Fun in the Grey Gardens - Ah-Ha!

This is how I knew that Belle was a Grey Garden Girl.  This morning it was snowing - well, random flurries actually and we were chatting about having to work in the blizzard.  "Don't forget your panty hose!" I said.  And without skipping a beat she replied "I shan't, and I'll be wearing them on my head!"  This exchange in our best eccentric, nantucket drawl dahling!

May we all in the end, feed the racoons, break into random dances of joy and surround ourselves with lush, comforting, gardens of our own creation.....la, la, la!


But oh yeah, minus the garbage.....

Triste est Belle

This is the view from a certain rental house in Ocracoke. A vacation rental like all the others, but this one rented on a certain September weekend, with dear friends, during the waning days of summer, a summer like many that came before though none after. From my bedroom I noticed them. The egrets that came to rest en masse on the fading green marshes. As still as ghosts they peppered my view and I remembered them as beautiful, simply. Looking backwards, as memories overwhelmed, so fragile, those that had come and were yet to come, still, yet restless to live, still.
We were on our way out to the beach, getting ready and busy. Barely giving time to catch their watching. I glanced out and saw them and quickly took this picture. These thoughts of ephemeral joy far from my mind that day. There were no words for passing souls and goodbyes, I had no reason to gasp, though the breath was there already caught deep inside my heart - ready to burst out just a few days after this photo was taken. And then again just a few weeks later.....
Yes, I recall that life can change in one instant. A desolation can descend and make shreddings of the foliage of our lives, we've only to turn our heads to glimpse what was before, just there, on a cloudy, changling day. The feathers of an egret, moving slightly in the breeze, sharp eyes looking here then there. Making a terrifying memory restful if we let it. A bird of summer perched near us for a moment, bringing hope with their beauty. Should we pause to watch them finally fly away, we feel peace in their leaving.


C'était un weekend innocent, plein de joie, avec ma copine chérie. Peut âpres avoir pris cette photo - ca maman c'est endormit un soir, mais ne s'est plus réveillé.....

Dance!

Had an evening out with some friends and we went to the ballet in Raleigh!  The performance was Cinderella and was just perfect.  The Carolina Ballet http://www.carolinaballet.com/  is a great company that has grown in the last dozen years or so.  The performance could have been cutesy and done, but instead was a fresh and beautiful version of this classic.  We had great seats - almost front and center.  It amazed me most of all how quiet these dancers were.  How all we heard was occasionally their feet coming back to land on the ground again.  They seemed to float on the air they were so graceful and free.  I can't even get through one yoga class without grunting so loud the instructor calls attention to it.  They perform these amazing feats of flexibility and pose without so much as a whisper.  In addition, the music was live and performed by the resident Pianist Tetyana Ryabchikova - he played for over an hour and it was flawless!

After the performance we got an extra.  A dark interpretation of one of my favorites - Barbers' Adagio for Strings.  Each note of this piece is so sharp in its sadness, so heavy with hopelessness that it was a struggle for me not to allow the tears to run down my cheeks.  Every time I hear this music I am moved by its beauty and melacholy.  The performance was the struggle of one woman among five men, as she moved from the arms of one to the other.  But the music, for me, filled the room with a thick swelling of suffering and blanketed me with such melancholy - it eclipsed what I was seeing. 

I think Adagio for Strings is the sound of a soul dying - it is so pure in its release of each note, it is not of this world.