Seeking SWF with Big Lens

I have been seeking that someone special for a very long time. Most recently I have updated my "needs list" to include a woman who has a good camera with a big telephoto lens. You see I have this really big view and I just can't capture it with my really tiny instrument...

What do I have to offer? In no particular order: big bed, big stories, big brain and this really big view.

On a clear day - the Bay Bridge and San Francisco.

Bay Area weather is nothing if not changeable.

and since we view is due West . . .

Among other things, the woman of my dreams should possess: photoshop and a enormous level of acceptance of over-the-top metaphors.

I would also add that I am about to embark on another of my periodic road trips. This one begins in two weeks and will last a bit over two months. More on that later, including my big reveal on my new approach to online dating, which I will implement upon my return to the Bay area later this fall.

Tomorrow - the writing that led to this week's focus on relationships.

Apartment with a View

A regular reader pointed out that I have not shared any window gazing from my high perch here in Berkeley; at least not recently. So today a few peeks or peaks from my windows on the San Francisco Bay. The first shot above will be familiar to many Bay Area residents and summer visitors - the fog.

For those who haven't read my previous ruminations on my view, the City of San Francisco is out there about ten miles, that's Treasure Island and the Bay Bridge in the middle ground halfway across the Bay. 

[on most computers you can click on the picture to get a bigger & better view]

Just to the right/north of the city picture are the twin spires of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here's a shot of the City on a bluer day.

...and then there is the ever changing light from the western sky, here giving the Golden Gate some backlighting.

To the north, further right, are the Marin Headlands and Mt. Tamalpais; in the summer months the sun sets around the peaks.

 Sometimes gold.

other times...

When A View Is Not A View

I have spoked of my apartment view often in the past, perhaps a bit too often. Please note there have been no pictures from my window since I returned to the apartment after the remodel. Speaking of the remodel, while I have been back in the apartment for over two months the final piece of the remodeling was completed just a week ago - the window treatment as the decorators like to refer to it. Or the blinds as us normal folk say.

You see the apartment has a stretch of windows nearly 25 feet across. Big windows from the ceiling to about three feet above the floor. A huge amount of glass, the aforementioned panoramic view and in the afternoon a whole big bunch of sunlight. Without something on the windows there would be no working in the afternoon or early evening as the view is due west and blindingly bright. And, of course, I have my desk right up against the windows so the view is always right there for me to enjoy, ponder and meditate upon. Temperature is only an issue a dozen days a year in the temperate northern california climate, light is the really big concern. So I lobbied for and got vertical blinds. They can stand up to being adjusted as often as five or six times every day, I can tweak them to block light but still let me have the view. Sturdy, functional slats unlike those flimsy running material sheer blinds that look so elegant, but block the view entirely and can't stand up to heavy duty usage day after day.

An interesting thing happened the first day the blinds were in. I closed them and the apartment became a completely different space. The huge view draws me out, the immense wall of blocking blinds wombs me in. The word "cave" will have popped into several of my friends thoughts about now, yes I have my cave again. But the visuals out the windows are compelling and now malleable. I can completely block the light streaming over the desk and still have wide open views both right and left. I can tweak the openings between the slats to limit light but still keep the view (amazing what binocular vision and the human brain can do with partial information). And, yes, the hibernating bear can close off the view entirely and retreat into the cave - after all Plato did it.

--
photo: sfgate.com

A Black Ballet

I don't know what it was that day perhaps the blustery wind or the off-and-on rain. The Bay was churned an eerie pale green. But it was the crows that told me it was an out-of-the-ordinary day. I often see the flights of blackbirds playing between my windows and the nearby Bay. As many as a score soaring together or several pairs sometimes a foursome then two couplets. I had thought for several weeks that they were perching on the roof just two floors above me, why else would they heighten their flight as they approached my view, most times they simply flew around my tower.

