-
In the popularity of all things vintage, sepia photographs enjoy a major comeback. Is it because in the proliferation of technology we crave nostalgia?
Funeral Blues(Song IX, from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.- W. H. Auden (1907-1973)Listen to John Hannah read Auden's poem in the film "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
In the dense green of August 2003 we fell in love with the farm in one moment. We pulled into the drive for the realtor's open house after nearly giving up finding it, and stopped, speechless. The property enveloped us with itself and asked kindly to let it take care of us.
Then, after weeks completing the sales of our old house and the new one, in November we moved. Since that first August visit, autumn winds had blown maple leaves against the house in thick piles. The ground was hard and the grass gone dormant. Simple lines of land, barn and outbuildings, and bare trees that had billowed with green when we first met them, presented an altered scene.
Was I wistful for the lush green of first love? No, I was glad for the change.Something had already shifted in me. We had wanted more of Nature, close up, which was why we were moving to the country. At the same time I was going inside too, the way you do in winter. With the light opening to me through the quiet winter landscape, looking back at it through the window was just the thing for contemplation, letting it in slowly, as if suspended. It felt like a relief to get to know the farm in its unadorned state.Now, each year after winter's span from Thanksgiving to Christmas and past the frozen calm of January and February, the next season comes in degrees, thankfully. Before spring shivers and erupts into full riots of color - iris tongues sprout an inch, and the birch sapling sheds its tissue skin, igniting into sunny orange flames (the color was really that saturated).I'm ready for warmth, but am I ready for the riot? If I get outside often in these warming, lengthening days, I can slow down the transition for myself. Something I want:- - - S - l - o - w - - - s - p - r - i - n - g - - -
We're coming onto April and the inevitable spring light that slants through trees at a particular height, angle and shade of amber, lasting just a couple of weeks. When it happens, I'm in Paris.
Above, Don is standing in the clock window of the Orsay museum in 2003. He snapped me, below, the afternoon we rode bikes for hours in the Bois de Boulogne and still didn't see a fraction of it. That's not a surprise when you realize it is two and a half times the size of New York's Central Park. (Believe me, I was very happy, even though I don't seem to be smiling in this photo.)
If you're like me and you want to fly to Paris, but can't at the moment, find a Paris blog, like Peter's wonderful one - full of history, architecture and art, or mine, where I posted just 35 posts mostly in 2006. My blog has been waiting for another visit by its proprietor, but lucky Peter gets to live there.
The linen for those summer clothes is made from flax of course. I didn't realize what a labor intensive process flax-to-linen is until I read about pulling, stacking, swingling, rippling, retting, scutching, heckling, spinning and weaving here. It's done mostly by machine now, but you can see Egyptians in these images growing and processing flax for linen. Do you suppose they ironed their linen garments? That would be an interesting frame added to these Egyptian collages.
We will be using another product made from flax when we install old fashioned linoleum squares in our bathroom. What appealed to us about linoleum (unlike vinyl) is that it is made from linseed - flax - and is natural and biodegradable.
I am humbled by new technologies as well as ancient processes that I know nothing about from experience. Friends like Gwen have sheered sheep and spun the fleece into wool, then knitted it into garments. She would not surprise me at all if she told me she has processed flax into linen.
Hands, hands, what are you doing? I think I live too much in my head.
imp-noun
1. a little devil or demon; an evil spirit.
2. a mischievous child. There is a lot of folklore about imps. They take other forms too, such as gremlins, goblins and gnomes (what's with the "G"s?), and Pan and Puck, oh and Dobby the house elf.
Don, suddenly looking up from his Hobby Farms magazine, over his reading glasses: "What the . . .?! How'd the chickens get out!!?"Ruth: "Wha?"Don, now at the window, confused: "Look! I didn't let them out!"Ruth, turning to look through the window at the hens frolicking with Khan, then back to Henry James to re-read the same sentence for the fifteenth time: "Wow, that's weird."Don: "Did you let them out?" he asks incredulously. Suddenly he reviews the mental calendar in his head wondering if it's April Fool's Day yet.Ruth: "Moo heee?" (pulling a phrase her impish mother used to say for "Who me?")Don, scratching his head: "Maybe I didn't latch the coop tight last night." And he throws on his jacket, steps into his farm clogs and lets the door bang behind him.Ruth peeks out the window at him, trying to enjoy watching him make a beeline for the coop door. But she's afraid. What if one of the hens got gobbled by a hawk in the last 15 minutes since she snuck out and opened the latch? That would be a bad life path number 15.Don returns. "I must be losing my mind. And I'll never get them back in until dusk. Oh well, hope they enjoy the day out."Ruth: "So they're all accounted for?"Don: "No, they're scavenging now, so I won't be able to count until they're back in the roost this evening."Oh dear, Ruth will have to suffer as an imp all day Sunday. And oh no! Last night was daylight savings, prolonging the misery an extra hour!---