Happy Thanksgiving

Things for which to be thankful:

The Land

I am very fortunate to have space, and a few moments of quiet, for thought.

Good Cheer

We had a fine family meal today, thanks mostly to my sister, who cooked for everyone.  I only made croissant rolls, with 128 layers of butter, some filled with chocolate or cheese.  Here are two of the many pies that appeared at the feast, along with a glass of good beer.

The Old Home

This stone ring appears on my father's land.  I built it some years ago out of stones plowed up by the county when they were fixing the road.  It was good to have a day to go back to the ancestral home, and spend time with the people I grew up among.

I hope your Thanksgiving was a fine one:  that you had time to reflect on good things, and be grateful.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree. You are blessed. May it be so for the future.

The photo display tool is very cool.

douglas said...

Thanksgiving is always good when you have your family, immediate and extended, gathered around celebrating all that is good, and no matter how bad things get, there is plenty of good.

I love that stone ring. Is there any more to it that to create a sense of a place of importance? It reminds me in some ways of the work of Andy Goldsworthy, who I think you'd enjoy quite a bit. When I was in architecture school, he was a guest speaker, and was easily the best one we had during my time there- interesting, earnest, intellectually stimulating but without dressing up in academic speak, and funny as heck.

Grim said...

RCL,

Thank you, my friend.

Douglas,

It doesn't signify anything more than that I was looking at the rocks the county had plowed up, and thought it would be cool. So I got a wheelbarrow -- the center one barely fit in it -- and started moving them, digging holes, and so forth. Then I poured stale milk and beer around and over the rocks to encourage moss to grow -- although with the leaves down, you can't see it well in the photo.

But you know, these things are very old in the parts of the world we are from (I say "we" because Douglas is a Gaelic name, as you surely know). Throughout Ireland, Britain and France you'll find stone rings and standing stones small and large.

douglas said...

Well, sure, you thought it would look cool, and you went ahead and did it, but within that, there are ideas about marking a place, and the idea of time (which you tried to accelerate, to fit some preference of yours about old things, I'll conjecture). The inherent understanding of the significance those rocks could have, instead of being mere detritus from road work, is itself an insight, and one now shared in some small way with us. At the least, intended or not, it is still a mark of your presence on the land, and in a fashion that notes your connection to the materials at hand and to the ways of nature and time.

If you get a chance, check out Goldsworthy's work- I think you would like it. One of my favorite things he's done are his 'rainshadows' which are really just a sophisticated childsplay- when you first notice it's raining, lay down, and watch the rain start to fall for a few minutes, till the soil around you has gotten damp, then get up and observe your 'rain shadow'- the dry spot where you had lain down. It's not just that the shadow itself is interesting, and very temporary (part of his work is photo documentation of it, sometimes over time), but also that in laying down in the rain (something we don't typically do) you come to have an experience where you see rain in an intimate and considered way, instead of simply something that waters the plants and is to be kept off you with umbrellas and coats and boots. His sense of the process as the crux of the art, and attention to temporality is what I find most interesting.

Regards,
He of the dark stream...