living the moment

 

photo: basic accoutrement

flower and grapes

A beautiful breezy cool day.Photos are taken from our daughter’s backyard.

photo: zinfandel grapes

 

photo: a sunflower

riddle of the labyrinth

I’m reading a new book: “The Riddle of the Labyrinth” by Margalit Fox. The tablets of hieroglyphs  being deciphered in the book were found at the archeological digs in Knossos,  Crete.Mrs. Abstract and I visited Knossos 3 years ago and toured the archeological site. 

 

The story is the quest to decipher the code  started by an English archeologist, Arthur Evans, who discovered the tablets but could not cracked the riddle. Then by Alice Kober, an American scholar, who died before she could finish her work and was not recognized for her accomplishment and finally by an English architect, Michael Ventris, who successfully solved the riddle at the age of thirty but died 4 years later. An amazing story.

 

 

photo: part of the palace 

 

 

 

photo: samples of the scripts written on coins 

photo: what King Mino’s palace should look like during Bronze Age in Crete 1850 to 1450 B.C.

 

Impressionism in nature

photo: Denver Botanical Garden,Denver,Colorado

no images, no poetry

Reading a fly fishing magazine I came across an statement that stirs my heart strings:

 

“Their supposition is that [fly-fishing] is an admixture of aesthetics, philosophy, and science, and that by standing in cold water for a couple of hours you can communicate with your God (obviously not a bait fisherman). Certainly all these elements are present in the recreation, but they are important elements of all the better parts of life, not just fly-fishing.”-Herman Henkin, quoted in California Fly Fisher, August 2013.

 

I like to emphasize the “they are important elements of all the better parts of life.”

Life is a synthesis of many aspects of living.

 

When there no new images or poetry. Or new books.

white flower

 

photo: a simple white flower, Key West, Florida

Hot air balloon

I’m looking at old photos taken when Mrs. Abstract and I visited Cappadocia, Turkey in 2010.We toured Cappadocia on a hot air balloon which started at dawn.

Substitute teacher

I’m sorry for being away for a few days. There are things one can avoid and things that just happen.

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER

Who could have thought

the tree would fall on the Students’s Square?

They miss the shade,

are waiting for the substitute teacher.

Tales she tells with her sweet voice

of ants exploring crumpled papers,

Of hens lost in a forest,

of simple elements in photosynthesis.

Culture brings meaning to colors

saffron yellow expresses wisdom or renunciation.

They are shadows of her movements,

inflections of her voice.

All of them can stand and say

“I am not afraid of dragons.”

question of choice

a cyclist 

tows a dog

on a leash

incentive? hindrance?

Lake Tahoe

 

photo: Lake Tahoe (by Mrs. Abstract)