Drie-en-sewentig

It was -12C when I left home this morning at 6.15 for school!  The ice and snow storm had made the driveway pretty slick.  I slid down the hill, but remembered to take my horrified foot off the brake and stopped myself from meeting up with the neighbour's quietly parked car. Such a strange solution to the problem.  Your every instinct is to slam your foot as hard as you can on the brake, to stop at all costs, the only way you know, but if you just lift your foot off gently for a couple of seconds, then apply pressure to the brake, and repeat when necessary, your car eases smoothly down the icy hill, barely skidding at all.   Our hill is always an adventure in the winter.

It is Einstein's birthday today, an amazing man in so many ways.
He had five children, which not many people think about when they remember Einstein.  He was a rebellious, free spirit all his life, looked at mysteries in different ways because of this, and came up with incredible ideas as a result.

His wife-to-be, Mileva, gave birth to a little girl, Lieserl, before they were married, when Einstein was just 22 years old.  She went home to Serbia in secret and no one quite knows what became of the baby, although there are many theories about her.  It seems that she was left with her grandparents and died of scarlet fever while still an infant.  
Hans-Albert was an engineer, who eventually worked for the USDA, on sediment transport, after emigrating to the USA a few years after his father.  He was an avid photographer and loved playing the flute.  He died in Massachusetts at the age of 70.  Albert left his grandson Bernard, Hans-Albert's son, his violin when he died.
Eduard became a scizophrenic, died at 55, after having been institutionalised for many years.
Hi second wife Elsa, who was his first cousin, had two daughters whom he adopted, named Ilse and Margot. 

He became a vegetarian in later life.  

Such a sweet face.

In his lecture at Einstein's memorial, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of him as a person: "He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn." - wikipedia.

Intelligent conversations were had tonight in our lounge, sitting in front of the lovely warm woodstove, with Matt P. and Nick, who both came home unexpectedly for the night.

Amazing, to talk about all kinds of things, like aesthetics and conceptual art and different photographers and cinematographers they have met, with these two huge giants who used to be little boys whom I carried.

And we talked of Winthrop, where we all lived once upon a time, and how one day I gave them a talk about strangers and how to behave when someone invites you into their car, or to go and look for a puppy, or some such, how you should say "No" loudly, and refuse to get into the car, and call an adult as soon as possible.  They were all nine years old and we had been required by the school to reiterate "the talk".  The very next day, after school in the afternoon, the boys were playing in the neighbourhood, and I peeked out of the window to check on them, and saw with horror that they were all three of them, getting into a huge truck parked in the street!  I rushed outside and hauled them out by their collars, so angry and frightened, and there was horror on their faces at my distress, and great surprise on the face of the sweet truck-driver, who was fixing something for our next door neighbour and was completely legitimate!

After having a good laugh, Matt P said, "But there were three of us!" And I said, "I doubt whether you thought that at all, actually looked around and thought, "We'll be fine, there are three of us after all!"  You just thought, "Oh look, a truck, let's get inside!"

The three friends and Luna last summer.  So glad they escaped the truck!

Day 72

I went walking with my ghost dog Molly through the dancing snowflakes this morning, greeted the giant personality of the Corner Pine Tree, crunched along the path to the pond, and sat in the plastic chair there while the snow filled up around me. It is a little wild spot, with birds always in the tall trees, and sometimes a duck or two, and a good place to cry, so I had one.  It was so cold that my eyes felt as if the tears were freezing, but it was only my dramatic imagination.  The lovely fantasy writer Ray Bradbury said, "If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live a full and complete life.^"  I had just heard about plans to mine the Everglades for oil, and the radio article had interviews with affected homeowners protesting the destruction of this fragile and beautiful eco-system, as well as with persuasive company-men, sprouting new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, which result in "clean" mining.

The Everglades

 "Look at our track record," he said.  Well, that's not such a good idea, because if you look at oil company's track records in general, they all have histories of "spills", that stupid word again, like spilling a little milk when you take it from the fridge.   Four years ago when I was writing this blog, I was heartbroken every day, pushing away the image of oil gushing uncontrollably from the BP well under the sea in the Gulf of Mexico for so many months!  And the US govt has just lifted the ban on BP working in the Gulf! 

