Tonight, looking at the
lights reflecting off the pond while I waited for our dog, Terra, to
wet: The lights on poles in the parking lot of the Lofts condominium across the
pond and the lights in the house windows further along the shore, when viewed
directly have a harsh mechanical effect evoking parking lots, asphalt, and
window treatments. But reflected in the water, softened by the water's motion
and refraction and shorn of the objects they are lighting, they become scenic:
natural phenomenon converting the ungraceful to the beautiful. The truth but
told slant?
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
An Insane Instant
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Emo-Shun
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/ the-allure-of-brain-scans-123685587 |
Once I realized that the disappointment still echoed in my
brain though the sound that produced the echo was silent, I thought to go back and
deal with the disappointment, assess its validity. However, I could not
remember what it was that had sparked the emotion. I have always been capable
of this kind of forgetting, though now that I am aging, I am better at it, especially
when I am not paying attention to my thoughts.
I felt a twinge of horror: here I was stuck with a rogue effect
that I could not analyze because it no longer had a cause. Thoughts leave their
emotional echoes behind to mingle sometimes with other thoughts to which they bear
no significant causal relationship. An associational link is possible but there
is no guarantee that the point of linkage bears on the emotion that persists.
This phenomenon suggest a landscape of memory littered with the emotional ruins
of buildings that never actually existed, a confused geography that never did
make any sense and for which no historical map exists. A wilderness.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Composting One's Self
This past week I made our first trip to the Amesbury City
compost facility to dispose of the leaves and seeds and who knows what—all of
which I had shoveled out of the gutter in front of our house. I also had some
one-inch-thick magnolia branches I had taken off one tree in the front and some
thorny wild rose clippings from the front yard and the edge of the pond. Some
of the weeds I dug up from the lower terrace further down the hill—nasty, deep
rooted burdocky looking things—I had just tossed in the garbage, and the more
benign clippings and rotting leaves that had come from the yard itself, I just
dumped down the hill since the erosion is so bad, anything that sticks either
as humus or plants will be positive.
We had gotten our compost sticker the week before and scoped
out where the place was. Even so, I lost my way trying to find it without our
GPS. Ultimately, however, I had to cheat and use the GPS capacity of my iPhone to find it. It is a newly opened facility, out in the middle of nowhere near
the newly relocated DPW facility. Tonight, walking home from my daughter Clare’s
house, I was reminded of where the old facility was when I walked by it right next to Mt. Prospect Cemetery.
What a shame that they disconnected the rotting leaves and
the rotting people. The cemetery and the old composting area shared an access
road so that the reminder that we are also compost, that we are dust and will
return to dust, or, more hopefully, to humus was an additional benefit to
composting. As it is, when you go to the Amesbury, MA website, you will find a
link explaining the procedure and cost for getting a permit to place compost at the city facility, and another link explaining the procedure and cost to put a body in the Mt. Prospect Cemetery. At least in the virtual world, the access
points are still contiguous. I think it is a particularly nice touch that
resident senior citizens can get one free compost permit.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Ducks and What?
As Terra and I returned from a walk, I paused on the deck,
and looking down at the edge of Clarks Pond, I saw a head moving through the
water. We had just rediscovered an old pair of binoculars that were of dubious
value, so I fetched them from the study to try them out. When I returned to the
deck, the mammal was hunched over, standing on a submerged section of a fallen
tree in the water, the one I had planned to remove. I had envisioned myself
floating off shore, sawing sections off and dragging them to shore, so that
when I was finished, the shore line would look neat and orderly; though I would
have hoped that with all I know, I should have rejected that idea out of hand,
but I did not. It took my watching fallen trees in the pond lure wildlife
providing convenient places for turtles to sun and for beavers and muskrats to
munch, to re-enlighten me. Now I plan for the log and branches to stay till they
rot.
"Muskrat." Wikipedia |
But as I looked through my binoculars at the surprisingly
sharp image, the beaver vs. muskrat question was what occupied my mind. I could
not tell whether a muskrat or beaver was
hunched over its root gnawing for a bit then slipping back in the water for
more. I watched carefully, but it returned to the water each time in a way that
concealed its tail. It seemed much too big for a muskrat, which The Washington Post’s kids guide to beavers
and muskrats, told me max out at about 4 pounds (while beavers run 35 to 60
pounds). On the other hand,
eventually I saw the whole body as the creature swam and a black tail flagellated
as it swam. The Post claimed that if
you see only the head (what I saw at
first) it is a beaver; the whole body (what I saw later), it’s a muskrat. I don’t
think I saw two different animals. I was convinced enough right after sighting
it to tell a friend that I had seen a beaver.
"Male Wood Duck" Wikipedia |
I walked into town to meet Madalene at Flatbread Pizza for
supper after her Yoga class. Returning home, as we stepped back onto our deck,
I saw the mammal on the log again; this time I looked at it without the
binoculars. Much to my surprise, I realized it was tiny, easily no more than four
pounds. The binoculars excluded too much
of the context so that my frame of reference slipped. Concentrating too much on
too little can lead to errors that seem solid the more so because of the assiduousness
with which the erroneous observation was performed. Muir’s comment about how
everything is connected works all the way down.
Monday, June 2, 2014
This Old Man
I have come into possession of one of the souvenirs of
aging: a seven chambered pill box, each chamber with its own lid marked with a
letter for a day of the week. I appreciate that the makers of my pillbox
acknowledge that the issue is memory not cognition because they do not hesitate
to mark both Tuesday and Thursday each with just a “T.”
On Sunday I put two pills in each chamber; that way during
the week I will know whether I have taken my pills or not. This concise device
engages at once my deteriorating health and memory. But it is also a calendar on
which I mark off the days, like opening the doors of an advent calendar
anticipating Christmas, only in this case I will open the last door and then I’ll
die. In a sense it is like the first advent, waiting for the big event, but
unsure of when it will happen. When I was young, the days would drag until
Christmas, but as I open these doors the weeks go by quickly. The practice
forces me to mark off the days and weeks, reminds me that time is passing.
As I refill the week’s supply, I think, “Didn’t I just do
this?” Pill taking becomes déjà vu: as the act of taking pills everyday becomes
more ingrained in my brain, it is easier for me to recall having taken the pill,
whether or not I have. Each event seems like I might have done it before, but
the doors tell me which I have already passed through and what has passed
through me and what of me has passed.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Spring?
I am so tired. An inauspicious way to begin. One morning last week, I walked on the winter side of the edge of spring: though it was well into April, it was just barely 20F and during the night leading into that morning it had snowed and had been in the teens. Two days before that, however, the temperature had been in the mid-seventies, so then we had been fairly far over the spring border in the summer side that day. But I am tired. Spring is a line we draw through the chaos of weather and then cleave to it, with effort.
Past weather Wellsboro - april 2014
Average high temperature: | 19.1°F (normal: 55°F) |
Average low temperature: | 10.5°F (normal: 32°F) |
Average temperature: | 14.8°F (normal: 44°F) |
Total Precipitation: | 1.11 inch (normal: 2.87 inch) |
Total snowfall: | 0 inch |
Highest max temperature: | 64.9°F |
Lowest max temperature: | °F |
Highest min temperature: | 35.1°F |
Lowest min temperature: | °F |
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