A Transformation . . .

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Just a couple of posts down thanks were offered to the kind couple who hosted us in la Réunion for a good part of February. When Lynne over at Décolleté Glimpses saw the photo attached to those thanks, she started playing around with it in Photoshop, and the below two images are the results of her doodlings. From Décolleté Glimpses you can find links to her other blog and website, to get a better idea of just what a fine artist she is. But it's not only about art; mainly it's simply about enjoying life. And be careful if you should start communicating with her via the comment box or otherwise . . . she has a wicked sense of humor. You have been warned. Thanks Lynne for these beauties ! I think you really caught the essence of the original image, and the transformations are awesome, imho . . .
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The Floating Dream Bridge . . .

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Somewhere in distant southern seas
Lies an island steeped in mysteries
As dark as the history of colonies
Despite the bright sun that bathes the place
Despite torrential rains
That wash all despair away
Down the ravines cut deep
Into the flank of the land
Land that flows like fire
Solidifying into rock
To be worn by the wind and rain
Far in the east of this distant place
Long ago a bridge was built
To cross a deep ravine
It served for many years
But finally a new road
And a new bridge were needed
To respond to the demands
Of modern times
The old bridge obsolete
Still standing but abandoned
In suspended animation
Keeping us all in suspense
Us few curious travellers
Who may venture here
To walk its length
And gaze over the edge
Into the abyss
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Far away to the east
In the dark heart of Europe
Lies another bridge
A figurative bridge
A haunted bridge
Or just haunting
Deep in the forests of Romania
A bridge that joins continents
A bridge that joins hearts
A bridge that searches souls
A bridge that flows
With the water going under
A bridge that sings in the twilight
A bridge that whispers at dawn
A bridge between clouds
A floating bridge
A floating bridge of dreams . . .
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One can look up from the old bridge, across the new bridge, to the heights of the volcano in the distance, a volcano that regularly sends streams of lava down the mountain and into the sea . . .
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And on this floating, suspended bridge of dreams, on the handrails, many messages of love have been carved into the metal, and over the years since, the messages have rusted . . . but has the love spoken of rusted too ? ? ? Is it possible for love to rust ? ? ?
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Love you forever . . .
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Ensemble . . . together . . .
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To the tune of : Who do you love ? ? ?
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Is this the Lolita that Nabokov wrote of ? ? ?
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Eternal love . . .
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Musical heroes memorialized . . .
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Restos du Coeur . . . Have a Heart . . .

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In these days of economic crisis, far from finished apparently, few employed people are ever much farther than a heartlessly cold business decision from gainful employment and a roof over one's head, to life on the street. And were one to end up unemployed and homeless, one might just be very thankful someday for the existence of the "Restos du Coeur"... "Restaurants of the Heart", who provide meals to homeless people, and have been doing so since 1985 if I understand correctly.

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In any case, I just saw over on Peter's blog, Peter's Paris, that two main sponsors of the Restos du Coeur, Carrefour and Danone corporations, will offer ten free meals for every blog article published about the Restos du Coeur. If this is so, then in my humble opinion it is well worth doing. Apparently one just needs to send an e-mail with the link to the blog post in it to this e-mail address : hub@lanetscouade.com
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So here's hoping that ten people will get a hot meal thanks to these few words here . . . it's the least I can do. And if a few of you jump on the bandwagon . . . imagine how many meals that could add up to . . .
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On the Beach . . .

On Reunion Island, the beaches just go on and on, sometimes accompanied by colorful bits of architecture . . .
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A message scratched in the sand . . .
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And as there were requests from certain quarters for more Indian Ocean sunsets . . .
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Simply Thanks . . .

