The higher, the farther, the faster you fly

[sovay]

Today the streets were full of flowering trees, weeping cherries and saucer magnolias and Bradford pears which blossom like a cloud of white cut paper and smell like week-old fish; I walked circuitously into Union Square and back, reading Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal: The Last of the Innocent (2011) at Hub Comics and acquiring Geoffrey Hill's Somewhere Is Such a Kingdom: Poems 1952–1971 (1975) from the Somerville Public Library, and I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures of white and pink and green blossoms or the afternoon sun making a desert rose of the bricks of the Litchfield Block or the roof of Pearl Street Studios as seen from the overpass, lacking only pigeons and a clothesline to make a modern painting. I met my parents and spatch for dinner at Christopher's. We walked home together down Somerville Ave. as the sky darkened to the deep, luminous blue that is the intensity of wine in hexameters about the sea, a nearly full moon clearing out of the haze. In the evening I read some Hill and watched a small, fine noir that I hope to write about since it was exactly what I was looking for when I tried my luck (and lost) with Out of the Fog (1941). Tomorrow I have plans to attend the Boston Conservatory's production of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock (1937), whose opening night story is legendary; I heard it from my grandfather as well as Tim Robbins. Immediately tonight I suspect I should stop making notes and sleep.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

That's what those stinky trees are!

Looking forward to movie reviews and random thoughts re: the play. I'd be delighted to hear your grandfather's story.

[sovay]

That's what those stinky trees are!

I learned the name from spatch after smelling them all my life. They are also known as Callery pears. In the U.S. they are an invasive species, an ornamental that got out of control, like a land-based version of the water caltrop.

Looking forward to movie reviews and random thoughts re: the play. I'd be delighted to hear your grandfather's story.

Done!

[alexxkay]

I'm a huge fan of Criminal, and have enjoyed most of Brubaker & Phillips' other collaborations as well.

[sovay]

I'm a huge fan of Criminal, and have enjoyed most of Brubaker & Phillips' other collaborations as well.

I don't think I know Brubaker and Phillips' other work, but I have enjoyed all of Criminal I've read. It's one of the few forms of neo-noir I don't want to punch for missing the point.

[alexxkay]

You might want to try their The Fade-Out, a noir-ish tale set in 1940s Hollywood. But only if you're prepared for an unusually bleak ending.

[radiantfracture]

Bradford pears which blossom like a cloud of white cut paper and smell like week-old fish

The lilacs are beginning to come into flower in my neighborhood, each with its enveloping, slightly aquatic sweetness -- all except the shrub down the block, which I always think of as "the carrion lilac."

[sovay]

The lilacs are beginning to come into flower in my neighborhood, each with its enveloping, slightly aquatic sweetness -- all except the shrub down the block, which I always think of as "the carrion lilac."

That's a wonderful image, if possibly not the best neighbor. Is it a different strain?

[rosefox]

I love Callery pears and had no idea they had a scent at all—I've never noticed one, and I've been up close and personal with them many times. I wonder whether the ones up your way are a different variety than the ones in NYC.

[sovay]

I wonder whether the ones up your way are a different variety than the ones in NYC.

I don't know: it's possible there's a cultivar that has been bred not to have a scent. They're planted all over Boston and they all smell the same to me. I do not actually mind it, because I associate it with spring, but it is distinctly fish-like. (The internet keeps trying to tell me the trees smell like sex, which makes me think the internet has never had any.)

[moon_custafer]

(The internet keeps trying to tell me the trees smell like sex, which makes me think the internet has never had any.)

I’m going to reply to that with the best catch-phrase to come out of Tumblr in the past year, GUILLERMO DEL TORO WE KNOW IT’S YOU

[sovay]

GUILLERMO DEL TORO WE KNOW IT’S YOU

. . . I see how that happened.

[ashlyme]

That sounds like a good day. Can you eat Bradford pears? I imagine the smell to be something like the sweet-rot of hawthorn blossom, but I'm probably stabbing in the dark.

[sovay]

Can you eat Bradford pears? I imagine the smell to be something like the sweet-rot of hawthorn blossom, but I'm probably stabbing in the dark.

To my knowledge the tiny fruits they produce are ornamental rather than edible by humans (they are distributed by birds, so I am not sure if the issue is that they are toxic to humans or just taste bad), although they are entertaining to look at because their skin has the amphibious greenish-brown speckled color of regular pears and they are maybe a centimeter in diameter. They smell saltier than hawthorn. I would not liken it to a sexual smell, but I described it to spatch last night as "tide-flat-y."