Peace & light

If I could have two things in one:

the peace of the grave,

and the light of the sun.

This was the message on my page-a-day calendar at work this morning, kind of a doozy for today, these incredible opening lines of Edna St. Vincent Millay's Moriturus.

The Changing Woods

This is, to date, the most incredible mushroom I've ever seen. I haven't been able to identify it yet...





And I don't just mean the leaves.

Just as the woods behind the house are changing, so are the woods across the street. Wild and untouched, even J and I rarely ventured there, not wanting to disturb the peace of such a spot. However, the land has recently been given to the local land trust, and an official hiking trail is being forged over the river and through the woods. On Friday we found foot bridges under construction, and soon official trail markers will guide hikers through the once dense brush. It's a far better situation than the tree-felling that's going on behind our property and is obviously being done thoughtfully, but it's still a change.

Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation

How I Arrive

Past the perpetual yard sales and the acrid tang of goats in a pen, tired mailboxes leaning towards gravel roadsides with their knock and ping percussion of dancing stones and transparent veils of resurrected dust, past the fallen limbs of last winter, by summer houses dark now and closed like the petals of August blooms, by the swoop of low crows and high, wide formations of geese, fields wearing lady's mantle edges, woodpecker tappings, the hesitancy of deer, mountains that slope softly into valleys like shoulders in sleep, front steps littered with leaves, small hills of unstacked cordwood, a thirsty visitor leaning to collect cold spring water in a plastic jug and hardy swimmers at the pond's edge wrapped in towels of red and blue. Today is setting in the rear view mirror, her soft curtain rising and closing, and with every passing mile I arrive both closer and father away from what's familiar.

Divenely Strange Refrain

lady on the water
make me rich, make me poor,
lay your flowers at my door
lady on the water
bring me branches, bring me twine
wrap my heart upon the vine
with your wine dye my feathers
as the cock crows giving time

awake, my lady on the water
share my bread and share my drink
pay no mind to what others think
lady on the water
whip this wind into a flame
with your grapes and bottled rain,
make your wine of my worship
a divinely strange refrain
or make it rain

my lady on the water
place your thumb upon my tongue
be the song no one has sung
lady on the water
with your jacket blue and strange
change these rivers in my veins
into wine, learning, burning,
driven deep into this maze
all of my days

my lady on the water
lead me from the wilderness
to countless deserts, dreams, and jests
lady on the water
rest my head upon your chest
leave me only when i'm blessed
cause i'll be in my own country
good and dead and gone to rest
that's the way that's the best

Shining nowhere, but in the dark

They are all gone into the world of light!

And I alone sit ling’ring here;

Their very memory is fair and bright,

And my sad thoughts doth clear.

— Henry Vaughn

Five Senses Friday on a Saturday. No. 24

I feel down a bit of a rabbit hole last night, but Five Senses Friday is better late than never, yes? How else can I keep track of these weeks, swirling past.

Feel:
• I had the worst hangover in years today. Many years.
• Chilled and aching, I would love a wood-fired hot tub to sink into at night, a place to gaze up at the stars, feel clean, feel warm.
• Terribly, wonderfully mortal

Smell:
• Fresh potted rosemary, a gift from friends
• Cheap incense and dry leaves
• Cinnamon scented peaches baking beneath a homemade biscuit topping
• Freshly picked basil

Taste:
• Brunch at the Dirty Truth: Alagash White, steak and eggs, a salad of greens with walnuts, blue cheese and apples
• Chicken pot pie made with local chicken
• Fresh peaches sliced in oatmeal
• Tomatillo salsa — we preserved 15 pints this week

See:
• Black crows in golden branches
• Two porcupines overhead in a tree

Hear:
• J bought a drum kit
• My ears have a crush on Ryan Adams, who keeps me company on the drive to and from work lately

Improv Everywhere Strikes Again

This is so sweet. I love how game everyone is to have their photo taken on the subway, and seeing all those genuine smiles and then the portraits at the end made my day. I need to get back to NYC soon.

The furry, fuzzy, & feathered...

animals of the 3-County Fair.

The 3-County Fair

Earlier this month I arrived at the 3 County Fair on a hot, sunny afternoon lugging around my camera bag and (yes, I'm a dork) 4 cameras — 2 digital and 2 toy. These are some of the digital shots (with actions applied). Later this week I'll pick up the Diana+ prints (which I already know are going to have major light leaks) and drop off my first roll of film from my newest toy, a little orange Blackbird Fly, my birthday present from J (blogs are priceless for hinting around).

Stay tuned for cute animal shots!

The Age of Stupid

The Age of Stupid Global Premiere Trailer from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Tonight The Age of Stupid premieres in NYC (as well as in 700 other locations in 50 different countries) with a bike-powered performance by Moby and an acoustic set by Thom Yorke (insert whining about not living in New York here — you know the drill). This film looks pretty intense, to say the least.

I also heard today that the Blog Action Day theme for this October 15th is Climate Change.

I'm trapped like a raindrop in your web...

Webs by the river.

Books, books, books....

As if I don't think about books enough working for a publishing company — but I have such a weakness for them...

Via a friend on Twitter I discovered the portfolio of James and Karla Murray today. Looking through the delicious store front photos I thought, My God, I'd like to see a whole book of these! And apparently my wish is grant-able, because the 336 page book is available on Amazon.

Asylum, which I posted about earlier this month, arrived early and is every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be. I haven't read the intro by Oliver Sacks yet (maybe tonight) but the photos by Christopher Payne are both amazing and chilling.

