John & Anne Wiley

2014/01/29

Water & Rocks

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 07:55
0781 Duckling Boats

0781 Duckling Boats

To me this looks like a scurrying mother boat followed by three frantic duckling boats as the other boats passively look on. Or they could just be an intricate collection of miniature toy boats. I guess the motor boat is towing the three small sailboats, either back to the marina or around the course so they can practice using the rigging.

Meanwhile, up in our mountains the rocks hold evidence they were once under the water.

0857 Sedimentary Layers

0857 Sedimentary Layers

Water has also apparently carved out holes where the rock is softer, giving it a complex etched look.

0859 Etchings

0859 Etchings

Small streams running down the slope during heavy rains also seem to have carved out a small cave between these rocks.

0969 Carved Cave

0969 Carved Cave

Nearby is another even smaller and shallower opening that still might provide welcome shelter for various animals. Maybe also a hunting ground for snakes. It has a blocky shape, as if carved by humans to place a signal lantern for ships in the Channel.

0969 Blocky Shrine

0969 Blocky Shrine

Our mountains have innumerable interesting rock sculptures carved by water, some like miniature fanciful Monument Valley columns.

0865 Mini Monuments

0865 Mini Monuments

Looking at these sculptures reminds me that time is relative. What seems like solid stone is still fluid as the water that once covered it, if we could view it uplifting and then dissolving over millennia.

2014/01/25

Over The Hill

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 21:30

How do we know when we’re over the hill? Often it seems when we’re over the hill we just see more mountains to cross.

8092 Over The Hill

8092 Over The Hill

As you can see, the hills here are dry. But still beautiful. Nestled among these hills (they’d be called Mountains back east) are some reservoirs. Just a few miles north of Carp as the Tripp flies, Jameson Lake is showing ever more lake bed as the drought deepens.

0674 Jameson Lake

0674 Jameson Lake

Further west along the Santa Ynez River is Gibraltar Lake, also looking very dry and brown.

0693 Gibraltar Dam

0693 Gibraltar Dam

But just a couple of miles south across the ridge on the Montecito foothills, there are patches of bright green fed by water from three dams on the river.

0714 Redistribution

0714 Redistribution

This sort of contrast is one of many things that make flying here so delightful. In a couple of minutes you can see such different worlds, glimpses of how it looked eons ago, and the dramatic effects of human hand.

2014/01/23

Albatross

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 10:27

The albatross is such an exceptional flyer, that it can effortlessly cover over 620 miles in a day. This is impressive to a pilot of small planes like Tripp, but for this post there’s also another relevance to this bird in the Coleridge poem and associated idiom of an “albatross around the neck.” That is, a psychological burden that feels like a curse. In the first meaning here, sometimes while flying it feels like I’d prefer to Never land.

0347 Never Land Time

0347 Never Land Time

In the second meaning here, I sometimes imagine the psychological burdens borne by the guy who lived in the mansion hidden among the wizened ancient oaks here.

0351 Palace Between Ponds

0351 Palace Between Ponds

A short walk away lie the foundations of the carnival rides Michael Jackson had on this estate. What albatross around his neck led to the investment in creating an enormous playground here?

0354 Echoes of Play

0354 Echoes of Play

A little further along the tracks of his personal railroad was this cluster of buildings made to look like an idealized wild west town to house a petting zoo.

0356 Petting Zoo

0356 Petting Zoo

This fantasy land a few minutes flight from SBA is fascinating to contemplate as we fly past occasionally for another look. From up here it all somehow appears to me symptomatic of a troubled soul. The demons and delights in any person could also manifest in me. In my heart though there dwells a love of experiencing life not just in air but on land and in water. After the bliss of being aloft, other delights are enriched. Though the impulse may pass as the shadow of an albatross, I would not truly wish to never land.

2014/01/17

Art

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 20:24

Some would say that at its most interesting, Art is just a nickname for Arthur. Looking at paintings or photos just doesn’t trigger for them what it magically awakens in me. In this glimpse, I see Art.

1265 Art Flow

1265 Art Flow

It strikes me as silly to analyze Art, because it’s beyond understanding. But somehow images like this awaken not just my love of Art but my love of understanding and an associated yearning for learning. I enjoy the niggle of vertigo from this angle, the interleaved wedge swaths of color, the frozen action of surfers, and the subsurface billowing sand. But I’ll never know why this glimpse of Art moved finger to shutter in that moment, or choice of this for a longer look from among snaps, or posting this brief foray into analysis. Or wondering for a moment whether anyone seeing this will experience thought, boredom, or Art. 🙂

2014/01/15

Frames

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 19:28

Flying has redefined my frames. For some aviators it’s about reframing travel, in that you can go from here to there very quickly. Akin to the difference between using your feet or your car to go ten miles, especially subtracting the “security” and early check-in of airlines. But for me it’s much more about the frame of an art work.

0081 Framed Tree

0081 Framed Tree

From a quarter mile or so up we see a vast expanse of breathtaking beauty, so snapping a pic like this with a superzoom lens is about choosing the frame. The tree was surrounded by acres of the white hothouse tents, and that made it art even more than a tree in a meadow. Other art I see aloft is reframed by the fresh perspective of a hawk eye.

0106 Framed Dune

0106 Framed Dune

This dune at Vandenberg is different at every angle, in every light, at every scale, and every day. So how my eye frames it and chooses the moment to snap, freezes it into static art that I can now explore in detail. Unlike the hawk who probably sees only movement in the soaring search for fresh food, my eye brushes the texture of scrub and sifts the contour of fine sand. In a different moment I am filling the frame with a divide between streaks of sand and marching waves.

0105 Framed Divide

0105 Framed Divide

They meet in a battle of colors and shapes wrought by the wind, creating a geometry of mind that I call art. Before long our magic carpet transports the framing eye to another shore where sculptures jut from one dimension to another, accented by an eroded line to the sea wearing a garland of foam.

0127 Framed Stone

0127 Framed Stone

In this way, everything becomes art. Being on the ground is transformed by these forays into the sky. Waking is transformed by dreams.

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