10.10.13 Cool Days, Cooler Nights, Approaching the Time of Sleep, Soup and Slow

Cool days; cooler nights, almost but not quite rain as the enormous storm clouds blow their bluster elsewhere. And then finally, every week or so, and good fall soaking, the earth drinking it up, plants feeding upon it in preparation for their fall transition.

Farmers gathering the harvest, tractors slowly pulling loads of potato and corn and squash. Tobacco all picked and almost dry, farmstands thick with happily stopped local cars, 

and soon the roads will be filled to the brim with leaf-peepers come to relish the New England propensity for the fall colors, a last hurrah.


We dig out our socks and jackets and close the windows up by dinner time. Rustle around for hats just this morning, the pup's breath even a bit visible in a New Englander's home, reticence about turning on heat before whatever that certain date may be for you.....

Squash plants proliferating - Acorn squash, Butternut...gourds...

The huge Aster just warming up for their purple time of providing the very last meals and night shelter for cold tired bees of all kinds.  








The wild grasses producing the season's end seeds, called, of all lovely things, luminescents...the softly glistening tops of each grass, akin to the proud creation of a spider's egg sac, a squash plant's progeny. 

I catch sight of the morning sunlight spilling over the range and onto the conservation fields out my kitchen window. In my nightgown, I grab my camera and run out to capture the elusive light.

My feet seeped with the ground's dew, my breath a cool small cloud, I lean down to see if the camera can gather up the remarkable, shifting light as the earth does turn and the sun's light comes further every second. Every second as I stand there, feet coooolllddd, slight fall wind whistling through us all out there, I imagine the earth I stand upon, you stand upon, moving and the origin of this change of light. 

I lean down I kneel down and almost lay down, the dew seeping into nightgown, I peer closer at the soft shining field and its inhabitants, and there....there upon the luminescent...is a small spider. Tiny tiny spider. and its intricate web. Yes it is. Hmm. I sit up on my knees. I think. I turn and peer the field over, and there before me are thousands or more small luminescents, each with a spider and spider web. There they are. Surprise surprise. Neighbors.






























Did you ever read  the kid book, Dr. Seuss's ' Horton Hears a Who' growing up, or to children? Where he discovers one day that there is a universe of beings upon each and every clover, and he strains to protect this one small universe? 

Changed, I was, as a child, by the story. Oh, it was a bit much,and how do you step, and where, and all that, soon overcome by childish enthusiasm and the practical necessity of getting on with life. But I did not forget. That we are brethren. The universe over. Relational. Parallel lives. Each with value. Still, I delight. In the universes of life..on grasses. Beneath humus. 

So here I am, with these thousands of small intricate webs of small intricate spiders.

Do they call? Sing? Strum? So many species do so many things that poor old humans do not detect, so we assume we are the top of the food chain, and who really cares about anyone else? I watch as well as I can for a moment, taking it all in; then return back inside, sopping wet, smiling widely to my beloved who glances at me, taken aback but just for a second, then laughs and embraces my soggyness. 

I turn my head, just for a second, in his embrace, peer out the row of ground level windows, and the light has filled the field now; the vision of the grasses and dew gone from my sight, but not from their existence. 

So many types of  spiders making their elaborate brilliant webs each evening, selecting mates, spinning and then protecting precious egg sacs,

                                                                                                                                                                                                          as night air comes weighted with dew

and Eagles and Red Tail Hawks and Harris Hawks overhead call each to each, soaring over the ancient range and the powerful ever present Connecticut-

our bodies and trees and animals and microbes all seamlessly moving in the seasonal dance that leads from the last vestiges of summer ,

spinning us in their arms through Autumn ,

and trundling us right down into yet another winter's time 











of soup and warm socks and early nights and all the essential recharging,

like wise bears and turtles and trees,

that recharges your deep wise strength and takes you by the hand

back toward Spring light,

rejuvenated by your slow time and ready to expand and grow once again.

10.9.13 All All Those People All Over The World

I have been having a very nice time hanging out on Instagram, which is all K.R.'s fault, as I saw a FB reference to it and said 'what on earth is Instagram?'.

The cool part is that it's kind of like FB but with few words, and all about...photographs.

Well, except for the occasional very nice probably young people who like your photographs and say cool dude type stuff and then you go check out their photos and they have about 1,000 posts a day (exaggerating)  of their new nail polish.

Or their whole page, seriously, is filled with selfie's -

yeah, I had to learn that means self taken photos. My my.

But the really cool thing is that you get to see very very good photographs by people in Istanbul and Kuwait and Africa and Ireland and every single place you could ever imagine, where all their likes are written in letters I, myself, have never seen before, and they speak french to you and you struggle back, or you just see 12 really remarkable sunrises and sunsets from all all over the world. all over.

And its possible to begin to connect with people who take a broad range of very very nice photographs, and you get all inspired to broaden your range too, and get all up into it and all.

It does give me pause, in terms of engaging with yet another  'social networks' (haha whatta  funny name) , or rather, machines with access to connecting , when really you are all alone in your little home or somewhere else holding onto your little cellphone , not looking up and around and actually living your life, but rather killing your neck and getting irradiated while you obsess on your little not-so-smart-to obsess-with phone......gasp.

Anyway, now I very much enjoy posting photos and seeing photos from people all over the world.

 I'm kind of thinking Emily Dickinson and so many hundreds of years of  people taking the time to write letters, which we actually used to do.

 I even have old friends who remind me of reams of letters I must have written and then mailed, with out really remembering.

 

But what a cool thing it was, young ones, as we sit around the glow of the fire, I mean tv; how people used to put implements in their hands and go find some paper and scratch all the letters because they wanted to convey something to someone else. And then they got this thing called an envelope and another thing called a stamp and they scratched stuff on it and put it in... a mailbox. Amazing concept.

And now this, all these machines and this really funny kind of connecting that some people begin to misplace in their minds as actual connections.

Yet they do have their actual precious aspects to them, for us all, within reason.

 I get to completely delight in the lives and choices and contributions of people I have never ever seen or stood beside or spoke with in person, who I have come to value so much.

I get to do what so many of us developmentally do, of all things, which is to reconnect with some, not all, of the people we were teenagers with. Go figure.

And we may not walk or bus or train or plane or drive to them and sit with them and listen to them slurp their tea and look into their creased faces while they look into ours, and laugh and catch up and listen and muse.

But sometimes, we DO! And in the meantime, there we are, connected by machines in outer-space, by currents invisible and surrounding our lives.

And this funny Instagram thing...where you take your photos and then crank them editing, if you wish, kinda turbo charge them for fun, til you mature a bit and get over that

and then just relish all the.....connections.....of people and places farther away than I will ever ever go, who have taken these photographs today, that are really very good, who you kinda get to know in that kinda funny far away not really but somewhat way,

and then you go on in the evening and post up your photo of the Connecticut River tonight, how it streamed and soothed

 and how the darkness came and enveloped

as you walked with your huge German Shepherd pup,

and people kept coming out of the darkness down the path,

but the land was safe and sweet and you CAN be a 61 year old woman

watching the sliver of the moon

 and the gradations of color coalescing before your eyes,

 and  look up and imagine all all of those people all over the world and their own little corner of earth with their own little sunsets  they will be sharing with you.

 Here's my little cache....http://instagram.com/gwenmccl