NATURE NOTES
(i had time to write during the recent covid lockdowns)
He ought to imagine the creatures there
and all the faintest motions of the wind.
He ought to recollect the glare of the moon
and the colors of the dawn and dusk.” – barry lopez
FISHING FOR ANSWERS
(August 2, 2021)
Fish are hard to see. Their ability to vanish by not moving is a mystery and I go out of my way now and again during the summer heat and challenge the currents. In a nearby stream I try to glimpse small brown trout bewitched in still pools or rocking softly in the life-giving undercurrent behind large stones.
The very act of trying to see the fish makes them almost impossible to find. My eyes are awkward instruments. If I face the sunny side along a bank while I enter for my swim I cannot see into the water. Instead of fish, I get ripples and cloudy blue sky. How does that osprey watching me 40 metres overhead, adjusting for refraction, do it?
The little river is shallow now, more so than any other summer in recent memory. So I hop over to the other side on exposed rocks to put the sun to my back. But my body now makes a shadow that looms across them and they vanish in a flash of tails. I stay still and the trout gently materialize in the shadows, water ghosts with heads pointing upstream, tapered for efficiency like compass needles.
Because the fish have bladders filled with gas that balance their weight in the water, they are actually hanging from their own bodies as it were, like gondola baskets below air balloons. They pause suspended, seemingly motionless. The colour of the water would be impossible to capture with a paint brush.
I don my mask and submerge in the cool, clear knee-deep river and gently float behind one of those large rocks that defy the river’s strength. I take hold and let my body literally slip-stream with the current, holding on just by my fingertips. My eyes are at water level as I experience two dimensions at the same time. Floating alder leaves from last night’s wind curl on the surface around my ears while mini waterspouts spin just underneath, dispersing the energy from the falls a bit upstream.
Unlike the fish hawk above, I am stalking by using “via negativa”, the act of searching by not actively being in pursuit. I put myself in the way of the fish’s path. I am like Shackleton scanning the horizon, Newton under the apple tree, an Inuit hunter hunched over a blow hole. Something might appear!
Something I like to do a lot is just sit by the water
when there's a current and just stare into the water.
I don't fish, I don't hunt, I don't scuba, I don't spear,
don't boat, don't play basketball or football -
I excel at staring into space.
I'm really good at that. - Iggy Pop
(August 2, 2021)
Fish are hard to see. Their ability to vanish by not moving is a mystery and I go out of my way now and again during the summer heat and challenge the currents. In a nearby stream I try to glimpse small brown trout bewitched in still pools or rocking softly in the life-giving undercurrent behind large stones.
The very act of trying to see the fish makes them almost impossible to find. My eyes are awkward instruments. If I face the sunny side along a bank while I enter for my swim I cannot see into the water. Instead of fish, I get ripples and cloudy blue sky. How does that osprey watching me 40 metres overhead, adjusting for refraction, do it?
The little river is shallow now, more so than any other summer in recent memory. So I hop over to the other side on exposed rocks to put the sun to my back. But my body now makes a shadow that looms across them and they vanish in a flash of tails. I stay still and the trout gently materialize in the shadows, water ghosts with heads pointing upstream, tapered for efficiency like compass needles.
Because the fish have bladders filled with gas that balance their weight in the water, they are actually hanging from their own bodies as it were, like gondola baskets below air balloons. They pause suspended, seemingly motionless. The colour of the water would be impossible to capture with a paint brush.
I don my mask and submerge in the cool, clear knee-deep river and gently float behind one of those large rocks that defy the river’s strength. I take hold and let my body literally slip-stream with the current, holding on just by my fingertips. My eyes are at water level as I experience two dimensions at the same time. Floating alder leaves from last night’s wind curl on the surface around my ears while mini waterspouts spin just underneath, dispersing the energy from the falls a bit upstream.
Unlike the fish hawk above, I am stalking by using “via negativa”, the act of searching by not actively being in pursuit. I put myself in the way of the fish’s path. I am like Shackleton scanning the horizon, Newton under the apple tree, an Inuit hunter hunched over a blow hole. Something might appear!
Something I like to do a lot is just sit by the water
when there's a current and just stare into the water.
I don't fish, I don't hunt, I don't scuba, I don't spear,
don't boat, don't play basketball or football -
I excel at staring into space.
I'm really good at that. - Iggy Pop
SUMMER SOLSTICE
(June 21 - 1:01 am, 2021)
Greetings all, on this most exceedingly beautiful first day of summer - a day swollen with birds nesting, spiders spinning, deciduous leaves unfurling and mayflies dancing under emerald branches. All forms of life are seeping with this return of summer which migrates a wave of heat northward approximately twenty five kilometres a day. And as the top of this wobbling earth finishes its lean towards that great star out there, it’s been giving us an extra two minutes of light per day since the March last.
There is muscular power in this returning sunlight. On a fresh summer’s day like this the sun’s energy on a single acre of land or small pond can actually equal 4500 horsepower. Let's break that down: 1 horsepower is about 746 watts (roughly 8 incandescent light bulbs) which gets turned on at the same time. So, doing the math, when the sun - at 148.62 million kilometres away - comes out from behind a big cloud, it can theoretically switch on 36000 100W light bulbs in an instant... in a space not much bigger than my front garden!
It’s hard to believe just a few short weeks ago we were eating our cornflakes in the wintry dark mornings. Now, well it’s still kind of cool and dim out there when we rise each morning with the last of the overnight dew still hanging on the grass, but the days are long and winter’s a distant memory folks, no doubt about it.
Before the invention of the second hand on clocks, people used their own pulse to record small instances in time like this. I wonder how that worked out in moments during lazy, hazy days when a blissful warm ray of sunshine graced the side of faces and made medieval hearts skip a beat?
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it,
and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes
as if it had nothing else in the universe to do - Albert Einstein
A WALK IN THE WOODS WITH THE BIRDS
(May 2, 2021)
A morning walk in the woods. I blink… and just like that, the grass has turned green! Seems I missed the transition yet again! But I am really here to see the yellow light that beams through the trees making my shadow appear and vanish on the mossy bank and rambling rocky gorge where, only last week, a little stream of melting snow trickled - now only a memory. The deciduous trees have not leafed out. In truth, a third of the leaves have yet to even bud. But when they catch the light just so, there is this haze where they are beginning to wake up - an almost yawning anticipation of some event - a prequel to the great show; even the evergreens look fresh, newly created and washed clean by the winter past.
I rest and watch a tiny warbler sing on a branch. Chances are it’s a male; they are brighter in colour and tend to be the singers. Why the need for that lush electric yellow, I wonder? They say it comes from its diet of seeds. It’s called carotenoids, the same dye in carrots and other brightly coloured vegetables. So the warbler, teetering on that empty branch, sings its heart out, yet all I could hear was “Why... why... why?... what is the meaning... meaning... meaning?” Is it that he knows something we do not? Scientists admit that they are not wholly satisfied that birds sing truly for communication. So we do not really know why this tiny bird is sitting there singing to the sky. Easy answers come to mind: territory and mating, but I long to think there is more to it as the downside to this singing is alerting prey of its location and this constant vocalizing is taxing on its reserves.
Does the bird itself know why it sings? Or am I asking the wrong question? Maybe it does not matter. Maybe the real question is: Why is the song so beautiful to me? And why the extravagance to the score? It has a liquid, intricate sound like this creek in early spring, and, ironically, the closer it sings to the river the louder the song. Some songbirds can actually sing two notes at once using their syrinx, an organ located where the trachea splits into two independently controlled bronchial tubes. All this work and evolutionary design to telegraph a simple message? Why the trouble with such a five-act play? And then who, interpreting that message would actually understand it?
It’s known that of all the natural sounds, bird songs were those most often cited as helping people recover from stress, and allow them to restore and refocus. Take a moment out of your day - especially in these spring mornings when birds sing most. Stop and really listen, not because you can but simply because you must. The act puts you directly into the present moment and focuses you on their sublime song.
Beauty is the language to which we have no key; an unbroken code that needs a new Rosetta Stone. Something objectively is performed all around us each day - whether or not we are there as witnesses. And how wonderful it is to get such a message - a different kind of morning "tweet".
I hope you love birds too. It is economical.
