Strange Arts & Visual Delights
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Cynthia Reeves, “Landscape Study,” late 1950s. The dark day of a winter solstice. i.
cold wind leaf over leaf will scrape across the snow ***** In my posts for each of the thirteen weeks of winter, I imagine colder days than we consistently get in my part of North Carolina. But over the years we have experienced winter weather—sleet that knocked out the power for several very cold days, knee-high snow (it usually melted quickly), rivers frozen so hard a few hardy souls dared to step out on the ice. Late fall here has been unusually cold this year, perhaps portending an icy winter. I am writing on Wednesday 18 December. The high today will be 70, but a low of 19 degrees is forecast for Sunday, the planned date for this post. We may remember this as a cold winter. Most of my memories of cold weather in the South come from two winters. First was the winter of 1959-1960 in the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia: unusually heavy snow fell on four consecutive Wednesdays and remained on the ground through an unusually long cold snap; in some places it was blown into drifts over 20 feet high. On our farm in Southwest Virginia, we could walk on the drifts over fences; the tops of the fence posts protruded only an inch or two above the snow. The storms and persistent snow cover caused major disruptions and hardships for many, though not for my family. In remote areas, food was helicoptered in for people and livestock. In North Carolina, children missed so much school, a special act of the legislature was required to allow them to advance to the next grade. The second landmark winter was January 1994, when an unusual cold snap in the Raleigh-Durham area caused rivers to freeze over. My son and I walked out on ice over shallow spots on the Eno. Falling through would only have wetted our boots, but we didn’t fall through. The ice cracked but did not bend or break. Eno Winter 1994 i. Feeder creek above water stump ends ice-encased end game ii. Islets of ice, eyelets of sun “If she cracks she bears” coronal splendors teethe the light avid as tongue for water the eye creases the ice nuzzle pivots and frays the wind: shoots of man-smell flag the woods like common grass rive from river the high-tailed fear the white-tailed beauty “if she bends she breaks” with crack of fire iii. Great blue The heron bides on one leg stumped the kingfisher's harangue. Exiled inland these solitary birds shy as bats beat their wings like dirty rugs. Trapped by winter they stoicize: can freeze upright and fall with a clatter. Mired in the Eno, their bodies are baled with log and leaf, bottle, carcass of tire foul and indispensable. iv. The air this side Brazen airings attack us napped and felted inside- outed by bluer breathings They cap the riffles with foam pour unvoiced over the river the mercies of God Shuttle steaming from lights to heart, bolted to iron swimming in us as we in them Fluvial days, rivers of exhalation: the noon light shivers shivers and drowns the trees. v. The bluer book What matters cannot be said: in this field of vision that obtuse angle of ridge and river form of air and light, it is what you see you cannot say, for you see nothing: the opposite ridge sheared (like this) of woods, the ice-mottled brush-lined river, the arc of power lines carving the space: these-- palpable and opaque—permit the void to fill the eye. Moved inwardly by that glow, we speak—must speak—though what we say, whatever we can say, does not matter. What it means, if it means anything, is beyond our saying. vi. Are these The green pastures promised the righteous? The grass is all browns, yellows, and grays, like a barbershop’s day’s end sweepings. Where are the hoppers, the fiddlers, the leg-scraping white-winged shit-spitters? Like the rich, they are different: wear their bones outside, breathe from the gut, sing all summer long. Come back in July, climb the high grassed hill before the power company bushhogs it back to lawn, and they will rise before you clickety-click in a green-brown tide, in an arcing shoal of alien life. They will be almost as strange to you as your own life, if you ever see it for what it is; almost as strange as the life you haven't lived. vii. The king of hearts Under the bridge, Twan of New York has painted hearts in red and black. Overhead the cars pass up and down Guess Road. Climb the embankment—it's terraced in red dirt, like a ziggurat-- and you can touch the roadway with the flat of your hand. Here you can escape the rain and sun and even the traffic noise. This is a sturdy bridge: at rush hour it doesn't shake or groan, but hums like a big cat after a kill. Twan whose middle name is Dante has sprayed on a lengthwise beam just under the road bed, a red beetle-- the people's car, humped like a bison-- and on the concrete support a rural mailbox labeled Old Farms. Any escape is good, if you can find it. Here others, or Twan himself, warn 'fagots' of an imprecise wrath, and you can inspect the products of the age-- flattened beer cans, Xmas paper still in shape of the box, a price list (suggested retail) for barstools, flecks and shards of styrofoam. As for every other spot of land, someone no doubt has died for this. Twan, perhaps, could live for it. --Crucible, Fall 1994; winner of Sam Ragan Prize Notes ii. Italicized lines are from John Gordon, "If She Bends, She Breaks," in Aidan Chambers, ed., A Haunt of Ghosts. iv. “airings”—a pun on airain, the French word for bronze v. “the bluer book”—a joking allusion to the published notes of lectures by Wittgenstein called the Blue Book. Posted 22 December 2024
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