and half a dozen to take away

they came cream-filled, double-chocolate-dipped, sprinkled with sweetness; they came delicately puffed and powdered. sometimes they came simply - and beautifully - plain, and pure.
they were set before me. i tasted; i feasted. i swept morsels - discreetly - to the side of my plate, and later - replete - i wondered which had pleased me most, and knew how little it really mattered.

or what you will

we selected our tree today, and, as i sorted bluespruce finery and untangled knots of fairy lights, i realised that the picture i featured here last christmas is the one-and-only digital image that i have posted in the past year.
a festive house fills me with joy.
and - oh, my, yes - so does film.

sweet sweet music

sometimes, camera poised, composing, coaxing an image into clarity, i am conscious of a melody, a lyric: what i hear by what i see, and feel - the soundtrack of my own perception.
this past september, on the blustery blackpool pier, i saw the sign, the building, and the sky. i loved the colours; i lined up the verticals, and, metering, hummed, "just before our love got lost, you said: i am as constant as a northern star, and i said: 'constantly in the darkness, where's that at? if you want me, i'll be in the bar'.."
the lovely joni.
somehow one never forgets the soundtrack of one's younger years.

that light we seek

"do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. let the days own trouble be sufficient for the day."
- samuel butler

i was going to write:
"i have grave misgivings about the feasibility of daily posting"...
but that would be a poor pun indeed.

so i won't.

in the air i rose, singing

he was a traveller, back then, he tells her.
she nods.
she knows.
he was a traveller, back then, he says, and his tone is wistful, as he recalls a life astride the wind and the wide world, and watches the waves from the seawall's lee.

approach with caution

the nice people at thesaurus.com understand exactly how i feel today:
"bad-tempered, bearish, bitchy, captious, choleric, contrary, cranky, critical, cross, crotchety, crusty, difficult, disagreeable, dour, grouchy, grumpy, huffy, ill-humored, ill-natured, irascible, irritable, morose, obstinate, ornery, peevish, perverse, petulant, prickly, quarrelsome, snappish, sour, stuffy, testy, vinegarish, vinegary, wrinkly"
they are very perceptive.
a circuitous route might be advisable.

O2B@C

"any way you want it to be, that's just right."
- bob ross (american painter and television presenter, 1942-1995)

this scene would seem to have been watercoloured - or photoshopped - into
nostalgic surreality, but neither is true: even i was surprised at the way the negative scanned.
as my friend j. astutely remarked, it rather resembles a hand-painted edwardian
picture postcard - apt, southwold being the charming old-fashioned suffolk seaside town that it is - and, as he even more astutely reassured me (aware of my conviction that nothing can outglow the simple truth), it totally conveys the feel, the colours, the magic palette of that fine october day.
and he should know.
he was there.

how fickle, how fine

in the early hours of today, feeling low, just home from a late shift, i perceived this as a patently pertinent picture: it had poured non-stop since this month began.
i just awoke, however, to a crisp bright blueness that rather contradicts an image of café tables in the rain; but this is december, and this is the netherlands, so by the time i'm dressed for work it may be totally appropriate once more.

the truth of tenderness

"she gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
and humble cares, and delicate fears;
a heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
and love, and thought, and joy."
- william wordsworth (english romantic poet, 1770-1850)

oh, my.
could it be said any more sublimely?

serendipity-on-sea

the abandoned amusement park appeared before us, suddenly, in the sunshine, as we strolled the hunstanton seafront; and, although the norfolk coast is anything but a visual desert, we exulted, like thirsty travelers stumbling upon a shimmering photographic oasis, and took our fill.