August 31, 2009
Framed
![[IMAGE] framed](/blog/blogpix/framed.jpg)
…about the musicReflecting.
My little Smudge has no idea just how perfect his reflection looked in the framed pastel hanging across from my desk. I couldn’t have positioned him like this had I tried.
I’m reflecting, too, on the toll the massive fires are taking in my former home turf of Los Angeles. I’ve been following the reports on the web, and trying to transmit humid, cooler thoughts to the pyro gods above. During the 24 years I lived in southern California I experienced a lot of wildfires, a handful of which came frighteningly close to the physical spaces that contained fragile, temporal proof of my existence. Once you’ve been through it, a visceral reaction is unavoidable. Bravi to the brave: the tireless firefighters, working so hard in these hellish conditions, risking, and sadly sometimes giving, their lives in an effort to protect everyone else’s.
Glenn Buttkus said,
September 1, 2009 @ 5:24 am
The picture is perfect and precious. It is like those pictures that used to appear in the back page of LIFE magazine, the “Can You Believe It?” images. It helps that you have the photographer’s artistic eye, of course–but what a dynamite reflection. Smudge must be proud to be the subject of such depth, such profound iconography. Your musical clip, AT THE ABYSS: REFLECTION @ 2:12 slowed things way down for me this fine pre-dawn. The vibraphone is one weird instrument, kind of reminescent of those tones we used to hear on Science Fiction Theater, putting us out there, suspended on the cusp of an abyss a day.
Every year in California, Nature rattles its tail and produces mud slides, flash floods, and wild fires. What is there, like 11 million people in the LA County basin now? When I lived there, in Glendale, I loved hugging the mountains, but that was where the wildfire monsters lived, and they came down often and licked at the wood on my deck and porch. A flash flood nearly “got” me one time up near Bakersfield, on one of those mountain roads coming over from Santa Barbara coastal side. The rushing water looked shallow, so I took a run at it. The back of my car lifted up and began to drift, but somehow I had the volition to rocket across. Scarey. Like waiting for several nights during the fires, waiting for that knock at the door to tell us to evacuate. Then again, there are those southern Californians who feel we are nuts living so close to the Ring of Fire, the many volcanos that stand tall all around us.
Glenn
Barry said,
September 1, 2009 @ 10:50 am
Alex,
Yup, there’s a smudge on that photo alright!
I’m glad you moved to moister environs. Those fires look very menacing. The people on TV this morning, whose home was not burned, the only one on their block, were as distressed as those whose were lost. What a thing to go through.
I was in Montana a few years ago and had to evacuate from West Glacier as the burning embers were crossing the ridge above us and threatening the town. As we left we stopped at the water park down the road from Glacier and on the top of the high slide you could see the raging inferno leaping up the mountain. The little girl at the top telling us when to go said the fire was heading straight to her home on that mountain and she didn’t know if she’d have a home to go to that evening.
It’s as though we live a fragile existence in the path and midst of nature’s tumultuous moments. We have the best of intentions of living, building, growing, buying, furnishing all our lives and in a breath it withers in seconds, or not, depending on the wind.
Hmmm, calls for more reflection. Perhaps Smudge has the right idea!
Barry
Paul H. Muller said,
September 4, 2009 @ 8:54 pm
More smoke than flames from the fires this time – they seem to be north and east of downtown. Nothing down here on the coast… yet.
Why is it that a cat just HAS to sit on the exact piece of paper you are reading or need?