the gorgeous nothings

Solo retreat in Provincetown--long walks, good art, crazy sunset, interesting conversations.

"Provincetown is, always has been, an eccentrics sanctuary."

                                                  -Michael Cunningham

Green. I can't stay away.

Each little square is an exploration.

Also,

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shaccochis. Great book. Read it if the description makes it sound like your kind of thing.

New Directions is publishing reproductions of Emily Dickinson's writings on envelopes. The Gorgeous Nothings.

Jellyfish are taking over. And, Inside the mind of an Octopus. 

almost a loneliness

A day when I long for retreat, a winter beach cottage, a lonely boat,
I make do with my rocking chair,
and a page from an antique speller.
Words from The Death of the Flowers--Bryant.
melancholy, rustle, sisterhood, smoky...

I am more interested in the words chosen, and the title of the poem,
than the poem itself (too baroque for my mood this night,
 though it has some wonderful lines). What did the children make of it,
when their teacher read it to them some autumn morning?

I prefer the astringency of Emily Dickinson:

 I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

the light that tied too tight escapes*

The way snow settles on branches,

the glorious, startling red of a cardinal,

how the fragrance of hyacinths fill a room.

I commit them to memory, with the hope that when I am overwhelmed, they will revive me.

Meanwhile... There are whale alive today who were born before Moby Dick was written. here (and check out their link to the Moby Dick big read); 

You can view Emily Dickinson's letters, manuscripts and fragments here (click guest);

Ninety-four years ago in Boston a "Giant Wave of 2,300,000 Gallons of Molasses, 50 Feet High, Sweeps Everything Before It—100 Men, Women and Children Caught In Sticky Stream—Buildings, Vehicles, and L Structure Crushed.” from The Boston Post, January 15 1919; read more here.

*Emily Dickinson

one clover and a bee

Remember our frog pond in the Catskills? (I wrote about it here.)  There's a word used to describe pond life, succession, that in this context means the progressive replacement of one biological community by another. When a new pond forms naturally, plant life grows as wind and birds carry seeds. Those plants are food for insects, frogs, and turtles that come upon them in their travels, and stay. The pond habitat is dynamic, constantly changing. Ponds are shallow enough that rooted plants can grow in them, and eventually they will be covered with vegetation, and, over hundreds of years, become marshland and then grassy prairie or forest. Or, as Emily Dickinson wrote:


   To make a prairie it takes a clover 
   and one bee,
   One clover, and a bee,
   and revery.
   The revery alone will do
   if bees are few.