Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex. The Downs were a ten minute walk away. It's probably all built up now with paved roads and council houses. Bleh! So, in a way, I'm glad I haven't gone back to see all of that. I'm content to keep my memories intact.
I live in Southern California now in the extended suburban sprawl outside of Los Angeles. All concrete with only the occasional palm trees to break up the monotony; it can be stultifying.
I miss the vibrant, magical green of England.
Ever mindful of the maxim that brevity is the soul of wit, axordil sums up the Sil:
The thing that really alarmed and amazed me about the enormous LA sprawl is the intense congestion.
You can drive for ten miles in a straight line on the same road and not see an inch of empty space that can be built upon.
There is just so much congested structures/human expanse that it boggles the mind. I found myself pining for a vacant lot even.
I say knock down 10% of the gas stations and fast food joints and just let the earth recover a bit. So you may have to drive an extra block to get a Quarter Pounder?
Meh.
Hmmh, I'm confused - if it's the Prunus Domestica, it would seem to be the normal plum tree - so, of course I've seen it - but why did my dictionary give me such an exotic name and why didn't the English eat the plums (according to Pearl, they used it for dye)?
Anyway, more on topic - everything here is just exploding with spring, too!
Before I left for Edinburgh, there was not a single leaf on any tree, and when I got back, everything was budding. The lilies of the valley are pretty high already, and the leaves of the trees are making up for having started two weeks later than usual by growing so much faster.
I didn't get round to visit the wood-anemones in a little wood half an hours' walk from here, and I think they'll probably be over by now - they are such a beautiful sight, covering the ground with a white carpet.
(I'll see if I find a pic to post in the picture thread.)
but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
truehobbit wrote:Hmmh, I'm confused - if it's the Prunus Domestica, it would seem to be the normal plum tree - so, of course I've seen it - but why did my dictionary give me such an exotic name and why didn't the English eat the plums (according to Pearl, they used it for dye)?
That's a good question. Yes, why. Perhaps there were enough plums both for cooking and, er, to export for dye!!
Wood-anemones are beautiful. I like to imagine them as niphredil.
"Frodo undertook his quest out of love - to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could ... " Letter no. 246, The Collected Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Avatar by goldlighticons on Live Journal
Earlier in the evening, my husband and I had stood on the bank overlooking our little cove. We watched the last warm fingers of the westering sun touch upon the arching limbs of the old arbutus that stretches in perpetual thanksgiving towards the light offered by that open space of water and stone and shell. Those final rays were piercingly and shockingly golden, turning the thin, peeling bark of the great tree into a glow of embers and its smooth, exposed skin into hot yellow flames licking along its branches. My head told me that it was the last sunset of summer; that in a few short hours, there would be a moment that would pass, silent and uncounted, in which one season would pass and another begin. My heart told me that if I hearkened to it, I would hear summer’s last, peaceful sigh in the rustling maple leaves overhead; great, broad leaves transformed by the last rays of light into a translucent gold-green canopy that seemed to bend down towards us as we walked the path along the forest edge, wrapping us in their changing hues, whispering to us in voices still soft and melodious before the brittle rattle of their final, falling dance.
These thoughts stayed with me as the light finally faded into darkness, and candles were lit and a deep red wine was savoured. They stayed with me as the bats darted, black against a slate sky and the stars appeared one by one in a revelation of quickening intensity. Perhaps it was these thoughts that entered into my sleep, preventing me from burrowing deeper into dream. Beginnings and endings. The beauty of a daughter’s smile before she turned to face her future. The wonder of a son growing tall towards manhood. The sharp swiftness of time.
Perhaps because these thoughts stayed with me in shallow sleep, when I awoke fully before dawn another thought was in my mind. I had seen and felt the setting sun on the last day of summer and now, more than anything, I wanted to witness it rising into autumn’s first morning.
Wrapped in down, I stepped into the chill of deep night and felt the stone patio cool and rough under my feet. I tucked myself into the V of a corner bench, and leaned back to look upward to the stars. They were still bright within the dark pools of sky that were bordered here and there with shadowy clouds – the only bright things in a dark, dark world, it seemed. Water, sky, wood and field blended together in various shades of grey, and with sight diminished, the sounds of night attained a simple and beautiful clarity: the sleepy chirruping of ducks bobbing unseen on the waters below, the drawn-out, comical croak of the little tree frog, slick and emerald green, that lives in the garden under the climbing rose, a rooster call echoing far in the distance, snapping twigs and rustling branches that marked the slow, cautious passage of our resident doe and her fawn, the sudden breath of an awakening motor somewhere in the harbour beyond the point, followed by the soft exhalations of “putt-putt-putt” as someone, wrapped in darkness, urged a little boat out to sea.
