Sometimes I Just Need a Little Color

so I abandon bugs for blooms.

Panasonic Lumix GH3: Day 7

or, Why I Am Still Undecided though Leaning More Toward Than Away

Pros/Joys in
1/ discovery
2/ the Borrowers' perspective
3/ the challenge
4/ technology
5/ potential for growth in my work

Cons/Irritations due to
1/ awful EVF
2/ squirrely LCD, though I think I may have solved it today by learning a trick

Gratitude to
1/ Nick Coury of Dury's Camera in Nashville who showed me the GH4 and who encouraged me to rent before buying. I cannot thank him enough for his kindness, professionalism, careful listening, and investment in my needs and desires. As a friend wrote me last night, "Hoping your photosalesman can stay available as a trusted advisor. Being emotionally invested in your work is definitely not out of the question for people you ask to help you." Yes, me too.

Random Acts of Art

After lying on the ground, shooting this moss over and over again,

I stood, rounded the bend, and laughed.

In forty-eight hours, the single sculpture of the stealthy freshman artist has become twelve.

Such exuberance! Such joy!

On Finding a Small Scalp of Upturned Moss at the Lake

and feeling responsible for having heeled it up myself yesterday, I remembered "Moss-gathering" by Ted Roethke.

To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber
And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,
Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat,
The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots,
And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top, --
That was moss-gathering.
But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets
Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the
         marshes:
And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,
By pulling off flesh from the living planet;
As if I had committed against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

Tiny Forests

Lie on damp spongy ground, and look straight ahead. If you're lucky, like me, you'll see a tiny forest, not neat rows on a Christmas tree farm, but a mishmash of mosses resting on their own soft mat.

I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, and though I wanted to like the book, I didn't. But I loved the passages about the main character's passion, mosses. Gilbert is herself an enthusiastic and knowledgeable gardener and a scholarly student of her topic (now I want to read Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss, which Gilbert read and re-read) She writes about moss with such precision, respect, and joy that the bryophytes seem to spring up from the page.

Among many passages that captured my imagination were these:

"Moss is inconceivably strong. Moss eats stone; scarcely anything, in return, eats moss. Moss dines upon boulders, slowly but devastatingly, in a meal that lasts for centuries. Given enough time, a colony of moss can turn a cliff into gravel, and turn that gravel into topsoil. Under shelves of exposed limestone, moss colonies create dripping, living sponges that hold on tight and drink calciferous water straight from the stone. Over time, this mix of moss and mineral will itself turn into travertine marble. Within that hard, creamy-white marble surface, one will forever see veins of blue, green, and gray -- the traces of the antediluvian moss settlements. St. Peter's Basilica itself was built from the stuff, both created by and stained with the bodies of ancient moss colonies."

"[Moss] grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones."

"Now the miniature forest below her gaze sprang into majestic detail. . . . This was a stupefying kingdom. This was the Amazon jungle as seen from the back of a harpy eagle. She rode her eye above the surprising landscape, following its paths in every direction. Here were rich, abundant valleys filled with tiny trees of braided mermaid hair and minuscule, tangled vines. Here was barely visible tributaries running through that jungle."

Moss: soft, springy, strong, satisfyingly beautiful.

Triple the Pleasure

Triple the fun!

If Doublemint can do it, so can I!

How must it be

Moss
by Bruce Guernsey

How must it be
to be moss,
that slipcover of rocks? --
imagine,

greening in the dark,
longing for north,
the silence
of birds gone south.

How does moss do it,
all day
in a dank place
and never a cough? --

a wet dust
where light fails,
where the chisel
cut the name.

Get Ready!

Shakerag is on the verge of bursting.

Buds obelisk up from mottled trillium leaves,

tiny mushrooms glow like butterscotch,

moss sporophytes shout their hello,

and water runs over rocks and round winter ice.

Get ready! I'm comin', Spring sings!

A Day Inside

Too little sun, too many things undone, and many more to do: no snapping today.

But . . .

one photograph from yesterday and one video discovered today have brought the outside in and, with them, much joy.

Richard Feynman - Ode To A Flower from Fraser Davidson on Vimeo.