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All of my ghosts are my home
On the normality front, our street is full of cracks and bangs and whooshes from fireworks set off around the neighborhood, none so far combustibly. Otherwise I spent this Fourth of July with my husbands and my parents and eleven leaves of milkweed on which the monarch seen fluttering around the yard this afternoon had left her progeny. My hair still smells like grill smoke. Due to the size of one of the hamburgers, I folded it over into a double-decker with cheese and avocado and chipotle mayo and regret nothing about the hipster Dagwood sandwich. A quantity of peach pie and strawberries and cream were highlights of the dessert after a walk into the Great Meadows where the black water had risen under the boardwalk and the water lilies were growing in profusion from the last, droughtier time we had passed that way. I do not know the species of bird that has built a nest in the rhododendron beside the summer kitchen, but the three eggs in it are dye-blue.
On the non-normality front, I meant it about the spite: watching my country stripped for parts for the cruelty of it, half remixed atrocities, half sprint into dystopia, however complicated the American definition has always been, right now it still means my family of queers and rootless cosmopolitans and as most of the holidays we observe assert, we are still here. It's peculiar. I was not raised to think of my nationality as an important part of myself so much as an accident of history, much like the chain of immigrations and migrations that led to my birth in Boston. I was raised to carry home with me, not locate it in geography. I've been asked my whole life where I really come from. This administration in both its nameless rounds has managed to make me territorial about my country beyond the mechanisms of its democracy whose guardrails turned out to be such movable goalposts. It enrages me to be expected not to care that I have seen the pendulum swing like a wrecking ball in my lifetime, as if the trajectory were so inevitable that it absolves the avarice to do harm or the cowardice to prevent it. It is nothing to do with statues. The door to the stranger is supposed to be open.
The wet meadows of the Great Meadows are peatlands. They were cut for fuel in the nineteenth century, the surrealism of fossil fuels: twelve thousand years after the glaciers, ashes in a night. The color of their smoke filled the air sixteen years ago when some of the dryer acres burned. If you ask me, there's room for bog bodies.
On the non-normality front, I meant it about the spite: watching my country stripped for parts for the cruelty of it, half remixed atrocities, half sprint into dystopia, however complicated the American definition has always been, right now it still means my family of queers and rootless cosmopolitans and as most of the holidays we observe assert, we are still here. It's peculiar. I was not raised to think of my nationality as an important part of myself so much as an accident of history, much like the chain of immigrations and migrations that led to my birth in Boston. I was raised to carry home with me, not locate it in geography. I've been asked my whole life where I really come from. This administration in both its nameless rounds has managed to make me territorial about my country beyond the mechanisms of its democracy whose guardrails turned out to be such movable goalposts. It enrages me to be expected not to care that I have seen the pendulum swing like a wrecking ball in my lifetime, as if the trajectory were so inevitable that it absolves the avarice to do harm or the cowardice to prevent it. It is nothing to do with statues. The door to the stranger is supposed to be open.
The wet meadows of the Great Meadows are peatlands. They were cut for fuel in the nineteenth century, the surrealism of fossil fuels: twelve thousand years after the glaciers, ashes in a night. The color of their smoke filled the air sixteen years ago when some of the dryer acres burned. If you ask me, there's room for bog bodies.
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You look like a Dorling-Kindersley photo illustration of “Here, our ancestors relied on the bog for long-term anaerobic storage. Of…. stuff.”
*hugs*
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If you ask me, there's room for bog bodies. --There is. I've been practicing my words to weight a body down with.
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That is a beautiful bog.
Oh, it's always a treasure to find a wild bird's nest, especially one accessible enough that you can see the eggs. Hmm, I know blackbirds' eggs are pretty blue—American robins are related to blackbirds—their eggs also seem to be blue, is that a possibility?
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picture, if it wouldn't disturb the nest?
are there birds around here besides robins that have blue eggs? *Googles* wow, seems there's at least a handful. I had no idea.
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You can be rooted where the pie is!
