Lined Up

Check out Carmi's post for more parallel-themed pictures.

I snapped this picture with my cell phone on my way out of the garage at work this week. 

I intended to go back with my camera to get a wider view or a different angle. Alas, work trapped me inside most of the week and by the time I got back to the garage today with my camera in hand, the workers had quit for the day. 

On my way to meet my wife I walked past these outside the restaurant next door. 

Then as I waited outside my her office I took pictures of the building, of the brick plaza, the blinds in the window, even the stripes on my espadrilles. Then I noticed the hostas in the planter I was sitting on.  

I love the parallel veins in the leaves, don't you?

Gray Is a Story

Check out Carmi's post for more gray.

When Carmi prompted us to post a gray-themed picture I started thinking about what I might use as my gray subject. What is gray for me? What comes to mind when I think of gray? 

The simplest answer is that gray is a paint chip; one of those little pieces of paper you get at the hardware store with a series of "warm grays" or "cool grays" that you can hold against your wall, scrunch up your eyes and try to figure out what it would look like magnified a thousand times to fill the room. 

Beyond that, however, I realized that gray (to me) is a story. gray is my drive to work 

with the interior of the car in a color that Toyota (that year) called "stone."

Gray can be a boring length of galvanized steel. 

But if I back up a step, I see it has a story to tell, with a hole and rust, and a chain. 

Gray is the color of rocks around here. 

I grew up with rocks that were predominantly beige. New England granite, however, seems to be mostly served up in gray.

The gravel beneath my feet can tell a story; this time the story is about nature's resilience. 

The Civil War Monument downtown is gray, and definitely tells a story, with the names carved in the bottom section. The fact that it is in good shape and not neglected is also a story. 

I just know that this house has stories to tell.

Even the parking meter I used on Wednesday has a story to tell. I see that it wasn't always gray. It seems to me that in a former life it was blue. 

But the favorite gray for me are these chairs. 

Simple folding chairs might seem to be a boring story. But every time these chairs come out of the basement it is because we're expecting company, and that is always a smile-worthy occasion.

Pics Taken with SmartPhone

Carmi over at Written Inc challenged us to share pictures taken with smartphones (or tablets, etc).  I do that occasionally for pleasure when my camera isn't with me.  But most of the pictures I take with my phone are for short-term work purposes like these: 

The one above is when I was helping someone with connections.  We had to disconnect all these wires, disconnect the box, thread everything out of the lectern they were in, then reverse all the steps with the brand-new lectern.  I captured this so we would remember which order the colors connect to the box. 

A couple of weeks later I was on a walk-through of an office area under construction.  Rather than jot down lots of network jack numbers, I snapped a few of these so that I could send the info to someone later.  This one had the advantage of reminding me where in the room it was (next to the light switch).

I don't typically keep these around after the task is finished, although a few end up tweaked into documentation (such as our how-to on using the buil-in audio-visual features in the conference rooms).

Go check out Carmi's post and see what others contributed this week.

Refuse

Refuse

Meditation was a taxing chore,
so-called sage counsel for self-healing.
I never knew there were so many rocks
in my couch cushion, so many scratchy tags
in my shirts. I carried a pout on the inside
of my face
and NO in my heart.

And one day,
and one day I forgot
to pack my heavy anger,
and I floated over time,
breathed deeply and heard the sun
sing in my veins, carrying joy
to my fingertips,
and YES into my soul.

The Pose

I haven't posted poetry in a long time, but this one wanted to be shared. I think I'll link to it over at Monday Poetry Train Revisited.

The Pose

The sun was nearly done with the cold sky when
I turned the corner at the graveyard and noticed
the teenager walking on the sidewalk by the road,
wandering somewhat aimlessly, gracefully.
The young man seemed to pose liquidly,
as if both hyper-aware of his body and also unfamiliar with it.
He didn't pose for me, anonymous in my Camry,
and I don't think he noticed Mr. Baseball Cap in the car ahead.
Perhaps it was in response to what he heard through the
ubiquitous white earbuds connected by a tether to his palm.
I saw the elfin curve of his body in my rear view mirror,
still at the corner, on this side of the cemetery's stone wall,
until the road's bend hid him from me.