Winter River

 A view of the River Sègre in Lleida, from 2019, as December of that year closed. With luck and the continued global fight against Covid-19 we'll be able to spend time walking the river again from the city.

Good health to all !

Winter Ivy

 Winter ivy on a graffiti'd section of the wall on the bank of the Sègre River, Lleida. 

First posted, some may remember, on December 25, 2014. Happy Holidays to All !!

Danse Macabre - an online literary magazine

 Some of my recent poems are in the current issue of Danse Macabre (Number 139, Les Tretze Dèsserts). I hope people will look into this and previous issues of DM and by all means certainly consider participating. 

Meanwhile thanking the magazine's editorial staff for including me. Below is a link:

https://dansemacabreonline.wixsite.com/neudm

A view of the Segre

 El riu Sègre, a prop de la confluència Noguera-Pallaresa (principis d'octubre, caminant...)

Near the Noguera-Pallaresa confluence (on a walk in early October). Great memories of a sunny day, from today's cloud covered Barcelona........

 

 

Autumn walks and drives

 A cell phone view of the Pre-Pyrenees from our hotel, the Cal Taverner, in Monsonís. This is in the La Noguera comarca of Catalonia. It's about a 30 minute drive from Balaguer. I'll post some more texts soon. It is beautiful to get out and walk around the countryside. Coldish mornings, though!

Barcelona, October

 

Barcelona, October

 

Waking sounds in a quiet house.

We close our eyes and listen.

Murmured colors grace the window.

November voices share our embrace,

first gift in a season chanting hurry

into café life and hillside walks.

Our choices brace the turning path,

each resonant step a new set—

the city’s rousing seasonal song.

Pyrenees photos

 

We spent four days in August in the Pyrenees, in the Vall Fosca region of the Pallars Jussà comarca (county). This area has been lucky to have very low rates of Covid 19 infection, which of course is one reason for our choice. One of our walks took us from Gento Lake along the old narrow gauge railway line, which leads to more lakes in the system. I’ll post more on this but for the moment these three pictures give an idea of the views—and the great sunny weather! 

Gento Lake

 

A little farther along the trail ...

Erica and clear blue skies ... Taken from the trail, no actual climbing ...

Floating building

 

Summer inspires travel, as I was saying in relation to our recent trip to Vilanova i La Geltrú. But I also feel I should mention rising Covid numbers again.

However, some information that might be considered indirectly related to travel is available at the link below, regarding architecture and, more specifically, floating architecture or floating building. You may already know the term, but I think this is well worth a read.  

https://ecofriend.com/10-examples-sustainable-architecture-future.html

Summer holidays

 

 

It isn’t only short trips like our recent ones between Barcelona and Vilanova i La Geltrú. Summer inspires longer trips as well, the kind that may require air travel, which obviously means adding to the world’s large carbon footprint. So thinking about ways to make travelling a part of the sustainable environment, I’ve looked around the web a bit for some ideas. An organisation called Sustainable Travel has information on this topic, including things like staying closer to home, investing in carbon offsets, generally slowing down. Their website is worth a read:

 

https://sustainabletravel.org/how-to-reduce-travel-carbon-footprint/

 

Also, on the theme of airplane travel, the Environmental Defense Fund speaks about the same themes but with a focus primarily on the aviation industry and vacationers. New information (to me, at least) includes the Carbon Offsetting Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. As much as 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions could be kept out of the atmosphere with full implementation of Corsia. The link on this is:

 

https://www.edf.org/climate/aviation

 

Finally, I looked in the direction of architecture. What I found is surprising and I’m going to save it. Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long. I hope some good poetry (in the ample sense, whatever your creative activity) comes out of this. Stretch those desires….

  Another view of the sea from Vilanova. We hadn’t seen some of the friends at yesterday’s birthday celebration for a year…. And it was a beautiful reunion, masks off when possible, proper distancing and greeting—and who would have believed we’d be talking this way before the pandemic! However, mild, sunny weather. Light traffic on the highways. All in high spirits. From the restaurant we could look down and see the beach with people running and playing, and colorful parasols here and there on the sands, then the long shallows of the sea, something like in this photo taken some time back (and at a different time of day). This morning, back in the city and ready for a longer trip.

