Cloud Reaching For The Sun

Reminded me of an elephant's trunk.

Beautiful Flower Alley Toilet

^

Le Veau D'Or

The Golden Calf still stands!

Praised be his power

from one end of the world

to the other

In praise of this infamous idol

kings and peasants alike

to the jingling of coins

dance a wild round

around his pedestal

And Satan leads the dance!

I don't normally like to post links to YouTube videos, because they might end up disappearing at some point.  But I think this performance by Boris Christoff of "The Golden Calf" from the opera Faust by Gounod is fairly safe from that worry, it's a classic.  That scary smile at the end of the first verse!

And, perhaps I risk being rather impertinent with my cartoonish effort here, but I think this face below is also a pretty good visual fit for Mephistopheles, as he sings in praise of his master, the Devil.  Also, I didn't think of it at the time I drew it, but that bare suggestion of hair even looks a bit like a ram's horns.  That mirthless smile...!

3 Insects In 3 Days

All shot in and around the very busy plaza above the neighborhood subway station.

A pretty moth

A grasshopper;  I was afraid it might get stepped on, but after my third attempt to capture it, it flew off

And a mantis with a bum leg -- and it's missing part of its right antenna!

The Secret Language Of The Earth (Pt. 21)

 

Something I Noticed

and most likely, few othes did...

Errant Earring

A Startling Sight

at the top of a stairwell in an old building I snuck into.

 

What Are The Odds?!

Just now, I was watching a YouTube video about unusual things and events.  This segment came up that introduced the giant colonial superorganism known as a Pyrosome.  Not being familiar with this taxon, I paused the video to look it up on another window.  A bunch of articles came up, and I randomly clicked on a Reddit topic.  And whaddayaknow, the article included a screen grab from the same video, and I'd paused the video at the exact same moment!  How about that^

O.K., This Really, Really, Has Got To Be

the last of the last stragglers this year.

Today I was out shooting some really dramatic clouds

when this dragonfly swooped into view.

It then landed on the railing not three feet away from me (at the time I was standing on the landing halfway up the stairs to the overpass [visible in the photo] -- that's as high as I dare to go, because in addition to being obsessive-compulsive and possibly mildly autistic, I'm also acrophobic).

I was very glad to see it, and frankly a little amazed, too;  summer had long since yielded to fall, and recent days and nights have been rainy and even fairly cold at times.  This dragonfly was a genuine surprise.  It then flew over to the opposite railing and landed facing me, providing an excellent photo-op.  But just then these two high school jock-ish idiots came up, each immersed in his phone, not even looking where they were going, and certainly not noticing the dragonfly.  They passed between me and the dragonfly, right next to the railing it was sitting on and of course the dragonfly flew off.  I was so so annoyed!  I waited a while to see if it would come back, but it never did.

Related posts:  Another Well-Timed Shot

                         Last Stragglers

More Of Seoul Stairs II

 

A Two-Headed Monster

Worthy to be recorded in the annals of teratological literature.

Where Do Thoughts Come From?

I used to have so much trouble recalling the word "paisley".  I could see the image of the pattern in my mind's eye, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what the squiggly beasties were collectively called.  If I had a dollar for every time I tried to look it up by searching under "curlicue patterns" or the like, I'd be at least somewhat richer.  Now, it's no problem.  I can call up that name any time I "want to" -- but "wanting" to remember something that we had not been thinking about?  How is that even possible?  Remembering to remember something?

We are not the masters of our thoughts.  On the contrary, we are at their mercy.  We cannot deliberately generate a particular thought, out of the mental blue, whenever we "want to" -- rather, the thought happens to us.  That would imply we must somehow have been thinking about thinking about it already.  How could we want to remember something, if we had not been thinking of it already?  But what does that mean?  How or why does the wish to remember something -- not the thing itself, mind you, but the pre-recall desire to try and recall it -- suddenly pop into our heads?  You might say "Oh, some stray sensory stimulus must have reminded us of ___";  but consider -- once I was certain of my mastery of the name "paisley", I actually counted the number of times I successfully recalled "paisley" in one day.  Seven times.  How or why did I conceive the wish to recall "paisley" that many times, unless at some unconscious level I had been thinking of it all along?  But that seems weirdly paradoxical somehow... being unaware of continuously thinking about "paisley"?

Jet Plane Hiccupping

 

Tiger And Magpie

While checking out the *Hanok Village in Bukchon,

I came across this mural -- a modern interpretation of a traditional theme in Korean folk art.

Tigers were symbolic of power and protection, and also were servants of Mountain Spirits.  When shown with magpies in satirical paintings, though, they stood for the higher-ups in society, the wealthy and the titled, while the scolding magpies represented the powerless but clever common folk who secretly made fun of their betters.

As I came down from the hilly neighborhood, I saw this magpie land right in front of me.

Magpies were considered to be heralds of glad tidings;  maybe the magpies in the mural were sending me a real-life magpie to foretell some happy bit of news.

I didn't run into any real tigers, though.

*Traditional-style houses.

Another Mirror In A Weird Place

The Wet Weather Continues

 

Alley Cats

stalking pigeons.