First Post

I am starting this blog to find out who is looking out through my eyes.  This will be my place to collect and catalog the things that touch me as I move through my life.  I have no goal or structure other than to warm myself by gathering, examining, manipulating in one way or another, and generally delighting in things that I find beautiful and compelling.  It will be a place to expand rather than condense, although over time I expect some recurrent themes will emerge.

I live in Irvine, California.  I didn't like it here for a long time.  I spent a lot of energy hating it.  I am in graduate school and I will be leaving anyway, so it is a temporary home.  Then at some point I started seeing Orange County differently.  I started seeing all of these little details, and I started hunting for things I liked, and then more and more tiny pockets of awesomeness emerged.  I have even found myself enjoying the suburban structure of Irvine- it is so clean and ordered, which makes it interesting to look at in and of itself, but maybe even more interesting is taking opportunities to do unexpected things in this environment, and finding places where the placid suburban landscape is just begging to be played with.

These pictures are from Turtle Rock Park in Irvine.  There is a stream which on a warm day is the perfect place to play, and also a little nature park.  People look at us like we are crazy splashing around in the stream.  I guess we look kinda like hillbillies, two sometimes naked little kids and me playing with sticks and dead crayfish and whatever else is on hand that day.  Usually when we play in it other little kids come over and want to get in too and their parents give me dirty looks and won't let their kids take their shoes off.  But I seriously don't know how you could not look at this stream and immediately think of getting in it.  In the late afternoon the sunlight filters through the trees that grow on the banks and it looks really pretty.