Dena's Surprise

Can you spot the foreigner?

Collected some sea glass yesterday.

Finding the green pieces among the millions of stones & pebbles was easy.

The greenish blue pieces weren’t terribly hard to find either.

This is one of the best beaches I've ever seen if you want to find enormous 

quantities of sea glass ... and it's a 5 minute walk from our house. 

Among the millions of rocks & pebbles, the glass pieces seem few

and far between, until they start to add up in your pocket.

Then, among the millions of rocks & pebbles,

one white one stood out.

I pocketed it with the pieces of glass.

My pocket filled quickly, and as it did, 

I thought of that one white pebble.

Surrounded by glass, mostly green with a bit of blue.

Imported out of its comfortable majority of stones,

Suddenly isolated. 

Different.

Jostled, engulfed, immersed...

Standing out like a…

like a pebble in a sea of glass.

East doesn’t just meet west here…

it engulfs and overwhelms it,

it rarely pauses to consider your presence.

When noticed, there are stares, comments, laughter,

and the occasional bold child who wants to show off his three English phrases.

I no longer feel the difference by skin color alone, 

but rather by something almost chemical.

Picture how we think...

Living is simple.
Life is complex.

Words have such power,
yet pictures turn "pow" into "DY-NO-MITE!"

a guy who gets to dress up other peoples wordsWe just watched Tim Burton's delicious visualization of
R.Dahl's Chocolate Factory...
we laughed,
we drooled,
we oompa'd and we loompa'd
(this part gave me nightmares when i was a kid)

I dreamed aloud that my kids
(each more graphically talented than i)
would one day turn some great book into some great film.

I began to feel that gloom again,
the one that always says I've got nothing
of value to say, or write, or create...

Countdown to Simplicity

Simplicity as a standalone life-goal can actually get rather complicated.  (Note the failure rate of new year's resolutions to "simplify my life")
When simplicity is embraced as part of a package deal however the fruit can be sweet (not that I have much experience yet in this, but I like what I've tasted thus far)

In a month we'll be back in California.