The answer to everything

Here it the answer to all your problems.

I was out at front desk of the library with a youngish colleague, one who is somewhat new and more or less temporary. We were handling the relentless barrage of calls for our curbside pickup routine. She was having problems because her phone was so loud and the people blaring into her ear were driving her crazy. She wanted to know how to turn down the volume on the phone.

"You can do what I did." I said helpfully.

"What's that?"

"Just wait 25 years and your hearing will start to go."







She said something else to that, but I didn't quite catch it.

A game

In accordance with my attempt at a low key week of blog writing, I would like to share a picture or two. But it's not regular pictures of flowers or bugs or bunnies that I have so readily been showing you lately. Rather, it's from a game!

I know!

I'm not sure what I know, but... totally!



It's not really a "game" per se. It's more like a little city building toy I have been playing with on my computer. It's called "Townscaper". It's not hard to make lovely little European Cities in the Sea.





I like it. So here's what it looks like:

And here's one that's a little more intimate and Venice like:

And then with butterflies?











via GIPHY










And then, finally, the more realistic versions:












via GIPHY














via GIPHY

Butterfly lands

Surely not more than a week ago I wrote a post about butterflies. It was about how they didn't land.


And so I couldn't photograph them.



This may have been sour grapes from someone with a whirring and whizzing camera who wanted nothing more than to take eight million pictures of any butterfly who would just settle down and... let me.

I did come to the very mature understanding that butterflies fly because they can and, wouldn't you?



I was so much older then.







The butterfly has landed!

I took eight million pictures of this butterfly.  I hope you don't mind if I show you all of them.

That's two.

Okay, it might not be eight million. But I hope you can feel the excitement.

I honestly have no idea why this next one is my favorite, I mean, the flower is IN THE WAY!

I'm not sure what our count is, 400 so far?

In this one the butterfly is, actually, I don't know. But look! It's a butterfly!

And finally we come to picture number eight million. What a journey! 

Leave your name below if you viewed all eight million and your prize will arrive in six to eight weeks.

The photography detour

We're still on our photography detour while I work out how mad I am at my library job during the pandemic and try to find some way through. For now, there's always the flowers.

Hey people, remember that there's always the flowers. It won't do much, but the flowers need to be flattered and we all must do our part.

Where we last left it off we were developing our framing, which, to put it indelicately, is where we plop tiny ornate frames over the flowers in the field, or, more accurately, in the yards of our neighbors, while old ladies peer out their screen doors and give us suspicious looks. We were developmentally moving from ornate, Italian papers to using natural elements like leaves. But today it's maybe more of a hodge podge of pictures I haven't had an opportunity to present on blog instead of a full development of our aesthetic schemes.










Nevertheless here is sort of where we left off:

This ahead is an experiment with using leaves as masks that only rarely worked, but I feel is worth further exploration:

This lead to basically putting found things on found things, like this eroded leaf on the petals of a flower.




I still have this leaf!

This one is just a straight up picture of a Hosta leaf doing its strange thing.

And then finally one last framed one that makes me want to go out and buy a lot of very expensive and exotic decorated papers:

The framing pictures

As promised here are some more of the framing pictures and not a lot of commentary. And by "not a lot" I mean "A medium amount" because I'm me.






As you see I have moved more into decorative papers for my frames (from Rome no less!). The joy of using decorative paper from Rome is that when I use it I feel that I urgently need to go back there to replace it.




They'll let us back one day.












Usually I avoid ants when they start wandering around the flowers, but this tableau made me feel more positive about them...

One of the first lessons I've learned is to make sure to overlap the flower in the frame or it looks a little like it's all done post processing. For my level of photography most of it comes down to focus after that...

I don't know how to describe this except that it makes me queasy. This is the quality I look for in my pictures.

Here's where I started combining elements. You'll probably see more dead leaves tomorrow. Not long ago I wondered: What will I do in the Fall with all the leaves. 

I guess I've already started...

Framing

After 2,750 or so blog posts it suddenly occurs to me, this is not a confessional sort of blog. I suppose it's there sometimes, that confessional quality, if you feel like looking under all the curlicues, or if you catch clerkmanifesto on just the right sort of day, and you have an open heart, but mostly we're pretty busy here with a whole lot of...

other things.

But right now I am feeling very sad.

I'm having a mostly terrible time navigating my way through working in a poorly run library in a pandemic. I've never been so unhappy at my job. I don't see leaving my job any time soon for a whole bunch of reasons. But I'm a little too mad all the time, and upset, and tired, and really... sad. 

So I think I need to be a little bit quiet for a few days and do some working it out.





This isn't a confessional sort of blog.

Lately I started taking a kind of picture I call "framed". You already saw one in an earlier post, a couple of times actually, of a dead beetle. Here it is again to give you the idea, third time is the charm:

That's the general concept I'm experimenting with, though maybe not so... dead.

So I think maybe I'll share some of these framed pictures with you for the next few days. 

Maybe I'll say things and maybe I won't. They're really just a work in progress...




