Went for a miniscule walk yesterday, drawn out by the rays of the autumn sun as if by golden reins. Stood under the silver birch (oh, isn’t the name already beautiful!) at the end of my block, sniffed its cracked white bark and looked up to the long trailing branches floating like strands of hair in the soft wind that was more like a gentle breath out. The rustling of the wind in the leaves sounds different now, it’s more of a crackling sound, you can hear the dryness of the leaves. Stepped away from my lovely tree when my time was up and walking towards home I kept turning back and saw that there was a lovely gradation of colours in the foliage: around the crown’s tip oranges and ochres prevailed, below yellowish tints spread and furthest down just-still-green hovered.
Today I haven’t got enough steps in me to take me out of the house, so it’s just as well that I can get some of yesterday’s ecstasy back by writing about it here. For a moment I lamented that I hadn’t taken my camera then but actually the process of writing engraves these images in my brain more clearly and more permanently. I have to work to conjure them up again and find just the right words - through that small and delicious effort I relive the experience whereas with a photo I’d lazily stay on its surface, I think. So with every word I write here I imprint myself with the look of that tree, the feel of that gentle breeze, the scent of that bark.
4 comments:
hi Marjojo, reading this...and imagining i could smell the silver bark too (even though i don't know what it smells like at all)...
also wondering if even before M.E. you had always had such intense appreciation and observation of these things around you...?
i did go on my trails earlier in the day today but don't think i had a moment nearly intense as yours. i just love reading what you write and seeing it all through your senses.
Hi Marjojo
I am excited about your poetry, (it's so funny, how I also will have a list of projects I want to work on, and then when I get down to it, it's as though my creative side just goes off and does something totally different, almost as though it wanted to assert its freedom). I see the words that you use in your blog as a part of your art, another layer that gets woven into the work, creating an ongoing story.
There is a Zen-like quality in how you-reduced in your energy - are totally aware of your surroundings. You haven't got the chance to hurry on so you make the best of it: Concentrate! Feel! Describe!
It's beautiful, Marion! And it's a chance!
Hello:
This is so beautiful. I feel a love for these birch too, and yes, writing engraves something in me as well--and sometimes i take the picture and its only when i edit the photos that i might see some detail...so i do a lot of up close photography.
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