Tag: Peace

Tuesday is for…

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Tuesdays are for….time lapses.

You may be thinking that due to the dearth of blog posts recently, that Wednesday’s, Thursday’s, Friday’s, Saturday’s, Sunday’s and Monday’s are for Time Lapses as well — and, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.

I know that you’ve all been anxiously waiting to learn about the time-lapse process. Here’s the secret sauce.

Continue reading “Tuesday is for…” →

Sunday Morning

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I also painted a study of a seascape, nothing but a bit of sand, sea, sky, grey and lonely—sometimes I feel a need for that silence—where there’s nothing but the grey sea—with an occasional seabird. But otherwise, no other voice than the murmur of the waves.

— Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother Theo, 17 September 1882 (via Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters)

Notes: DK Photo, 5:21 am. Saturday July 6, 2024. Quote via More Than Ideas.

Savory food writing.

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For what is home if not the first place where you learn what does and does not nourish you? The first place you learn to sit still and slow down when someone offers you a bite to eat?

— Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees (Ecco, April 30, 2024)

Notes:

  • Kirkus Review of Bite by Bite: …A collection of flavorful memories. Poet and essayist Nezhukumatathil, award-winning author of World of Wonders, creates a graceful memoir centered on 40 different kinds of food, some exotic, some familiar, all evoking recollections of childhood, family, travels, friendships, and much more. “This book is a bite of personal and natural history,” she writes, “a serving if you will—scooped up with a dollop of the bounty and largesse of the edible world.” With a father from India and a mother from the Philippines, some of the author’s memories center on traditional food such as kaong, the fruit of the sugar palm, prized in Filipino salads; jackfruit, her favorite fruit, which she first tasted during a visit to her grandparents in Kerala; bangus, the national fish of the Philippines, served fried as part of breakfast; and lumpia, a deep-fried Filipino finger food, with a crisp outer skin filled with chicken, ground beef or pork, carrots, and green beans. She takes sides in her parents’ debate over which mangoes are sweetest, those from India or those from the Philippines. For her, it’s Alphonso mangoes, from India, “hands down.” Eating lychees reminds her of her 20s, when she lived in Buffalo and would fly to New York City to meet friends. She’d buy a sackful of lychees, eating them happily on a bench while people-watching. Cherries, figs, and maple syrup are among other foods that elicit the author’s lyrical responses. The taste of apple banana, for example, “becomes a party in your mouth featuring a banana host and a sort of pineapple-strawberry DJ spinning tunes.” Her memoir is not unlike halo-halo, a mixture of unexpected ingredients that make for a delectable dessert. “With halo-halo,” she writes, “you never know what you are going to discover and when.”Savory food writing.

Light Child, Lightly.

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The only difference between a lake with waves and a lake without waves is the wind. A lake would be calm except for the wind. We would be calm if not for our thinking. We can tell how much of a turbulent effect the wind has on the lake by the size and strength of the waves. We can tell how much effect our thinking is having on us by the size and strength of our feelings. The wind is invisible. We can only feel the effects of it. Most of the thinking that affects us is also invisible. Our feelings are the only thing that tells us something is amiss.

– Jack Pransky, Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for Living

Notes:

  • Video: DK. April 22, 2024 @ 5:30 am at Cove Island Park.
  • 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.
  • Inspired by: “It is exhausting, dizzying. It is good to feel all sorts of things, even the bad things that scare you, because they, too, push you in the direction of your convictions. — Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 6, 2024)
  • Also inspired by: “When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.” —Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Grove Press in 2012)

Walking. And, for a moment, all is right with the world…

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6:54 am. Weather app says 33° F. There’s no damn way it’s 33°. I shiver.

And, I walk.

1,347 consecutive (almost) days at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

Our Swan family sleeps peacefully out in open water, a rare sight. The youngster is now fully grown, making it difficult to sort out who’s who.

I stand watching them, the pulse slows, this calm in the shadow of bombs dropping in Kyiv, in Gaza and in Yemen. And the warming planet offering a respite for the swans who don’t need to migrate south to find unfrozen bodies of water.

Non sequitur. Up and in flashes a segment of a CBS Sunday Morning interview with Jelly Roll, not the donut kind, but the rapper and singer. It’s a worthy segment, I urge you all to watch.

Jelly says “I have a very dark hallway between my ears.”

I look out at the swans.

Peace. And War.

War & Peace.

Notes:

  • Photo above taken at 6:54 am this morning. For more pictures from this morning’s walk, and yet another incredible light show here, here, and here
  • Related posts tied to the Swan family here.