 

 

By the sea.....

 Longing to take a long walk along these shores, which is the plan for today. With the new rise in Covid figures we’re limiting activities of course. We’re permitted to be without masks in the open air inside cities now, but in Barcelona often keep the mask on out of habit. A bad sign? I hope not! In any case for today the sea awaits….

 

Happy Dalloway Day

 

 

 

Celebratory greetings to all.

And happy celebration of the centenary of the publication of Virginia Woolf’s short story collection, Monday or Tuesday. More information on this is available at Paula Maggio’s Blogging Woolf, through this link:

https://bloggingwoolf.org/2021/04/08/celebrating-the-centenary-of-virginia-woolfs-monday-or-tuesday/

 Paula’s site is searchable of course, and has more information about Dalloway Day and a host of other topics.

 On we go!

Lighthouse

 Lighthouse

Wednesday will mark the celebration of the fourth annual Dalloway Day (“the third Wednesday in June.”) And as restrictions due to the Covid 19 pandemic begin to be lifted, we recall that Virginia Woolf, who gave us Mrs Dalloway and so much more, lived through the 1918 influenza pandemic. Indeed, the eponymous character of Woolf’s novel is portrayed as having suffered from that illness.

 However, I have titled this post “Lighthouse” thinking of Woolf’s fourth novel, the book she published two years after Mrs Dalloway. After all, the literary “day” honoring her 1925 novel also honors her fuller achievement, rather as Bloomsday honors more than James Joyce’s Ulysses. And—as many already know—the third Wednesday in June this year happens to fall on the 16^th, the annual date of Bloomsday.

So, definitely, let us continue to celebrate! And as the author of To the Lighthouse notes in the essay “On Re-reading Novels,” recall that,

[o]ur observations [from previous readings] … can now come out and range themselves according to the directions we have received. [….] On a second reading we are able to use our observations from the start, and they are much more precise, but they are still controlled by these moments of understanding.

Haiku

 

Walking in the Pyrenees*

 

hurrying to beat the traffic

we pack the food,

check the house and lock up

 

 

* From  June last year, actually. While we open up

and ease pandemic restrictions we still haven't had

a chance to return farther north than Viladrau. Hope-

fully this month or next will bring new horizons.

Barcelona Poetry Week (Jocs Florals, 2021)

 

Jocs Florals

Barcelona is celebrating its Jocs Florals 2021, a celebration derived from the ancient Roman games celebrated to honor the deity Flora (ludi floreales).

Barcelona Town Hall’s website has information on this in Catalan and Castilian. This brings up the difficulty of translation, of course, but it seems to me interesting to point up the fact that the website (this year, in any case) includes a selection of the poems that were presented to the competition for last year’s event. Obviously those who read Romance languages will have an advantage here, but my suggestion is that, if interested, once you reach the website (at  https://www.barcelona.cat/barcelonapoesia/ca/jocs-florals

) you might want to scroll down or in-page search for “llibre dels jocs florals 2021” without the quotes. This will take you to the event’s book (llibre or libro).

You can then search inside the book for “selecció de poemes any 2020” without quotes. The poems there were chosen by Ingrid Guardiola, who also introduces this section of the book. The poems will speak for themselves of course. But personally I find many interesting surprises in the lines chosen. Enjoy!

Seafields

 

An August 15, 2015 photo (below) titled Seafields, taken at the Giant’s Causeway, Ireland. That is the date it was first published on this blog. Once it becomes safe to do so I want to go back to this amazing place.

 Meanwhile, it is at least considered safe now for us to move around our own county (comarca). So new views of the Mediterranean coast will be possible again, something I’ve also greatly missed during these months. I’ve had my first vaccination dose with the Pfizer vaccine and I am scheduled for the second in May.

