March 2, 2015 at 3:23 am (Books, Places, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: inspiration, novel, Roberto Bolaño, Sundays
As they left the airport, the three of them noticed how bright it was in Sonora. It was as if the light were buried in the Pacific Ocean, producing an enormous curvature of space. It made a person hungry to travel in that light, although also, and maybe more insistently, thought Norton, it made you want to bear your hunger until the end.
– 2666, pp. 110 -111
February 28, 2015 at 3:11 pm (Links, Places, postaday)
Tags: artists residency, complaints, discoveries, happiness, inspirations, Mendocino, postaday, postaweek, Saturdays, Wordpress
This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is REWARD.
When one has spent a hard couple of days writing, applying to grants, and commenting on student writing, one needs to reward oneself with . . .
Gelato!
Since self’s favorite gelato place is all the way in Palo Alto, however, self has to be content with walking around the Mendocino business district, which has all kinds of quaint businesses, like this one:
Lansing Street, Mendocino
Her first week here, self heard a woman calling out: “Wif-Fi! No! Wi-Fi!” Turned out Wi-Fi was the name of her pooch. But at first self thought she was bewailing the state of the wi-fi connections here. Then, self had no complaints.
Now, it’s self’s turn to cry, “Wi-Fi! No Wi-Fi! No!” It took her 10 minutes just to upload one picture.
Stay tuned.
February 22, 2015 at 4:20 pm (Places, postaday, Sundays)
Tags: California, Elk, postaday, postaweek, Sundays, Wordpress
The prompt: “Focus closely on your subject and use a wide aperture.”
The View From Elk, CA
More of Elk, California
And still more of Elk, California
February 21, 2015 at 1:40 am (Links, Places, postaday)
Tags: discoveries, Fridays, Mendocino, photography, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is Rule of Thirds.
“The Rule of Thirds is a photography concept that puts the subject of the photograph off-center, which usually results in blank space in the rest of the image.”
Wow! Self loves off-center photographs!
She hasn’t been taking too many pictures lately, so these pictures are from a few weeks ago.
Hopefully, they successfully illustrate the Rule of Thirds.
Port of Richmond: Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015
Another shot of the laundry room at the Mendocino Art Center: Who knew that a room with such a utilitarian purpose would prove to be such a great source of inspiration!
There’s a path that follows the bluffs of the Mendocino Headlands. One morning, self walked there with a steaming cup of hot chocolate, and it was just heaven to find this bench.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
February 20, 2015 at 3:33 pm (Places, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: discoveries, Mendocino, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
Elk, California
Clinic, Village of Mendocino
Morning has come: Mendocino, CA
February 19, 2015 at 10:40 pm (Books, Places, postaday, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: artists residency, Asian American Writers, Calyx Press, Events, Filipino writers, flash fiction, Going Home to a Landscape, Mendocino, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
Such a gorgeous day! Tonight is self’s talk on Flash Fiction at The Mendocino Hotel.
She walked along the bluffs, just to let her mind organize her ideas.
She’s having different people read her short shorts, and then she’s throwing in two more: the piece that appeared in Vela Magazine right after Typhoon Haiyan, and Shirley Ancheta’s piece “Kristine,” in Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx Press, 2003)
In the meantime, here are some pictures she took of the Headlands, with an eye to the WordPress Photo Challenge this week, SYMMETRY.
Standing on the bluffs, just off Main Street, earlier today
A Wider Perspective
Port of Richmond, on the last day of the Codex International Book Fair, Feb. 11, 2015
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
February 15, 2015 at 3:47 pm (Places, postaday, Sundays)
Tags: inspirations, Mendocino, photography, postaday, postaweek, Sundays, Wordpress
Symmetry (noun): the quality of something that has two sides or halves that are the same or very close in size, shape and position; the quality of having symmetrical parts.
California Route 128 West, near Navarro
Route 128: This looks like more of the same shot, but self assures you it isn’t.
Last Shot (At this point, dear blog readers may well be saying to one another, Hurrah) of Route 128 West near Navarro
Those trees are magnificent, aren’t they? Self remembers reading somewhere that the oldest living thing on Earth is a sequoia tree which is in Sequoia National Park. It has survived — OK, self will live for danger — 1,000 years, at least. Self thinks.
Stay tuned.
February 9, 2015 at 4:08 pm (Artists and Writers, Flowers, Places, postaday)
Tags: art, farmers markets, Los Angeles, Mendocino, museum, poetry, postaday, Wordpress
WordPress Daily Post Photo Challenge: SCALE
“This week, play with scale. Insert something into a scene to highlight size: your two-year-old in a field of flowers. A dime next to a huge cinnamon roll you picked up at the bakery.”
First, Mendocino houses, the sky at sunset:
Sunset, Little Lake Street, Mendocino
Flowers in the Redwood City Farmers Market:
Flower Stand, Redwood City Farmers Market (The vendor’s stall is that white tent behind the flowers)
Ahmanson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art:
“Smoke” by Tony Smith, in the lobby of the Ahmanson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
February 7, 2015 at 5:19 am (Links, Places, postaday)
Tags: California, destinations, discoveries, fairy tales, inspirations, memories, Mendocino, postaday, postaweek, travel, Wordpress, writing process
Self finds this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge — SCALE — very interesting.
She thinks the theme has a lot to do with surprise and contrast. She finds the photograph accompanying the prompt (by Michelle W.) very amusing.
The instructions are to “share a photograph that highlights a size relationship.”
Here are her takes on the theme:
A miniature lamp enlarged self’s childhood imagination (and probably went a long way in determining what she would eventually become: a writer)
Self has had this lamp since she was three or four: a present from her parents. She has it with her in Mendocino, a little talisman. Also, an indication of what work she hopes to do here: an exploration of myth and legends and first life.
Her second trip to Elk was when she finally got to appreciate the view (On her first trip, she was too nervous trying to get out of the way of trucks, buses, etc that all seemed to be crawling up her bumper). Self took this photo from Cottage # 3 behind The Griffin House Inn. A view isn’t a view without something to lend it a sense of scale, and here self used the deck.
Elk, California: View from the Back of The Griffin House Inn
En route to Chicago, last fall
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
February 4, 2015 at 6:16 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Places, Recommended)
Tags: discoveries, Ireland, Irish writers, poetry, Tyrone Guthrie Center
from firelines (London: Anvil Press Poetry) by Marcus Cumberlege (who self discovered when she was at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, last May)
Children of Lir
Cork of the dark waters
Connaught of the storms
Meath of still pastures
Our triangle, our forms
Everywhere we come from
Everywhere we go
Swans grow sleeves of crimson
The ancient ring-marks show
Ireland is a no-man’s-land
Where dead and living meet
Finola’s ‘flower-stung’ fingers
Knit Pearse’s winding-sheet
Coffin-ships trawl the ocean
And on beds tilled long ago
The shadowy birds of winter
Claw crosses in the snow.
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