I took photographs of snowflakes today, even one with my little iPhone!

At school we make cut-out snowflakes each Christmas for "holiday" cards, as it is not politically correct to make Christmas cards.  I discovered a very easy way of folding and cutting which results in a beautiful six-sided snowflake that looks like a doiley.

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, a reclusive Vermont farmer who spent much of his life looking after his ailing mother, was fascinated by snowflakes and devised a way to catch them on black velvet and preserve them for the time it took to photograph them, beginning in 1885, and taking more than 5000 images of snow crystals in his lifetime.  He did it so well that no one bothered to take pictures of snowflakes for about fifty years.

In the 1930's a Japanese physicist, Ukichiro Nakaya, a researcher of snow crystals, took about 3000 images of snow crystals he created in his lab.  They are probably so fascinating because they are beautifully symmetrical, and each one unique, like a finger-print.  Well, that is what people used to believe, but in fact snowflakes start out just about the same, in the clouds.  It is their descent through different fluctuations of temperature and erratic air movements that form their beautiful individual shapes.  And many snowflakes are just funny shapes, just lumps of crystal.  the ones we notice, like the ones Bentley chose to take photographs of, are the Margot Fonteyns and Rudolf Nureyev's of the snowflake world, the beautiful dancers.

Little stars on the ground

When we came to America I insisted on bringing my kitchen table.  It is an old Oak table with leaves that can be taken out to make it smaller, although we have never had it like that.  I have had that table for most of my life, forty years.  I bought it when I was 18 years old, at an auction in Grahamstown for R14, a paltry sum, although it seemed like quite a lot for a poor student back then. (This is the equivalent now of about $1.50!)   No one really wanted it because it has a round burn-mark on one end from something very hot, perhaps a small cooking pot, although the mark is concave, which is odd, and not much like a pot-bottom.  We used to ask people to guess how the mark happened, and several came up with interesting ideas, but we are no nearer to the actual story.  I love imperfection, the rejects of life, so that table knew it had a good home with me.

Tim and Marc, our friend, decided to fix up the legs and sand the table, clean it up a bit before we packed it off to America.  While they were working on it in Marc's workshop, they discovered a little old stamp on the underside, proving that it was made in Philadelphia, so it was going home at last!

I love this table with a deep love.  It is rarely empty, the friendliest of tables, offering a poetry anthology here, a jug of tulips there. 

When I lived in Bonza Bay, the table lived outside on the huge verandah, where we ate all our meals, it was very tropical there.  The centre-piece was a big bowl of fruit, until the monkeys discovered it and clambered and climbed all over the verandah and the table to get at the delicious items. We kept all the fruit inside after that.

When I was a new single mother, one end was my sewing table, constantly covered with sewing machine, fabric, the pin-cushion my mother made me, etc.  The other end was where we ate our meals, my two little daughters and I.  In the magical 16 Cross Street, it dominated the beautiful tall-ceilinged room that was our kitchen.  Here children did their homework when they were little, while I made supper.  Friends sat around eating dinner or having tea and chatting about things large and significant and also small and inconsequential. The stuff of life.

It has always been my rule that we sit at the table for all our meals, together, and that we have "intelligent conversations".  (Sometimes it is quite difficult to have an intelligent conversation with a rebellious teenager.)  This sitting at table for dinner inspires interesting ideas: Matthew and Nick, puzzled little boys having just started pre-school, "Mom, we know that our names are Matthew and Nicholas, but apparently we have something called a surname, and what is ours?"  Matthew, aged about 4, "Dad, why aren't our fingers all the same length?" Emma, aged 16, "Mom, you have to let Michael move into the flat, it is a matter of life and death!"  Jess, aged 12, looking pale and worried, "I have a project on Renaissance Artists due tomorrow."  "How much have you done?"  "I'm just starting."  The kitchen table sighs at the prospect of a long night ahead. Nick, aged 5, telling the story of the operation to remove his adenoids, "The nurse was so beautiful, she smiled at me the whole time."  "But how could you see her, she had a mask on?" " Her eyes were all blue and smiley."

