makes me find creative workarounds. but then fall comes around, full of gold, and and i feel temporarily wealthy again.

still life composition with butterfly

shall we?

while we were in france several years ago, the village had one of those little celebrations of itself that small villages sometimes have. banquet tables and bottles of local wine, and a band. a whole town square lit up by strings of lights. after dinner, the brother of a friend of ours took the hand of his wife, and led her out onto the asphalt of the town square to dance under the lights. they were both in their sixties, and they knew what they were doing. they moved swiftly and lightly and trustingly, and it was one of the most romantic things i have ever seen.

unidentified twig with curved branches