I was just walking along, checking out the ginkgo leaves strewn on the sidewalk
when I came upon this pair.
Ginkgo leaves that dreamed of becoming a butterfly and flying off.
Were they perhaps lovers whose romance was opposed by their families? I wonder.
And then, there was this pair. They definitely deserve a consolation prize:
I've been doing a lot of mini-nature hikes in the hills around the neighborhood lately (and there are a lot of them -- Korea is mostly hills and mountains). Nothing too arduous, just walking through some woods along well-worn trails. On one recent hike I came upon this scene, which put me in a fairytale mood. Hansel and Gretel about to come upon the witch's house, maybe?
I've not the faintest idea what this is -- or used to be -- but I found it to be oddly beautiful.
It's tantalizingly almost-reminiscent of some things. What is it they remind me of? Slabs of meat? Some amorphous deep sea monster floating in the quiet waters of the Mariana Trench? Plastinated human carcases in those "Mysteries of the body" exhibits (visiting one of them kept me from eating meat for days afterward)?
I'd like to say "a perfectly-timed" shot, but of course luck plays a not-insignificant role in these. The eye is way faster than the camera. The smart phone camera, anyway.
Some impressive foliage in and around DeokSuGung, one of the smallest of the five Joseon dynasty palaces in Seoul. To think that I used to walk down that path by the stone wall all the time all those years ago, when as a child I attended DeokSu Elementary School (named after the palace) before immigrating to the US..!
Just as I found them.
It's true -- the universe does organize itself!
Taken at 3:42 PM on November 5, 2026, local time.
An image of two unrelated boundaries spontaneously matching up; building and sky, and sunlight and shadow -- an example of the universe organizing by itself, which stands in direct opposition to the accepted opinion on entropy (that the degree of overall disorder in the universe can only increase, because any initial state of order and complexity in any system in the universe can only wear down and become randomized over time).
But I guess it could also be seen as support for the conventional view, as it makes disparate elements like the edge of a building and a shadow on trees line up so that they can be described with a single line, which is not unlike simplifying a fraction, like, say, from 216786/325179 to 2/3.
Never drink and internet, I always say.
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