The Vitreous Surface of Grief: And, a Death on Halloween

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Dark Humour, Death, Experimental, Music, Nature, Photography, Prose, Quotation, Swamp

“Will I always feel this way?
So empty, so estranged?”
– From the song “Empty” by Ray Lamontagne

Shadows spill in green tendrils across oiled waters. I probe the murky, moschate depths with a long, soggy stick. My hands are black and muddied. Reeds whistle beside me. A seagull mews somewhere far away. Minims of sweat glisten and drop from the end of my nose. I can taste the paracme, the tongue-slitting, nascent edge of the end.

A frog burbles to the vitreous surface. Two aurific eyes shimmer at me, bright as egg-yokes. With a gulp, they vanish. I can smell slime. My fingers balter through the mud. I am waiting. I am always waiting.

The sun spits in my eye and I turn away, longing for the tenebrous clouds of the foggy North to sidle down and cast me in a casket of embalming gloom.

I am addicted to desolation. I ache for darkness, cold and decay.

And then a cool wind finally came. Its chilled fingers ruffled my hair and it made the back gate moan plangorously against its flaking hinges. I reveled, I pranced, I forgot my little pain.

A mouse came in the night. He settled himself in a soft, grey ball beside my feet, nose nuzzling the coarse, back-door rug. I watched him take slow, solemn breaths, his sable eyes squinting, mordant. He died in the wash of a final sunrise that milked across a violescent sky, on the dawn of Halloween. Creatures come to me to die, sometimes.

The ants are burrowing into his raisin eyes, now. In a week or three, his tiny white mouse skull will be decoration on my desk.

There is always a glimmer through grief.

“Walk on down the hill
Through the grass grown tall and brown
And still it’s hard somehow to let go of my pain
On past the busted back
Of that old and rusted Cadillac
That sinks into this field collecting rain”
– From the song “Empty” by Ray Lamontagne

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Craggy Fool

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Abstract, Black and White, Gloom, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sea, Storm

A hairnet of pink lightning
Flames across glum skies
Shadows saunter, charcoaling
The Sea’s velvet skin

October wind coos
Across ruffled iron peaks
The Brine percolates
Each heaving sigh beckoning

Violently out of place
Craggy Fool remains
Askew at the tide-line
Like a lazy sketch

His bulged back still aches
From last night’s dune-pillowed sleep
Nascent rain oozing
Down the minefield of his face

A lifetime of anomie
Stings in his shoulders
His nails chew through leather palms
His eyes cloud with Storm

He envies the clams
Where dungeons feel like Home
And little mole crabs
Soothed by every ruthless blow

Silent moments
Rarely come
Through the ocean thrum

From cinder plumes
Scavengers plunge
Ranting, brash and loud

Tearing out his thoughts, like guts
Twirling filipendulous

Spotted Only with a Magnifying Glass

Tags

Abstract, Experimental, Nature, Photography, Poetry

She is spotted only
with a magnifying glass,
an animalcule
with limescaled wings
And a dusky face.

Clinging to
a breathing blade
of dancing
chloroplasts,
she sees
the fractals flash
in a fury of green-
the mosaics of her
shieling sea.

The dawn scatters
in a migraine of hues,
the aurific daal’mist
sibilant around this
unseen and muted thing.

Waiting to be flicked
by a snapping finger
of prairie wind,
she watches the world,
as listless as a carcass,
through a cage
of tangled light
and vying stems.

Fade to Grain…

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Experimental, Florida, Grain, Lizard, Nature, Odd, Photography, Rain, Wandering, Writing

Olitory rain; a rain-forest in the kitchen, again. Time for a change. Time for an adventure. Time to let the ceiling-cascade water the counter-top-basil-and-sage.

Time to escape.

“Time runs along a linear plain, they say. Nothing remains the same. Thus, we can never turn back, again.”

Pompous, highfalutin windbag…

Another dull interplay as Traffic Light refuses to change.

“You see, this is known as the arrow of time, which describes the asymmetrical nature of Time, and…”

Please…Eat your…GREEN.

Bunched traffic left in a puddle, behind.

What am I doing? What have I been doing all these years?

