Water World

June 2, 2013

At the head of the island which is just below the dam, there is a small quiet space, a pool where the reflections of the grasses settle and shimmer. But the river races along on either side as if the right and left banks worry that they will be separated forever. Where they join at the downstream end of the island, you may spot mallards resting and dabbling in the calm eddies.
Does water have a memory? Eventually, the rivers and seas are the depositories of all our innocent and murderous launderings. They are the library and witness to the wine spilled, the blood dabbed from a child's knee, and the runoff of our too-green lawns, the hair and soap and waste and rainbow flecks from the sky. Does it also contain the frozen footprints that the ducks left in the ice last winter? Can it contain, like a paper envelope, my clandestine cat-like thoughts and ship them around the wet world? And that object, bobbing down the river… is that a letter for me? From, you? Marvelous!

Calligraphy

21 Jan. 2013
A single crow perches in the top branches of a tree above the river.

 

26 Jan. 2013
Pigeons flock near the chimney of an abandoned church

 "All the world's a stage…" Are you strutting and fretting too? Are you managing to persevere and get through the winter of your discontent? Or just plain old winter? How do you manage it?

I wonder how birds do it. I could easily research the facts and those ARE interesting. But I like posing the question even more: Isn't winter long, lonely and cold for the birds? And their bony and scaly legs and toes that grip, lock and release with no insulation and are exposed to the sub-freezing elements 24/7.

26 Jan. 2013

A log is snagged on top of the dam 

and sheet of ice has formed below it

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I was at the river taking note of the steadily advancing ice that seems intent on encasing the waterfall; it's been very cold for a week and this seems to threaten the steady flow of moving water. But instead, I was surprised by a flock of a dozen geese and about fifty mallards diving and dabbling in the open laminar flow below the bridge. I was bundled in layers of nylon, wool and fleece and they were diving for breakfast and acting like it was the middle of Summer.

I pass through these landscapes as if they are an imperfect mirror where I know that somewhere in them I can find myself and not feel alone. This is life and this is what we do: on the face of a beautiful Chaos, we seek some confirmation. On the paper of winter, the birds of winter write the fact of their existence and thence, I find a fragment of my own. In the faces and fact of loved ones I search for and write what is in my heart hoping for a similar confirmation. And in Art which is my calligraphic responses to Reality, I jot some statement regarding or even a cry to connect to what is outside of me and bring it to you.