The composition isn’t quite right.

I tell myself, “You really ought to rotate counter-clockwise a couple degrees, then re-sketch.” But I’m back in DC now, my four-night Thanksgiving holiday in Tucson is at an end, and I’d need to use the Hi EDIT tools to fix the place and time. Then if I’m taking the time to do that, I really ought to try tagging with Markdown. And then I get to thinking about Voltaire…

le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

So yes, the best really is the enemy of the good, even in Tucson.

It was the first of December. It was 17.2° C. I’d just departed the Catalina Park Inn having enjoyed a rollicking catch-up chat with the owners. My holiday had unfolded differently than expected — I had anticipated spending more time practicing welding in Jeff and Greer’s back yard — so a free morning meant dropping by the Inn.

Did we stop laughing even once? Did we stop to breathe? Could I really have spent all my time behind a welding mask and missed this?

Glad I didn’t.

FWIW: Pictures don’t tell the whole story. The soundtrack to this photo is as placid as you’d imagine, except for the occasional sonic boom and doppler-effect cacophony of fighter jets on maneuvers from the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Your tolerance of the noise probably matches your preference for spicy food (which Tucson supplies in delicious abundance). The random cacophony offers a forest-for-the-trees moment. You wake from Tucson’s mystical harmonies and take stock of how different it is from where you came from, and how quickly you had slipped into the rhythm.

And perhaps the composition isn’t that important after all.