Unraveling like an old sweater.

All my life, pushing quaint little notes under the slouching fence.  But I see no familiar, vibrant-faced recipient peeping back at me through the shadowy gap in the moldered boards. I only see darkness.

She must have grown up and moved away.

How pretty mold can be, as it glitters in the rain.

She used to snack on fistfuls of buttercups in the field and make her eyes turn white.  She liked to snarl like a mountain bear and play basketball on roller-blades.  And how she loved wild toads.

I have found it- another abandoned place to jauk about, dispensing disheveled, nullibiquitous thoughts out into the ether.

Let the leak in the dysphoric sky wash me like a houseplant.  How lovely to watch each drop scatter the dust.

That liminal phase- I wander through a succession of tropical depressions, a soggy bindle sagging over my shoulder.

A golden-eyed hobo toad searching for a secluded little hovel- preferably filled with mud and rain and, preferably, beneath a mossy stone.

A snort of lightning- a sniffle in the clouds- a sneeze of wind.

When is that point at which the pain of change is less than that of remaining the same?

“You’re beautiful,” she said, “and as gentle as a gale.”

The other day, I noticed that I was missing another tooth.

I keep digging under that same old soggy fence, searching for her bones…

I scuffle away, lutose and mildly bemused.  The usual state.

Time to face the traffic.  Time to shuffle on back, back to the swampy garden on the counter-top.  Back to unraveling into a stringy bundle on the floor.

Back to Entropy.

Fade to grain.

“To The Artist There is Never Anything Ugly…”

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Death, Florida, Monochrome, Nature, Photography, Quotations, Thoughts, Woods

“If reality fails to fill us with wonder, it is because we have fallen into the habit of seeing it as ordinary.”
– Brassaï

“Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.”
– Federico Fellini

“To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.”
– Auguste Rodin

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
– Albert Einstein

Ocean Static Fills My Ears…

Tags

Abstract, Beach, Black and White, Florida, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sea, Water

Sibilant words
Lumber off the sea

Ocean static
Fills my ears

The dunes shrug
Cicadas throbbing

The scent of distant rain
Hanging in a hammock
Of gauzy wind

Fingers probe
Like crab claws
In cold-packed sand

As I listen
To the conversation
Of the waves beyond

The Swamp May Claim My Body One Day…

Tags

Abstract, Animals, Birds, Black and White, Butterfly, Caterpillar, Damselfly, Florida, Hike, Humor, Insects, Merritt Island, Misadventure, Nature, Photography, Story, Sunset, Swamp, Video, Water, Wildlife, Writing

The Swamp may one day claim my body. This past weekend I was found sinking into the muck, yet again. I never mean to deviate out into those gurgling and gushing, reedy and thrillingly mucid marshlands but something always draws me in.

In this case, it was vultures…

A great cluster of black vultures descended right in the middle of the great sprawling mire below and I just had to go tumbling down after them.

They wheezed and grunted and hopped about in a frenzy as I sloshed near. Then in a great charcoal gust they fluttered up and adorned the palm trees above, their crinkled heads bent with sharp, bilge-water brown eyes studying me, looking like dark-frocked, feathered judges scowling down at me.

I sifted about looking for a corpse. To no avail. Disappointed, I continued on. I was soon slopping along in happy oblivion until the mire became a river and the reeds turned into mangrove trees; and even then I ventured further. A tiny gator slipped away and a flurry of silver bodies slapped the surface of the water as they swam away in a fast flash. Little black minnows danced in the golden, tea-stained waters bathed in warm sunset.

Suddenly I remembered that I do not live in the Swamp and that these ruddy parks always have a blasted time-limit. I turned and squished back toward the great sprawling knoll where the path was. I clambered and crawled up through an impenetrable green fog of knotted grass. A merry wind casually chucked vulture feathers, globs of yellow pollen, sticks and burrs into my wild, tangled mane as I clawed along like a blind bear.

At last I popped onto the trail, adorned in Swamp.

I was surprised when I heard a squeak pierce through the meditative hum of honey bees that I had just walked through as they danced from flower to flower at my muculent feet.

