Monday, October 17, 2011

the fall crab

Last night Isis joined us upstairs. It has taken him six months to be successful in establishing himself as a permanent part-time resident at the farmhouse. (There is no litter box and no kittie door, hence the "part time" nature of the enterprise,.)

Wait a minute, has it really been six months since I moved to the farmhouse? Almost. This Thursday celebrates the sixes: six months since the move, six years since I met and started hanging out with Ed and it is, too his 61st birthday.

How he hates that I remind him of it! (Ed has a small set of strong negative feelings and in that set you’ll find his feelings about celebrations, especially as they pertain to him.)

But let me not jump ahead. For now I’m thinking about how pretty it is outside the farmhouse. How every morning, our crab apples, studded with red fruits, are the feeding station for these guys:


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I know that if you live in a place where you hate some detail of your environment, that feeling of dissatisfaction eventually passes. You get used to most anything: ugly carpets, miserable wall paper -- it all becomes background noise. So I wonder: does beauty become background noise as well? Or is it that I will always step out in the morning, see the same birds against the fall crab apple and think -- wow.

4 comments:

  1. the latter: the WOW factor doesn't go away because it's always fresh and new! Or so I believe.

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  2. Cedar Waxwings bring good fortune. They did for me.

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  3. I believe beauty only becomes "background noise" when we stop looking for the abundance of beauty surrounding us every day.

    Long ago I was down on one knee making a photo of a door knob on the outside of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. I overheard a young girl ask her mother: "Why is that man (me) taking a picture of a silly old door knob?" That silly old door knob, which had probably been overlooked by most visitors, was an exquisite example of a victorian bronze door knob inlaid with ivory and polished to a lovely sheen by thousands of hands—including Edison's—over the years. This beautiful object was there every day, waiting to delight anyone willing to look.

    I love your photo today. Wow indeed.

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  4. By even asking the question about beauty, you have ensured that it will never become background noise. This is based on my experience moving to a beautiful place in the country in 1987 and breathing a prayer that I never take that beauty for granted.

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