You look like a Dorling-Kindersley photo illustration of “Here, our ancestors relied on the bog for long-term anaerobic storage. Of…. stuff.”
*hugs*
Stuff.
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Oh, good. No peat bog should be without one.
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I like spending time with it. I didn't learn about the peat until adulthood.
*hugs*
Oh, it's always a treasure to find a wild bird's nest, especially one accessible enough that you can see the eggs. Hmm, I know blackbirds' eggs are pretty blue—American robins are related to blackbirds—their eggs also seem to be blue, is that a possibility?
It is very much a possibility! Robin was the first assumption and is currently the working hypothesis because of the color: robin's-egg blue. The only person who's gotten a real look at it nesting, however, is my father who has just been referring to it as "the bird." I glimpsed it very slightly through the screen of the rhododendrons and backed off as soon as I registered its presence and could tell you nothing meaningful about it except earth tones, which doesn't narrow down a lot for the relevant female birds.
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I took a terribly blurred one while trying to use my phone to discover if there was anyone at home. (The next time I came back, there was an adult in situ and I left so as not to disturb her.)
wow, seems there's at least a handful. I had no idea.
I can say that I feel comfortable ruling out any egrets or herons.
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Thank you! It was so good to see the wetlands not looking parched.
--There is. I've been practicing my words to weight a body down with.
I would love to hear them.
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Yes, the door to the stranger is supposed to be open.
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Thanks to the quality of the photo, I can't see if they are speckled or not, but the saturation is so striking!
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Robins? Starlings?
I'm very glad that you (and your family) are still here! <3
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*hugs*
I don't find it strange to be attached to coasts or harbors or the local peat bog. I imprinted early on the Atlantic and would have a lot of difficulty landlocked, although I did manage to find out before the world shut down that I am not confined to the geology of New England. The firewall of inarticulable rage toward the death-cult currently representing and permanently deforming the more intangible landscape in which I live (with destruction to spare for the tangible, of course: people, water, earth, air, infrastructure, you name it) seems to have flashed over since 2016 and marks a change from even how I felt during the W. Bush administration, which was my incredibly demoralizing introduction to participating in democracy. I wanted those people in chains at the Hague. I want these people removed from the planet entirely. I wanted it long before this year. I am not used to thinking of this country I was born into as mine, but I have Kelvin zero interest in ceding it as the God-given torture chamber of vuture-capitalist Armageddon freaks. Couldn't Reagan have broken his neck on some horse opera in the '50's and spared everyone his cowboy fantasies on the world stage?
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Robin is currently the frontrunner, but it's not like we don't have starlings! Or blue jays! Or even bluebirds!
I'm very glad that you (and your family) are still here!
We're doing our best!
*hugs*
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Thank you. Will update on the monarchs as events warrant.
Yes, the door to the stranger is supposed to be open.
It maddens me that it is not apparently possible to just hold it.
*hugs*
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If I get the chance to see them for myself, I will report back on the color gradation.
[edit] I cannot see the eggs because the bird is on them, but the bird is definitely a robin.
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Some years ago, we saw a nest with blue eggs, and I think chicks hatched, but I think the nest was abandoned by then, and they disappeared. Not sure what happened to them :( I had always assumed they were robins, but now I realize I shouldn't be so sure since there are other candidates I hadn't known about. They probably were not heron eggs, given that the nest was in a bush next to a sidewalk and not near any body of water.
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This speaks to me.
What a lovely family gathering! The more beautiful, alas, for its setting.
The shape of the nest is also robin-like,
*hugs*
Nine
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It is incredible how much time we are used to literally burning.
What a lovely family gathering! The more beautiful, alas, for its setting.
*hugs*
The shape of the nest is also robin-like
Good to know! If I get a real look at the bird, I will report back.
[edit] The occupant is most certainly a robin.
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*hugs*
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It is a robin! I can see it nesting, red-breasted, white around the eye.
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They are that blue! This time I borrowed
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Nine
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