Category Archives: Photography

Transcendent

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Monday Morning Musings:

“If you could tag each of the atoms in your body and follow them backward in time, through the air that you breathed during your life, through the food that you ate, back through the geological history of the Earth, through the ancient seas and soil, back to the formation of the Earth out of the solar nebular cloud, and then out into interstellar space, you could trace each of your atoms, those exact atoms, to particular massive stars in the past of our galaxy. At the end of their lifetimes, those stars exploded and spewed out their newly forged atoms into space, later to condense into planets and oceans and plants and your body at this moment.”
–from Alan Lightman, The Transcendent Brain, quoted in The Marginalian

Transcendent

Perhaps I make tenuous connections,
hear the light-sound waves
of an acoustic moon, a push-pull
of tide creation and slowing rotation.

Nothing is constant, one day Earth and Moon
will part, lovers who have drifted too beyond salvation,
but for now, we revolve and spin, see only her bright face,
never her dark side,

and perhaps that is why she sings,
adding her voice to the universe. One voice in an infinite,
ever-changing choir of nebulous nebulae and exploding stars
that have formed us, and to which we return—

but this is a point, maybe the point
in this dashing, flawed, incredible world
where our own star rises and sets, and robins trill–
where I feel both wonder and tranquility
in spring’s transcendent glow, reflected
a thousand times, light finding a way
through space and generations, sky to river and back again.

I used some of Kerfe’s Random Words for my poem.

Today is the first day of spring. Winter has been trying to hang on the last few days with cold winds, despite the sunshine. The temperature was only 29 F when I woke up this morning, but we will warm up to the 50s and have some days of 60+ this week. The days I walked outside, I saw incredible light. Meanwhile the former president is trying to stir up his supporters (and collect money for his legal bills) and the GOP continues to pass or try to pass laws that will harm women and promote ignorance. Thank goodness for daffodils.

Daffodils

Last Tuesday was Pi Day. I don’t bake pies very often, but this apple crumb pie was delicious.

We had sci-fi Saturday with our homemade pizza (the heart-shaped one just came out that way), our Star Trek Enterprise pizza cutter, and an episode of the new Picard and old Next Generation. And more lentil soup as the cold winds howled.

Perspectives

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Monday Morning Musings:

Perspectives

“Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.”

—From, Pattiann Rogers, “Achieving Perspective”

1.
Hoaxes dropped like scat—
watch where you walk—
rabid creatures lurk waiting to infect
the gullible. They wear chips on their shoulders,
bray like donkeys, wait to crush all non-believers.

2.
Toothsome treats
savor them, as if there will be no more
fruit brought from away, cooked and sweetened,
no essence of grapes harvested and fermented.
Then and now intersect. For a moment, it’s everything.

3.
Dirt is what a worm knows—
the feel, the taste, the way wet and dry particles
cling differently–soil, mud, earth—it’s the world.
The robin is a giant who knows sky, trees, ground,
catches the worm, swallows it.

4.
Geese squabble like Jets and Sharks
Turkeys look surprised to cross the road
Is it truly spring because I heard a mockingbird sing?
Crows know the answers
to the questions we never ask.

5.
Here is magic, river-caught sparkle,
blue-sky where branches reach up to catch bird-beats
and wing-brushes—here,
where feathered clouds sweep away haze,
and you and perfect daffodils raises your faces to the light.

I used some of Kerfe’s random words for this cadralor.I should mention, that hopefully if you click on the photos in this post, you’ll see captions.
Spring is definitely on the way, despite this past week’s cooler temperatures. I really did hear a mockingbird putting on a concert a few days ago. I’ve seen some around, but this was the first medley-of-my-greatest-hits concert I’ve heard since last summer.
Oh—just now—birds singing pre-dawn, even as the heat clicking on.

We’re getting rain today, and possible snow tomorrow, though I think that will probably be north or west of us.

We walked at Tall Pines yesterday.

