Thanks

I just wanted to say thank you all for the birthday wishes today, and share this card that J's aunt made for me — appropriate, isn't it?

Coney Lomo

It sounds like Japanese, doesn't it?

I couldn't be in NY for my birthday this year (did I mention that today is my birthday?) but I did get a surprise when I picked up this roll of film from the photo store and found images of Coney Island from several birthday trips ago.

At the time I had just bought myself a cute little Diana+ camera and loaded my first roll of 120 film. Photography was still more of a curiosity than an obsession to me then.

And for a variety of reasons the finished roll has sat in the camera all this time.

Until now.

I will definitely not take so long to develop the second roll.

The Fair

Raw, rainy weather kept the usual crowds from the muddy midway of the local fair yesterday, but I was determined not to skip what's become an end-of-summer tradition. There are plates of steaming polish food to be eaten at damp picnic tables, and a building where prize-winning produce has been thoughtfully arranged under the glare of florescent lights. There are stacks of wire cages confining unusual chickens and ducks and floppy-eared rabbits, the red and blue ribbons affixed to their coops fluttering in the chilly breeze from an open door. Outside on the trampled grass there's a succession of antique tractors in red, blue, and green, and near them a display of steam-powered machinery chugs and spins, sputtering smoke into the clouds while men in plaid shirts and Carharts keep watch, add oil, fetch water, discuss the weather. We survive a few rotations on a beat-up ferris wheel and a stomach-turning spin on the ski-bob before my favorite part of any fair — a narrow petting barn full of animals. Goats, tall and short with wiry hair and smooth horns, oily-fleeced sheep, messy-nosed pigs, an old pony with a tangled mane, and impossibly soft rabbits and llamas beguile me with twitching noses poking out of wooden pens and glistening, inquisitive eyes.

Fair season is in full swing here in the hills, and I hope to visit several more of them in the weeks to come, juggling several cameras, falling in love with other people's farm animals, looking forward to taking you along.

Like holding a bumpy marshmallow

The mind, the Buddha, living creatures — these are not three different things.
— Seng-T'san

Five Senses Friday Number 20

Hear:
• While having my hair cut today my stylist leaned in and told me, in hushed tones, that someone had jumped off the nearby parking garage roof only hours earlier. That was sobering.
• On a lighter note, I've never been to a party and heard the words, "Let's have a cattle drive" come out of someone's mouth. But they did, and we did, on Tuesday night. Though I didn't take photos to accompany it, I'm thinking this story deserves it's own post.
• I've started listening to a lot of Bill Frisell this week. I don't know what prompted it, but the emotion that man can wring from a guitar is humbling.

Taste:
• Buttermilk blueberry muffins
• Pineapple upside-down cake
• The wonderful combination of peanut butter, ginger, and sesame in a cookie with subtle crunch
• Hennepin beer from Brewery Oomagang. I love the taste, but I love saying both "Hennepin" and "Oomagang" even more — like an unfamiliar dialect from the land of beer.

See:
• "Mare's tails" clouds in a crisp blue sky. I'd never heard the expression.
• I saw my parents and brother in RI last Sunday, always special
• Dynamite Records on Main St. Northampton empty, dark, and very much closed for good. A worrisome sign. J loved to buy his vinyl there. I'll miss the surprises he'd come home with.

Smell:
• Grilled hamburgers
• Impending autumn
• Corn husks, drying on the ground outside the kitchen door. A pleasant scent, like dried hay.

Feel:
• A definite chill in the air, especially at night
• The weight of heavier blankets
• No longer that self-conscious about shooting random photos in public, in front of people. I'm more obsessed with getting a shot I want than about worrying how I look taking it. It's liberating to not care who's watching

Candy, you were so fine

It's a rainy afternoon
In 1990
The big city geez it's been 20 years-
Candy-you were so fine

— Candy, Iggy Pop

Moments

Thanks Rowena for pointing me towards this video. I think it goes well with Monday's Pieces post.

As well as with this quote:

"Our lives...are but a little while, so let them run as sweetly as you can, and give no thought to grief from day to day. For time is not concerned to keep our hopes, but hurried on it's business, and is gone." — Euripides

Mushrooms for Lunch

Heading out of the office for lunch yesterday I debated whether or not I should grab my camera. What could I possibly see between work and the grocery store? I asked myself, and left it behind.

Luckily it wasn't too long a walk back to get it.

Love Thursday

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma
And endlessly change complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn how to read
the love letters sent by the wind and the rain,
the snow and the moon.

— Ikkyu

Happy Love Thursday all. I hope you find love letters in unexpected places today.

Flying Fish?

Nope — it's a fence full of painted river trout, left over from this weekend's Hoosic River Festival.


A cheery sight for a Monday morning.

I think more fences need art. These reminded me a little of the 911 Memorial Tile fence on 7th Ave in West Greenwich Village, though far less serious of course.

Jackson Pollock trout?

Trout behind bars.

Have you come across any fence art lately?

I'm short on words today, so I'll borrow someone elses...

Because I love this poem.

Signs
by Larry Levis

All night I dreamed of my home,
of the roads that are so long
and straight they die in the middle—
among the spines of elderly weeds
on either side, among the dead cats,
the ants who are all eyes, the suitcase
thrown open, sprouting failures.

2.
And this evening in the garden
I find the winter
inside a snail shell, rigid and
cool, a little stubborn temple,
its one visitor gone.

3.
If there were messages or signs,
I might hear now a voice tell me
to walk forever, to ask
the mold for pardon, and one
by one I would hear out my sins,
hear they are not important—that I am
part of this rain
drumming its long fingers, and
of the roadside stone refusing
to blink, and of the coyote
nailed to the fence with its
long grin.

