For this image, I pasted a sample from from one of my paintings onto an AI image of a writer and a robot. It’s me writing my novel Software in 1980, right? And my muse is Ralph Numbers, or Cobb Anderson, or my father, Embry Rucker, Sr.
As I compose today’s post, it’s March, 2025. I’m catching up on my blog. I haven’t posted since July, 2024. It’s been about eight months! Why did I neglect my blog for so long? Well, mainly it’s because I was intensely focused on my novel Sqinks.
As my programmer friend Michael Beeson once said, “Writing a long program is like being a drug addict. All you want is that one thing, and you never have any time for all the other things.” Same deal with writing a novel.
A couple of weeks ago, I finished the first draft and the first round of corrections on Sqinks, and now it’s with my agent, and I’m free. Dutiful sort that I am, I like to have something to do, and I enjoy sharing my photos and anecdotes. So here goes my blog again.
But why not just microblog? As you probably know, I post pretty often on Bluesky, Mastodon, and, yes, even X/Twitter. I like the microblog format. Over the years I’ve gotten used to it. In some ways it’s like composing haiku, what with the strict limit on length. Generally I’ll attach one of my recent photos to each microblog post, under the Surrealist principle that any image goes with any text.
But the long blog post format still appeals to me. I do shoot a lot of photos and I love to put them out there. And when I’m posting a lot of photos at once, I get a rolling flow of commentary going, and I can develop my thoughts at greater length and, I hope, entertain you guys. So welcome back.
After my trip to London with Barb Ash, we did a mandatory visit to Seabright beach in Santa Cruz. The lighthouse on the spit next to the harbor. Love walking up and down this beach, it’s been a touchstone ever since we moved here in 1986, which was, my god, nearly forty years ago. I guess you could say I’m a Californian by now.
The classic Greens restaurant in the Fort Mason area of San Francisco. Fab views and the food is always startling. Barb and I were here very much at an uncrowded time, near afternoon closing time. Epic view.
I like walking the path along the coast between Fort Mason and towards the Land’s End area. Dig the lovely curves of the sea walls.
Spotted this nice art ball in an art alley behind SF MOMA. In place for some coming evening’s fest. The sphere is truly one of most perfect possible shapes. And when it’s a mirror—well, it contains the entire outer world within.
Rude Dog the author at home. I painted a “face” onto the case of my phone to make it easier to find.
Speaking of spheres, how about this mossy being at low tide on Four Mile Beach, north of Santa Cruz? Exquisite. All is one, baby.
My painting “White Holes.” I smeared the paints from my previous palette on the canvas, then added the white holes. It took quite a while to decide the colors around the holes. As always you can purchase my paintings at my Paintings page
Daughter Isabel Rucker and I walking in Los Gatos Creek on a warm day. The water level kind of low, but certainly deep enough to be beautiful. My kids all get it about Nature being holy. Holy in a fun, relaxing kind of way—no sermons or blaring organ music involved. To comfortably walk on the underwater stones I myself wear Keene’s sandals with cotton socks, and use two walking sticks.
Lovely inside-out 4D portal magic door. In the “cube” overlooking silicon valley. It’s an old structure on Mount Umunhum, originally the mounting for a big radar dish to look for incoming ICBM missiles from Russia. Now painted over with varnish and left in place. Nice drive and a nice view.
Another sacred spot, with its own magic door. This one at Panther Beach between Santa Cruz and Davenport. It used to be undiscovered, but now you see more people there. Even so, you can often have it to yourself.
Barb Ash at Panther Beach with me. Interesting flows of blue rock amid the buff.
Another shot of that amazing stone at Panther. Gnarl is the best, and chaos is health.
Magical crack in my basement door with the light burning in. Sober though I am, I am in fact “high” a lot of the time. It’s just a matter of paying attention.
Holding forth on my theories about the all-important gnarl. At Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur.
Great shot of the setting sun from the entrance to Pfeiffer Beach. Really strong wind at this time, almost like you’re being sand-blasted. If you want to sit down, you need to sit in the lee of a log or rock. I got this shot with my Pixel phone camera … sometimes these little phone cameras can catch something that a “real” camera might not.
This was shot with my Leica Q 2. Just love that sunbeam. Graphic designers and photographers sometimes call these “God rays,” especially if the rays they’re emanating from a setting sun or cloudy sky. I didn’t really even see this ray when I took this picture, but it showed up when I was processing the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom Classic, which my go-to “dark room,” where I “develop” my photos.
For this photo, it’s crucial to have those two people in it. Humanizes it, let’s you project yourself into it.
This shot and the one before were shot at Andrew Molera State Park just north of Big Sur. It has a nice trail from the parking area to the beach, although you have to cross a brook (well, actually it’s the Big Sur River)…you might wade, or sometimes there’s some boards or even a bridge to walk on, it varies.
“Farewell,” a sad painting about me saying goodbye to my dear wife Sylvia. She’s walking toward the afterworld and I’m standing there. The creepy building on the right is, like, a crypt where you might buy a slot for storing your departed one’s ashes. We did not in fact use a crypt, as it felt better to bury Sylvia’s box of ashes in a regular cemetery grave with a headstone. What are those four lonely little cakes by the crypt? I guess they might stand for me and the three kids, on our own now.
Sutro Tower in San Francisco, emerging from the fog. I didn’t use a telephoto lens here, it was just my regular Q2 lens, but with the image cropped way down. At first you might think Sutro Tower is ugly — a robotic fondu fork — but over time you get used to it. It’s part of SF.
The classic bar at Zuni Cafe on Market Street in SF. Been there since 1979. On daughter Isabel’s fiftieth birthday, all the kids gathered here, flanked by Rudy’s wife Penny, and Isabel’s husband Gus. Rudy Jr. treated us to dinner; he and I split a house specialty: an entire roast chicken. And what a chicken. It was lovely to share the big birthday with Isabel.
Rudy the Elder.