Here are a couple of the first tries to get you started:

All the words

Dear Clerkmanifesto:


I am a huge fan. Maybe the biggest ever. I am such a big fan of your blog I would even consider telling other people about it if they didn't look at me funny when I did. Some of your posts have made me giggle hysterically. Some have caused me to rethink my fundamental views about things. And I even think there have been extraordinary essays you wrote that have made me a better person!

There's just one problem: 

The reading.

Oh the reading! And the thinking.

Reading and thinking and thinking and reading! Isn't life hard enough already?

Anyway, thanks.

I'm going to go take a nap now.



Your devoted reader when I remember "Oh yeah, that blog" and have enough energy for it,

Regards,




Pug "Luce" Murillo














Dear Pug (Luce):



How's this for no reading? 

I call it "Friends".

Hang in there.



Clerkmanifesto

Beetle picture story

This picture story involves some of the harsh realities of the natural world IN ACTION. So, unfortunately, it is maybe not suitable for, 

um, 

well, 

anyone. 

Anyone with a heart at all.


But we're sort of stuck with it all, so we should try and be Buddhist or something, I guess.

I guess.





It all starts with this beetle, who is everywhere around town these days:

There was even one of these guys on the table between me and my wife a couple of hours ago!



Careful readers may notice that this is the same exact variety of beetle whose corpse I, er, borrowed, for a little Audobonesque photography a few days ago. To refresh your memory it's as seen here:

Now bear with me as we change gears for a bit.


Despite all my delightful ribbing of god for being a psychopathic asshole, I have always been a big fan of nature. I love nature! 

It's pretty! And endlessly interesting. And intricate. And mercurial. And did I mention it being pretty?

So there's that, thank you very much.

But for all my interest and time in nature I've never been a great Naturalist.

I love the idea of being a Great Naturalist. I like reading books by great naturalists. I love to look at nature and to spend time out in it as long as there aren't too many mosquitoes, or rain, or hot weather, or ticks, or angry bears, or spiders, or wind, or freezing nights, or sunshine. But minutely observing just exactly what's going on in the natural world takes a fair bit of discipline. And notes. And stillness. And attention. And patience.

So I find it way easier to take a good and enjoyable look at the world around me and then sort of deduce, or make up what's going on. 

Making up what's going on does not mean it's not right!

But I accept that it's not terribly scientific. It's not being a Naturalist.

But then something happened. 

I started taking pictures all the time with my super zoom lens and my super close up lens.

I'm not saying this made me into a Naturalist. But this endeavor, and my camera, has been revealing to me a kind of detail of the natural world around me that I've never had the commitment, skill, and luck to see before. 

I mean, I liked flowers, sometimes a lot, they're colorful and extraordinarily beautiful. They smell great. They're hopeful! 


But I never really understood before that they looked like this:

Or like this:

Yes, I probably could have guessed at their being something like it, but that's not the same as having my soul rocked by it. A rocked soul stands aside from the rational mind. It's more like a spice.




Another good example of this new, almost Naturalist vision is with the Robins. I've been looking at Robins with some pleasure for my whole life. I've also known from all the storybooks and proverbs about how Robins really like worms. That's nice. But until recently, until I stared into my zoom and followed Robins around for minutes at a time (very Naturalist type behavior), I never saw the Robins actually eating these said worms.




Now I see it all the time!

Maybe even a little too much, if you know what I mean.



Today I witnessed a special nature event. It was very exciting. I have seen nature events before, naturally enough: a giant flock of geese, a Golden Eagle catching a fish in the Mountains, deer in a lightning storm, a massive bloom of poppies, you know the kind of thing. But this one was a little smaller. I'm not sure I would've noticed if I weren't taking my photos.

Now let's go back to that beetle. 


I found some more. And since I'm not likely to say no to trying to get just the right shot of their iridescent green heads as they wander across flowers I was taking some pictures.


Like this:

And then all of a sudden there were birds everywhere!



It was the nature event!



And it wasn't Robins, who I have lots of pictures of, or sparrows, who I have a few pictures of but they're not very colorful. It was three varieties of birds that aren't uncommon, but that are shy enough, and uncommon enough, that I haven't been able to get pictures of them. They tend to prefer the deeper foliage of trees, and so far all the ones I've seen dart about constantly.

These weren't really different in that sense. They were very active. I didn't get a picture at all of the woodpecker. But because there were several blue jays I was actually able to get an only a little bit blurry and not quite close enough picture of one.

A blue jay! 

Oh boy. 

But most of the birds jumping around the tree were this yellowish one. I think it's an American Goldfinch. There were at least a dozen of them hopping busily around. I've never seen so many before. It was pretty exciting.

I took as many pictures as I could, knowing I would be lucky if one or two turned out, and eventually all the birds left and I went on my way too.

Naturally I wondered what all the excitement was in the tree. And I had my surmise that it was some small feeding event, but that's just guesswork, the work of the old me who wasn't a Naturalist, as opposed to the new me who is almost a Naturalist.



But all wasn't revealed until I went home and looked through my photos.

I came across a decent action pic of the (maybe it's an) American Goldfinch. He (she?) was eating just like I guessed.


Take a good look:

Yep.

That's our beetle!