Of the world

In the world

Gas in the car – up 10 centsGarbage to the dump – damn bag split3 two-by-fours – no red paintSquirrel on the road – get outta wayDriver going 40 – what’s wrong with you?All these problems faced by me‘Cuz I’m in the world, not of it

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You are here?

You are here

Are we ever there if we’re not aware? If we’re in the woods and fail to notice the creak of the maples? Or if the musical rhythm of the lake’s waves laps us by? Can we say we’ve been somewhere if we don’t see the shades of the rocks and the shadows through the leaves?…

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Waiting for nothing

Stillness

I’m sitting on a bench outside my house. It’s four feet wide – enough for two, if that’s your thing. I’m waiting for nothing. Stillness, you see, is my superpower: Birds surprise my ears, a squirrel shoots between my legs. The boy deer is back, nibbling at the oaks I newly planted. A baby raccoon…

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The goodest dog

new old

For Freddie – the goodest dog in the world – everything old is also new. On that same maple with the broken branch chats a cheeky squirrel, too far to leap. There’s a raccoon been under the dusty brush pile. But when? But how? What’s with the mushroom that wasn’t on the lawn? Where did…

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The journey home

The journey home

Ten minutes by bike (all downhill) from the house I grew up in was Bobbits Lane. And down Bobbits Lane was a wheat field, a meadow, some allotments and the sewage works. To the right was Spring Wood, which was ancient and ended abruptly at the A14. I would bike down here, on my own,…

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The easy, small things

Love the small things first

Tiny seeds that flirt with the sun and fall like sparks. The hummingbird, so hurrying bird for that next frantic hit. This turpentine pine cone, warm and gluey. Two dead grasshoppers in the screened-in porch. Got in. Trapped. Thin. Shiny grass. Surprising breezes. Loam. All these small things, so easy to love. And the big…

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Beautiful mortality

Beautiful mortality

I don’t want to go skydiving or rock climbing. I won’t jump between rooftops or race Highway 401. Instead, I’ll sit here, feeling mortal and adoring the scent of the forest.

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Know me not name me

Know me not name me

I’m surrounded by birds. I can hear their beating wings, their squawking and tweeting, pecking, drumming. Flocks of birds. Birds I haven’t seen before, black and white birds, birds that creep up trees, birds that peck at gutters, yellow-headed birds. I have no idea what they’re all called. And that’s OK because once I name…

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Masked

Masked

I’m getting accustomed to the whole Covid thing. But from time to time, I see a familiar place turned apocalyptic, with the masks and the distancing and such. That sends a chill up my body, like the time I was a kid and I realized for the first time I too would die one day.…

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Leftovers

Leftovers

I got two bush cords of firewood delivered this week; truckloads tipped with the sound of thunder. There are round logs and square logs, wedge logs and deformed logs. Wood with latticy fungus or a cancery burl. And when its stacked (and it will be, soon), all that is littered is scraps and splints and…

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Visit Sitges

OKness

One day in – I don’t know – 2002, I found myself in the Catalan seaside town of Sitges. I was stress-working in Amsterdam, flew to visit a friend in Barcelona and…well… I just needed a break alone. So I took the train past the airport, got off in Sitges – and found a cafe…

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A beautiful day

beautiful day

I’m from England, where it rains from time to time. I remember as a kid in the back of the car, following the drops on the windows as they jigged and jagged earthward, absorbing and engorging with brakes-failed momentum. Or the November puddles on the black roads, which slobbered a wobbly red under the traffic…

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Where do we go when we’re asleep?

Asleep

Where do we go when we’re asleep? Are we like the bee on the thistle? Fuzzy yellow on spiky purple, a color wheel contrast in stillness? Are we like the barbecue spider? An eight-legged cast that no fly might wake? Are we like caterpillar goo? Denatured? Deconstructed? Dissolved? DNA? Or are we like me? Snoring…

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On thoughts

On thoughts

I was sitting on my couch the other day, looking out the window and thinking about this and that. Along came a flock of tiny birds, into the frame from left to right. Fluttering so gently from branch to branch. I watched them pass. Into the frame, out of the frame. How fascinating they were!…

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Do be do be do

Do be

We have a woodchuck that lives with us. Well, not in the house (we have no wood to chuck) but around and about, on the sandy bank and the weedy septic. It has a condo in the rock face crack, with a roof terrace and eighth floor balcony. That’s the kind of real estate you…

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Sifting flour with a fishing net

interestingjustasinteresting

As a child, my family vacations consisted of walking up big hills in the rain. My dad called it “savage amusement” and we loved it. Sometimes there was wind instead of rain. On one particularly steep mountain in particularly grey weather, the wind was so strong I could lean my little frame into it and…

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Questions of light

light so bright

That patch of light. You see? The one that’s making the leaves of the raspberry bush shine so white? That patch of light, whose photons journeyed 93 million miles to bounce off the leaves of the raspberry bush and make them shine so white? That patch of light, which is forcing a squint as the…

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Seeing stars

Wait and see

The secret to viewing shooting stars, as I discovered while I lay on the gently rocking dock, with the crickets buzzing behind me and the Milky Way misting across the blackness, is not to look for them. Instead, it’s to wait… and then see. Meteors punish effort. Seek in the north-west, or at Perseus, or…

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Good bad

Good or bad

Of all the world’s inhabitants I’ve fallen in love with recently, I fell hardest for the song sparrow. Its melody relieved the early days of Covid, and it kept singing until the dry days of August parched its tiny voice. It built a nest in the giant heap of cut-down branches. Quite the fortress, you’d…

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At the dump

out of sight

I was at the dump today. With seagulls and eagles (and maybe a bear). Cans and bottles and scrubbed out jars. Boxes, more boxes and (oops!) legal files. Dead TVs in a metallic morgue, awaiting postmortem by hammer and torch. Chicken bones and Barbies with hair all tangled. Melon rind, headlamp from a 1990s Ford.…

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Dead daisies

dead daisies

Dead daisies are beautiful and I don’t care. Look at them, with their crusty petals and hollow seeds. So brown and so defiant. But they’re dead! they say. They’re deceased, they’re passed, and they’re done. A dead daisy is over and I have no use for such a thing. But look! I say back. Those…

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Attention is the beginning of devotion

Attention is the beginning of devotion

I fell in love with my saucepan this morning. We’re not getting married or anything. But I noticed a deep affection – a warm swelling in my chest. It was early, you see. Time to put the cooled pot of curry in the fridge. The pan was so heavy and so stained; hard and metally…

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On OKness

Unit of production

One of the (shush!) side benefits of the whole Covid thing was that my 2020 sales goals went for crap. In January, we’d set targets that were higher than last year. But when March came along, we were like, “we’ll do what we can.” And as the spring dragged on, I started thinking, why the…

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About the rain

About the rain

The birds here are singing just as loudly although it’s raining. Yet we as humans tend to think of the rain as “bad”. Interesting.

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