When in Another's House

1.  Let sleeping dogs lie.

2.  Resist the urge to rush to the kitchen and pour yourself a bowl of bran buds with milk.

3.  Try to keep the freezer door closed. Do not steal frozen steaks.

4.  As for the broom closet, stay out of it.

5.  Stop refolding the linens.

6.  And measuring out the laundry soap.

7.  If you must peak into cupboards, then go ahead! try on the shoes!

8.  But please ask if you wish to borrow a coat, a scarf, a tie, a pair of gloves.

9.  Try not to leave your own hair tangled in another's brush.

10. And please cease hiding shots of bourbon under the bed.
      Did you think I wouldn't find the glass?

Every day

Every day

I pull myself together;

every day,

I fall apart.

On Brittle Ice: A Week of Winter Weather

Clouds always tell a true story, but one which is difficult to read.
                        Ralph Abercromby, "Suggestions for an International Nomenclature of Clouds," 1887.

Saturday 21 January 2012--Water Pools in Dead Grass

Sun today, after snow and bluster and rain yesterday.  It must be warm because the pond is slick and watery, though still frozen, snapping and groaning as the ice shifts. Blue sky; blue sea; blue ice. Frozen water pools in the dead grass, glitters in the sun. The ground is solid now, like rock, and won't absorb the rain.

Sunday, 22 January 2012--A Scattering of Snow

The sky is clear blue this morning, the light golden; a scattering of snow sparkles on the porch railings and floor, and swirls in strange looping patterns across the blue ice of the pond. Every contour is sharp, crisp, defined. At -11 it is cold enough that moisture has dropped from the air, and along with it, all haze. Another day of such cold and near stillness of wind and the sea will begin to freeze. Ducks swim in the shallows, eiders I think, but I would have to look through the binoculars to be sure.  Out by the islands smoke rises from the sea, warmer water lifting into cooler air.  A swath of brittle salt-ice limns the beach where the tide has pulled back.

Tuesday 24 January 2012 (Halifax)--Blot Out the World

A steady rain falls on the ice, the windows, the streets. Wind in the trees, standing water everywhere, the ice rotting and guttering, hiss of tires on pavement, darkness. A twilight day. A day to be home, to stay home, to huddle in bed beneath the eiderdown. Blot out the world. But I am not at home; I am here, in Halifax, and have to trudge to work soon. Cold feet, wet feet and a blown out umbrella--the joys of the day.

Rain. Rain. I listen to Bach's cello sonatas. The wind picks up, flings rain like pebbles at the windows. Time to get up and go now.

Wednesday 25 January 2012--The Sea is a Lung

Home again in woodsmoke and slush and yellow grass and damp earth and singing birds. High tide, and masses of seaweed are tossed up on the island, on the cove shore; they glow, rubescent, beneath grey streaky skies.  Lines of light above the islands. A slight wind. Rain.

Sudden angle of near sun so that the porch floor begins to glisten, the water goes silver and the edges of things sharpen. And then it fades. A brief break of blue overhead. The last one. Seas nearly flat calm, just the motion of the tide rolling in, rippling the glassy surface. That movement always makes me feel as if the earth is breathing, as if the sea is the lung of the world.

Thursday 26 January 2012--Suddenly Sun Flashes

Blue light of a coming storm. Grey clouds, dull sea, a narrow streak of light across the sky to the south. Frozen pond. Suddenly sun flashes through thinning cloud and the sea glistens gold, a beaten brass pan.

Friday 27 January 2012--Descent into a Colourless World

A cold morning. The sea has frozen again nearly all the way to islands and shattered white sheets of ice, like glass, lie crumpled on the beaches. The sun is a pale white orb behind pale clouds; the pond and sea, too, are a whitened grey.  Now is our descent into a colourless world.  A storm is in the offing: snow, then rain then ice, oh joy.  I am glad I do not have to come or go to the city today. 

All night an eerie stillness as we wait for the wind to begin to sigh from afar.

Photos of ice and bladderwrack were shot between 22 and 26 January 2012 on Sober Island and in West Quoddy, Nova Scotia. Whole sequence may be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/karincope/sets/72157629048704619/

Ralph Abercromby's comments on clouds are taken from Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies. London: Picador, 2002, p. 253.

Snapshots

Marina Seca, San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico

1. The wash filled with red earth, spots of mud, standing water.  Swallows flit across the road, a gull flaps by, then suddenly, along the line of trees, a commotion.  An egret lands; the other birds scatter then return while it highsteps happily in the rocky ditch.

 

2. I am on the way to the market.  A bright grey knee-high dog with large ears comes scampering up the road and sniffs my heels. Two women in a golf cart stop to pet it.  One stumps out handling two canes, the dog backs off, then runs forward: he knows her.

3. Water gushes beneath the road, still tumbling out of the mountains after the rains two days ago.  This is where the road washed out in the fall after the hurricane, and an entire work gang is still labouring to replace it.  They've built themselves a tarpaper shack just off of the road; all day they move machinery and screen earth, separating out the stones.  Trucks full of pipes discharge their loads here; a woman waits for the bus; two boys dig what looks like--but cannot be--a shallow grave with pickaxes.  Someone has just planted palms in the median; abrupt holes in the earth--pedestrian beware!--indicate where other plantings may be.  I come from the market and carry heavy bags.  I pick my way through the uneven ground of the median until I arrive at a culvert.  Water is gushing from a cast iron pipe, creating a small red mud lake.  A young engineer balances on the pipe, talking on his cellphone.  He gestures to someone else, then suddenly looses his balance, teeters, his eyes wide as he peers into the watery mud.  He flails his arms, regains his balance, shrugs, then snaps his phone closed and pulls out a tape measure to count off the length of broken pipe.

4. It is night. Cold, clear, the sky filled with stars. There, above the yard, is the big dipper, its handle tipped back along a mast so that the ladle dumps out backwards, pouring starlight over the deck.

5.  It's dusk.  The cattle wander up from the arroyo, where they've been feeding on grass and sheltering in the trees. They decide to cross the road and nothing will hurry them, not the baying of the dogs nor the honking chorus of a line of dusty pick-up trucks, tired men on their way home from work.