nature
Well, yesterday we did precisely nothing here on the mountainside. At about 5pm, when it had clouded over, I finally got my act together to hobble up to the pool. By that time my muscles and joints had all seized up & I needed the swim just to stay alive.
See, here in the sticks, there are no shops or cafes to go to, no interesting people-watching spots in the immediate vicinity - and, more importantly, there are no sidewalks on which to walk to them if there were. If I went out on the road I'd most likely be killed.
Of course, there are the woods, acres and acres of 'em, all connected to this property - but they are, if reports are to be believed, absolutely teeming with ticks. If you go there you have to wear sturdy shoes, and socks, and definitely not flip flops (my footwear on this trip, as you will guess, consists of two pairs of flip flops), and preferably fill your pockets with crumbs before setting out.
It's worth remembering that Lyme, after which the fearsome Lyme Disease is named, is actually a town in Connecticut.
But I'm not immune to the joys of nature! No, no. I spent an hour or so yesterday afternoon trying to take a picture of a cricket, but they were all singing their little guts out, or rubbing their little legs together, from under the shrubbery. Two years ago when I was here it must have been a bumper year for crickets; they were spilling out everywhere, by the roadside, walking in single file, just sitting there, lying dead in the pool poor things... Now they seem to have got the hang of it. Heard but not seen. It's a shame, because they are beautiful: light brown, and they look as if they are wearing little jerkins and breeches. It's hard not to warm to them. (I did, yesterday, get some other pictures which if I can ever be arsed to transfer them to the laptop I might share. It is very verdant here.)
The other night there was a big green grasshopper sitting on the side of the house, next to the door. I was out here on the deck with no camera, so there is no picture of him - but he was about three inches long and very calm, but happy.
There is a hummingbird feeder out front, visible from the living room window, shaped like a hot air balloon in red-&-white plastic. Apparently "the hummingbirds absolutely love it," says Mama Baroque - but your correspondent has yet to see a hummingbird. If I do I will try to take a picture of it as it hovers around its hot air balloon like something out of Jules Verne.
They also get Cardinals and Blue Jays here. I have seen lots of little birds, but nothing I recognise.
This sojourn among nature has got to be good for me. The other day in Borders we were sitting in the coffee shop looking at our piles of books, and Mama B suddenly says to me: "What will the poets do when the farms disappear?"
On the other hand, we gave the dog, Truman, a giant bone last night when we ate dinner and he was much better about jumping up on the table. Tonight: lamb.
7 comments:
I read "teeming with ticks" as "teeming with hicks" and thought no, don't go in the woods!
God bless America, I've only been there once, and this is a marvellous post, worthy of it.
I'm going to bed now.
There is a depth to these posts, and a feel, i suppose an inherent poetic'ness about them, that writing in London could never lead one to. The humanity of being alone, or around few people, outside the bustle of a 10 million megatropolis like London.
As reagrds Dublin not being the place to change the paradigm of the Behan stereotype, those days are well gone now, as Irish poetry is a slick industry and as cliquy and ruthless as any of the UK centres.
The old days of rattling off a few lines in McDaids with a small stock of verse to bluff oneself a poet with, are nea more, although the real legends still remain known only to a small group of artists who constitute the real cutting edge in this city.
The official arts council crowd are as defensive and cute when defending their slice of the art pie as i imagine Truman is with the bones he is getting, and unless one plays the game as I imagine it is played throughout the globe, it is very hard to get n the gang.
Though the net is offering the answers now, as i know, having stidied for the last six years and at least am equipped to handle myself in hoime turf, as the stand alone poet, apart from any clique or politically alligned to any publisher and thus feeling a subtle force to defend those i am in only a professional relationship with, for publishing purposes.
I think the net is beginning to yield up the good writers, as it only appeared in 2000, as in that everyone started getting online, and it takes five years full time writing before one becomes real, before we find ourselves critically in prose and thus acquire the skills needed to handle the fellow bores and trolls we joust with online.
Remember when - and it still goes on - the debate asking "How will the internet affect publishing and writing in general?"
Well i found that the people asking that now, are the ones who missed the boat, the opportunities the net offered new writers who were disillusioned with traditional routes into getting "published."
I always maintained that publishing online and in print, is essentially the same thing, and they who were poo-pooing onloine writing as being somehow the window for inferior talent, have been proven wrong, as what matters is the process, the just doing it part of writing, of any art.
The not confusing of irrelevant ephemera, the commercial side, with the artistic. The dream of appearing in faber, many would claim meant one could only appear in this rag, only write to commission, but the ones who just did the writing and worried about t=where it was leading after, have developed far quicker and become the more supple pro, than the bores droning on and looking down their noses at people because they hold an erroneous and false opinion of their intellectual capacity or artistic worth as a human being.
We are all equal, as human beings, and it baffles me how poets can get all ooh arghh, over the depth and meaning poetry is supposed to offer; indeed which is the whole purpose of it essentially. The trying to describe pure humanity and make a universal connection with all our fellow humans, be they a tramp or king, using language alone; and yet many (if not most) poets, it is obvious, are interested in practicing poetry, primarily as a tool for accruing wealth, or rather, their dream is that poetry will lead to fame and riches on a shay fay level. Total poetic respect, and a lot of dough, which is plainly a very unrealistic notion to hold, unless one has a very solid basis for this belief, beyond ones desire...and so behan is dead, his mask gone, and the next stage i will perform on is with uou as my pal, a regular person, who i can chat poetically with and whose writing has sparked me to deeper digs and i hope mine yours..Love and peace..stand alone, poet..
Des
I am enjoying your posts, your writing, and all that you generously share, very much.
Gosh...sounds almost like you are in southern Arizona!
You should know it's impossible to film crickets. Easier to snap a shot of a yeti.
She is very generous indeed, and knows what she is talking about.
And yes, she has rejected some RH comments, but that appears usual among ladies living in Hackney. Next time I'm in London I'll be going there to study why.
-Robert.
(thankyou)
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