Long walk to Lynch, Friday, February 17

When I was a teen we call this stand of stones 'utopia.'

It’s in the 50s. In February. I made it home earlier than usual today, by 4:30 p.m., and the weather was still great, still in the 50s. So when I reached the end of Lothrop, I decided to keep going around Hale Street and down Ober to Lynch Park by way of Woodbury Street. (View more of these photos on Flickr.)

The setting sun continued to cast its rosy glow on everything, up-lighting a stand of tall pines in pink on Ober.

Tucked behind more modern homes near the end of Woodbury, a once-gorgeous sea-side, waits for someone with enough fortunes and care to replace its rotten porches and crumbling cornices.

On the other side of the cove, the Carriage House’s once-grand stature stands only slightly better preserved on the Lynch Park seawall. Its windows are full of color. There are vested individuals who seek to restore the building. Around the opposite side it has new doors and the floors of what they’re calling “The Cabot Room” have been restored.

I continue walking up past the playground and around the Lynch Park point capturing the sunset on my little Olympia, looking back over Mackerel Cove from this vantage point, attempting to secure an image of Quincy Park and Dane Street and the steeples of Cabot Street in the distant their silhouettes tall and looming, their internal lights just beginning to come up to dispel the dusk. And around the corner back at Hospital Point the light house lights come on, both inside and out.

The temperature drops and the wind picks up and sun sets. I pick up my pace and head on back home.

The Carriage House at Sunset

No walk, Thursday, February 16

Even the humdrum scene outside my window can be a source of inspiration.

It has been busy in the office this week. Well, busy in general lately. Seems (isn’t this the way with everyone) like the hurrier I go the behinder I get. So no walk this morning. And no walk this evening. Instead, wiped out at the end of the day I talked Chris into taking me to the Wild Horse Restaurant on Cabot Street for Caesar salad and steak tips.

But once you get to taking pictures, once you get to focusing on something, that something has a way nudging your subconscious. You must have had this experience. Like when you learn a new vocabulary word and suddenly it seems like everyone is using that particular word. You wonder if they’ve always been using it and you never noticed or if now somehow everyone seems to have magically learned the same word as you.

Last year, fed up with my boring, white-trash-looking, gravel-and-grass driveway, I decided to repave the path with seashells. I dumped buckets of blue and purple mussel shells in wavy strips, highlighting the edges of those strips with black seaweed, and then another strip of white scallop shells. Every time the cars ran over them, they’d crunch and snap. At the beach, toes in the sand you may not really notice the shells. (Of course, certain beaches on Mackerel Cove feature more shells than sand, but you get my drift.) Once I started looking for the big white curve of scallop shells, I saw them everywhere. I quickly learned which cove housed the most abundant collection of which shell type. I harvested and harvested those shells. But by the end of the summer I’d only covered half the driveway and sparsely at that. I gave up.

But I digress.

Since I started this Mackerel Cove Blog project, I’ve been trying to pick up on contrast, learn more about photographing light, and how the use of light lends drama and depth to a photograph. I’ve been interested in this idea of chiaroscuro since Laure-Anne Bosselaar first introduced me to it back in the summer of 2008. (That and duende.) Chiaroscuro refers to clear tonal contrasts found in painting. (Thanks wiki. Artists out there, please weigh in on your understanding of the word and its implications in art.) More than that, however, some artists began to use light and dark as pseudo characters in their own right—symbolically indicating the goodness or evilness of an illustrated moment or object by catching the light just right. Admittedly, I am woefully ill equipped to describe this. And it is probably fodder for a longer essay/research project. I’ve reached out to a number of poets in an attempt to understand why there is no chiaroscuro equivalent in poetry and why we, as poets, have not co-opted the word for use in our critique and poetic constructions.

Sigh. I digress again.

A cloud waves a come-hither swirl in defiance of its darker brothers.

Even though I did not go for any walks today. The contrast of cloud cover outside my office window could not be denied. I had to capture this contrast, had to capture these malleable landscapes and shifting horizon lines all wrapped in white and gray.

What do these images evoke to you beside a simple cloudy day? Where is the hope, and where lies the thread of threat in these photographs?

Everywhere I find contrast these days. My work has kept me away from walk for the day but oh, then perhaps tomorrow morning’s endeavor will be that much brighter.

Frost, Wednesday February 15

Winnie the whining seagull with his mouth full

It is particularly cold out this morning. Cold in a particular way, I guess more than it is particularly (or unusually) cold. There is a thin frost crusting the neighborhood and the sidewalks are a bit slippery.

