John & Anne Wiley

2012/07/08

Pools

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 05:31

When I was little we lived on the edge of the desert where it was 120F for at least a week every summer. I remember quite clearly when my Dad started his own contracting business and lifted us into the upper middle class, because we got a swimming pool. Much more than anyone else in the family, I was in it! Maybe that’s why one of the things I enjoy about flying around SB is all the pools.

0884 Pool Promise

0884 Pool Promise

I don’t know if this one’s new or just being spiffed up with deck improvements, but I wonder whether they swim in it with all that silt on the bottom. It promises to be a great pool soon, and I like the angled out shape at the deep end. Probably the best “pool” in the area is this one on a private ranch.

0887 Monster Pool

0887 Monster Pool

That house on the hill has spectacular views of the mountains, this pond, the oceans, and the Channel Islands. The creek that feeds it flows to the ocean much of the year, so unlike other pools the eldest male child never has to sweep and vacuum it. 🙂

0889 Friendly Shape

0889 Friendly Shape

I love the friendly curved shape of this last one, plus the fact it’s sheltered by all that greenery. Sweet place to relax for a read and then a cool splash to refresh.

2012/07/07

Impression

Filed under: Flying,Has Photos,Inner World,People,Random,Relationships,SB Region — John @ 03:44

He asked, “What remains when you leave a room?” Pausing a moment to reflect, she replied quietly, “An impression of me.”

I recalled this exchange looking at an abandoned home in the area past Goleta that was once called Naples. Imagining a growing family, adding on rooms. The father building a picket fence to form a permeable boundary for children, a dog, and perhaps some chickens. Now it stands alone and forgotten. Those close bonds of kinship stretched by miles and time, some or all perhaps severed by fate. Only this impression of them remains.

0881 Impression of Home

0881 Impression of Home

2012/07/06

Boundaries

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,Relationships,SB Region — John @ 09:03

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

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

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

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

0858 Field & Forest

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

0855 Valley & Hill

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

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?

2012/07/04

Terra Stories

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 07:11

Flying a quarter mile above terra firma, stories emerge from the landscape. There’s a different sort of intimacy with the earth than when we’re scuffing in the dust or splashing in the water. A little bit up in the air makes a big difference. You see vistas like this that would be a popular roadside view point or the reward for a strenuous hike.

0843 Lompoc Valley Vista

0843 Lompoc Valley Vista

Of course, they’re in every direction and moving in a slow dance with each turn revealing entirely new delights. Also plenty of interesting things like this you’d never see from the ground, even atop a high hill.

0845 Mystery Machines

0845 Mystery Machines

I puzzled over them for a moment, then snapped at full zoom to look at back on the ground. Cropping out just the machines it was easy to see they’re wind generators for frost prevention on crops sensitive to freezing. A couple of miles away just on the other side of Lompoc this entirely different vista soothes the aviator’s eye.

0846 Soft Shapes & Colors

0846 Soft Shapes & Colors

Beneath us I cropped a crazy corduroy of colors trembling in the gentle breeze we were riding.

0848 Story Lines

0848 Story Lines

With every color and undulation, our planet’s stories are expanded for the viewer on wings.

2012/07/03

Silent Song

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,Relationships,SB Region — John @ 21:13

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

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

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.

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