Merril’s Movie/Book Club

We watched the new Luther movie, but really you shouldn’t. (You’re welcome.) So many good actors wasted in a movie that’s mediocre at best. Some movies you like more when you think about them later, not this one.

We also watched Women Talking, which both of us thought was excellent. But you know, it was women talking, so if you only watch action films, it’s not for you. A brilliant ensemble cast with deft direction by Sarah Polley. Although the story is loosely based on events that occurred in an extremist Mennonite colony in Bolivia, in the movie, the place and religion are never named. This gives it a timeless feel—these could be women almost anywhere in any time. The violence is never shown, only some blood, a black eye, and a pregnancy. Women Talking was free on Amazon Prime this past weekend.

I didn’t watch the Oscars, but I was pleased that Everything Everywhere All at Once won best picture, and Michelle Yeoh, best actress. I will watch this one again—and it is sort of an action film, but so much more.

Books: I finished the most recent Louise Penny book, A World of Curiosities. I haven’t read all her books, but this one was on the shelf at the library, so I picked it up. The librarian told me that she didn’t care for this one in the series, which she thought was all over the place. The beginning does jump back in forth in time, but that doesn’t bother me. Penny uses a real-life event that took place in Canada, and one that she covered as a young journalist to argue for anti-gun measures and discuss systemic misogyny. The mistaken identity plot device seems a bit thin here. It’s probably not her best, but I still enjoyed it. It’s the humanity of Gamache and his friends that comes through to me once again.

One last thing. I’m participating in a launch of Our Own Coordinates this Friday (3 PM my time). I’ll be reading my poem, “Sylvia.” You can get a free ticket here.

Spring Anthem

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Monday Morning Musings:

Spring Anthem

In spring’s slant shadowed light, daffodils,
like bright belles dance, unmeasured
in their joy, guileless
in their lemon-yellow gowns,
they rise unabashed from winter beds,
ready for change,
awakened.

If only we could learn
from them, from the budding trees,
the crows, and geese—the unquestioning tenacity
of life, to reset, to build, to amplify, to repeat–
to believe it’s not a quixotic quest
to acknowledge heartbreak, the systemic wrongs,
resolved

in this: our bodies belong
only to ourselves. Once daffodils, watch
as we become roses with thorns, cactuses with spikes, flowering
as we will. Ancient roots connect us, whispering of freedom–
soon, hear us like the sea, like a tidal wave,
roar.

I used a few of Kerfe’s Random Words. It is Women’s History Month. Over the weekend I heard or read these stories (among others):

This American Life: a doctor who is thinking of leaving the state of Idaho because of the draconian abortion law, which prevents doctors from treating patients, even preventing them from giving care in life-threatening situations.

Washington Post: Divorce and remarried women in Afghanistan forced into hiding because they’re considered adulterers for leaving abusive husbands.

NPR: The covert effort to get abortion pills into Ukraine.

The GOP is still pushing for voter suppression laws, and they have prevented the passage of new Voting Rights Acts, including the For the People Act and the John R. Lewis Act. And in Florida, the governor is moving on with his fascist agenda. I imagine there will soon be statues erected and parades in his honor. Right-wing extremists (and the GOP members who enable them) are happy to keep people ignorant and fixated on fake issues. They, like extremists always have, thrive on hierarchies and fear of the other. Now, LGBTQ+ people are the others. I don’t like the term “woke,” but I’ll own it. What is the opposite, sleeping? Shouldn’t everyone in a democracy be awake (and anti-fascist)?


We watched the movie She Said about the New York Times investigative journalists Megan Twohey and Jodie Kantor and their reporting on allegations made of sexual harassment and assault made against Harvey Weinstein. I read their work when I was working on my book on sexual harassment and also Ronan Farrow’s in the New Yorker.

However, the holiday of Purim begins tonight. It is a joyous holiday—you’re supposed to drink! But it is also a story of Queen Esther and freedom. We plan to open our favorite Syrah, Blue-Eyed Boy, and eat a lot of Hamantaschen.