I began to concoct a haphazard smile, realizing the squeak had issued forth from a wide-eyed dog-walking lady that had been startled by my sudden appearance. I guess she had no idea someone had been crawling around in the somnolent mire below all this time. She rapidly gathered up her canine companion and shielded the small and thoroughly fascinated terrier from my ghoulish and slovenly sight. The pair darted away as I said with a stumble, becoming entangled in some gigantic weed I hadn’t noticed, “Lovely time for swamping, eh?!” She didn’t reply…I don’t think she heard me…

I immediately became distracted by the lake on the opposite side and soon found myself in the water, yet again, joyfully fiddling with the camera. Time was forgotten yet again as the sun was swiftly hoovered away and squeezed to rust. The phone deep in my pack tootled but I couldn’t be bothered with attempting to dig it out, so I continued to film as I slowly made my way back.

Then I heard a great booming cry warble across the glimmering waters glazed in purple dusk, “PARK CLOSING!”

It seemed to be coming from a tiny dancing dot on the shore across the way…where the park entrance was…

Oh dear…THE TIME!

I tried to assure the little black dot (that was an irate ranger) that I was hurrying as I called out, “I AM COMING! DON’T WORRY! BE RIGHT THERE!”

He was miles away…well, perhaps just one mile.

I wasn’t very near and the wind was probably erasing my calls, so I gesticulated wildly in order to encourage the ranger that I was hurrying. He continued to hop up and down.

Then I started splashing back as quickly as possible.

And then I crouched down in the water to film a rock.

“PARK CLOSING!!!!! PARK CLOSING RIGHT NOW!!!” came a very jarring, caterwauling cry.

I decided I should put the camera away…this was a very difficult chore as my arms suddenly weighed about 18,000 lbs.

I managed to make it back and even avoided being pounded by the red-faced, snowy-mustached ranger as he crammed me into the car and Sir rapidly peeled away (well, rapidly for a tortoise, that is, as Sir is a very sedate, I mean careful, driver- to the outraged ranger’s dismay…). I was able to obtain enough footage for a few wee videos featuring some minute creatures. Here is one below, shot at Pine Island Conservation Area in Merritt Island, FL. Thanks for drizzling by,

Smiling Toad

“The Sun the Color of Pressed Grapes…”

Tags

Abstract, Beach, Black and White, Blur, Drear, Experimental Photography, Nature, Ocean, Pensive, Photography, Quotes, Sand, Sea, Twilight

“He opens his eyes and stares directly into the morning sun which wallows up from the misty sea like some bloated, dying fish. The sky is gray and immobile, a dome of lead. A cloud hangs mute and dark over the western horizon. High up, barely visible, a seagull floats on motionless wings. Its cry is weird and restless.”
– Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal

“I had forgotten that time wasn’t fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. I had forgotten that even misery can end. ”
– Joyce Carol Oates, I Am No One You Know

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
– Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Nothing is Easier Than…”

Tags

Abstract, Abstract Photography, Black and White, Crime, Dark, Experiemental, Literature Quotes, Odd, Pain, Photography, Quotes, Skull, Thoughts

“Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea”
– Dylan Thomas

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I pulled out the letter. It was a receipt for putting my little dog to sleep. When I realized what they’d done, I think I screamed…I believe that this was the moment the world lost me, for pain quickly turned to fury.”
– Edward Bunker, Education of a Felon

“Winter was gray and mean upon the city and every night was a package of cold bleak hours, like the hours in a cell that had no door.”
– David Goodis, Of Tender Sin

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”
-Jorge Luis Borges

“The World in All Its Tainted Glory”

Tags

Abstract, Abstract Photography, Black and White, Grief, Hope, Literary Quotes, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Sadness, Swan, Water

“Everybody is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

“His dislike of mankind, of the mass of mankind, amounted almost to an illness.”
– D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to man has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.”
– Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal

“I had a dream. I was walking a beautiful street. On one side were white buildings with columns. On the other side, a park. And under the trees along the street was a dark green band. Then I came to a high wall, covered completely by roses. A plane came and set fire to the roses. It was not such a bad thing, since it was so beautiful. I looked into the water. How the roses were burning.”
– Ingmar Bergman, Shame

“It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
– Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband