So this new camera is pretty slick, I must say.

And I was briefly setting my heart against loving it, because it's a Sony and not a Fuji like the last two. (The HP was first. 1.3 megapixels, and no video. I still have it, though I suppose I should recycle it or something.)

But. This one can shoot video in sepia or black and white. It doesn't (sadly) have a Kodachrome setting for photographs, though. I do miss that.


The new camera has a slideshow option for reviewing pictures. The sound for video playback isn't good at all, the Fuji was better for that. Overall, though, I'd have to say it was a good idea to buy it.

But the memory card, oh my goodness. Eight gigabytes of picture and video storage. What in the world was my husband thinking? Now how am I supposed to get anything done besides documenting the way the light falls differently on wet gravel than it does on dry, or, oh yes! burst picture taking mode. Like stop motion animation, I love it. So now I'm taking way too many pictures of the cross-eyed Siamese cat who deigns to live with us. I watch him stalking things, the way cats do, and I take pictures of him for long moments a time, in black and white, against the bamboo.

I can't imagine that I've got much of any consequence to say.

(This could preface many blog posts, couldn't it? Mine included, of course.)

It's not the

connection is the word that comes to mind when I try to hold the idea of what it is I think is best about the way I can sit here nattering on about everything/nothing and

dishwasher's going. sounds companionable. There was a helicopter (I think it was a helicopter. At least I think I remember thinking that at the time, I've forgotten now what it sounded like exactly but I do know it was a sound I haven't heard before. I pay attention to things like the difference in the sound of the mailtruck and the UPS truck and the way our neighbor's truck next door starts up is a distinct signature, or not, not a signature but a song, I suppose, as much as a bird's noise is its song.




Whatever. I don't know where the words come from, and often now I don't bother worrying about why I don't know that, or what it might mean or how it might be interpreted or misinterpreted or completely ignored, not even noticed, what was that over there, did you see it? No, it wasn't there, it was only the shadow of the thought of it that appeared there briefly.

We had dragonflies today in the just-watered garden, sunning themselves and thrilling their wings as they sat on the tops of sticks cut from the little ornamental cherry tree that's grown all crooked. It's been badly pruned, but it wasn't done out of anything other than a lack of something, foresight, patience, something like that.




Tired all of a sudden. Didn't do so much today but did get some things done, and was nice part of the time and kind of grumpy the other part but it was pretty much not such a bad day. Hot though.

I had several very good ideas today.

But that was hours ago, and all sorts of things and events have transpired; conspired to cause me to forget those particular shed epiphanies.

But. The idea is energy, and energy cannot be lost, only momentarily transformed, transmitted, transubstantiated.

I'm tired. I unloaded a pickup truck full of gravel yesterday, and spread it out by the shed, swept and brushed and washed out the truck bed (next time, a clever blue tarp before the gravel goes in) and the day before that we had a garden party with a live and very cool band who are friends of ours, and before that it was getting ready for that, and now it's getting ready for the next thing, and the days go by and it's hot, blue skies, popsicles, and don't I wish I could travel back in time and give this whole happy relaxed loving joyful me to the child who suffered the despondent and confused mother. I didn't have any joy of my own then, and now I do. That feels like betrayal some days, and just the way it goes on other days; life teaches, and some of us learn faster than others and some of us

us, me, you. Pronouns are such tricky things.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense. Here's the latest picture of the shed.

The shed as I found it not quite three years ago.

Today I started painting the concrete wall in front of our house.

This is, of course, after I started painting the living room, kitchen and bathroom walls, the back door, one of the shed doors (they're currently detached from the shed and awaiting an opportunity to go to town) and of course inside and outside the shed here and there, the shed floor, a length of PVC pipe and a few other things I'm sure. I like to paint.

I'm curious to see his reaction when he sees the living room wall. I'll let you know how it goes. I expect a sigh, a smile and a comment like "Honey, you're an artist. There's no denying it."

The shed's getting to more of a finished state, the garage is in the beginning stages, but oh the house and all those white textured walls, and the way the cheap craft paint goes on like cream and dries like chalk, but no, more like velveteen.

According to Wikipedia, this is what autodyne means.

The autodyne circuit was an improvement to radio signal amplification using the De Forest Audion light bulb type amplifier.

It goes on for a paragraph or so like that, but you can look it up yourself if you're interested. So how that definition affects the understanding of the phrase mentioned in the next post, in which autodyne plays a part (oscillating?) I just don't know.

I'm aware it's a glitch in the translation, the transmission, or intended transmission.

I just found it interesting enough to waste some time amusing myself, and I thought it might amuse you as well or at least just puzzle you for a moment, or cause you to smile and say well, autodyne. Now there's a word you don't see everyday. I wonder what the hell it means.

