Found this this morning. Don't know what to say...
26 May 2007
Yosemite National Park
03 March 2007
'...Well I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there
Many stories told me of the way to get there
So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out
There's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to findout
Well in the end I'll know, but on the way I wonder
Through descending snow, and through the frost and thunder
I listen to the wind come howl, telling me I have to hurry
I listen to the robin's song saying not to worry...'
Cat Stevens
'On the Road to Findout'
25 May 2007
20 May 2007
Two egrets fly above and beyond me in the pasture. Like buddies bumping shoulders, they fly so near to each other that their wings brush. I can hear the shush, feathers against feathers. Then the birds catch a rhythm, in such synchrony that their adjacent wings rotate as blades on a shared turbine, their bodies close like the two sides of the turbine’s hub held by an invisible pin.
The pasture and trees are very green, the egrets very white, the sky very blue.
The pasture and trees are very green, the egrets very white, the sky very blue.
19 May 2007
I pick up Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 every five years or so. There is something new to be found with every reading. I wrote the author once to let him know there is one more person on the planet who deeply values his unusual war novel.
The book centers around the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII. Actually, it doesn’t center around anything, but Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time of the bombing, and the book is permeated by his experience.
He doesn’t harp on what happened, or make judgments. He delivers one observation after another through the eyes of his dazed, time-warped main character, Billy Pilgrim. Like a tiny Greek Chorus, a bird comments on the unexplained, perhaps inexplicable, human activity.
At least once during the war, Vonnegut himself must have heard a bird singing from within the surreal events around him.
Beautiful Kurt Vonnegut died last month. I couldn’t help but wonder if the happy bird I heard every morning during my travel regardless of where I landed wasn’t the same bird who followed his character Billy. I was told the bird I heard is a gorge rouge, or red throat. It has an elaborate, cheerful way of speaking, always ending with a question. I’m quoting from memory here, but I believe Vonnegut’s bird asked: Po-te-weet?
The book centers around the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII. Actually, it doesn’t center around anything, but Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time of the bombing, and the book is permeated by his experience.
He doesn’t harp on what happened, or make judgments. He delivers one observation after another through the eyes of his dazed, time-warped main character, Billy Pilgrim. Like a tiny Greek Chorus, a bird comments on the unexplained, perhaps inexplicable, human activity.
At least once during the war, Vonnegut himself must have heard a bird singing from within the surreal events around him.
Beautiful Kurt Vonnegut died last month. I couldn’t help but wonder if the happy bird I heard every morning during my travel regardless of where I landed wasn’t the same bird who followed his character Billy. I was told the bird I heard is a gorge rouge, or red throat. It has an elaborate, cheerful way of speaking, always ending with a question. I’m quoting from memory here, but I believe Vonnegut’s bird asked: Po-te-weet?
16 May 2007
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