Frozen Photos
Forgive me: I don't leave early enough in the morning. I am eager to get home to dinner at night. I don't stop. I don't slow the car, pull over, slip my feet into boots and traipse across iced savannahs. I have not captured these places with what we onced called film.
But there are several images that I've seen this last month, and loved:
1) Fence poles, stark and gray against an afternoon sky, slices of shadow splicing the snow. They are straight and crooked and lonely. Yet brave. They remind me of thin children in a school yard lined up to jump rope.
2) Sand dunes that are snow dunes, Antarctic ridges that are Saharan ridges. Hills that rise up, their wide bodies tinged with blue, into a blue-white sky.
3) Thick snow on the roads. At 6:07 a.m--the morning black except for headlights and all this otherwordly visiting white--I think, We tell ourselves we have settled this land, cut through it cleanly from one city to the next--but we are all visitors. We are swimmers. It is easy enough to be moved.
And the one that haunts me most:
4) The three tall maple trees to the south of Highway 7, up high on the ridge line. They stand like sisters, bathed in early light, robed in gold. I look to them each morning for a sign. I'm not sure why. I glance at their branches, half-expecting to one day see an arm, a hand, a thousand fingers pointing me east or west.
But there are several images that I've seen this last month, and loved:
1) Fence poles, stark and gray against an afternoon sky, slices of shadow splicing the snow. They are straight and crooked and lonely. Yet brave. They remind me of thin children in a school yard lined up to jump rope.
2) Sand dunes that are snow dunes, Antarctic ridges that are Saharan ridges. Hills that rise up, their wide bodies tinged with blue, into a blue-white sky.
3) Thick snow on the roads. At 6:07 a.m--the morning black except for headlights and all this otherwordly visiting white--I think, We tell ourselves we have settled this land, cut through it cleanly from one city to the next--but we are all visitors. We are swimmers. It is easy enough to be moved.
And the one that haunts me most:
4) The three tall maple trees to the south of Highway 7, up high on the ridge line. They stand like sisters, bathed in early light, robed in gold. I look to them each morning for a sign. I'm not sure why. I glance at their branches, half-expecting to one day see an arm, a hand, a thousand fingers pointing me east or west.
These are great images, capturing them in words is much more difficult than on "film", I think. And yet you have so clearly. I have mental images swinging around in my cranium like monkeys on a vine!
ReplyDeleteAnd those three trees, the three sisters, look again, they are telling you something. You just have to figure out what it is. Why else would you keep looking?
Wow. Great descriptions/images. Some of the most moving/haunting scenes I've come across are the ones I witnessed without a camera in hand.
ReplyDeleteThis line is beautiful: "Fence poles, stark and gray against an afternoon sky, slices of shadow splicing the snow." Don't we all wish we had more time to get out and prowl around?
ReplyDelete"Monkeys on a vine"--now THAT is a mental image, Bill. Perhaps if I keep looking at those trees, those wiley creatures will show up next time. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, ZG, I more often than not have an empty pocket at a beautiful scene, but that's okay. I'm probably more present that way.
(And since I realize I'm inadvertently rhyming in my responses...)
If I could prowl around on the ground as much as I'm in my car, easy evidences of my journeys could be found both near and far.
Errrrg. :) Thanks for reading, everyone!
Imageless photographs, I can relate to the premise -still frames taken by your minds eye. A poetic an elegant way in which to capture a split second that you responded to, where other elements come into play -wind, sound, temperature, one's past, one's dreams etc. We all have said, "wish I had my camera". Truth is, I have purposelessly laid my camera aside, knowing I didn't have a chance in hell to capture what was really happening at that moment. A moment that was more than a memory, it was a moment which moved an changed the way I think and see. A 'shiny moment'. I like this post 'bunches'. Thank you!
ReplyDelete