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Posts Tagged ‘Hillcrest’

Night Landscapes

Posted in art, art,poetry,writing, Photography, Poetry, Quotes, San Diego, wanderlust, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »

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I walk at night.
You can keep mornings, with the aftershave of salesmen, rush hour…with the Starbucks lines and hair perfectly
well done.

(Mafalda says that everything good in life messes up your hair)

You can have the morning with its blinding light, its lack of nuances…leave the night to blur lines, to hide and to reveal.

The morning of road warriors, weekend warriors, commute warriors, checkers of life’s milestones – I lost count, and it is not my race.

Leave me the profound night, let me walk at hours of my choosing, when empty streets whispher poetry lines, if you just listen.

This is my queendom, let me patrol my land of empty office buildings, of Mexican night workers, of quiet and shadows.

The night of orange streetlights, of vacant lots and sleeping churches.

Of red windows, where the artists burn.

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San Diego, the Night is My Territory

Posted in Architecture, art, art,poetry,writing, digital collage, photography, writing, architecture, Photography, Poetry, San Diego, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 16, 2015| 1 Comment »

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California Building Tower. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.


In the past couple of months, we’ve had the most spectacular sunsets – the most magnificent skies, really.

In addition, balmy, magical nights.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but San Diego and Southern California are becoming more and more lovely and precious each day.
It is like falling in love, all over again.

Tonight I want to share some night and sunset shots, reserving the day skies for another post.
These photos have all been taken and corrected on my HTC One camera, hence the sometimes annoying light ‘spilling’, low res and graininess.
I will start carrying my Panasonic camera again, and correcting on Photoshop. I realize that my photos look better on a small screen…
One day I would like to invest in a proper Digital DSRL, but for now accept these artisanal shots.

I have taken to making nightly pilgrimages to our Balboa Park.
This is our cultural park, with more than twenty art museums and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. The pairing of Spanish architecture and tropical greenery take me to Cuba, to Puerto Rico…to the Caribbeans. Balboa Park was built in 1915 for the Pan-American Exhibition, and is celebrating its Centenary this year!

The central plaza, Plaza de Panama, is now restored as the living room of the city.

To my eye, the park is more and more beautiful each month that goes by.

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View from Cabrillo Bridge. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.

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Night view from Cabrillo Bridge. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. January 2015.

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View of Plaza De Panama. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.

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Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.

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Arboretum. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.

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Sculpture Garden. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.

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Museum of Man. Balboa Park, Uptown San Diego. March 2015.

And here are other end-of-day scenes from San Diego.

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Normal Heights, San Diego. January 2015.

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Bankers' Hill, San Diego. January 2015.

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Hillcrest, San Diego. February 2015.

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University Heights, San Diego. February 2015.

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Hillcrest, San Diego. February 2015.

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Downtown San Diego, Gaslamp Quarter, Horton Plaza. December 2014

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Downtown San Diego, Gaslamp Quarter, Horton Plaza. December 2014.

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Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego. Cafe' Sevilla. January 2015.

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163 South Highway towards Downtown San Diego. View from Cabrillo Bridge, Balboa Park. March 2015.


And now, two poems to the Night.

The Night is Still

by Edith Matilda Thomas


The night is still, the moon looks kind,
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
An ivy climbs across thy blind,
And throws a light and misty wreath.

 
The dew hangs jewels in the heath,
Buds bloom for which the bee has pined;
I haste along, I quicker breathe,
The night is still, the moon looks kind.

Buds bloom for which the bee has pined,
The primrose slips its jealous sheath,
As up the flower-watched path I wind
And come thy window-ledge beneath.

The primrose slips its jealous sheath,—
Then open wide that churlish blind,
And kiss me through the ivy wreath!
The night is still, the moon looks kind.

….

A Gift

by Leonora Speyer


I Woke: —
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song,
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.

 
Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird’s-notes.


