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Old Blog, New Style
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Error
- Hits: 1504
And with the change in season I've set myself the goal of refreshing my blog. The migration went off seamlessly, (whew!) and so all content is now in the new format. Nonetheless there remain some bugs to be worked out - styles from the old blog overflow some of the pages (I'll have to fix this..), images need to be resized, some of the functionality of the old blog has disappeared, but will be replaced and improved upon.
Everything takes time.
Until then, thank you for your patience, and if you should see something that needs fixing please don't hesitate to let me know.
Cheers.
Autumn Melancholy
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1858
"O Wild West Wind, thou breathe of Autumn's being...."
- Shelley
I have been seized with that restlessness, seasonal melancholy that brings in Autumn.
The leaves have not yet turned, but there is the shortening of days, the lengthening of shadows, the quick chill in the morning that never dispels itself....
It is Autumn.
And there is the wind, blowing from the west, earlier than the wind of Shelley, but the same. It always arrives here earlier, truly summer only lasts until the end of July, then the light changes, the shortening of days becomes more pronounced, there is that rush to finish those countless chores of summer....
TO explore, adventure, travel, live, each day growing shorter, quicker, more and more noticable.
Until it's September and Autumn is here, perhaps not on the calendar, but it's here. Dark still at 6:00 AM, chill outside, leaves and branches from the trees, still green, begin gathering on the lawns. There is the full harvest moon hanging bloated in the sky, low to the horizon, the next time it appears there will have been frost....
It is Autumn.
Strange, it fills me always with sadness, yet is my favorite season. It conjures, evokes within me memories of returning to University, of fresh acquaintance and old souls gathering in the halls, of finding new classrooms.
Of warm coffee in the morning, pretty girls whom you will know by the end of semester, the romance of libraries and of cozy winebars, live theatre, haunting music played late on the radio. It heralds winter, and you can see through the still green lawns to the frozen ground, to trees with barren fingers reaching up to the sky, to cold graves shoveled through the snow.
It is the colour of burnt sienna and raw umber and smells like freshly ground coffee, old leather and red wine, it's the bracing cold of early morning before the sun has arisen, early snowflakes melting upon your cheek, it's the smell of rare perfumes and burning leaves, it's the taste of pumpkin pies and crabapples, it's the hope, always, that this year it will be different, this year will be the one....
There is the sadness for the memories of loves that have failed, romances fallen by the wayside, people stolen away by death or circumstance, it begins the season of gathering and preparing for winter, the gestation of ideas and ambitions until more sunny and fortuitous times are upon us....
It is Autumn, and when you go outside the wind, the sun, remind you of how soon it will be here, how soon it will be winter, and somewhere in my soul there's an archtype, an understanding that with each season my own days are numbered....
It has been postulated that time is an illusion, that everything that has happened in the universe has happened all at once, for an instant and an eternity, and what we imagine to be time is a distortion of our senses that brings to us only what we can understand, a necessary evolution (if that can be applied here), and so we are forever in the womb, in the embrace of our lovers, in the cold earth beneath us...
the object as muse
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1962
Then there are the other reasons for collecting. Not just memories or souveniers, but objects as inspiration.
From top left and clockwise: Seashells, locally found amber, antique ivory chess piece, Palindrome Cork (1991, Ravenswood), large piece of amber with insects entrapped, neolithic flint, crystal skull, seashells, snuff bottle (contemporary), hand painted from the inside, row of dinosaur teeth, plastic reliquary containing the plastic reproduction of a saint, mailbox plate.
A small selection of the ornaments on my shelf. 1991, a good year, the logo (3 interlocked ravens) and the date contain a certain symmetry. The snuff bottle, meticulous Asian craftsmanship, to sit with a single brushed hair and paint the bottle through the narrow opening, finer antique examples cost in the thousands of dollars. The Ivory chess piece, knight, a stream of associations -> Parsifal and the Holy Grail, The errant knight, the odd move, the knights tour. The crystal skull and plastic saint, cheap bits of forteana, amber with insects (visible through a magnifying glass), tangible worlds within worlds.
Right: Fossil Nautilus(ammonite?) shell.
And the Nautilus, the golden mean and proportion as simply laid out as possible, underlying mathematical principles for growth and development, fractals, time....
Left: Georgian Keys
Keys, of course, access to secrets, initiation, antique keys because the new swipe cards, microchips and passwords somehow lack poetry, the keys as an object themselves are beautiful, rusted and patinated iron, ornate patterns hand cut to fit the lock.
Above: Brain Coral, buddha, buddha
And Buddha's, I need more of these, the finer Indian bronzes, the pantheon of Gods contained in a printing box shelf...
Collecting...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1804
I've taken this collecting thing a bit far. I mean, to see my place, it's packed to the rafters, overflowing with stuff.
Stuff, as in, not especially valuable stuff, probably most of it worthless, but my stuff. Boxes and boxes and boxes of it. It's been over a year and I sitll haven't unpacked.
Most of it is worthless, junk, but sentimental. With everything there is associated a memory, the 1930's vintage Rolex Oyster Observatory, junk, but the memory, the surprise of finding it in a Value Village in the southeast of Calgary. The 50's 16mm film camera, the realizing of it's potential, the quick reframe of thought at a garage sale, from "What is it" to "I have to have it....". And so on and so forth. The dinosaur bones, small fragments, memories of Drumheller, walking in the badlands. The native artifacts, walking the local rivers at sunset. An antique ivory chess knight, memory of an antique shop in Greenich, that, the keys, the bones, coins, crystals, all serve to jog the imagination, archived, preserved inspiration, a moment of time, recent or long ago, held captive and displayed in a series of old wooden typeface drawers, themselves a souvenier.
On the shelf above my desk...2 Coins, Roman, (Maximus & Trajan), coin, chinese (15th century), pendant (chinese), cheap rock crystal skull 1" across, a lead soldier, 3 18th century keys (the rest on a shelf elsewhere), 2 native beads, many stones with holes through them picked and thought too neat to be discarded, 2 fossilized bison teeth (1 from Crowsnest Lake, the other picked along the Bow), a pine cone, many sea shells, a nautilus, postage stamp, lock, piece of amber with insects....
The objects, they're only the landmarks on the journey. The physical signposts.
Other people fill their houses with warm memories of Ikea and smooth talking salesmen. Well dusted kitchens, scrubbed floors and orderly bookshelved. Mine is packed with junk and memories.
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