On a shopping spree, Kim buys a stalk of Brussel sprouts and I discover a new car magazine with great photography. Later, on the early evening exorcism of The Beast, we see ten deer and many, many geese and inspect Jack’s tombstone with the dancer sculpture piece in place. And so on.
A late afternoon walk with Sir Charles Barkage…
Do you ever just want quiet? Even if you’re a music lover like I am, there is no substitute for quiet when it is wanted or needed. Apparently, Microsoft has now cornered the market on that commodity with its Quiet Lab:
The back yard, a couple of cats, a couple of pre-selfie selfies in and out of the house …
Windy, rain about to fall …
C.J., Kevin and I rendezvous at Gangloff Park, then go on to traverse Spring Creek Road to Kamela. And … talk.
Just a little documentation perhaps useful only to give some sense of the place. The house, a rickety old affair that showed up in a history book (that I later discovered in a local used book store) as the oldest frame house in the Canyon, extended some three stories-worth down the side of a very steep cliff which had become overgrown with all manner of vines and bushes and small wildlife. (And I recall a mutant orange-lemon tree that had incredibly bitter fruit.) Sometimes when the haze would abate, you could get a peek of the ocean through the bushes. One of the photos, taken from the inside through a living room window, shows the rooftop of a neighbor’s house as well as the more or less flat roof of our garage (about four levels down and accessible only from a lower street) where bike repair, furniture refinishing and sunbathing took place. Plant growth was not just limited to the outside; we packed the interior with spider and other plants to keep the air as pure as possible, although Santa Monica air was among the cleanest of the L.A. area.
These were probably taken somewhere between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. During the few months that my brother and niece shared my Santa Monica Canyon house, I perhaps attained my greatest level of physical fitness before or since with miles and miles of daily riding (though only a fraction of what Dennis undertook). Dennis frequently stopped on these trips to repair his tires; he ran sew-ups while my bike was shod with lower-performing but more durable clinchers.
Now I’m not particularly fashion-conscious or fashion-caring, but I did find this piece from Aljazeera to be rather interesting.
And on a related note, again from Sweden …
(Could this be a direction for Velouria?)
Most of these were taken in the jungle-like back yard of the Santa Monica Canyon house, just above the beach. Two are probably in Malibu. The cat was named Nexus.
