One day I jumped and I stayed up late
For reasons primarily relating to a decision on the part of the City of Somerville to begin concrete-cutting construction directly in front of our building at eight o'clock sharp this morning, we ended up taking a rain check on the sea this afternoon and went to a river instead. Specifically, with the connivance of some masks and my mother's car, we went to the Old North Bridge across the Concord River and wandered around the grounds of the early twentieth-century mansion that now serves as the park's visitor center, autumn-wild gardens and all. It was cold and sun-setting and wonderful. All photographs taken by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch unless I don't appear in them.
I had expressed some uncertainty as to whether this hat really went with this coat. We were getting out of the car when a kid in a tricorne went past us with his dads and I immediately stopped feeling self-conscious. The burning mirror on my lapel is the mimic octopus pin that was my last year's birthday present from Rob.
It's all reflection from this angle, but around the pilings of the bridge, the water had that ink-opacity that meant you could see how it flowed only by the movement of leaves and pine needles. Had there been fewer people taking selfies, we would have taken the time to play Poohsticks.
I do feel better around water.
I have no idea what I was thinking, but I like the gesture.
Looking at the radius of the stump, Rob said suddenly, "It was a witness."
It was whorled like two trees that had become one, like a ballad.
Rob called this one "Stand and deliver!"
I wanted to catch the sunset on the bronze of the Minuteman statue—Rob spotted that it had been cast at the Ames Foundry at Chicopee—but feel I may have just paid tribute to the model's ass.
Looking back across the meadow toward the bridge was like looking through several seasons at once. Winter was there in the middle somewhere.
And then close to, it broke up into art.
The gardens were full of stairs and terraces and paths leading into autumn, so we took them. We have determined to go back. There were too many levels full of brick and ivy and wrought iron and pokeberries to leave unexplored.
The air underneath the small pines smelled cold, of resin and pine straw, and I felt wonderful. I don't write about them as often, but trees mean a lot to me.
There were just some seriously gorgeous fungi on view. Rob found a puffball the size of a soccer ball, or a skull.
I remember loving these tiny pinecones as a child. They were as precious to me as acorns or maple helicopters.
We made it out of the park just in time for sunset and met my parents for dinner from—not at; it will be some time before anyone in my family feels comfortable with restaurants in person—Highland Fried, which thankfully I thought of calling when their online ordering service claimed they were closed. They were not closed. They were irritated with their online ordering service, but cheerfully furnished us with pork ribs and fried chicken and collards and coleslaw and mashed potatoes and chicken gravy and key lime pie and peach cobbler and my father who has never lost his Southern foodways was very happy and so was everyone else, especially me who has missed this restaurant for months. Since my birthday observed is still to be celebrated on Sunday when my brother's family can make it, I was not expecting the presents of either Wade Miller's Devil May Care/Sinner Take All (1950/1960), which look fantastically pulp, or the polished weight of labradorite flashing blue-green as phytoplankton or the northern lights.spatch got me the digital single of Stopwalk's "Homosexual Art Attack," which I have played at least half a dozen times in a row. Autolycus is asleep on my lap.
I am still having a great deal of difficulty with the future, but I am definitely glad to have been here for today.
spatch unless I don't appear in them.
I had expressed some uncertainty as to whether this hat really went with this coat. We were getting out of the car when a kid in a tricorne went past us with his dads and I immediately stopped feeling self-conscious. The burning mirror on my lapel is the mimic octopus pin that was my last year's birthday present from Rob.
It's all reflection from this angle, but around the pilings of the bridge, the water had that ink-opacity that meant you could see how it flowed only by the movement of leaves and pine needles. Had there been fewer people taking selfies, we would have taken the time to play Poohsticks.
I do feel better around water.
I have no idea what I was thinking, but I like the gesture.
Looking at the radius of the stump, Rob said suddenly, "It was a witness."
It was whorled like two trees that had become one, like a ballad.
