Month: June 2007

A quick glance back at past entries revealed I first commented on Van Morrison in 2001 with a song called “Cleaning Windows” and have never gone too long without commenting on another of his songs, possibly because I spend a lot of my spare time listening to his albums on iTunes .

For reasons that only became apparent after I started to write this entry, I kept replaying Morrison’s “Satisfied” from Common One earlier today:

Let’s go walkin’ up that mountainside
Look down in the valley down below
As we survey this wondrous scene
Wait a minute-
Hold that dream.
Hold that dream.
Don’t want to change my name and write a book
Just like Catcher in the Rye
Settle down in a shady nook
Talkin’ to my baby now

I’m satisfied
With my world
Cause I made it
The way it is.
Satisfied (Satisfied.)
Inside.

Go to the mountain
Come back to the city
Where a whole lot of things
Don’t look very pretty
Spiritual hunger, spiritual thirst
But you got to change it
On the inside first
To be satisfied
To be satisfied
Sometimes I think I know where it’s at
Other times I’m completely in the dark
You know, baby, cause and effect
Hell, I got my karma from here right to New York

I’m satisfied
With my world
Cause I made it
The way it is
Satisfied (Satisfied)
Inside.

Sometimes I think I know how it is
Other times I’m completely in the dark
You know, baby, cause and effect
I’ve got my karma from here right to New York
I’m satisfied
Cause I made it
The way it is
I’m satisfied (satisfied)
Inside

At first it occurred to me that being trapped inside the last two few weeks had multiplied my desire to get outside hiking again, particularly in the mountains. Later, I marveled at how Morrison has been able to adapt the blues, including the driving horn sections from Texas blues, to fit his own needs. “Satisfied” may sound like the blues, but the lyrics sound anything but blue.

Finally, it dawned on me that Morrison’s lyrics seemed to answer some questions I’d had lately on whether I wanted to try to publish some of my poems elsewhere, whether it was worth the bother of going through all the ones that I’ve posted and see if any of them deserved any more attention than they’ve already gotten here. Looking back at many of them made me wonder how I could’ve had the hutzpah to even publish them here.

Overall, it seemed that most of them had already gotten more exposure than they deserved. Heck, since my site is averaging a little over 1,100 visits a day, I’m not sure anything I’ve ever written or photographed deserves that kind of exposure, certainly more exposure than I would ever have expected when I started this blog in 2001 as a protest against America’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Which is not to say that I’m particularly dissatisfied with my writing or my photographs. I’m not, and neither am I content to sit on my “laurels” and profess that I can’t write something better or take a better photograph.

Reflecting, the song pretty much describes how I feel about my life right now. I’m not saying I don’t have karma all the way from here to Vietnam, but overall I’m happy with the way I’ve lived my life. In hindsight I would have made some different decisions, but anyone who doesn’t feel that way at 65 must have avoided too many decisions in life.

I’m not sure whether I’m attracted to photography because it provides me with the power to transform small, relatively nondescript flowers like this

and this

that most people would pass by without a second glance into striking flowers, or because after repeated attempts I still can’t manage to capture just how striking

these huge poppies are in the garden, drawing raves from nearly everyone who sees them.

If you’re a regular visitor you’ve probably noted that I haven’t been out birding for nearly three weeks now, largely because we’ve had visitors the last two or three weeks, but also because I’ve been suffering from a serious cold, one I finally got antibiotics for today. So hopefully, I’ll get out at least once this week when the sunshine returns.

While I’ve been stuck in the house, though, I’ve been visited repeatedly by a little Song Sparrow. At first, it sat in the front garden on the tallest plants repeating its song for hours on end.

I assumed he was doing so to attract a mate. Now I’m beginning to have my doubts,

Recently, whenever someone sits down to watch television in the front room during the day, or at least when I do, he sits on the rail, staring in, jumping from one spot to another, all the time peering inside. He’ll stand at the bottom of the window sill or hang from the top, as if trying to see everything there is to see. Even two-year-old Zoe commented on the strange little bird hopping back and forth.

I’m sure there must be some rational explanation for its behavior, but lately I’ve begun to imagine this Song Sparrow is trying to call me out, call me back to birding, knowing that I’ll heal more quickly if I’m out enjoying myself and following my heart rather than sitting inside nursing a silly cold.

When I first started taking butterfly pictures I was almost exclusively interested in capturing their beauty.

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, the more pictures I took the more carefully I looked at butterflies, something I probably haven’t done since I studied them in grade school.

When I took this series of pictures last Friday,

I noticed the funny foot coming straight out of the forehead, even though I knew that it couldn’t really be a foot, or at least I didn’t think so. Then somewhere from deep inside my brain the term “proboscis” arose, even if it wasn’t spelled that way in my third-grade mind.

A few moments on the web, and sure enough there’s a world of fascinating information about Butterfly parts.

It’s amazing how just paying attention changes our perception of our world, isn’t it?