It saves going to heaven. - Emily Dickinson
(May 2, 2021)
A morning walk in the woods. I blink… and just like that, the grass has turned green! Seems I missed the transition yet again! But I am really here to see the yellow light that beams through the trees making my shadow appear and vanish on the mossy bank and rambling rocky gorge where, only last week, a little stream of melting snow trickled - now only a memory. The deciduous trees have not leafed out. In truth, a third of the leaves have yet to even bud. But when they catch the light just so, there is this haze where they are beginning to wake up - an almost yawning anticipation of some event - a prequel to the great show; even the evergreens look fresh, newly created and washed clean by the winter past.
I rest and watch a tiny warbler sing on a branch. Chances are it’s a male; they are brighter in colour and tend to be the singers. Why the need for that lush electric yellow, I wonder? They say it comes from its diet of seeds. It’s called carotenoids, the same dye in carrots and other brightly coloured vegetables. So the warbler, teetering on that empty branch, sings its heart out, yet all I could hear was “Why... why... why?... what is the meaning... meaning... meaning?” Is it that he knows something we do not? Scientists admit that they are not wholly satisfied that birds sing truly for communication. So we do not really know why this tiny bird is sitting there singing to the sky. Easy answers come to mind: territory and mating, but I long to think there is more to it as the downside to this singing is alerting prey of its location and this constant vocalizing is taxing on its reserves.
Does the bird itself know why it sings? Or am I asking the wrong question? Maybe it does not matter. Maybe the real question is: Why is the song so beautiful to me? And why the extravagance to the score? It has a liquid, intricate sound like this creek in early spring, and, ironically, the closer it sings to the river the louder the song. Some songbirds can actually sing two notes at once using their syrinx, an organ located where the trachea splits into two independently controlled bronchial tubes. All this work and evolutionary design to telegraph a simple message? Why the trouble with such a five-act play? And then who, interpreting that message would actually understand it?
It’s known that of all the natural sounds, bird songs were those most often cited as helping people recover from stress, and allow them to restore and refocus. Take a moment out of your day - especially in these spring mornings when birds sing most. Stop and really listen, not because you can but simply because you must. The act puts you directly into the present moment and focuses you on their sublime song.
Beauty is the language to which we have no key; an unbroken code that needs a new Rosetta Stone. Something objectively is performed all around us each day - whether or not we are there as witnesses. And how wonderful it is to get such a message - a different kind of morning "tweet".
I hope you love birds too. It is economical.
It saves going to heaven. - Emily Dickinson
LIGHT IS LIFE
(March 20, 2021)
LIGHT IS LIFE - Happy Spring!
March 20: Vernal Equinox or Spring Equinox - it’s the same thing - the beginning of a new cycle. Another winter is in the books folks (we hope) and life is once again emerging from the earth. Insects and earthworms, roots and fungal strands are doing a gentle pavane deep under the remaining snow. Little green shoots in the soil in my garden are now reaching up through the bramble between the snow for this new light. Hallowed be thy ground.
Energy awakens too in our own growth and stirs fertility and creativity as we break out of our own shells. I too want to shake off my winter coat, toss my boots and snovel, shed my old skin and prepare for the coming warmth like the tiny buds stirring at the tips of branches outside my studio window. Everything is starting to burst as life prepares for another summer. The sun and moon are spending the same time in the sky now, equally balancing out the light and dark (equinox). But soon light will overtake the dark as the days start to stretch. Apollo, in his golden chariot, is now the ruler of the sky and carrying us into the lighter half of the year.
Goethe’s dying words: “More light!” We’ve always craved it from time’s beginning. More light. Sunlight. Candle light. Street light that banishes the darkness from our little towns. Little lights on our heads when we hike at night. Big lights at the ball field. Tiny lights as we read in bed when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and amperage. It’s a metaphor. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light. To love beauty is to see light. O, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on earth. Light, the visible reminder of Invisible Light. Darkness cannot drive out Darkness. Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. Lead Thou me on! Arise, shine, for thy light has come. Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun. And I say, it’s alright. Sun. Sun. Sun. Here it comes. ..Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine... - www.christophernewhook.studio
TUCKAMORE, HOLDING FAST!
(December 31, 2020)
These stunted trees all over Newfoundland and Labrador are referred to as Tuckamore. They are subalpine formations that continue to grow, sometimes in a horizontal direction, despite harsh conditions and adversity. They lean into cruel Atlantic ocean winter winds and somehow find enough soil and moisture to survive. They are shrubby, yet resilient in such a chaotic environment and are true symbols of the plucky conditions we humans are in at this moment.
Let’s take this tree I’ve found. Its power lies in its acceptance to the situation. It cannot relocate; it is literally rooted in place for its lifetime. So buckling down and living within its means allows it to survive. We can learn from this twisted piece of knobby juniper. Just like the tree, we too need to find peace in acceptance.
Astronauts call this review of one’s condition “The Overview Effect”. When they go into space, they look over their shoulder and get a whole new perspective on life and their place on earth. So, mankind’s current global situation (like all previous major voyages of change - pandemics, wars or droughts) will, in time, resolve itself as nature always does. Perhaps it will bring us closer together with a sharper focus on new opportunities along the journey. And hopefully, when we are given future problems like this present virus, we will permit ourselves to maybe change our perspective so that a new sense of reality will then be allowed.
Back to this tree: I felt compelled to scramble out to the precipice, take off my gloves and pat the spiky little tuckamore. Not sure why. Perhaps, like everyone, I am missing the simple act of touching another living thing outside my bubble (sure...I found great pleasure patting a wandering dog in the street yesterday). From my point of view, the little spruce appears to just be hanging on, out there at the end of a desolate world. Yet to this spruce it’s not the end of the world but rather the centre of the universe! And while I sat with this little tuck I paused, took a few deep breaths, looked over my shoulder on this new perspective and came to realize that the view from there was far better than where I had felt more comfortable!
Hold fast everyone ...and take a moment and look around. You never know – we may be at the edge of something truly great!
At the centre of the universe dwells the Great Spirit
And that centre is really everywhere
It is within each of us. - Black Elk
is LET THERE BE LIGHT...AND WIND...AND CLOUDS
(February 6, 2020)
3:30 PM: The winter wind today is terrific out of the north on this Cape Shore hike. It waters my eyes, flaps my coat, pushing snow clouds ahead of itself which makes the sun come and go. I can even see the edge of shadows they press down on the rolling barrens. It deepens the colours and spreads itself towards me like an oncoming locust plague, as if a heavenly light switch is flicked off and everything goes as dull as dusk. I am amazed that I can’t even distinguish the sharpness of these random erratics, tossed by giants in some Lord of the Rings game. And then, with a snap of the fingers, the golden light returns, breaking through the rushing clouds, bursting across in a tundra tsunami. I blink and it's gone again. But then the light swings around charging back like wild horses. I catch myself holding my breath in anticipation, wanting to grab its reins as it rushes past.
4:00 pm: The eastern sky is painted with low orpiment clouds. The sun in the west illuminates everything. The air and the sky are oversaturated. Patches of snow, like scattered newspapers, quilt the ground. The clouds slide along with an underbelly of soft heliotrope grey, pulled by the same heavenly hand that scattered these giant stones. Shadows are racing ahead and this constant wind keeps pushing my face away.
4:15 pm: The sky is clear again. How could that big mass of cloud disappear? Then, out of nowhere a new one creeps up from behind me and everything is again drained of its brightness; the clouds are sucking the life out of this land!
4:40 pm: The wind has drastically thinned out now to a delicate air of twilight; it’s just enough to rustle the skin on the nearby ocean. I watch the running sheets of light being raised on the surface. The sight has the appeal of the purely passive, like the earlier racing of light under the clouds on the barren ground.
5:30 pm: Darkness has set in as the stars approach the stage. The breeze is now the merest puff on my face. I keep Mars to my right as I walk back to the car.