Rob called this one "Stand and deliver!"
I wanted to catch the sunset on the bronze of the Minuteman statue—Rob spotted that it had been cast at the Ames Foundry at Chicopee—but feel I may have just paid tribute to the model's ass.
Looking back across the meadow toward the bridge was like looking through several seasons at once. Winter was there in the middle somewhere.
And then close to, it broke up into art.
The gardens were full of stairs and terraces and paths leading into autumn, so we took them. We have determined to go back. There were too many levels full of brick and ivy and wrought iron and pokeberries to leave unexplored.
The air underneath the small pines smelled cold, of resin and pine straw, and I felt wonderful. I don't write about them as often, but trees mean a lot to me.
There were just some seriously gorgeous fungi on view. Rob found a puffball the size of a soccer ball, or a skull.
I remember loving these tiny pinecones as a child. They were as precious to me as acorns or maple helicopters.
We made it out of the park just in time for sunset and met my parents for dinner from—not at; it will be some time before anyone in my family feels comfortable with restaurants in person—Highland Fried, which thankfully I thought of calling when their online ordering service claimed they were closed. They were not closed. They were irritated with their online ordering service, but cheerfully furnished us with pork ribs and fried chicken and collards and coleslaw and mashed potatoes and chicken gravy and key lime pie and peach cobbler and my father who has never lost his Southern foodways was very happy and so was everyone else, especially me who has missed this restaurant for months. Since my birthday observed is still to be celebrated on Sunday when my brother's family can make it, I was not expecting the presents of either Wade Miller's Devil May Care/Sinner Take All (1950/1960), which look fantastically pulp, or the polished weight of labradorite flashing blue-green as phytoplankton or the northern lights.
spatch got me the digital single of Stopwalk's "Homosexual Art Attack," which I have played at least half a dozen times in a row. Autolycus is asleep on my lap.I am still having a great deal of difficulty with the future, but I am definitely glad to have been here for today.
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*gazes*
*redacts Nature Feelings in honor of birthday*
*checks calendar in case we have dropped into nineteen-forty-eleven*
All good pictures! You have an excellent and handy documentarian.
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Thank you!
To be honest, I'm not even sure what decade the hat is from. I mean, I know more or less when it was manufactured, but that's not the same thing.
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In that outfit, I think you look like a version of The Doctor :-)
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Thank you!
In that outfit, I think you look like a version of The Doctor
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That meal sounds incredible.
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Thank you! I have just missed so much of the year. The smell of the earth and the river and the leaf-mold was something I hadn't known I was hungry for.
That meal sounds incredible.
It was a feast. Highland Fried has been effectively off-limits to us since the beginning of the pandemic because we neither have a car nor can walk to them easily and they have not been delivering for most of the last seven months, so we may have gone a little wild, but it was worth it.
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All in all, lovely photos--I'm glad that even without the sea, the day's celebration was a good one!
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Thank you. I bet this is a good year for carrying the sun with you.
and I would say rippling shoulders rather than ass in that Minuteman statue.
Is true, the shoulders are also notable.
Re: your highwayman pose, I can tell that your band of thieves turn into crows after the robbery is complete, no?
Hey! We don't give trade secrets away!
All in all, lovely photos--I'm glad that even without the sea, the day's celebration was a good one!
Thank you! It was, and it makes a difference.
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Well, it does seem to have been a very nice ass and worthy of paying some tribute to at least! *g*
I am still having a great deal of difficulty with the future, but I am definitely glad to have been here for today.
It's excellent that today was a day you were glad of being here for.
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I consider it extremely thoughtful of the sculptor to provide for visitors who couldn't get a real look at the front of the statue due to plague-time photo-ops!
It's excellent that today was a day you were glad of being here for.
Thank you.
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distressed face I am not allowed to take that image and super-impose those words on it!
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Your outfit (including hat and delightful octopus!) was entirely harmonious and appropriate to the setting.
