Cross posting under Daily Grace and les collines, because the 15-year old engine of this auto ode is so integral to both….
late winter, clarity
There is something that happens with the light around the time of the equinox, when the angle and distance between sun and earth produce exceptionally stunning, crisp stark reliefs of light and shadow.
A week or so ago, driving north along the glacial ridge that borders this part of New York and Massachusetts, the light ahead of an approaching snow squall caught my breath. To the north, really dark clouds, black, nearly, with bright sunlight from a late afternoon sun bouncing off and illuminating stark tree outlines and bright bleached bark in a lovely chiaroscura.
Light and dark, black and white, no soft edges here as the squall blew in and the gorgeous contrasts were replaced by what seemed early nightfall and whiteout conditions. It was a mini blizzard, ahead of the real one we’d get soon enough.
We love contrast, we crave the black and the white, we want things to be clear. Clarity, clairvoyance, seeing clearly. We would like to walk the world as if our vision were as clear and bright as the pre-equinox sun glancing off the beech and sycamore. But the reality is more like perpetual fog, and the longed for moments when it lifts are all too rare, where we break through, the light hits just, so, and everything seems truly clear.
These moments serve as beacons, when our vision pretty much otherwise ranges from zero to minimal. People, events, moments of grace may offer intense flashes of illumination along the way, showing us the path– just long enough to know have we gotten lost, are we still on it, is there in fact a path?– until the light dims and we are back in the fog.
Soon after the squall episode, the local PBS station was running a special on the making of Hamilton. This was a great piece of television, what of it I caught, about a show I have long wanted to see. At one point, referencing Hamilton’s approach to politics, and perhaps life, someone quotes Obama as saying that the only way stuff gets done is when you hear, see the truth of the person sitting across the table from you. This sounds like a truism, like, right, I know that. But the reality of it, the practice of it, is infinitely delicate, complicated, and labor intensive.
In graduate school, as a 20th-century French scholar working on literature of the post-war period, I spent time tangling with theories of the Other. Following a strong start early on by the Germans in the late 18th and 19th centuries, in the last century the French really took hold in the field, with philosophers, psychoanalysts, and theorists like Derrida, Lévinas, Foucault, Lacan, Kristeva; even Sartre and de Beauvoir.
Outside of the Academy, the connections between literature, literary theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis may seem perplexing at best, but given events of the 20th century we needed every tool at our disposal to simply read and absorb much less decipher and possibly interpret.
My field involved literature of the Holocaust. The horror of the Holocaust was for me just about the most extreme schism between all concepts of self and other, the ultimate otherization; I think to some extent I sought answers in the complex, dense, often puzzle-like language of many theorists, but really only found more questions.
That was ok. The seeking itself is of value, of course, and if nothing else I learned that history is not so teleologic and neither are individual lives. Rather than terrifying, that seems an oddly comforting notion when one is engaged in the day-to-day, hand-to-hand work of living. Doing the very best you can may only lead you back to where you began, but that is ok. It may in fact be all about the journey, after all.
On we go, making our way through the fog. The moments of beautiful illuminating chiaroscura are just behind, or ahead; it’s for us to allow the intermediary beacons to shine on the better angels of our own, and others’, natures.
Guido’s Month of Love demo: salmon and pork
Faroe Island Salmon with les collines Meyer Lemon Rosemary Jelly
We love the Faroe Island salmon as it is consistently buttery, flavorful, and is cleanly and sustainably farmed in the cold waters off Scotland….
mixing it up: le Thom Collines and friends
Oh March, the weather is ricocheting from -5 to 55 and back again. There is more snow coming, and even those not affected by SAD are beginning to feel light- and warmth- deprived. Really good fresh fruit and vegetables seem like a dream. It is late winter in the Northeast….
In the bleak midwinter
Mirroring my query last summer of when is midsummer, actually, same goes for midwinter…in my book of course it is midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, which is right about now, 5th of February. But officially, midwinter is the winter solstice, go figure. It is also a key word in of one of my favorite carols, more proof that it happens around Christmas rather than a month and a half later as I prefer. Alas I am stubborn so for me, it will stay put where I have put it….
the grace of Joe Biden
This is a post I intended to write many months ago– it was on a list of planned topics I sent to someone in November, with the parenthetical comment: non-political! That I finally got to writing it Inauguration weekend is a chance irony. But wow, what a weekend that was….
auld lang syne to Epiphany
Hold on to those horses, we have a boatload of ground to cover. Because I never met a metaphor I didn’t like to mix.
Such a year, such an end of year….
winter solstice 2016
Winter official two days ago, 5:44 a.m. the 21st. Though weather-wise it felt pretty well underway, with serious snow the Sunday before Thanksgiving and some real cold last week.
The local fruit now is all preserved in jars or awaits in the freezer to carry through a good part of the winter months. Sour cherries, Concord grapes, blackberries; rhubarb, strawberries, pears. And a good supply of local ginger will continue to contribute wholeheartedly to Chipped Pears, and soon our new Ginger Preserve.
Two days til Christmas and space to breath at last. Looking forward to writing in the Daily Grace mode soon. Til then, wishing all a good night xo
at the mid-fall very super beaver moon
November’s moon is the beaver, and this year’s happened also to be the biggest supermoon since 1948. The beaver is also a sentimental favorite, near to our heart.
Here in Columbia County, some perfect clear skies to see this superduper moon, which was nice as it will be another few decades or so til we get one quite so close again. Though I didn’t get a photo, my favorite view was the morning before it was truly full, as it was setting in the hour before sunrise. On a cold, perfectly still and clear morning, it was indeed huge, simply gorgeous.
Though we are a few days into the waning moon now, this post has been about a week in the writing, as my head would end up on the keyboard more than above it. And the long lag since last I wrote….similar excuse…
We’ve been busy though, picking and preserving, tagging, selling, demoing. Cooking up quince, crabapples, pears, and ginger for some of the last best of the season’s flavors: Quince Preserve, Crabapple Jelly, Chipped Pears. No Quince Jelly this year, sorry to say, as the quince crop was all too limited, damaged in part by the same April cold that hurt the apple family.
New on the roster: Concord Grape Conserve: like our dense Concord Grape Preserve, but with the addition of walnuts and oranges. Chunky, sweet, citrusy, divine. Based on one of our old recipe cards, it’s a keeper.
In development, Ginger Preserve, a personal favorite, ready hopefully before Christmas. With the beautiful ginger we are lucky to have from Et Cetera Farm in Ghent, just up the road, we are fully inspired. We will keep you posted.
And in this season of giving thanks, we are grateful for the season’s harvest, for our farms and amazing farmers, for the beautiful fruit and supportive customers who make les collines as much a gesture of preserving love, as about the preserves themselves xo
les collines at the autumnal equinox
The fruits of summer are ceding to those of fall: Concords are in, crabapples very soon, pears, quince, apples; all ripe or soon to be. Summer turned to autumn Thursday, following the preceding week’s beautiful harvest moon….
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- …
- 18
- Next Page »