This afternoon was a beautiful dream and I was witness to it at the moment of it being dreamt. Though I am a painter I can create neither light nor wind, only render its aftereffects. Nature is it’s own master and much too big to harness! The most I can do is to put myself in its path and simply be the bell waiting to be struck.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen
(February 6, 2020)
3:30 PM: The winter wind today is terrific out of the north on this Cape Shore hike. It waters my eyes, flaps my coat, pushing snow clouds ahead of itself which makes the sun come and go. I can even see the edge of shadows they press down on the rolling barrens. It deepens the colours and spreads itself towards me like an oncoming locust plague, as if a heavenly light switch is flicked off and everything goes as dull as dusk. I am amazed that I can’t even distinguish the sharpness of these random erratics, tossed by giants in some Lord of the Rings game. And then, with a snap of the fingers, the golden light returns, breaking through the rushing clouds, bursting across in a tundra tsunami. I blink and it's gone again. But then the light swings around charging back like wild horses. I catch myself holding my breath in anticipation, wanting to grab its reins as it rushes past.
4:00 pm: The eastern sky is painted with low orpiment clouds. The sun in the west illuminates everything. The air and the sky are oversaturated. Patches of snow, like scattered newspapers, quilt the ground. The clouds slide along with an underbelly of soft heliotrope grey, pulled by the same heavenly hand that scattered these giant stones. Shadows are racing ahead and this constant wind keeps pushing my face away.
4:15 pm: The sky is clear again. How could that big mass of cloud disappear? Then, out of nowhere a new one creeps up from behind me and everything is again drained of its brightness; the clouds are sucking the life out of this land!
4:40 pm: The wind has drastically thinned out now to a delicate air of twilight; it’s just enough to rustle the skin on the nearby ocean. I watch the running sheets of light being raised on the surface. The sight has the appeal of the purely passive, like the earlier racing of light under the clouds on the barren ground.
5:30 pm: Darkness has set in as the stars approach the stage. The breeze is now the merest puff on my face. I keep Mars to my right as I walk back to the car.
This afternoon was a beautiful dream and I was witness to it at the moment of it being dreamt. Though I am a painter I can create neither light nor wind, only render its aftereffects. Nature is it’s own master and much too big to harness! The most I can do is to put myself in its path and simply be the bell waiting to be struck.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen
FORCED PERSPECTIVE
(January 17, 2020)
I like the light this time of year - when it’s slanted a lot. When the sun is either coming up or going down. It's a good time for winter hikes and great for photography. Especially this winter, as it’s not too cold on the camera’s battery and my bare fingers.
When I go wandering, the camera in my hand pleads with me to peek through its tiny rectangle eye hole on the back. Doing so eliminates the surrounding natural business as well as the chatter inside my head. It sparks me to focus on the true subject at hand, which Newton showed is nothing more than a basic spectrum of coloured light and subsequent hues, all bouncing off my surroundings. Later on in history the American painter A.H. Munsell took this even further with his studies and subsequent “Grammar of Color”, likening colour to music notation and numbers; the word we use today for this is synesthesia (Greek for perceive together). Munsell’s attempt was to try and combine the art and science of colour into a single theory. He didn't get very far.
But there is more to this present hunt than the chase for the rainbow of images and sounds. When I shoot I try to be as sensitive and empty as the digital SD card. I receive many impressions during the hike; some make it inside my camera but more develop in my mind.
I find too that my own self awareness of place also vanishes. This is very invigorating. It makes me contemplate the energy most of us waste by spending every waking minute thinking about our personal selves and present condition and miss so much around. There is an old Hasid master who said “When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all the growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.”
For me, the holy flame ignites when I light a little beach fire and fill my kettle from a waterfall tumbling nearby. I rest it on the fire and look out over the great Atlantic beyond, pause and breathe deep while I wait for it to whistle. This is innocence in the purest form. And sparks abound.
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly
Into the Mystic.
- Sir George Ivan Morrison
(January 17, 2020)
I like the light this time of year - when it’s slanted a lot. When the sun is either coming up or going down. It's a good time for winter hikes and great for photography. Especially this winter, as it’s not too cold on the camera’s battery and my bare fingers.
When I go wandering, the camera in my hand pleads with me to peek through its tiny rectangle eye hole on the back. Doing so eliminates the surrounding natural business as well as the chatter inside my head. It sparks me to focus on the true subject at hand, which Newton showed is nothing more than a basic spectrum of coloured light and subsequent hues, all bouncing off my surroundings. Later on in history the American painter A.H. Munsell took this even further with his studies and subsequent “Grammar of Color”, likening colour to music notation and numbers; the word we use today for this is synesthesia (Greek for perceive together). Munsell’s attempt was to try and combine the art and science of colour into a single theory. He didn't get very far.
But there is more to this present hunt than the chase for the rainbow of images and sounds. When I shoot I try to be as sensitive and empty as the digital SD card. I receive many impressions during the hike; some make it inside my camera but more develop in my mind.
I find too that my own self awareness of place also vanishes. This is very invigorating. It makes me contemplate the energy most of us waste by spending every waking minute thinking about our personal selves and present condition and miss so much around. There is an old Hasid master who said “When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all the growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.”
For me, the holy flame ignites when I light a little beach fire and fill my kettle from a waterfall tumbling nearby. I rest it on the fire and look out over the great Atlantic beyond, pause and breathe deep while I wait for it to whistle. This is innocence in the purest form. And sparks abound.
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly
Into the Mystic.
- Sir George Ivan Morrison
AUGENBLICK(Middle High German: quick glance, moment, instant)
(December 31, 2020)
Don’t reach too far into the future. Instead, resolve to be in the moment if possible. You see, the present is like a blank canvas, wiped clean by the past, washed off the page from last night’s wind and snow before it’s had time to dry. Then, while you sleep, your muse places a new one on the easel before you wake, gleaming, white and anxious for the colours of today.
What is time? It’s an invisible force, instant yet fleeting - like the afterburn of a lightning strike in the black sky. It’s here and then it’s gone. However, as with all good gifts of nature, it's free for the taking. I always hear people say “I wish I had more time...” But time is the one thing we have been given. And yet, instead, most of us have chosen to simply give into time. It’s like we're walking around in a dream until, in a rare instant – after a birth, death or catastrophe – we awake to the moment at hand, surprised that our eyes are wide open. Then, sure as sure, given enough space we all lapse back into that lazy haze once again. “The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind.” said Franz Kafka. It’s true, yet it’s so very hard to stay conscious of the moment, and not allow our eyes to glaze over. We must try and keep our heads up, antenna pulled all the way out and eyelids propped open with toothpicks - with trees if we must!
This is where art comes in. Its role is simple - to capture feeling and memory. That's it! That's all that art can do in reality. However you can choose your medium: paint, dance, sing, run, cook or whatever else that inspires. Your job is simple - bring your moments into the present. Give them meaning. Study them and lock them down.
I’ve been working on another little watercolour in Argentia. What about you? What will you create today? A poem? A loaf of bread? A pair of mittens? A new friend? It all starts in the blink of an eye. Augenblick..
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
- Mason, Wright, Waters, Gilmore
(December 31, 2020)
Don’t reach too far into the future. Instead, resolve to be in the moment if possible. You see, the present is like a blank canvas, wiped clean by the past, washed off the page from last night’s wind and snow before it’s had time to dry. Then, while you sleep, your muse places a new one on the easel before you wake, gleaming, white and anxious for the colours of today.
What is time? It’s an invisible force, instant yet fleeting - like the afterburn of a lightning strike in the black sky. It’s here and then it’s gone. However, as with all good gifts of nature, it's free for the taking. I always hear people say “I wish I had more time...” But time is the one thing we have been given. And yet, instead, most of us have chosen to simply give into time. It’s like we're walking around in a dream until, in a rare instant – after a birth, death or catastrophe – we awake to the moment at hand, surprised that our eyes are wide open. Then, sure as sure, given enough space we all lapse back into that lazy haze once again. “The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind.” said Franz Kafka. It’s true, yet it’s so very hard to stay conscious of the moment, and not allow our eyes to glaze over. We must try and keep our heads up, antenna pulled all the way out and eyelids propped open with toothpicks - with trees if we must!
This is where art comes in. Its role is simple - to capture feeling and memory. That's it! That's all that art can do in reality. However you can choose your medium: paint, dance, sing, run, cook or whatever else that inspires. Your job is simple - bring your moments into the present. Give them meaning. Study them and lock them down.
I’ve been working on another little watercolour in Argentia. What about you? What will you create today? A poem? A loaf of bread? A pair of mittens? A new friend? It all starts in the blink of an eye. Augenblick..
