Fire

From the house on Lake St. Catherine to Green Mountain College, the drive may not have been 20 minutes.  Past the golf course where the curve in the road made me grip the door handle, and the aged woman constantly fixing her rickety shack of a house.  The drive would take almost 40 minutes on that frosty October morning.  The previous night, through the blur of snow and wind and winding roads, it seemed to take an eternity.  This morning, we would not cross over the semi frozen lake, not today when my newly frostbitten toes were just regaining their consciousness.

Trees like waves of heat and sky the color of smoke.  If fall was here now, winter must be on its way.  Crisp winds cutting night that sound like echoes through train tunnels.  I did not understand what was meant by the "dead of winter" until I spent my first of the season in Vermont.  Strangely enough, fall is never as long as it is given credit; when leaves change from green to yellow orange, you know it will be over.  Soon the ground will be covered with the crunch of green and remnants of summer. 

Princeton Harbor

The tide is out now, exposing sand mud flats that make ripples and tease sea gulls up and down the beach.  Gold flakes catch the sun and glare up at you from the sand; upon reaching down the flecks disappear into ordinary grains of sediment.  Kelp and seaweed litter the landscape, stinking and saturated from under the water's surface; a green brighter than the surrounding hillsides.  Birds walk carefully over the tops of dried sea plants as I sink through cushions of earth, plagued with cold feet, graced with wet sand between my toes. 

At dusk, the sea gull flock that have been exploring the beach fly in unison over the abandoned fishing pier.  Their wings are iridescent, catching the glare from the ocean, caught between water and sky.  The flock will get lost in the fog as my eyes will not be able to follow them past the pier; their iridescence now radiating behind clouds.  This time of year, the water creeps so close to the rip raff and leaves little room for walking; winter storms raged with such drama to bring yachts up into the front garden and keels buried in the sand; plant life ripped from the sea floor and spread across the beach; evidence of nature's unpredictability.

Spotlights from fishing ships will take the place of alarm clocks, waking me several times and interrupting dream cycles.  The drone of the foghorn fades in and out like the tide; depending on the direction of the wind and your familiarity with the harbor, its call gets absorbed by the landscape and by one's ears. 

shadow graffitti

someone did me the pleasure of tracing various shadows in sidewalk chalk, across the town.  thank you for being inspired by that which you cannot change.

broken bikes

Broken bikes, orphaned bikes. Bikes that are left to fate, locked to street signs, stripped of their value. No one owns their skeletons, but they had an owner at one time, someone to oil their chains and fix brakes. This is all too familiar this weekend. How can a place address such a situation.

things I don't want to forget

This is what I want to hold onto. A running list...

• two gemini's together is the equivlant of four people
• the iradescence of sea gull wings at dusk over the ocean
• bruno, the italian, making his way across the west
• diamonds as prehistoric stars that happened as the universe was in a state of chaos
• verde que te quiero verde
• some people need love; some people need books
• summertime rainstorms in the midwest