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A magazine of sound and fury Dana Wilde |
The Mind Errant |
All writings on this website Copyright 2008-2009 by Dana Wilde and Jack Wilde. Images Copyright Dana Wilde unless otherwise attributed. You may use what you find here for any noncommercial purpose as long as you give full credit to the authors, photographers and the website. For any purpose which involves the exchange of money, including postings to websites which host any kind of financial transactions, please contact us. |
Amateur Naturalist Short forays into nature Fires of the Sun Longer forays into outer space Critica Forays in Reading Fictions Nature Notes by Jack Wilde |
"In the dreaming man's dream, the dreamed man awoke." -Jorge Luis Borges |
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Other writings in other places: China Daze: American life there, 2000-2002 How Ancient China Came to America: The I Ching as Bible An Old-Fashioned American Revival: Henry Miller, the Beats, Philip K. Dick and M.C. Dalley Ride the Highway West, Baby: The Doors and the latte literati Nine Qazals of Mazun: Translations of a Sufi poet |
Maine: An Essay (1990) Observations on the difficulties of saying anything meaningful about observations on the difficulties of living here. Contraband: A Recollection (1996) Portland had a poetry and arts scene in the 1970s, before the fall. Awakening: Rimbaud (long ago now) Of adolescence and poetry. |
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Turning the Wheel by Bruce Holsapple The weather shifts, fog, mud lots of rabbits about, need to watch in the early dark, they scootch beside the road tend to dart out, make the stupidest moves twist, maneuver, melt, avoiding a straight path a coyote might get fooled but trucks don't predict-you can't turn the wheel fast enough, so that the road's spotted by carcasses- recall small deer, mornings in West Texas, those big trucks, the headlights at night, plowing thru them you can't slow fast enough vultures, pink ugly heads, gathered awkward flapping off next morning just as the day heats & one deer tangled in a barbed fence between Sanderson & Marathon sensed it watch as I drove past otherwise I'd never have noticed- tan haired in the sand & brown bushes Got out, looked over & the herd 20 or so, were looking back at us managed to get the leg free & she hopped off Hot, Jesus, those border towns me with no air conditioning driving around like in an tin oven lightning flash, hail, wind, fog meanwhile in Iraq, the radio says Weapons of Mass Destruction but that's already taken place in fact a done deal A cow sees grass A thief, opportunities Vox Audio/udio-poetry/ |
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Responsibility & the News If you leave the reporting of the news to the internet people, you will never have any accurate idea of what is actually happening. |
Beyond the Bounds of Eye and Ear Listening for spirits. Deviant theory Contrary to popular belief, money does not make the world go round. A Talk with a Monk West meets East. |
October In October comes a quality of light here that is practically supernatural. The sun has bent down toward the southern horizon since June so it's throwing rays through the air at the same angle as in late February. But fall is a convergence of seasons, and winter is a months-long end, all bare trees and snow. October light is different. October sunlight filters through leaves and crystal-clear air. In any given field there's a birch, maple or sumac that practically refracts light, like a tree hologram, or like a live crystal with facets bending yellow, orange and red radiances inside the tree and over every ghostly remnant of milkweed, grass and goldenrod. Everything owes itself to the air in October and November. Not only conditions of light, but squalling blue jays and hop-flocking juncos, and Canada geese. Where the dignity and nobility of the great geese originate, I don't know. But when you hear 20 or 30 voices honking and cheering overhead, and see the streaming chevron headed south in slow, powerful wingbeats, then - at least to me - a chill comes made partly of cool air and partly of cool grace. They summer from here north, sometimes to the edge of topmost Canada, where they mate for life and nest on the ground, often islands, and on muskrat and beaver domes. Their little families stay together for the year, until the next brood. They migrate south as far as 600 miles and the Caribbean and tend to make the same rest stops. In October they're flapping and racing on ahead of the snow and cold, which is already settling over Canada and not long for Maine. As long as there's brown meadow grass or stubble fields for forage, they stay. I've seen flocks resting in desolated corn fields in December before the snow and wind bullied them out and they headed off south. They've got the wings to go. The geese's wings in autumn. The waning sunlight stuns them, or rather, the light angling in from southwest and bouncing off their wings, almost like the echo of a voice, stuns who sees it. In my memory, which is increasingly cluttered by autumn after autumn, is a moment of crystal clarity in southern England. It was October 1980, I was hitchhiking out of Poole in Dorset on a road beside a moorland field. The grass and heather were brown up the slopes; there were brittle fallen leaves everywhere, just like here but duller. There was no breath of wind and not a sound; the landscape itself was listening. Suddenly a V of geese rose out of the grass. They ascended in perfect silent unison with the silkiness of motion you imagine wraiths have. They rose and rose and then on some unknown cue started honking. I watched them out of sight over the hills. Where they were going I didn't know. They were pretty surely Canada geese, already at the southmost limit of their British range. They were brought from North America to Britain in the 17th century for sport and decoration and afterward invented their own migration routes. It didn't matter that their destination was unknown. In their ascent and the low morning light the autumns of England and New England converged, at least in my apprehension, the way certain dreams mean something impossible to state or even think. In October comes a certain slant of light and perspective that seems to rise up out of some unseen spot of time and gather itself, and head south. |
Books, bits and pieces |
Recollections and other perceptions |
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WHILE HULLS FLOAT TO THE TOP OF THE OAT WATER by Patricia Ranzoni Where did they go, these top sheets from Wolf Moon’s calendar gift, Clif’s snaps boxed in a Maine Seasons deck to prop for us to check by months, weeks, days? No sooner February’s iceplates crashing and crushing under the pilings when March’s lobster boats part the thinning crust at their moorings, April’s green waiting to push through last year’s field thatch for thirty days ‘til taking its place in the back of another year. But thirty days are nothing next to the way the likes of young great grandfather Snowman went to sea and, gone long enough, breakfast could be a stale biscuit broken into coffee, long enough for spoons of maggots, weevils and scum to rise into a ho-hum skim. I sketch this year’s first bantam egg with exclamations in the space at January’s end, signaling the return of enough light for layers, waving so long to the ice fishing shack Cousin Frank could’ve towed out onto the blue snow, its elbowed stovepipe waving back. The way our men work frozen-over fishpastures between fried bread and beans. Another chance to begin again. Clear the table still strewn with unfinished Christmas makings so late they could be Valentines. Can’t keep up, even with an extra December bridging that black and white husky panting pulse onto that black and white Winthrop lake over near Laura with her prized kitchen utensils, wooden handles painted green, worn. And Claire gazing as if out the window in her trailer park, the consoling memory of a strong, pitch-smelling hand resting on her knee. Only ten more serene scenes before it’s too late for another year. Couldn’t we just confess we’ve blown it? Another Christmas missed but still time to prove our love? |
Jupiter & its moons, orbiting 9-9-09. |