And before I go any further with tales of la Réunion, I would be remiss to not extend a great big thank you, mille fois merci, to Bernard and Valorie, who were our gracious hosts for a good part of our stay on that fascinating island. So if you happen to see this, well, really, we just can't thank you enough for your lovely hospitality. And I would especially like to thank Valorie, who very quickly realized what sorts of things I was interested in photographing, and she offered to stop on many occasions so I could get out of the car and put the camera to work on old wrecks of cars, abandoned buildings, interesting graffiti, and so forth. And it was she who spotted the light in the room here silhouetting an array of objects on shelves by the window one night, and asked if I maybe wanted to try to get a shot of it . . . which I proceeded to do from the car window. Many thanks V., couldn't have done it without you !
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Back to Winter . . .

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Instructions For Re-Opening Blog After Vacation Is Over :
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1. Take taxi home from airport, pay exorbitant taxi fare. Marvel at how cold freezing weather is on a Sunday morning after two weeks in the tropics.
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2. Unpack suitcases, take long nap after sleepless night on airplane watching movies.
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3. Give affection starved cats plenty of hugs and patting.
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4. Put off blogging until tomorrow as too tired to see straight; too much to do still to get back into the swing of life at home again between two weeks worth of sweaty laundry, hiking boots to put away, snorkeling tubes and masks to stow in closet, etc. . .
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5. Open two weeks of postal mail, the usual bills etc... Clear out two weeks of spam e-mails interspersed with the occasional real message from a real person. Delete about 75 spammed comments from blog moderation, while publishing a few kind comments that came in while away...
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6. Go to bed early get long and refreshing good night's sleep in own bed with own pillow and quilt . . . close to heaven !
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7. Get up next day feeling nearly human again, have breakfast, make big mug of coffee, turn on PC, proceed to copy from compact flash memory cards approximately 25 giga-bytes of photos taken over the past two weeks to PC, back them up to external hard drive as well to prevent accidental loss of treasured images.
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8. Debate for long while about which of over 1700 photos taken while on l'île de la Réunion to post on blog first. Drink more coffee.
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9. Finally get down to serious business of blogging again . . . Wonder if anyone will still be out there to read this after such a long time away . . .
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So . . . after a much needed breather over the past couple of weeks away discovering Reunion Island, a small corner of France I'd heard of but never been to, it is good to be typing in this white box again, one starts to miss the good company of the blogosphere when away from it for too long. . .
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Reunion Island is a few hundred miles off the east coast of Madagascar. A volcanic island that sprang up out of the sea only about three million years ago, a relative youngster as far as dry land goes. The tortured history of a long series of geographic upheavals caused by volcanic eruptions is clearly evident on this relatively small island that rises out of the Indian Ocean to a height of about 10000 feet in altitude over a distance of not more than 20 miles from the coast to the highest point, le Piton des Neiges. An amazing place in many dimensions. Today it is what is known as a DOM of France, a "Département d'Outre Mer", or an overseas administrative territory. Hard to believe one can take a flight from Paris that lasts over 11 hours, crossing part of Africa and the equator, and land again . . . in France.
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This first post is not going to go into too much detail, call it hors d'oeuvres, une amuse-gueule as they say, a little bit of an appetizer. But there will be more to come . . . la Réunion will be another theme to be threaded into this multifarious creation over the coming weeks and months. And may you enjoy it as much as we did, even if only vicariously. Who knows, perhaps the images to come may inspire one or two of you to get in a sailboat and head across the wide oceans to pull into one of the ports of la Réunion some day soon . . .
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Tropical islands are reputed to have an abundance of palm trees and endless beaches . . . la Réunion is no exception. And although such attractions are far from the only sights worth seeing on the island, I guess they're as good a place to start as any, just to sort of whet your appetites for what will follow, picnics by the beach are a time honored tradition . . .
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At one end of the beach where the above palm trees were photographed, a place on the south coast of the island known as Grande Anse, a small corner of water was ringed with large stones to create a protected calm area for bathing, as otherwise the currents present there would render the water too dangerous for swimming. More on that later.
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The other end of the same beach . . . more palm trees . . .
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On several evenings we were treated to splendid sunsets, this was off the west coast, at a place called Hermitage les Bains . . .
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While wandering the island, north to south, east to west, in two different spots I stumbled on signs that couldn't help but remind me of one of the finest photography blogs out there in the blogosphere, run by one of the finest blogging pals one could ever wish to have stumbled on by pure hazard . . . none other than Loulou at Indiaphragme, so just to get back into the swing of blogging again, here's a little friendly coucou to Loulou . . . This first one was way up in one of the three interior cirques of the island . . . not easy to spot either, but as you know by now I like to poke around back streets and alleys . . .
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The second was in a beach town on the west coast, a pastry shop . . .
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This was the shop just adjacent to Chez Loulou, with a name symbolic of some of the best la Réunion has to offer, sun and vanilla, in great abundance. The white bird on the shutter is a paille-en-queue, or straw in the tail, an emblematic bird of the island . . .
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A Tall Tail or a Short Break ? ? ?

