All posts in category breathing rights

‘endlessly making an end of things’

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by sean on August 2, 2021 • Permalink

Posted by sean on August 2, 2021

https://sd-stewart.com/2021/08/02/endlessly-making-an-end-of-things/

friday at black marsh and environs

Black Marsh Wildlands Area, Edgemere, Maryland, USA. © 2017 S. D. Stewart

Little Blue Heron at Black Marsh Wildlands Area, Edgemere, Maryland, USA. © 2017 S. D. Stewart

Eastern Box Turtle at North Point State Park, Edgemere, Maryland, USA. © 2017 S. D. Stewart

Rose Pink (Sabatia angularis) at North Point State Park, Edgemere, Maryland, USA. © 2017 S. D. Stewart

Spicebush Swallowtail at North Point State Park, Edgemere, Maryland, USA. © 2017 S. D. Stewart

Eastern Cottontail at North Point State Park, Edgemere, Maryland, USA. © 2017 S. D. Stewart

Not depicted: (1) the Eastern Ratsnake that beat a hasty retreat from the trail it was attempting to cross when it sensed my approach; (2) the White-tailed Deer fawn that bolted from its hiding spot adjacent to the trail as I came upon it; (3) the 30+ other species of birds I saw and/or heard.

2 Comments

by sean on August 4, 2017 • Permalink

Posted in birds, breathing rights, butterflies, eastern box turtle, eastern cottontail, eastern ratsnake, escape, fridays, friends, little blue heron, mammals, nature, parts of the whole, photography, reptiles, somewhere else, spicebush swallowtail, swamps, wildflowers

Posted by sean on August 4, 2017

https://sd-stewart.com/2017/08/04/friday-at-black-marsh-and-environs/

prettyboy reservoir

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by sean on July 16, 2017 • Image • Permalink

Posted in breathing rights, clouds, in the sky, nature, photography, reservoirs, saving, self-medication, somewhere else, sundays, the antidote is inside all of us, trees

Posted by sean on July 16, 2017

https://sd-stewart.com/2017/07/16/prettyboy-reservoir/

friday birds (with bonus turtles)

Fox Sparrow (Red) – my favorite sparrow

Wood Duck

Hermit Thrush

Eastern Painted Turtles, © 2016 S. D. Stewart

Eastern Painted Turtles taking the sun at Black Marsh.

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by sean on March 12, 2016 • Permalink

Posted in birding, birds, breathing rights, eastern painted turtle, fox sparrow, fridays, hermit thrush, nature, photography, reptiles, somewhere else, wood duck

Posted by sean on March 12, 2016

https://sd-stewart.com/2016/03/12/friday-birds-with-bonus-turtles/

ravine trail

The new trail opens up the wildest area in this urban forest oasis. Clusters of mushroom sprout from the center of the path. Few have walked here yet. It is high summer and the wood thrush yet sings. Cicadas offer up a constant backing drone. Point of fact: dogs don’t process the switchback concept. It conflicts with their innate knowledge of the shortest distance rule. As the trail climbs from the deepest shaded low point, the morning heat barges uninvited into the cool air space. Sounds of the nearby freeway intrude. As I struggle to adapt, a certain chorus tears through my head in response. This walk is soon over.

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by sean on July 31, 2015 • Permalink

Posted by sean on July 31, 2015

https://sd-stewart.com/2015/07/31/ravine-trail/

life’s splendor forever lies in wait

“Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”

– Franz Kafka

(thanks to kafkaesque-world for summoning Kafka’s splendor)

bruno schulz and the need for connections

“Recently, I have been calling almost daily at the office. It sometimes happens that someone is sick and they allow me to work in his place. Or somebody has something urgent to do in town and lets me deputize for him. Unfortunately, this is not regular work. It is pleasant to have, even for a few hours, a chair of one’s own with a leather cushion, one’s own rulers, pencils, and pens. It is pleasant to run into or even be rebuked by one’s fellow workers. Someone addresses you, makes a joke, pulls your leg, and you blossom forth for a moment. You rub against somebody, attach your homelessness and nothingness to something alive and warm. The other person walks away and does not feel your burden, does not notice that he is carrying you on his shoulders, that like a parasite you cling momentarily to his life…”

—Bruno Schulz, “The Old Age Pensioner” in Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

testing…testing…

From an infinite distance, I saw the floor. Ofélia. From afar, I tried to reach the heart of that silent girl, in vain. Oh, do not be so frightened! Sometimes people kill for love, but I promise you that one day you will forget everything, I promise you! People do not know how to love, do you hear me, I repeated as if I might reach her before, in refusing to serve truth, she should proudly serve nothingness. I who had not remembered to warn her that without fear there was the world. But I swear that this is breathing.

