I dwell in Possibility —
A fairer House than prose —
More numerous of Windows —
Superior — for Doors —
Of Chambers as the Cedars —
Impregnable of eye —
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky —
Of Visitors — the fairest —
For Occupation — This —
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #466)
~
Poetry, physics — same thing!
~ The Doctor
(Doctor Who, Series 10 Episode 1)
Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fullness, rest, suffuse the frame, like fresher, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light,
and the apple at last hangs really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!
~ Walt Whitman
(Sands at Seventy)
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
(The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Well, I’m sad to report that I haven’t seen my gull friend with the mangled foot since our encounter on July 10th… I have a strong feeling that he was indeed saying good-bye.
Sunday afternoon a different gull with an injured foot limped over to us to see what food we might offer him. He’s young so he hasn’t learned yet that most humans follow the rules and don’t feed the gulls. While I’m pretty sure our old friend was a herring gull, our new friend is much larger, perhaps a juvenile great black-backed gull.
Of course I was without camera, but I made sure to bring it with me yesterday. The sky was striking. But our new friend wasn’t there.
On Sunday the parking lot had been full of laughing gulls, but yesterday there was only one, and he perched near us, watching us eat. The laughing gulls don’t usually hang out on the white posts. It seems everyone is behaving differently these days!
As we left for home I spotted this bird wading in the nearly dried up salt water pond. Connecticut is in a moderate drought. We have many great egrets but this one was smaller and I wondered if it was a young one. He was too far away to get a decent picture.
Imagine my surprise when I enlarged a few of the pictures and noticed his yellow feet! Pretty sure this identifies him as a snowy egret, which is smaller than the great egret.
Not sure what kind of little shorebird this but he sure looked cute exploring the exposed pond bed. So many appearances in the flow of life…
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
~ Alan Watts
(The Wisdom of Insecurity)
You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that’s all, and it is as simple as a ray of sunshine, as normal as the blue of the sky.
~ Bernard Moitessier
(The Long Way)
Now that our son and daughter-in-law have returned home to Georgia our house is so very quiet… Yesterday for lunch we went to the beach. The weather was cool and damp and there were very few people there. I wasn’t the only one wearing a sweatshirt. At first we didn’t see our friendly gull.
Disappointed that we hadn’t seen our friend, we started to walk back to our car and then we saw him, standing on the sidewalk, almost as if he was waiting for us. He was quiet – no vocalizations this day.
So I got down on the grass and talked to him for a while. He sat down and allowed me to get closer than ever before. This time I had my camera!
After getting the picture above I pressed my luck and got the portrait at the top of this post. What a thrill! Somehow he knows we can be trusted. But again, he seems old and tired. I wonder if we will ever see him standing on one of the white posts this summer. Maybe those days are over. We’ll see…
It’s been a while since we went down to Avery Point so we decided to take a sunset stroll last night. Believe it or not, our bathroom renovation still is not finished. It started on February 29 and was supposed to be done on April 1. A series of tile and fixture delivery delays stalled the job at various points. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the new bathroom door will be put in place this afternoon as promised…
After taking showers at my sister’s apartment for five weeks at least we could finally use the shower here, but we still had no toilet and had to continue using the one in the basement. We’ve only had the new toilet for two days now… One thing I’m thrilled about is my new linen closet in the bathroom!!! No more running out in the hall dripping wet when we forget to get a towel!
We discovered something new installed along the Avery Point sculpture walkway, a meteorological mast.
We’ve never had a renovation done before – this has been a surreal experience. At last, though, I think I may have a touch of spring fever!
Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;
A poet’s face asleep is this grey morn.
Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
A mystic child is set in these still hours.
I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn.
~ Alice Meynell
(In February)
Up and away for life! be fleet!-
The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence.
Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-
The punctual stars will vigil keep,-
Embalmed by purifying cold;
The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
The snow is no ignoble shroud,
The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(The Titmouse)
This is another of those strangely potent places. Everyone I know who has spent any time on the dune agrees that there’s, well, something there, though outwardly it is neither more nor less than an enormous arc of sand cutting across the sky.
~ Michael Cunningham
(Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown)
Almost every time we go to Provincetown we go on one of Art’s Dune Tours to see the Province Lands sand dunes of Cape Cod National Seashore. In the past part of the tour took us down on the beach but we couldn’t do that this time due to severe beach erosion caused by storms the past couple of winters. So we had to be satisfied with exploring the dunes themselves. Unfortunately we weren’t able to book a sunset tour – those have been our favorites over the years.
If I die tomorrow, Provincetown is where I’d want my ashes scattered. Who knows why we fall in love, with places or people, with objects or ideas? Thirty centuries of literature haven’t begun to solve the mystery; nor have they in any way slaked our interest in it. Provincetown is a mysterious place, and those of us who love it tend to do so with a peculiar, inscrutable intensity.
~ Michael Cunningham
(Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown)
Our guide kept showing us where the sands have been shifting in recent years, impressing on us the endless flow of nature. How strange that while present there, time seems to stand still, if only for a moment.
