Icon Meme, from k_crow

[tylik]

Some years ago I bought a bluetooth phone - because my PDA had bluetooth, and a lot of the point of a PDA for me was internet connectivity. That phone had a camera - I couldn't find a reasonable bluetooth phone that didn't have one. I scoffed at the camera... and then almost immediately started using it. This was from a hike. I'm pretty sure not to Twin Falls (though I took a lot of pictures of contorted trees and roots there), but I don't remember where. I think it was a solo hike, though again, not sure. I haven't been using it recently. I used to use it often for a cetain kind of a very pure, minimalist sadness.

It's a tea pot and a couple of cups on my bread board. With my beloved pentacle trivet. Sometimes it's about tea, or food. Sometimes it's more a particular kind of mood.
This is a photograph of a painting I did when I was seventeen. It's not particularly finished - there was a class assignment to put together a collage representing ourselves. I realized pretty quickly that a collage was just not going to do it for me, but still, one evening. Front in center is a tree with a trunk suggesting a womans body, with one of it's upper branches in flower, another bearing fruit, and another bare (hey, I was seventeen). At it's feet to the left is a crumbling wall and a sundial, to the right is a pool that reflects a clean night sky (not that it's night). Woods behind to the left ("a pattern of light and shadow"), a plain and then a mountain to the right, with a tiny figure playing harp in that distance. Crescent moon above, open book resting on a tree branch... neither of the people-ish figures are really meant to be me. Sometimes I use it when I'm writing about that time in my life, sometimes more generally about past things, especially grief.

This is an Amanita muscaria, not fully grown, from up at one of my favorite collecting spots near Roslyn. Sometimes it's about mycology, sometimes about exuberance or absudity. It's red! With white spots! Popping up out of the earth! At this particular location, one can sometimes fine rings twelve feet across of A muscaria, though they tend to turn more salmon than red (as is this one) when exposed to light over tiem.

The picture name is two Chinese words, 玄 xuan meaning dark, obscure, mysterious or murky and 明 meaning bright. Which is mostly about the visual contrasts. But I also use it when I'm feeling troubled, or talking about very internal aspects of myself. I took this one on the barge. I might play around with redoing it someday, as the contours of my face are harsher now, which might make for a more interesting picture.

This is a close up of the face on the little demon fish fork I wrote about a few days ago. It's a little blurry. I'm not sure what I'll use it for yet - though at a guess when I am feeling... impish? (demonic seems a bit strong) or if I'm talking about some of the mixed aspects of my heritage. (My family. Not boring. But more often than not not the sort of folks you'd want to be related to.) This fork is from the side of the family wherein, well, it is said that when my great- great- (great?) grandmother was a little girl and in a temper, her parents would send her out to whip the indians to work it off. A fairly famous novel about the oppression of the native peoples by the Spanish speaking settlers was apparently largely based on her.

And yet, I adore the demon forks. I'm generally not much interested in the family heirlooms, other than to make sure they're cared for. But these I just love.