Dreaming of a Better World

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A Better World
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It was one of those lovely autumn afternoons
Where the rains of the day before
Had given way to washed pale blue skies and sun
The trees still had enough leaves remaining
To provide some more serious raking work
But she was out in the yard
Running from patches of shade
To bright green sunlit grass
Blond hair unbrushed
Brilliant in the golden radiant light
I stood still as one transfigured
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She had one of those pink bottles in her hand
Full of soap solution
In her other hand the plastic ring attached to the cap
She was blowing bubbles as best she could
Five years old and dancing her private dance
Screwing up her face and blowing
For all she was worth
No bubbles coming stamping her foot
Shaking her butt in five year old frustration
Dipping the ring in the soap again
This time blowing softly
Her lips pursed as if for a kiss
And a long stream of beautifully round bubbles erupts
She shakes her hair with joy
Running after the floating swirling worlds of light
Pure magnificent five year old delight
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Then looking up
Seeing me at the window
Leaning with forehead rested on raised hand
She stands up tall
Throws her shoulders back
Raises her right hand to right eyebrow
And gleefully shouts, “Garde à vous !”
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And my heart expired my heart went out
I only had one wish one terrible dreadful futile wish
I wished I could have offered her another world
Ten times more beautiful
And a thousand times kinder than this one
Something akin to the radiant orbs she launched
Unleashed from her bottle of soap
Upon the autumn breeze
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What's In A Name . . .

For some no doubt vain reason, I tried doing a Google search on my name tonight, just for the heck of it. . . and I was surprised to find out after all these years what a multi-faceted, diverse, and varied person I am. In fact there are quite a few of me, and this list is not exhaustive. So watch out, there are more of me than you thought possible, and we are watching you ! Here are a few links to some of the more prominent Owen Phillips on this planet (there were 3,790,000 Google listings for Owen Phillips, so you will pardon me if I did not explore them all) :
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Owen Phillips - Illustrator . . . London, UK
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Owen Phillips - Illustration Editor, The New Yorker Magazine
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Owen Phillips - Professor of Economics, University of Wyoming
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Dr. Owen Phillips - Obstetrics & Gynecology . . .
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Owen Phillips - Geophysics Professor, Johns Hopkins University
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Owen Phillips - Writer for the Newstatesman
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Owen Phillips - Playwright
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Owen Phillips - 6'6", 285 pounds, professional wrestler, oh my god !
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Owen Phillips - A Modern Major General in the Australian Army in WWI
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Google Page 11 Reference to blog Life Is Beautiful where Owen Phillips left a comment
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Google Page 12 link to Magic Lantern Show, a blog by a certain Owen Phillips
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Saving the best for last, a man after my own heart :
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Owen Phillips - Creative Design (Yorkshire UK)
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Owen Phillips - Music (Yorkshire, UK, same person as above)
He likes the Grateful Dead too ! And guess what ? We have the same middle name !!!
He happens to be a very fine photographer as well, as you can see from this lovely sunset shot done by Owen (not by me ! by Him !) (Owen, I hope you don't mind... ! After our e-mail exchanges I took the liberty. . . but if not ok, well, I can see the lawsuit : Owen Phillips vs. Owen Phillips !) LOL !
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So what are the chances that there could be two people named Owen Martin Phillips on this planet, both with reddish hair, both acoustic guitar players with very similar taste in music, both with a strong passion for photography, and both sufficiently savvy on the internet to have found one another through their websites. . . personally, I'm just flabbergasted. . . will have to ask him when his birthday is. . .
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Photo by Owen Phillips of Yorkshire, UK, not by me...

PS Just for trivia's sake, there is also a fictional Owen Phillips who makes a cameo appearance in Stephen King's novel IT. (In Part 3 Grownups, Chapter 11, Section 2 Eddie Kasbrak...) King's youngest son, btw, is named Owen Philip King. . .
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Road to Dream House . . .

Just a few posts down I wrote about my dream house in the woods. I think this may be the road that goes there . . .
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Dreaming of Eternity . . . (the return)

I found this simple stone in a Louisville, Kentucky graveyard way back in 1992, and couldn't resist posing for a shot with the shutter release timer . . . no hurry though to end up under something like this . . .

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Virgin Rust . . .

As with the rusted face in the preceeding post, this virgin figure was also exuding an aura of great peace. Some of the metal working artists who produced creations like this one really were quite talented, although totally unknown. So whoever you were, long dead sculptor, I commend thee here, your work was beautiful, and even more so with a hundred years worth of patina from rust and rain and wind and frost. . . may you sleep peacefully.

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Door to the Underground

In all my years of poking around in cemeteries in various countries, I've never seen a tomb quite like this one. In fact, I'm not even sure if this is a tomb at all. It looked more like a door, and I think if one were to open the padlock and lift the heavy metal plate by the handles on it, one would probably find a flight of stairs there, going down, down, down into the darkness. Someone even left a broom laying handily nearby to sweep the stairs with. To what underworlds do those stairs lead ? One of these nights armed with some powerful flashlights, I may just have to go find out . . . if I'm not back on the blog again, well at least you'll know where I went . . .

