Up the creek without a paddle

Has that ever happened to you?
You were paddling along just fine downriver, with one useful but unloved paddle in one hand and about half of another paddle somewhere in between hand and bush, when that unloved paddle became too unloved and the longing for the half-paddle became more important?
Eventually, you got disgruntled enough to discard the unloved albeit useful paddle, suddenly found yourself going upriver, and the half-paddle turned out to be entirely elusive?
OK, so I'm talking in riddles here, but the situation is pretty clear: up shit creek without a paddle.
Scared shitless and almost willing to turn around again to grasp for what might remain of the unloved paddle...

– Len "Master of Self-Inflicted Riddles" Blumfeld

In honor of Ali Akbar Khan

Ali Akbar Khan, one of the most celebrated Indian musicians and great master of the sarod, passed away on June 18, 2009, in California, aged 87. Hear and see him perform raag Marwa on Youtube:

Grey June day

It's a grey day out there
with grey feelings

Was there ever anything real?
What's real is this tepid weather

come from somewhere up north,
possibly Iceland

Feelings iced over,
so to speak

I myself am grey enough
not to be noticed

– Len "Grey" Blumfeld

An uninvited guest from up north for Totally Optional Prompts. All à propos and razor-edge-of-time, including the fact that a child I like a lot did not appear to see me at all this morning.

Donnie and Geronimo, youthful warriors

“It was such a dreary day. You looked just as dreary.”
“And that’s why you embraced me? Even though you know I have no tolerance for embraces!”
“Oh, knock off that intolerance crap! You’re just timid, and that human touch created turmoil such as you’ve never felt before.”
“Next thing you’re going to tell me that I love you!”
“Precisely that, you timid fool.”

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2009)

Written around Dreary, Embrace and Timid from 3WW.

Denouement

I edited my story.
Now it's all happy endings.
Everyone's happy about their happy endings.
Even those that died are happy
because they died happy deaths.
How about that.

- Len "Frenchy" Blumfeld

Written for One Single Impression and Denouement.

I dropped it, I dropped it

A tisket, a tasket,
a tiny little basket

You say: What was in it?
I say: A minute

– Leonard “Chaz” Blumfeld

Written for One Single Impression’s dropped and for Totally Optional Prompts’ song lyrics. Alludes, of course, to the Ella Fitzgerald ditty from 1938 which, in turn, alluded to a much older American nursery rhyme.

Paradox

Paradoxically, tolerance must also be intolerant.
It cannot tolerate intolerance.

– Len "All of a Sudden Wise" Blumfeld

Posted for Tolerance at One Single Impression.

Prototype umbrellas

Prototype umbrellas near Castel del Monte in a magic night for Inspire Me Thursday.

Long before umbrellas, long before mysterious Castel del Monte, there were umbrella pines...

Back to near zero

These emotional ups and downs versus one particular person seem to have some regularity.
Intensity and certainty are inevitably followed by increasing uncertainty and doubt ... and then reverse certainty (that it's all artificial heat-up and all too welcome misunderstanding of signals on my part).
But ... there were smiles from her yesterday even though cold had seeped into my emotional feet.

Push

A digitally processed gouache sketch from 2003.
Since the original was mostly green, my initial intention was to use it for the previous green topic. But the scan struck me as boring. While playing around with the tools of digital editing, I arrived at this version, which shows what I'd call a dynamic push. The massive, bulldog-like body on the right – itself receiving a push from the right – is going to collide with the spiky* body on the left. The resulting crash should be interesting...
Now for Inspire Me Thursday's Push.

*Inspired by Santa Maria della Spina in Florence.