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Welcoming the city-withered... |
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Notes on the natural.
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| What is the obsession with mowing the lawn all about, anyway? Better asked, why is society so obsessed with the full, rich, closely clipped carpet of grass in front of the house? I muse so because our own front lawn is tressed in lank dreadlocks fully thigh high, and I personally don't give a faint hot damn. Get a goat, I advise, rent a cow, borrow a sheep or two. At least the fine fodder would serve some ends (most importantly, mine-I could use a scrap of ... manure.). The concept of stepping out of a sultry summer's afternoon to push a snarling, stinking, noisome machine about so that it can chew up grass without even the by-product of feeding itself is one I balk at. I prefer the idea (someone else's) of sowing vast amounts of wildflowers and sitting, buried in my meadow, mutinously glaring in defiance of social mores. 'Ware ye the impostor among the Black Eyed Susans. |
| My blog will feature these entries, these asides, on thoughts that don't quite fit in with my established theme. I have always been fascinated with the English language. Language seems a form of magic to me; a single word, spoken judiciously, can conjure an entire scene. An erudite here on WDC has chided me for the awkward use of archaic language. Reading between the lines (which one should never), in essence I felt as though the reader felt that I should cater to my audience, and write in a more contemporary style. Tsk tsk, I was chastised, it seems as though the writer is attempting to speak in a terribly old-fashioned, gauche, if you will, fashion. I drew my old gauche cape of words closer to my throat and looked at it harshly. Well, yes, I could reasonably be charged with verbosity. I have an uncanny ability with language, syllables, words. Every writing endeavor is a tapestry for me to weave, imbued with all the subtle richness of creation. Writing is my art, and I labor long and lovingly over the placement of every syllable, every nuance that enhances an image further. My grandmother had many favorite phrases. One was "The brain is a muscle, and like any other it will atrophy without use." Why can't the same be said of language as can be said of any valuable tool or fact? If we forget about good old vitamin deficiencies, then scurvy and ricketts will run amok anew. If we forget the stalwart stanchions of our language, will the evolution of thought regress, atrophy? Just as an aside. |
| Gloom and rain have prevailed for four days now. The soggy weather gets into my bones, making me feel as though I swim through the day, making me groggy and reluctant to rise at a reasonable hour. The moist air brings out the stinks in the house; old furniture exudes musty miasmas. The plants are happy, though. |
| The topsoil is thick and dark in places here. Three small rock-enclosed gardens boast herbs and well-loved flowers. In a dip by the marshy lands surrounding the brook, the truck, trapped by a careless operator, tore great furrows in the moist, rich dirt. With a bit of peat moss and a scrap of composted manure, this could be productive farmland. Again. |
| My fiancee reports that someone told him raccoons thrash and crash about so they seem big and scary, to frighten predators away. But I've heard my Wendigo again, heard his stride as he stalked haughtily away, huffing at me in a vaguely horsey way. This is no racca-ma-coon. This is the Wendigo. |
| The tomatoes and cucumbers I transplanted have nearly doubled in size, to my eye. I look forward to that first juicy tomato, bursting with concentrated sunshine. |
| Sitting outside this morning, listening to the cheerful birdsong, it occurred to me that there's a thing yet to be appreciably captured in word-birdsong. Some species have a distinct enough cry that we can mimic it with words-bob white, whippoorwill, crow...but many more of the divine choir are indescribable. |
I've decided to center everything to maybe lend a poetical flow to my blog. So here goes! I got dirty toes, black under my fingers, a smudge of soil on my nose and pores full of loam. There's a hole in the ground on a slope behind my house; a smallish hole, busily bored out of the soft warm ground by a flying insect, I think, despite its resemblance to an anthill. I step around it as I carry my latest offering to the Wild Things to the forest's edge. It's leftover soup stock leavings, bits of boiled bone, onion skin, longboiled carrot. I try to keep the offerings a little further from the house in case the Wild Things don't eat it so I needn't smell it dust to dusting. I step out the back door for a smoke at 10:30 at night. The moon rides high, full and proud, bursting with Spring's potential. There's a loud nonchalant crashing coming from the back of the house (close, I must note, to where my Wild Thing offerings were left). I find this crashing disturbing on a soul-visceral level; frankly, I'm scared to death of it. Mad coyote? Some last, lone wolf? Wild dog? Dumb deer? Or...the Wendigo. I frighten myself back into the house. There is a long-felled tree sprawled across the back yard. It has been cut into 3 foot lengths, and these lengths are pierced with winding holes that meander beneath the surface. One can hear whatever It is, chewing, strong jaws creaking on the underside of the bark. The brook babbles. |
| May 30, 2007 A full Planting Moon seems a propitious time to begin any fresh endeavor. This blog will strive to bring to the reader refreshing scenes of suburban American wildlife, its habits, its habitat. Currently set in the cool, wooded town of Middleborough, Massachusetts, USA., where white pines tower whose girth is such that one cannot wrap one's arms about them. As many as nine great hawks wheel above the clearing in the noonday sun. At night, something crashes insouciantly through the brush behind the house. I've convinced myself that it is the Wendigo. |
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