A Dose of Reality

With commencement this weekend, families are arriving, parties are starting, and visitors are wandering the campus. I can only hope that none of them visits any of the campus lakes. Should they do so, the reality may be a shock. Unlike the shiny brochures, webpages, and videos, the Domain is at times more like a dump than a beloved preserve.

Irony abounds within feet of a dorm and at the edge of a pond.

A Day of Red

roof

quince

redbud

choir robes

fire and passion, too, in student, family, and colleague memorial service testimonies attesting to the powerful influence of a beloved Sewanee professor, a man I met a few times and left each time charmed and intrigued and touched by his quiet humor and intelligence

Wind Sock

"A tapered tubular cloth vane, open at both ends and having at the larger end a fixed ring pivoted to swing freely, installed at airports or elsewhere to indicate wind direction and approximate intensity." Dictionary.com

"An elegant structure so intensely beautiful that one must park at the airport and walk across the grass to admire it." Anonymous (who may or may not be the author of this blog post)

Learning from People I Don't Know

I posted several pictures to 500px yesterday, including a heavily shadowed photo of the art studio building. Almost immediately, a photographer whose work I've admired wrote, "Very nice minimal shot, love the hard shadows." Encouraged by his compliments and inspired by similar photos, I set out today intentionally looking for hard shadows. I found plenty.

When I chat with students about university compositions, I try to distinguish between reports and essays. I think I'm finally leaving "reports" behind, and I like it.

(Until odonate season.)

Socialization

Walking a dog, even someone else's dog, every morning has surprising benefits, chief among them socialization.

The kindness of a neighbor and her dog Panda eases Gracie into new territory: friendship with a previously unfamiliar canine. Yesterday, after previously barking at the same pair several times over the course of different days, we happened upon Panda and her human on our way to the lake. We were invited to walk along beside, at some distance, and Gracie was allowed to sniff Panda's markings, and Panda to sniff Gracie's. After an enthusiastically boisterous beginning, Gracie settled into a companionable stroll. Today, when we met them on their way home and on our way out, Panda and Gracie shared a lovely moment of rest while the humans chatted.

A bit later, as we crossed a Lake Cheston bridge, we encountered two students taking advantage of their late first class (11 AM), soaking in the sun and blue sky and strangely (uncomfortably so) warm weather. Instead of barking at the seated young women, as has been her wont in the past on encountering unknown people, Gracie wagged and wiggled and they giggled and stroked her and took cell photos. Then, about halfway to the dam, Gracie spotted her first slider (my first slider of the year) sunning on the fallen tree where they often are. Instead of charging full-out toward it, Gracie assumed a position and stared a good long time. Still later, at the dam, as a gaggle of children and parents approached, Gracie stopped, accepted their smiles, and then moved on.

Even the players at the baseball field were just other points of interest, for us both, and we headed home feeling happy to have made such good relaxed acquaintance with those along our way.

This Is What My Day's Been Like

Walk under blue sky. Happy dog. Happy human.

Discovery of Japanese Garden on campus.

Email, Facebook, newspapers.

Work.

Lunch, a treat, with a friend. Stimulating conversation. Great fun.

Visit with a neighbor. Laughter.

Long photography session.

Work.

Vacation planning.

Email, Facebook, newspapers.

Photograph editing, uploading.

Blogging.

Pure joy, like this lucky snap.

I Agree with Gracie when It Comes to Walls

Picturing It Slant

So I cheated. 

The bridge to Hardee-McGee Field doesn't look exactly like this from underneath.

So what?

Thanks, Emily (Dickinson), for backing me up on this one:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Sunny Hours

Before I started walking slowly with a camera, purposely paying attention to the world, one step at a time, I could not even imagine all the tiny miracles, those I missed seeing (in my own childhood yard, for example, with rocks, and trees, and flowers (wild and not), and creek, and caves, and forest) without knowing I was missing them, walking by, hurrying by, not taking time to suspend the hurry and the step to look, really look, but when I did slow up and start to look and listen, I noticed things that shot me right back to college, not to zoology or botany or geology, but to art history where learning to see what one looked at opened whole worlds of possibility, like architectural ornamentation, which brings me to this: circular forms, one man made (which, thinking it might be special, sent me to the internet only to discover that it's a cliched one of millions) and one natural (which surely a friend has identified and cataloged, but remains unidentified to me, even with his superior photos). 

I shall simply enjoy both and note their echoes of one another.

A Plea for Forgiveness

Dear K T

This is to say 
that I photographed 
your store's walls

cracks, crevices, holes
moldy paint chips
broken stucco chards 

My act may 
distress you as
much as one 

other business owner 
many years ago
but please know

my fascination in
in decay's beauty
expresses my reverence 

Sunday Tour

Gracie wonders what Chill Water means. (So does Robley.)

Gracie looks all ways before crossing University Avenue. (Robley wishes everyone would since she came within a foot of being broadsided by a stop-sign-running SUV loaded with party-hard girls only the day before.)

Gracie admires All Saints', but she doesn't go to church. (Robley does and doesn't too.)

Gracie likes strolling on campus. (Robley does too.)

Gracie is charmed by The Sewanee International Frisbee Golf Course. (Robley is puzzled.)

Swallowing a chunk of cheese pizza snatched from the grass, Gracie believes she makes Sewanee stronger and truer. (Robley isn't so sure she does.)

Both Gracie and Robley stare and listen in astonishment to the drunk male students leaning out a frat house window catcalling a barely dressed young woman stumbling through the front door and up the yard to a waiting car. Gracie and Robley shake their heads and walk on; they pass another frat house, where three male students are cleaning up the yard from their Saturday party. Gracie is impressed. (Robley is too.)

At home,Gracie welcomes her dog treat and sits with her mother and Robley. Gracie is happy. (Robley is too.)

Solace in the New Year

Fog, turning to mist, then clearing slowly. 

A campus stroll. Four dogs, six people, five cars, empty archways, empty hallways, one overheard bit of chatter, one conversation (Merry Christmas, Happy New Year).

Mostly silence except for the dripping on and off stone and leaf. 

My kind of new beginning.

After Tornado Warnings Last Night, This

Directional Druthers

I'd rather this than the other.

The Magic Hour

I was on my way to visit an elderly friend.

I never made it.

This is why.

The Lady Who Used to Live Here

in the house down the driveway was, with one daughter, kind to a first-cousin, who devotedly continued to visit her (sometimes twice, always once a year) for a very long time after leaving College, always bringing her dog, welcome as she was too in the house. Several times, I joined my cousin and the lady who used to live here for tea (I brought the scones) and spent a delightful hour listening to her old stories and my cousin's, and on leaving once I banged into the wrought-iron gate lightly, not bending anything but sort of smearing black on my car, a sign of her long kindness to my cousin. The house, I think, is now empty, she having moved to a place for older folks in Nashville and her children having gone through and sorted and disposed of things, some in moving vans, others probably simply removed. The University owns the house where the lady used to live, which now sits empty, but the stone and wrought iron fence and mailbox on which her name still faintly appears remind me of her and her kindness to my first-cousin every time I walk by, including today near the end of my walk. 

I wish them all well.

Today's Rhetorical Question

What could be more beautiful than this shiny Fiat 500?

Fall Color ABCedarian: U

UMBER AND UNITED NATIONS BLUE

Fall Color ABCedarian: O

OCHRE AND OLIVE

The kind of afternoon

when sun celebrates sudden surprise.

In the woods

 

and in town.