A strong gust of wind pummeled the window drawing my sight up from the screen; six perhaps seven crows were being blown towards me. They all kilted their wings at the same moment and arched up to be carried just a few feet above the roof, had they stayed in that turn they would almost immediately reappear high above my view, but they did not. They must have landed on the roof deck, today would be the day to check for their presence.

Still staring out to the Bay suddenly three black flashes swooped through my view, they had perch on the roof's edge and then leapt off into the strong updraft along the buildings face. They plummeted mere feet from my window and then soaring upward yards further away. Another pair did the same but pulled out of their fall almost immediately and were for a moment suspended six feet in front of my eyes.

A had a few moments to language my awe when the final bird glided out in a long, slow arch straight towards the west. This final flyer raises a ruckus with sharp, piercing caws that seem to draw the other crows up as they formed a flight of five, then eight, then many birds. Several blocks from my view, halfway to the Bay there stands one lone group of pines taller than all the rest, the flight wheeled around tight around those trees and did not come out on the other side. Clearly, it was intermission.

--
art: "Crows in Flight" by Ron Jones

Sunsets

The Landlady demands a monthly post about the view or the rent goes up.

Yes every single evening.

This is the view when I lift my eyes from the laptop.

the sun slips further south each evening...

All dinner reservations are "after sunset"

A few minutes after this shot the clouds went dark red, the reflection turned the fog layer on the bay light pink for just a few incredible moments. Alas my camera could not capture that light

Even the cloud cover is cool.

San Francisco open your golden gate

Innards of an Attic

Because my view is from the eighth floor in a neighborhood of one and two story homes and apartments, I get to see all the roof action. There is the gentleman in the apartments below who gets up on the flat roof about once a week and exercises facing the sun. He does large arm swings and a bit of quiet meditation, he reminds of an old friend who likes to take a sun bath each morning. 

Another flat-roofed apartment about a block away has had roof leak issues, I know this because after every rain storm a maintenance man gets up there and sweeps away the pooled water. Many of the flat roofs have large puddles after a storm but only this one has a depuddler on duty.

Unfortunately no naked sunbathers in view, in fact no tanners at all; white, well-educated folks tend to be unanimously pale. There is a one story cement block garage a block away that serves as the daytime haunts of a big yellow cat, he prowls the roof and often naps under some low hanging branches from a nearby tree which also serves as his ladder. 

And then there is the large two-story wood shingled house across the street to the south. There are a couple of residents on the second floor but the building also serves as the offices for a low-income housing advocacy group. Several weeks ago a small group of workers swarmed the roof one morning and began to remove shingles on the far side, I suspected a roof patching job was in progress. The next day there was a lot of inspecting and discussion with roofers and periodic others poking their heads out from the attic through a six-by-six hole. A decision must have been reached because on day three the roofers denuded first the far side of the roof and then the side facing my view. All that was left were the ribs of the roof.

Laid out before me were the treasures of an entire attic. At the top of the staircase were filing cabinets then several rows of boxes with access aisles. This corner of the attic clearly supported the housing group. This was an attic being used as opposed to the cluttered storage in which many such spaces exist. The other three quarters of the space were what we would all expect an attic to be. There were random pieces of furniture, sloppily packed boxes, crates and bags of all sorts.

Somehow exposing the contents of the entire attic to full sunlight stirred something primal in the house residents, because soon a giant sort and discard movement began. The roofers danced above the house while a cleaning crew removed, recycled and rearranged the inside space. As the new shingles were applied a large space had been carved out in the middle of the attic, soon blanketed in a huge oriental carpet. Then two now empty dressers were positioned, a large reading chair and lamp but still a large open space remained in the middle. The new roof closed off my interior view but there was left a wide gap framed out for what had to be a new skylight.

The day the assembled skylight was installed was also the day the new bed arrived and was hoisted up three stories to the newly formed bedroom/reading room in the attic. I suppose low-income housing policy ranks human space above storage space. The winter rains on the skylight should be a comforting sound to fall asleep beneath.

A Doh! Sunset

Just forty-five minutes before sunset the cloud layer lifts and there is the bridge with a light blue and pink sky behind it. This is the sunset that will align perfectly with the bridge, lo and behold this might actually happen!