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
- Mason, Wright, Waters, Gilmore
WINTER SOLSTICE
(December 21, 2020)
Solstice - from the Latin SOLSTITIUM, meaning “sun stood still”. For six days of December in the northern hemisphere, the sun ceases its crawl south on the horizon and rises and sets in the same spot. In ancient times, this period of the year was noted with drawn breath. Would the giver of life return? Best not chance it! So they lit fires and danced around giant stone circles just in case.
Regardless, it’s comforting to know that, while everything changes around us, nothing’s actually lost; that the winter solstice falls each year in the constellation Capricorn and that in the Orion Nebula, new stars are still being born. Earth tilts just so to its nearest star (our sun), lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that yearly blazing touch. Orion leaps across the night sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready for battle.
I am super conscious during this time of year - of the dwindling warmth and the the fading of light. A unique moment of darkness that is truly magnificent. Soft brush pastel daylight is bookended by long endless inky nights. I gaze at the mystery out there and await the return of the warm sun. I pray for the regeneration of all things to come and tuck the memory of a bright summer day into my breast pocket, a talisman against the dark winter ahead.
In the midst of winter,
I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. - Albert Camus
(December 21, 2020)
Solstice - from the Latin SOLSTITIUM, meaning “sun stood still”. For six days of December in the northern hemisphere, the sun ceases its crawl south on the horizon and rises and sets in the same spot. In ancient times, this period of the year was noted with drawn breath. Would the giver of life return? Best not chance it! So they lit fires and danced around giant stone circles just in case.
Regardless, it’s comforting to know that, while everything changes around us, nothing’s actually lost; that the winter solstice falls each year in the constellation Capricorn and that in the Orion Nebula, new stars are still being born. Earth tilts just so to its nearest star (our sun), lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that yearly blazing touch. Orion leaps across the night sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready for battle.
I am super conscious during this time of year - of the dwindling warmth and the the fading of light. A unique moment of darkness that is truly magnificent. Soft brush pastel daylight is bookended by long endless inky nights. I gaze at the mystery out there and await the return of the warm sun. I pray for the regeneration of all things to come and tuck the memory of a bright summer day into my breast pocket, a talisman against the dark winter ahead.
In the midst of winter,
I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. - Albert Camus
THE CHRISTMAS STAR
(December 12, 2020)
Keep your eyes on the skies this month. A celestial event, hundreds of years in the making is getting ready to showcase an out-of-this-world Christmas pageant. During the first three weeks of December, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer in the sky than they have since 1623 when Galileo pointed his new telescope upwards and mumbled to himself “Well, what do we have here..?”
Unfortunately for him his view was marred by sunsets, so really the best one to compare to it happened long before then, in the year 1226! To give you context, that’s when Saint Francis of Assisi died, and not long after the 4th Crusade into the Holy Lands ended! We’re going WAY back in time. Got it?
NASA calls it “The Great Conjunction”, where the orbits of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn brush shoulders, causing Jupiter and Saturn to appear remarkably close to each other in our night sky. They finally embrace on December 21 (first day of winter) when the two giants merge their bubbles, so to speak. The next time they meet on the great dancing floor will be 2080. In extremely rare fashion, Jupiter completely covers Saturn, and that my friends, won’t happen again until the year 7541!
We all know the ancient Greek name for Jupiter is Zeus, but get this... Saturn is Cronus! Many layers of coincidence abound in the timing of this union; read what you wish into the data. Is it an awakening plea from all those bearded bards inside our history books? Is it just the end of a bad year or the hope of a new era?
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. - Phillip Brooks
(December 12, 2020)
Keep your eyes on the skies this month. A celestial event, hundreds of years in the making is getting ready to showcase an out-of-this-world Christmas pageant. During the first three weeks of December, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer in the sky than they have since 1623 when Galileo pointed his new telescope upwards and mumbled to himself “Well, what do we have here..?”
Unfortunately for him his view was marred by sunsets, so really the best one to compare to it happened long before then, in the year 1226! To give you context, that’s when Saint Francis of Assisi died, and not long after the 4th Crusade into the Holy Lands ended! We’re going WAY back in time. Got it?
NASA calls it “The Great Conjunction”, where the orbits of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn brush shoulders, causing Jupiter and Saturn to appear remarkably close to each other in our night sky. They finally embrace on December 21 (first day of winter) when the two giants merge their bubbles, so to speak. The next time they meet on the great dancing floor will be 2080. In extremely rare fashion, Jupiter completely covers Saturn, and that my friends, won’t happen again until the year 7541!
We all know the ancient Greek name for Jupiter is Zeus, but get this... Saturn is Cronus! Many layers of coincidence abound in the timing of this union; read what you wish into the data. Is it an awakening plea from all those bearded bards inside our history books? Is it just the end of a bad year or the hope of a new era?
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. - Phillip Brooks
ZUGUNRUHE
(November 28, 2020)
Winter is near. I can hear it in the wind. But no bird songs. Most of them have gone south or gone quiet. The ones still singing are exhibiting “Zugunruhe”, a German word for that restlessness of birds before migration. I can feel it as I watch a robin on a branch out my studio window. I sense that its little mind is still contemplating… “should I stay or should I go?” The cold is coming and those oversized clouds careening beyond the hills move between small patches of blue. Another kind of migration up there, tempting the little bird off her branch to come join them. She leaps and they race together from one end of the sky to the other.
The morning air is also rich in the smell of detritus. I wonder at the natural cycle of life and death around me. Rotten leaves are under foot or hanging on the ends of tiny limbs on the birch in our driveway. The remains of flower stalks stain the deck. All those millions of dead summer insects below, frozen in the first real frost of the season. The wind quickens and a subtle scent permeates the air.
Twenty or thirty starlings suddenly move through the garden. They hurl themselves from one tree to another. They ascend in a sudden puff and settle, like a shaken blanket over an unmade bed, till some impulse tosses them up again into the clouds.
A natural uneasiness abounds. Winter is coming! We humans are feeling it too.
(November 28, 2020)
Winter is near. I can hear it in the wind. But no bird songs. Most of them have gone south or gone quiet. The ones still singing are exhibiting “Zugunruhe”, a German word for that restlessness of birds before migration. I can feel it as I watch a robin on a branch out my studio window. I sense that its little mind is still contemplating… “should I stay or should I go?” The cold is coming and those oversized clouds careening beyond the hills move between small patches of blue. Another kind of migration up there, tempting the little bird off her branch to come join them. She leaps and they race together from one end of the sky to the other.
The morning air is also rich in the smell of detritus. I wonder at the natural cycle of life and death around me. Rotten leaves are under foot or hanging on the ends of tiny limbs on the birch in our driveway. The remains of flower stalks stain the deck. All those millions of dead summer insects below, frozen in the first real frost of the season. The wind quickens and a subtle scent permeates the air.
Twenty or thirty starlings suddenly move through the garden. They hurl themselves from one tree to another. They ascend in a sudden puff and settle, like a shaken blanket over an unmade bed, till some impulse tosses them up again into the clouds.
A natural uneasiness abounds. Winter is coming! We humans are feeling it too.
WITNESS
(November 15, 2020)
Life is a paradox and a mystery. Take the singing of a horned lark on a sheep skull. And yet, there still seems to be such a thing as absolute beauty, a presence wholly gratuitous.
Last week at the Cape I saw a kestrel make a straight vertical descent from the edge of a 90 metre cliff. It was an act of careless suicide, like that of a WWII kamikaze pilot. The bird took one step into the air… and simply dropped! His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were resting on a telephone wire and not actually falling, accelerating almost 10 metres per second, cutting through the empty salt uprush of ocean air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, fanned his elegant tipped tail, and in doing so, floated softly onto a rocky outcrop. I had just rounded the crest of the edge when his leap caught my eye; there were no other viewers.
The fact of his plummet was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. Does it make a noise? The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we are there as witnesses. The least we can do is try to be present and acknowledge the moment.
If I were to fall in the woods would the trees hear my sounds?
(November 15, 2020)
Life is a paradox and a mystery. Take the singing of a horned lark on a sheep skull. And yet, there still seems to be such a thing as absolute beauty, a presence wholly gratuitous.
