August 9, 2008
Feeling positive about negative ions
…listen
…about the musicLooking and listening south at South Beach.
Summer in these islands is usually coated with a thin layer of silt and dust. Mystical particles settle from the woods and the sky and the unpaved side roads that take my bicycle to new stands of thistle and gestating blackberry bushes. Everyone’s truck is known not as blue or silver, but “island colored,” as taupey beige nearly camouflages the hard metal that waits in our driveway. So it was a surprise last week and then again today, when heavy rainfall visited, washing away the indictments of July’s drought and bringing moisture to plants that had been prepared to tough it out until the fall. Between fits of downpour, the sun blazed and spent its Saturday painting canvases of magic.
I love the rain. I love the smell and the negative ions and the sharp color contrasts that pop like fireworks in front of my eyes. South Beach, photo-ed above, lends itself so well to all the vivid joys I sense when water pours down from the sky as well as in from the sea.
Glenn Buttkus said,
August 11, 2008 @ 5:00 am
I remember when I lived in Southern California for 10 years, thinking that when it rained there, things did not smell the same as at home, here in the Northwest. Perhaps it has to do with the humidity, or the changes in ocean breezes, or the mixture of ions, positive coming in the salten air off the sea, and the negative pulled up from lakes and sounds and bays and rivers and puddles, recycled and dumped lovingly back onto us. As a kid my sense memories were very active, especially in the fall and spring, wet pavement, sidewalks, dirt, and maple leaves. Your poem of the day follows:
Negative Ions
Summer in these islands
is usually coated
with a thin layer
of silt and dust.
Mystical particles settle
from the woods
and the sky
and the unpaved side roads
that take my bicycle
to new stands of thistle
and gestating blackberry bushes.
Everyone’s truck is
known not
as blue or silver,
but “island colored,â€
as taupey beige
nearly camouflages the hard metal
that waits in our driveway.
So it was a surprise
last week
and then again
today,
when heavy rainfall visited,
washing away the indictments
of July’s drought
and bringing moisture
to plants
that had been prepared
to tough it out
until the fall.
Between fits of downpour,
the sun blazed
and spent its Saturday
painting canvases of magic.
I love the rain.
I love the smell
and the negative ions
and the sharp color contrasts
that pop like fireworks
in front of my eyes.
South Beach,
lends itself so well
to all the vivid joys
I sense
when water pours
down from the sky
as well as
in from the sea.
Alex Shapiro August 2008
Glenn Buttkus said,
August 11, 2008 @ 5:13 am
RE: your musical selection clip, THEWHITEHORSE @ 45 seconds. Gosh, how grand it is to revisit the white horse again. What are the instruments, clarinet, harp, synthesizer? There was no explication to click on this time. I recall writing a poem on this piece many months ago, during the winter, titling it simply THE WHITE HORSE, on FFTR. I found a great jpg image of a white horse in the snow to caption it. Your herd of white horses on the island, until yesterday, were probably like your vehicles, taupe biege, or ivory, or gray. It must be nice today to gaze into and at the snowball clairity of their newly washed whiteness, their shivvering withers, thier magnificent manes, and their strong shoulders. Spirit stallions perhaps, or dashing herds in your head, horses of the imagination.
Glenn