Slowly the golden streaks of sunlight intensify the overcast holds high above the Bay, even with my meager little camera this could be the event I have been blathering about for weeks. 

Yes! A solar appearance and with this angle of decline the sun will appear to be setting right smack in the middle of the bridge, it will actually be cradled between the two towers. Tolkienian prose leaps to mind.

Wait! What is that large dark bank of clouds. Quick check the weather website. Weekend storm moving in -- marine layer 35 miles off shore. Quick mathematical calculation: marine layer 35 miles away, sun 92,875,414 miles away. Hmm, that is going to cause a juxtapositional problem.

Damn! Foiled again by water vapor.

One Last Weather Post

With the forecast steady for partly cloudy days and evening fog followed by weekend showers, I will make this the last lament about missed sun, moon and bridge observations.

The shot above is from last night just before sunset, framed in that dim pink swath just above the water is the Golden Gate Bridge, trust me. The shot below is from about fifteen minutes later the very faint line across the sun is one of the cables from the bridge. Yes to the naked eye and the binocular assisted view it was a very nice image.

Next post, I shall return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when I blather on about whatever comes to mind, heart, soul or spleen.

Oh and the moonrise was brilliant last night, I was out in North Berkeley and got a perfect view of the gibbous moon slipping in and out of the high clouds but that was far to the east, by the time the moon had swung across the sky to my windowed western view, twas nary a shimmer behind the grey.

Twilight Time, to dream awhile

In veils of deepening gloom

As fantasy strides over colourful skies

The fog disappearing from view

Moody Blues, Twilight

Days of Future Passed

If the Sun Sets in the Darkness . . .

This is the view from my window this morning, which provides you with all the information you need about the moonset early this morning. Unfortunately the weather predictors are not encouraging about our chances for more celestial dazzlement this week. The much anticipated full moon settling over San Francisco will occur this Friday and Saturday, which as you can see below is not apparently going to be prime viewer weather.

TODAY	TOMORROW	THU	FRI	SAT	6-10 DAY
Partly Cloudy	Sunny	Partly Cloudy	Few Showers	Showers	Extended Forecast
High: 73° Low: 51°	High: 69° Low: 50°	High: 62° Low: 51°	High: 64° Low: 51°	High: 65° Low: 52°

The first sunset through the Golden Gate narrows happened yesterday, you will not notice in my shot below any sort of bridge or the golden opening to the Pacific. A near fifty mile long fog bank crept in during the late afternoon yesterday to fill San Francisco Bay from end to end.

I would mention one final time that I really am fond of this type of weather. The rain and fog are fascinating for me, my spirits are lifting by the damp and chilled weather, it's like be wrapped in a cocoon the size of the universe. Sounds are muffled, perceptions shrink and we are forced to go on internal sensors. Perhaps in the next few days we will get a glimpse of the astronomical workings between the clouds, if not, I shall attempt to entertain and minister from the internal microcosm.

Pinprick holes in a colourless sky

Let insipid figures of light pass by

The mighty light of ten thousand suns

Challenges infinity and is soon gone

Night time, to some a brief interlude

To others the fear of solitude

Brave Helios, wake up your steeds

Bring the warmth the countryside needs

Moody Blues The Day Begins

from Days of Future Passed

A Little Lunar Physics

With my celestial gazing blotted out by the grey weather again last night, I turn to a bit of chat about astronomical angles with some solar/lunar synchronicity tossed in for leavening. As I am sure most of you know, but may not often contemplate, the moon has no light of its own. Earth's satellite is a reflective surface, what we see as the illuminated moon is completely solar energy cast back at us.

So when we see or don't see the new moon, it is because the moon is between the earth and the sun. All the light of the sun is on the far side of the moon, which contrary to what Pink Floyd is thought to have said, is not the dark side of the moon at all. At the other apex of earth/sun/moon alignment, a full moon occurs when the earth is between the sun and the moon with the full illumination of the sun on the earth facing moon countenance. The graphic below illustrates these facts of celestial physics. 

