Tag Archives: glamorous

Foreshadowed

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There we were in our hotel room in Prague—much more sophisticated and glamorous than the sort we’d have booked for ourselves, to be sure, thanks to the tour organizers—and I looked up and saw this through the curtains on our window:
Photo: Through the Curtains

Isn’t it amazing how just the hint of an image, a fluttering silhouette in the afternoon sun, can promise so much romance and adventure?
Digital illustration from a photo: Shades of Dusk

You know, naturally, that since we were in Prague, any promise of romance and adventure was bound to be fulfilled and, indeed, surpassed. A holiday of any sort is not to be shunned, generally speaking. But when I find myself in a city so marvelously compounded of history, mystery, drama and delight as Prague, I feel from the first glimpse of its thousand towers that frisson, that lovely shiver, presaging wonderful things not yet imagined even by me in my most vivid dreams.

O Pilot, My Pilot!

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My momentary flirtation with manning the controls in a flight simulator, besides making me seriously quavery in the moment, told me in no uncertain terms that I would be glad to continue leaving all such labors to the experts. When I was a lot younger I had fantasized about training as a pilot, but reality intervened in good time and I, never mind how humble my brain-power, was able to recognize that I had been saved from myself by a number of factors that conveniently nixed that old fantasy.

The adventures of modern TSA-enhanced travel further confirmed my gratitude that I didn’t opt for life as an air jockey. I’m more content than ever to let airline and airport professionals cope with all of the added red tape and hassles of bulked up security and its concomitant regulations. I am able, despite being far too young to remember it in minute detail, to revere even now the romantic notion of those days when airplane travel was glamorous and cool. And, yes, easy. Though I am better aware now than I was in my infatuated youth that the latter quality is, and always was, more easily achieved by those not in the pilot’s seat.

Those of you who like that work, I thank you. Brother Dennis and all of you fine souls willing to ship me on my various expeditions yon as well as hither, I thank you very much. I’ll just be back there in the thirtieth row with my earplugs screwed in and my pretend aviator scarf pulled over my eyes while I work diligently, with my nice nap, at forgetting I’m even in the air for hours on end. After all, I already put in my enormous effort at flying when I got into that simulator. Your turn now.digital illustration

Birds of a Brilliant Feather Flock Together

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I do love peacocks and admire their showy plumage and all of the other attributes that I anthropomorphize to my great delight. Birds, in general, are a subject of my fondness for their wonderful and weird and wildly showy beauties, and peacocks merely one of the more obvious kings of my affections. Another variety of bird of which I’m quite enamored is the chicken, with the many distinctive shapes, colors, and personalities in its species.

Roosters, of course, are often (though not always) the showiest and most individualistic of their kind. Men. Whatever anyone says about women being the self-absorbed sex when it comes to appearances clearly hasn’t looked around at all of the coiffed, tattooed, jeweled, made-up, well-heeled males wandering around humankind throughout history let alone at the range of male beauty in the beastly realms. The other kinds of beasts, I mean.

But enough scorning of sexist talk. I’m here to admire birds, roosters in particular, and Celi’s handsome cockerel specifically. She never fails to show her animal menagerie in a glorious light, even when they’re cutting quite the junior-miscreant capers, and I’m quite certain that it’s her great affection for them that makes them look their best in her every shot. Well, that and a whole barge-full of skill and art on her part. In any event, I have fallen in love with all of the residents of her ‘farmy’ right along with Celi herself, and while I should most like to have paid tribute to her gorgeous rooster in person or at least with an exquisitely embroidered silk panel in the Chinese style to give him his full due, I can’t fly, and my own skills in embroidery are more of the oops-I-stitched-it-to-my-own-leg and what-is-that-weird-spiderweb varieties, so here I made a pretense of embroidering by using my digital stitchery. I do mean well.digital artwork from a photo by Cecilia G