R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 60

Burrowing Owls & Owlets

I wish I'd seen them earlier (they've lost some of their muppet-ness but they're still cuties), but I saw two guardian males down the road standing at other holes, so maybe the fun is just beginning.:)

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Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

 “I said, among other things,” the prisoner answered, “that every form of authority means coercion over men, and that a time will come when there shall be neither Caesars, nor any other rulers. Man will come into the kingdom of truth and justice, where there will be no need for any authority.”

Ash-throated Flycatcher

Ash-throated Flycatcher in Naples (a "fly by" while I was checking the heron rookery).

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That Hideous Strength

That’s what happens when you study men: you find mare’s nests. I happen to believe that you can’t study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing.

Red-whiskered Bulbul @ Huntington Arboretum

Red-whiskered Bulbul @ Huntington Arboretum in San Marino CA. Not bad: Got 'em the first visit (in the Herb Garden). Thanks for the tip @mathquark.:)

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Perelandra

Memory passes through the womb and hovers in the air. The Muse is a real thing. A faint breath, as Virgil says, reaches even the late generations. Our mythology is based on a solider reality than we dream: but it is also at an almost infinite distance from that base. And when they told him this, Ransom at last understood why mythology was what it was—gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility. His cheeks burned on behalf of our race when he looked on the true Mars and Venus and remembered the follies that have been talked of them on Earth. Then a doubt struck him. “But do I see you as you really are?” he asked. “Only Maleldil sees any creature as it really is,” said Mars. “How do you see one another?” asked Ransom. “There are no holding places in your mind for an answer to that.” “Am I then seeing only an appearance? Is it not real at all?” “You see only an appearance, small one. You have never seen more than an appearance of anything—not of Arbol, nor of a stone, nor of your own body. This appearance is as true as what you see of those.” “But . . . there were those other appearances.” “No. There was only the failure of appearance.” “I don’t understand,” said Ransom. “Were all those other things—the wheels and the eyes—more real than this or less?” “There is no meaning in your question,” said Mars. “You can see a stone, if it is a fit distance from you and if you and it are moving at speeds not too different. But if one throws the stone at your eye, what then is the appearance?” “I should feel pain and perhaps see splintered light,” said Ransom. “But I don’t know that I should call that an appearance of the stone.” “Yet it would be the true operation of the stone. And there is your question answered. We are now at the right distance from you.” “And were you nearer in what I first saw?” “I do not mean that kind of distance.” “And then,” said Ransom, still pondering, “there is what I had thought was your wonted appearance—the very faint light, Oyarsa, as I used to see it in your own world. What of that?”

Eared Grebe @ Colorado Lagoon

Eared Grebe (in Beautiful Breeding Plumage) @ Colorado Lagoon. Took me a while (days) to find him, but then I lucked out and had to myself for 20 minutes. 

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Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Herons in Long Beach CA. WEEKEND.

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C S Lewis: Space Trilogy

 Ransom’s mind shied away from the problem; he was getting sleepy and thought he must be misunderstanding the sorn. “I think I must sleep, Augray,” he said. “And I do not know what you are saying. Perhaps, too, I do not come from what you call Thulcandra.” “We will both sleep presently,” said the sorn. “But first I will show you Thulcandra.” It rose and Ransom followed it into the back of the cave. Here he found a little recess and running up within it a winding stair. The steps, hewn for sorns, were too high for a man to climb with any comfort, but using hands and knees he managed to hobble up. The sorn preceded him. Ransom did not understand the light, which seemed to come from some small round object which the creature held in its hand. They went up a long way, almost as if they were climbing up the inside of a hollow mountain. At last, breathless, he found himself in a dark but warm chamber of rock, and heard the sorn saying: “She is still well above the southern horizon.” It directed his attention to something like a small window. Whatever it was, it did not appear to work like an earthly telescope, Ransom thought; though an attempt, made next day, to explain the principles of the telescope to the sorn threw grave doubts on his own ability to discern the difference. He leaned forward with his elbows on the sill of the aperture and looked. He saw perfect blackness and, floating in the center of it, seemingly an arm’s length away, a bright disk about the size of a half-crown. Most of its surface was featureless, shining silver; towards the bottom markings appeared, and below them a white cap, just as he had seen the polar caps in astronomical photographs of Mars. He wondered for a moment if it was Mars he was looking at; then, as his eyes took in the markings better, he recognized what they were—Northern Europe and a piece of North America. They were upside down with the North Pole at the bottom of the picture and this somehow shocked him. But it was Earth he was seeing—even, perhaps, England, though the picture shook a little and his eyes were quickly getting tired, and he could not be certain that he was not imagining it. It was all there in that little disk—London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened; and there, presumably, his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Sterk. “Yes,” he said dully to the sorn. “That is my world.” It was the bleakest moment in all his travels.

Yellow-crowned Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Herons in Long Beach CA. Large rookery consisting of black- and yellow-crowned herons: adults and juveniles.

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