The host of this challenge, Travel with Intent, has a gallery of haunting photographs on this week’s theme. Check them out!
Morning Sky, 2 January 2023
Parking Garage, Berkeley
Category: destinations
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Began Hannah Sward’s memoir yesterday (postponing the reading of Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage). The fragmentary, episodic narrative is told in a child-like voice — works! It is deeply enthralling. The story oscillates between a father/poet who, when not running off to ashrams, reads his poetry in bookstores (impressive, though self isn’t sure how he makes a living) and a free-spirited mother in Florida who cycles between lovers and makes a living by selling tie-dyed shirts.
Baba, the new guru with the knotted beard, has inspired my dad to move across the continent to the Santa Cruz Mountains to live at his meditation center, Mount Madonna.
In the middle of winter we arrive at San Francisco Airport dressed in fur hats and wool scarves. A lady in a sari meets us. I don’t know if there will be other fourteen-year-olds.
I am given a Sanskrit name, Sumitra. It means ‘friends of all.’ Dad is Jai Per Kash. Even Alina and Alex can’t pronounce their new names. We have a cabin with an outhouse up a trail. The first night I stepped on a slug the size of a banana. Now in the night I pee in the bushes. We eat tofu with brown rice, no spices, homemade unsalted granola. I want sugar and meat and to go home.
This first Sunday we go down the mountain to Watsonville to chant and do laundry.
— Strip, a Memoir by Hannah Sward, p. 40 -
Thanks to Wind Kisses for hosting this week and for coming up with the awesome prompt, MESSAGES!
Here are a few “message” pictures from self’s archives, all places in California:
- sign inside a restaurant in Mission San Miguel Arcangel, California Central Coast
- sign in the lobby of the San Jose Convention Center during Adam Savage’s SilCon 2022
- Fro-yo cup, downtown San Luis Obispo
- Sign commemorating the original Facebook Headquarters, Emerson Street, downtown Palo Alto
- Traffic sign, Kasten corner of Main Street, Mendocino Village
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Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six Word Saturday.
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It’s been a while since self joined Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge. This week’s challenge is Pick a Topic from My Photo.
She thinks she may have found a picture. She took it when she overnighted in Cloverdale, at the Pinschower Inn (a lovely Bed & Breakfast, highly recommend!), just before Christmas. The grounds are lovely. There’s an arched trellis over the path to the main house. And these espaliered — self wants to say roses but she thinks they are — maples.
Anyhoo, the thin metal wires are barely visible, except on the posts.
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Self is in a nostalgic mood this rainy, gloomy Sunday in northern California.
Posting for Travel with Intent’s One-Word Sunday. The theme is SKYLINE.
Here’s Southbank by the Thames. Took these pictures leaving Shakespeare’s Globe after a play. The bridge is the old Blackfriars.
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One of self’s must-see stops whenever she is in Dublin is St. Stephen’s Green. She loves this park and its meandering paths, its leafy spaces.
She was in Dublin in late November, when the trees were turning. Here is Edward Delaney’s Famine Memorial. More information about the artist here.
Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six-Word Saturday.
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For the second year in a row, self spent Christmas in Mendocino. She loves being in the tiny, picturesque village clinging to the headlands off US-1. Her favorite doors/haunts (L to R): Mendocino Chocolate Company on Main (the main store is in Fort Bragg); Corners of the Mouth organic grocery (in a re-purposed church, on Ukiah); a vintage store in downtown Fort Bragg; and the Garden Bakery, in an alley next to the Great Put-On clothing boutique on Albion.
Posting for No Facilities’ Thursday Doors.
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The Atherton Public Library received the Mother of All Glow-Ups last year. Self had grown so used to the trailer that she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Anyhoo, one day last fall, exactly one week before Halloween, self dropped by. The walk was lined with California native plants, giving off a heavenly scent. Anyone know what these are called?
Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.
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Kanlaon 