GrongarBlog – Page 31

52 Photos ~ Microscopic

Trust

Trust that there is a tiger, muscular
Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been
seen and never will be seen by any human
eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword-
fish will never near a ship, that far
from cameras or cars elephant herds live
long elephant lives. Believe that bees
by the billions find unidentified flowers
on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe
in caves of contentment, bears sleep.
Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly
snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun.
I must trust all this to be true, though
the few birds at my feeder watch the window
with small flutters of fear, so like my own.

–Susan Kinsolving, Poetry (May 2003)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This photo and post are in response to this week’s theme for the 52 Photos Project. You should participate, too! Read about how it works here. You can see a gallery of everyone’s photos for this week’s theme here. To see a list of all my blog posts for this project, go here.

Our winter of Bond-age

This winter, we the James Bond movies.

All of them.

From Sean Connery’s first, “Dr. No” (1962), to the 1967 spoof, “Casino Royale”, starring David Niven and Peter Sellars, through the one-off George Lazenby (“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”), through the cringe-worthy Roger Moores, the cold Timothy Daltons, the flashy Pierce Brosnans, and the uneasy Daniel Craigs.

I’ve never been a James Bond fan. Before this winter, I think I’d only seen a couple of the films (including, memorably, “Live and Let Die”, at the drive-in when I was about eight years old. My sister and I sat in the back seat of our parents’ car, wearing our pjs, digesting our fast-food dinner, pretending to be asleep, and being terrified for two hours).

But, we’d gone to “Skyfall” last November or December, and it was better than any of us had expected, and, aware of the long dark evenings ahead of us, one of us (and here I’m going to say it was M —Michael that is, not Bond’s boss, “M”) suggested we work our way through the rest. Randomly. As they were available at the video rental place, or via video streaming.

A few things I know today that I didn’t know last fall:

:: With a few exceptions, these movies are not about plot. If you fall asleep for half-an-hour while watching them, you won’t miss much. If you fall asleep through all of the Roger Moore movies, you won’t miss anything.

:: Cane chairs are more dangerous than you realized.

:: Goldfinger has an amazing rumpus room.

:: Going to bed with James Bond is usually a fatal act. You might think it’s worth it, but you should know the consequences beforehand.

:: Cigars are for heat. Ice cubes are for cold. And this is the best part of “Thunderball”.

:: If you are a villain, and you want to kill James Bond, you should just shoot him. Don’t capture him, drive him somewhere, tie him up, and leave him to be eaten by sharks or something. It doesn’t work. I’m sure you already know this, but you’d be surprised how many don’t.

:: The rules for playing baccarat are clearly spelled out in Ian Flemming’s novel, “Casino Royale”. If you use salt water taffy as betting chips, you win no matter what’s in your hand.

:: It’s a lot of fun to go around saying “Octopussy” with Sean Connery’s accent.

:: James Bond would be nowhere without “Q”.

:: Miss Moneypenny deserves better.

We watched the last two movies on our list this week. We’d saved a good one for last: Sean Connery looking young, lithe, and fresh in “From Russia With Love”.

M went to the video rental place yesterday to return the two DVDs we took out last weekend. When he got there, he saw a sign saying that the place was closed without notice. For good. As if they knew that our Bond binge was over and we wouldn’t be helping to keep their business afloat anymore.

Time for some new adventures, but I won’t say no to a very very cold Vesper Martini on the deck. Shaken, not stirred.

52 Photos ~ Conversation

Like many people who write for a living, I sit here alone at my computer much of the day and mutter.

Not to myself, mind you.

The cats, with their interrogative tails and their insistent meows, are always making demands disguised as questions.

When are you going to feed us? What’s that on the counter? Can we have it? Now? Are you going to try to stop us if we get on the counter? Why did you have to buy that stupid dog? Can’t you get rid of him? Are you going to feed us now? Are you eating something? Can we have it? Will you give it to us if we walk on your face?