I have my book. I am reading Kerouac’s haikus now. And I have a bag of stale rolls. I am wearing my jammies, of course, underneath my rust-colored down fluff of a coat. I must look like quite the sight.

The seagulls are not in their usual sentinel spots atop the peak of the home at the end of Quincy park. I march down to the beach with my bundle anyway. I know they will come once they see what I have brought.

I start to toss the crusts into the water. They are too hard and stale for me this time to pull apart and multiply my loaves for the fowl. They start to come.

Gullies of shadow on a frosty beach.

A man in a van lets loose his pooch. The thing runs across the sand, darts up the staircase loops back around and does it again. The gulls take off, confused. The man laughs a deep, hearty cackle. And yes, it sounded like a big rude cackle.

Soon he is gone though and the seagulls are engaged in their typical rancorous scavenging.  Winnie is there too. He is crying as he always is. Even when I toss a roll to him specifically and even when he gets the entire thing in his beak he is squawking.

I’ve lingered, played with the birds long enough. Delighted enough in the swoop and sway. Time to be on my way.

Ice beads cling to a bush's green

The frost interests me this morning. Its pointed delicacy fascinates me. The juxtaposition of light and dark interests me today in a way that it may not have previously. See, my husband encouraged me the other day (not that it takes much to get my ego fanned) regarding my photos. We talked about color fields and Rothoko’s work and we looked back over my collections’ latest works. Not that he was saying my work is comparative to Rothoko’s but more reminiscent of it.

Silver lamb's ear highlights dead flower stalks.

I stop on my way to the stairs and snap a shot of the frost on the beach and the gullies of terrain that catch nothing but shadow despite the intensity of sunrise.

Up on the walk again it seems the frost highlights contrast everywhere. Leaves on a bush edged in minuscule drops of ice

cannot contain their garish green, it bursts forth. A stand of once cranberry colored autumn yarrow poses like a model against a bed of silver, wilted Lamb’s ear.

Down at Dane, my focus on frost leads me to another discovery—the tree that was, and was then a stump, was ground down now frost covered mulch.

A tree that stood, a nest of roots that was, now nothing more than frost favored mulch

Failure, Saturday, February 11

Failure. Failure. Failure.

It’s the only word that comes to mind as I sit down to write another blog post after an 11-day absence. People told me this would happen. Older, wiser, more experienced bloggers told me it was crazy to set an expectation for myself to blog every day. I told them I could handle it. I told myself that as long as I post a photo from my walk and even just a sentence or two, that it would count. Then, not even into my first week, I changed my goals. Told myself that a post every other day was fine. Told myself not to be too hard on myself and now the days have flown by and I have not written, have not carved out a sacred space for this priority. Even the minor duty of composing a short verse for Twitter seems to have fallen away. All that’s posted is:

• Feb. 9 Moon rising. Translucent pumpkin flickering light. Lucky girl who catches it appearing, rising.
• Feb. 9 The man with the German shepherd had no woman by his side this morning. His smile was strong but quick.
• Feb. 6 A certain sweep of sun-touched cloud, a thousand glistening stars blink in and out of existence. At the end of the road, the cemetery.
• Feb. 2 An old (?) tree cut down from its stand on the side of park overlooking the beach. How long had it stood and why was it necessary to fall?

What can I say about it now? I can re-pledge my allegiance. Renew my vow. That’s all.

And a recap. I have to recap, find those missing days. As easy as it would be to simply leave them where they lay and move on, there are many moments in those missing days that want telling, sharing. I cannot leave them behind. (I’ll date the posts as if I’d done my job.)

So let’s try a little bit of time travel coupled with a promise to do better next week.

For Robins, Monday, February 6

A poem remembered

On the 6^th I must not have gotten out in the morning or evening for that matter. Things have been busy at the office and I have been tired, in a rush to get to work and wiped out when I get home. But I did manage to get out for lunch today. While this isn’t strictly about walking along Lothrop Street. I thought I’d post the first pictures of the first robins of the season. I do not believe in the myth of the first robin of spring, though. When the office was located in Marblehead, MA, I used to see trees full of robins in the middle of snow storms, their red breasts like berries or flowers in otherwise barren trees. Once, I believed in the myth and their appearance caught me off guard. I wrote this poem:

For robins in the bush 

Snow falls big

as it should

on Christmas.

Coffee steams a small

segment of my

windshield.

It is not

Christmas.

It is not

Spring, either.

So when I see a flock

          of robins

sprout blooms in winter bush

I slow the car

to catch a better

glimpse

 before

they all

fly away.

Pottery

I almost passed by this piece of pottery hanging precariously from a tree branch.

