Entering the Zone

Yesterday morning our friend L. drove Lorraine and me to the airport to enter the zone, or, in other words, to embark on a journey by air.  I hadn’t really believed until this morning that we were actually leaving, though the weighing of suitcases last night and last minute check marks on the task lists suggested it was really happening.  However, it’s not until you enter the zone that you actually understand the fact that you are going.

Once you are inside the zone there is little that you actually decide for yourself; basically you do what the people in charge of your travel tell you to.  It can be a bore, and it can be exhausting, but there can be moments of magic inside that zone.  I think part of the reason for it is that you are transported out of your quotidian existence, where the list of tasks you need to complete can weigh on your time, into a zone where there’s not much you can do except relax and free your mind to explore.

Here were some of my highlights from inside that zone:

The July 4 issue of The New Yorker (my chosen zone reading) had some good Talk of the Town pieces, including one on Afghanistan, which took me back to the conversations I’ve been having over the past week with F., a doctor from there who has left the country he loves because of the danger and corruption and heartbreak that he has witnessed there.  Then I read a piece on Jeff Nunokawa which made me want to read his short literary essays and commentaries on Facebook and another on Kirsten Hively and neon signs that made me think of a few noteworthy ones in Halifax I might want to photograph.  The EDL article made me glad not to be in England, and the one on Han Han got me wanting to check out his blog.

I interrupted this reading periodically to look out my window, which was on the south side of the plane, and wrote in my journal:

the world outside my window is a dream

green forests blue lakes

farmland and rivers in the clear air

two shining bays on the far horizon

then the blue blue Fundy straight below

I examined the slightly freckled male pattern baldness of the man in 28A.

I listened to Lorraine in 29B laughing out loud at something in Morning Glory.

When I got tired of reading, I listened to Janis J.singing Cry Baby and thought about the summer when Cream, The Doors, and Janis all played Vancouver, and I had money for only one concert.  I still regret my choice, though I did get to see Morrison take a dive on the stage at an "intense" moment in one of his songs.

After Toronto the air was hazy and I watched Unknown, kind of a waste of time with a couple of annoyingly impossible car chases, but held together with some interesting plot twists, a cute and clever Diane Kruger, and a very nice scene between Bruno Ganz, formerly of Stasi, and Frank Langella, member of “Section 15”.

Bright sun over the Prairies so that I sneezed when I lifted the blind – reminded me of a Quirks and Quarks show years ago where a Swedish researcher determined that a neural pathway in the nose can be stimulated by sunshine and cause that reflex.

Clouds floated out to the horizon over flat farmland, green and brown fields, and dark patches that looked like woodlots but turned out to be cloud shadows.

I listened to Clapton Unplugged and thought of my good friend K. who has loved Eric deeply for much of his life.  Then we came to Running on Faith as I sat next to my partner of 41 years and thought of our good fortune in this world, to love and to be loved.  Try listening to it here.

And finally we landed, picked up our bags, emerged from the zone into the bright light of western sun where the air feels just a little thinner and a little drier, and embarked on the next stage of this journey, once more outside of the zone.

Hirtle’s Beach

Anyone who lives on or near Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coastline knows about the fog.  It’s the reason Environment Canada’s forecasts in June and July often say things like: “Fog patches dissipating in the morning. Wind becoming west 30 km/h near noon. High 27 except 21 along parts of the coast.”  This is tomorrow’s forecast (tonight the fog has crept up the harbour and hidden everything but our neighbours’ lights), and the projected 6-degree difference between us on the coast and those who live more inland is caused by the fog bank that lies out on the horizon through the day and the breeze that blows from it to us.  Sometimes it is pleasantly cooling; sometimes it’s damned cold!

So when we drove with our friend G. toward Lunenburg County and Hirtle’s Beach on Sunday afternoon, we knew that the sunshine we were in might not last, and sure enough, when we passed somewhere near the Head of St. Margaret’s Bay, a huge plume of fog drifted over the highway and turned everything damp and grey.  Fortunately we drove out of that and Lunenburg town was sunny, but we knew that heading out past Rose Bay to Hirtle’s was likely to put us into the fog again.  And it did.

However, Hirtle’s is one of the most beautiful beaches on our coast, and it’s always worth a visit.  The waves were not much, and the wind and fog were really cold, but it was great to be there.