Democracy seems to be dying. We’re destroying our planet. And yet, there are daffodils. Spring is coming.

Descending, Ascending

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Monday Morning Musings:

“That though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going.”
― Zora Neale Hurston. (2018). Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”.

Descending, Ascending

Each winter she descends,
her mouth red-stained, she rises in spring
like sun and moon
reborn

in ancient rhythms
of ancient songs
of stellar light
unnoticed

in unwritten time,
migrations of enlightenment–
the sparkle of sun-silver on outstretched wings,
flapped

the shadows shift. You see a peacock array.
Does the clock ever end? Around and around,
you look for a chivalrous nerve in space
determined

to find connections in the liminal.
Mother to child and on. Never forget
you say. Not black-and-white. Prisms. The daffodils rise,
again.

I used some of Kerfe’s Random Words. So. . .this was a strange week.
On, Tuesday, we went to William Heritage Winery in Mullica Hill, NJ for a February/Valentine wine and chocolate pairing, and it was lovely. Despite the woman at a nearby table holding her companions–and us–captive with her non-stop monologues. We learned she had had COVID and worked in the poker room. There had been some rain (and a tornado hit north of us), but when we got there, the sun was shining.
Then later in the week, I spent some time in the ER, entering Thursday morning and leaving Friday afternoon. It turned out to be a “better safe than sorry” situation with observation and tons of tests done “out of an abundance of caution.” I feel fine now, but you will understand why I’m behind on everything. I didn’t feel great when I got home on Friday because I hadn’t eaten since Wednesday at dinner. But I ate and rested, and we had a family Zoom shabbat, and it was wonderful to see my children. While in the ER, I finished the book club book I was reading, Lessons in Chemistry (though I missed the meeting), and then I re-read the entire book of Anne of Green Gables and started Anne of Avonlea. I remembered I had them on my Kindle.

On Saturday morning, I got a poetry acceptance. So, things seem to be looking up!

Saturday night we watched “Descendant,” an excellent documentary film on Netflix. It’s about the descendants of the people who were enslaved and brought to the US from Africa in 1860 aboard the ship Clotilda. The slave trade had been abolished in 1807, though slavery was not. I knew about the ship Clotilda, but not so much about the community of the descendants of the people captured and brought to Alabama. It’s a wonderful, moving documentary that also explores environmental and economic injustice, and includes audio of Zora Neale Hurston, excerpts of her book, Barracoon, and film footage that she shot from her interviews in the 1920s! I also started thinking about the word “descendant,” climbing down from an ancestor. Of course, if you go back far enough—despite what the White supremacists believe—we’re all related. See: this episode of Finding Your Roots or this interview with Henry Louis Gates

It Was a Week (in February)

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Monday Morning Musings:

It Was a Week (in February)

It was a week of love and death,
of birth and yearning,
Winter holding tight, and Spring burning
bright on birds and flowers returning.

It was a week of wine and cheese
and heart-shaped things,
feathered clouds, like wings,
drumming rain, wind of violin strings.

It was a week of hawks and jays
of vulture flight
and shorter nights,
of elongated shadows in slanted light.

It was a week when war continued
and people died and lied, while some tried
to guide with firm stride
through the upside-down, and slippery slide–

of every week. But this week was not a love poem,
or maybe it was, this week of burning, turning, yearning. Or could be,
as winding like the river to the sea,

it breaks free. Maybe. If. Could be.

This year spring is coming very early. Our crocuses are blooming, and our daffodils are pushing up through the ground. Some places have daffodils in bloom already. We typically have lots of daffodils in bloom around Passover/Easter, unless it is a year when the holidays are late in April. But we still have days of wintry weather. I turned the heat off and turned it back on this week.

We celebrated Valentine’s with a wine and cheese virtual event from Tria in Philadelphia. We picked up the materials in the afternoon for that night’s event.

My husband’s birthday was Saturday. I made him a cheesecake, and we had food from a favorite Indian restaurant (and leftovers the next night!). I didn’t get a photo of his chicken dish.