When the earth lines up exactly between the sun and the moon, we get a lunar eclipse and I would be remise if I did not remind you that this year on the winter solstice (Dec. 21st) there will be a total lunar eclipse visible in most of North America.

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark.

Pink Floyd Eclipse from Dark Side of the Moon

Whether San Francisco Weather

The best-laid schemes o' mice and' men

Gang aft agley

Robert Burns

After several autumnal heat waves, true fall weather has arrived here in the Bay area. With the lowering to shivering temperatures comes overcast, undercast, fog banks and assorted sky-sea phenomenon. All of these have combined to make my celestial observations more or less muted the last forty-eight hours. The sun has set into high stacks of clouds the last two evenings, the moonset on Friday was an hour early into a high fog bank and last night there was nary a glow from behind the overcast. Today we awoke to grey with a smattering of gray. I was worried that the full moonset next weekend would be blotted out by the dawn but unless we have another change in weather patterns I will miss this highly anticipated week of solar and lunar settings altogether.

I did manage one shot of the setting sun just north of the golden gate narrows last night, you can clearly make out the Golden Gate Bridge. Hope that was not the last sunset this week.

Beauty I'd always missed

With these eyes before

Just what the truth is

I can't say anymore

Moody Blues

Nights in White Satin

That's Not the Moon

Last night marked the fifth night of close observation of the moon setting into or over San Francisco. One night was done without the aid of my powerful binoculars, I was out and the tripod would have seemed a bit intrusive. Last night was the closest we would get to a perfect quarter moon, it was officially and exactly quartered around 14:30 in the afternoon and our setting time last night over the City was 0:23.

I am a bit disappointed that I have not been able to successfully google pictures that do justice to the visuals I have seen. And I mourn one last time my own shortcomings in the telephoto/nocturnal camera arena. As always I will attempt to paint you a worthy image in words.

I also want to acknowledge my own, previously overlooked, lack of learning in the general area of astronomy. Each and every night I discover another phenomenon that sends me off asurfin' to uncover the physics of the heavens. I won't overburden you with each and every mote of new learning I uncover. I assume some of you know a lot more in this area than I do and many more of you do not want to wade through the formula, azimuths and ephemeris to "know" why the sky is just amazingly fascinating. 

As I said last night was a near perfect quarter moon but the previous evening (also fairly close to a quarter) I could clearly see the other facing quarter of the sphere. Instead of being slightly lighter than the dark sky, last night the dark quarter of the moon was precisely the same pitch as the sky. This meant the moon presented itself as a jagged edged illusion, as if the top half of the moon was not actually there, like the photo above. And while I watched the descent the oranging began. First the white slice became slightly dirty, then a few minutes later a perfectly hued hard taco shell loomed over the Transamerica building. Following the corn flour tan came the slow darkening towards burnt orange, but not without a new visual.

The low clouds over the City created a reflection of some kind, lines of orange would appear below the moon and slowly the two would melt together. At one point the detached line was a bit more red and dancing in the reflected heat of San Francisco. As the two merged it appeared that the lower edge of the setting moon had begun to flame and burn, as if it would need to quench itself in the Pacific.

The final setting was, as it has been for several nights, a complete distortion of the moon's crescent. Last night both the top and bottom tips of the quarter were lost in the over&undercast. Anyone peering through my magic glasses at that moment would have seen a large orange blob just above the buildings of the city. No one would have guessed this was the perfect quarter we had seen twenty minutes before. Finally, instead of descending behind one of San Francisco's many hills, a misty grey cloud rose up and consumed the orange and it was gone again until tonight

