Tragedy: Wheel inside a Wheel

In the face of horrific events, I tend to go quiet. I watch along with the rest of the world but I don't feel that I have much to add. Online life does not do well with quiet. We're supposed to always be looking for ten-ways-to-shout-louder-than-others-here or find-success-like-dooce there. I tend to step back. Tweet a few things that informed me. Like how a nuclear reactor works. I had no idea.

I wait for the regular tragedy cycle. Shock and awe. Commentary. Stupidity - that US network that chose to add frantic drumming over video of the tsunami because the footage wasn't dramatic enough for them. The religious chatterers of all stripes who think they have the direct line to shifting rock and the voice of gods. The need to know so we can feel some sort of control over those gods. And men. And atoms. All while living on a planet that shakes itself silly while spinning through space.

It's been a while since I've thought of the voice of God in the midst of a tragedy but I was thinking of all this a few years ago when the combination of human imperfection and natural forces heaved themselves onto the shores of southern States. As I walked through my quiet neighborhood, I could hear Mary Gauthier's voice. She wrote a song, Wheel Inside The Wheel,  about a funeral in New Orleans. I saw her at a folk festival - too early in the morning and in the pouring rain. As the audience took shelter as best we could - hats, rain ponchos made from hastily torn garbage bags, Mary said "You're impressing the hell outta me." We shouted our encouragement, our breath showing in the morning air and then rolling upwards with the collected cigarette smoke and coffee fumes into the falling rain.

She told us she wanted to write a song for a friend, a songwriting friend, that had died. She felt unworthy to write a song for someone who had such incredible skill so she asked God, "Lord, what should I do?" And God said, "Go to New Orleans! Go to New Orleans! Go to New Orleans!"  And Mary said, "Shit God. Don't speak to me directly. You're scarin' me."

Those are the words I heard step after step on my clean and dry sidewalks...New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. And now on currently not-so terra firma, my keyboard and all of us chattering away trying to avoid the tremors beneath our feet. Shit God. Don't speak to me directly. You're scarin' me.

Domestic Landscapes: Bert Teunissen

I recently came across the work of Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen and his project Domestic Landscapes. I have been tiring lately of Martha Stewart-esque domestic photos, perfectly lit showing teal mugs of coffee composed next to a piece of toast and a pot of jam that just so happens to come from the perfectly matching complimentary side of the color wheel. Teunissen's photographs have been a welcome antidote. The images come from across Europe and Japan. I needed time with these photos - they provided an opportunity to think about many of the thing Teunissen mentions on his web site: 

For the last thirteen years I have been working on a photography project called Domestic Landscapes. This project is about light - natural daylight. The photos show how daylight illuminates the domestic interior, and how it dictated the way the interior was build, used and decorated. This specific light and the atmosphere it creates have their origins in the architecture of the pre-electricity era, when daylight was the main source of light. This kind of light started to disappear from European homes after World War II when the old way of building was abandoned. At this moment few of these homes remain.

Domestic Landscapes is also about identity and diversity. Every country, every region has its own distinctive culture that can be recognized in its homes, customs, cuisine and traditions.

The inhabitants of the houses where I take photographs still know how something ought to taste and how it should be made; they understand the importance of time and ripening, and the value of daily and seasonal repetition. I found that when local traditions disappear, most of their visible aspects are also lost. When a small farmer stops slaughtering, the open fireplace becomes redundant. Sausages and hams will be dried artificially and smoked in a factory losing their original flavour and appearance. And when a small farmer stops farming, the stables are converted into storage or living spaces, the stable doors are replaced by windows, the cement floor by parquet, the hayloft is altered into bedrooms, the kitchen is moved to the former parlour, and slowly all rooms and spaces will have lost their original meaning and significance.

France

Romania

Spain

Bosnia i Hercegovina

Many more images at Bert Teunissen's website.

A sense of place

Two views of autumn from two different bridges, 100 kilometers, 24 hours, and a world apart:

"A sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.” —Rebecca Solnit

This quote is pulled from the page of one of my favourite features on the Orion Magazine website: The place where you live. Someday, after I've done more deep thinking, searching and writing (hard but necessary work, a worthwhile 24 hours alone project),  I hope to contribute an essay there. For now, the first draft, which I started composing while walking under the city bridge last night, consists only of a list of essential elements: flora, fauna, water, mountains, sky, sunlight.

A few more words about the last element, sunlight: I prefer the early morning Autumn light, sometimes silvery, sometimes golden, soft, gentle and slow. Two memories come to mind. Nine years ago, in a clearing along the Grouse Mountain trail: sunlight glittering through branches, creating a golden glow that filled the space. I felt like I'd stumbled upon a sacred place. And last Sunday morning, while driving back to the city: silver shafts of sunlight breaking through clouds to meet the mist rising from the farm fields - a luminous, diaphanous joining of earth and sky.

I'm beginning to understand the quote. Yes, place is within you -- it's deep knowing, deep connection, the sixth sense. And that sense is helping me feel, finally, at home and at peace within the city where I live.