And when there are no messages
the dead lie still—
their hands crossed so strangely
like knives and forks after supper.

4.
I stay up late listening.
My feet tap the floor,
they begin a tiny dance
which will outlive me.
They turn away from this poem.
It is almost Spring.

Blackbird, Fly

On my wish list. This adorable plastic twin-reflex camera that shoots 35mm film. I'm already mulling over where I could shoot with it.

Love the instructions too...especially, "let's take actively."

Pieces

Maybe I shouldn't have just taken the wedding cake topper from the shelf in my parent's basement without asking Sunday, but there it is. And there are my parents, at least symbolically, young and happy, before they built the house we're now emptying in a spot they used to picnic, before my brother was handed to my mom swaddled in a Christmas stocking, before I came along unexpectedly and against all odds 11 years later, before my mom's first cancer diagnosis, before my dad worked and then retired from 50 years of selling auto parts, before countless deaths and births, A+'s and failures, fights and forgivenesses, before thousands of meals around kitchen tables whose shapes might have changed through the decades, but whose position in the center of the kitchen remains the same to this day.

So many tiny pieces, big and small, fitting together one after the other until the larger image of a life is revealed. I wish I could take it apart and put it all back together again, more slowly this time, more familiar with what the final picture looks like.

It's almost my parent's 57th wedding anniversary. It's almost my 38th birthday. A red sun rose behind their cake topper this morning. It was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.

nothing to do (but think of you)

I took a little movie out the sunroof while driving home from work last week. The commute is 40 minutes, no traffic, businesses, or sidewalks full of people to distract me from my thoughts. Just the soundtrack of my choosing. The uninterrupted time can be both a blessing and a curse.

Music: World Spins Madly On by the Weepies, which cuts to audio from inside the car: Neil Young singing Down by the River, and wind. There was more I would have liked to have done with this, but I'm using i-Movie, the most rudimentary of video software.

Joyful, joyful, we adore thee

While visiting our house a few weekends ago, my young niece kept gravitating to the old upright piano in the dining room, picking out the familiar "Ode to Joy" melody from the final movement of Beethovan's 9th Symphony. Since then it won't leave me. When I was a child in Rhode Island, attending Catholic services with my family every Sunday, we often filed out of our pews to this hymn, following the priest and altar boys in a slow, crowded shuffle to the double doors which had been thrown open to the sun and air. It remains one of my clearest childhood memories, and I can hear the voices of both my mother and my father singing when I recall it.

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!

All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth and heaven reflect Thy rays,
Stars and angels sing around Thee, center of unbroken praise.
Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea,
Singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.

Thou art giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blessed,
Wellspring of the joy of living, ocean depth of happy rest!
Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, all who live in love are Thine;
Teach us how to love each other, lift us to the joy divine.

Mortals, join the happy chorus, which the morning stars began;
Father love is reigning o’er us, brother love binds man to man.
Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife,
Joyful music leads us Sunward in the triumph song of life.

Sadly, the hymn was deemed "dated" after a while, and cast aside for more contemporary choices. I was sorry to see it go — even as a child recognizing the divine in nature was a far easier concept to grasp than many of the others I was taught. What a beautiful world it described.

Googling the lyrics just now, I learned that Henry Van Dyke, who wrote them 1907, did so while attending nearby Williams College, perhaps inspired by the same fields, forests, vales, mountains, and flowery meadows I ended up gravitating to in Massachusetts, and look at every day on my way to and from work, feeling similarly humbled.

Straight-out-of-the-camera, baby. Some flowers for you...

A gray rain's been falling steadily all afternoon (hello, Hurricane Bill), but I have lots of windows to shoot from, and cream-colored, lacy hydrangeas (my favorite flowery subject) planted just beyond their frames.

I also have an inexpensive telephoto macro that sometimes surprises me. No fiddling with these photos required.

Five Senses Friday Number 19

I just realized there are two Five Senses Friday number 16's.

See:
• What must have been the last wild strawberry in the lawn, given that it's August and their season ended a month ago. I'm sure you can imagine where it ended up next.
• I saw Magpie from A New York Magpie's Beads, who came to visit us while taking a week of classes at beautiful Snow Farm. What a trip it was to have someone I've only known online (with the exception of a brief meeting at BEA last spring) at my home, as if she'd been beamed there from another dimension. Such fun.

Hear:

• The sound of lightening crackling inside the house last night. My reaction? Jump towards J and cling to his arm like a barnacle. Because I'm sure he can fight off lightening strikes.
• J whistling along to "The Girl from Ipanema" upstairs in his studio. Too sweet.
• Paul Stookey playing with Mottau, Drew & Clark at the Peterborough Country Club last night. (J's dad being the "Drew" part of the band, singing and playing percussion). Afterwards I got to meet Paul Stookey and stupidly did not tell him that Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the first concerts I ever saw with my brother at the Warwick Tent in RI. And that I specifically remember them playing this song, which I think they'd just written:

Peter, Paul And Mary: El Salvador - Peter, Paul And Mary

Taste:
• Spoonfuls of the remaining warm blueberry jam from the bottom of the heavy pan I'd just boiled it in. It's been a few years since I've preserved anything, and it felt good to hear the metal lids on each of the 4 pints "pop!" as the jars began their cooling down process on the kitchen table.
• Rosemary and orange marinated tuna kabobs. Try it!
• Wild rice with fresh tarragon, parsley, chives, lemon juice...recipe here. Goes well with the kabobs.
• Bangers n' mash" at Harlow's last night. If you're ever in Peterborough, NH this is the place to go. Give the bar a pat - J built it.

Touch:
• Scrambling into the thorny wild blackberry patch to pick berries

Smell:
• The air of August is heavy with scents — earthy, floral, grassy, the decay of spring growth, the mustiness of an old home after a wet summer