Filed under: drawing, poetry | Tags: art, autumn, december, drawing, foliage, haiku, leaves, maryland, poetry, seattle, trees, winter, woods
december is upon us, but i cannot say that this writer feels much of a difference from the last days of a month and the first days.
when i left for seattle on nov. 11, the trees here in md were brilliantly colored. the leaves decided to make their last days, their best. i had plans to return from the west coast and photograph various locations catalogued in my mind. i wanted to pull out and dust off my canon slr, which i’ve almost exclusively used to shoot in black and white, and shoot autumn’s dying display in color. two things stopped me from doing so: firstly, the battery in the camera needed to be replaced, and second-of-ly, the leaves could not hold on long enough for me to captured them on film … for when i returned just a week later on the 18th, most of the trees were mere skeletons, stripped of their brightly colored leafy robes. it was quite a let down to say the least, but there is beauty in the dead of winter.
/in the winter wood/
/there is no life to be found/
/felled leaves, fallen snow/
just as the trees in maryland were preparing for the change of seasons, out in seattle, i too, was preparing for a possible change. i have been in the process of applying to the art institute of seattle to go back to school to both broaden my horizons and narrow my focus. half way home in the application process, having last week submitted my financial aid information … waiting on the numbers.
thanksgiving proved to be too much at times. family, and then more family as we celebrated an aunt’s 60th birthday on friday. extensions of extended family … our small house proved too small to afford one solitude of any kind, even for five minutes. i survived.
Filed under: music, photography | Tags: black & white, blindsided, bon iver, concrete, folk, leaves, music, photography
just a brief little sumthin sumthin for happygivingthanksday …
a photo and a song …
today my house will be full of family, both immediate and extended. my brother is up from virginia beach. my aunt marty is up from clearwater. my uncle larry and aunt besty are down from martha’s vineyard. i’m pretty certain my seldom-seen cousin aaron, from right in baltimore, will be making an appearance. the house will barely be able to contain all the people and the food, so i am thankful to be at work this morning. thankful to be at work, you say? well, with a crowded home, there will be nowhere to get a moment to myself if needed. call it some form of antisocial behavior (antisocialism?) … call it me being a loner … call it social anxiety disorder … hell, you can even call it dislike of family … there may be a part of each one of these things in me to make me feel this way, but when comes down to it, these moments alone at work will help me defeat these behaviors when i finally get to go home around noontime. by then, i will be ready to be thankful for my family. though the dynamic is always a bit tense when a particular aunt is present, we all love her and her ridiculous foibles … we know that we have our own. when we all sit around the table, we not only extend our hands to embrace when we say grace … we extend grace itself, and set aside our annoyances and embrace the differences … embrace the idiosyncrasies/shortcomings and are thankful that we have people at the end of the day who we can break bread with, without being judged too much … even if we do chew with our mouth open.
may you give thanks to God for the blessings He has poured out …
cheers.
Filed under: music | Tags: anticipation, autumn, beauty, cinematic, Creation, death, fall, hope, iceland, leaves, life, lightning, lovely, sigur ros, snow, spring, storm, summer, thunder, winter
in past writings about their catalog, i have waxed obsessive about the beauty and cinematic quality in the music of sigur ros. that, if one takes time to listen; takes time to drop everything, close their eyes, and give full attention to the music, it will produce images of beauty in your mind’s eye. perhaps this is a bit lame, or a bit over the top, but not if you ask me … which you haven’t, but i will be telling you nonetheless.
a little more than a year and a half ago i could often be found on the wooded trails of oregon ridge regional park in hunt valley, md. i would go for trail runs over the dirt trails riddled with rocks, pebbles, and overgrown roots, careful to not twist an ankle as i gingerly ran, trying to keep a taxing pace. other days when i lacked the energy, i would just walk the trails, careful to notice something new each time. through all four seasons, weather permitting, i would visit the park. i loved noticing the difference from particular places of interest in the park from one season to the next. a towering oak tree, bursting with green life in the summer, would be reduced to a mere skeleton whose bones would rattle in the strong northwest gusts after a cold front comes through. songbirds, whose voice once absent from the snowy forests, have come back for the thaw, singing their songs in the anticipation of spring. the more i think about it, i believe that i am a seasonal, migratory creature as well … maybe not so much in the physical sense, but definitely mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. the seasons seem to elicit very raw emotions within me. as i feel something in me dying, fall and the glorious colors of death that come with it resonate deep in my soul. the winter closes its moribund curtain and the lights go down on nature’s theater … an act break if you will … but soon, soon the stage will come to life once more. as i mentioned with the birds earlier, spring brings strong anticipation with it … the hope of life reborn. as summer incrementally bakes and soaks the earth, bringing heatwaves and raging thunderstorms down from heaven, autumn prepares once more to paint the landscape in gold, orange, and red.
/leaves laid to rest, begin their colorful dance/
/green to gold, gold to brown/
/brown to air, air to ground/
/scattered to every wind/
the cycle continues, paying no mind to us as we take these changes for granted. we are all in cycles and seasons … listen and look to Creation, though broken, it’s beauty points to something whole. appreciate the similarities of our lives with the life of this lovely earth.
on to the song … i would ask you to keep the change of seasons in mind as you listen … close your eyes and drink in the beauty.