I also wanted to mention a bit about finding my way with my camera and my intuition. Since the tree at the edge of Dane Street was chopped down, I find I’ve been more dedicated with the camera. Before, I would not have taken the time to acknowledge each notion of my eye as to what might be beautiful or worth capturing. You may have read that I had mentioned wanting to tell “stories” for each of the trees to notice their markings… But my chance with that one tree was gone. So I found myself being ever more diligent in capturing photographs of items I would have come back to later or ignored entirely. Again this isn’t in the strict vein of this blog, the photo being snapped along Holten Avenue in Danvers near its new trail walk. I walked by this shard of pottery stuck on a tree limb and had to walk back to it to take a number of photos of it. I spent, oh maybe five minutes, but the sun’s reflection on its surface and the pure strangeness of the artifact in this environment were well worth examining.

Every day’s walk opens new experiences for me. I cannot imagine a life without the possibilities offered by simply making one’s self open to them.

Commitment, Sunday February 5

How emotionally moving can a certain sweep of cloud actually be?

Remember I am writing in retrospect, now. I am lying. I am telling you what I think I would have told you had I

Depending on the focus of your attention you can actually catch the sun, or rather its reflection. Nothing is really what we think it is.

remained true to my mission. A mission I so quickly (albeit akin to most well-intentioned bloggers) relinquished in honor of other obligations. So I do not remember this walk taking place on a Sunday.

For February, the colors here are amazing.

I do not remember much of this walk at all. The photos I took on this day say that I took them on February 5. February 5 is a Sunday so I must have taken them on Sunday morning. Waking on a Sunday morning is like me seeing a mythical creature. It never happens. Evidentially, this Sunday, however, it did.

I do remember grabbing a bag of old rolls.

Oh, no. That was Saturday.

I remember being particularly impressed with the swish of the clouds above the sun. And, well, who can not be impressed with the sun’s rise every day? (Today, actually February 17, I saw a video of tornadoes on the surface of the sun!) Being amazed at a swish of clouds above a rising sun is one of the blessings of a commitment made to oneself. Hum. A commitment made to oneself in homage to the amazing gifts of the universe. I mean, look at this.

Just the same, it is so hard to stick to the commitment. You all must feel this way. It doesn’t

matter what the obligation may be. Perhaps it is quitting smoking, or drinking, or reading more, or brushing your teeth more frequently, or remembering to floss. For me, now, it is to stick to my commitment of walking everyday, of remaining true to my commitment to write every day.

God, it is so beautiful and rewarding. How can I possibly ignore it? How can I chose that five minutes of sleep over this?

Breakfast for the gulls, Saturday, February 4

The ocean's ripples seemed cool and clear enough for a summer day.

We’d had a “souper bowl” party at the office (in advance of the Patriot’s playing against the Giants, we invited co-workers to bring in crock-pots of their best soups for a taste test) and there were a few bags of rolls left over. At the end of the week they were still there so I grabbed them for the gulls.

On January 31, I’d felt like I was being followed by a flock of gulls, hovering high above me, protecting their adolescent kin. Somehow maybe I felt like I had to prove myself to the crew, to show them I was no menace, remind them that they see me everyday. I’m not sure this was the way.

It wasn't until after I'd fed the gulls that I had enough presence of mind to photograph them.

I did not make it a quarter of the way down Quincy Park’s side street before the flock mobilized. They were all over me. They didn’t recognize me otherwise they’d have exhibited this behavior in my previous walks. No. They recognized the bag I was carrying. They’d seen it and its kind before. They knew what it meant. Breakfast.

The bag was stuffed with bread. Maybe 40 or 50 smallish rolls. My sack was no match for their hunger. Each roll I pulled out, I pulled apart into two, three, four pieces if possible, tossing the strips first this way, then that. I aimed for the ones at the outer edges of the group with larger, harder rolls. The courageous who rose and hovered just out of reach over my head got their pieces if they were quick and no faster gull robbed them. The one-legged one about two feet from my outstretched right arm got more than his share, admittedly.

I was too enraptured in the act to think about photographing it. It was thrilling. Beautiful.

Today, I try to capture the vein-like reflections of sunlight in the waves. The water looks clear enough to be a backyard pool. Pleasant enough (in digital) to make me want to wade into its coolness, caress its depth, feel the warmth of those thin rays on my skin. But it is winter and all that can be seen, anything that I think that I can capture is mere illusion.

Illumination of scars, Thursday February 2

Notice the scars on this tree. I am sure someone knows how such a think might occur. But perhaps it is the poets job to merely wonder?

No walk this morning but an evening one. It is starting to rain again. A winter without snow. I am playing with taking night photos. Playing. This time my playmate is a tree at the end of the path at Quincy Park. I shoot with the night feature on. It lights up as if it were ablaze.