On Sunday, we went to the Wilma Theater to see Kiss by Guillermo Calderón. It was the final live performance, but the play is streaming now. It is a powerful, moving, funny, shocking, provocative play. I just looked at my husband and said “wow” when it was over. You can read more here and also purchase a ticket for streaming here. We took our usual pre-theater walk.

We also watched the movie, Nanny (Amazon), that like Kiss, dealt with cultural misunderstandings, but also cultural displacement. It’s classified as horror, but it’s psychological horror with folklore. Anna Diop is excellent as the Senegalese woman working as a nanny in New York while saving money to bring her young son to the US.

The Fathomable Unknown

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Monday Morning Musings:

Tree shadows and reflections in a stream. The tree branches are just beginning to show some buds.

The Fathomable Unknown

Pondering,
you recollect the past,
its sweat-stained shirts
and hulking monoliths–
describe the bells
so that we hear
the tintinnabulation,
the bell-swell, clapper-clang,
ding-dong, soul-singing

ring across the hills and plains
across the years—construe
the meaning behind it all,
Writer, make a city rise and fall.
Create a giant, defiant but
literate, stormy as a cloud–

wonder aloud,
grapple for answers
based in knowledge—
a girl, a famine, misogyny, religion—
the thousand indecisions,

the visions —
life and death
and forgotten facts
buried in earth and under snow,
but know
like the snowbells, they rise and ring,

and like the robins they sing
with bright bill chirps as
their wings catch the light,
a song takes flight
and a tale rises from the dust,
because it must,
a wonder of sorrow, regret,
love, or glory–

Once upon a time. . .imagine. You tell the story.

Once again, I used some of Jane’s Random Words. (Thank you!) I’m still thinking about truth, fiction (see last week’s musings), and the half-truths and flat-out political/cultural lies of our current time (see, the Republican party.)

We watched the movie, The Wonder based on the novel by Emma Donoghue, who also worked on the screenplay. I had read the book, but I didn’t remember all the details. The story is inspired by true accounts of fasting girls, particularly a girl in Wales. For her story based on facts—and not—Donoghue moved the location to Ireland after the famine. I liked both the book and the movie. Florence Pugh is wonderful as the English nurse sent to watch the girl. I’ve read several of Donoghue’s books, and though Room is her most famous, several others are based on historical events and set in past centuries. I found the story of her most recent book Haven, fascinating, though I disliked all the characters. I find it difficult to feel sympathy for religious fanatics and misogynists in any era.

Both of my children had birthdays this past week. We saw one and wished the other happy birthday by phone—then ate some cake.

There was a big football game last night. I don’t follow sports at all. I made my husband some goodies and sat with him for the first half hour. Lots of excitement in my area about the Eagles, but unfortunately, they lost. My husband said it was a good game though.

I’m hosting Prosery on dVerse today, so I’ll be back!

All the Stories Waiting

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Monday Morning Musings:

All the Stories Waiting

“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
–Pablo Picasso, in an interview in “The Arts: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine Covering All Phases of Ancient and Modern Art” (1923). Source: Quote Investigator

1.
The fog yawns, and
February arrives, but the robins
ignore the powdered sugar-dusted boughs,
in a round they sing, spring is coming.

2.
The numberless praise the murky,
present theories, make them facts,
drag faint, insidious lines to a bonfire,
boast in the smoky air, despite no escape hatch.

3.
The sounds of a city,
the acoustics of brick and steel
layered beats and melodies, birds and booms,
shadows and reflections, there and gone.

4.
A sip of wine, local or imported,
a bite of cheese—small pleasures—
the writer writes, the curtain drops,
she disappears—reappears in the next chapter.

5.
Look! And again. See how blue
attracts blue—river and sky merge,
a call and response. The breeze smells of messy possibility,
the future, like inchoate clouds, a story waiting to be told.

