Sunday, April 27, 2008

San's Desktop Meme

San, congenial person that she is, challenged us all to display what was on our desktops. She probably hoped we'd share a favored picture of something we valued. While I do have images of friends saved on my machine, I don't usually display them. Instead my computer is my gallery wall. Webshots Desktop allows me to download lovely photographs by professional photographers, to which I've added other files saved on my computer (those being fantasy art and friends photos). My background image rotates daily. Today, I downloaded this picture of a mountain in Mexico titled Mina, Nuevo Leon, Mexico by Super Stock.

A few days ago it was this lovely picture of a Peruvian Pelican by Ruoso & Minden.

Because I'm a sucker for golds in images, I often download photos simply because they contain a glorious or mysterious variety of that color. So I also have this interesting shot of a pair of geese in flight titled Mirrored Wings from Super Stock.

And of course there are some images I come back to time and again. Such as this one of Sand Hill Cranes in Fog by Dancing Pelican. It it by far my favorite.

So that's my desktop. It's simple. Getting rid of unnecessary icons keeps it clutter free so that I can enjoy the art. Windows used to have a "hide desktop icons" option which I used so that my view of the image was unimpeded. XP doesn't seem to have it. I miss that.

20 comments:

San said...

Thanks for the desktop tour, Lee. I'm with you. The sand hill cranes in fog are worth returning to. Lovely!

Lee said...

You're welcome, San. Glad you liked my favorite. :)

Hugs!

murat11 said...

Gorgeous pelican, Lee. Reminds me a bit of the great blue heron, one of my totems. I had a "flyer" on my school computer desktop, too.

Lee said...

That's cool, Paschal. What does the Heron mean as a totem?

Joy!

Sandi McBride said...

Oh the cranes, Lee...they're my absolute favorite and I'd like them on my desktop...please, could you email me this??????
hugs
Sandi

murat11 said...

It's been a while since I read about the heron, but one of the things that stood out years ago was their decided movement to their own rhythm: they do not value what most of the world values, and they have an ability to stand in stillness until it's time to strike and seize their opportunity. These two things struck a deep chord when I first read them, validating what at times seemed like my increasingly odd path in life. I suspect that, since they stare for such long periods of time in water, often on one leg, great blues are incorrigible surrealists.

Lee said...

Sandi, I'm so glad you like that one too. It is headed your way right now!

Hugs!

Lee said...

Surrealist huh, Paschal? That's probably you a lot. After reading your description I went looking on my own. I found plenty and the following key words:

Ability to Stand Alone, Uniqueness, Independence, Call to Balance, Self-Esteem, Boundaries, Dignity, Exploration, Peace, and Fluidity.

It strikes me that what I know of you seems especially fluid. Your poetry shifts like the waves of a changing tide, you like a river goddess and flow through the services to our Lord, you are in tune with both the yen and yang of your persona, your creativity shifts so rapidly that its dazzling. I'd say fluidity is you personified. With all that fluidity I'm glad there's balance included in that totem.

Peace!

murat11 said...

Well said, Lee: nicely captured. The ability to be of water, but stand in it, too.

Lee said...

Thank you, Paschal. :)

Joy!

indicaspecies said...

Oh, the pictures of Mina, and the Mirrored Wings is superb.

I dropped by from San's, and congratulations on getting the Award.:)

Lee said...

Thank you, Celine. Those awards are tons of fun, aren't they?

Joy!

david mcmahon said...

Beautiful images, Lee. Mirrored wings is my favourite. Off to check out your recommendation (Murat 11) now ......

Lee said...

Thank you, David. I'm glad you liked them. Mirrored Wings is interesting isn't it. I looked through some of my photos by others artists and found quite a few where birds flew in tandem but none that had the wings in opposing angles like this.

Cheers!

Fletch said...

Lee,

(off topic)

You've been tagged!

david mcmahon said...

Hope all is well with your space in the world, Lee. I'm so glad you like my autumn leaves post.

Been busy with the new job but things are starting to settle down now.....

Lee said...

David, I can't tell you how tickled I am that you've got this great new job with all kinds of stuff to do. Congratulations!

I'm fine...just tired and busy too. :)

Smiling a mile wide!

murat11 said...

Lee: Nothing to do with desktop memes, but a follow-up to our brief conversation about writing poems. "Sound" poems can be one way of describing "some" of the poetry I write, but upon further reflection, it seems rather limiting, at least semantically. As ridiculous as it sounds, many of my poems are much more about colliding "words" than they are about colliding sounds. Back in the late 1940s/1950s, there was "school" of painters called the New York School, with folks like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning: the NY School style was often called "action painting," a designation that drew attention to the idea that these painters worked very quickly, and were often more process-oriented (fast process, at that) than "content" oriented. There were, coincidentally, a whole group of poets that shared this aesthetic (as did, to an extent, the Beat poets and writers: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Snyder, et. al.), many of them drawing further back into the Dadaists and Surrealists of post-WWI Europe, and even further back into Rimbaud in the 1870s. A typical characterization of surrealism is that it is "unreal," but several of the surrealists would have argued that surrealism is, rather, "more" real.

I am very interested in sound, but even more interested in words, and I am pretty committed (in my poetry and shorter fictions) to not making sense. The contention of the "more-realists" is that the "derangement" of language allows for the deeper mysteries and sensibilities to break through in a way that more "rational," straightforward poetry tends to shut off by climbing into the box with its "messages."

All in all, though, as with all things, its merely a matter of preference. I've had longstanding writers of poetry say that my poems make them "very anxious" because they don't seem to be "saying" anything. I might just as easily counter that their poems are saying too much.

Do I only like poems that are "senseless?" Certainly not. I like what I like, and I read a wide wide variety of poets, across all ages and "genres." I love Mary Oliver: she makes about as much sense as just about anyone you might name. But, I also love Alice Notley, who in her reverberatingly broken syntax seems to be calling forth a haunting sense of what lies at the cores of our being, without "pointing" and "telling." Situate John Berryman's Dream Songs (of Henry) somewhere in between these two and you have sublimely wicked comedy that at times is straight-up sonnet-formed, structured and anarchistic all at the same time.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Lee said...

Wow, Paschal, I appreciate your taking time to talk about this. Thank you! I'm already trying out strings of words in my head. Of course right now mine are full of old cliche phrases. I think that will go when I have gotten through a few.

What was the first word that popped into my head? Onomatopoeia! LOL

Peace! Hope! & Joy!

murat11 said...

Something else to consider: http://www.organicpoetry.com/

The San-Meme Poem

desktop opticons
suckers for golds
downloaded peruvian cranes I
miss the fantasy
of files saved
friends lovely
professional geese in
titled flight:
far my favorite icon...

[the poems are lurking everywhere]