There was fog around the trees on the other side of the lake back of the beach (where the water was much warmer).

The wild roses seem to thrive above the tide line, and the foggy air helps make their colours brighter.

I always like the tumbles of boulders on our beaches.

And the real treat, after G. and I searched all of the boardwalks, was finding the board we were looking for, the one we had dedicated back in 2002 to the memory of our Welsh terrier who died that fall. 

We remember him well, our dog Griff, whose spirit was large..

Celebrating a Birthday

Last Saturday our middle granddaughter turned four, and on Sunday she came to our house with her big sister to celebrate.

We went exploring and she climbed up on their favourite rock next to the brook.

They both dressed in the pixie costumes Lorraine had found and discovered Pixieland under the big apple tree where the hawthorn petals had been falling.

She showed that she has learned how to really pump a swing high.

Because she doesn't especially like cake, they decorated chocolate chip cookies for the event.

And we all blew out our cookie candles.

A very good time was had by all!

A Man, a Dog, and a Green Hill

One of the many joys of being part of Lorraine’s photographic practice has always been travelling with her to scout for locations. 

When we were looking for sites in various regions of Canada to make her Illuminated Petragraphs images (check them out here), we had a pretty rigorous regime.  In the evenings we had to be on location at least an hour before sunset to get the landscape image and didn’t usually leave until three or four hours later after darkness had fallen and the jewel-like projected image was double-exposed on top of it.  And mornings had us finding our way to the location at about four to photograph the projection in total darkness, well before sunrise lit up the surrounding landscape for the second shot.

We spent a lot of time waiting for the right light and watched a lot of sunrises and sets, which was a wonderful contemplative way to spend our time, but in between the morning and evening shoots we were always searching for our next locations.  What we needed was the right rock in the right orientation in the right landscape setting, and this took us down little roads to the shoreline, across fields, up rock faces, or through forest trails.  We were on a quest, the adventure was always in the looking, and finding the right rock for the next morning or evening was a shared moment of pleasure.

Other series took us to other places, like the ancient roadway in Jordan leading up to Herod’s palace or the rocky outcrops on the south side of Crete or the walled walkway in Jerusalem’s Old City, and every place, every location we returned to when the light was right, was the result of an adventure in looking. 

The forecast for last Sunday evening suggested that the fog wouldn’t let us get the shots we wanted at Crystal Crescent Beach, so Lorraine decided that we needed to go inland and we headed off to check out Laurie Park and Oakfield Park.  We went in roads and walked over fields, checking slopes and view planes and trying to determine without a compass or a clear location of the sun behind the clouds where it would set that night. 

We had a couple of reasons for being out there looking: the first was that the sky was supposed to clear that afternoon, so an evening shot was possible, as long as it was far enough inland to escape the fog; the second was that the man with the dog was available only on Sunday evenings and was getting married next weekend.   A further reason, of course, was that once the idea had taken shape it was important to get out and do the thing.

The park areas didn’t work, but finally we checked out the large dairy farms you can see from the highway  out near Milford where we found a couple of fields that were possible.  The first one we walked over had a transmission tower and power lines running across it.  A young eagle flew over and perched in the tower, which reminded me of the time in Oman we walked past power lines into the desert to check out a possible location and saw on our walk back more than a dozen vultures in one tower.  Just in case we didn’t make it all the way to the car, I’d guess.

The hay had been cut on the second one, which was clear of obstructions, and Lorraine decided it was likely the right one, so we found the owner, asked him where the sun would be setting, and got permission to come back to photograph.  So we came back that evening with the man and his dog in the back of our car and learned a lot about training dogs and their humans along the way.  

Another great joy for me is being there on the shoot, which it was, and recording some of the action with my little Lumix, but that may just have to be another story.

Our Turkish breakfast

It is June here and we are not in Istanbul; in fact, this is the first spring since 2004 that we have not been in Istanbul.  We miss it, especially in spring.

So when E., our daughter, arrived from Ontario on Friday night, I suggested that we have a Turkish breakfast (kahvaltı) in the morning.  She had spent two years (and thus two springs) in Istanbul, and we had happy shared memories of Saturday or Sunday morning kahvaltı somewhere along the Bosphorus.

