View at the mouth of the Paillon River

 

Here is the first fully completed drawing, or painting, I have made with my drawing pad. The Paillon River runs under a long park here through most of the city, but once was the butt of jokes for being such a dry river. Right now in the aftermath of late Winter Rains and maybe some snow run off it is going pretty good into the sea, which is where this view is from, looking up into the mysterious undercity river. The mouth here keeps shifting around both naturally and as a result of the city curiously stirring the famous stone beaches around with bulldozers and suchlike. This evening we were down at the Paillon again, and it is already configured differently than in this view from a week ago.

Nature boxes

 

The thought of packing up is on my mind. Perhaps this is because we are reducing our entire lives down to a few carry-on bags and three suitcases. We'll take all this and wander around Japan with it, shaking off the dust of our lives for awhile before we go to France. So much dust.

Dust never sleeps.

As you have recently seen here I first went this route by packing my library up into little to-go dollhouses I could bring with me. But yesterday I was down by my lovely river, and wanted to take that with me too. So I tried to put that into a box as well. 

It didn't work out like I planned.

It's hard to put a river in a box.

But then when I was putting together today's post, which was going to be called "Unsuccessful", I saw all these pictures of the river in a box, and I thought:

"Failure is like dust. I'll have plenty of opportunity for that sort of thing later."

So today I wanted to show you my river boxes.

They are made out of the flowers in people's front yards, and the staircases down from the bridge, and the tangle of the trees, and bees, and water. And then I added literally anything that would fit.

They're almost what I was looking for. And I'll take them with because they use no space.

Baroque dinosaurs

 

Two days ago I had some dinosaur pictures to show you. I had taken these pictures down by the river and, after much working with them, I ended up with several variations of pictures of these prehistoric animals in the river woods. My two favorite versions were the vanilla variety, which were realistic images of the scenes, and versions inspired by Caravaggio, or, to some extent, inspired by the best painting interpretations of dinosaurs from before the age of computer generations. I decided to show you the photographic variations the other day, but I really liked the painting ones too. I liked them too much to just leave them behind, it turns out, and so I am hoping you can bear seeing much the same pictures you've already seen, but with a very different feel to them. 

Dinosaurs on the river

 

Last week I went walking on the river's shore. I love the tangled woods down there, the high river, and the lowlands that so easily flood that the city has more or less left it all alone for a hundred years. It feels rich and ancient, independent and wild. It may not be the abode of dinosaurs, after all, the world of deciduous trees was not the world of dinosaurs, but I find dinosaurs fit in well enough anyway...

My walk in Disney

 

There isn't any reason to complicate this.

I went for a walk today. I went to one of my favorite spots down by the river, with woods all along it. I took some pictures.

I tried to take the very best pictures I could, but I could see right away they looked a little lonely, the pictures. The places I took the pictures of didn't seem lonely. They seemed happy. But the pictures seemed lonely and I wanted to cheer them up as soon as I could.

So I gave them animals. Well I mostly gave them animals. I gave a few flowers too. And a mushroom.

They watched me over my shoulder and said, change this and fix this and could you put a flower in the squirrel's mouth.

I could put a flower in a squirrel's mouth.

Then they were quiet for awhile.

"Do you want them to be less real?" I asked.

"Yes please." They said quietly, in a small voice I could barely hear.

"Should I make them look like Disney?" I asked.

They thought for awhile and then they shook their head yes.

I made them look like Disney.

They shook their head yes again.

I walked home. When I was almost there I looked at them. 

I thought, wow.

"Were the woods I was walking in really this pretty?" I asked.

They looked over my shoulder again.

"Yes." They replied. "This is exactly where you were." 

Which is just what you want your photographs to say.