Street Art: Black, White, and Gray

The white patches mark the pedestrian walkway, 

while the black is sealant spread over grooves 

in the asphalt pavement where electronic sensors 

are installed that (mostly) prevent the shopping

carts from being taken away from the property

With A Cup of Coffee, A Bic Pen, and A Notebook the World Is Mine

Most workday mornings, I like to stop in at

 the Paradise Bakery for a hot chai latte.

Between buses, I sit at a table for a few minutes

to watch the downtown area come alive

for another day of business, working towards

a dream, or like most of us, just keeping 

food on the table and bills paid.

I am not alone in this endeavor; there is a 

woman at another corner table sipping her

coffee, writing in a notebook.

Is that a novel she's working on? A journal,

perhaps? For sure, it's not an ordinary

entry because she's making it in longhand,

not typing the info into her laptop, 

nor is she texting. It seems deeper, more

personal somehow. At this time of the morning,

when the sun's rays are just beginning

to edge around the downtown office buildings,

writing in a notebook, with a cup of coffee

at hand seems just about the right

thing to occupy one's time.

Winter Into Spring

The past few days have been rainy and cold.

 Flowers have appeared, only to be assaulted 

by temperatures verging into frost; the delicate leaves

of magnolia show the rusty scars inflicted

by the cold and the winds.

Here, the fresh green leaves on a shrub

stand shoulder to shoulder with the remains

of decorative grasses, its ashen colors revealing 

the hardships it endured during winter.

May Theme: Squares

When I go to North Central High School to swim 

on Saturday mornings, I am usually among 

the first to arrive. I often use the extra few minutes 

to sit down and look at the pool and its environs, 

a series of squares and rectangles just piled 

and piled on each other.

The squares are found, of course, everywhere: 

in the small tiles in the pool itself, then in the deck. 

The checkered pattern is found in the surrounding walls 

and red squares are included in the acoustic panels.

White squares line the pool in the form

of starting blocks. Then, of course, the whole thing 

is reflected back from the pool's surface, 

adding to the silent visual cacophony

before the storm, when fifty or so swimmers

churn the water into crystal mayhem.

Oddly, I find this scene calming and enjoy trying

to sort the patterns out, to find some kind of

visual rhythm to what may first seem

like a sensory mess.

To see how other members of the world-wide 

City Daily Photo community have interpreted today's 

theme, click on the above CDP link, 

or on the badge to be found near the upper 

right column of this blog page. Enjoy.

  

Well ... Hell

All my pictures are gone. Every damn one, other than for the few 

I've taken over the past few days. After being off-line for over a month,

I was glad to see my PC repaired and returned with its programs

and my image files intact. However, I must have done something disastrous

over the weekend because there was nothing but my desktop

on Monday morning. I was virtually compelled to re-install my Windows and,

after doing so, everything was gone, even my favorite picture I was

using for my desktop. I have saved a lot of the photos on an external drive,

but there were still thousands of images I was using

for my blog and to build my little exhibit. Those are all lost.

So ... I guess I'm stuck re-installing and re-building.

Squatters

The Canada geese show up every spring, 

taking up residence on parking lots and on the tops 

of any available flat-roofed buildings.

We have plenty of both in Indy. I suspect the

black-topped parking lots may resemble

ponds to the geese, and there is standing rain

water on top of many buildings.

They are the twenty-first century incarnation

of the previous century's pigeons,

but they leave larger turds.

Much larger - think bench beagle

or cocker spaniel. Whew!

Achieving Balance

A week or so ago, while waiting for the bus, 

I watched as a group of teenagers practiced a trick 

with their small bikes. In turn, each kid rode

up parallel to an old, steel pipe railing,

then leaped the bike onto the rail.

The intent seemed to be to coast as far as possible 

along the rail before losing their balance or bumping 

into one of the upright posts. A few took a tumble

or two, but got right back up, dusted off their trousers,

 and made another try. Other onlookers and I joked 

that the kids at least had the foresight 

to pick a practice area right across the street 

from a hospital with a Level 1 trauma unit.

In all, there were seven kids in the group, 

including one girl, who worked on this skill 

for about an hour. At about a quarter 'til

eight, they all peeled off across the campus

as if they'd received some otherwise

unheard signal. I suppose they were headed

towards homes in the downtown area.

Besides, it was a school night.