Another cadralor attempt. This time using Jane’s Random Words.
The weather was all over the place this week—mild to very, blustery cold,
then milder again. I took note of some architectural details for Kerfe as we walked in Philadelphia.

We saw two good plays this weekend,
Clyde’s By Lynn Nottage, at the Arden Theater

And Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell at the Lantern Theater.

We liked both plays, but we both preferred Lifespan—the play itself and the acting. Excellent. I’m still thinking about it.

The above was written before I heard the news–
My thoughts go out to the many people affected by the earthquake in Turkey last night. Horrific news. And now I’ve seen there’s been a second earthquake there.

Reverie

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Monday Morning Musings:

Reverie

There are moments
when time seems to curve,
or is it the light of stars
traveling beyond death?

We watch the rippling reflections
for illumination—to understand the fuzzy in-between

of dream and waking,
the puzzle of

why bees sleep,
and why flowers exist—and the splendid wonder
that they do—

why we question, but never learn,
why we forget to question,
why we forget

how arguments and competition
turn to wars.

Why we think it’s either science or art–
the truth of beauty,
all ye need to know
despite everything—

is ephemeral and lasting,
like spots on a tablecloth, a reminder of what was,
a sign of what may come, the possibility of peace or dystopia

a curve in time, an arc like a rainbow
shimmering in the distance,

hope
with wings outstretched,
gliding,
returning home, a loop in space,
a curve in time.

I used some of Jane’s Random Words.

We caught up on some movies this past week. Pre-pandemic, we would have seen them all in the theater months ago, but we ended up streaming them, which I know is not the same as a big-screen experience.

I wanted to watch Argentina, 1985, but I couldn’t get the subtitles to work properly, and I do not enjoy watching dubbed movies. I’ve never had this problem before.

The Banshees of Inisherin
Tár
Armageddon Time

I liked all of them very much, and they are all excellent movies, but none of them were for me, oh my god, wow! {No Cold War, Dale.] Cate Blanchett is amazing, however, in Tár, which I liked much more after thinking about it. I read that the role was written for her. I think this year I may go for the favorite, “Everything, Everywhere All at Once.” I know that seems weird for me, but it really was a Merril movie.

I read Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins. I loved this book. I found it while looking over the new books at the library. I haven’t read anything else by this author who has won several prizes and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee. She suffered a massive stroke while writing this book, but she recovered enough so that her daughter could help her finish the manuscript. I did have to read several pages to get into it. It is written from different characters’ perspectives with long sections of their thoughts and memories. The book is divided into sections, with each labeled as a different “property of thirst.”

Cold, rainy day comfort food

Home-made pizza for a movie night

A Week in January

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Monday Morning Musings:

A Week in January

Some days begin grey and turn greyer,
there are mouse droppings in your pantry,
the rodents have partied while your cat sleeps,
the rain like a purple sweater, soft,
and you want to sleep, too.

Another day, the sun tries
to open its eyes,
as the wind whispers, try again—
and flaps rainbow wings. Look.

Another day, in this endless week,
the sky is the blue of cornflowers and hyacinths,
the river sparkles,
shadows dance and play
as a squirrel pipes a melody–

It’s all connected, the trees’
murmuring roots and the river’s answer,
the geese that rise
and the wind that sighs,

bang the drum, cross the bridge,
awaken and inform—
as the sun bestows majesty
ringing puddles in gold
take ideas from cloistered recesses–

It’s a heartbreaking spell
it’s a wishing well
it’s the dock at goodbye
and those left, asking why,

and you can’t explain,
but it comes again—
fear, regret—love,
beauty,
a day in January. A week.

I used some of the random words I generated. It’s been another strange week within years full of strangeness. Lots of grey rainy days with a few patches of blue. No ice or snow—that may come later this week. The GOP is still awful, and I pity anyone trying to teach or learn in Florida. Our children and their spouses—are sick. Older child and their wife have COVID. We have not seen any of them recently, but parents worry. Our refrigerator was terminally ill, and we got a new one last week. Then a couple of days ago, I heard some rustling, and we discovered mouse droppings in a large cabinet under the kitchen counter. A lot. It was a major cleanup. I think perhaps the bird feeder attached to the kitchen window may have lured them with its scattered seeds on the ground. So, though I’ve been enjoying seeing the variety of birds there, I think we should not fill this feeder again.