I knew we had good tomatoes to slice up and some fine small cucumbers, maybe not the choice curvy Çengelköy variety, but compact and tasty.  There was also no crumbly beyaz peynir, but we did have good Nova Scotian feta cheese.  Although the olives, both green and black, were Greek rather than Turkish, at least we were geographically close on that front. 

Often at the studio in Ortaköy where we usually spent our weekends, we put together our own breakfasts.  It was only a short walk to a bakery where we could buy fresh bread (ekmek), still warm and smelling faintly of woodsmoke, poğaça, great little buns that were plain (sade) or cheese-filled (peynirli), or fresh simit, like slender sesame covered bagels, also faintly smoky.  And if we needed something more, like a variety of breakfast cheeses or a small bag of fresh eggs or some thick kaymaklı yoghurt with a crust of yellow cream on top, there was always the kahvaltı shop just around the corner.

Or you could eat out.  We could walk to the Cheesecake Café down on the waterfront and enjoy their good 11 lira breakfast that included fine crisp sigara borek pastries and plenty of Turkish tea (çay) always çok açık (not too strong).  If we were more ambitious and/or wanted a real treat, we would hop on a bus or get the car and go to Emirgan, which was on the sahil yolu (Seaside Road) in Emirgan and was one of the finest kahvaltı spots we knew, famous for its bal kaymak, a small cylinder of white clotted cream with golden honey poured over it, perfect to spread on fresh ekmek.  Or we could go a little farther for some great menemen at the tiny place right on the water in Istinye where you could lean your elbow on the seawall while you ate if you were early enough to get that table.

I have wandered a little from my plan for a Turkish breakfast here on Saturday morning, but I realize in writing this how strong and fond are my memories of those weekend breakfasts along the Bosphorus.  So I suppose it does make sense that when I put out fruit, olives, vegetables, and cheese, sliced the bread, made ihlamur (linden) tea in the little teapot from the Ortaköy eskici, and cooled the boiled eggs under the tap, I would want to take a picture of the spread and write something about what it all meant.

It was Halifax Harbour outside the window and not the Bosphorus, but our Ferguson’s Cove kahvaltı was a pretty good treat on Saturday morning for us three expats homesick for Istanbul.

Happy birthday, Bob

Today is Bob’s birthday and he is 70.  That is something to celebrate.  Here are a few things I did today in his honour:

I thought a lot about the summer of 1964 when I would hitchhike to Toronto with my friend Cal on Friday afternoon and crash at an SCM summer project in the rectory of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Trinity Square.  As a young undergraduate from Halifax, it was my first opportunity to meet Trots, Leninists, and Marxists (the project was called a Peace Camp) and hang out with them on our weekends in the big city.  It was also the first time I heard Dylan sing, down in the rectory basement with the SCM radicals.  Cal was disdainful of Bob’s voice and did some pretty funny imitations, and I have to admit that I didn’t really get what everyone was blown away by.

And I thought about when I joined the Columbia Record Club in the fall of ’66 after moving to Vancouver and had my own apartment and a record player from a second hand store on Fourth.  My first order included Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing it all Back Home, and Blonde on Blonde along with nine other albums, all for one cent, and it was then that I began to understand what people who talked about Bob were talking about.

I remembered how Desire was for us the landmark musical event of the 1970’s and how our five year old daughter loved to sit in the front seat of our van and sing the first verse of Highway 61 Revisited at the top of her lungs as we drove across Canada in the summer of 1984.

Lol and I both listened to Rick Terfry this afternoon on Drive as he played old Dylan and Dylan covers and clips of people talking about working with Bob.

This evening we also both went to a reading by Andy Wainwright of a fiction piece he had recently completed called “The Old Master”.  It was about a 16^th century Dutch painter, but the story of this painter’s artistic life and creative processes was clearly and subtly connected to the story of Bob’s life and work and artistic development and processes.  It was interesting to listen to the ways that Andy alluded to Bob through the painter’s imagery and actions and to follow the interplay between the two “old masters”, the painter and Bob, that Andy was exploring.

I made two notes during the reading, “discography” and “hagiography”.  Discography is pretty obvious, since so much of Andy’s story and of what we presume to know or understand of Bob is measured out by what we hear in his albums, the works he has made throughout the various stages of his life.  And hagiography is also obvious, since the age of threescore and ten suggests that a time has been reached for reflection and assessment and summing up.  Bob’s no saint and has steadfastly resisted sainthood; however, all of the hagiographers still struggle to come to terms with what he is,  though Bob himself will never easily be summed up; say what you will about him, you’ll usually find out that “he’s not there”, so to speak.