I step closer, aim my shot up into its arms.

The flash illuminates its scars. One is white, the other black. At least to a layman’s eye.

We have no artists’ sense of color when we walk by objects do we? We only see what we see in a flash. Even with the camera, even in retrospect, there is no time to distinguish the shade of beige that splits up the branch like an open wound, no combination of gray/black/brown to adequately describe the snake that slithers up this trunk disappearing into the night and the reaches of all the branches like a living thing attempting its escape from my flash.

Tonight, like many mornings and many evenings, I stepped from my stoop and set forth. The walk was the walk and nothing more. There was a book in my hand and weariness in my feet and my mind from the day, from the day-to-day. And then there were these scars on this tree and the light rain falling and the trial and error of a simple thing. A machine in my hand and its miracle of image capturing—its mirage of illumination.

Scars and illumination. It must be a theme for another blog post.

Farewell to a tree, February 1

A tree that was.

I swear it was only a few days ago that I took photos of this tree’s reflection in a puddle. Just a few days ago that I’d tried to capture its depth and the rain and the way puddles somehow look so deep sometimes that you could jump in and disappear and be transported into another world.

But I only photographed a portion of the trunk of it. I only photographed a portion of its bare branches stretching out over the muddy waters pooled in the Dane Street drive.

And today it was just gone.

They must have came like thieves in the night to take its life. But no, that too romantic. To impractical. My inconsistent attentiveness (my inattentiveness) led me to miss any clues that may have offered any foreshadowing, that might have led me to understand its cause.

The stump that is.

And all that’s left is a nest of roots and a close-cropped stump.

And I remember writing that at some point I will need to focus on the trees on my walk and document them all. Attempt to tell some semblance of the imagined stories of their lives. And this one, all of a sudden, is gone from that collection of tales.

And I think again that this is/was part of the purpose of my tackling this project; to capture the fleeting pleasures, acknowledge their influence, before they are gone.

The sun is bright and orange and the sky deep in its gray bed, wants to sleep still. The kind sun will not abide but it comes soft, gentle into its rise. I have a thought to try to capture reflections of this shining on the windows of the Lothrop Street homes. But I snap only one shot.

The clouds look like a coverlet for the sky.

Being followed: Big sky, ego, Tuesday, January 31

Seriously, they were chasing me.

Overcast. A few snow flakes fall. The forecast calls for warm weather and sunshine today, though. The mild winter continues.

One doesn’t know whether to be thankful, appreciative, or apprehensive. Knowing the winters as we do we worry, forget about the ebb and flow of nature, forget to appreciate whatever weather it is we wake to.

Ego. It is all encompassing.

At the beach, I stop at the top of the stairs leading down to the sands. A gullet, a first winter juvenile, all brown and grey speckled, calls like a baby to its kin. (Later, I’ll recognize the tone and pitch of that call when my nine month old kittens greet me at the door after work, calling for their supper.) A few moments pass while I watch wondering about the connection between the two birds. I know, instinctively that it must be familial but I do not know for sure and so I pause in my pondering. The whiter gull takes flight. Another I’d not previously noticed hovers into my sight from behind my right shoulder. They call.

There are only nine in this photo. There were a dozen others, I swear.

I am enthralled.

The next moment the entire shoreline lifts. Gulls from rooftops, from Sandy Point, from I don’t know where, cyclone above.

I wait. Think. I didn’t bring any bread. Remembering a scene from an earlier walk where a woman come out from her home on the edge of Quincy & Lothrop to toss her day-old to them.

Still they spin. And still I am enthralled at their whirling.

And then I wonder if they are not seeking food, but acting collectively. Seeking protection. From me.

Of course, it makes sense. There was the infant. (Of course I wasn’t sure it was an infant, but I was instinctively sure, that counts doesn’t it?) But I’d never even got near to it. There was a man with two dogs down on the beach closer than me. Why weren’t they hovering over him, pecking his unleashed pooches?

Ego, Melissa. Ego. They’re not after you. I reasoned. Just doing their seagull business.

And so I walked on. And the flock followed. There were more than 20 of them. And I don’t mean one or two followed. And don’t try to tell me that it was in my head. Incrementally, they moved as one unit keeping pace with my pace.

It was crazy.

It was beautiful.

They didn’t screech at me. They didn’t come close. They hovered and, well, flocked, floating in the air above me. Anthropomorphizing, they were checking me out. Ushering me on my way. I was happy to go, of course. Snapping photos of them the whole way, of course.

To be honest, what an ego trip. Hey, flock, I mean you no harm but thanks for checking me out.