more than a mouthful
Bed and breakfast for this robin.
Not just some fibres for the nest, but a juicy insect as well.
I didn't intend to photograph the robin; birds are not my thing. However, I was out stalking flowers with a long telephoto, and the bird paused and posed just briefly enough to adjust the contents in his beak, and poop ( after much editorial angst, I photoshopped that out), so I bagged a picture.
Speaking of mouthfuls...
This post is perhaps the one about which I've wrestled mentally the most in a long time. I've spent the morning procrastinating, deciding whether to throw it out there, and finally I honestly said f--k it and started writing.
In fact, all of this indecision was finally what spurred me to begin writing, because I just became angrier with myself for simply not letting it go. And perhaps I am making the proverbial mountain out of a molehill here, but so be it. At least I'll be at peace with myself.
Yesterday evening, I headed out on my own, with a camera, to get some pictures down at the lakefront. I was a few minutes away from home, still on my own road, when I passed a large van that was being loaded. A few paces further on, from the bowels of the truck behind me, I heard a wolf whistle. We've all been there. It immediately gets your back up and simultaneously makes you cringe self-consciously. The best recipe is to ignore it, even if it does piss you off and/or frighten you. Do not engage. I didn't.
Then he did it again.
All of a sudden it was not a momentary embarrassment, something to be laughed off and forgotten. It was an imperative, a demand for acknowledgement, and to my mind at least a blatant, sexist statement of objectification and power, and an expectation of submission to, recognition of, same.
I did turn around then.
Which was when he discovered that the ponytail and legs were about twice as old as he was, and they were connected to arms holding a lens longer than his…forearm.
I told him it was not okay. Not in those words, but you get the idea.
Maybe I'm being oversensitive.
Maybe not.
Thoughts?
solstice sunset
Yesterday was the solstice, the longest day in terms of daylight in the year. It also began as one of the hottest days of the year, with cloying humidity followed by afternoon storm winds that foretold the imminent arrival of thundery fireworks and a cold front. Somehow, we escaped the storms, though the skies blackened ominously twice, and a large branch came tumbling down in the wind, taking out our phone line yet again.
When evening came around, the skies were clear; a brisk, cool, fresh breeze had blown in from the northwest, and I decided to go to the lake and sit and witness the sun going down over the opposite shore. I went right around the edge of the bay, past the beach where adults sat at picnic tables while children played in the sand and ran in the shallow water. Leaving them behind, I climbed up through the pine forest and found a favourite rocky outcrop; a small, steep granite cliff that juts out over the water, peppered with cedars and moss and a few determined daisies.
I went all alone, and it seemed right.
The sun and sky did not put on a spectacular, flamboyant show, but the sight of that golden ball dropping first languidly and then with amazing speed, behind the treeline, was mesmerizing. The wind was playing relentlessly with the lake, ruffling it this way and that, and for a while, the low sun traced a shimmering path on the waves.
As the sun dropped into the trees on the opposite shore, there was a brief illusion that the treetops were actually on fire. At times, I closed my eyes because the light was so bright. At one such time, I sensed the disappearance of the light not visually, but in a tactile way, as the warmth of it left my face.
Below my feet, the lake stretched out for kilometres in every direction. Though I was aware that people were about, such as those I'd passed on the beach in the hidden bay behind my right shoulder, the expanse below me was devoid of any human activity, and full of an incredible sense of peace. The setting sun cast its last coda of colour on the puffs of clouds above the treeline, gilding them in a beautiful encore. And then darkness came in like a curtain. The show was over, and it was time to go home.
Last one in...
...is a dirty rotten egg.
(I guess that would be me)
The pre-swim safety talk:
Elegant, we are not. But game, oh yes!
After the initial slip-n-slide, we progressed marvellously :
coming up empty
“He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton