Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged birds, cityscape, colors, Inspiration, life, musings, nature, Photography, pigeons, Somerville, urban wildlife on October 10, 2013| 1 Comment »
… some bubbled with age and double paned
through which are seen such sights as red eyes staring back
and which draw the hands of visiting young artists.
They are portals onto worlds of concrete and asphalt …
and dead trees …
… all of which are places where great beauty can still be found.
Posted in Inspiration, Music, tagged Boston, compassion, homelessness, Inspiration, life, music, Paul Robeson, Photography, storytelling on July 25, 2013| 3 Comments »
This past spring I met a man in Boston Common. He sings.
I don’t remember if he had an instrument in-hand that first meeting. Most striking were his looks and that voice. Skin as dark as night. A scraggly beard and bushy eyebrows, all white as snow. His voice carried across the park. A gentle rumble. Bass, perhaps. Imagine Paul Robeson in sound.
“Can anyone spare some change? Can anyone spare some change? Can anyone spare some chaaaaaange?”
At first I ignored him. I generally have no spare change. And I have mixed feelings about giving money to panhandlers.
“Can anyone spare some change? Can anyone spare some change? Can anyone spare some chaaaaaange?”
But then one day we made eye contact. It has been ingrained that if eye contact is made with a stranger no words need be exchanged but at a minimum try to nod in greeting. And so I did.
“Can anyone spare some … ooooh … Does anyone have a pretty smile? Does anyone have a pretty smile?”
Ever since that moment, when our paths cross in the Common, which is not very often, he will change his song for me.
“Oh there’s that pretty smile. There’s that pretty smile.”
I know I can’t be the only one he does this for. I have yet to place coins in his cup, but he sure does make me feel like I brighten his day. At some point, I shall have to tell him that the sound of his voice brightens mine.
—
Footnote 1: Checkout the blog Lust & Rum by photographer Anton Brookes. There, he shares pictures that are heartbreaking and deeply moving of the homeless on the streets of NYC. Following his photographic journey helps remind me to keep my eyes open to those sights I might like to ignore.
Footnote 2: If you’ve not heard the voice of Paul Robeson, you can hear a sample via the following 1 minute and 22 second clip. Enjoy.
Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged family, home, Inspiration, life, listening, musings, nature, outdoors, Photography, prose, siblings, storytelling on June 23, 2013| 6 Comments »
We spoke by phone. I sat in my kitchen in Somerville, MA while my younger brother sat outside his home in Lynchburg, VA. After I had described my latest walk by the water and what I might write about, he said, “Mmmhmm. I think you should write some more about porches.”
“Porches?”
“Yes. About what it’s like to sit on the porch steps at night, in the quiet and in the cool, with fireflies in the distance. They look like stars.”
I imagined him sitting on his little back porch. I thought about the seeds I had sent him and his family. “Next year, I am sending you night blooming flowers.”
“That’s fine,” he said, and then he added, “And you should write about wearing glasses, how we wear them to see clearly, these wire frames that are not heavy but somehow you feel their weight all the time, and if you have long eyelashes you’re constantly batting them against the lenses. Yeah, there’s always contacts … but somehow when you wear glasses and then you sit and you take them off … you can’t see as clearly and yet there is a certain sense of freedom. A weight has been removed. Though your view is a bit blurry somehow you can see with greater clarity the beauty all around.”
“I gave you a blank notebook. Why don’t you write these things?” I say.
“Because you’re the writer,” he said.
Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged Inspiration, interview, life, nature, poetry, prose, silence, Talking Writing, Terry Tempest Williams, voice on June 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Please, please, please treat yourself to this Talking Writing interview, “Silence is Where We Locate Our Voice,” by Lorraine Berry with Terry Tempest Williams. I consider myself quite lucky to have met Terry Tempest Williams at a pivotal point in developing my voice. You can read about that experience in this blog post, Birdsong.
Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged compassion, Contributing Writer, empathy, essay, family, Inspiration, life, nature, Photography, racism, Talking Writing on June 10, 2013| 7 Comments »
There is a time and place for everything. I guess now is a time and place in my life to collect seashells and rocks and blossoms that I let dry in the sun. As I collect these things, I ponder. Here is a recent essay inspired by a broken bowl of stone and shells: fragile beauty.
Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged family, Father's Day, gardening, Inspiration, life, nature, nostalgia, Photography, prose, seeds on June 4, 2013| 5 Comments »
Would you believe I was restless this morning? Probably the two cups of strong coffee. I could not settle down to work with words or images. Finally I began picking through a box with writing from years past — letters never mailed, musings, unfinished stories, etc. I forgot to date the paper, but I expect the following piece was written around Father’s Day nearly fifteen years ago. I probably wrote it while sitting on the back porch of my childhood home in Virginia. After reading the words, would you believe I felt grounded?
Seasons
The sun shines bright and a cool breeze blows. Spring has not yet arrived but I feel the change in the air.
Spring arrives and yet my father’s vegetable garden lies fallow. Let it rest as he now rests. His long journey has ended.
Let the land rest. Rest your head, child. Sit still for it is the day of rest. A verb that is used so often. What does it mean, to rest?
A rest in music. A rest between words on paper.
