John & Anne Wiley

I like how boundaries are affected by air. From above, many impassable boundaries like borders and fences are irrelevant. Other boundaries appear where none show on maps. Some are sharply drawn.

0852 One & Many

Seldom do you see straight lines like these, except by the hand of humans. Boundaries can enhance the beauty by pointing out differences in number, kind, color and other variables.

0854 Liquid & Solid

Right in Lompoc it seems salt water is pumped from the ocean several miles away and turned into rock salt by the sun. The boundaries between four ponds produce different colors and textures as each dries in turn. Even boundaries in time are visible.

0856 Then & Now

Millions of years ago when this was sea floor, tiny diatoms died and their porous shells piled up. The diatomaceous earth their shells formed was mined here in the 1960s to improve the efficiency of swimming pool filters. Now a quiet pond nurtures trees and attracts many other forms of life that tread on that ancient seabed. Nearby are boundaries between oak forest and hay field.

0858 Field & Forest

All around are many similar boundaries, and larger boundaries between river banks. Boundaries between flat and undulating earth.

0855 Valley & Hill

Flight expands the horizons, so that aviators more than most are aware of how we live in boundaries between earth and atmosphere.

0860 Land & Air

People create and defend boundaries between themselves in relationships, groups and nations. If everyone occasionally spent some time contemplatively flying low in small planes, might it help to make the space between us more flexible, permeable and peaceful?

Sometimes I get a song stuck in my head. That is, I can hear it or sing it repeatedly in total silence. A few times I’ve dreamed a song and once or twice rushed to play it on the piano or guitar and taken notes, to contemplate and explore further. But perhaps like many people, most of the time a song gets stuck after hearing it. Rarely, a completely silent trigger launches the inner tune. Here’s an example:

0796 Silent Trigger

Looking thru pix this one caught my eye so I opened it to full 3696×2448 size. Then I inexplicably started silently “singing” in my head the age old words, “Be it ever so humble…” Do you hear the melody?

Now it may be far outdone by places like Malibu, Monaco or Manhattan, but SB isn’t exactly “humble” in most people’s minds. Our actual home here is, but more relevant to this post is our inner feelings about the town. We know many people here who have far more money than we’d want, and of course even more who lack even our modest means. So the song was probably more triggered by our feelings reflected in the rest of that verse, as evoked for me in this next pic I looked at.

0811 Home Port

The song of course is “Home Sweet Home” and the remaining lyric snippet in that first line is, “…there’s no place like home!”

‘Mid pleasures and Palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
Which seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.

Another line I’d forgotten hints at what lies beneath our species’ yearning for Home:

How sweet ’tis to sit ‘neath a fond father’s smile,
And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile!

We chanced to see an interesting interview of Spiderman director Marc Webb on Charlie Rose. Marc referenced the theory that human motivation arises from lack. How many people experienced a complete fulfillment of Home in childhood? So does some lack of that explain both our urge for travel to seek it, and also for getting back to a place where we’ve found some measure of such comfort and solace in the past?

We’ve roamed the skies of every North American state and province in Tripp, and explored some of Western Europe via other transportation. Yet each SB return has brought a warm glow in our hearts under the charming skies on the soothing shores nestled beneath the familiar mountains of our humble Home.