Photo of the Day – San Clemente Pier

San Clemente Pier

Of all the piers in California that I had encountered, San Clemente’s main wooden pier stood out, quite literally and also quite figuratively. It is where my camera finally bit the bullet (and the dirt, mud and small granules of yellow sand) where I took pictures of random lovers staring out into the expanse of the sea, hoping their future would have a never ending horizon as well, watched three hoola hoops swing in fast succession around a smiling girl in a euphoric dance and met two awesome people in my life, couch surfer Jitka and my good friend Claire Bush. A wonderful soul, good hearted, would uproot the very foundations of her life in a brash, spontaneous leap upwards, expecting never to touch the ground again. She is one of the most talented people I have ever met and cannot do anything but succeed. She really has no choice in that matter. We shared some good, deep laughs on this pier, the daylight, IV slow drips into a darker, more night sky, stars glimmering as daylight remembered. It was considerably cold for people of So Cal, but for me the night brought with it a warm breeze, swaying the palm trees, frozen as fuzzy thoughts, looking like watercolored postcards from somewhere tropical and that people only send to make those who see it, envious. Pretty much how I felt when I was staring at them, if only my camera had not R I Ped. Then again, like this picture, my words and descriptions, of moons and breezes, is taste to a heavy smoker, more an presumption than a filler in.

Photo of the Day – Sea of Diamonds

The Del Mar Coast

Showing up in Del Mar, I felt more than a tad under dressed and over-bearded. While Hollywood was the place to become a star, Del Mar was the place where stars did normal people things, you know,  dine on rare beluga caviar, at a levitating restaurant, finishing off with a round of Tiny Dancer on Karaoke, with you snickering at all the typos in the song, which by chance, you penned.  Oopsie, not really a great place to get caught when your use to paying for your accommodations in loose change or stand up comedy (and by stand up comedy, I try and tell and awkward joke and they make me pay double the amount and then some). Let’s see what my options are….hmmmm….a castle with an operational draw bridge…another castle….oh….cheaper, no drawbridge. Well, it was time to treat myself, with some help from my padre, and stay at the only Holiday Inn in town. After settling into my spacious room, sneaking my bike into it in the process, I took a walk along the rails that surround the outer rim of the city, just before clay packed cliffs fling themselves into the sea. The sun was setting, but I could catch the flora in the last breath of daylight, the dust rising slightly as you walked, like a mysterious mist, against white, diamond encrusted waves.

Photo of the Day – Apocalypse Now San Symphony

Helicopter, constantly landing and taking off

Camp Pendleton, California. America is scared, in a constant state of readiness. The enemy is not an outside virus, but a cancer, unrecognizable deep in the capillaries and veins of the each state. And though, the painting looks unified from a distance, closer up, you can see the harsh hatch work of troops in green fatigues in well drilled marches, odd white bubble satellites  on the side of arid landscape hills monitoring each phone call where Russia is mentioned and Apocalypse Now helicopters, dark brushstrokes in the sky, up and down, every moment taking off and landing. It’s not entirely true and just gave me a chance to be a bit floral with language without getting too abstract, but there is something to it. Why is there this massive base in Southern California? A militarized city in the desert? A helicopter, so big, that if you hadn’t noticed it’s approached, you’d feel it, darken your skin to ash, eclipsing the circumference of the sun.