the strangeness of memory

So this is what perplexes me, as I slowly unpack and re-arrange my office.  Some things I've carried round with me, from university office to university office, since my first over-heated glass room in Bristol in 1980 (where, indeed, I caused consternation among the cleaning staff by growing tomatoes on my windowsill - very tasty ones, too - it was about the only thing that I could do in that non a/c'd climate).  Some are more recent.  I'm trying to be selective, or at least rotate.  But where did these faded rose petals come from?  I know the origins of the bowl they're in - a gift from a friend in Oxford.  But whence the dried blossoms?  You'd think that, in some T. S. Eliotian, Four Quartets like way, that they'd take me back to some gift, some gesture, some ... something.  They seem like a clichéd repository for memory.  But the horrible truth is that I can't even remember which country they originated in, although I have a sense that maybe, yes, they were once pulled together in a small bunch.  Does this mean that I should throw them out, since they no longer appear to be the bearers of any significance?  Or what?

seasonal

It's squash season.  And quite apart from all the Hallowe'en decorations (and live spiders), and pumpkins being carried around by people with ambitious ideas, presumably, of turning them into Trumpkins (anything to distract one from election nerves and jitters), it's also damp and rainy here in Los Angeles.  It must be fall!  It is quite wonderful to have it damp, even if also decidedly reminiscent of England.

hallowe'en decoration

Really, I don't think that we have to bother with Hallowee'en decorations this year - the front yard seems to be decorating itself.  Here's an orb weaver spider, happily eating a large fly.  Next, they caught a bee, which we were less ecologically happy about, even if fascinated to see it being wrapped up in spider thread to neutralize it.

to downtown

With a couple of hours to spare before the volleyball game this evening, we took the Expo line to downtown - emerged - ate at Little Sister, on 7th St (south-east Asian food - very much recommended) - and returned to campus and the Galen Center.  There was something very strange about going underground in LA - as though we started in LA and emerged in NYC, and vice-versa, an illusion sustained by having the subway under our feet as we ate.

pale greens

This looks somewhat like seaweed, or some strange maritime foliage - but that seems unlikely.  The plant's actually huge, sprawling out of a very large pot in the Huntington Gardens, and managed, even in today's dull, pre-rain light, to have a strange luminosity.

students being students

This is the view from my USC office window: green, pleasant, unremarkable, peaceful.  And on the grass neatly arranged, some specimens of student life, as if posed for a college brochure photo any time during the last forty years or so: one lying on their back reading a book; a couple sitting chatting/singing, with one playing the guitar, and one guy in the foreground, to all intents and purposes asleep.  On second thoughts, maybe someone more active should be photoshopped in to that last posture ...

Californian cliché

This elderly Chevy made its presence felt on our walk this evening.  It's not just its shiny chrome and stream lined tail fins that make this fit subject matter for a Larry Sultan mimicry photo; it's the impeccable 1950s domestic architecture behind it ...