The beauty of bodies
Is the power of thought

But the sadness in thinking
Is the power of not

And the children of darkness
And the children of light

Wage holy chaos
In the hope that they're right

But the coin

It keeps spiralling
Heads over tails

And the weights that you place
Never balance the scales

Because one side is heavy
And the other is light

Or one child has dark skin
And another is white

And while one man eats caviar
Another man starves

His wife sobs in the corner
Her dead child in her arms

And the coin

It still oscillates
Trailing a line

Blurring the distance
Twixt living and dying

"What goes up must come down"
It's been said many times

And there's always that instinct:
"It's either your turn or mine"

So keep your eyes on the coin
It has secrets to share

And that heads is no different
From tails, I'm aware

That you may not realize
Until it's too late

When the coin shall have landed
And sealed our fate

Ra- ra- ra- boom de-ay!
We have no school today
Our teacher passed away
She died of tooth decay

We threw her in the bay
She scared the fish away
She's never coming out
She smells like sauerkraut

Oh my gosh. A bit of sunlight this morning, and looks what happens...

Ilex europaeus: Holly Berries
Pansy flower

¡Pura vida!

Costa Rica beckons, with waving palm fronds and coconut-strewn beaches; with blistering tropical sunbeams and lush jungles, ready to swallow me up in one gigantic green breath. Take me now, you green mansions! I tremor with anticipation of your verdant embrace.

My camera arrived a couple of days ago. Can you hear the exaltations of the choirs of heavenly Seraphim? No? Such a shame. They've got quite a set of pipes between them, those Seraphim. I've been listening to them inside my head, singing the soundtrack to my life for the past couple of days. I could get used to this, I think.

Back to business. Were I forced to choose a single word to describe this camera, it would probably be 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.' Nothing else quite seems to do it justice. I guess I could go with 'legendary,' 'phenomenal,' or even 'sinfully indulgent,' (two words!) but you know, none of those are idosyncratic enough for my inner monkey. Get the picture? (Pun intended... Ha ha!) Truly, my focus (have i no shame!?) is that this is one fantastic piece of machinery! In a flash (!) of inspiration, someone decided to capture (!) the pinnacle of modern imaging technology in a tidy little package, addictive in both the functional and aesthetic sense. I love it!

Should you have a fast internet connection or overambitious curiousity, here is a sample image for your downloading pleasure. This photo has not been retouched, color-corrected, etc. It's straight from lens's mouth, so to speak. Impressive? I think so. Don't you agree?

Tsuga heterophylla: Western hemlock

I ate dinner at a friend's house this evening. This leaving the country in two weeks business has gone and wound me all up. It was good to take a break from all that craziness. Of course, life is just plugging along as usual at breakneck speed. Someone in class today mentioned that there's a new theory which proposes that the speed of light is steadily decreasing. Those of you readers with some knowledge of relativity might find this intriguing, as it seems to imply that time itself is slowing down. Personally, I think maybe human perception is just speeding up... When it comes down to it, what's the difference, after all?

Ah, my faithful devoted, I must adjourn to my slumber. Fare thee well in mine absence, that thy presence may once again grace mine blog, next I post. Oh, but parting is such sweet sorrow... Still, time waits for no man, and what's done shall not be changed 'cept by failing memory.

Ach.

Must post something to push that dreadful poem further down the page where fewer people may read it...

The Sequoia has almost completed weaponizing its pollen. Many other Sequoias here in town are glowing that strange yellow-green color characteristic of coniferous trees in the throes of Spring. One of these days when the air dries out, the winds will drag clouds of pollen out of those armies of pollen cones, depositing it wherever chaos' whimsy fancies. Sometimes when the pollen/air ratio is near its climax, puddles of water masquerade as yellow lakes of pollen. Visible drifts of ochre dust tumble by on the breeze. Pollen impregnates the air, clings to surfaces, and makes my father generally miserable with sneezes and various other allergic reactions.

It's not like that in the tropics. Competition for resources is so intense in places where the growing season lasts all year, most trees cannot afford to waste their energy flinging pollen all over the place in the hope that one out of every ten thousand grains will reach a receptive flower (or cone). So the plants have devised an ingenous strategy: they get all those strange mobile things with legs and wings to work for them. Monkeys, birds, bats, and innumerable types of insects all carry out their chores dutifully, translocating pollen from one flower to another, collecting their payment in the form of nectar and the occassional flower part. The trees don't seem to mind in the least. Avoid eating those leaves, though... Instead of building arsenals of pollen, tropical trees have opted instead for chemical weapons factories in their bodies, enough to convince most herbivores they're not worth the pain, hallucinations, etc.

While we're on the subject of trees, I climbed one yesterday. For the first time, I donned a harness, tied myself to a rope, and "prusik'ed" (it's a climbing term) my way up a big old Douglas-fir. We drank ginger tea at the top and watched Olympia happen from our perch ninety or so feet above the ground. It was fabulous. I can't wait to gaze over the canopy of the tropical rainforest from a vantage point in some monster emergent tree, nestled amongst the bromeliads, orchids, mosses, aroids, and who knows what else. Ah... Yes, the future looks bright as tropical sunrays, filtering through leaves.

My camera arrived. Photos will follow shortly. In the mean time, visit Mycoblastus and read all about Vinson's latest escapades. He's quite an interesting fellow, that Vinson.