Please be aware this post contains suggestive language.

I posted that last post, with the blue jug in the shed window, and immediately, a comment. A whole block of text that looked to be Chinese (like I could tell, but it looked boxier, and isn't Japanese more flowing? I don't know. Anyway) so I copied the text (each phrase was a link, by the way) and Babelfish says the comment was this:


Love apartment, the sentiment color, the sentiment color pastes the chart, the pornographic website, love pair, the sentiment color a piece, the sensation novel, the sentiment color literature, the sentiment color novel, the pornography, the sentiment color video, expresses feelings builds the garden small game, aio makes friends love hall, the pornographic game, the sentiment color makes friends, toot toot the sweetheart color network, the love story, the sentiment color forum, the pornographic movie, love, the erotic literature, the sentiment color network, Li's sentiment color small game, the pornographic cartoon, a night of sentiment, the sentiment color game, the pornography pastes the chart, the pornographic picture, the breeze adult, the adult website, the adult disc, toot toot adult net, adult, the adult cinema city, 18 adults, the adult chatroom, the 85cct adult piece, the adult movie, the adult picture, the adult paste the chart, the adult picture area, the adult movie, the adult article, the adult novel, the breeze adult area, the adult make friends, the adult pastes the chart station, the adult cartoon, the adult plays, free adult movie, adult forum, a piece, AIO, Japanese a piece, a piece of downloading, av, av piece, av female superior, a inundates, the free A piece, the av beautiful woman, the appeal thing, the appeal, the appeal commodity, the native place autodyne, the autodyne, the sexual affection, the video makes the love, makes the love, the beautiful woman makes friends, beautiful woman, beautiful womanThe game, the beautiful woman portrait, the ut chatroom, the chatroom, the bean bean chatroom, the chatroom, seeks the dream garden chatroom, the video chatroom, the adult chatroom, 080 chatrooms, 080 Miaoli person chatroom, the video chats, the free video, the free video chats, the video makes friends the net, the video beautiful woman, is exposed, the great breast, photographs surreptitiously, the sexy movie, does not have the code, the movie.

So I disallowed comments on that post, in case anyone innocently clicked on any of the links. Thank goodness I'm somewhat cautious about those kinds of things. I've just glanced through the list and I think my favourite comment is either the native place autodyne (whatever that means) or toot toot the sweetheart color network.

I have a fancy new camera. An early birthday gift from my husband.

So now I can see again, what I'm taking a picture of. Mind you, by this point I know when the camera is pointed a certain way what I'll see when I take the picture, because I've taken I don't know how many thousands of pictures with it.

My old camera, that is. My new one I don't have to know that, it knows that for me.

If I ever was so inclined, and could bear the indulgence of the expense, I could easily find enough photographs to make a show, about almost anything.

Maybe next year.

Sometimes I wonder what the point of all this is.

The blogging, in particular, and just everything, in general.

Today's not one of those days though, thank goodness.



I don't imagine that's because I've discovered any sort of mysterious clue to the heart of the universe, if one exists, if the universe exists, and it's not all some figment of the collective imagination. I expect it's more along the lines of a kind of relaxation into the understanding that mystery not only defies understanding, but laughs at the effrontery of it. I like to imagine the laugh as a kindly one, firm but not malicious in any sort of way. Indifferent, perhaps, to the confusion of the ones debating point and pointlessness and the many variations of variations of possibility.

No I don't understand any of that. But I've been reading Deleuze and Guattari again. So I'm a little confused, and prone to using many words and comprehending none of them.

Well. I say reading. But really what I mean is that I open the book and stare at the letters and sometimes I catch a glimpse of the shadow of an idea. And then I look again, and no, it's all gibberish, like it's written in languages I can't even begin to hope to half-understand. I don't know why I torment myself this way; sometimes I read things that hurt, they're so intricate and beyond me. But it's soothing in an odd way. The words aren't much different than the bamboo that held me up that afternoon. Uncomfortable, as long as you resist the boldness of trusting something you know may very well bend and break and let you fall.

Another old drawing. I was in the "Sad-Eyed Queens & Virgins" phase, apparently.

I blame it on the time spent reading the Lives of the Saints in grade five library period. When I went back to my old school many years later I found a book in the library with my name there, in my girl-handwriting, on the library card.


Then the Andrew Lang fairy tale books started, all the colours (even the secondary ones) and tales from faraway and exotic places, but all of them pretty much boiled down to one thing and that was love. The fear of never finding it, of finding it and losing it, and having to bear that loss through all the rest of the long days after, and all those mornings of waking up and picking up the grief again.