To let your heart rest …
Resting seems scary somehow right now.
If one does rest, is it possible to pause for too long? If so, what will quicken the heart, the spirit? Will it be the sun’s rays, a cool breeze against bare skin, a lover’s lips? Perhaps a bird’s song.
What if there is no breeze, no sun, no lover?
There are plenty of birds, though, even in the empty garden. I suppose there are still seeds there beneath the earth.
What are those seeds doing there?
Well, I suppose my father would say that they are resting.
Yes, resting is what he would say.
The seeds are resting in the arms of the Earth awaiting their chance to grow.
###
Posted in Inspiration, Kitchen Inspirations, tagged careers, chef, cooking, creativity, dreams, food, food photography, Inspiration, life, motivation, Photography, random thoughts on May 26, 2013| 3 Comments »
lime and apple mint
… but I did not dream of growing up to become a chef, like Jackie Hill did. Of course, I had a toy camera and I never dreamed of growing up to become a photographer. You never know what a day — or a life — will hold, do you? Those random thoughts were inspired by this beautiful article about a woman following her dreams.
Posted in Inspiration, tagged books, cinema, Inspiration, life, literature, Photography, Ray Bradbury, science fact, science fiction, short stories, transportation on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Have you read Ray Bradbury’s The Pedestrian? I had not until today. Out loud. Quite moving. Amazing how some stories remain timeless, isn’t it? I also chanced upon the following video, a six minute and forty-four second student production based on the 1951 short story. The dialogue is in German but if you do not speak German, I think the scenery and music are powerful enough. See what you think when you have a chance.
The original short story: The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury
The YouTube video: http://youtu.be/t3qZsXStnlw
The Wiki summary (with some quotes by Bradbury): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pedestrian
Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged Boston, charity, culture, homeless, life, nature, poems, poetry, poverty, prose, Spare Change News, street life on March 26, 2013| 1 Comment »
Boston Public Garden Street Light
When I first read Lin Nulman’s haiku, I told her that her words made me want to paint, to capture the vivid impressions she conveyed of Boston. I have yet to pick up a brush but I did think of her words when I rediscovered this photograph. Her work appears in this week’s issue of Spare Change News, the longest continuously running street paper in the U.S. Over 100 vendors, many of whom are currently or formerly homeless, purchase the papers from a distribution office for .25 and sell them on the streets of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville for $1.00. If you’re in the neighborhood consider purchasing a copy, or making an online donation. The writing is excellent and the stories not often told. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy Lin’s words below.
Sights of the City Haiku
Boston winter night—
streetlight caught in the glass rim
of a sun-catcher.
Dark birds float to a
bare tree. Underneath pages
of newspaper blow.
A young man reads poems
by Lorca on the train, lips
moving, body still.
Sky of milk and slate—
the sails below are whiter,
the river bluer.
Vs of geese fly east
across a violet sky, haze
above the wet earth.
My pages ruffle,
and the willow grows pale leaves.
They also ruffle.
T-shirt heat. Black-haired
boy’s block-print tattoo fills his
forearm: FORGIVEN.
Early autumn day.
Bronze beads pepper a bench from
a broken earring.
Blue sidewalk. Lights of
table candles tremble their
small constellation.
Lin A. Nulman is an Adjunct Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College. Her poetry has appeared in Black Water Review, Tanka Splendor, and the anthology Regrets Only: Contemporary Poets on the Theme of Regret, among others.
Posted in Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged charity, good deeds, homeless, Inspiration, landscape, life, nature, nature photography, rain, true stories, water on December 18, 2012| 4 Comments »
Not a rainbow but …
… I was taking a shortcut through the Boston Public Library, making my way from the Boylston Street entrance to the Dartmouth Street side. Of course I had to pause for a quick browse of the New Arrivals shelf. That’s where I saw the deed take place.
It would be easy to assume that the old man was homeless, one of the many who frequent the building. His clothing was bedraggled to say the least and his beard more than a bit unkempt. His brown skin was weathered into the proverbial leather. Despite apparent age, there was an almost childish bright light in his rheumy eyes. While he walked with the aid of a battered metal cane, there was a spryness to his step as he made his way across the room. But, I have to admit, I noticed none of these details until later, until after I heard the young man’s voice calling, “Hey. Hey! Wait a minute, old man.”
The old man had been walking away from me, but he turned at the younger man’s voice, and that was how I was able to see his face. The younger man had been walking toward me, looking gruff and rushed as so many of us do today as we race, race, race. I had seen him brush passed the old man nearly knocking him over. But then he had stopped. The gruff look upon his face had not changed. In fact, it deepened.
At some point the younger man spun around. With a fierce, aggressive energy, he called the old man. When the man paused and turned to face him, the young man raced back to him. “Here,” he said, and shoved something into the old man’s hand.
The old man raised a plastic bag. It was just clear enough for me to see that inside were a pair of shoes. I glanced down and saw what the younger man may have seen. The old man’s feet were barely covered by a pair of threadbare sneakers.
“Where did these come from?” the old man asked, clearly perplexed. The younger man had already turned away. Over his shoulder he growled, “St. Francis.”
The older man looked at the bag, shrugged, and continued on his way.
Words + Images 