Cold hearted orb that rules the night

Removes the colours from our sight

Red is grey and yellow, white

But we decided which is right

               Moody Blues

"Late Lament" from Days of Future Passed

--

net photo - uncredited

Celestial Views

I'll put the photo credit up top when it's actually me, so yes that is my picture up there. That is the sky I woke to this morning and that sky will be the focus of my next series of posts. With apologies to my olde friend Lee, eastcoat Lee not southwest Lee, but with apologies to him and anyone else who has tired of my sky gazing... the next week or so will be an extended meditation looking out my window. In last Sunday's post (two down the scroll) I wrote about the moon setting into the skyscape of San Francisco last Saturday night; well, of course, it has done something similar but completely different every evening since. Each night the illuminated portion of the moon gets bigger, it was quartered last night. The hills and buildings of the City that are descended thru shift and the atmosphere, clouds and light change the images sliding through my view. 

What with the earth rotating, the moon setting later each night, the cloud cover shifting, the moon becoming fuller -- the show offers new celestial perspectives each and every night. Add to that the sunset continues to march south and has reached the north end of the Golden Gate narrows (and bridge), this all portents some really interesting sky viewing over the next week. 

The moonset timetable will require some late nights and dark mornings but if the last several days have been any indication it will clearly be worth the lost sleep. Besides there are a few sections of my current book that could use some dark of night influenced attention.

So don't call too early, I'm going deep nocturnal for awhile and together we will ponder the skies through my window.

I can see it all

From this great height

I can feel the sun

Slipping out of sight

And the world still goes on

Through the night

          Moody Blues

          "Sunset" from Days of Future Passed

White Bird and other things

One of my faithful readers is also an OCD nit, she likes to track any promises I make and hold me to them or as she says: "I only bug you to follow up on things I am interested in." Apparently one of those things comes from a post last April where I observed a bevy of white birds in my neighborhood. Actually they tend to flock three or four blocks west of here and each time I walked down there after spotting them, they had vanished. This weekend I got a 'white bird' reminder from my friend and avid reader, then this morning there was the brood flying around down the street.

I first watched them wheel about in the area the size of ten or twelve residential blocks, this seemed to me to be the same relative area they had covered when I first noticed them. Either they had taken the summer off or I just haven't been as avian observant lately. First there were five or six birds but soon the rest of the drove rose up to join them. About a dozen in all with at least two thirds of them white as snow. Finally about half of the skein lighted in that same evergreen tree and the others on a double span utility pole. The pole was clearly visible so I peered through my super binoculars and saw six birds (four white) very clearly but what were they? We must have our labels.

I tossed on the sneakers and headed out hoping to catch them. About a block from the house I saw them in flight again but they often liked to double back so I kept after them. Here I was a humanoid on foot chasing birds on wing, next week I chase down roadrunners in Arizona. Just as I was feeling a tad stupid, I came out from under a big olive tree and there was the utility pole with nine birds perched on it. Six were indeed pure white and one of the other ones was clearly a standard, everyday rat-with-wings pigeon (bottom row center in the picture above).

Seeking verification of this congregation, I asked the store clerk on the next corner about the birds, he looked at me like I had asked for live tarantula ala mode. The homeless guy saw me looking up at the multitude and told me they were -- "the birds of peace." This piece of information comes with neither citation or nor corroboration. 

I did a little net research when I got back, here is what I found:

The difference between doves and pigeons is mostly size. Doves are generally sleeker and smaller with pointed tails, while pigeons are larger and stockier with rounded tails. The common urban pigeon is also known as a "Rock Dove." The popular white dove releases at various celebrations are billed as "dove" releases, but ethical companies always use white homing pigeons, as they return home.

Ethical in that they do not release tamed doves into the wild to fend for themselves. Ethical, not so much, in that they can sell them over and over again, well Viva Capitalism! 

By the way, I was unable to use army, assembly, cloud, collection, colony, company, convoy, crowd, crush, drift, drove, gaggle, gathering, group, herd, host, legion, litter, mass, pack, progeny, rout, scores, throng and I would have liked to have worked in an exaltation of larks or an ostentation of peacocks.

A Thousand Words

I apologize that I don't have a high-end camera so that I might show you what I saw last night. These photos lifted from the web are only faint shadows of what I will describe for you. But words are my craft so perhaps it is appropriate that I capture the experience with my digits instead of digitally.

