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.
Posts Tagged ‘life’
a TW interview with Terry Tempest Williams
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 »
fragile beauty
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.
resting
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.
###
As a child, I had an Easy-Bake Oven …
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.
“to enter out into that silence …of a misty evening …”
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
Lin Nulman’s Sights of the City Haiku
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.
what I saw this rainy day
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.
virginia seeds
Posted in Inspiration, On the Road, tagged colors, digital photography, family, life, portraits, seeds, siblings, stories, travel on November 26, 2012| 1 Comment »
Once upon a time, I sat in my father’s arm chair while my parents sat side by side on the neighboring couch. I’m not sure how this seating arrangement happened. I do remember that in the big chair I was loudly sharing my knowledge of the world. With each proclamation my parents just nodded or said, “Mmmhmm.” So I felt completely affirmed in my beliefs, right? But then at some point in the conversation, they denied my request to do something. I stood up with all the wrath and righteousness of a fifteen-year old and said, “You can say that now since you think I’m a baby, but when I’m 99-years old …” My mom interjected, “When you are 99-years old, you will still be our baby.”
That story keeps coming to mind as I show pictures of my brother Keith to friends. They are used to my stories of a little boy who planted a seed in a cup. Or stories of the little boy I used to send to collect dandelions in our empty Easter baskets. When they see pictures of the small boy now a man who towers over most people, and of the child now a father, they always exclaim, “I thought you said he was little?” I just shrug and say, “He is little. He’ll always be my little brother.”
reminiscent of snow
Posted in Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged baby's breath, family, flowers, imagination, Inspiration, life, nature, nature photography, white on November 14, 2012| 7 Comments »
I have been trying to photograph a vase of baby’s breath for quite a while now. The stems were part of a larger bouquet, just filler for the fancier flowers. But as those flowers passed away, the baby’s breath remained, tall and strong though with a certain fragility.
This morning as I sat at the kitchen table thinking about the chaos in many a friend and family member’s life right now, people who are bearing the weight of so much sadness, my eyes kept falling upon the vase of baby’s breath. The light from that same sun that struck the green sage mentioned in an earlier post now fell upon fine white petals.
Against the backdrop of a window still covered in frost, the petals reminded me of fresh fallen snow with the dazzle of glistening flakes and the accompanying quiet that descends upon the land. In those moments, I always think of snow as a beautiful thing.
I once wrote a poem about white being the color of sadness. When I wrote those words years ago, that feeling was true. Today I feel differently. I don’t know what color sadness is for me today, but I know it is not white.
fragile beauty
Posted in Inspiration, tagged community, Contributing Writer, family, Inspiration, life, nature, Photography, storytelling on August 28, 2012| 4 Comments »
The following images are of rocks and shells and bits of colored glass found on different New England beaches this summer. I photographed them yesterday after placing them in a bowl I had rediscovered, a beautiful dark clay vessel lined with ridges. Eventually I filled the bowl with water. I snapped photos throughout the day whenever whimsy struck. Near dusk I decided I should empty the bowl before mosquitoes began to breed. Just as I drained the last drop, the bowl cracked in my hands. An unseen flaw had been exacerbated by the weight of water. In an instant, I was reminded of the beauty found in fragile things.
Today, as I worked with the images, admiring the visual expression of soft colors and hard edges and glimpses of the bowl now gone, I was reminded of a series of conversations I’ve been having with people about empathy and compassion (and their lack) in a world that can appear so beautiful and yet so broken at the same time. I was also reminded of how much I miss the wisdom of my elders as I live through these times. They may be gone but I do have their stories … though goshdarnit, some of the stories make me ponder even more about the ways of this fragile world.
My father once told me a story of walking to work. It was southern Virginia in the 1950’s. He and my mother were newlywed and I think they had one child. He couldn’t yet afford a car. As he walked from home to the Public Works Department, he passed a yellow school bus. The bus was stopped at a red light. He smiled up at the young children. The children spat down at him. He was black and they were white.
My mother’s sister Thelma happily left the south for New York during that great migration in this country. Though she had no car and did not drive, she could walk wherever she wanted. One day she walked through Central Park. She saw this beautiful redheaded woman with smooth milk-white skin. “She looked like a movie star,” Aunt Thelma recalled. At the woman’s side was a young boy. As their paths crossed, eye contact was made and Aunt Thelma prepared herself to exchange a greeting. Instead the woman tapped her son. “Then she pointed at me,” Aunt Thelma said. “She pointed at me and said You see, my dear, that’s a nigger.” Many decades later, Aunt Thelma looked at me and said with a gentle chuckle, “That’s why to this day I have a hard time watching movies with redheads.”
My mother told me stories. My brothers, both my elder ones and my younger one, have told me stories. I have my own growing collection of stories of not being seen as an individual or of being discounted and even despised because of the color of my skin. I read newspaper accounts of children around the world, who from my perspective look alike, who are trying to kill each other because of deeds that took place long before they were “a gleam in their mothers’ eyes,” who hate in large part because of what is shared by surrounding adults.
As I remember my parents and other elders who led challenging lives in this country, I wonder how is it that they did not plant seeds of hate in the hearts of their children? How did they choose and succeed I hope in teaching us to lend a hand to help the fallen and not first assess if that person was white, red, black, green or purple or carried a certain bible or had a certain sized bank account? Perhaps I oversimplify …
My younger brother still lives in Virginia with his family. He recently called while on his way home from work. We usually joke and laugh about silly things. But this time he was more somber. Finally, he said, “You know, I have a hard time watching television anymore. Those ads by all the candidates of every party and their followers. You know how much money some people are putting into these ads just to make me hate somebody? Don’t they realize how that money could help so many homeless people and others dying on the streets?”
Don’t tell my brother I said this but he reminds me of the bowl that held the stones in these pictures. To be able to ask such questions suggests to me that a person is not closed off … that there is a beautiful fissure in one’s heart, mind, soul … that helps one remain open to the life experiences of others. Anyway, the summer is not quite done. More rocks and shells I may collect. A new bowl I may find. Then we’ll see what words and images emerge. Be well!
