The view from my window

The gallery prompt, started by Tara at Sticky fingers came along just as I got a new camera, and I find myself drawn in almost every week by her themes.

This week's is "Outside my front door". For the very first gallery I posted a picture of the city skyline, taken just around the corner from my front door. For an extra mere few hundred thousand dollars we could have had that view from right outside our front door/living room window, but instead we live on the other side of the hill, and  have a quirkier take on San Francisco scenery. One of the lovely things about this city is that from every hill in every neighbourhood there is a different view, beautiful in its own way. The city never fails to surprise me. Visiting friends is an excuse to peer out of their windows and comment upon a never before observed vantage point of the fair city that all of us who live here love so passionately.

Here is what you can see from our place:

Looking northwest from the kids room, on a clear day and with the help here of my zoom lens we can actually glimpse the top of that icon of California, the Golden Gate Bridge. In my mind one of the most beautiful man made structures in the world.

And looking South West we can see the freeways and hills south of the city. The photo doesn't really show how steep the street is, but if you look at the way the houses fall away, each roof lower than the other, you can get a sense of the precipitousness.

Geekygirl loves to run pell mell down the street, it must feel like flying. Once she stumbled and raised the most enormous egg on her smooth perfect forhead, and I'm inclined to strap a crash helmet onto her every time we go out. She still runs like the wind whenever she gets the chance.

 You may notice the thick webs of wires clouding the views. All our power and phone is overground here for reasons I don't understand but probably have to do with the sorry under-investment in communal infrastructure here in "the land of everyone for him/herself".

I don't see the wires though. I just tune them out and I'm surprised when I look at the photographs, because the camera seems to emphasize what my brain ignores. It is a reminder that I can see past the irrelevent clutter in life, and focus on the beauty.