The Hammock Papers: outside

Showing posts with label outside. Show all posts

18 February 2021

Revel.

CORRESPONDENCES

Nature's a fane where down each corridor

of living pillars, darkling whispers roll,

— a symbol-forest every pilgrim soul

must pierce, 'neath gazing eyes it knew before.

like echoes long that from afar rebound,

merged till one deep low shadowy note is born,

vast as the night or as the fires of morn,

sound calls to fragrance, colour calls to sound.

cool as an infant's brow some perfumes are,

softer than oboes, green as rainy leas;

others, corrupt, exultant, rich, unbar

wide infinities wherein we move at ease:

— musk, ambergris, frankincense, benjamin

chant all our soul or sense can revel in.

Charles Baudelaire

25 March 2020

Merrier.

Caspari, Morel, 1962

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

J.R.R. Tolkien

07 December 2017

Opener.

Wyeth, Northern Point, 1950

It's opener, out there,

In the wide-open air.

Dr. Seuss

31 August 2012

Blue-moon.

Sai, Woods Under the Moonlight, 2001

Columnar pines soar
Two-track glowing, blue-moon light
Our season begins

03 July 2012

Head in the (storm) clouds.

Not the safest place to be, but, with a dram issued, exciting nonetheless.

Friday afternoon. That gray ghost flew across that field in seconds ...

Later, Friday evening. My reading lamp ...

Storm II mammatus. For as far as the eye could see ...

Storm II, leading edge of the mammatus ...

Sunday night ...

... clearing.

06 March 2012

Full.

Firchau, Scary Trees, 2012

Nice one, Drew!

11 January 2012

Uncaptured.

Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.

- Aldo Leopold

24 October 2011

Bubbles.

A couple of little kids spent a crisp Autumn morning capturing their launching of bubbles ...

09 May 2011

The windows are open in the barn and for the past three mornings, at almost exactly 5:25 each morning, I have been awakened by a robin in the apple tree outside my window. Smells good, sounds better.

Enjoy the day!
- Franklin Furman

21 January 2011

Open.

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, ...

... the great door, that does not look like a door, ...

... opens.

- Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping

27 November 2010

Altan, "The Sunset"

Preparing for a night hike ... where's that corkscrew?

21 November 2010

Wandering.

Sunrise on Dry Creek and Welsh Hills Roads ...

20 October 2010

Look.

The BBC has done it again ...

12 August 2010

"Fireflyers"

Thanks National Geographic.

07 August 2010

Dome.

Home late, after work.

Crisp darkness ... the humidity has cleared.

The air feels and smells clean.

Crickets' loud racket.

As I walk to the stairs my eye is caught ... looking up ...

a magical pure moment in time
gazing at the pallet of the sky,
the arc of the dome
separating the sky from the void beyond

An excerpt from Under the Stars by Raymond A. Foss

14 July 2010

Visible.

Sharpness.

Contrast.

Definition.

Gone.

Weighted air.

No shadow.

All around ...

Singing.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."