And here in America, we were set adrift from all that familiarity, cast off from our previously comfortable existence.  We set off on our separate journeys into the unknown each morning, but always returned to one another at the end of the day, to a good meal and the telling of our stories at our benevolent and generous kitchen table, the raft of our lives. 

Four graduates of the Kitchen Table.

Le jour Soixante et onze

Languages are so interesting.  French counting gets to sixty and then becomes all poetic and arithmetical after that.  Seventy is sixty-ten, seventy-one is sixty and eleven.  Eighty is four twenties.  And ninety is quatre-vingt dix, four twenties ten.  French seems to me a bit like isiXhosa, very descriptive and wordy.  Working at a French/American school we have numerous signs, articles, forms etc., in both languages, and English always seems to take up less space than the French.  The simple sign with four words, four syllables: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH, becomes, in French NE TOUCHEZ PAS, S'IL VOUS  PLAIT, six words, seven syllables.

French influenced English enormously, mainly because of the Norman invasion in the 11the century, and so many words were shared, but there are many which you think mean the same thing but they don't, like medecin, which means doctor in English.  Medicine is medicament in french. Cave in French means a cellar in English, a librairie is a bookshop, not a library.  I wonder how that happened?

In isiXhosa, there are many words which are like pictures, like ixhesha abantu bahle, which refers to a particular time of sunset when everyone is bathed in a rosy golden hue, the "time of the beautiful people".  Impumalanga is the word for east, meaning, "the coming out of the sun". 

When I was young, Afrikaans was the hated language, the language of the oppressors, but in grade 11 I discovered its poetry.  We had a rather large Afrikaans lady who taught us, Mevrou Botha, I think her name was.  She smelt sweetly of talcum powder and was always impeccably dressed in matching pastel shades.  For a rebellious teenager this teacher was definitely not high on the list, and yet, when she introduced us to the Afrikaans poetry of N P Van Wyk Louw, D J Opperman, Elisabeth Eybers, Olga Kirsch, et al, all read in the most beautiful voice you have ever heard, rich and low and expressive, I fell in love!  This is one of my favourites.  It is better understood if you have lived in a parched land. 

DIE DANS VAN DIE REËN – Eugene Marais
Lied van die vioolspeler. Jan Konterdans.
Uit die Groot Woestyn
O die dans van ons Suster!
Eers oor die bergtop loer sy skelm,
en haar oge is skaam;
en sy lag saggies.
En van ver af wink sy met die een hand;
haar armbande blink en haar krale skitter;
saggies roep sy.
Sy vertel die winde van die dans
en sy nooi hulle uit, want die werf is wyd en die bruilof groot.
Die grootwild jaag uit die vlakte,
hulle dam op die bulttop,
wyd rek hulle die neusgate
en hulle sluk die wind;
en hulle buk, om haar fyn spore op die sand te sien.
Die kleinvolk diep onder die grond hoor die sleep van haar voete,
en hulle kruip nader en sing saggies:
“Ons Suster! Ons Suster! Jy het gekom! Jy het gekom!”
En haar krale skud,
en haar koperringe blink in die wegraak van die son.
Op haar voorkop is die vuurpluim van die berggier;
sy trap af van die hoogte;
sy sprei die vaalkaros met altwee arms uit;
die asem van die wind raak weg.
O, die dans van ons Suster! 

The Dance of the Rain
Song of the violinist: Jan Konterdans
translated by:Nikita
The Dance of the Rain
Oh, the dance of our Sister!
First, over the hilltop she peeps stealthily
and her eyes are shy
and she laughs softly
From afar she begs with her one hand
her wrist-bands shimmering and her bead-work sparkling
softly she calls
She tells the wind about the dance
and she invites it, because the yard is spacious and the wedding large
The big game rush about the plains
they gather on the hilltop
their nostrils flared-up
and they swallow the wind
and they crouch to see her tracks in the sand
The small game, deep down under the floor, hear the rhythm of her feet
and they creep, come closer and sing softly
“Our Sister! Our Sister! You’ve come! You’ve come!”
and her bead-work shake,
and her copper wrist-bands shine in the disappearance of the sun
On her forehead, rests the eagle’s plume
She decends down from the hilltop
She spreads her ashened cloak with both arms
the breath of the wind disappears
Oh, the dance of our Sister!