Sunset last night was just north of the Golden Gate, after the sun had set behind the Marin Headlands the sky glowed with an orange/blue layered effect. The horizon grew a brighter and deeper orange and the sky above remained illuminated in shades of blue. Of course, I have quite a view from the apartment, I can see nearly fifty miles of San Francisco Bay coastline on each side of the Bay. The City of San Francisco sparkled in the middle of the tableau. 

It was then that I noticed a thin crescent moon just to the south of the City, I knew the moon was setting and wondered if it would plunge into the cityscape below. As I watched the lunar progress it slid lower and slightly further north on its way to the sea. The moon was indeed going to set right over the towers of downtown San Francisco. As I watched through my Super Giant Astronomical Binoculars I glanced down to see with my naked eyes where the moon might impact the City when I noticed something out of place, something very orange. 

It seems that in celebration of the baseball SF Giants making the MLB playoffs, several landmarks have had their normal lighting changed to Giant orange. Coit Tower was one of those attractions, so last night it glowed brilliantly orange. When I looked up again the white crescent had begun to yellow and I realized that the moon takes on yellow and orange hues as it declines through the atmosphere.

You perhaps can imagine what happened next, in the now black sky, a very orange crescent descended directly over a very orange tower and all of my desires to capture the moment peaked. It was simply visually stunning . . . and just when I thought I was seeing natural perfection linked with man-made construction, the final passage began.

As the moon lowered into the atmosphere of the ocean behind the SF peninsula, it also descended into the heat footprint of the City. In the last ten minutes the sharply defined edges of the crescent began to mottle, the sky and the moon began to blur together, the brilliant orange moon became an organic cantaloupe with bumps and depressions along its leading edge.

I made one more false assumption that the moon would sink behind the City as the sun had sunk beyond the Headlands but instead with the double atmosphere of the Pacific and the City, the lower edge of the crescent moon simply dissolved just as the Cheshire Cat had. Slowly the moon disappeared as the dark below consumed it. As the last third stood just above Telegraph Hill, anyone looking up for the first time might have wondered at the strange triangular cloud dimly orange in the night sky.

Wish you had been here to see it with me.

Winter Window Weather

For those not familiar with San Francisco weather, I have been waiting for the fog since I moved in six months ago. While the imagery outside my windows remains spectacular, my very first night living with the view was in mid-March or right around the spring equinox. The sun was moving slowly north of the Golden Gate and the famous San Francisco fog was in its dry season. Now as another equinox approaches the fog is returning.

Last evening at sunset the silver bluffs had piled into the Bay like a thick blanket, the Marin headlands to the north had been overwhelmed, the waters of the bay were smothered in a twenty foot high layer with eruptions as high as 100 or more feet. A novice viewer would have supposed an island under those peaks but Alcatraz, Treassure and Angel were far off, these were just billows of happenstance. The City itself still stood out over the lower fog bank much like the picture above, but it floated alone in the gauzy mixture that I know is only a preview of many grey-white winter scenes to come. 

Today surprisingly broke in dull light but fog-less, the rain that was predicted to slide down from the north never arrived. It is as though a bubble has descended on the Bay and nowhere outside of this hazy scene exists, that somewhere just over the hills the world dissolves into a tommy-knocker nothingness. An interesting winter has been announced.

Vespertine Viewing

No I did not take that picture and no I am not doing acid again. But after nearly two weeks of evening fog cover, I finally got several nighttime looks at the moon with my new big eyes. I decided I needed some geographical assistance to know what I am looking at. So I turned to NASA. Twas very kind of NASA to provide a paint-by-the-numbers guide to the lunar surface. The multi-hued photo was actually taken in 1992 by the Galileo spacecraft.

As more planets and phases of the moon drift through the western skies beyond the San Francisco peninsula I will gaze on and share with you more of the view from my perch. For now, the image below is what I saw on the first clear night.