BirchLane.net

February 2009

 

Friday 27

A Rose. Late at night; last night:

Thursday 26

Divine Substance. 

Wednesday 25

A Gift. A card from a friend in Mumbai, India arrives in today's mail.

Tuesday 24

Nadine.

Monday 23

Today.

"The Strength of Fields," James Dickey

... a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power and a life-enhancing return ...
 

       Van Gennep: Rites de Passage
 

 

Moth-force a small town always has,

 

          Given the night.

 

                                           What field-forms can be,

         Outlying the small civic light-decisions over

               A man walking near home?

                                                         Men are not where he is

      Exactly now, but they are around him    around him like the strength

 

Of fields.    The solar system floats on

    Above him in town-moths.

                                             Tell me, train-sound,

    With all your long-lost grief,

                                             what I can give.

    Dear Lord of all the fields

                                             what am I going to do?

                                        Street-lights, blue-force and frail

As the homes of men, tell me how to do it    how

    To withdraw    how to penetrate and find the source

      Of the power you always had

                                             light as a moth, and rising

       With the level and moonlit expansion

    Of the fields around, and the sleep of hoping men.

 

       You?    I?    What difference is there?    We can all be saved

 

       By a secret blooming. Now as I walk

The night    and you walk with me    we know simplicity

   Is close to the source that sleeping men

       Search for in their home-deep beds.

       We know that the sun is away    we know that the sun can be conquered

   By moths, in blue home-town air.

          The stars splinter, pointed and wild. The dead lie under

The pastures.    They look on and help.    Tell me, freight-train,

                            When there is no one else

   To hear. Tell me in a voice the sea

         Would have, if it had not a better one: as it lifts,

          Hundreds of miles away, its fumbling, deep-structured roar

               Like the profound, unstoppable craving

            Of nations for their wish.

                                                      Hunger, time and the moon:

 

         The moon lying on the brain

                                                    as on the excited sea    as on

          The strength of fields. Lord, let me shake

         With purpose.    Wild hope can always spring

         From tended strength.    Everything is in that.

            That and nothing but kindness.    More kindness, dear Lord

Of the renewing green.    That is where it all has to start:

         With the simplest things. More kindness will do nothing less

             Than save every sleeping one

             And night-walking one

 

         Of us.

                   My life belongs to the world. I will do what I can.

 

Sunday 22

Saturday 21

From Romanticism to Surrealism.

Atget almost always passed by the "great sights and the so-called landmarks": what he did not pass by was a long row of boot lasts; or the Paris courtyards, where from night to morning the hand-carts stand in serried ranks; or the tables after the people have finished eating and left, the dishes yet not cleared away--as they exist in their hundreds of thousands at the same hour; or the brothel at Rue ... No 5, whose street number appears, gigantic, at four different places on the building's facade. Remarkably, however, almost all these picture are empty. Empty the Porte d'Arcueil by the Fortification, empty the triumphal steps, empty the courtyards ... They are not lonely, merely without mood; the city in these pictures looks cleared out, like a lodging that has not yet found a tenant. It is in these achievements that surrealist photography sets the scene for a salutary estrangement between man and his surroundings. It gives free play to the politically educated eye, under whose gaze all intimacies are sacrificed to the illumination of detail. ~Walter Benjamin "A Small History of Photography," 1931 (extract) "He will be remembered as an ubanist, a genuine romanticist, a lover of Paris, a Balzac of the camera, from whose work we weave a tapestry of French civilization." ~Bernice Abbott

Path in Central Park. Photography by Bruce Barone.

Horses. Photography by Bruce Barone.

Friday 20

Thursday 19

New Pages. Created a new Wedding Blog and a Food Blog. And re-designed the index page for Birchlane.

Wednesday 18

Slide Shows. Created a 10-minute slide show/video of photos of Mt. Tom I took over a four-year period looking out my loft window at Eastworks.

Tuesday 17.

Constant Contact. Emailed Press Release via Constant Contact to Interior Decorators regarding my photographic services.

Monday 16

The Cat Nadine. Nadine now has her own Blog and Facebook Page.

Sunday 15

Saturday 14

Valentine's Day. Breakfast: scrambled Eggs with Diced Red Pepper and Green Onions.

 

Friday 13

Dinner Party. Susan and I had two friends over for dinner, Suzi Craig and Ann Black. I made chicken breasts with a cranberry reduction
sauce.

Suzi Craig of Fathom and Group 88.

Ann Black of Creative Economy Consulting.

Susan of Soap by Susan.

Thursday 12

Ethiopia Whispers. Went to art opening at Westfield State College Downtown Art Gallery. "Ethiopia Whispers," painting exhibition of Sofia Kifle.
Very impressed. Visual music/dance.

Wednesday 11

Slide Show. Completed.

Tuesday 10

Slide Show. Working a slide show.

Monday 09

Full Moon Behind Branches.

Today I discovered the music of Michael Jones. Visiting his website, Pianoscapes, I was struck by:

Michael envisions a new leadership story - one that involves a transformation in awareness from performance to presence, from uniformity to uniqueness, from abstraction to beauty, from efficiency to improvisation and from instrumentality to the expressive power of story and voice. Together they awaken a commons of the imagination - a collective field of possibility that transforms our mechanistic view of the world to a more sustainable and transcendent vision that is creative, organic and whole.

Sunday 08

Moon.

Saturday 07

Nadine.

Friday 06

Portfolio.

Thursday 04

Cardinal

Tuesday 03

Cardinal.

Monday 02

Chicken Cutlet with Herb Cranberry Sauce Reduction.

Sunday 01

Pancakes