They don’t wait for answers. They just keep asking. I answer. No. Later. You can’t have that. Leave the dog alone. Leave each other alone. Get out of the sink. We keep up this exchange until they fall asleep in little cat piles on the sofa cushions, or until I boot them into the basement and shut the door behind them.

Our conversation is not very satisfying, but at least it’s reliable.

With the dog, it’s more a series of polite requests and assurances.

Dog: If it’s not too much trouble, I’d sure like to go for a walk. Might you have time soon to go for a walk?

Me: Don’t worry, we’ll go soon. I just have to write this thing.

Okay, I can wait. Oh, there’s a scary cat. Can you please make the cat go away? Also, I love you. So much.

I love you, too. Go away cat.

Can we go for a walk now? I mean, if it sounds good to you, it sure sounds good to me!

Soon, soon.

Now? I love you.

It’s a sweet-but-tiring sort of conversation. The walk would be good for both of us. The cats are scary. But I don’t want to talk about it all the time. Can’t we talk about something new? Like, I’d really love to know more about what he can smell when we go for a hike, or his opinion about which route we take on the walk, or why the toaster used to scare him.

The goats and I have a different patter. Every morning, I greet them with a bright, “Good morning” and they stare at me from the pen. Then one or two bleat in greeting. I know it’s a question. Have you got any banana peels, or artichoke leaves, or grain?

Once I’ve answered that question, the conversation changes. Albus talks to me by sniffing my hand and my hair, then exhaling next to my face, then inhaling my breath. Lars stands close, shyly, bends his neck, silently presents his forehead for scratches. Willow nickers, asking if maybe I have an extra treat, then sloppily licks my nose, regardless of my answer. Westie stand away from the crowd, stares, and asks me with those gentle gold eyes to come to her, to rub her forehead.

And Wellesley. A week from her kidding date, Wellesley and I talk a lot. Her bleat sounds like she’s softly clearing her throat over and over. Ahem. Ahem. She has expectations. They include being served grain, then being served cuddles. She rubs my legs with her head the way a cat might. She makes satisfied little grunting sounds. Sounds of contentment. I reply in kind, with little bleats and grunts and sighs. I don’t know what either of us are saying, but I get the gist. I remember, long ago, that feeling of waiting, and expecting, and wanting a snack and some affection.

So we talk about that. And then we’re silent. And we wait.

The shape of the air

The last day of April and the air feels mildly thicker than it did a week ago, settling like a welcome lightweight wool blanket in the chilly evenings and mornings, but not yet stifling, as it will likely feel in another month.

The air curves around the house. Around the fragile new leaves. The air reshapes itself daily around the round goat (who is due to deliver her kids any day now), easing back slightly each day to leave her more space. The air lifts up the blades of grass that have been lying brown and compressed under the snow for months and then claims its space between the upright blades.

