John & Anne Wiley

2012/05/04

Seeing Eye

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,SB Region — John @ 03:30

I hope someday soon we’ll have cameras that see as the human eye does, and creates photos that can evoke the same bliss in the human heart. Standing on the bluff looking at Torrey Pines and La Jolla yesterday brought back many fond memories of past times there.

2149 Mixed Use

2149 Mixed Use

The bike route ended here, but this guy didn’t mind. There were people jogging, walking and sitting along the dirt path. Others were doing the same things down on the sand. A few more were swimming, skimboarding, sufing and body surfing. Across the road all sorts of critters were flying, wading and swimming as occasional trains rolled by. Dabbling her feet in the water was a beauty who delightedly pointed out another popular activity here.

2157 Anne & Cessna

2157 Anne & Cessna

She literally squealed with delight as she noted what we’d be doing today. Sure enough, we passed quite near this spot at a similar height to the Cessna she’s pointing at near the top of the pic. Sadly, the weather wasn’t as good when we went by so this pic of a similar scene out Tripp’s window looks hazy.

2179 Breath Trigger

2179 Breath Trigger

Fortunately for us, this pic triggers a deep delicious breath as we recall how moving and magnificent this view was in person a few hours ago. Our hearts completely remove the haze, and the pulse quickens with immeasurable joy in the memory of a flood of moments on our journey home. Life is Sweet!

2012/05/02

More Mesa Manses

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 05:02

On the beach by the nursery just West of More Mesa are some manses I really like. Isn’t this a great yard with a trail winding down to the beach?

1754 Yard Wander

1754 Yard Wander

The triangle in this next one is interesting, and the pool on the left is a really cool shape.

1757 Manse Shapes

1757 Manse Shapes

Gazillionaires sometimes just find a manse they like, and pay whatever the owner can’t refuse. They should fly around in helicopters and pick out the places they’d like to buy, because we sure see some remarkable manses.

2012/04/30

Remote Closeness

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,Relationships,SB Region — John @ 23:22

There’s a remote intimacy in flying as we do, close to the earth yet free of it. Flying miles up in an airliner produces an almost ethereal feeling about our planet, and maybe that helps some people treat her as an object to be exploited. For me, flying evokes a dreamy engagement looking at shapes of life and patterns of change.

1682 Shape Farm

1682 Shape Farm

The shapes and textures of homes, farms, agriculture and industry are divided by angled roads and traces of life. The pervasive effects of people are everywhere, and most easily seen from the air where the human density is greatest. The touch of our hand brings rows of order in a random tapestry.

1686 Life Quilt

1686 Life Quilt

Ancient quilts stitched on the terrain stretch toward the distant mountain above Santa Paula, and the “glory” lighting effect around our shadow in a field at the lower left makes it all more contemplative. How did this spot look 300 years ago, and what about 300 years hence? All suburban houses and shopping malls, or maybe some areas returned to nature?

1688 Agro Geometry

1688 Agro Geometry

In 300 years will we still grow things in machine-friendly rows, or might we have farms that look more wild from this perspective? Lately it seems as if divisions between people could turn our use of ever more powerful tools once again toward efforts to destroy the Other. Could it be that our population will dwindle to the point that our traces weather away and erosion divides up our flattened lands to begin carving new shapes?

1694 Erosion

1694 Erosion

2012/04/28

Flood & Drought

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,Relationships,SB Region — John @ 23:49

Rivers are so beautiful. Sitting in the reeds, walking the bank, splashing the shore, swimming across, and of course taking it all in again from the air.

1669 Jugular

1669 Jugular

Sometimes the ribbon of life running through this river valley at Fillmore is a thread like this, barely connecting mountain to sea. Summers it’s often a sandy band serving as a wildlife freeway skirting the towns. The wider view introduces a tale of occasional storms that have bathed the whole valley in relentless muddy mayhem when the Santa Clara River rears up and races downstream changing everything.

1678 Flood Plain

1678 Flood Plain

Life, and for humans Love, has such seasons. Dry times and those overflowing. Cultivating the fertile valley nourished by flows and floods is most productive when we can remember nothing is permanent, and that we need to welcome change. Then a richer beauty emerges in our enjoyment of rivers.

2012/04/27

Oil Hills

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 23:48

The hills in SoCA are alive with oil, and the manses it built. Now I don’t know if this particular manse between Calabasas and Simi was built with “Beverly Hillbilly” oil money, but I like the moat.

1640 Moat Manse

1640 Moat Manse

The moat is actually a runoff control system, and the fence might be as much for falling rock as invading hordes. I like the golf green lawn, and how the whole castle and pool fits into the hillside. The nearby oil facilities, not so much.

1642 Rock Oil

1642 Rock Oil

Granted it almost disappears amid the rocks, but it still seems incompatible. With all the cool rock shapes, seems to me the native peoples used to hang out here. So I guess it’s just my imagination of the ancient silence there being broken by the machinery that doesn’t fit for me. Are these holes in the rock too deep to have been used for making food?

1648 Food or Fantasy?

1648 Food or Fantasy?

If I were living in a stone age culture, stones like these would appeal much more than the relatively small amount of petroleum harvested here.

1649 Oil Town

1649 Oil Town

Of course, a few decades ago it was a veritable flood, and until biofuels are available we get above it all by burning a gallon of the stuff they’re pulling out of the ground to traverse 20 miles of ancient stories.

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