nuzzling the snow
wind nipping noses, two deer
tracking down acorns
~ Barbara Rodgers
(By the Sea)
snow moon
Tag: winds
wanting the sea
Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.
Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Exiled)
when the cold comes
When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night, the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.
~ Alice Hoffman
(Here on Earth)
miakoda
Miakoda is a Native American word for the power of the moon. The gravity from last night’s full moon added 2 to 3 feet to Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge at high tide. We are safe and sound!
You may have heard of survivor guilt. I am suffering a case of power guilt. For some reason we cannot fathom, we never lost power from the super storm, even though the lights flickered here at times and the neighborhoods surrounding ours lost theirs.
Apparently I fell soundly asleep early last night and Tim went out to take storm surge pictures at high tide without me. He says I said good-bye but I don’t remember it. Amazing I could sleep through all the excitement! The pictures of the surge didn’t come out so well, but he got some amazing shots of the full moon in the storm clouds!
The full moon sailed bright through that Ocean on high,
And the wind murmured past with a wild eerie sound.
~ Emily Brontë
(The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë)
photos by Timothy Rodgers
surge
Looking east, a short walk from us, Birch Plain Creek at low tide (3:16 pm) covering some of Thomas Road. The creek empties into the sound to the right, about half a mile to the south. Wonder how high the surge will be at high tide (8:52 pm) tonight? Tim says he will go and take pictures in the dark – I’m not so sure about his plan!
Looking west from Thomas Road, showing the surge has pushed north up the creek and under the bridge, about where the signs are. Water is creeping up the banks. We live up that little hill, and then to the right, still farther up the hill.
The wind is howling, the walls are creaking, and the lights were flickering a short while ago. We’ve had very little rain. Reports say much of Groton is without power now and we’ll probably be joining them soon. And Groton is now experiencing hurricane-force winds. I think I’m signing out for the time being.
Hoping for the best for everyone in the path of this super storm, and praying that all are well prepared for the worst!
photos by Timothy Rodgers
those songs graze like buffalo
When music is your life, there is a key that gets you to the core. I am so grateful that I still have Crazy Horse, knock on wood. You see, they are my window to the cosmic world where the muse lives and breathes. I can find myself there and go to the special area of my soul where those songs graze like buffalo. The herd is still there, and the plains are endless. Just getting there is the key thing, and Crazy Horse is my way of getting there. That is the place where music lives in my soul. It is not youth, time, or age. I dream of playing those long jams and floating over the herd like a condor. I dream of the changing wind playing on my feathers, my brothers and sisters around me, silently telling their stories and sharing their spirits with the sky. They are my life.
~ Neil Young
(Waging Heavy Peace)
faerie of tree stumps and dead wood
Tym-Brrr is the faerie of tree stumps and dead wood, a subject often depicted in the foreground of landscape paintings. Twisted and broken trees suggest the awesome power of nature; the aftermath of a lightning storm or strong winds. Tree stumps, on the other hand, humanize an otherwise wild scene. Tym-Brr eats and plays in one cave, sleeps in another, and stores his sailboat for seeking out driftwood in the third. Clues to how trees become “never green” are burned into the outer walls.
~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making
Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels. But their magic sparkles in nature.
~ Lynn Holland
(A Faerie Treasury)
windwood faeriegrounds
created by Jennifer L. Johnson & Edward Johnson
10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
Everyone needs a playground … don’t they? Even the wee faeries of Old Lyme need a whirl or two on the Faerie Wheel to keep their spirits spry. Three good faerie friends decided to get together and create an amusement park for their pixie peers. Chinook, Squall and Leveche are wind faeries and have built fun contraptions to share their love of breezes. Pixiechutes, TumbleTwirls, and the Swing-n-Wings keep the pixie dust flying.
~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making
Well, this post was supposed to be added on Sunday, but an early morning phone call changed the course of the day. Auntie fell at 3 o’clock in the morning and had to go to the hospital to get stitches in the back of her head. The doctors admitted her. She has stopped eating again and seems only strong enough to move her arms. Our spending the day at the hospital with her did not seem to be helping much and I came home with a terrific headache.
We had just visited her and my dad on Saturday. Auntie was a wisp of her former self, lying in a dark bedroom, complaining about the dark and the household noises, but refusing to allow her curtains to be drawn open. She grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go for the longest time. I read to her for about an hour and then left her bedside to visit Dad in the living room. We had a little apple tasting party – McCouns are still his favorites – and then showed him our latest photos on the TV screen. Block Island, the giant seagull, and the fairy village. He seemed to be enjoying the visit.
And now something seems to be the matter with my blog. Instead of a place for comments at the end there is a message saying, “This content cannot be displayed in a frame.” Huh? So I do apologize – I have no idea what is going on!!!
Anyhow, I love the Faerie Wheel above – it may be my favorite thing from the whole exhibit!
folding shirts
We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. These spirits form our lives, and they may reveal themselves in mere trivialities – a quirk of speech, a way of folding a shirt. From the earliest days of my life, I encountered the past at every turn, in every season.
~ Shirley Abbott
(Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South)
Early this morning I was awakened by a dream, one of those slice-of-life dreams that seems profound in some way. In the dream my father was young again, folding a pile of his fresh white t-shirts, as he used to do so meticulously on his laundry day. Padding over to the computer, I soon discovered our internet connection was down… So… I started looking through my quote collection to find one to go with the painting above, and smiled at the ‘folding a shirt’ connection to my dream.
I have the feeling I’ll be taking a leave of absence from blogging for now. Friday I had a root canal and other dental work done under conscious sedation, and the effects of the sedation didn’t wear off completely until late Saturday. Tim had some dental work done on Monday as well and both of us are still recuperating and on pain meds.
Meanwhile things have reached a crisis level with my aunt, who is 97. She now needs full-time care and seems to be declining rather quickly. She’s not eating and losing weight rapidly. Another aunt is in town and was working at finding her a place in a nursing home, but my long-suffering sister has decided that she would rather move Auntie into my father’s house so she and her husband can care for both her and Dad. Fortunately they have an appointment with an agency to get some professional in-home assistance, and an appointment with Hospice, too.
Both of Auntie’s sons predeceased her, but her granddaughter, who lives in Tennessee, is in town now as well. She doesn’t want to die alone, so the aim is to keep her surrounded by those who love her.
Nothing is here to stay
Everything has to begin and end
A ship in a bottle won’t sail
All we can do is dream that the wind will blow us across the water
A ship in a bottle set sail
~ Dave Matthews
♫ (Baby) ♫
I have been assigned the task of planning for a simple cremation by-passing the cost of and toxic chemicals used at funeral homes. This research is bringing up all kinds of emotions. On the one hand it makes sense to be ready with a plan, but the very act of planning seems cold and calculating somehow… Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial by Mark Harris has been helpful. I wish there was a natural cemetery in Connecticut, but since there isn’t, cremation seems best.
Things have changed a lot since my mother died twenty-one years ago. Online I found the Cremation Society of New England. If I understand what I’m reading correctly, one can fill out forms online and have plans in place for when the last moment has arrived. But I will have to read this over a little at a time…
I love the painting at the top of this post, “The Ages of Life.” It seems to be a stage in a play. The woman in the lower right corner makes me think of Auntie, left widowed at such a young age. And now she seems to be the black figure with the cane in the background, quietly leaving the scene.