 Yesterday we walked up to the Park Güell, extending the tour to keep from arriving too early at the restaurant for lunch. We ended up walking more than 12 kilometers in the end. Happy to be in shape at least for slopes that aren’t very steep. Also something to be said, I think, for a gentle stroll on level ground…

World Book Day 2021

 

 Running words through your fingers, as Book Day takes the torch from Earth Day:

“Another sort of reading matches better with the morning hours. This is not the time for foraging and rummaging, for half-closed eyes and gliding voyages. We want something that has been shaped and clarified, cut to catch the light, hard as gem or rock with the seal of human experience in it, and yet sheltering as in a clear gem the flame which burns now so high and now sinks so low in our own hearts. We want what is timeless and contemporary. But one might exhaust all images, and run words through one’s fingers like water and yet not say why it is that on such a morning one wakes with a desire for poetry.” Virginia Woolf, from her essay “Reading.”

Happy World Book Day to All!

Viladrau

Planning a new trip.....Viladrau flowers seen (from notes) Dandelions in seed and flowering; nipplewort; violets; something like coltsfoot. Some tiny white flowers. Also some beautiful scrubland with Spanish broom and what I think is gorse. Trees to revisit: Holm oak, cork oak, innumerable firs, pines, birch, hazel. 

Hoping the sunny weather holds (and pandemic restrictions permit travel).......

Happy world poetry day

 May poetic creation in all its many forms continue to shine a light.

Glass vase in sunlight

 

 

 

Glass vase in sunlight

 

I can’t stop looking at the long stemmed rose we bought,

the petals so red against the green leaves.

expansion

 

expansion 

down binder steam, cloud,

today shouts powder dram,

musician-bright wedge

in steam panels—chipped

yellow rust, finely minnow.

akimbo, tick tock way

chaff fast one two or

Walking the Parc Güell

 

Walking the Parc Güell

 A few of the photos I took a couple of weeks ago, on a walk through Antoni Gaudí’s beautiful park. The first one shows the living stone of the Carmel Hill, where the park is located. Then more of this metamorphic rock covered with lichen. Finally, a third pic showing a stairway leading up to columns using Gaudí’s system of building---derived more from Nature, less from French curves and ruled lines. However, my inexpert thoughts are indebted to Scott Engering’s blog, The Language of Stone at

https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=uhf_2013

and to Marc Pantano’s article “Reading Gaudí’s book of nature: Reconsidering the peripheral perception of proto-environmental architecture” at

https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=uhf_2013

My pictures:

 

And a detail...

Steel dumpster

 

steel dumpster*

 

there’s cardboard

and a paper sack of cement

broken 3-ply sheet glass

and different kinds of plastics

black duct hose splattered with plaster

and two coke cans

then a knight’s move of short end-split two-bys inside

* First published in 2009 on Peter Ganick's Live Journal page. The two poems I posted prior to this were also published there by Peter who, sadly, passed away last year. So with thanks and continued admiration for Peter's very extensive writing, music, and visual arwork.

experim e

 

experim       e

  

the     re

dr      ive

all       ure

star    e

str      ing

bol     d

the     ater

 

bremsstrahlung

 

bremsstrahlung
   

are many of these

trips south of fall

through porous spa

that edge will catch

your hand on vacation

sprain can get plums in the bran

bees in the flow

finding lichen on a Pyrenees walk

 

finding lichen on a Pyrenees walk

 

easy enough

walking like this

of course the grades

now make some difference

a carp on yesterday

brings an edge

yes and don’t we (oft-times)

term the other sweet

life itself

chipped mold

color

Memories of summer....... Water splashing freely

 Every once in a while...... I posted this photo of the Sant Nicolau River, a tributary of the Nogera de Tor on August 4, 2020. Here it is again, reposted for enjoyment and contemplaltion.

We went to the Pyrenees last summer in part precisely because it was a safe place with regard to the Coronavirus outbreak.

So I suppose I'm saying I hope the current dangers cease and we can all get out and live our lives more freely.

Barcelona, winter 2020/2021 (revision)

 

Barcelona, winter 2020/2021

 

And light rain

developing out of mist—

meet the cold snap as

a friend of old,

lingering present

to walk with.

 

Bright voices

sing the city cheer.

 

Still mostly sunny days,

wintering sheer from harbor to hills—

large portions of hope

range forth,

frosty breath

through new shutters.