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Lions and Tigers and... !

To complement the bear and boar scene just below, here is some more wildlife for you, well, they were not so wild, in their circus holding cage, where they waited before going on stage in a small travelling show I happened upon last Summer, in Brittany, France... seems like these two were getting on just fine despite their disparate species. It is true there are sometimes offspring born between lions and tigers... ligers, or tions... truth is stranger than fiction.

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In Bruges !

The enclosed courtyard of the Begjinhof Convent in Bruges, Belgium is one of the loveliest places I've had the good fortune to stumble on recently. Calm and quiet prevail, the trees lean gracefully, while a blaze of late afternoon sun all but obscured the distant church spire... In general Bruges is a beautiful city, well worth the visit ! Don't be put off by the disparaging comments or violence in the movie "In Bruges"... just kidding, I'm sure the producers were doing the best they could to promote tourism in Belgium...
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Bercy Bottles !

A few earlier postings in the dim distant mists of early history in this blog mentioned the once renowned wine warehouse area in Paris, les Entrepots de Bercy, which was a vast quarter of big old warehouses serving as a stocking and distribution center for a large part of the wine consumed in Paris... you can imagine the quantities involved over the years ! ! In 1986 I was able to slip under a gate and took a trespassing walk (I know, I'm bad) in the Bercy warehouse section of Paris, before the whole zone was razed to make way for apartment blocks and offices... a sad loss of an important historic site. These crates full of empty bottles were stacked outside, waiting to be filled from the huge wine casks arriving by barge on the Seine River. An example of French culture at its finest here ! Wow, all this writing is making me thirsty ! Going to go uncork a bottle...
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Have Camera Will Travel

In case anyone was wondering how the author of this blog has held up after surviving nearly 50 years of life on this topsy turvy planet, here I am wandering a back country lane in Brittany, western France, last summer... still have some red hair left, and still weigh roughly what I weighed in 1978... hopefully still have a few years left to continue roaming backwaters looking for that dream car and dream house (see earlier posts) and documenting whatever other oddities as may cross my path ... what really had me interested here were all those micro wild flowers growing right out of this ancient stone wall ... it never ceases to amaze me how life will grab hold almost anywhere and make a valiant stand, hanging on against all odds... love this kind of discovery... have camera, will travel !

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Armchairs That We've Known

This photo was taken in Paris before an area known as Les Entrepots de Bercy had been transformed into office buildings and upscale apartments. The Bercy Warehouses was acres and acres of ancient wine warehouses along the Seine that had lain abandoned for years. I was lucky to slip under a fence one day and roam around in there, because not long after that day, the entire place was bull-dozed... a criminal act if there ever was one. More pictures will follow from the Bercy Warehouses... if I'd only known then what I know now, I'd have taken hundreds more photos than I did. This one always seemed like a stage scene to me, just waiting for the actors to come in from the wings...

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Armchair
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It was sitting there
Next to the dumpster
In the rain
Drooping
Looking far less like an armchair
An old tired down on its luck armchair
A Bowery Row beatnick beat up armchair
An armchair that had obviously endured
At least fifteen years
Of sweat and farts and pretzel crumbs
Spilled beer and ketchup stains
All of that and more undoubtedly
Without a complaint
Yet for all of that
Those fifteen arduous years
Those fifteen faithful years
There it was
Sitting
Next to the dumpster
In the rain
Looking far less
Like an armchair
Than it looked
Like an old and tired dog
Told unceremoniously
To leave
To go away
To get out
After all those years
And it went down the street
With head down
And tail between legs

The pain was crushing
Like the soggy plaid upholstery

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Transformed

The magic window posted below was transformed quite some time ago for other purposes, long forgotten, but just another case of : there is always more than one way to look at anything, as in Both Sides Now, or both sides then...

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DeSoto Detail

Hernando de Soto travelled widely, but ended badly, dying of a fever along the Mississippi River in the 1500's. The car named for him fared similarly. I had never seen a DeSoto automobile that was still in running condition at close range until stumbling on one in a back street of Damascus, Syria in April,2007. For years I've had a chrome DeSoto hubcap on my wall, which I found on an abandoned car lying on its roof in the woods near Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. That hubcap will no doubt make its way into this blog sooner or later. A noble hood ornament if there ever was one... but another example of man's endeavors coming to naught.

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Point of View

I could never decide whether I liked this image better upside down or right-side up, it doesn't really matter. If I'd been hanging upside down from a tree branch, this is the scene you would have seen. The fact that light bounces off water with startling clarity never ceases to amaze me. Photo was taken along a quiet stretch of Nacote Creek, near Port Republic, New Jersey. A backwater town if there ever was one.

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Wildflowers and Weeds

To the north of Paris, not far from CDG Airport there are stretches of fields bordered by wildflowers, I am particularly partial to the time of summer when the wild poppies are blooming, that Monet celebrated so thoroughly with his "Coquelicots". Farther off in the field, and stretching away into the distance, another form of weed grows, insidious, omni-present, difficult to eradicate.

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