June 20, 2010

• These are pretty cool--I'd never seen infrared landscapes before, so the first couple had me in awe that the photographer was willing to spend so much time doing a sedentary activity outside in the winter. Doh! **slinks quietly out the door**
• Those are simply beautiful. I have to say that a couple of them reminded me of the tree in...The Ring? It was some horror movie. I am pretty sure it was The Ring.
• I saw in Louisiana a live oak growing I saw in Louisiana a live oak growing, All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches; Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself; But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near—for I knew I could not; And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away—and I have placed it in sight in my room; It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them;) Yet it remains to me a curious token—it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near, I know very well I could not. --Walt Whitman
• I think that tree WAS loved, you know, by the poet.
• the close-clinging moss is this live oak's lover for there's no other tree to give it company or furnish a surprise though it utter dark green sighs
• Banana Trees They are tall herbs, really, not trees, though they can shoot up thirty feet if all goes well for them. Cut in cross section they look like gigantic onions, multi-layered mysteries with ghostly hearts. Their leaves are made to be broken by the wind, if wind there be, but the crosswise tears they are built to expect do them no harm. Around the steady staff of the leafstalk the broken fronds flap in the breeze like brief forgotten flags, but these tattered, green, photosynthetic machines know how to grasp with their broken fingers the gold coins of light that give open air its shine. In hot, dry weather the fingers fold down to touch on each side-- a kind of prayer to clasp what damp they can against the too much light. --Joseph Stanton
• Crown Too much rain loosens trees. In the hills giant oaks fall upon their knees. You can touch parts you have no right to— places only birds should fly to. --Kay Ryan
• The Moment The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this, is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you, the birds take back their language, the cliffs fissure and collapse, the air moves back from you like a wave and you can’t breathe. No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way round. --Margaret Atwood
• Apple and Brute Stone in the prayer ceremony of ocean a storm bows down stone watches over May in vain guarding against that green contagion as the four seasons take turns axing huge trees stars try to recognize the road a drunk using that talent for balance breaks out from the time-siege a bullet soars through the apple life's on loan --Bei Dao Trans. David Hinton
• That's great, islander. I've never heard of Bei Dao. Must look him up!