gold

On Tuesday my friends took me on a night drift through New Haven for my birthday. We were all stopped short by the window of Artspace radiating a gold glow into the darkness of Crown Street.


I was tired and distracted and might not have looked more carefully, but my fascinated friends lingered long enough for me to notice the San Marco Annunciation tucked high in the left corner. I've learned to always pay keen attention whenever that painting shows up.


And upon closer inspection of the window I found these gold scarabs,


and this gold dress,


gold shoes,


and my friends pointed out this dove was only one of 3 or 4 things not gold.



I love this window.

photographs and mountains

Kathleen McTigue gave a moving sermon at USNH this morning.

She told a story about meeting an older woman at the top of Mt Adams, who, upon reaching the peak, hurriedly got out her camera and took a dozen photos while turning 360 degrees. When asked why she said this was her habit: she loved to hike but had become nearly blind and could not see the view. But she would later be able to look at the photos up close and see the beauty of where she'd been.

I'd just seen a tv show about a man who takes blind teenagers mountain climbing. He said you don't need sight to experience the unique awesomeness of being on top of a mountain, that you can feel the elevation, and you can hear the immenseness around you that is unlike anywhere else on earth.

I think sometimes what we are experiencing is so grand that while we are experiencing it we can't see it at all. Some things are too big to see from the inside. Memories and photographs show the details of things we want to identify, but not until after we've come down from the mountain.

While you're up there just pay attention, take some pictures, and trust that you'll be able to name it another time.

It's time to revisit Rilke:

Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conslusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you.... Your life...of which I think with so many wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be difficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow.

interlude

"...children, do new things!"
- Richard Wagner

interlude

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibres as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." -Herman Melville

the blog is back

I took the blog offline for a number of good reasons, including that my computer died tragically and it was too much effort to borrow computers to blog. And I just didn't feel like writing for a long time.

I didn't realize it would show a page that said "invited readers only", and that so many dedicated readers would feel slighted by not having been invited. Rest assured, I didn't invite anyone! If you have come back you will see that nothing new has occurred during that time. Well lots has occurred, but it's not written here.

And, something felt wrong between the world and me while the blog was gone. I still don't know if I can manage posts very regularly, but I feel better having it back out there.

Thanks, my friends.