Tag: Poetics of Place
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Family Traditions: Top 5
Write about a few of your favorite family traditions. Hhhmmm… Family traditions. What are our family traditions? That’s an interesting question, and I’m not 100% certain that I have answers at the ready. But a few ideas come to mind. Canis familiaris Let’s start with the beautiful beast snoozing in a sun puddle at my…
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Dream Job
What’s your dream job? Saturday, a day for job dreaming, right? Or telemark skiing… That’s how I spent my day. But now it’s time to wax wordy about my dream job. Jobs? Hybrid job? A dream job spanning diverse occupations, vertically dissimilar vocations. Let’s start with a few of the more obvious ingredients for my…
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College, Collage, Kismet
Three mornings into Bloganuary I’m starting to reevaluate the merits of this challenge. Today’s prompt is less open-ended than ideal for inspiring creative responses. But then I remembered a post I’d begun drafting (and eventually abandoned) this past summer. That 6 month old seed — quick to germinate, quick to stall — came to mind…
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Gray Day
What a persistent stretch of rainy gray days. It seems to me that February or March of this year marked a transition from *typical* North Country winter to rain-dominant weather. Then a rainy spring followed by a rainy summer. When autumn arrived, everyone was in agreement that the rain was behind us. Certainly September and…
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Poetics of Essex
At least part of what I was longing for after living, working, and exploring in Western Europe from 1999 to 2003 was a “connection with place“. To be honest, I’d fallen hard for Paris and Rome, and after four years based primarily in the former, untethering was bittersweet. But something was missing. I had begun…
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Holiday Homecoming
What a wellspring of euphoria this evening! We returned to Rosslyn after briefly sojourning in Santa Fe, returned to a delicate frosting of snow underfoot, early dwindling natural light, holiday lights glowing in windows, 28° outside, toasty inside, the promise of savory stew and spicy cider wafting like a whimsical Christmas carol,… Rosslyn welcomed us…
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Porosity & Permeability
Porosity and permeability. Words. Ideas. Aesthetics. Biases. So many opportunities to mis-listen. Misinterpret. Assume… We volley language and visions without ever knowing whether or not we perceive the same boundaries. The same winning. And losing. Sometimes an image, less answer than visual poem, is the only way. Other times a poem-poem, less answer than question,…
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Crescent Moon Haiku
Sometimes it’s the little things. Often, actually. Like this slender sliver of a crescent moon tipped sideways, a celestial smile. Like this volute capital — atop one of two ionic columns flanking Rosslyn’s front entrance — glowing warmly from the pendant light hanging above the stone landing. Like that improbable glow silhouetting the trees despite…
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Aerial Arborist Haiku
As often, Aaron spent his Saturday at Rosslyn, whittling down the bottomless punch list. His demeanor, perseverance, and smarts are a perennial hat trick, but his arboreal aptitude has proven again and again to be one of his superpowers. Yesterday and today his whittling was not metaphorical. High up — some 100’ to 120’ above…
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Enclosure
A mid morning meditation on enclosure inspired by ongoing deliberations on the height and porosity of the privacy fence that will screen the mechanicals, propane tank, etc. behind the carriage barn (south of the icehouse terrace). So muchdepends upona borderenfolding,a framedefining,a hedge ora tree linescreening,veiling,a yardencompassing,a paddockor a stycontaining,a ringencircling,a cageconfining,a courtyard’ssanctuarysheltering,a harborprotecting,an embracewelcoming andnurturing…
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Lumbering Home
Hymn-along a song ofhomegrown timber,harvested within sightof the renewed icehouse.Hum, drum, and struman anthem hailinghyper local lumberloved, labored, arrayed.Felled and milled on site,then stickered and stacked,courses upon courses,a dozen years cured,between hemlock floor,and fir paneled walls,ceiling stained from fivequarter centuries.Once towering ash,elm, and poplar treesreborn as flooring,balusters, newels, railings. Canopied colossimetamorphosed intostair treads and risers,door…
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After Rowing, Retrieving
After rowing, retrieving. A perfect pairing in the eyes of Carley, our Labrador retriever. Fall is upon us, but that’s no disincentive to man and beast from enjoying the still warmish waters of Lake Champlain. I find it challenging to capture in prose or images, but this autumn atmosphere and rhythm lend themselves to the…