Last week at the Cape I saw a kestrel make a straight vertical descent from the edge of a 90 metre cliff. It was an act of careless suicide, like that of a WWII kamikaze pilot. The bird took one step into the air… and simply dropped! His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were resting on a telephone wire and not actually falling, accelerating almost 10 metres per second, cutting through the empty salt uprush of ocean air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, fanned his elegant tipped tail, and in doing so, floated softly onto a rocky outcrop. I had just rounded the crest of the edge when his leap caught my eye; there were no other viewers.
The fact of his plummet was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. Does it make a noise? The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we are there as witnesses. The least we can do is try to be present and acknowledge the moment.
If I were to fall in the woods would the trees hear my sounds?
SOLITUDE VS LONELINESS
(November 7, 2020)
This past weekend I had the privilege of again being in one of the most special spots in the world. No cell service, no clouds and more surprisingly no wind. And not a single person for miles! A late fall Friday afternoon at Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve, there to work on a 3D exhibit installation inside the provincial Interpretation Centre. But the weather was just too nice to stay inside on the reconstruction project this late fall day, so I went for a hike along the nearby cliffs. The first hour or so of crawling over the barrens got my mind wandering about physical space. Another hour and my wandering turned inward to dwell on our need for mental space and clarity. Both go hand in hand. Downtime we call it, yet this gift of space is truly more uplifting!
I read somewhere there’s a link between the size of our brains and the size of the communities we build: the greater the extent of our social world, the bigger the brain. Humans form the largest groups of all primates, floating about 150 individuals per person. This is known as “Dunbar’s Number” and it turns out that it crops up rather a lot, from the optimal upper limit for a church congregation to the average size of social networks on Twitter.
Naturally this brain measurement works the other way, too. In the long term, a lack of socializing can make the odd friendly encounter shrink and a little uncomfortable. While some people might think that they prefer solitude, in reality, their soul needs to connect with others, even total strangers. Last year, German scientists discovered that the brains of nine Antarctic explorers, who lived for 14 months at a research station, were 7% smaller over the course of the expedition. That can't be good?
Psychologists aren’t really concerned with exactly how many people we each have in our extended bubbles. Instead, they focus on how we view our situation. Solitude involves being alone without being lonely – it’s a contented state. Loneliness is a very different and dark beast, in which a person feels down and isolated and craves more social contact. Regularly interacting with others teaches us to be valued and helps to inturn accurately interpret our intentions, which ultimately creates more positive social experiences.
Then again, as I sit content on this barren craggy outcrop far away from this new covid world over that distant horizon, I’m quite content to vanish for awhile in the warm afternoon sunlight and let my brain shrivel if it must as a trade off for a swelling soul. Thankfully Lori showed up just before sunset and we dashed out to Bird Rock to catch the greatest show on earth.
I wonder how this new awareness about brain shrinking will play out with our individual hibernation plans? Old Man Winter’s grinding his axe in preparation for another possible social lockdown and this 6 foot dance between good company and self isolation is getting trickier by the day.
“The beaten path is the safest, but the traffic’s terrible.” -Jeff Taylor
(November 7, 2020)
This past weekend I had the privilege of again being in one of the most special spots in the world. No cell service, no clouds and more surprisingly no wind. And not a single person for miles! A late fall Friday afternoon at Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve, there to work on a 3D exhibit installation inside the provincial Interpretation Centre. But the weather was just too nice to stay inside on the reconstruction project this late fall day, so I went for a hike along the nearby cliffs. The first hour or so of crawling over the barrens got my mind wandering about physical space. Another hour and my wandering turned inward to dwell on our need for mental space and clarity. Both go hand in hand. Downtime we call it, yet this gift of space is truly more uplifting!
I read somewhere there’s a link between the size of our brains and the size of the communities we build: the greater the extent of our social world, the bigger the brain. Humans form the largest groups of all primates, floating about 150 individuals per person. This is known as “Dunbar’s Number” and it turns out that it crops up rather a lot, from the optimal upper limit for a church congregation to the average size of social networks on Twitter.
Naturally this brain measurement works the other way, too. In the long term, a lack of socializing can make the odd friendly encounter shrink and a little uncomfortable. While some people might think that they prefer solitude, in reality, their soul needs to connect with others, even total strangers. Last year, German scientists discovered that the brains of nine Antarctic explorers, who lived for 14 months at a research station, were 7% smaller over the course of the expedition. That can't be good?
Psychologists aren’t really concerned with exactly how many people we each have in our extended bubbles. Instead, they focus on how we view our situation. Solitude involves being alone without being lonely – it’s a contented state. Loneliness is a very different and dark beast, in which a person feels down and isolated and craves more social contact. Regularly interacting with others teaches us to be valued and helps to inturn accurately interpret our intentions, which ultimately creates more positive social experiences.
Then again, as I sit content on this barren craggy outcrop far away from this new covid world over that distant horizon, I’m quite content to vanish for awhile in the warm afternoon sunlight and let my brain shrivel if it must as a trade off for a swelling soul. Thankfully Lori showed up just before sunset and we dashed out to Bird Rock to catch the greatest show on earth.
I wonder how this new awareness about brain shrinking will play out with our individual hibernation plans? Old Man Winter’s grinding his axe in preparation for another possible social lockdown and this 6 foot dance between good company and self isolation is getting trickier by the day.
“The beaten path is the safest, but the traffic’s terrible.” -Jeff Taylor
THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER on the Baie Verte Peninsula
(November 7, 2020)
During this past summer we tried our best to stay close to the basic things in Newfoundland. Cliffs and fields and the steady rhythm of breaking waves. We asked permission to park our camper on wharves and beaches and long dirt roads that wandered to nowhere to catch sunsets and fall asleep with the surf! Slowness and stillness was the best medicine to get over our chaotic winter past. Lori would quickly search out another nook for her book while I'd break open my little watercolour kit.
When serenity is restored new perspectives open and for me the challenge of art turns into an invitation for growth. No competition here! No need to prove! Just gentle observations leading to a better understanding of the charm that coloured pigments mixed with a little drop of water can evoke. Chasing these Newfoundland settings coaxes me deeper inwards to participate in the stillness of the earth.
The potential of creativity as an adult is often buried beneath layers and layers of practicality and life-stuff that has piled up over the years. I remember being a kid creating with reckless abandon; drawing whatever I wanted on the inside of textbooks, the back windows of my parent’s car, building forts with chairs and pillows and being able to fill an entire day with nothing but a stick and piece of string? It’s still alive you know - just observe young children playing and you’ll immediately see what I mean.
We all have imagination, it’s just that most of us have been told – or told ourselves – that we don’t. Learning something new as an adult (like watercolour painting for me) can spark that forgotten inspiration and reconnect us to the young artist again. Discovering our creativity doesn’t only mean that we now can have a newfound hobby... it means that we can all become more expressive in life in general, which to me, is a great gift.
"The creative adult is the child who survived". - Ursula Le Guin
(November 7, 2020)
During this past summer we tried our best to stay close to the basic things in Newfoundland. Cliffs and fields and the steady rhythm of breaking waves. We asked permission to park our camper on wharves and beaches and long dirt roads that wandered to nowhere to catch sunsets and fall asleep with the surf! Slowness and stillness was the best medicine to get over our chaotic winter past. Lori would quickly search out another nook for her book while I'd break open my little watercolour kit.
When serenity is restored new perspectives open and for me the challenge of art turns into an invitation for growth. No competition here! No need to prove! Just gentle observations leading to a better understanding of the charm that coloured pigments mixed with a little drop of water can evoke. Chasing these Newfoundland settings coaxes me deeper inwards to participate in the stillness of the earth.
The potential of creativity as an adult is often buried beneath layers and layers of practicality and life-stuff that has piled up over the years. I remember being a kid creating with reckless abandon; drawing whatever I wanted on the inside of textbooks, the back windows of my parent’s car, building forts with chairs and pillows and being able to fill an entire day with nothing but a stick and piece of string? It’s still alive you know - just observe young children playing and you’ll immediately see what I mean.
We all have imagination, it’s just that most of us have been told – or told ourselves – that we don’t. Learning something new as an adult (like watercolour painting for me) can spark that forgotten inspiration and reconnect us to the young artist again. Discovering our creativity doesn’t only mean that we now can have a newfound hobby... it means that we can all become more expressive in life in general, which to me, is a great gift.