Next, allow me to introduce you to a book I designed for Countryman Press last summer called Out of Gas.

It features nearly 100 photos of pickups and abandoned gas stations and pumps by Jeffrey E. Blackman. If you're into rust and abandoned place (like me) you'll want to check it out.

Not long ago a friend surprised me with this book in the mail. Tina Berning's paintings and drawings of women are beautiful - playful, sensual, stylish, fun. I love looking through it, and if you could see some of the fashion illustration style drawings I did in high school (and later in cut paper collages) you would recognize immediately why I'm so fascinated by it.

Some friends recently commented that they'd like to come over to my house and do nothing but look through my coffee table books for an afternoon. I think this is a fantastic idea. Books are meant to be looked at and enjoyed, and the time I can spend drooling over my own (relatively small) collection is limited. A pile of books, wine, some munchies, good music, friends...I definitely want to do this.

Rust on a Wave

"Show me any object, I'll show you rust on a wave." — James Galvin

Time Zero

You can be sure I'll add a Polaroid camera to my lineup should this company actually start producing instant film again. Fingers crossed!

Stay tuned by visiting  The Impossible Project.

Future Smoke

Stacking wood, a timeless-feeling endeavor. The rows in the shed above are about 8' wide by 6' tall and will be three deep by the end of our next stacking-session. We finished two yesterday, and the woodshed floor is bowing — a fix for the future.

The row of wood against the very back wall is the first one built in the early fall and the last to be pulled from in late winter. God only knows what the dark months in between have in store, but certainly there will be a sense of relief upon reaching that back row in late February — to know there might finally be more wood than winter remaining. That's "rural riches" I suppose, though I'm no expert.

Hunger for Something

by Chase Twichell

Sometimes I long to be in the woodpile,
cut-apart trees soon to be smoke,
or even the smoke itself,

sinewy ghost of ash and air, going
wherever I want to, at least for a while.

Neither inside nor out,
neither lost nor home, no longer
a shape or a name, I’d pass through

all the broken windows of the world.
It’s not a wish for consciousness to end.

It’s not the appetite an army has
for its own emptying heart,
but a hunger to stand now and then

alone on the death-grounds,
where the dogs of the self are feeding.

Sleeping in Sage

This morning I was working my way down the row of sage at the edge of the garden, clippers in one hand and bouquet of fresh herbs in the other, when I spied this tiny tree frog taking a nap in the most fragrant of beds.

It reminded me of the visitor to my peonies in June.


He was unperturbed, still out there as I type this.

I prefer new places to be new, and familiar places to remain familiar.

A fresh path was sliced through the forest this week, and there's suddenly new sky where there were just old branches. The air is thick with the scent of sliced pine and churned soil, and the bending ferns are crushed beneath a thick carpet of amputated hemlock boughs.

The dog, eager to investigate, bounds ahead to follow the winding path of the woodman's tractor. My own feet twist in the soft earth, catch on a lacerated root, the uncovered stone. The wide new path is edged in white tree stumps, oozing thick tears of amber sap, auburn rings like wrinkles showing age. Trees whose swaying tops have been edging slowly skyward for decades, long before something possessed me to buy a house on the edge of this forest and set off into it.

Well it's letting in more light, and it's a great path for mountain biking I tell myself, but above me I can hear the remaining leaves nervously rustling who's next to fall? and in the distance lunch break is over and the chainsaw's being roused.

Saturday Morning Funny

Five Senses Friday #23

Taste:

• Boiled lobster, corn, baked potato and chocolate cake for my birthday dinner with my family at my brother's house last week

• Fresh baked zucchini bread, which my mom and brother claim is, "the best zucchini bread ever."

• Well roasted green beans. Too roasted, maybe.

• Café mocha in the afternoons
• My guilty comfort food pleasure: Ramen noodles. I don't use the little MSG-filled packets but instead like my wilted noodels doused in either sauteed garlic or (if I'm really lazy) sprinkled generously with dried garlic granules. Thursday night, to spare the friend I was about to have a beer with, I opted for mixing in a big scoop of locally made sweet brown rice miso instead.

Smell:

• It is most definitely autumn

• A dead mouse I forgot in a trap upstairs by J's studio. Ugh. Sorry J.

• Blown-out birthday candles

This week has forced me to look at lots of things I don't want to see.

See:

• Beautiful skies, which I've been trying to consciously appreciate

• A hawk at close range, sitting on a low dead branch and not bothered by my presence

• Blisters covering my mom's swollen feet

• Last Sunday I brought home bound pages for this book which you might recall I did some modeling for last winter. I really don't like having my picture taken (or looking at most photos of myself afterwards) and did it entirely because I knew it would thrill my mom, which it did

• These photos by Vriad-Lee are lovely. Ah, film.

Hear:

• The Hideaway by The Weepies is a beautiful album. It will bear the curse of forever reminding me of this particular time, but I think it's strong enough to transcend it. I also love listening to James Taylor's One Man Dog in autumn. It's perfect for solitary drives along foliage-blazed roads

Feel:

• Light mist catching in my hair and unsettled wind on Saturday morning as I headed down to the river. Gray, moody weather that makes me feel like Catherine, haunting the moors. As a side note, my brother (an English professor) doesn't think what Catherine and Heathcliff had between them was love. I beg to differ.

• Cold mud soaking through my shoes

• Proud of my dad for keeping his shocked reaction to my mom's weakened state on Sunday inside until he reached my brother's car and shut the door. Grateful for and amazed at my brother's patience and selflessness in caring for her at his house. Thankful for the support of J and my friends in the hills