A damp and overcast morning on the island, though I have hopes the day will brighten and the sky clear by evening, in time to view the supermoon... they say it will be the largest moon of 2012. If I'm lucky, I'll get a good picture of it. Meanwhile, the first thing that appealed to my eye this morning was this crouching predator's eye view of the island tepee. I can fancy myself a mountain lion sneaking up on a Native American dwelling on the Dakota plains, sometime before the real predator arrived (read: the White Man). But wait, do plains have trees and grass and willowy weeds? Whatever.
I took only a few steps farther before the anthropomorphic quality of these conspiratorial trees arrested my imagination. Huddling close together in solidarity, as if to embrace one another, one arm raised and the other extended to effect the embrace, these trees evoke the central image and metaphor of my novel, The Trees in Winter, even though these are no longer barren as those in winter, and have already slipped into their green spring attire. Here's an excerpt from the novel:
She peeled the aluminum foil from a palette and picked up a teardrop-shaped palette knife mired in a glop of cobalt blue, sat on her stool and began dabbing it along the trunk of a tree. Always the trees. The bare outlines of their skeletal forms huddled together on each of three hopeful canvases, poised to welcome the merest embellishment of their limbs, spindly and wanting, raised in supplication to an empty sky.
She’d done little painting while she was working, but since being home she had responded to the still small voice deep inside her so long neglected. Instinctively but tentatively, she had begun sketching that which came naturally, the trees, the parallel outlines of their ascendant trunks and limbs, the subtle or sweeping curvature of their postures, jagged or bowed, bisected or monolithic, always reaching for an ineffable redemption, regeneration, wholeness and salubrity.
And another:
He remembered the first time he’d seen the painting, and how it had struck him then with its stark simplicity and crisp lines, with shadings that somehow evoked the fragile brittleness of the limbs, depicted the sense of shared loss in the woe befallen attitudes of the trees as they huddled together, as if they would embrace and console one another if only nature would allow.
I think you get the idea.
I resumed my stroll and soon came upon something seen from an even greater distance, as I stood on the bluff surveying the river vista. Looking straight down to the shore below, I spotted what appeared to be a winged idler, sitting tucked underneath a fallen tree trunk in the river. At first, I took it to be a pigeon, but after zooming in and snapping a couple of shots and viewing them later, I found the creature's beak appears decidedly unpigeonlike.
But you be the judge. Here is a shot where I zoomed in closer. Pigeon or not? Whatever the species, the sight struck a chord somewhere in the cerebral piano case of analogic memory. While walking underneath the eastern Hennepin Bridge overpass during the past week, which we have done a fair number of times to attend screenings at the Minneapolis Film Festival taking place at the nearby St. Anthony Main Theater, we have noticed a couple of human idlers tucked up underneath the overpass, at the top of the slanted stone embankment and just beneath the bridge's roadway. In fact, returning home from a film just last night, one of these specimens was down on the sidewalk stretching his legs in a decidedly inebriated manner, to the extent that we thought it best to step off the sidewalk and give him a wide berth. This bird, sheltering beneath the log, called these human shelterers to mind. I can only assume that, come fairer skies, they
—like the bird
—will take flight in search of more hospitable milieux.
But enough of idlers. I'm sure you're more interested in creatures that are going somewhere, such as the members of this goose-stepping family, who seem to be in perfect step with one another. This is a common sight on the island these days, as the island denizens bring forth their young and begin teaching them the ways of survival.
And, as you can see, these youngsters must learn to survive on water as well as on land. Funny to think that those little yellow fluffballs, next year and in future years, will assume the appearance of the parent and be tutoring little fluffballs of their own. Just as my own son has slipped into shoes specially designed for raising small children, which I myself have slipped out of. He is now doing the goose-step, whereas I, by comparison, have become ... an idler?
Actually, I try to keep moving, even if no longer engaged in childrearing. And what better image to represent movement that the arrival of the train as it comes around the bend, the train that traverses our island many times each day, heralded by the clanging warning bell. Actually, it's not coming around a bend, but I only tried to make it appear that way from the angle of my photograph. In fact, it's coming across a bridge from the west and about to cross another bridge to the east. The train teaches a good lesson, I think, by suggesting that, though it is all right to stop and rest occasionally, to sit, observe and contemplate, it is even more important to get up again and keep moving. One can sit on a log or under a viaduct for only so long. Too long and you risk becoming a log yourself, and a log has no fun and does no one else any good, except provide them a place to sit. Does anyone really want to spend their lives being sat on by others?
Here is an actual moving picture of the train, to serve as an even better reminder to keep on moving, keep on rolling, keep on keepin' on, and as they said back in the long ago 1960's:
KEEP ON TRUCKIN' BABY!
Life flows on, in and around us—it grows and moves and reproduces, and when it no longer does any of these things, it is no longer life.
D.E.S.
Here is a representative for the many other specimens of his kind that I have been encountering with regularity in these nascent days of spring. We had a brief staring contest before he gave up and rejoined his sibs, scuttling around in the wake of their parents and plucking at the dew-basted grass. By now I have featured my share of Canadian geese on this blog, so will refrain from adding more unless I happen to capture something I consider to be extra special. Due to the demands of the working life, my island wandering days have been cruelly and sadly curtailed. So I will just share one more photo, and then venture out on this fine Saturday morning to see what I can see.
During my last walk (yesterday), which included a crossing of the Central Ave. Bridge, I was surprised and pleased to note that the mysterious spirit of the island had changed the sign that, from the southeastern tip of the island, exhorts bridge-crossers to consider a single word, in this most recent case: REFLECT.
Last month, we were exhorted to INSPIRE (see past posts). As I zoomed in with my camera (this pic is taken from a considerable distance), I noticed what appeared to be a chain holding the sign in place, which seemed to me a new development. Perhaps the last sign had been carried downriver in the waters which have risen considerably in recent weeks, and its sponsor had been compelled to install restraints so as to ensure his message could resist the forces of nature and endure.