The translation is quite awful really.  I suppose this is why you should always read poetry in the language in which it was written.  One of my Nombulelo students learned Spanish just so that he could read the poetry of Lorca and Neruda. Amazing.  I knew a man in Grahamstown who could read in six different languages!  

Noam Chomsky developed the idea that language is innate, basing his theory on the fact that children learn language even though adults do not speak "adult language" to children, which he called "impoverished input".  He believes that the human brain has evolved (probably only in the last 100 000 years) neural circuits that contain linguistic information at birth so that the child's natural predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech.  So the learning of language is biologically and genetically determined.  Chomsky is always lovely to listen to, and in this little clip he talks about the way theories grow and develop, and explains the addition to the universal grammar theory of principles and parameters.

My little granddaughters are grasping at their language, believing they can talk just like anyone else.  Ella in her deep voice with long vowel-sounds, telling me long stories about her day on Skype, and Luna bubbling over with her little language too, with a few recognisable words happening now, like "Hello, dog, and (maybe I'm imagining it) Granny".

Ella-Bella

Luna-Moon

Day 70

What a beautiful day!  Like Spring.  Pink fingers of clouds in the milky morning sky as I swanned down the highway, and glorious sunshine all day, and so warm in the Art room that we opened all the windows! 

Of course, we are supposed to have another big storm Wednesday going into Thursday, but today was a beauty, giving us hope for the future, warming our bones, making us happy!  So that we can wait another few weeks for the delicate crocuses and proud dandelions which are the first heralds, and then the actual buds, the newest green leaves, and all the tremendous burgeoning LIFE!

My little advisory group was so funny today, as we have been having trouble lately with respectful listening.  They are all crazy-lively, super-springy today, terribly enthusiastic and a couple of them are also very loud! So I asked them what sign we could use which would work so that on command they will all keep quiet.  They came up with this idea:  I clap twice, and they all respond by raising one arm like a trunk and making a sound like an elephant's trumpet!  Then they are quiet and I can talk without anyone interrupting me.  And it worked very well (for today).

When we were in England for Emma's wedding two years ago my sister and I went to see a very old friend of my mother's, Vicky, who lives in Kent with her daughter.  The two families used to live next door to one another in Pinelands, Cape Town, before I was born, and Diana, Vicky's daughter, is the same age as my brother, so the two played together and got into an awful lot of trouble, apparently.  My brother was very accident-prone as a child, and Diana kind of followed along behind his calamities.  Vicky is now 96, I think, and still wonderful, full of life and telling her lovely stories in her lilting Irish brogue.  She and my mum were friends for nearly 60 years.

Auntie Vicky telling one of her lively stories!

They took us on an outing, to a place they knew we would love, a church called All Saints Tudeley, which is the only church in the world to have all its stained glass windows designed and created by Marc Chagall!  The little church doesn't look like anything special from the outside, but you walk in, and yes, you just walk in, it's not locked or anything, you can give a little donation in a box if you want to, and you can walk around and marvel and stay as long as you want to in this beautiful space! 

Between 1963 and 1978, Chagall replaced all the windows in the little 13th century church.  A wealthy Jewish landowner and his Christian wife had lost their 21-year old daughter Sarah in a boating accident, and commissioned a memorial window from Chagall.  Chagall fell in love with the little church and decided to do all the windows, apparently he fell a little in love with Sarah's mother too (it appears that he was always a terrible flirt), and isn't it strange that this little ancient Christian church has windows done by an old Russian Jewish man, playing with light?

50

-->

I discovered the rude meaning of 69 when I was 18.  Before that it was just a number.  