"The creative adult is the child who survived". - Ursula Le Guin
PLEIN AIR OFF THE AVALON (SLOW-CATION 2020)
(September 27, 2020)
Summer came and the itch to hitch-up our little camper and head a tad west. We wanted to get off the Avalon to hike a favourite trail of ours past Clarenville. But that highway sign “St. Jones Within” has always beckoned us along the way and on this early August weekend trip we decided to ramp off Route 205 for a new and unplanned adventure. Good decision! What a wonderful place and more importantly...what fabulous folks we met during this weekend. They took us to isolated communities that aren’t even on the map!
Plein air is a French painting expression meaning “in the open air”. Although artists have long painted out of doors to create preparatory landscape sketches or studies, before the nineteenth century, finished pictures would not have been made in this way.
This approach was pioneered by artist John Constable in Britain c.1813, but from about 1860 it became fundamental to the impressionist movement. The popularity of this style increased in the 1870s with the introduction of portable easels and paints in tubes – previously, painters made their own paints in the studio, a much more laborious and messy process which kept them inside a lot.
I’m lucky and can venture outside with my portable art kit. Aside from the random nippers and a dunce leg or nish arse from sitting on beach rocks, this art-venture was overwhelmingly rewarding. And the quality of light outside simply cannot be matched in any studio.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more. ~ Lord Byron
SLOW-CATION 2020 The Beauty of Slowing Down and Staying Close to Home
(September 19, 2020)
Ok. So I’ve been busy working with Parks Canada all summer helping other people with their explorations. But on occasion Lori and I have taken the odd weekend and did some day-tripping or overnighters with our little camper to wherever the sun decided was best. We did spring excursions to Cape St. Mary’s, trekked Halfway Brook, wandered the Long Cove-Norman’s Cove trail, went north to do the Grate’s Cove trails, dodged to St. Vincent’s Beach and along the way I canoed the Colinet River with my brother.
Normally I’d pack the camera and lenses with me each time I went out the door. But this summer I wanted to explore a new medium. So I bundled a small watercolour pad, a portable painting kit, brushes and drawing pens. I wanted to experience the looseness of both the medium and freeness of the place.
Creativity...that’s a word that’s usually reserved for the “artistic” types. You know, painters, musicians, art directors! But we are all creative, even in the everyday things that we do. Each day, we make - or have the opportunity to make - creative decisions from how we dress to coming up with new ideas at work or solutions to issues at home.
Painting, like drawing, comes from first observing with intention. These creative exercises I've added are just that, done in maybe an hour or less. A basic palette of pigment and a touch of water in each allows me to capture my adventures around this wonderful province in a new light! However these simple dabbles are not about rendering fine details of the day, but rather grasping the spirit of one moment. I wanted to stay close to the raw message of nature: slow down, be still and focus eyes and soul on the moment at hand.
Above are a few of my spring sketches of places we’ve seen.
(September 19, 2020)
Ok. So I’ve been busy working with Parks Canada all summer helping other people with their explorations. But on occasion Lori and I have taken the odd weekend and did some day-tripping or overnighters with our little camper to wherever the sun decided was best. We did spring excursions to Cape St. Mary’s, trekked Halfway Brook, wandered the Long Cove-Norman’s Cove trail, went north to do the Grate’s Cove trails, dodged to St. Vincent’s Beach and along the way I canoed the Colinet River with my brother.
Normally I’d pack the camera and lenses with me each time I went out the door. But this summer I wanted to explore a new medium. So I bundled a small watercolour pad, a portable painting kit, brushes and drawing pens. I wanted to experience the looseness of both the medium and freeness of the place.
Creativity...that’s a word that’s usually reserved for the “artistic” types. You know, painters, musicians, art directors! But we are all creative, even in the everyday things that we do. Each day, we make - or have the opportunity to make - creative decisions from how we dress to coming up with new ideas at work or solutions to issues at home.
Painting, like drawing, comes from first observing with intention. These creative exercises I've added are just that, done in maybe an hour or less. A basic palette of pigment and a touch of water in each allows me to capture my adventures around this wonderful province in a new light! However these simple dabbles are not about rendering fine details of the day, but rather grasping the spirit of one moment. I wanted to stay close to the raw message of nature: slow down, be still and focus eyes and soul on the moment at hand.
Above are a few of my spring sketches of places we’ve seen.
THEN THERE IS LIGHT Tiefer, tiefer, irgendwo in der tiefer, gibt es ein leicht
(June 21, 2020)
So one of the things that's been on my mind lately during this universal constant low grade anxiety we're all feeling is this thing called TIME. We've all experienced the weirdest spring ever with this virus warping the spinning wheels in our heads, that is for those of us that do not have to work on the front lines and are still lucky enough to have a job. We're stuck in our homes, doing the zoom meetings, still trying to get things done. But there's a lack of routine that typically gives purpose to our days. And without this pattern, time does odd things. It bleeds: it stretches and then collapses. I mean, we've all had the experience of talking about something that's happened say, on a Tuesday and then suddenly, oh my God... that was like three weeks ago! On the flip-side, there's April - an entire month which lasted...what... five days?!
This got me thinking about our historical obsession with time, from obelisks to flower clocks (Horologium, Florae) to sundials and spice clocks. During these frequent late nights in my studio I've been listening to a version of Beethoven's 9th symphony that someone on you-tube modified from it's usual 70-ish minutes to over 24 hours long! It's really interesting to note the way the music develops very subtly and builds and builds for hours... and I don't know if it's going to keep rising to some typical Ludwig crescendo (rising me up through the roof!) ... and then ... it pauses .................................... for way too long!
Then there's light. Now let's talk about the sun, the bringer of life. Today is the Summer Solstice, the day when the Great Timekeeper in the sky also does a sort of warpy thing with our minds. The sun appears to "stand still" up there, for far too long. Historically, humans have documented this oddity since we first looked up! We've celebrated it by dancing around fires under megalithic stones, warding off evil spirits wearing crowns of Chase Devil (St. John's Wart). We also watched the Nile tell us when to plant; in ancient Greece we knew after today it would be only a month to the original Olympic Games.
Current values show that spring lasted for 92 days, 19 hours; summer will be 93 days, 15 hours; autumn 89 days, 20 hours; and winter 89 days, 0 hours. And here's more numbers to crunch about time: the earth is closest to the sun (perihelion) on January 5 and furthest (aphelion) on July 4, so it is moving fastest in autumn and winter and making them the shortest seasons. Summer in Newfoundland began June 20, 7:13 pm yesterday evening - normally it would be the 21st but you'll recall this February had an extra day.
This bonus sunshine in June still energizes us even today and gives us renewed hope that our dreams for the future during this Covid standstill will prosper as well as the window boxes sprouting chives and climbing tomatoes in our newly fashioned garden boxes.
It is the time you have wasted for your roses
that makes your rose so important. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
MAGNIFICENCE: Caelum certe patet, ibimus illi
(June 14, 2020)
A late night silhouetted hilltop sweeps across the sky. The trees appear clipped from black paper and pasted to a cobalt background. The uppermost branches weave into the skyline like a tapestry - or maybe the sky is weaving into the trees.
My eyes adjust to a magnitude of rolling stars. As far back as ancient times people have always thought we and these pinpoints of light overhead have a connection, albeit one way. Stars were viewed as blessed intelligences singing to the glory of the various gods. They looked down on us, affecting or controlling our destiny with nothing in return. They were littered dead lights, shavings from the Maker's worktable, dust on a giant inverted sphere or tiny holes that still let in the sun. They put meaning to that great emptiness out there. Then came the Age of Enlightenment and it all changed with a drop of an apple from a tree.
And yet, today we still long for a mystery: On dark clear nights we want to be involved with stars without knowing why. Perhaps this is because we are truly made out of them, out of their pulsations and deaths. Their flickering is a burning of mixed chemicals that coincidentally also make up our bodies. The number one ingredient out there is hydrogen followed by oxygen (H20). Look inside us; we're mostly water too. Next inside the body, carbon; next in the cosmos, carbon. We're not simply in the universe...the universe is in us!
But perhaps this is jut an obvious connection that all things have with each other both in outer space and on earth. For instance, the red iron dust that makes up the planet Mars is the same iron that flows through our veins. Therefore blood may have a memory older than the body which it circulates. Iren is the Anglo Saxon work “holy metal” and it was the main ingredient in the swords of the crusades that spilled blood during the Middle Ages. Eye for an eye. Blood for blood.
