Saturday, June 23, 2007

solstice-time


{irises, my garden...}



{flower shadows, also my garden... perhaps the midsummer tsvit paporoti?}



{ladybug on clematis leaf in the garden}


Happy Midsummer! (slightly post-Solstice, but really, traditional celebrations for the occasion are occuring this whole week...) In honour of the light hours & the presence of the sun, I have been trying to get away from my endless computer work to be outside. Warm mornings and stormy afternoons, and daily running in the river valley, hearing the locusts singing in the grasses, sweet humming of wind in the poplars, feeling as if I am inside a massive green lung at the forest bottom. Playing music again -- I'm rededicating myself to playing oboe: Polovetsian dances, the Largo from New World Symphony, Gymnopédies, the Romance from Eine Kleine... The sound is the colour of warm honey evening light melting the sidewalk, the light that goes on forever, exhaling into the dark before breathing out a sunrise again.

In two months, I'll be up north & the days still won't be getting shorter... though I'm sure mid-August in Whitehorse will already mean yellow leaves, dying fireweed & smoky nights.

Alexander Borodin's Polovetsian Dances from Prince Igor -- the Slovak Philharmonic with Daniel Nazareth, conductor. (click there for mp3!)

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

mostly a note to myself.


{rays shining on the vor frelsers kirke, christianshavn, copenhagen, may 25}


{wavy grasses, windmill at the moat at kastellet, copenhagen, may 20}



{chesnut flowers fallen on the cobblestone, copenhagen, may 20}


{lilacs, botanisk laboritorium, copenhagen, june 1}


So, going to Copenhagen piqued my curiousity in Mister Søren Kierkegaard's writings.
I haven't read much yet, but I must say that thus far, he refreshes me. It seems we are kindred spirits on a few points, already, e.g. existentialists who still believe in divine forces do make me Even if he gets a little melodramatic and angsty sometimes, I overall deeply appreciate his focus on emotions and feelings and how they affect our ethics. We are not little rational logic-machines! (I deal with that far too much in academia...) Anyway, currently I am starting with 'The Concept of Anxiety' (because goodness knows, that was written for me) and appreciating statements like:

"[Anxiety is] neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself."

'Freedom entangled in itself', I think, perfectly captures both the panic/dread and yet the anticipation and potential of anxiety. All in all, it resonates.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

wonderful wonderful Copenhagen


{a bicycle patiently waiting for its owner, christianshavn, copenhagen, may 25 i think}


{looking down nyhavn canal, copenhagen, may 20...}


{a swan nibbling the end of a waffle cone, nyhavn canal, copenhagen, june 1}

I am missing Copenhagen now, hyggelig København... missing, among many things:

-- sitting on the edge of Nyhavn canal in the afternoon, talking with conference-people, sun on my face melting my soft is, swinging my legs over the water

-- the walk to the Dansk Polar Centre every morning, over the Knippelsbro, the nine o'clock flock of bicycles swooping down, emerging out of the fog. chats with anyone and everyone, gravel in my shoes, the scent of salt sea & lilacs

-- certain foods, especially my usual breakfast: banana-pear yogourt, hyldeblomst (elderflower) juice, sticky sweet almond pastries, & spiced green tea.

-- swans! & the constant flight of swallows, shrill canopy of calls over the canals.

-- all that intellectual ecstasy at that Italian restaurant, that red wine, smoke in my face & some of the juiciest, most inspiring & honest conversations I've ever had... being with people who are so passionate & sincere about their fields of study... who understand the importance of emotion in academia... this never fails to remind me why I love what I study.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

all of the trees were in light


{st. albans kirke, kastellet, copenhagen - may 20/07}


{hyldeblomster, swan, kastellet moat, copenhagen, same evening}



{old ramparts, swan, kastellet, copenhagen, etc}

This place felt like magic; palpable & sweet & sad. Illuminated elderflowers & preening swans, & light that you could taste - you knew where all the stories came from. Behind the calm that yearning, that heart bursting, & everything he could cling to: little tin heart, fir needles, & white sea foam blossoming on the waves.

* * *

We didn't sleep too late
There was a fire in the yard
All of the trees were in light
They had no faces to show
I saw a sign in the sky
Seven swans, seven swans, seven swans
I heard a voice in my mind
"I will try, I will try, I will try
I will try, I will try, I will try"

-- Sufjan Stevens, 'Seven Swans'