My childhood was very protected, a time of innocence, and also very happy, for the most part.  I played imaginary games, climbed trees, read books, read everything I could really, perused the huge tomes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica sometimes, with that paper light as tissue, the books almost too heavy to carry far, so I would sit on the carpet next to the bookshelf and pore over them.  (My best friend and I once came across the special medical section with clear plastic pages, where you could see the circulatory system of the entire body, then turn that page to discover underneath the digestive system, the way muscles lie under the skin, and so on and so on until you reached the bottom images which were a naked man and woman, lying patiently under all these transparent pages, giving the body's outline to all the systems portrayed.  It was a fascinating discovery.)  I drew pictures constantly, loved my friends with a deep and passionate love, learned to swim in the salty sea-water of the Kalk Bay baths, rode my bicycle all over Pinelands, lay on my tummy on the carpet with my brother and listened to records, or our serial on the radio, and all this wondrous being in the world was based on the certain knowledge and safety of my family's great love.  

The 11 or 12-year old child today could be living on another planet from the one of my childhood.  Everything is technology-related.  Boys (and some girls, but still mostly boys) are besotted with games played on screens, often killing games, where you shoot people and there is much blood and gore, but if you "die" you can just start over again.  Girls (and some boys) are addicted to how many likes they get on Facebook, there is a culture of narcissism, with everyone taking constant "selfies" which are then posted online.  On websites like Tumblr people post and repost, so the same things are going around and around, and all the moments recorded are succumbing to all the minutes and hours and days of youngsters' lives, as they compulsively check their phones for updates and news.  And everywhere sex and pornography, and still the objectification of women.  Such a strange world. "O wonder!/ How many goodly creatures are there here!/  How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,/ That has such people in't!" Miranda in The Tempest  by William Shakespeare, Act V, scene i.

It feels as though my childhood was a lengthy continuum, with highs and lows of course, but generally quite placid, and filled with long periods of concentration with no distractions, like curling up in a "nest" on the couch and reading for hours on rainy wintry days, only stopping for meals, or when you finished the book.  And quiet walks in the rain, and curiosity and imagination always at play.  The child of today lives a very fragmented life, filled with perpetual new sensations and demands, a constant barrage of stimulation.  

I feel this as a period of extreme change, 2014 and beyond, and Luna and Ella's world will be even more different from this one today, this world where children have too much information, a technological environment where 11 year olds are already quite familiar with all the different meanings of 69, a fact which constantly shocks this old lady. 

And now I go back to the topic of travel.  Most of my life was spent not travelling.  I had my daughters early and was bound to them, and all my efforts were to love them and provide for them.  I was also a teacher, which is a job without much remuneration which can be spent on travel.  Later I had two more babies, and always dogs, and cats, and no real idea about money and how to keep it from slipping and sliding and rushing out of my bank account into the coffers of grocery shops, and school uniform stores, and mortgage companies, and vet surgeries. Camping in the mountains and holidays spent at a friend’s sea house were all the travelling we did. 

And then we took this gigantic leap across the ocean, travelling so far both literally and figuratively.  We landed in Massachusetts to a difficult and lonely life at first, a hard battle, an undertaking to settle and understand the unfamiliar culture, to prove ourselves, to find friends, to make a living. So it is only in our older age that travel has become possible.  There are no longer any children living at home, no dog to find a dog-sitter for, we can be free as birds on occasion, when Tim has leave, when I have school vacation.

Travel expands us, we become more open, we see our human race from a different perspective.   A journey to another land provides us with empathy, with knowledge, with different tastes, views, sights.  

When I went to Vietnam we went to the American War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, which used to be called Saigon.  (It is called the Vietnam war here in America, and the American war in Vietnam.)  Most of the exhibits are photographic, horrifying pictures donated by war photographers, showing graphic images of the aftermath of the My Lai massacre, the effects of defoliants on babies, the huge swathes of jungle destroyed by the Americans spraying Agent Orange from aeroplanes.  I walked around one floor and then disintegrated on a bench outside, my eyes pouring, my heart an aching jelly of emotions.   

