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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Split Personality . . .

In case anyone is wondering what Mr Toad looks like, here are a couple of self portraits done in Paris circa 1993 which turned up today . . . well, I admit, my split personality was showing a bit that day. . .
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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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Zillions of Zebras !

Having just posted the decaying circus poster below here, and while still in the zebrology inspired trance state brought on by resurrecting ancient images of zebras, here are a couple more pieces from the Phillips Collection holdings . . . both are wall hangings that grace my bedroom walls. . . what could be better than waking to see zebras roaming the fading morning dreamscape ? May your days too be blessed by the presence of zads of zebras !

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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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The Phillips Collection

In fact one could say I started this blogging adventure about 8 years ago, but that was before I had any inkling of what a blog was or could mean, and so the first blog was in the form of a scrapbook containing images and scraps of writing. I facetiously named it The Phillips Collection, as my last name is Phillips, but I have no connection to the Phillips family that founded the more well known Phillips Collection art museum in Washington DC. I have however visited the Phillips Collection in Washington, and my own smaller, private, Phillips Collection contains a few posters of artworks which belong to the art museum Phillips Collection, and which are prominently marked The Phillips Collection in big bold print. . . No doubt they will soon appear in these pages. Anyway, the title page of that earlier scrapbook was a sketch I did of a Georgia O'keefe painting of Ranchos Church, New Mexico . . . as the entire beginning of the scrapbook story was linked to a large framed poster of that painting ; more on that later. Don't mean to leave you hanging, but it's time for me to go get my beauty sleep. . .
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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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