three wayside stories

[asakiyume]

One: The Sparrow Entrepreneurs




You can have a shopping cart, but you must pay to rent them.

The rent is cheap though: a few crumbs of bread or bits of cracker will buy you several hours.

Don't forget to pay the ones who live below, too:






Two: The Stream Thorns

In winter, this stream grows giant thorns. They make good swords, I'm told: the blood of those they strike congeals into rubies and garnets.






Three: The Glazier and the Vandal

The glazier and the vandal play a game here. No one else knows the rules, except that when the glazier scores, a window pane appears, and when the vandal scores, a window pane disappears.

Comments

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

I like the second picture a lot.

For some reason, this is making me think of John Crowley.

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

Love the sparrow enterpreneurs!!

[tltrent.livejournal.com]

Love the light in these pics, esp. the first. And the blood of rubies and garnets...I am so sad I can't make art.

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

three little gems, all lined up in a row!

[sovay]

I love all of these.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

We met some very brazen little sparrows on the High Line yesterday, just hanging out on this birdhouse/feeder/sculpture completely unperturbed by all the surging crowd passing by.

The glazier seems to be behind;then again, I wonder if there are more full or empty windowframes in the world right now. A global game between them would be very hard to track.

[deponti.livejournal.com]

Delightful, and thought-provoking....such wonderful photographs. Thank you, A! My post today is for you :)

Again with the Win!

[jtglover.livejournal.com]

Delightful all, but I admire those sparrows' entrepreneurial spirit. Also, that "glazier" pic is just lovely, and that sky is something else.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Spare a crumb for the sparrows, sir?

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

You always make me smile with these. I don't always have time to tell you, but it's true. :)

Love the thorns most of all this time.

[bondo-ba.livejournal.com]

Your pictures are so wintery... While down here, the temperature outside is over 30 degrees celcius.

The ice in the picture with the thorns is so welcome!

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I wonder what it is with sparrows and shopping carts? I see them hanging out on (and under) them at Stop & Shop all the time. :)

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

You are so brilliant.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm happy to hear they remind you of John Crowley! He's an author I've heard nothing but good things about, and also: he's an author I'd like to read.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

They are industrious and profitable!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

But you **do** make art! Lovely, entrancing stories! If that's not art, is anything art?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

zyzyly, I know this is the wrong place to say it, but I have really adored your retrospective photos of the year. I'll have to go over and tell you (or, in some cases, tell you again) the ones I really like.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thank you--that makes me really happy :-)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The vandal likes to change the rules of the game, it seems to me, but the glazier is creative in meeting the challenge.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I can't wait to take a look!

Re: Again with the Win!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I admire sparrows--they make their homes all over and get right down to the business of living.

And yeah--it was one of those sharp, bright days, the day I took that last photo.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thanks ♥

I really really prefer it this way--that you drop by now and then, when you have a moment. I know for my own part that I can only comment on a portion of the LJ entries I read and enjoy. This way of doing it feels more honest and more free.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

I've only read Little, Big, but I thought that was amazing.

I'm going to try to read Engine Summer, Beasts, and The Deep this year.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'll have to come to you for coolth in August!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I don't know! I was going to say that maybe there are crumbs--but the shopping cart slats are so wide that I doubt any crumbs linger (and anyway, when people are buying stuff, the things are all wrapped up in paper or plastic--it's not like that many crumbs could get out).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

No more than my highly talented friends! I got sidetracked last night before I could post on your engaging post on religion in fantasy, but I'm still intending to drop by and do that. (Interesting comments already on that post!)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'll let you eat cake crumbs, little sparrows!

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

Sometimes while waiting in the parking lot, I watch the finches peck bug parts out of radiators and tires, or flit away with a stray french fry in their beaks. I think of Charles Darwin and his speciation theory and think that one day, hundreds if not thousands of years from now, a species of finch will become endangered because GM or Ford discontinued radiators in their cars, and their beaks will have become so specialized to that shape that the birds can no longer survive without them to provide tasty bug tussels for sustenance.

[dudeshoes.livejournal.com]

Wonderful stories. Do you have to be feeling cheerful to be this creative, I wonder? Today for some reason I don't feel cheerful, and I think that's the reason it's hard to create the haiku I want on blue claw crabs.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I don't think you do have to be too cheerful--I say this because I haven't been very sunny myself these past couple of days. I do think that writing them offered some relief, though.

Sorry you're feeling that way too.

I hold out for the crab haiku, but if something else finds its way to you, write that. I found two pennies today: one face up, one face down. I'll split the luck with you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

They'll have to put GM or Ford in the species name of that finch. Carpodaxus fordum. Carpodaxus generalis motorii.

[wendigomountain.livejournal.com]

Ha! I like it!

[pjthompson]

I like all of these, but I love the first one with the sparrows and the shopping carts.

[just-ann-now.livejournal.com]

De-lurks (inspired by today's Fandom Snowflake (http://akamine-chan.dreamwidth.org/251419.html#cutid1) challenge) to tell you how much I really enjoy these posts, the sensitive and imaginative photographs and the amazing storytelling in your text. Thank you so much for sharing them.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! How great to think I might have a secret reader or two, and how **extra great** that you de-cloaked and said hi.

Hi!

And I see you're a great LoTR fan. Your post of the covers of the Ballantine paperbacks makes me **so** nostalgic for my childhood paperbacks of them. Those were the versions I read when I first read LoTR, in fifth and sixth grade <3

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So glad <3

[just-ann-now.livejournal.com]

Those pictures just make my brain explode now. Must be old age *grin*

Join Tolkien fans worldwide tonight in lifting a glass to The Professor tonight, the 120th anniversary of his birth!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I fully intend to!

I still have them, with my penciled-in transliteration of the words in tengwar along the bottom of the title pages (though I didn't decipher that until after the Silmarillion came out...)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

That sounds very Marie Antoinette! :P

[avalonestel.livejournal.com]

Love the gorgeous photos, especially the one of the birds under the carts, and the stream swords made me shiver! <3

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It does a bit, doesn't it! Well, let's change the story to imagine her--or someone--saying that not as the height of selfish lack of concern, but out of generosity: imagine them really strewing cake crubs about!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Glad you like them! The sparrows were there again today, when I went to do the food shop.