The air fills our mouths, shapes itself to our throats, makes words, makes songs.

~~~~~~~~
In honor of the last day of April, the last day of National Poetry Month, and writer Annie Dillard’s birthday, here’s a part of a poem by Annie Dillard called “The Shape of the Air”. (You can see the full list of poems I’ve selected this month here.)

This is the final part of a four-part poem. The first describes the idea of the shape of the air, as it lies across the land, folds itself into objects and animals, slides under, around, and through. The second describes the interaction between wind and the shape of air. The third introduces the image of a birchbark canoe in an unnamed museum’s Hall of the Americas (perhaps the American Museum of Natural History?):

The girl
climbed in the museum’s birchbark canoe
in April, and has lived there since.
Crowds came, and thinned.
Visitors leave food.

In the final part, we have the air and the girl and the birchbark canoe.

The Shape of the Air
Around the Girl in the Birchbark Canoe

Willow and skins
make a calm-water bullboat;
it raises a bowlful of air from the floor.
There’s a thorn
of tipi up in the air, a splinter
of kayak. The top of the air
loops like an acrobat around the rough
sides of a forty-man dugout
hung from the roof.

The keel of the birchbark canoe
is pitched with resin;
the keel of the museum’s air still smells
of the volatile oils of pine.
The air around the birchbark canoe
is a spoon through the part in her lips.
Air makes inlets up her fingers,
grooves, transparent.

When she moves,
the air sways and fills.
Air cups at her eyes.
Warm slabs of air
from her shoulders rise,
spread to the plaster dome.
Broadside,
concentric arcs of air
swell in a cone
of her mother
her father
calling out
across wild white water.

Sprung

Just as we all predicted, spring is springing.

Two weeks ago, we drove a few hours south, through slush, ice, and hail, and were met with a cold ocean and hibernating buds. And then the sun came out and we watched as spring unfolded in a matter of two days.

Then we returned home and, though the snow was gone, spring wasn’t quite here. It was dallying on the beach (can you blame it?), but, a few days ago, it finally decided that vacation was over and it was time to come back to Vermont.

So here we are now, with signs of spring everywhere.

The brown grass is suddenly vibrantly green. The budding maple trees are turning the hillsides pink. The apple and rose buds are relaxing from their knotted sleep. The irises are coming out of hibernation, stretching their green arms above the crumpled soil.

The local independent film festival was going strong all weekend and, thanks to my thoughtful sister, I had the chance to attend for the first time. It was sort of a shame to spend the pretty days inside, in the dark. But it was a glorious, childhood feeling to step out of a dark theater into the bright, warm spring day. And it was exciting to meet and talk with people who are passionate about images and words and sounds and ideas.

It feels like a time for new projects. New ideas. New ways of looking at things. (Yes, it’s probably just the sunshine talking.)

Last April, I started a daily photo project, which I completed a couple weeks ago. I still have to do more thinking about that project, and I plan to write about it here, but now I need a new one.

Hey! Remember back in January when I said I was going to do another weekly photo project, but this time I’d be choosing my own themes?

Yeah.

That didn’t go so well.

It turns out I need someone else to come up with the themes. When I try to do it myself, I’m just too predictable (read: boring). Luckily, just when I was casting about for a way to get myself thinking in new ways, I read about the 52 Photos Project, which just happened to be starting last week. The theme for the first photo, due by tomorrow, is “Conversation”.

Meet me back here tomorrow. And we’ll chat.

This side of the embrace

We’re here on this shore of the Atlantic, after driving through sleet and slush and rain, and spending a night in our sister’s cozy home. We tried to sleep, but the dog was restless all night (there was a cat to meet), and made a pathetic whining sound for hours. We arrived on the Cape in cloud and cold, grateful to be at our home-away-from-home.

After lunch, and after the car was unloaded and the beds made and the groceries put away… we napped. As you do when you are content, and chilled, and knowing that the ocean is scouring the shore just a short walk away.

Some years ago–a lifetime ago–I took a nap on the other shore of the Atlantic, in the sheltering crook of a wall at Dún Dúchathair, to the tune of the wind and the waves.

Now we’re awake, and the evening is waiting, and Seamus Heaney, who knows something about cold rocks, windswept shores, and putting a few words together, is celebrating his birthday on that other shore (or so I imagine; he could be sitting in a coffee shop in Indianapolis, for all I know).

Lovers on Aran

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush
to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves’ collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.

–Seamus Heaney

Five fun things for Friday

:: Sleet! Ice! Hail! Snow! This makes me happy. Why? Because it’s April and it just won’t last. Enjoy your last gasp, winter. I’ll see you next November.

:: In the mornings, the dog gets up with the rest of us, goes outside, has his breakfast, begs for H’s breakfast, stands by the door as I wave goodbye to M & H. And then you know what he does? He looks at me, he sighs a long, slow sigh, and then he trots back upstairs to bed for a couple of hours. He’s so smart that way.

:: I really wish my mom could see this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFxnBrO9n7o

:: New baking toys for my birthday.

:: April? Time for a pilgrimage.

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…

–Geoffrey Chaucer, from the “General Prologue” of The Canterbury Tales

Wordless Wednesday ~ How sweet it is

Rise and shine

One Day

One day after another—
Perfect.
They all fit.