Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Green
The very light here has changed in the last week. The bare things which blossomed and delighted me have now leafed and filter the light so that there is a greenness to it all. A shade. A dappling which enchants me.
There is a calmness to it, a serenity, which is lacking in winter and in spring.
Everything looks different, as if one has put on sunglasses, perhaps. And this being the first of it all, everything is sharp and in focus and clear in a way I can't really describe. It is completely different from winter's clearness. It is a polarized clearness, perhaps and everything is, as Paul Simon might say, "Kodachromed."
Yes. That may be it. Polarized and Kodachromed.
I know it affects me and my emotions and my thoughts and my days, this change in the light and I wonder how many of us are affected by nothing more than the light of where we live and what season it is without realizing it at all? I have always thought that people with certain types of mental, well, perhaps we could call them CHALLANGES, feel compelled to move near the beach. Surely there is solace there. The unobstructed light, the light on the water, the vastness of the water itself, the heat (usually), the very obvious rhythm of the waves on the shore, the ozone which is supposedly released as water meets sand. I think when I was younger and dare we say? Crazier? I needed that more than I do now. I know there are still times when I must get back to the beach but not as often as when I was young.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings said that we all know when we arrive at a place which feels like "home" when we get there, even if we have never been there before. That we may have been raised in the mountains but when crossing a desert, realize that there is something...something about it which feels right, which feels familiar, which feels like home and which may be exactly the place where our own soul needs to be for the best health of body and spirit too.
I was miserable the entire year and a half I lived in Denver. Oh yes, it was beautiful. The mountains were majestic and yet, they never caught my soul, they never gave me solace. I felt as if I were living in the wrong time or on the wrong planet or something just wrong. And when I got back to the south, I realized without a doubt that I, quite frankly, need the green of many, many trees and the blue of water. Mountains? Nah. I can live without 'em, thank-you, but I am glad that many people love them and live near and in them. Makes more room here for me and I am sure the people who are mountain people appreciate my need not to be taking up their space.
And I do love the beach. I do love the ocean. I do love rivers. My heart is so happy on a river. So I have to have water somewhere near by but I think above all, I need green.
And here I have it and right now, my entire world is becoming more and more green and it is not a weary, hot, thirsty green. It is a frothy lace of petticoats green. It is a fresh, newborn, brave and succulent green.
It is a cooling green, an all-is-right-with-the-world green. It is a Chinese parasol of green. It is an emerald sparkling on a beautiful dark-skinned woman's ear sort of green.
And I love it.
The final trees to leaf are in full thrust right now. The pecans. Yes, they say. There will be no more frost. There will be no more bitter cold. That is our promise.
And honey, they make good on that promise, the pecans. They are our truth-tellers, the wood we knock on when we want to keep our luck.
And they are leafing now as the cardinals feed their babies at the feeder (even the daddies!), as the last of the wisteria's purple bloom drops into petals on the ground, as the squirrels chase and leap and dance on the tops of fences and on branches and across the ground, as the air filters through all this dizzying green, this woozy-making green, this thousand-shades of green that are the decoration of the walls and the floors and the ceilings of the outdoor room where I mostly live.
The place I call home as does my soul.
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I know that the sun and green really make life here much more bearable. The gray and cold of winter is a downer.
ReplyDeleteI too am a child of the water and the South. I belong here. And the greens of the wetlands next to the house are just awesome. Every shade and hue. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThat feeling of home. That is exactly what I felt the first time I stood on this piece of dirt. It is my place.
ReplyDeleteI love this post and I love the quote of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings -- I have never heard that before, and it rings so true. I wonder how urban/pastoral fits into that quote and that reasoning -- when I lived in NYC I thought each and ever day that THIS is where my home is, this is what I love, this city, these crazy people, this history, these streets, etc. I've never felt that anywhere else, I think, and it had literally nothing to do with nature. Oh, well, enough rambling. You've given me wonderful food for thought this morning!
ReplyDeleteI've got green, and mountains, and the sea. I'm lucky too.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.ie/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=bray&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g4g-s1g5&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
I wish I had a little more of it right in my own little patch, but ah well... when my ship comes in.
