The World Examining Works

The Time of Year When Things Begin Anew

 

On Friday, coming back from the beach

we passed through Huntington where the historical society was preparing for a little festival --very end of summery/hint of fall.

Then home to the city under terror alert. Earthquake, hurricane, floods and then people zooming about on large motorcycles trying to express whatever was impossible to express about this weekend's sad anniversary.

We are alert to a plane very high up above a building! A World War Two plane travelling so very slowly. The weekend over

 

 the light, so clear and bright, makes complicated patterns everywhere.

Even the chain link fence looks abstracty and artsy.

Our apartment floors sanded and sealed, a storage cabinet built, walls painted. Everything cleared and clean and ready to make something new.

 

In the meantime, I dug up a very old poem about my cereal bowl.

Villeroy and Boch

 

 

_{they reap the corn two centuries ago}

_{in some hot european field}

_{where two men stand}

_{bent slightly over scythes}

_{and women stoop to gather what’s been cut.}

_{it was ever thus.}

 

_{this tasteful scene}

_{congeals beneath my weetabix}

_{in monochrome}

_{(bone china}

_{dishwasher safe)}

_{atop a polished table}

 

_{the sweat! the smell!}

_{the hours under scalding sun}

_{I’d hate to be a peasant then}

_{broad-fingered, ignorant and numb}

_{to everything but aching back and shoulders’ burn}

_{I’d long to loll beside the cows}

_{in shade beneath the heavy trees}

_{I wouldn’t care to look charmant}

_{to decorate a dish}

_{my labor turned to prettiness}

 

Reflections

 

The top three pictures are from the Jardin Majorelle, Marrakesh, Morocco.

The small turtle was doing some sort of yoga pose to salute the sun.

The bamboo and the fish all got sort of intertwined

and a palm tree fell into the water.

We went to the orchid show at the New York Botanical Gardens today which was wonderful and hot as could be in the greenhouses.

My daughter in law and I both noticed how many Japanese families were there with their children enjoying the garden. Maybe there are always lots of them there ( a bit like being pregnant and suddenly seeing a gazillion pregnant people)  or maybe they wanted to enjoy something lovely as a distraction from the sad events abroad.

 

 

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Stripes

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For some reason, even grocery stores in foreign parts are thrilling.

Odd how the little rug on the right caught both our attention. Maybe it was the odd little squiffy ladders in the middle. Only the second rug we have bought in our lives. We know precisely nothing about carpets. We ended up buying it for exactly half what the charming salesman first asked. We like it anyway. 

Having henna put on is rather a lovely experience. I have been going to the same henna lady for ages and ages and she does nice complicated Berber designs. Henna goes on rather like piping frosting and cools a little as it dries. It smells lovely. I still have the ghost of this design on my hand. 

 

I haven't the least idea what animals these skins came from. I don't really want to think about it. 

Hm...........

This is my  top, hands down stripe picture winner.   A chap in the souks wearing a striped shirt.

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A Curious House/ Maison Tiskiwin

 

Bert Flint, a Dutchman who is now eighty, has lived in Marrakesh since 1957. In the middle part of the last century he traveled round North Africa collecting all sorts of things --textiles and tent pegs, sculptures and jewelry. His house --actually two houses joined together --is called Maison Tiskiwin and is open to the public.

 

 How wonderful to have your very own personal museum, quirky and remarkable. When a friend, who has taught in Nigeria and was interested in the Tuareg, talked to Bert Flint a few years ago he was concerned what would happen to his collection when he died.

So you had better go and see his house now.

No one is quite sure who this forbidding woman is --or whether she is, in fact, a woman at all.

And the windows.....

..well I could devote a whole post to the windows alone......

And who are these warriors -- one of whom seems to be posed atop a pomander (you know --those oranges studded with cloves --given as Christmas presents to unwitting aunts)? They look like creatures from another planet.

Pity the poor camel who has to carry such a burden through long desert days....

...and maybe meet up with this jocund crew.

The stairs in themselves are a delight.....

as is a bedroom --decorative but not absolutely comfortable.

Such jewels, weighty and marvelous...

...and last a scrap of embroidered cloth. Altogether there is so much to see and to ponder, this only gives you the least inkling of the treasures there.

All this makes one dream of magical journeys to places like Timbuctoo and Samarkand where I don't think I'll ever go.

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Fuel: or how not to get anything done.....

 

 

In order to do anything

one must get fueled up for it.

Eat. Sharpen the pencils.

Ponder tidying things up.

Observe the accidental by products of creativity.

Look at other people's work.

Give up and take the dog for a walk.

Ponder the Christmas tree's last evening.

Look at ghost trees.

Think it's about time to get down to work.

Maybe.

 

 

Blizzard

 

 

Nothing like a little snow to make things look festive and mysterious.

Much too lazy to run round the place, so took photos out of the window with my new camera. Here the little park between the buildings on 24th Street.

Here the SVA Theater on 23rd Street on Sunday evening.

The same view on Monday morning.

How the snow makes abstract and rather formal patterns that one hadn't noticed before!

The sparrows are pecking at something....

 

Children are out at four o'clock when it's cold and the dog almost pulls me over, he's so in love with the snow.

I retreat indoors.

In the morning I take the dog for a walk and see...

 a submerged Vespa.

 

 

 

 

The Moon and Sixpence

 

 

l like taking photos of the moon.

(This with an app  from my phone.) It has been enormously big and bright for the solstice.

 

At 4:17 am the other morning I managed to see part of the lunar eclipse. A great blob of dried-blood colored shadow obscured the lower half of the moon.

Last night the moon and its reflection bounced off the Empire State Building...

This morning at seven the moon was still palely lingering.

Falling and Scattered

 

 

At Union Square surprisingly

rose petals that one associates with weddings and welcomes in Morocco.

On 22nd Street on a windshield

Pin oak leaves in the gutter looking up

and after the rain

Robert Schmid's studio a work in progress.

leaves, sheets of paper land in a heap

the people get cut out and the light shines through the tracing paper

the people get taped and glued to the sky

then they lie about on the radiator

getting a bit curled up in the heat. here they are dropping out of the sky a bit like angels in Tiepolo paintings

 

 

The Season

 

First of all....

Berch's paintings appear on the windows of the Mooonstruck Diner --whose neon sign exploded in bright flames last week.

Some still- green leaves decorate a car's windshield.

At Union Square, bittersweet abounds. How messy it is! How all the little berries fall off all over the place...

and how tastefully it decorates a truck!

This morning, early,  shadows of the wrought iron railing fall on the pumpkin spelling some sort of message .........

...and the gutter does its best to look picturesque.

 

 

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Evening, then Noon on the First Day of Autumn

 

In the manner of an old fashioned sundial, it's possible to tell the seasons

by observing how the light falls across the room at different times of day. Here the light from the declining sun catches the dining table with its clutter of junk and paints the pepper mill  and the Hellman's mayo on the wall.

The light casts a shadow on a painting of a shadow -- and me with the camera too. Such tricks!  and how the putana's elbow jumps out at you!

At noon the slightly triste sight of a leaf fallen into the almost-too-cold-to-swim-in pool.

Summer and fall in the same moment. Gosh.