It ain't braggin' if it's true

Thanks so very much to Austinist for naming Chatoyance their Favorite Random Blog of the Week. Made me smile! Go see them and say "howdy" when you get the chance.

Agave americana

Photo Friday: Portrait

Sculpture by Charles Umlauf, re-visioned and excerpted for Photo Friday. His is a beautiful Poetess.

Birthday present

Summer-born

Flesh born under a surgeon’s knife, soul borne by gusts
from a summer thunderstorm, bruised sky roiling as self
folds down from Self like origami from sheets – of rain,
of the leaves of all books written and not yet written falling
like me into spine-stiff casing as I was bound from dream
to womb to air crackling with ether and ozone, lightning
licking a gleaming alphabet onto my bloodstreaked skin,
unbound, unbounded, unfolded, unfolding from arc to arc
under the Perseids, following their spark back home.

Crow about...color

Stopped sign

Mercurial

X-it

Presence

In between

Illustration Friday: Opposite

Although the boxes made noise when I shook them, they were ultimately empty.
(Click for a larger empty.)

Moody Monday: Exotic

Vitex agnus-castus and contrails: one exotic, and one native to Texas.

Sun / Storm

As always, click for more detail...

Transitory

Photo Friday: Common

And the most common letter in the English language is...

Mexcellente

Click for "grande-sizing"...

Thursday Challenge: Stuff

Got my Thursday Challenge in a bit early...long day, so posted while I could. Just some very interesting Stuff I saw while wandering around.

Framed

Glass flow

Ranch road...

...and tattered corn.
(Best larger -- please click to grow.)

Happy coffee cans

Illustration Friday: Sacrifice (the illusion of self)

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
c.1250, from O.Fr. sacrifise (12c.), from L. sacrificium, from sacrificus "performing priestly functions or sacrifices," from sacra "sacred rites" (prop. neut. pl. of sacer "sacred," see sacred) + root of facere "to do, perform" (see factitious). L. sacrificium is glossed in O.E. by ansegdniss.

Back-country drive poem

Terse

Radiant Number 8 gravel a rougher bed
than shell roads you said, and I said yes.

Heat makes the air dance baked shimmy-shake
mirages pooling in rut-roads, flouring us with
dust the color of talc, but no mind. We’re gone
down to where there is nothing but bent grass
and dry sunflowers, all the everynothing, to
listen to the vast chirring terse once stopped.

Arc of a story (no words)

Shadowplay 2

Photo Friday: Remarkable

Thursday Challenge: Animals(Cow Hide)

Ambiguous pond

Slough's edge

See the dragonfly?
I didn't, until I finished and posted.
Hint: click to enlarge, and then look again...and again.

Moody Monday: Infectious

Silly grin? I caught it...so infectious.

The VW dreams of Rosemaling

RustFest

For Lydia and Kyknoord...and all you other fans of oxidation.

Detroit Diesel

Photo Friday: Summer

Sparklytexturesnowballmobile

When Mary Kay Career Car dreams go bad.

Thursday Challenge: Outdoors

Iconic sunflowers everywhere.
From A Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg:
"...A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence!..."

Dim rainbow

Made me think of JMW Turner.
Doing a Google search, I found Turner was also a poet.

From his poem Fallacies of Hope, excerpted for his 1843 painting The Morning After the Deluge:
“…In prismatic guise
Hope’s harbinger, ephemeral as the summer fly
Which rises flits, expands and dies. …”

Not gone yet

For all my American friends, Happy Independence Day!
And for all, happy independent thinking, creativity, and heart!

Moody Monday: Indifferent

From Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens:

"...The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue. ..."

Dragonfly

You see it yet?
Click to make it a bit easier to find...

Before the storm

Illustration Friday: Sticky

She dreamt sticky, asphalt-filled dreams...
(Better larger. Please do click, but try not to stick.)

Ascent

Photo Friday: Happiness is...

...the butterscotch smell of Ponderosa pine.