…or too much time…
I’ve got too much time on my hands—it’s the only way I can explain this stretched metaphor where the skin on one’s face and plant cover on the earth are equated.
If plants are the skin, the face of the earth, then…
The sky, the earth, the clouds and water combine to give the most unique of deep and revitalizing facial treatments to the plants.
And afterwards…all are glowing…absolutely glorious…everyone is smiling!
Happy?
🙂
Water is special, respect it.
If you have water, you have richness.
If you have water, you have beauty.
If you have water, respect it.
If you don’t have water, death comes quickly…
Petal Mirror–is the universe in that petal mirror? Are those stars?
And if those are stars…what is the reverse mirror?
Mirrors, look into yourself? Or, mirrors, look into the clear night sky?
I was looking into this African violet petal mirror and saw everything about the night sky that I could not understand…and…everything about myself I could not understand.
Before I collapsed from dizziness, I asked how can a plant do this?
…and today, I’m happy just to enjoy this flower’s beauty. Really, I’m just fine. 🙂
In this photo is the loop of life. All the basics are there or implied. Tree yields wood for shelter. Tree implies arable soil and vegetation upon which all life subsists. Snow is the provision of water. That is all. The fuzzy bit is the uncertainty that all get automatically at the time of birth. But even with uncertainty the entire picture can indeed have balance, even though asymmetrical.
On 1May2016 an unexpected snow fell.
Sometimes sharp and crisp doesn’t tell the story. Fuzzy around the edges, that is real life. Between the door of birth and the door of death, uncertainty, that is the real day to day life.
I wonder how many people during the past century have been inviting these Africans into their homes and caring for them.
African violets: Saintpaulia ionantha. Seem right at home in either the kitchen or the living room. 🙂
In my 2006-2010 search for the Dubai landscape, I found Dubai was two entities. An Emirate, one of the seven that comprise the United Arab Emirates. And a Municipality, in the centre of a burgeoning 230km coastal megalopolis stretching from Ras al Khaymah in the north east all the way south west to Abu Dhabi.
The rulers of Dubai, the Emirate and the Municipality, are the family of Shaik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. Shaikh Mohammed, born in 1949, is the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Emir of Dubai.
He has built Dubai and its hospitality offerings as a place for family vacations.
That’s the official story but even in the ‘winter’, I found the weather too hot to be in the sun very long, before seeking AC. And in the summer, sometimes only after midnight it might be ok for casual walks of more than 15 minutes, before seeking AC.
I was in a conundrum. Maybe it was my cultural upbringing, but I thought that family vacations were outdoor experiences. Yet in the Dubai landscape, I found its climatic extremes always pushed me back indoors. Aha! The aha moment–AC shopping–indoors–spectacular architecture and attractions–yes indoor shopping as a family vacation. Hmm.
Family vacation with outdoor landscape as a condiment. Just use it a little. Hmm…
Dubai sits in the centre of this world.
I visited Dubai in the early 90s for business. Then in 2006, I moved to Dubai for business–four years living and doing business in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the Liwa Oasis.
My landscape challenge was a simple question: what is the Dubai landscape? Never found the answer. But in 2007 I put together a short series of seven figures that addressed some important landscape issues in the region.
This one addresses the population dynamic of the humans in a hemisphere that is measured by a six hour or less jet flight from Dubai. This is a Dubai-centric world hemisphere.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLAq_usAazU?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Ports and dhows are why the edges of the Empty Quarter are…not empty.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1CT1TtGNu4?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
For a visitor not familiar with the cultures of Southwest Asia, this map is a lame short hand code for that trans-dimensional experience.
Southwest Asia is where the first time visitor, having cultural roots in Western Europe or North America, and now having both feet firmly on the ground of this unusual cultural landscape, finds, for personal consumption, placed on the table before him, a plate with four pounds of sweets that all are just too sweet…and then, from the vague mist of too much sweetness, the visitor may realize…the game is on.
The Southwest Asia background geopolitics establish the contemporary context for the large construction projects in the Arabian Peninsula region–the region in which the Empty Quarter and my landscape story, The 23 Club, take place.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4EilvxlNrE?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Maps are fun. Maps are codes–landscape codes that blend natural and cultural geographies.
Maps and cartography…other ways of taking landscape journeys.
The Empty Quarter is the central landscape influence of my landscape story, The 23 Club.
Arabia Felix
Arabia Felix…happy? Why?
Felix is the only portion of the southern half of the Arabian Peninsula to receive regular rainfall. The tail ends of Indian sub-continent monsoon cyclones push into the mountains and valleys of the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula.
The valleys of Yemen have fertile soil and dependable rainfall–thus, felix, Arabia Felix.