—Clarice Lispector, “The Foreign Legion”

disordered chronology of movement

Failed recollections to begin with. Slow-creeping toward habit. A giant round metal head. Sudden velocity. Sudden inertia. Pavement merges with gravel. The emergence of a tentative consciousness, neither hard nor pebbly. Vexation of unidentified raptors. Vultures soar over open sore in ground. A blast. Winged assassins. New commonness of thrashers in the street. Feet to pedals. The river like a swollen artery choked with plaque. Ungroundedness. Slow mounting keen of a train not far off. Dream rivulets running off a dry and calloused cerebellum. The importance of a second floor. Eye contact with strangers. Avoid building awareness of a presence. A body imagined close, a body far off yet close, a body buried in dry soil, a body husking a soul. A dipping line, looming and drawing back, tangled in the hanging moss of a halting lifetime.

II.

The exultant dismissal of everything. A hitching-up of trouser legs above this rising level of foreign liquidity. A spreading out tempered by a wish to gather in. Weathering. Rusty rooftop with greenery. The futile accomplishment of deletion. Southern hospitality. Sensory overload. Sensory deprivation. Every atom split to populate a neverending shell game run by con artists connotating the building blocks of life. It’s so casual is what it feels like. An unseemly seeming accidental existence. And yet people fly planes. Against near-white skies. This is a reason not to listen to all the best songs in a row. This is the reason time means nothing. Look out, the fuse is lit. See how it sputters, this heat seen and heard, racing on its journey to a black-powder shattered shack. Every early morning blink of a first-opened eye, this fuse is lit. And wetted fingertips flutter to pinch it out quick.

III.

Bird on a wire, sing your song, lift your wing to the world. Swoop down and over this set of fleet footprints filled in long ago. Expectations of nothing can never be unfulfilled. It’s a something-nothing to believe in, at least. An anti-ideal to carry stuck beneath an idealist’s forever-sweating armpit. Relish the freedom of solitude in public places. Deny detours diverting detritus. Pick it up, handle it, determine meaning and value, discard when done. Don’t look back but for inspiration. Forward motion fuels freedom. Reminders come free.

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by sean on June 19, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in aether, anonymuncule flies into the sun, birds, breathing rights, cycling, dreams, elaborating on the never happening, escape, everything is in everything, friends, giant things, i feel vagulous don't you, i'm glowing don't touch me, in-between, isolation, it's always the smallest things that catch in your throat and fill you with a bit of light, it's the end of the song play it again, lassitude, learning to fold the map of my avoidance techniques, let's all synchronize our watches to 00:00, let's pretend everything is new again, memory, nothing, other things, parts of the whole, philosophastering, real-time dilution of a previously useful system of categorization, restlessness, rivers, rootlessness, south carolina, stream of whateverness, summer, swirly patterns, the antidote is also the poison, travel, wednesdays are weird, where are all the decoder rings

Posted by sean on June 19, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/06/19/disordered-chronology-of-movement/

scatterings

i like to see chaos subsumed into order. long grass growing tangled then trimmed. but only in certain places, like next to sidewalks, not in parks where i am walking. no, not there. not when i am sitting facing a field and the man comes on his mower, chasing me away, following me through the park, more and more mower men, an onslaught of men joined in mechanised noise and motion. that is what i don’t like. i like to see spread-out papers form themselves into a neat pile or disappear into the recycle bin. bare surfaces. something emptied and discarded. this is not a manifesto, by the way. this is just a monday morning [note: it’s actually now wednesday—ed.]. a morning i rode in rain. traffic altered my route and i passed the central police station, a thriving death star hive, battered tie fighters buzzing in and out from the flight deck, looking to crush, to destroy, to subjugate the populace, meting out their brutal mutilated form of “justice” with truncheons and guns.

last friday was a special day for i heard my first wood thrush of the year. o, how i love the ethereal songs of the thrushes! there is no sweeter music in the forest for me. i used to wake to their flute music every spring and early summer morning, but no more, no more. now, if lucky, it is the much lesser song of another thrush, the ubiquitous robin. not to disparage the robin, but his song is nowhere near as transcendent as the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, the swainson’s thrush…

yesterday i went to a class that was like jungian personality types but with colors and a few more bells and whistles. i am blue-green and my conflict sequence moves from green to blue to red. there are all these diagrams that look like someone made them with a spirograph. they are quite pretty but i don’t know how i feel about being plotted on a triangular graph. there i am…a black dot straddling the line between two types, far off from my fellows (in the group report, i am a clear outlier, there are no other dots near me). there i am…moving across the color scheme as conflict escalates, crossing axes with impunity. look at me go…

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by sean on May 1, 2013 • Permalink