Well, I'm not going to beat about the bush, as it were . . . For the next two weeks or so, I'm going to be totally absent from the blogosphere . . . off on a desert island in the southern seas, returning to the origins of life on this planet, returning to volcanic powers and primitive flowers, getting away from industrial disease and other 21st century forms of madness. Going back in time. Way back. Getting to know my family again. Going cold turkey from the daily injections of blog posts and comments and counter comments and followers and site meters and visits to all your blogs. And hopefully will return all charged up and ready and raring to go again.
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What a year it's been. I can't tell you how much I've been enjoying the ongoing conversations with many among you. I never dreamed the blogosphere would turn out to be such a rich and vibrant community. I had no expectations when starting out with the blog, had no idea what it might lead to. Ok, it hasn't gone viral or anything, but you know... so what. It has led to some wonderful people, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. Thank you so much for everything over the past year, your companionship and friendship on this strange voyage means the world to me. And I'll be back. But right now, I need a breather... to go do some deep breathing exercises by the waterside. Or on top of a volcano.
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Now, yesterday it was a zebra, today it is a giraffe who has wandered into these pages. And it sure looks like she has something to say to us all. But the question is : what ? So if you have any ideas about what this gentle giraffe is saying to us. . . well, just go ahead, that's what the comment box is there for. . . (and it almost looks like her face has been tattooed. . .)
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Oh, and given that I'm going to abandon everyone for two weeks, I won't leave you empty handed. I discovered recently that a highschool classmate from way back when has taken to writing books, and getting published. I had to give one a try, and I'm awfully glad I did. The Blue Tattoo, by Margot Mifflin is one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. Margot has done an exquisite job of researching the story of Olive Oatman, who was captured by Yavapai Indians in what is today southern Arizona after the murder of most of her family members, was then traded to the Mohave tribe along the Colorado River, where she lived away from white culture for several years in the early 1850's. While living with the Mohaves her face was tattooed, a sign of belonging to the tribe. Her "release" from the Mohaves was negotiated finally, and she returned to her native culture, bearing trans-cultural baggage she no doubt carried with her the rest of her days.
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This book provides plenty of food for thought about a wide range of subjects, including the expansion of America into the West in the 1800's, where Indian cultures were obliterated along the way, the notions of what it means to belong to a culture, fascinating insight into the Mohave tribe's civilization, glimpses of the Mormons, the literature of cross-cultural captives, tattoos, and more, much more. So, while I'm away, I'd highly recommend that you stop by Amazon.com, and order a copy of Margot's book, you won't regret it. And they make excellent gifts. . . so give one to a friend or two too. Well, I hope this has grabbed your interest. They say there is no such thing as bad advertising . . . see you in a couple of weeks !
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Stars and Stripes . . .

Sometimes in the animated life of a blog, it becomes necessary, for no particularly good reason, to insert a photograph of a zebra. Or even of two zebras. You may understandably wonder . . . "Has he lost his marbles?" "Has he been drinking?" "Has he gone clear around the bend?" But nevertheless, the implacable logic of blogging required a zebra in this blog at this exact point in time. These are not, by the way, the first zebras to appear in these pages, and probably not the last. A total of no less than 12 previous posts have dealt with the philosophically challenging topic of zebras. How could such a divinely decorated ass's uncle exist in the first place ? Now that is a stumper . . .
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