There are days when my daily journal writing cannot be matched in any way to my photographs for the day. Both writing and photography are as critical to my well-being as food and sleep. Sometime the writing is prompted by something or someone I have photographed, and there are times when I go out looking for a photograph to match something I have written. Sometimes, like today, my writing for the day is something build on a fragment of an idea that I have jotted on a scrap of paper; and it may have absolutely no relation to the pictures I've managed to take. Today, I took three pictures; and I don't feel like throwing any of them away; but I can see clearly that there is no way I can stretch an explanation to connect them to the writing. From a discussion with friends about the second chapter of Harvey Cox's new book, The Future of Faith, I managed to get only three lines in what I hope will eventually be a longer poem. If it materializes, I'll post the rest of it. Here's the start:

Here I am watching you watching me watching you
wondering can you help me know for sure that I am
not just a factor in someone else’s dream?

The thing about the lily that caught my attention was the single water drop. You should click on the image to see the water drop larger. There were at least a dozen more perfectly formed lily blossoms, but they didn't have at the tip a perfect, clear, water pearl that will not ever evaporate now that I've captured it in a picture.
I liked this classical ivory (now illegal material that I should probably be embarrassed to own) carving of a Chinese scholar from the moment I saw it in a shop forty years ago in Singapore. As I looked for subjects to photograph on this rainy day in San Diego, I settled on the ivory scholar and the much older jade horse below.