The Problem with this country

The Problem with this country is that they won't give you a PHD if you don't dot your "i"s.

As you can see I have been customizing my template and I worked on Photoshop after a very long time. And let me tell you Photoshop has therapeutic properties! Once I started I couldn't stop.....And I took out some pictures I shot in the past six months and worked on them too. Here they are.
This one above was shot in a service plaza. We were driving from Houston to San Antonio and it got so hot that Ash decided to stop and take a mini nap.










The boat picture, one of my favorites. I shot this is we were canoing down rainbow springs. Oh!! And this was before Ash lost his paddle...thats another story!!








The one below is also from the same expedition. Its a beautiful park/forest- the water is bright blue and trees are huge. They have these trails winding around a number of cascades (artificial but lovely anyway)






The picture below is one of the San Antonio sky. As you can see I've used the same image for my Blog Heading :)

Does art really make a difference? Or is it just another medium of elite entertainment? Or something that gratifies your senses?

I often wonder- like all those who attempt to reconfirm faith in their cause- if beauty really changes things at all. If it can really touch a person, a soul...if it can nudge a society toward refinement and culture.

Sometimes as I open myself to metaphors, their meanings and their secret depths.....I gasp and marvel for a while and then I feel somehow disappointed that it doesn't really leave a mark....It washes over me and I'm still the same. Unmoved. And I go back to the same world I came from.

Anything larger than life is expected to take you away from reality....maybe therein lies the paradox. Art as fantasy or as a response to the real....depends on the notion behind creation and the whim of the perceiver. But sometimes thats all there is....a whimsical whim. It agonizes me, pains me that this conception/comprehension is so fragile, so elusive. Yet it is so tremendous....it swallows me whole. And yet I cannot touch it.

I can sympathize with Rand's Dominique as she wants to destroy beauty because she cannot bear to see it mutilated by.....life. In fact, I envy her profound passion. To her frozen perfection leaps to life and the rest fades away.

I hate white light....its stark, ugly, and crude. Its ok for wal-mart...but I think it should be otherwise banned!!!
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!!!!!!


(whew!! That feels good :D)

The Leaf and I

She sits upon her twig
high up on a willow
and smiled as I
whizzed by in hurry.
'Where to?', she whispers to me
and I bellow out an answer
of castles and seas larger than I.
She wants to know more
whether the castle has a song
or if the sea could laugh
but I'm not sure so
I tell her I'm late. Then
a while later I change my mind
and rush the other way
seeking a desert and a spring.
She wonders why I left
the sea and the castle on the cliff
and she asks why I din't stay
to learn their story.
She asks me questions I
don't want to answer, questions
which i don't want to hear.
So I pretend to be rushed and
blow past her as she
clings to her twig
high up on a willow.

I cant think of a title for this one!!!

I think everyone needs to be king somewhere, sometime in his or her life. Even the most quiet, unassuming of the lot need to know they can rule...or at least hold the spotlight for a while. Its this sweet lingering memory that propels us through reality.

Narrating my life.....

Ever since I started blogging I seem to go about life hunting for moments or ideas that I can put into my blog. Its like this parallel processing my brain seems to be doing as it tries to capture the little ironies that hold my attention or flitting thoughts that breeze through my mind. And as I walk down the driveway, check in my luggage or water my little indoor plant, I seem to string together words and see how it all unfolds. Though most of it does not find its way here (since the moment is lost or I just forget), I think I've become a Thought-Collector.