Words come and go, I suppose, and today I don't know what that statement means, but I do know that at the moment I don't have many words to spend here. I must use them elsewhere (on the job, that is). And the kids are out of school for the ML King holiday. So today will be a scrapbook day, maybe a finger-painting day, a rolling-snakes-from-clay day.

I wanted to leave some photos here that I took this past Saturday at Magic Forest in Topeka, one of those indoor playgrounds that have sprung up in the last decade or two. Instead of a birthday party, T decided he wanted a trip to Magic Forest with his bud, hyphenated Ben, so we obliged.

The photos are large -- but not large enough really -- so they might take a while to download.

While the photos are loading down below, let me leave the url of Naked Eye, particularly the one for this photo essay about digital photography. It is a promising work in progress, so I record the address here as a reminder to myself to revisit, and as a recommendation to others to take a gander.

Other cliches loom ahead

It's a photographic cliche, of course, the ball crawl at these indoor rec places. But massed and repeated colors and shapes capture the eye, and are apparently a part of our shared visual syntax.

And they may operate so powerfully that when the same photo turns 180 degrees, well, vertigo might result.

Okay, you're tough. It didn't work on you. You've obviously spent more time hanging by your legs from the monkey bars over the ball crawl than I have. I'm the only wuss on this page.

Here's a standard record shot. A kid, just turned nine, vibrantly flush from adventure on the monkey bars or in the ball crawl, proof that younger humans can be beautiful when awake, unself-conscious in their snaggle-toothed disarray.

Of course, your child is more beautiful.

And then there's this self-portrait. The photo was not an accident -- I took it deliberately -- but I'm not sufficiently post-modern to explicate it. I don't mind language that is elliptical, that suggests rather than points, but I am not sufficiently confident in my ability to make images less obscure, so I prefer images that are more easily unfolded. I'm part of the great unwashed that doesn't venture much beyond the representations of the impressionists.

Ooh, pretty picture is often my most profound reaction to whatever visual wizardry came after the impressionists.

But I liked the contrast in the color ranges between the regular, geometric shapes and the irregular, human-cloaking shapes.

Maybe a title would help. Intruder, maybe. Or maybe, like so many things, it's just proof that I was there, here, somewhere.

Ye gads! Did I say that aloud? What a whiner!

On those rather heavy-handed observations, I will end this entry and go off to wash the paints from my fingers and the clay from beneath my fingernails. I enjoyed this.

Maybe I'll be back today for more. Dunno.