Eternity

This is my ultimate favorite flower picture from our travels in June. It is a cactus flower and I just stuck my camera's nose into the middle and took this photo. It is totally unaltered.

Eternity - as in forever and ever and ever - has been on my mind a lot lately. I think flowers and plants inspire thoughts of the eternal, at least for me. I had a teacher who said that flowers symbolize fulfillment and seeds symbolize potential. While this is true, I also see the reverse: flowers are all about the potential fertilization of seeds in the ovary and their future dispersal, and seeds are all about the fulfillment of the flower in perpetuating its species. It's a chicken and egg kind of thing.

But besides that, flowers and plants cycle around seasonally, breaking up forever and ever into manageable circling chunks of time that we can take in without panicking. The seasonal changes assure that while time keeps going on, things stay the same, and plant cycles are part of that pattern.

Our recent travels took us to Arches National Park. It was an experience of stepping both backward and forward in time. As we drove near the park, via the lesser used highway, we drove along the Colorado River. Slowly we started a descent along red walls that got higher and higher. I thought it interesting that while what is at the bottom of the canyon walls would be the most recently revealed through erosion, it would also be the oldest layers thus far uncovered. In some odd way the present moment and the far past were connected and experiencing each other. And while the future kept unfolding forward, the past kept unraveling backward. For me this created a feeling of eternity. Like the ouroborous snake that circles around and swallows its tail. We were always at the beginning and ending of time.

In the actual boundary of Arches National Park it was different. Here it was just the past over and over and over. Grains of sand whipping around in 80 mph gusts scouring everything, including us. Water worn arches and formations now in dry desert wearing down so slow that I felt time would end when the world is flat.

Being at the coast also evokes timelessness. While the waves go in and out over and over a thousand times a day, the ocean beyond the white foam frills is steady and unchanging. It breathes like a sleeping giant so huge we can only see the heave of its chest going up and down. The changing tide is not marking time at all, just the result of the giant turning this way and that, pulling the covers away and then flinging them back. What would it mean if the giant wakes?

At the coast there are sand patterns whose geometries repeat over and over. To see how the wave patterns go up and down the beach carrying little pebbles that resist return can create such intricate patterning amazes me!

Patterns are all about eternity to me. Patterns have arbitrary boundaries created by humans or nature, but if they were not bounded, they would have no limit. They would just repeat on and on. Fractals are an example of eternity patterning as well.

I make efforts to step back as far as I can in hopes of seeing the larger pattern of which I am just a grain of sand.

The sand, sea, the plants and us are all made of the same stuff in different combinations. Today I am "me" but I may turn into all kinds of things after I die. Not in a reincarnated sort of way, but in the way that all matter decays and transforms as energy into something else. If you believe science, everything that exists has always existed.

I can believe science for now, but after I die and become something else or many something else's or just compost for a long long time, I may not believe in science anymore. I probably won't believe in anything. I think eternity has a way of eroding all beliefs, because if you observe long enough, I think all beliefs are proved false.

Shooting Flowers at Yellowstone

Bill and I just returned from a 2 1/2 week 4,000 mile road trip. The timing was planned around the spring bloom just north of Yellowstone at our friend's Mary and Peter's. Unfortunately there was a blizzard when we first went through, so after two weeks of travelling south, we came back and captured as many flowers as we could in two half days. Here we are in Yellowstone.

This is Mary. Mary and Peter have been studying and shooting pictures in Yellowstone for some years.








Of course, most people come to Yellowstone for the wildlife, and there was plenty of that, too. These are bison, and there were hundreds, if not more, down along the river.

But my favorite shot of them all was this raven, trickster that she is, she got me to shoot myself at the same time.

Road Trips and the Joy of not Cooking

On a recent visit with my Mother she showed me this photograph.

When my Mother was young, her family moved from Sherman, Texas to Hilt, California. (If you've heard of Hilt, it would be a surprise. It was one mile south of the Oregon border on I-5. Hilt disappeared, and now it has somewhat come back. It would also be a surprise if you've heard of Sherman, Texas.) There were other family members that moved to the Hilt area, but most of my grandparent's family stayed in Texas and Oklahoma. So in this picture above my grandparents and their three children aged 10 - 14 and my great aunt Mary and uncle Raymond and their daughter, Linda who was about 4, are driving from northern California to north central Texas for the Blankenship family reunion in 1950. So there were eight people in the car! I love the pile in the rack on the top of the car. Cars were so big then, and Mom says Linda slept in the back window during the drive. Long road trips have been genetically inherited from both sides of my family. And Bill seems to have the bug, too. His mother, Alma, has driven out to visit us from Illinois every year!

My own road trips have largely been up and down I-5. For a long while there were regularly irregular trips to San Francisco for the Book Arts Fair at Fort Mason. A few of these I took with inspiring book artist, Mare Blocker. Our first trip down together we went to the Sanrio store, where Mare had told me you could always get your picture taken with Hello Kitty. Several purchases were also made.

Going to San Francisco and getting silly pictures taken seems to run in the family. This was taken at Playland on the Beach, a large 10 acre amusement park. These are my Grandparents about 1955.

This is my Mother on the right and her Aunt Mary (rumored to have married five times, and unfortunately widowed every time) on the left.

Taking road trips and finding great food is the best. I would love to have everyone write back and tell me where and what to eat when I am on the road. ANYWHERE! But I want it to be REALLY REALLY good food.

My recommendations:
Seattle -- Paseo in Fremont. The pulled pork plate with rice and beans and salad. La Spiga on Capitol Hill. Get the lasagna or the minestrone soup. Sunlight Cafe in Roosevelt. I love the nutburger with cheese and a side salad with tahini dressing.

Olympia -- Trinacria, a Sicilian restaurant. The lasagna and the pizza and the salad dressing. Divine. Old School Pizza, the olive and mushroom is my favorite. The Bread Peddler has great sandwiches and soups and of course, treats.

Portland -- Pearl Bakery. I love just about everything here, but always have to get the chocolate panini.

Near Cashmere, Washington -- D'Anjou (a bakery). Buy anything and everything and eat it all yourself.

San Francisco -- Three Seasons, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Marina District. Try anything for the main course, but then the fried bananas and coconut ice cream for dessert. This is a must eat place.

Sanibel Island, Florida -- Trader's has the best crab cakes on the island, I know, I tried them everywhere (that's where the driving comes in). For a very nice dinner out go to Thistle Lodge. I had the best snapper. Thanks Annie and Bill!

Somehere in New Mexico, Kathy Kuehn drove us for 3 hours to have the best burritos or tacos with Hatch green chilis. I don't remember where it was, but it was on the way to visit Clifford Burke. Kathy always knows where to eat and where the best pie is.

This is why eating at people's houses is not always the best idea.

In January and February I will have many trips to Portland and in February another trip to the Medford, Oregon area. I think late spring or early summer we will take a trip to Montana and Colorado. And any place north of Seattle between there and the border? Please, please, please, tell us where and what to eat or where to have a silly picture taken!