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The Old North Bridge is part of the Minute Man National Historical Park, which I never remember is actually all the same national park because I think of it as a series of linked historical sites in Lexington, Concord, and Lincoln—the Old North Bridge has its own visitor center, for example, as does the Lexington Battle Green, which is also just the town square and therefore in high school I watched many friends play Ultimate Frisbee on the lawn there.
Your outfit (including hat and delightful octopus!) was entirely harmonious and appropriate to the setting.
Thank you!
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It was a lovely time, and that was important.
Also, that's a fabulous hat, I think it goes perfectly with your jacket, and I agree with another post here - you do look like an incarnation of The Doctor. Happy Birthday!
Thank you!
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And one reason that hat is so wonderful is the shapes if creates when you're photographed against things.
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I hope they will permit for experimentation with the trenchcoat which it is finally the right weather to wear, but I agree with you that they seem committed.
And one reason that hat is so wonderful is the shapes if creates when you're photographed against things.
Oh, nice! [edit] I forgot to include this photo in the original post, although you can tell where it falls in the sequence, but it bears out the truth of your observation.
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Thank you! I also trust that it will.
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I'm glad your today was as good as it was.
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Thank you! I did not get as many photos as I had hoped out of this expedition because my camera, having assured me that its battery was just fine before leaving the apartment, decided almost as soon as we reached the bridge that it was lying, but I am really pleased with that one. The colors came out right.
I'm glad your today was as good as it was.
And thank you. It really feels like it matters.
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(Also: wow, irritating. I hate when that happens.)
"It really feels like it matters."
It does, really, for a lot of reasons.
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2. When I saw that first stump picture in the sun, I thought it was ice, because I always think things are snow and ice unless proven otherwise. Summer is a foreign country, take 874.
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Thank you!
2. When I saw that first stump picture in the sun, I thought it was ice, because I always think things are snow and ice unless proven otherwise. Summer is a foreign country, take 874.
It's been close to freezing the last few nights, which has been pleasant. Summer is not a foreign country to me, but I am much more comfortable in cold weather than in hot. I feel lucky to have been born in autumn because I like it.
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Trees and rivers are very dear to me, and those are some truly excellent examples thereof, and excellent pictures! It looks and sounds like a lovely day, and I'm very glad.
(I went kayaking on the Charles with a friend today, and it was wonderfully restorative. Water and trees! The combo is so great!!)
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Thank you! They are clothes that make me happy and I thought a birthday deserved them.
Trees and rivers are very dear to me, and those are some truly excellent examples thereof, and excellent pictures! It looks and sounds like a lovely day, and I'm very glad.
I have missed everything that grows so much. I don't know that I've ever spent a year so much indoors even when I was really sick. I was walking around just breathing tree-air and field-damp and it was wonderful.
(I went kayaking on the Charles with a friend today, and it was wonderfully restorative. Water and trees! The combo is so great!!)
That also sounds splendid, and I'm so glad you had it. (
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God, same. It really does lift my spirits inordinately every time, possibly because it's been so rare this year. But I do find myself appreciating every scrap of nature and breath of wind, even more than usual, and even more so when I manage to really get out in a forest or otherwise out in nature.
Where on the Charles were you?
Paddle Boston has an Allston/Brighton location that's an easy drive or a longish but doable walk away from us. Becca didn't come along this time, but we've gone kayaking there several times, and met up with friends; in these times, it turns out it's a very pleasant way to hang out while socially distanced, since it's easy to stay a paddle's length apart in any case.
It was windy enough today that they were sending everyone upwind, so they'd come back the easy way, which of course is what I would've opted to do anyway. So we put in at the rental place (a little ways upriver of the Eliot Bridge) and went upstream till we went under the Arsenal St. bridge, and fairly soon after that turned around and came back, because we had socially distanced picnic dinner plans with Becca and were starting to get hungry. A shortish trip, but lovely.
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Thank you! It felt like an adventure.