I particularly liked Lorraine’s comment/question after the reading as she asked Andy to reread the ending of the story where there were images of two women and then wondered aloud about the fact that though Bob grew up through the 60’s and the changes brought about in the status of women there seemed to be so little written about him by women.  Andy responded that he thought Bob was not a misogynist and mentioned the book that Suzy Retolo wrote recently about her relationship with Bob, but neither comment really touched on the fact that when it comes to writing about Bob and his work, he really is, as Lorraine put it, “a guy’s guy”.

Here is a fact Andy mentioned that is worth noting:  Bob has been quoted in more court decisions than any other artist.  I might have guessed Shakespeare for that achievement, which just goes to show how profoundly Bob’s words have shaped our age.

Here and here are a couple of commentaries, both by guys, about today that are worth noting.

And here’s a wish: Happy birthday, Bob, and may you be forever young.

Three bird stories

Two years ago, when we were having windows replaced and our deck rebuilt, I noticed a robin’s nest perched on top of the main carrying beam for the deck joists and under the deck itself.  I told P. the contractor about it.  He, it turned out, is someone who also pays attention to birds, telling me about the pileated woodpecker he has seen out behind his workshop and others he has noted in his travels, so he organized his work in order not to disturb the nest until the fledglings had moved out.  I appreciated that.

When we returned from Ontario earlier this month, I noticed that there were signs of three nests on top of the same carrying beam under our new deck.  It turned out that only one, the middle one, was occupied, and I would watch carefully from inside the studio to make sure I didn’t frighten this robin away.  She (or he) has been sitting on the nest for almost three weeks now, and I am sometimes scolded by one or the other parent if I wander too close, but so far as I can tell the nest and its occupant(s) have not been abandoned.

Last week I had found half a robin’s egg in the garden.  I figured that its neatly broken edge was a good sign, probably carefully chiseled open by the hatchling inside.  Then, a couple of days ago, I saw one of our neighbourhood red squirrels being chased by two ferocious robins up and down the shad bush next to the deck, more evidence that these parents still had something to protect.

When I checked just now there was no adult at the nest, so I waited a bit, watching one robin poking its bill into the wood chip pile and seeming to stay close to the nest.  Suddenly, from a different direction, I saw another robin fly up to the nest with a worm, feed at least one wide open beak, and nestle down over the young occupant(s) of the nest.  This made me happy. 

Something else that has made me happy lately is the return of our yellow-shafted flicker (you can see the yellow shafts of its feathers here).  It calls from the top of the power pole behind our shed, and sometimes flies up from the edge of our lane when we drive in, its bright white rump patch always a delight to see.  Last week Lorraine and I noticed it outside the dining room window, working next to the magnolia bush.  It was probably poking at the anthill, and we had plenty of time to admire its striped brown back, greyish head, and the bright red patch on its nape.

Many years ago when we lived in Maitland we found a flicker lying on the road out near the Mill Pond.  Its neck was broken, but almost every feather was in place, and its beautiful body was still warm in my hands.  We figured the car in front of us had hit it on one of the deep undulations of its flight and took it to our taxidermist friend F. where we had the opportunity to see it every time we went to his house, perfectly mounted and perfectly perfect. 

Last week we were planning to barbecue some steak.  There were three, and I cut them in half because they seemed big, seasoned them, and took them outside on a plate while I lighted the barbecue, which was on our back deck.  While the barbecue was heating I went back in the house to top up my wine and munch on some snacks.  A movement outside the front window caught my eye, and I saw a black crow racing off with a grey and white herring gull chasing it.  Interesting, I thought, and went outside to put the steaks on the grill, but where there had been six, there were now only five.

I admire the crows, their amazing flying ability, sharp beauty, and obvious intelligence.  They perch on I’s roof next door and in our trees and tell each other what is going on.  I didn’t see any crows around when I took the steaks out, but clearly one of them saw me, and the steak was gone, carried off by a crow.  The gull was bigger, but the crow was fast and deserved its prize.  We enjoyed our steaks and even had some left over, and I seriously hope the crow got to enjoy the one it stole.

Two things today

There were two things that brought tears to my eyes and thickened my throat today.

