introduce you to my blogging and life 
A few days ago, after working an entire night up in the Vancouver skies, 
I walked home around 4:00 am, following the madness south on Granville Street as clubbers were pouring out into the chilly morning air. Then I sliced my way through a quiet West End and got home just on time to realize I was still in great shape and the day was dawning. I jumped into a pair of jeans and onto the bike and scrambled to Coal Harbour’s section of the Seawall with Abe and the Martian. A slightly dull sunrise was brewing but it would have to do - despite appearances, I’m not up that early and in photographing mood that often.
I passed by the nesting swan which strangely seemed to have gained a few eggs and was once again sitting next to her treasure in a very un-motherly pose. The Seawall was as nice as ever, empty, seemingly abandoned. I went as far as the 9 O’clock Gun and took a series of bracketed exposures of the sunrise on Burrard Inlet and then headed back home, where I raised Brooklyn via VoIP. Sigh.
It was Sunday and I could afford to nap, which I did shamelessly. But come late afternoon, I returned to the Seawall for my regular Stanley Park run. The scene was changed, the Seawall unrecognizable. A thick crowd strolled along the water as far as the eye could see. I had to slalom between human obstacles pretty much the whole way. People had come out, on this very nice afternoon, like spring buds on a grateful tree.
As I finished the loop, I noticed that shores were partially exposed by the tide and many balanced stones had been laid out in the usual spot. It was stoningly beautiful and I instantly decided to come back right away with the camera.
I ran home, showered, jumped on the bike again and was back at the stones before sunset. Again, a grey, dull and cloudy sky. But it was one of the most amazing displays of balance I had ever seen. Abe clicked away until the light faded. I looked at my watch. It had been 24 hours since I’d taken the aerial post-sunset shot of the city lights, the night before. I’d slept a few hours, and been three times on the Seawall. A typical Vancouver day.
« What’s the story with the stones? These are incredible! »
Date of comment: 2008-05-08 07:49 •« The Web ate my first reply. Hungry spiders out there...
Date of comment: 2008-05-08 09:59 •OK. Wow. The stones are unearthly, even as truly of-earth as they are. It’s extraordinary.Your pictures are stunning and add to the feeling of other- worldliness, or better-worldliness. They look so alone and of themselves. I would love to watch them happening, and then stay to see them unhappening. »
« Amazing, aren’t they? They supposedly are the work of a man named Kent Avery who has been doing this for years, mostly between Ferguson Point and Second Beach on the Seawall. It’s hard to know if he’s still the only one behind the magic, as many people are trying to reproduce his art. It’s a beautiful, unnecessary, soothing thing, to see these stones balanced there in the sunset. They are thrown down by the moods of nature and eventually, he rebuilds new ones...
Date of comment: 2008-05-08 11:47 •For one thing, I just stare at them and I feel balance and peace flow into and though me. For another, they are a reminder that so often in our lives, we see amazing and beautiful things, and actions, and people and we just watch in awe and it never even crosses our mind to try for ourselves, as if « amazing » was the exclusive realm of others. Maybe it’s not so hard to balance stones and ourselves. Maybe we should try. »
« You do. You take photographs. They are your own balancing stones. Whatever It is, It has to be in you. And the It flows from you. Sometimes admiring is all we need to do. It is its own energy. »
Date of comment: 2008-05-08 23:11 •« Thank you
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Date of comment: 2008-05-10 00:10 •