"Caelum certe patet, imbus illi" was the phrase blazoned on the side of the Royal Vauxhall, an 80-foot red and white candy-striped coal gas balloon launched from Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in 1836, destined to make history and fly overnight from London to the continent. The motto is from Ovid: “Surely the sky lies open, let us go that way!” Out there dwells real magnificence and on nights like this I can feel it's pull.
UNIVERSAL SONG
(May 24, 2020)
We don't know why whales sing or whether they are even verses. We can't even fathom their meaning. Perhaps their songs, rather than deep rumbles and whistles are really cetacean versions of Mozart and Coltrane. However, we do know these hymns from the abyss prove that more than one intelligence inhabits this fragile blue ball.
Pythagoras and his followers thought that the celestial bodies made music. Whitman said the grass spoke. Isaiah heard the hills clap their hands. Music comes from everywhere; from the tiny legs of insects and branches of trees to fields of whispering grass and the whistling aurora borealis.
We all create music to connect, and the deeper the sorrow the bigger the choir. It's the purest way to let others know we are here! In 1977 NASA put humpback whale songs beside others like Beethoven and Chuck Berry on a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk and attached it to the now famous Voyager satellite. Thirty five years later it recently departed our solar system and is now heading into deep interstellar space.
Anyway, back to earth. After territory, mating and warming are accounted for, maybe these pelagic philosophers, like humans, sing simply for pure delight? No doubt the universe takes note of them - let's hope it has a record player!
A sound can move anything if it is strong enough. - Lynne Kelly, Song for a Whale
(May 24, 2020)
We don't know why whales sing or whether they are even verses. We can't even fathom their meaning. Perhaps their songs, rather than deep rumbles and whistles are really cetacean versions of Mozart and Coltrane. However, we do know these hymns from the abyss prove that more than one intelligence inhabits this fragile blue ball.
Pythagoras and his followers thought that the celestial bodies made music. Whitman said the grass spoke. Isaiah heard the hills clap their hands. Music comes from everywhere; from the tiny legs of insects and branches of trees to fields of whispering grass and the whistling aurora borealis.
We all create music to connect, and the deeper the sorrow the bigger the choir. It's the purest way to let others know we are here! In 1977 NASA put humpback whale songs beside others like Beethoven and Chuck Berry on a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk and attached it to the now famous Voyager satellite. Thirty five years later it recently departed our solar system and is now heading into deep interstellar space.
Anyway, back to earth. After territory, mating and warming are accounted for, maybe these pelagic philosophers, like humans, sing simply for pure delight? No doubt the universe takes note of them - let's hope it has a record player!
A sound can move anything if it is strong enough. - Lynne Kelly, Song for a Whale
KALLOS
(May 17, 2020)
The presence and experience of colour is at the very heart of human existence. In a sense, we are created for a life full of colour and we are forever surrounded by it. Take a close look at these stones.
Lean in...let your eyes wander. Follow their edges and shapes. Try and understand the complexity of nature's diverse colour palette and seemingly unnatural patterns and blends. Feel their smoothness with your eyes. Take your time. Zoom in on one, study it well as if you were going to try and paint it like I did. Then pan back. These types of stones are scattered amongst us, along most beaches in Newfoundland. we seldom look down and notice these silent witnesses yet they are most glorious near the surf where the danger of the ocean brings them to life.
The wonder of an object is that it is not a thought - a thing is first and foremost itself. And rocks, well, they prove there is a cosmos just as a watch to a watchmaker. These inconsequential stones have preceded us by up to four thousand million years and yet they will be polished further still by the pounding waves eons after we have all vanished. We think our shortsightedness can change this world yet these most minimal, seemingly insignificant objects will outlast us all.
"In difficult times you should always carry something in your heart" wrote Blaise Pascal. So I'll search for perfect beauties and fill my pocket with a billion years of creation. One from the bottom of the ocean, one from the moon and one from Africa when it slammed into our continent 325 million years ago in an orogeny that heaved up our mountain ranges.
The Greek word fo r beauty is Kallos.
(May 17, 2020)
The presence and experience of colour is at the very heart of human existence. In a sense, we are created for a life full of colour and we are forever surrounded by it. Take a close look at these stones.
Lean in...let your eyes wander. Follow their edges and shapes. Try and understand the complexity of nature's diverse colour palette and seemingly unnatural patterns and blends. Feel their smoothness with your eyes. Take your time. Zoom in on one, study it well as if you were going to try and paint it like I did. Then pan back. These types of stones are scattered amongst us, along most beaches in Newfoundland. we seldom look down and notice these silent witnesses yet they are most glorious near the surf where the danger of the ocean brings them to life.
The wonder of an object is that it is not a thought - a thing is first and foremost itself. And rocks, well, they prove there is a cosmos just as a watch to a watchmaker. These inconsequential stones have preceded us by up to four thousand million years and yet they will be polished further still by the pounding waves eons after we have all vanished. We think our shortsightedness can change this world yet these most minimal, seemingly insignificant objects will outlast us all.
"In difficult times you should always carry something in your heart" wrote Blaise Pascal. So I'll search for perfect beauties and fill my pocket with a billion years of creation. One from the bottom of the ocean, one from the moon and one from Africa when it slammed into our continent 325 million years ago in an orogeny that heaved up our mountain ranges.
The Greek word fo r beauty is Kallos.
MIGRATION
(April 26, 2020)
As Einstein famously said, time is relative. Yet when placed on a scale next to distance time assumes a unique aspect for all forms of life. Let's use his theory for, say migration. Take method of travel, size, obstacles and even length of life-cycle: they all create challenges for different life forms the world over in their transitory path of growth and existence.
We humans tend to think that the rest of life on planet earth sees reality on our level - great linear distances or remarkable feats of navigation must be met to get through life. Yet the maple seedling spiralling mere inches towards the sun through the forest floor bramble, the honey bee humming and bouncing across a meadow of wildflowers or even these northern gannets coaxed back to Cape St. Mary's on Spanish tailwinds are all on the same quest, only in different scales of time.
What's your journey?
(April 26, 2020)
As Einstein famously said, time is relative. Yet when placed on a scale next to distance time assumes a unique aspect for all forms of life. Let's use his theory for, say migration. Take method of travel, size, obstacles and even length of life-cycle: they all create challenges for different life forms the world over in their transitory path of growth and existence.
We humans tend to think that the rest of life on planet earth sees reality on our level - great linear distances or remarkable feats of navigation must be met to get through life. Yet the maple seedling spiralling mere inches towards the sun through the forest floor bramble, the honey bee humming and bouncing across a meadow of wildflowers or even these northern gannets coaxed back to Cape St. Mary's on Spanish tailwinds are all on the same quest, only in different scales of time.
What's your journey?
RIVER NOTES
(April 19, 2020)
I am often upended by nature, if not by some element of the landscape itself, then by what the landscape does to me visually. And as I start to lose my self awareness, she cracks the door to expose little secrets.
Take this Cape Shore river. It's a lush crease in the surface of the earth, a water road on its way to Placentia Bay. I can reach down and feel the simple power of this water shuddering against the stones. And if I lower myself, press my ear to the cold mossy rock surfaces I will hear a a conversation between land and water, a subtle presence of an age-old agreement over who is to move and who stays.
Then I step back and observe the natural flow around me. I can learn a lot from simply watching a river: when I need to push and when I must bend. We call it tolerance, yet some of the most enjoyable things - the way water folds itself around rock and drops away - have no name.
(April 19, 2020)
I am often upended by nature, if not by some element of the landscape itself, then by what the landscape does to me visually. And as I start to lose my self awareness, she cracks the door to expose little secrets.
Take this Cape Shore river. It's a lush crease in the surface of the earth, a water road on its way to Placentia Bay. I can reach down and feel the simple power of this water shuddering against the stones. And if I lower myself, press my ear to the cold mossy rock surfaces I will hear a a conversation between land and water, a subtle presence of an age-old agreement over who is to move and who stays.
Then I step back and observe the natural flow around me. I can learn a lot from simply watching a river: when I need to push and when I must bend. We call it tolerance, yet some of the most enjoyable things - the way water folds itself around rock and drops away - have no name.
