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Wow. Gorgeous isn’t it? By illustrator Chamo San in Barcelona.

Via Designspiration

Black Sabbath promoting their NEW album with posters guised to appear as if they were always there, underneath all the other posters that have now been peeled away to reveal them. I love it. So smart. Super creative and meaningful.

From PSFK

Had a tent catastrophe today. Not completely unexpected, but a collision of bad timing. Seconds before I was unsnapping the cotter pins to bring it down before the sure to come wind caught me, it caught me. I held onto the leg as it ripped through my hands. I jumped after it and tried to catch it again as it stopped for a split second on the edge of the fence but another gust lifted it 15 feet into the air and it came crashing back down..sliding across the sidewalk towards a newer model suburban, only stopping due to another tree. Thank god all the numerous young families with kids under 5 tottering on bikes that I’d smiled at all day were out of the path of my airborne tent. Pure luck. Thank god it didn’t land on that truck. Thank god it didn’t knock my teeth out when I desperately tried to stop it.

My partners on either side faired equally and not so equally well. Bags and tins and boxes of the importer from France lay scattered, his tent resting in the bushes, safely away from said families. On my other side, baskets of bread lay scattered everywhere, turned over tables and white table clothes laying twisted on the concrete. His tent 10 feet up in a tree, wrapped around it like a tent burrito, had to be gingerly pulled down.  We all, shell shocked, stumbled around helping one another pickup things. A team of 3 strangers went to work on my tent trying to untwist the twisted metal and squeeze it back together into a less aerodynamic shape, another stranger, who once made me the best gyro I’ve ever had, wrangled it into the back of my borrowed truck.

I cried all the way home.

Sometimes it just feels like you are forcing things that aren’t supposed to happen. Sometimes it feels like everything is against you. Sometimes your heart swells with gratitude towards strangers and new friends for unquestioningly helping and ensuring one anothers well being. Sometimes you can’t figure out if you are lucky or unlucky. Sometimes it really doesn’t matter. “Well, what are you going do? That happened.”, he said, smiling, dusty baguettes under this arm.

Yeah. It did.

This is the picture I took just a few minutes before. When I was marveling at the microcosm of life happening right before my eyes. Brilliant red springtime poppies petals open exposing all their bits for these bees to take from and sustain and create more life. The petal-less blooms standing quitely behind full pod filled with hundreds of seeds to create more life. I felt so lucky to see this and understand and try and apply it to my own part in this ever spinning world.

Then we turned the corner.

A shady spot, overgrown with weeds and optimistic tree shoots. Halle stopped in her tracks, rose her paw in a full point.

“Really? Where?”

I saw nothing.

Until I got down on my knees to her level and saw a tiny baby bird. Fresh out of the nest. Not quite ready to lift off apparently.

I considered a photo of this miraculous finding and pointing by my old girl. Decided instead to best leave it be and hope that its spot hidden from my eye, would be good enough to hide from cats eyes. I stood up and started to walk and ….she pounced. In a split second she had that little new life between her teeth, shaking, blood splattering the sandstone sidewalk.

“No!” I yelled. Capturing the attention of a neighbor. Middleaged gentleman in a logoed polo. Maybe he was a contractor, or a repairman.

She dropped the bird. It’s eye bulging, blood ringing it’s neck.

“Can I help you?, every thing ok?”

We examined the situation. Halle standing guard over her winnings. My heart breaking.

“Your bird dog caught a bird.” He looked at my face. “It’s surprising what they can come back from.”

“Probably not this.”

“No. Probably not this. Instinct. It’s a powerful thing.”

Yeah. It is. We are pretty hardwired when it comes down to it. Good job Halle. You were a good girl, just doing your job.

I’m sorry little bird. I’m really sorry.

I might have a reincarnated Buddhist squirrel in my neighborhood. Don’t laugh. Perhaps he is a lama of the bushy tailed species. Though, I did catch him stealing, which maybe isn’t very Buddhist at all. Little scamp made off with 4 of my prayer flags. I watched him, red handed, pulling those flags along the top of the fence, stopping to wad them up in his mouth so he could more easily make off with the multicolored trail that snagged on the tops of the fence inconveniently. He left with them, about 8:30 am. At 8:45 I went out to the alley, just to see…and found them here, stuffed in a gap in the fence. I brought them back to my yard and hung them back up, partially just to see if he would come back to steal them once again.

“Hey, did you see that squirrel on the top of the fence walking with alternate strides like a dog or a human? So strange.”

Must be that Buddhist squirrel, looking for his Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Flags.