The first was telling Lorraine and JE about the e-mail I received yesterday from XE, the high school student who had moved to Halifax from Beijing three years ago and who had just heard of the substantial scholarships she had been awarded by Dalhousie.  It doesn’t really make sense that it would affect me this way; after all, she had worked so hard, completing pre-IB in her first year here, doing IB A1 English in her second year, and taking every suggestion I gave her and applying it assiduously to her next assignments.  XE was an utter treat to work with that whole year, and I always looked forward to our after school sessions, the serious brightness of her attention and presence, the slippers they gave me to wear, and the huge mug of green tea that her dad kept refilling for me as we worked.

Helping  XE with her scholarship application letters, I came to know a little more about her and what the family had left behind when they brought her here to complete high school and apply to university.  It was that knowledge combined with the experience of helping her navigate a course that was difficult for native English speakers that flooded up in me when we parked the car in front of JE’s house and I started to tell them about the scholarship awards.  JE caught my eye in the rear view mirror and told me it was OK, and it was, but it still took me more than a minute to be able to actually say the words without choking up again.  When we crossed the street to the house, I felt a tear rolling down my left cheek and smiled at the thought of XE beaming with happiness.

The second happened a while later when Lorraine was reviewing the images she had got last night out on the Welland Canal spit.  It was a perfect evening for it with a sky that had cleared off through the afternoon and a wind that had dropped to nothing.  She and JE drove out the Seaway Haulage Road and then hiked out the spit to the small cove that was formed near the end.  She set up the camera while he gathered a collection of flat stones for skipping and slitting the devil’s throat. 

 

He stood where she told him to right at the edge of the flat water that had just enough residual wave action that it seemed to be breathing and skipped rocks out toward the gap between the lighthouse on one side and the Niagara River point on the other.  The night was perfect and the rock’s impact curled up the still surface and sent out a widening circle every time it touched down and then skipped ahead to touch another time and another.  The serious focus and beauty of JE’s stance and throw and the breathtaking poetry of each skip captured so lovingly by Lorraine brought the same welling up in my eyes and constriction in my throat.

That’s really all, a couple of occasions that made me so happy that I couldn’t speak.  Don’t need any more than that to make it a good day.

Easter Sunday, 2011

It is Easter Sunday and we are in Ontario.  As Nova Scotians we don’t necessarily love Ontario, but people we love live here and so we come to see them.  And to see parts of Ontario we've never seen.

This morning we woke up in Long Point in a rented cottage right next to the Long Point Provincial Campground and just across the road from high sand dunes and a pathway to a huge sand beach on Lake Erie.  It’s a beautiful spot, the beach mostly empty now because it’s mainly a summer resort area, and we were able to walk kilometres without seeing more than one or two others all along the shore.

Lorraine did some photographing there.

The dunes were lovely with variegated shades of sand and trees growing right through them.

E. and I. were walking up ahead as the lake fog rolled in.

There were wet marshes behind the beaches that the birds loved, soldier blackbirds everywhere.

Back in St. Catharine’s small flowers were blooming in the garden.

And on the front walk.

A squirrel watched M. and me from a tree branch.

She worked on another picture out on the sidewalk.  And then the Ontario sun started to set and she had a bath and went to bed.

April 1, it is raining (again)

March went out quietly, like a lamb, as they say, but April came in today with no fooling, just the serious flourish of a late winter or early spring storm.  The sky early this morning was red in warning, as they say, and now it is an even grey, with winds gusting out of the east, shaking the trees, lashing the rain against our windows, and howling past the corners of the house.

It is the first day of Poetry Month, so we need a poem that fits the day, not the little rhyme of April showers bringing May flowers, but something more, like the beginning of this scene from Act III of King Lear:

SCENE II. Another part of the heath. Storm still.

Enter KING LEAR and Fool

KING LEAR

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow.
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks.
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world;
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man.

Fool

O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this

rain-water out o' door.  Good nuncle, in; ask thy daughters'

blessing.  Here's a night pities neither wise man nor fools.

KING LEAR

Rumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire; spout, rain.
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription.  Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure.  Here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man;
But yet I call you servile ministers
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ho! 'tis foul!

We don’t have any thunderbolts or pernicious children, but we do have a pretty good pretty wild storm today and we have Bill’s words to inaugurate the month of poetry here.  Long may it reign!