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Dispatch from the Blackout: Entre Chien et Loup/Between Hope and Fear

Posted in Architecture, architecture, art,poetry,writing, Cures for the Nothing, Photography, photography, Poetry, Writing, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It has been ten long days since my last post, ten days of travels, of letters written and not sent, of (re) search.

In the middle of it all, I experienced the ‘biggest blackout in the history of San Diego county’. Thursday, September 8th, 2011, power went off for millions of people in Southern California, Baja California and Arizona. No ATM’s , shuttered stores, nowhere to buy food or water in a world where, when the machines stop, the city stops. The blackout lasted for almost nine hours, from 3.30 Pm till just before Midnight, and it was all it took to plunge my two neighborhoods in an atmosphere that was at times apocalyptic, at others, surreal, magical, “european”. Beyond the novelty, even excitement, felt by some there were people trapped in high-rise elevators, in trolley cars over canyons, in mid-rise buildings without water. It was a time where everything stopped and a battery radio and candles (my only emergency preparedness) help whiled away the hours. It was a movie. And a dream.

Before I share what I have been working on in the past few days, here is my dispatch from the Blackout and some urban moments caught on camera.

PS: From http://www.nakedtranslations.com/en/2004/entre-chien-et-loup  nakedtranslations.com:

Entre chien et loup is a multi-layered expression. It is used to describe a specific time of day, just before night, when the light is so dim you can’t distinguish a dog from a wolf. However, it’s not all about levels of light. It also expresses that limit between the familiar, the comfortable versus the unknown and the dangerous (or between the domestic and the wild). It is an uncertain threshold between hope and fear.

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The night we saw the stars.

Full moon, venus, motherlight.

Flaws and flames

Not multiplied

It is so quiet

we can hear ourselves

If the end of the world comes

I want you to know

We are fine.

By Moon Light.

 

Read ”La Noche que Volvimos a Ser Gente”or “The Night We Became People Again” by José Luis González, a short story on the big blackout in New York City.

If you are left with a battery powered CD player when the world ends- and speak italian- you could do worse than listen to Caffe’ Letterario.

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Koa, Bone, Flowers

Posted in Architecture, art,poetry,writing, Drawing, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2010| 3 Comments »

Bracelet, ring and necklace made of koa wood, bone, string. May 4, 2010

Still thinking about the versatility of wood, building material and jeweler’s materia prima.

This is the drawing (soon watercolor) I mentioned, long time coming, but, also, lots of slanted plumerias…I had to keep at this drawing , for some reason I kept leaving it and coming back to it, and carrying this wooden artifacts in my messenger bag everywhere, looking to finish the work. Perhaps I felt it like an ‘assignment’ and part of me rebelled to it, working on other drawings and ideas instead (which I am happy to say gave me material to now go back and post more regularly.) Perhaps it was the repetition that disturbed me, or it taking longer than i thought. Do you ever give yourself artistic assignment you regret but complete out of discipline–or stubbornness? It is very strange how art is a dichotomy between what is enjoyable and what is necessary, or what we arbitrarily consider necessary. I guess it is a way to give some sense of structure to our work.

I did not allow myself to post anything until I finished this blessed necklace, so you might see a series of plumerias, but I see a struggle XD.

Some say you should not do it once it ceases being fun. I think I would like to set a record for finishing what I started, and this is just an outward offering.

Speaking of flowers, here is walking around Mission Hills in San Diego, with my friend Theresa. Beautiful homes, canyons (we do live in an enchanted land- afternoon light through leaves-shimmering like a blessing), juxtaposed to sceneries right out of the incorporated town of Majestic/Agrestic. Passing by an It’s a Grind at the bottom of a horrific ‘Mediterrenean-Style’ condo on the way to Hillcrest made me chuckle and made me sad at the same time. I am sure the name contains the word ‘Tuscan’ somewhere.

The walk was a spontaneous one, not one of my photo expeditions, so here some unorthodox shots from my cell.

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