A huge self-education has ensued from that encounter, one which still haunts me, and stumps my rational brain, that we can manufacture such toxins and use them on forests, farmland, people, animals.  We can make laws which allow this to happen, and Monsanto, the company responsible for the manufacture of Agent Orange, can still continue to grow and monopolize and manipulate as it does today.  This company is the scariest of bio-pirates, and one of the greatest threats to biodiversity on the planet.

Before going to Vietnam I had a vague idea of the history, of Indochine, the war, the present country.  But actually being there meant that I met Vietnamese people, I saw how things worked, I lived with a host-family in the Mekong Delta, I ate strange dragonfish, rode a bicycle on the miles of narrow pathways through the jungles and canals, washed myself with a little hose instead of using toilet-paper, helped to build a road by hauling rocks and concrete and water in the extraordinary heat, was invited to a farm to enjoy the hospitality and hear the personal story of a woman who had been a spy during the war against the Americans.  It was hot and difficult and strange and extraordinary. 

Village elder in the Mekong delta

Restaurant in the jungle

The flight of the hibiscus

Monk in Buddhist temple who asked me to take his picture.

Little girl waiting on the scooter for her dad.

Entrepreneur

How many people can you fit on one scooter?

When I disembarked from the plane in Boston, I immediately wanted to take Tim and go back, so that we could experience it together, so that he could take his camera and his wonderful eye for detail and composition, and capture the phenomenon of that place.  I want to go back to see Hanoi, the thousand-year old city, I want to see Anghor Wat, the incredible ancient Hindu then Buddhist temple in Cambodia.  Travel creates a yearning for more travel.  It helps us become more fully human, to see beyond borders. 

Soixante-huit

With daylight saving last night, we "sprang forward" in time, losing an hour.  Unfortunately it meant that by the time we went to bed it was 2.30 and we got up at 9am, which has made for a very tiring day.  And even though it was lovely to arrive home this evening at 7pm and it was just dark at that time, I am exhausted.  I miss the hour that was taken from me.  Well, I suppose I just had to give back the stolen hour from last November, when we "fell back". 

Today we went to visit old friends who live a long distance away.  It is 65 miles one way, about 105km, which is almost the same distance as going from Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth.

When you went from Grahamstown to PE, it was a trip planned well in advance, for which you had your car serviced so that nothing would go wrong on the long drive, and it only happened when you had to fetch someone like your mother from the airport in Port Elizabeth, or you were flying off to a conference somewhere yourself, or you were expecting twins and had to go to a gynaecologist, of which there were none in our little Grahamstown, or your son had a burst eardrum and had to have his adenoids out in the hospital.  It was a huge trip, taking the whole day.  It was a journey.  You came back with presents from the big city for the children if they had had to remain behind. 

We always went for a walk along the pier.

And here we are in Massachusetts where people frequently drive this far just for their work.  For a couple of years Tim's work was situated an hour and a quarter's drive from our house!  Which meant he was in the car for at least two and a half hours a day!

We often listen to podcasts of radio shows like RadioLab, or This American Life on long journeys, or music, which is easier because then you can talk when you want to, without interrupting an important part of the story.  For talk is something which happens easily on long car trips, often about deep subjects.  I love driving long distances with one of my children, as you have such interesting and real conversations at that time, and being from a family of four children there is often not much chance to have your mother to yourself, or as a mother to have just one child to myself.

Today on our way there we didn't need the radio as Nick talked to us almost the whole way on the phone, telling us all about his amazing weekend in New York.  It seems that he met some very interesting and friendly people, saw some wonderful Art, had lovely and magnificent conversations, which could be because he is very friendly and interesting himself, and interested in others' stories.  It was a lovely hour which made the distance seem much shorter.

At our friends' house, we had a lovely laughing time eating a lunch which lasted about two hours, and one of the topics of conversation was travel, specifically flying to distant places.  Karen hasn't flown for a long time, and she pointed out how much I have flown over the last few years.  So on the way home, with Simon and Garfunkel singing nostalgically in the background, I stared out at the snowy land, the forests of trees, each with its own little circle of brown earth marking where the trunk is rooted, and I wondered if this is because trees are living things, so they must therefore be warmer than the snow?  I'm not sure why it actually happens, but it seems as if they are all just melting the snow immediately around them with the warm sap of their lives.

