Church of Crickets

Tom Waits (on Robert Wilson): "Wilson, he's always playing with time. I heard a recording recently of crickets slowed way down. It sounds like a choir, it sounds like angel music. Something sparkling, celestial with full harmony and bass parts - you wouldn't believe it. It's like a sweeping chorus of heaven, and it's just slowed down, they didn't manipulate the tape at all. So I think when Wilson slows people down, it gives you a chance to watch them moving through space. And there's something to be said for slowing down the world."

Growing up in the south, the summer chorus of crickets and cicadas felt like a throbbing pulse, and it's one of the things I miss most about living in that verdant climate.  This recording brings that sound and the pace of the south to another level. 

Listen here.
 
Source: "Woyzeck to run at Freud Playhouse". Daily Bruin (USA), by Andrew Lee. December 3, 2002

Dispatch from Vermont: Fresh Morels

My parents were extremely excited to find a single morel in their woods, which they quickly cooked up in an omelette.   Then a friend mentioned that they had a whole patch of them, and invited my parents over to harvest to their hearts' content.  My mom brought her new trug from Ancient Industries, while my dad took the photos of the bounty.  What a life!




*Full disclosure: I hate eating mushrooms, but I love everything else about them.

Mingling interchange

'There is no death in mortal things, and no end in ruinous death.  There is only mingling and interchange of parts, and it is this that we call 'Nature.'"  -- Empedocles

From Bernd Heinrich's The Trees in My Forest.  He then proceeds to describe the ancient trees that lose their limbs and slowly fall into disrepair and decay, only to provide more food and shelter to the other living things in the woods.  I find it to be a very comforting thought.

Also, I stumbled upon this preview of a documentary on Bernd Heinrich.  I think his sweater and theories on coffee bode well for the rest of the film.

Picture above from one of my many trips to Vermont.

Trees

For Christmas, I received a copy of Bernd Heinrich's book, The Trees in my Forest, in which he describes the details of his forest ecosystem.  The detail employed requires observation skills far beyond my own, but his ability to sit atop a tree and sketch the surrounding treetops each season, noting all the subtle changes, exhibits a youthful curiosity we all have buried.  Perhaps that curiosity is tempered by the wise processing of what the observations actually mean, something I'm still working on grasping. 

Woodcut prints above by Bryan Nash Gill.

Dispatch from the VT Woods

A damp and early spring came to Vermont this year.  The trilliums bloomed and gone, there was still winter debris left on the paths.  She came upon this eft newt slipping off a branch -- he was only trying to get a better view.  All was well as she scooped him up and perched him atop her head.  The walk allowed them both to clear their minds and with this new vantage, the adolescent newt could now grasp the extent of his habitat out of the pond.   

More info on the Eastern/red-spotted newt here.

Lingering decks

I'm harboring dreams of low slung decks in the woods – easy access to adjacencies, a sense of open possibility and simple lines.  


top image/bottom image

Watery pools of light

Wearing this ring would be like wearing a snapshot of the perfect swimming hole.  Always there to gaze into as if you were sitting alone on a hot rock, being cooled just by the sight of it.  Whoever made this ring in 1820 must have known exactly what I'm talking about.

From Erie Basin, purveyor of dreams.

Ghost Mobile

More on this later...

Vermont after the rain

I forgot to post this a couple of weeks ago while visiting my parents in Vermont.  It was thundering and pouring at cocktail hour, then the golden light and rainbows came out for the dinner hour.   Best show in town.

Faces in the trees

(one is never truly alone in the woods)

Dreaming of Vermont

Last August, I visited my parents in southern Vermont like I do every summer.  My mom is good at finding secret spots in the woods and I always enjoy exploring them with her.  In addition to the abandoned 18th century graveyard (pics to come), she also found this old road which has now become an overgrown trail.  It goes over the mountain behind the house and around to the Williams River and the Bartonsville Covered Bridge.  A couple hours after starting out, we emerge from the dense tree canopy to a more modern dirt road framed by blackberries.  A sweet treat at the end of our labor.  Last year, we saw maidenhair ferns and red eft newts.  The wild and moist lushness is an antidote to the dry wilds of LA, though both hold places in my heart.  I can't wait to get to the woods again this summer.