We’ve caught up on British mysteries this week, sort of comfort shows, not bleak mysteries.
Annika, which we started in October, so re-watched the first episode again and finished the series. My husband was put off by Nicola Walker’s breaking the fourth wall when he first saw it. But this time, we both enjoyed the show. Nicola Walker can do anything. I had listened to the original radio/podcast version of the show, too, which is also voiced by Walker.

Miss Scarlett and the Duke (Season 3)—it’s a light-weight mystery series, but fun, with good acting. I’m surprised how caught up my husband got in it.

We started the latest season of All Creatures Great and Small. It’s another “comfort series,” but it’s hard not to love it. It’s based on the books about a rural veterinarian in Yorkshire in the1930s. The books are also good, and so was the series done several decades ago.

Then we started something totally different, The Devil’s Hour (on Amazon). It’s about a woman who wakes every single day at 3:33 A.M. after a strange dream. This show should come with lots of trigger warnings. It’s unsettling, but we were both intrigued and want to see what happens. We have eclectic tastes. 😏

Warm and colorful food for cold, grey days.

Frosted fields with Van Gogh sun

But still, the Light

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Monday Morning Musings:

But still, the Light

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
–from Martin Luther King, Jr., Final Speech: “I’ve been to the mountaintop”

In bleak January,
the unclothed trees shiver,
and the sun has cast herself
into the ice,
but still, she rises.

Sun reflected in icy stream

The fields are rimed with frost,
and all paths seem slippery,
a time for caution, not over-confidence,
yet, through shadows,
some rise–

Frosted fields with Van Gogh sun

Shadow across painted road crossing lines

there’s a crossroad, a moment
when the tipping point comes
and a heart so engraved by
the acid of hate implodes–
or heals–scared with gold,

kintsugi hearts, with their own beauty
like winter landscapes—
and you watch as the geese soar up
past the morning moon, working together
to find the blue

Three geese in flight
One goose flying over a fence by the river
3 Geese in flight
Morning moon and branches
Morning moon between tree branches

that you saw in dreams,
that you see now,
and you think of ancient dead stars,
ghost-broadcasting faint photons,
not infinite, but as close as we can imagine,

the luminous beacons of time,
guiding us, appearing like heroes
that glow with incandescent fire,
not eternal, but with voices that continue
to transmit, like pulsars, blinking, spinning.

tilting toward tomorrow.

Geese and gulls, low tide at Delaware River

I used some of Jane’s Random Words for the poem. And yes, Jane, more stars. They slipped in while I was writing, and I couldn’t ignore their twinkling, or Dr. King.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I’m not a big fan of holidays such as this where people pay lip-service to someone while ignoring what he or she stood for the rest of the year. (Example, anyone lauding MLK who also seeks to suppress voting access.) However, I was moved by Heather Cox Richardson’s letter today on heroes.

Between the weather and work, I didn’t go anywhere this week, except to get a shingles vaccine. My husband and I both went. We know how to have an exciting date.😏 I got a few walks in though.

It was a good week for soup and bread.

Pot of white bean and chard soup
Artisan Bread on cutting board
Plate with grapes and apple slices

We finished Season 2 of the wonderful spy series Slow Horses on Apple TV. Imagine if George Smiley and his circle were mostly inept, but sometimes stumbled into something that they solved. Then we watched Black Bird, also good but disturbing, as it involves a serial killer. The disturbing part comes with the serial killer’s recounting things that viewers do not see, but can imagine. Excellent performances.

On Saturday night we watched Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix), which was thoroughly enjoyable. I think this one is better than the first. Since it seemed like “a popcorn movie,” I made some! And we ate it with a finger-food dinner.