And I thought about all the travelling I have done since moving to America when I was 45.  Before that I had just journeyed back and forth between Cape Town and Grahamstown.  The last time I had left the country of South Africa was on an overseas trip with my parents when I was 12 years old. 

The largest distance I have journeyed was to Vietnam almost three years ago now.  And because I am so tired I am going to put up some of my photographs from that time, and carry on with the travelling theme tomorrow.

Day 67

I went for a long brisk walk through the sunny snow, checked in on my hollow tree, where I always hope I will see an animal, although I have only seen a possum there on two occasions, in all the years of days.  Today I made my way through the brush, on to the rock which puts you almost on a level with the cavity, about 10 feet away, and stared, trying to see into the darkness.  And suddenly I realised that I was looking at a creature, there was a sleeping, breathing animal in there, and I thought, after a few more shocked seconds, that it was a large owl, as it seemed that I could make out a beak and tightly closed eyes.  I got quietly down and strode as fast as I could back home, but when I had made the long trek back, had the camera, and was walking towards the tree again I convinced myself that the little being would be gone, so that I would not be disappointed if it was, and of course, as I plunged downhill three deer suddenly scattered at my headlong rush, and moved away into the trees surrounding THE tree.  As I went closer they all scuttled noisily away, and I expect that the owl thought something very dangerous was coming and flew off, because by the time I got to the viewing rock, the tree was empty.

I wandered around the base, and stared up into as many trees as  I could before my neck refused to do that any more, and pondered on enjoying the moment rather than giving in to this ridiculous desire to capture it on camera.

Crossing the stone wall, some chickadees decided to cheer me, and sang their little piping songs, and flitted around a few inches from my eyes, doing little dances and aerobatics just for me. 

I sat on the bench-rock in the meadow and felt the warmth of the sun, the actual warmth.  And so the seasons come around again, the tilt of the earth, spring coming for us, autumn for Jess and all our family and friends in South Africa.

This evening we have been to an Avett Brothers concert at TD BankNorth Garden, a huge sports and entertainment arena at North Station in the city. The Avett brothers band consists of two brothers, Seth and Scott Avett, and three other "honorary brothers", including a very interesting cellist, who plays his cello while leaping around the stage, a feat I had never witnessed before.  They sing "harmony-drenched southern-influenced rock", which Tim discovered a few months ago. 

I think that I am more of a Symphony concert type of person, where the music is filled with colour and variety, and the silences mean something just as the notes do.  And the people are all attentive to the musicians and everyone behaves.  No one has public fights right in front of you, like the sorry-looking grump in the seat in front of Tim, who was dumped by his vivacious girlfriend during the interlude between the opening band and the actual concert.  Or the couple next to them who danced (really badly) for most of the songs, not giving a hoot for my friends sitting beside me, who couldn't see through their gyrating bodies.

And don't they torture people by shining sudden bright lights in their eyes?  Why ever would you do that to people who have paid to see a show then?   In almost every song, at one time all the revolving lights above the stage would abruptly turn on the audience with the seemingly express intent of blinding us!  In the end I had to sit shading my eyes with my hand and peep out of the bottom if I was to see any of the band's action.  But then looking around to see if anyone else was outraged, I found that everyone else could happily look straight into these lights, so I must just be too old and fragile. 

Also, I don't actually do well in places with lots of people and no windows, and smoke machines.  Why would you want smoke?  Or the illusion of smoke?  And people shout and scream inanities, I was constantly jumping out of my skin every time a man would scream out behind me with a bloodcurdling howl, at a completely inopportune time, not at the end of a song when you almost come to expect it and can brace yourself a bit.. 

So it was a violent assault on the senses, this concert, and even Tim admitted to feeling that a little, with your seat thumping with the waves of music, people coming and going and spilling beer and being thoughtless and gross and too many. 

Tim said that we are just probably too old.  Perhaps.

Seth Avett is a very accomplished artist too.  His paintings are much quieter.

Seth Avett's painting of his wife and two children

Well, maybe not.  Can you hear that baby screaming?