EOSTRE
(April 12, 2020)
The word Easter seems to go back to the name of an English pre-Christian goddess called “Eostre” (the same root word give us estrogen and estrus). She was hearkened in the middle ages to bring forth spring. The German word for Easter is “Orestres”, a tribal goddess and is often portrayed as a long necked bird who evolved into Mother Goose, as well as the goose that laid the golden egg. She was known as the goddess of ovulation and conception.
Easter always falls on the Sunday following the first full moon and after the spring equinox (it was hard not to notice it up there last week, bold and bright in total perigee). Spring also hails the return of warmth to the earth with the rising of dormant plants and trees from the soil and the birth of new life in the animal kingdom. Humans also begin to experience renewed energy due to the increased daylight hours when there are equal periods of light and darkness. We feel the need just to be outside, to stretch off our own hibernation. It is a time of counter-balance and equilibrium as well as accelerated growth in mind and body,
Which brings me back to the eggs. Those little balls of life have also been part of the Easter festivities since medieval times, and are the obvious symbolism of new birth. The strength of the egg shell is mirrored by its obvious vulnerability. It's at this time of the year that we are reminded of process and reward, of negotiation and alignment, of yin and yang. The egg assures us of the active possibility that the mystery of life internally and externally will manifest once again ... if we too can stay balanced.
Breathe deep everyone! Feel thee energy of spring and let it lift your body and soul. Find that state of grace to get you through your recent winter storms and challenges. Make yourself ready for the warmth and security of summer.
(April 12, 2020)
The word Easter seems to go back to the name of an English pre-Christian goddess called “Eostre” (the same root word give us estrogen and estrus). She was hearkened in the middle ages to bring forth spring. The German word for Easter is “Orestres”, a tribal goddess and is often portrayed as a long necked bird who evolved into Mother Goose, as well as the goose that laid the golden egg. She was known as the goddess of ovulation and conception.
Easter always falls on the Sunday following the first full moon and after the spring equinox (it was hard not to notice it up there last week, bold and bright in total perigee). Spring also hails the return of warmth to the earth with the rising of dormant plants and trees from the soil and the birth of new life in the animal kingdom. Humans also begin to experience renewed energy due to the increased daylight hours when there are equal periods of light and darkness. We feel the need just to be outside, to stretch off our own hibernation. It is a time of counter-balance and equilibrium as well as accelerated growth in mind and body,
Which brings me back to the eggs. Those little balls of life have also been part of the Easter festivities since medieval times, and are the obvious symbolism of new birth. The strength of the egg shell is mirrored by its obvious vulnerability. It's at this time of the year that we are reminded of process and reward, of negotiation and alignment, of yin and yang. The egg assures us of the active possibility that the mystery of life internally and externally will manifest once again ... if we too can stay balanced.
Breathe deep everyone! Feel thee energy of spring and let it lift your body and soul. Find that state of grace to get you through your recent winter storms and challenges. Make yourself ready for the warmth and security of summer.
UNEXPECTED GIFTS
(April 5, 2020)
I always try to examine the ocean slowly and up close. Yet many times I find myself dashing across the beach towards what seems to be the answer somewhere else (an abandoned lobster pot, a grassy bluff, a wharf). At that point I have to pull back and return again to the strict and ordered course of things immediate. So I begin once more and feel the veil of the cold salt breeze pressing on my face, the overlapping colours of the beach rocks and how their size varies based on the ocean's order of things. In looking down my eyes then stumble upon a multitude of abandoned shells tossed at my feet.
Staying focused on the moment at hand is always a challenge for us all. Looking around at one's immediate surroundings for beauty can be a difficult challenge if we only long for inspiration over distant horizons.
(April 5, 2020)
I always try to examine the ocean slowly and up close. Yet many times I find myself dashing across the beach towards what seems to be the answer somewhere else (an abandoned lobster pot, a grassy bluff, a wharf). At that point I have to pull back and return again to the strict and ordered course of things immediate. So I begin once more and feel the veil of the cold salt breeze pressing on my face, the overlapping colours of the beach rocks and how their size varies based on the ocean's order of things. In looking down my eyes then stumble upon a multitude of abandoned shells tossed at my feet.
Staying focused on the moment at hand is always a challenge for us all. Looking around at one's immediate surroundings for beauty can be a difficult challenge if we only long for inspiration over distant horizons.
SPRING'S REBIRTH AND MERMAID PURSES
(May 29, 2020)
Mermaid Purse (or Devil's Purse) is the popular name for the egg cases of elasmobranchs - the collective term for sharks, skates and rays. Rather than being the lost handbags of mythological mermaids, these little beach flotsam are the remains of creatures who form them to attach their unborn to kelp forests on the ocean floor. Leathery in appearance, the shell is made from keratin (the same material as fingernails and hair). Long twisting tendrils on the corners hold it fast, safe and protected, hidden for an entire year of underwater incubation.
So somehow the earth recently sent whispers of spring's rebirth into the depths and these little waterproof embryonic fish inside began to develop gills. Weeks ago, small holes opened in the tips of the horns to let in seawater and the infants learned to live as subaqueous animals. When fully formed they hatched leaving their cases behind. Then March storms detached the casings and waves tossed them for beachcombers like myself to find.
As mermaid purses, which shelter growing aquatic young in a salty embryonic womb (now appearing on our shores during the time of vernal equinox), they are known as strong symbols of spiritual protection. It is said that one and bury purses at each corner of one's property to invoke protective household energies. I suppose during a time like this, maybe I'll do a little bit of early gardening - what do I have to lose? I think I'll wait for the ground to thaw a little first.
(May 29, 2020)
Mermaid Purse (or Devil's Purse) is the popular name for the egg cases of elasmobranchs - the collective term for sharks, skates and rays. Rather than being the lost handbags of mythological mermaids, these little beach flotsam are the remains of creatures who form them to attach their unborn to kelp forests on the ocean floor. Leathery in appearance, the shell is made from keratin (the same material as fingernails and hair). Long twisting tendrils on the corners hold it fast, safe and protected, hidden for an entire year of underwater incubation.
So somehow the earth recently sent whispers of spring's rebirth into the depths and these little waterproof embryonic fish inside began to develop gills. Weeks ago, small holes opened in the tips of the horns to let in seawater and the infants learned to live as subaqueous animals. When fully formed they hatched leaving their cases behind. Then March storms detached the casings and waves tossed them for beachcombers like myself to find.
As mermaid purses, which shelter growing aquatic young in a salty embryonic womb (now appearing on our shores during the time of vernal equinox), they are known as strong symbols of spiritual protection. It is said that one and bury purses at each corner of one's property to invoke protective household energies. I suppose during a time like this, maybe I'll do a little bit of early gardening - what do I have to lose? I think I'll wait for the ground to thaw a little first.
THE GREAT RHYTHM
(March 20, 2020)
At my feet a great bay runs north and south - the largest in Newfoundland and Labrador. Solitary and elemental, it is visited constantly by the outer sea waves beyond the horizon. Age by age, the salt water here gives battle to the land and age by age the earth struggles to retain what is hers. She calls to her defence plants to creep down the rocky crumbling cliffs to hold fast in an interlocking weave of barren grass and root. Back and forth the transition line moves until one breaks the other's back and either the earth falls into the hands of the great bay or she spreads her cape a little further outward. And so the great rhythm of nature continues.
(March 20, 2020)
At my feet a great bay runs north and south - the largest in Newfoundland and Labrador. Solitary and elemental, it is visited constantly by the outer sea waves beyond the horizon. Age by age, the salt water here gives battle to the land and age by age the earth struggles to retain what is hers. She calls to her defence plants to creep down the rocky crumbling cliffs to hold fast in an interlocking weave of barren grass and root. Back and forth the transition line moves until one breaks the other's back and either the earth falls into the hands of the great bay or she spreads her cape a little further outward. And so the great rhythm of nature continues.
CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE
(March 8, 2020)
In the Low evening light the sky becomes a dazzle of colour pouring down on distant hills. The mesmerizing clouds glide silently overhead and the constant roar of the breaking waves nearby once again put me solidly in my place - the centre of the universe.
(March 8, 2020)
In the Low evening light the sky becomes a dazzle of colour pouring down on distant hills. The mesmerizing clouds glide silently overhead and the constant roar of the breaking waves nearby once again put me solidly in my place - the centre of the universe.