Virtual Images On A Real Window

These shots were taken at the rate of one every several paces as I cut across the parking lot at work in a straight path toward the building entrance;  the only variables were my distance from the glass pane and the small sidewise moves I had to make to go around parked cars.

Kind of looks like one of those artsy, hand-painted animated films.

Hypnos

Related posts:  Morpheus;  Thanatos

Thanatos

Related posts:  Morpheus;  Hypnos

The Secret Language Of The Earth (Pt. 12)

A PSEUDO-MOTHERWELL ON THE SIDEWALK

Scary Car Face

One needn't have seen animated movies to know that cars have faces.  And not just at their front ends, but at their back ends, too (at night this is especially obvious, as many tail lights are designed to resemble eyes).  I guess one might therefore say cars come with personalities of their own.  For example, this car, with its goofy, toothy smile, obviously has a happy-go-lucky, cheery character:

This next one, I think, has a stolid and dignified disposition, like, say, Bambi's or Simba's father:

This one looks very alert -- rather overly so in fact, like someone who's drunk way too much coffee:

And this one's fanatical stare reminds me of all those megalomaniacal supervillains from Saturday-morning cartoons and b-movies, bent on world conquest -- I can almost hear the laughter: "Mwahahahahaha--!"

Here is one that's looking pretty pissed-off about something -- maybe somebody cut it off...

This one is obviously reptilian, since it has the unblinking, expressionless gaze of a snake (a black mamba, maybe^):

So much for the amusing ones.  This last one, however, actually creeped me out today as I drove home from the Westside.  It looked for all the world like a skull.  Maybe with a slight Aztec flavor.  And I had to follow behind it down a good stretch of 6th Street, looking into the grinning face of Death.  Oy.

A Joke About A Very Serious Subject

SAM HAS A FORETASTE OF NARAKA

While taking my usual walk this morning, I came upon this interesting pattern formed by soil swept across the sidewalk, doubtless by water from a sprinkler.  The streamlined shapes were very suggestive of tongues of flame...

There is an old movie called 'Poor Devil', starring Sammy Davis, Jr. as an incompetent, low-ranking demon who must prove himself to Lucifer by winning a soul for Hell, and Jack Klugman plays the hapless loser who accidentally summons him.  Davis materializes before the shocked Klugman and explains that when Klugman thoughtlessly uttered a blasphemous phrase, he opened himself up to Hell's influence.  When Klugman protests that it was a very common curse that people pronounce all the time, Davis smiles and informs him "And we got 'em ALL down there".

WHERE HAMLET'S FATHER STAYS DURING THE DAY

My friends and I sometimes joke that "You know we're going to Hell, dontcha" after we've done something slightly naughty.  Maybe it's best that we stop saying it.

Sunflower III

Cut Short

SOMETHING YOU DON'T SEE ALL THAT OFTEN

A pair of June bugs, busy performing life's most essential function on the sidewalk.  Then some mean-spirited giant comes along and steps on them.  I suppose there are worse ways for one to leave a corpse behind, but in any case I shrank the original image down considerably and cleaned it up just a little so that, even expanded, the image wouldn't be too huge and gross for the more weak-stomached ones among us -- such as myself.

Another Chilling Vision In The Sky

Can't believe no one else noticed this terrifying dragon/lion/skull-looking face with its gaping maw, right next to the Sun.

Another Random Floating Object (#4)

I have no idea what this was, but its silhouette reminds me of an ocean sunfish, just a little.

Blue Sun #3

Horsehead Nebula

I am plagued by many fears.  I am afraid of real-world concerns, such as falling from a great height; being buried alive; falling victim to violence; contracting leprosy; etc.; and imaginary things and situations (I sure hope they are) like being cornered by zombies or scary-looking ghosts; a wall or railing suddenly melting away and causing me to plunge to my death (I guess this one is basically the same as the fear of falling); gravity suddenly reversing and causing me to fall up into the sky (same process as falling, but this one leads not to a crash but being lost in the black void of space).

Speaking of black voids, when I was little we had this big wardrobe in the house.  It was very beautiful and impressive, being ornamented with mother-of-pearl inlays on a ground of black lacquer.  My favorite part of it, however, was its interior.  I liked to climb in, shut the door and sit still, enjoying the quiet darkness.  Rather paradoxical for someone who developed a fear of both blackness and live burials, I suppose, but I found it comforting.  If that wardrobe were here I probably would do it again.  In fact, my dream house, if it ever were to be built, would include some cave-like structure, such as a small cell in a sub-basement, that I could crawl into and sit in the contemplative darkness and silence for a while.  Hmm, maybe I'm sounding a little weird now.

As for the scary kind of blackness, it's really two fears in one.  On the one hand, there is the fear of being permanently lost in a vast emptiness without anyone knowing what happened to me, and with no way to get back or call for help. It's utter helplessness reified (I do realize this kind of sounds like how some Christians conceive damnation to be -- not active punishment but the absence of hope;  and it can probably fit into some other kinds of spiritual belief systems as well).  Then on the other hand, there is the more concrete fear of unknown threats lurking in the darkness.  I think I was permanently traumatized when at a young age I came across in a science book some photographs of grotesque deep sea creatures, shown against the blackness of the ocean depths.  They did not look like fish, or any other living thing I had ever seen before;  they impressed me more as amorphous alien monsters, waiting to drag me down and subject me to some particularly repellent form of death.

And because celestial bodies seen against the blackness of space can remind me of those illustrations, I am often made uncomfortable by astronomical images, especially the more diffuse images of gaseous nebulae.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I found the so-called 'Pillars of Creation' dust clouds photographed by the Hubble space telescope to be quite disturbing.

One exception is the famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion.  It had always seemed rather friendly, like a favorite hobby horse remembered from childhood; but after I read in Isaac Asimov's writings that he thought it resembled the head and shoulders of the Big Bad Wolf from the Disney short The Three Little Pigs, it became downright humorous.

Which is why I couldn't resist taking a shot of this odd little cloud formation.  Compare with the actual Horsehead Nebula below it (courtesy of the internet).

 

Dragonfly Flying Over The Moon

Random Floating Object #3

 

IT'S A FLYING TOOTH!

Note how the shadow of the bag in the first photo looks just like the object in Random Flying Object #2.

Sour Expression

Not sure why, but when I doodle a face at random without any particular intention as to what kind of expression it should have, so often it comes out looking as if the owner of that face just ate something that tasted really bad.

To top it off, this poor soul may just have been forced into it.

Sculpey® Is Now The Color Of Terracotta

(IT USED TO BE PRISTINE WHITE)

And now, when you make a face out of it it automatically looks tanned and weather-worn -- and in the case of the face below, rather like an old Dutch farmer who, as a young man, joined the war effort in the Dutch-Swedish War in 1657, hoping to make a name for himself as a naval officer;  but having lost an eye in the Battle of the Sound less than a year later, decided to stick to farming and decades later looked back on his life and was glad that he changed career aspirations when he did.

Cloud Hole

Another Thrift Shop Purchase

The candy was not included.

Last Week's Dragonfly Photo

Morpheus

The sleeping consciousness, veiled with dreams...

Related posts:  Hypnos;  Thanatos