Transitions

Flowers for sale at the Rialto Market in Venice

How many times in life do you experience a significant change? Marriage, the birth of a child, loss, divorce, sorrow - all these events are monumental. They cause individual people to truly change who they feel they are. Now you're a wife, a mother, a widow, a single person.

A minor change like losing your job shouldn't really make that much of a difference in your basic self.

And so it is. I've just learned this morning that I've lost my job.

Oh, wait. That's really not fair. That's over-dramatizing things. To be accurate - this morning I was officially told what I've been expecting for a while.

A loss of funding has changed the future of my organization, so that our operation will cease at the end of the current budget year, eliminating the jobs of all the current employees. Even if funding were to be restored, it wouldn't happen in time to justify the expense of keeping everyone on payroll.

My job is pretty cushy, pays well, and doesn't involve too much hard work. And, human nature being what it is, I bitched about it a lot.  I often wondered what else I could do with my time that would be more enjoyable, but of course, I never bothered to figure that out.

So now I will just have to do that.

It's an opportunity, don't you think?

Which of life's transitions have become transformations for you?

Thematic photographic - pics taken with a smartphone

Carmi at the blog Written, Inc. posts a weekly photo challenge. This week, instead of posting photos on a theme, he encourages bloggers to post photos taken on a smartphone.

What do thousands of people use their smartphones for? Well, if you go by the example set on Yelp, they take pictures of their food!

Here's a picture of some yummy crostini taken on the patio of a wine bar in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Smartphones can do more than just take photos - this blog post was published using Blogger's I-phone ap!

Tacos and tunes

Yesterday was the Second Annual Los Angeles Taco Festival in Boyle Heights.

Modest as festivals go, it isn't complicated. It's all about eating tacos, hanging out, and listening to music in Mariachi Plaza.

Ding Dong

Clock Tower at St. Mark's Square, Venice

I woke up this morning at 6:00 o'clock, got up, made coffee, had breakfast, and then, at 7:00 I took Jack for a walk, like I always do on weekdays, my mind occupied with what I would be dealing with later this morning at work.

Then I saw the Sunday Times in the driveway where the delivery man had tossed it.

Relax. It's Sunday.

Has  this ever happened to you?

Far bar

We're sitting here in a tiny courtyard in Little Tokyo in downtown LA. I'm trying out the Blogger ap on my phone.

Well, it seems to work.

One point perspective

South Kensington tube station, on the District Line, London. Click to "embiggen"

Objects that are far away get smaller, as their distance from the viewer increases. The horizon line, directly opposite the viewer's eye, represents objects infinitely far away.

All elements that are perpendicular to the viewing frame converge at a single point (a vanishing point) on the horizon.

Ancient artists - the Greeks, the Egyptians - were aware of this phenomenon, and many works of art from those era show attempts to depict a sense of depth in a two-dimensional work. Medieval and Byzantine artists also tinkered with these ideas - but in many works, the relative status of certain figures caused these spatial ideas to be applied inconsistently. When you have to draw saints or donors larger than ordinary people, you tend to get the proportions out of whack.

It wasn't until the Eleventh Century that somebody figured out the math of perspective. The Islamic scientist and mathemetician Alhazan - born Abu Ali Al-Hazan ibn Al-Hasan ibn Al-Haytham in the city of Basra in what is now Iraq - was a civil servant working in Cairo. He developed the modern science of optics, studied the anatomical function of the human eye, and is credited with being the first scientist to explain how rays of light work.

Expanding on the writings of Alhazan, Italian artists such as Lorenzo Ghiberti and Fillipo Brunelleschi developed the geometrical methods of drawing in perspective. 

As a theatre student in college, my design professors used to assign me the trick of turning a floor plan into a graphic rendering, by simply using the geometrical formulae of perspective drawing. Or - conversely - to take a Renaissance perspective drawing and turn it into a spatial floor plan.

A photo like this one makes my fingers itch for drafting pencil and a T-square, to see if I can do it again.

Pink Saturday - Paris pinks

Summer in Paris - time for the promotional sales of rose wine at the Nicolas wine stores!

A painted scene on a security shutter at a stall in the Marche des Puces, the Flea Market at Porte de Clignancourt.

Flowers at a nursery on the Ile de la Cite.

A pink bike, on a street on the Ile de Saint Louis. I like the grafitti on the sign, too!

Paris Pinks!

Ouroborus

Door knocker in Paris on the Ile de St. Louis

The Ouraborus is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent swallowing its own tail. It represents cycles that begin anew as soon as they end, a kind of eternal rebirth.

But sometimes, doesn't it just seem like what you're doing in life is just endless repetition, retracing old paths, unproductive, like a serpent swallowing its own tail?

What endless circles are you spinning in, this week?

Thematic Photographic - Cloudy

Carmi, at Written, Inc., posts a weekly photo challenge called Thematic Photographic. This week, the theme is CLOUDY. Take a picture that supports this week's theme, then share it on your blog or website.

Click to "embiggen"

July 14th was unseasonably cold, rainy, and cloudy in London. But from where we were, at Frank's Cafe, the clouds and the London skyline were magnificent.