The place you call home is a balm to the soul. Even to mine, thousands of miles away, in the middle of the city with a tiny backyard. I look out my window and daydream: if only I had Ms. Moon's yard.
ReplyDelete"A seaman I know said that he was making a great effort to assure himself of going to Hell, for the Bible says that in Heaven "there shall be no more sea," and Heaven for him is a place of great waters."
ReplyDeleteHome is something you can taste and feel. I've written about this as well. Place is as real to me as the ridges on my fingertips.
ReplyDeleteAnd Lord help me if the sun doesn't shine.
Bucko Ken- I couldn't bear that. I would die.
ReplyDeleteSyd- I'll bet it's just incredibly beautiful where you are. I need to explore that area some day.
MSJC- We know it when we're there, don't we?
Elizabeth- If you haven't, you should read Cross Creek. Beautiful stories, beautiful writing.
And I think many people do best in cities. That is what makes their hearts and souls happy and at home.
What a lovely post! I felt just as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings described as soon as I came to Tallahassee almost 40 years ago. It just felt like home to me and I never left. I am loving all this green too, but the pollen is making me more miserable this year for some reason.
ReplyDeleteShit. I need to find my home. This is not my home. It may just be a few miles away, though. Here's hoping. The light is saving me, too, just now.
ReplyDeleteI find being near the ocean very soothing and calming, too. I love water. It makes me drunk with happiness.
ReplyDeleteSo do you!
Your writing is pure poetry... And you are so right. I grew up in Belgium, densely populated country in Europe, yet when I first visited the American South West and in particular New Mexico, I knew that I had found my home. Or I should say my heart found its home...
ReplyDeleteAnd spring is slowly entering England too now, and our greens are changing...
Thanks for your lovely post!
I've also noticed a bunch of - I don't know quite how to describe them - but pre-teen cardinals at my birdfeeder lately. I admire them. They definitely don't have the world figured out quite yet, but they're fearless.
ReplyDeleteI am definitely not a Southerner, though there are a lot of things that I like here. The weather we're having right now is summer to me, so I hope I won't be too miserable during real summer.
Your image of "a frothy lace of petticoats green" and on made me see your lovely place in the world...especially loved the fern photo. Aren't ferns so dear to watch as they unfurl their tender leaves?
ReplyDeleteWhere is home? I do so love the ocean for many reasons, I do love where I am near the mountain I see from my windows...but I am not in the high mountains...just the coastal range. Yet there are places like the south where I do feel a tug..of an odd homecoming..though I have only visited the south but a few times. Like the New Mexico where I was born I feel a intangible pull....
You make me happy to be living here... and i know in another month I'm going to be drippy wet, exhausted from the heat, and smelly all the time, and I'll need to reread this.
ReplyDeleteLovely post. I cannot wait to see more green 'round where I am.
ReplyDeleteI'm sooo jealous you have leaves! Denver is getting there...
ReplyDeleteMissed you.
Jo- You ARE lucky.
ReplyDeleteAngie M- Really? Wow. That makes me happy.
DTG- I should now but where does that come from?
Nancy C- Well, I love a day here and there where the sky tells us to stay inside. I do.
Lois- I don't know if we've ever seen a pollenized spring like this one.
Mwa- We all deserve to find our homes.
Ms. Bastard- Especially if that happens in Mexico. You know me too well.
Photocat- Sometimes I think we suffer these days with the ease of moving we have.
Anna- I wish I could tell you that you will not suffer but I am afraid you will.
Sorry. It gets brutal, even for those of us who have lived here forever.
Ellen- And some of us have more than one home. I know this to be true.
Ms. Fleur- I will remind you.
Nicol- And you know you will.
AJ- Where the hell have you been? Missing you.
oh, you speak to my soul, of light, of green...i have been feeling all those same delights but you place those feelings into beautiful poetry...the iris made my heart stop! my gingkos are sprouting their incredible lime- green fan-shaped leaves...i am in awe...adore this time of year!
ReplyDeleteReally.
ReplyDeleteLulumarie- Oh. You just reminded me of how much I NEED a gingko. I have been lusting after one for years. Ancient beauties.
ReplyDeleteLove you, dear.
Angie M- Yes.