Before the color of the sky changed, the stars began to fade. As each one went out, it seemed that the heavens took on its light and diffused it across the entire sky. Forms sharpened as the darkness fled, and blotches of black became a copse of slender vine maples, the trellis over a garden gate, a future burning pile of deadfall and pruned branches waiting for the rains to come. I could feel the dew beginning to cling to the quilt cover, and the chill in the air grow more intense as the sky became an expanse of milky white. A mist formed, suspended over the waters of our cove and on into the harbour, veiling the distant hills and relegating familiar islets as places in memory rather than sight. Ocean, garden, trees, fences, sky – all took on the pale light of dawn, their colours oddly flat, as if viewed through clouded glass. And then, quite suddenly, the sea mist changed, and became tinged with a colour I had no name for: a colour of warmth against a deepening blue sky. Light seemed to chase away the mists as the first rays of the morning sun stretched into the cove and bounced against tree trunks and leaves, tall grasses and beach pebbles. But soon I realized that the mists hadn’t really disappeared – they had become suspended throughout the very air, like the fading stars melting into the pale light of the awakening sky – and they were infused with a pink gold and violet cream that continued to deepen until earth, sky and water were one great glow. On the edge of the beach across from us, the tree trunks turned to burnished copper and the still, clear waters that met its graceful curve were crystal green. From the branches of the old arbutus that we stood beside at sunset, a kingfisher burst over the cove as if drawn to the glowing light reflected on the other side. It’s familiar call sounded like a laugh – like a joyful welcome to the coming day, autumn’s first morning.
'Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?' Those words came to me as I roused myself and stole back into the house for a cup of tea and the added warmth of morning sunshine through window glass. Beginnings and endings mean little when you wholly embrace the currents of the world, even fleetingly. I had, for a little while, escaped from the harness of time. It was more than being in the moment or being aware of the moment……it was being the moment itself.
Sometimes, I think, it can be good not to sleep.
Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon. Jalal ad-Din Rumi
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
I read it and was called away and meant to come back and tell you how much I liked it, cem—but forgot.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Working overnights in Boston I would frequently see the sunrise over the Harbor and sunsets beyond the mountains of Westerns MA. I would drive through thick early morning fog as it curled and spun itself around anything that stood in its way. I've seen deer gracefully, calmly trotting about the landscape raising their ears and walking about. (I saw one buck often enough to call him John.) Rattle snakes shaking and warning us that we were too close. Blinding biblical snowstorms dumping feet of the white stuff in a matter of hours, and adding a little thunder and lightning just for good measure. Red tailed hawks snatching pigeons out of the sky so quickly and with such percision that you wondered how we were the ones who ended up on the top of the food chain.
But nature's beauty to me was defined by the struggle of one locust tree pusing through the pavement by a souvenier shop at Fenway Park. Year after year in the spring this sapling would sprout through one single crack in the asphalt. It would get cut back, poisoned and paved over, yet still it managed to grow. By my senior year of highschool whoever was trying to keep this one tree at bay had either given up, been fired, or died. The tree now stands just under three meters tall, cracking the sidewalk with its roots and wreaking all sorts of havoc with the shop's foundation. It isn't a pretty tree by 'normal' standards. It's the tree world's equivalent of a pimply faced nerd. But it is persistant. It knows only one thing in life. It works for one goal, and that is to be, to exist, to keep shooting up and to never stop.
I remember going to the Grand Canyon with my family. The vistas were indescribably breathtaking. Even my memory does not do that natural wonder justice. What I remember most, however, was a large heap of what used to be some type of shelter. Overgrown with vines and brush this rusted, rotten pile of wood would be forgotten by mankind and eaten by nature. Some young tree would begin to push through and man's creation would become nature's food. We are left furoiusly trying to bring our definition of order to what we consider chaos.
Wonderful, Prince Alarming!
That sort of thing gives a person reason to hope that all the havoc we wreak here won't stop nature in the end.
We used to have a TV series for children here that was decidedly "green" oriented - it was called "Dandelion" and for the start titles it had a cartoon of a dandelion breaking through the asphalt in the middle of a road. These things are good to see.
but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
It was cold today. The wind would whip right through you, coat or no.
I have not been well lately, but felt a trip to the beach would be just right today. Nobody goes to the beach on winter days. That means a long span of sand. Just for me and my thoughts.
I stopped on the swinging bench to lift my feet off the wet ground for a few moments. I watched the clouds, so moody and dark, changing as quickly as the things in my mind.
Then I walked down onto the beach, past the bare trees. Trees that are so lush and green in the summer, raising their arms toward the sky. It was as though they were requesting their warm leaves back to help with the winter weather.
The beach was smooth and wet. Bits of foamy ice clung to occasional leaves, remnants of a fall that still seems to be here, as we have no snow.
I was alone. No birds, no fish, not even a paw print in the sand from a winter traveler.
Then I saw it.
The bottle.
There was no message inside. There was no need. The words had been whispered to the wind. They were carried across the water to the one who is loved.
I left the beach with an empty head, but a full heart.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
'Fear nothing! Have peace until morning! Heed no nightly noises!'
