The Cove Island Park attendant (?) periodically sets off 1 or 2 fireworks in the early twilight hours for the handful of insomniacs and early risers (or for himself). After 1,866 consecutive (almost) days of snapping shots on my morning walks, I was finally able to catch one in flight. More shots from this mornings walk here.
The sun rises at 5:21 a.m, the earliest day/time of the year. I set my internal clock (each morning) 90 minutes ahead of Sunrise to catch twilight, that’s 3:45 a.m. Groan.
It’s been 1,865 consecutive (almost) days, and counting, on this morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
One could say, same-old same-old track, ‘How about a change?’ A new track? Mix it up a little?
Yet, I’m grooved in this track, akin to deliberately steering within deep ruts of a muddy country road to keep forward momentum. Ocean Vuong: “It seemed the light wouldn’t change for a while. When he was younger Hai had wanted a bigger life. Instead he got the life that won’t let him go.“
There are days (among the 1,865 consecutive days) when you get out of the car, and tell yourself: “Self, there ain’t nothing here, you’re tired, snap a shot to prove you were here, drive back home and snuggle up to Wally.”
That day wasn’t today.
Park is empty. Birds have awakened. I pick up the pace, heartbeat quickening. I arrive at the shoreline at look out.
65° F, gentle breaths of wind from the north. A strip of golden light paints the horizon. Luna pops her head in and out between gaps in heavy cloud cover, splashing golden light on the ocean surface.
I could feel it today.
The Cove won’t let me go.
“How you can fall in love with the light.”
Ellen Meloy: Of all the things I wondered about on this land, I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home — not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with the light.
DK Photo @ 4:09 am. June 13, 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here. A magnificent morning.
My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important. He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to notice it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery, or fishing and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door. Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
“If this isn’t nice, what is?” DK Photo: Baby Robins. 1pm. June 1, 2025. Stamford, CT. Thank you Barry and Cara Denison for sharing your beautiful finding.
If the world were fair, destruction and creation would take the same effort. It is far too easy to destroy something. A red strike through a sentence. A flame through a forest. A fist through a flower’s roots. What took life a hundred years to create could be felled in mere minutes.
I was talking with Calder one day in his studio when suddenly a ‘mobile’ beside me, which until then had been quiet, became violently agitated. I stepped quickly back; thinking to be out of its reach. But then, when the agitation had ceased and it appeared to have relapsed into quiescence, its long, majestic tail, which until then had not budged, began mournfully to wave, and, sweeping through the air, brushed across my face. These hesitations, resumptions, gropings, clumsiness’s, the sudden decisions and above all that swan-like grace make of certain ‘mobiles’ very strange creatures indeed, something midway between matter and life. At moments they seem endowed with an intention; a moment later they appear to have forgotten what they intended to do, and finish by merely swaying inanely…”
— Jean-Paul Sartre, from “Calder’s Mobiles” (1947) by Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, in a catalogue also titled Calder’s Mobiles
Photo: Eléments Démontables was suspended in the atrium of the Ruffin Building in Wichita, Kansas from 1975 until 2024, and is now in the collection of the Calder Foundation. An article “Giant Mobile Flies at Fourth” from The Wichita Eagle on March 9th 1975 when the mobile was originally installed. Source: The Five Largest Mobiles Worldwide That I’m Aware of by Marco Mahler. (All 5 happen to be by Calder.
Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
