image by Kelly DeLay
Any project dedicated to ‘art, learning, determination, processes, patterns and obsession’ is a project that has won my heart. Particularly when it involves clouds. Kelly DeLay is doing a year-long experiment shooting clouds at Clouds 365 Project. Awesome photos and videos. Check it out.
I saw
a Christmas tree massacre the other day. It happened in the parking lot of a local park. I was walking in the park, admiring the snow and the blue sky. There was a tree shredder parked in the lot, and every now and then, a dump truck would pull up beside the shredder, full with discarded Christmas trees. A man would crawl into the bed of the truck and toss the trees down. Another man picked the trees up off the asphalt, held them upside down and inspected them for rogue ornaments or strands of lights. Two more men lifted the trees that had already been inspected and fed them into the shredder. Everyone wore gloves.
Between pauses of the roar of the shredder, I could hear the trees still packed into the bed of the dump truck whispering among themselves, But we were so elegant in our finery, they murmured. We were so grand and beautiful and loved .
Then the shredder would start again.
The smell of the freshly cut pine riding the sharp winter breeze was so elegant and grand.
I live for the sort of moments you can’t simply ‘order up’: the silver of ice on trees sunlit after a storm; the color of the sky at dusk in December; shadows of fast-moving clouds silently thrashing across a field lit by a full moon on a windy night. I live for these sort of moments–they make life larger: capacious and grand.
Recently, such a moment found me. We had a sudden temperature plummet in Boston last week–it went from a mild mid 30ish degrees to 11 degrees in a matter of hours. The water on Jamaica Pond had not yet frozen over, and the winds were high and brisk. During those hours that the temperatures plunged–while I hunkered down in my city apartment braving the drop with blankets and hot tea–the sort of art that only nature can create was forming on the eastern shore of the pond.
I discovered the finished piece the following afternoon, late in the day, when the sun was almost flush with the horizon, casting a brilliant light at an angle across the sculpture that had formed. It arrested me mid-walk.
During those hours the temperatures dropped, strong winds whipped high waves against the shore, and–wave by wave, moment by moment–ice
formed in layers: the waves hit the shore, receded, and the water left behind froze instantly. Everything was altered. Pebbles and stones that had been simply ordinary the day before were now recreated into grand orbs, glimmering within sheets of ice. Mundane, everyday sort of twigs had transformed into multilayered spears, shimmering with an opulence of light. A blade of grass? Now round with ice as smooth as Rodin’s Hand of God. Minor shrubs? Ensconced with the same sensual essence. The shore itself appeared frosted with glass icing–a glossed and flawless surface I wanted to touch.
The work of wind and waves and time and temperature had created such brilliance on that small shore, I couldn’t stop looking. It was cold. It was growing dark. But I stood captivated.
The most beautiful thing about it was: I knew it would not last.
A good photographer knows how to capture light in a way that suspends a moment in authenticity and truth. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, partly due to my own observances, recently, regarding light–the way it is actually a living thing, moving and shifting throughout the day, casting the same scene or subject in a different, well–for lack of a better word– ‘light’ as the day progresses. Light has the power to shift the narrative from moment to moment, from day to day, simply through its compelling quality of transience.
I’ve also been thinking about light and the ‘capturing’ of it to paint a narrative due to looking at the photographs of Harold Feinstein, whose work is currently being shown in Boston. This is a photographer who knows how to use light to tell a story, whether it is told by the shadows cast on a boulevard, or the by the lace-like luminance playing across a woman’s thighs. There’s a story within these images–a compelling, true, and authentic narrative, created by light and completed with shadow.
The clouds were in an unusual formation this morning. The sky looked like a letter composed in cloud text, or a poem.
The alphabet: 26 symbols through which infinite communication possibilities abound. Wherever the alphabet can be found, communication is possible, no? No matter how transient, or fleeting.
Eric Tabuchi’s Alphabet Truck finds language in a very unexpected venue: the miles of asphalt that provide connection and a means of transport for necessary and vital goods.
With all of the letters available, one can’t help but wonder: what messages might you come across while driving?
image by Edward MacGregor
I love it when people are singularly obsessed with something to an extreme. Take these people over at Drainspotting. There are over 3,743 photographs of manhole covers uploaded on the site.
“Drainspotting is all about paying attention to your surroundings….Functional and ornamental, there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening down by your feet.”
I agree. Take a look.
I was looking out the window and watching three flocks of sparrows swirling in the sky over the train station at the bottom of the hill I live on this morning…I was perfectly mesmerized by the unexpected beauty for a good 20 minutes. It was very much like in this video.
I went to a really awesome event on Saturday at the first annual Boston Book Festival. The event was called ‘Writer Idol,’ and it was presented by Grub Street, Inc., a center for writers here in Boston. So, ‘Writer Idol.’ Think: ‘American Idol’ with agents and editors instead of judges, a professional actor reading the first 250 words of an unpublished manuscript instead of performers, and you get the gist.
I wasn’t going to submit the first page of my novel in progress. I was a bit nervous that if it got too much negative criticism at this point, it would hinder my writing process. But, when I got to the Book Festival, I had a change of heart. And, since the Boston Public Library and it’s computer room was right there, and since my manuscript is in my e-mail because that’s how I’ll be sure to have a copy in case my house burns down, I went ahead and printed the page out. Then, I was hesitant to submit it once I got there, but I did.
What were the chances of it being chosen randomly from the box, when there were over a hundred submissions, and only time to read 15 or so? And–tell me this–what were the chances that mine would get chosen to be read immediately after the panel’s long discourse about why a book should never, never, never, ever begin with a character waking up, the first line of my novel being, of course, “He wakes with his face pressed against the car door, the window handle knob pushed into his cheek.” Yup. It happened.
And did they stop reading because of that? Nope. Did they let the actor read all the way through? Yep. And did they provide me with some much-needed and useful criticism afterward? You bet.
And everyone on the panel agreed they would read through the manuscript to see what else was there.
I’ll take that.
This might fall in the ‘always the bridesmaid never the bride’ category, but I found out this week that my short story collection–which I had entered in University of Georgia’s Flannery O’Connor Award–was chosen as a finalist, although it did not win. But to make it that far, out of 300+ manuscripts–I’ll take that as encouragement.
News about the winners can be found here. I know Jessica Treadway, and respect her work immensely, so that takes the sting off not winning a bit.
Someday, I’ll be the bride…
