Sunny day

These geometric shadows tell the story more clearly than I can. The spring sun has arrived in Keene, and Main Street is bustling with people strolling, sitting, and otherwise soaking up the light and warmth we’ve craved all winter. Sunny days are here again, and it’s all but impossible to stay inside.

 

Tunnel vision

I consider myself lucky to have a blog I can use an excuse to climb children’s playground equipment to snap curious and colorful photos. Most grown-ups, of course, need to have children to justify their spending any time at a playground…and when you’re a mom or dad, you presumably stay on the ground and observe while Junior tests out the equipment. But if you have a hungry blog to feed, you can engage in all kinds of playful and otherwise odd behavior. How could you tell, for instance, exactly what the inside of a jungle-gym tunnel looks like unless you climbed upon the thing to look for yourself?

As adults, we easily acquire a kind of tunnel vision that looks at the world from strictly an adult-level view. How difficult it is for us grown-ups to remember how even the prettiest playground pony must have looked tall and daunting when we first looked upon it as tiny tots. Walking the usual streets and sidewalks of our mundane lives, it’s easy to forget the amazement and wonder that fills folks newer to our neighborhood. To a child, even a small, otherwise ordinary playground can be a miraculous spot where make-believe characters come alive, childhood lasts forever, and a kiss from Mom or Dad makes everything instantly All Better.

If our adult lives seem less magical than now-distant childhood days, perhaps that’s because we walk the same streets and sidewalks that children do, but our grown-up perspectives prevent us from seeing the color, whimsy, and wonder that’s so apparent to those closer to the ground. Walking past a playground, we adults see ordinary swings and slides…but if we allow ourselves to experience the same at eye-level–climbing up, crouching down, or otherwise deviating from our usual upright business–we might find an entirely new world of wonder in a neighborhood we thought we knew.

 

The end…eventually?

I don’t usually snap photos while driving between Massachusetts and New Hampshire…but who can resist a truck that makes perfectly clear THE END is near? (For the record, I wasn’t tailgating: this is a zoomed and cropped shot.)

I would have thought The End of Winter was near now that a small cluster of snowdrops are blooming in their accustomed spot here in Keene…and yet, the forecast calls for some six inches of snow to drop on southwestern New Hampshire by tomorrow afternoon. Luckily I’m heading back down to Massachusetts, where nothing worse than a little wintry mix–not exactly The End of the World–is forecast for tonight. The End of Winter will arrive even in Keene…eventually.

 

Single shot

When I first moved to the Boston area in the early 1990s, my understanding of the city and its outlying areas was completely T-dependent. I knew the individual subway and trolley stops I used on my way from Malden to Chestnut Hill, for instance, but I didn’t know how these places connected above ground. When I started graduate classes at Northeastern, for instance, I’d take the Green Line from my Beacon Hill apartment to the aptly named “Northeastern” stop that let me off in front of campus…but it took my slow-witted self about a semester or so to realize the Orange Line “Ruggles” stop let me off on the side of campus where my office was located. It came as a silly surprise to realize a stop on the Orange Line could be so close to a stop on the Green: just one side of campus to the other! It was a realization I had to come to on-foot, leaving the safety of train or trolley to explore the neighborhood (and possibly get lost) on my own.

If you’ve been visiting Hoarded Ordinaries for a while, you’ve gotten some individual blog-stop views of the greater Boston area…but unless you’ve been to Boston, you might not understand how these individual blog-stations connect. So when I described Cambridge’s vintage Shell sign and freeway revolt mural as both being located at the intersection of Memorial Drive and Magazine Street, you might not have realized that these two landmarks really are so close to one another, you can shoot them both in a single shot.

 

Watch out for children…and graffiti

When I imagine ways of defacing a “Children” sign, I picture possibilities more playful than political. This sign near Newton’s Richardson Field (shown in all its spring-muddy, pre-Little-League glory at the top of this post) still shows the freeze-dried residue of a Halloween encounter with some anonymous child(ren) armed with Silly String. No matter what the season, kids will be kids.

I’m not quite as clear about the meaning of this stencil-adorned “Children” sign, also spotted in Newton.

Perhaps in Newton, you need to be on the lookout for children who play guitar and have SARS? Or is it children (not drivers) who’d better be wary of guitarists with respiratory diseases?

I’m not sure, but this much I know: I’m back in Keene now that my spring break in Newton is over, and tomorrow I’ll be headed back to teach at Keene State. Do you think any of my students will be armed with SARS, guitars, or Silly String?

 

Isn’t it ironic?

Something tells me that the person responsible for this child-unfriendly sign is her- or himself a child, at least if we include mischievous teenagers in the category of “children.” Apparently nobody’s taught the Unknown Scrawler that a corollary to “keep your laws off my body” is “keep your markers off our signs.”

 

When I’m 64

I am, even at the tender age of 39, a thorough-going creature of habit. During the week in Keene, I almost always walk Reggie along the same route into downtown and back; on weekends in Newton, my dog-walks are similarly predictable. On days when I don’t have much to do, I might take the time to explore, letting my feet (and Reggie) wander where they will. But on most days, my to-do list beckons, and I haven’t time to tarry.

And so it is that I learned last week (only, I might note, because I missed my usual turn on the way home from doing errands and ended up driving a way I usually don’t) that right down the street from my formerly favorite factory here in Keene, a similarly old and abandoned mill building is being renovated, the site of upscale senior housing.  According to marketing copy, Bentley Commons, “situated near historic downtown Keene,” will incorporate a “completely renovated 100-year old mill building” and will also feature “a bike and hike trail that runs along a small stream bordering the property.” How strange it is to see the rail-trail and stream that run through my almost-backyard–a rail-trail that Reggie and I have walked many times when my to-do list has been short, and a stream that Reggie has occasionally muddied his paws in–marketed as “amenities” to others. How strange to see the downtown where Reggie and I so frequently walk touted as “historic.”

Bentley Commons at Keene, that marketing copy continues, “will feature Independent living in 1 and 2 bedroom apartments as well as studios”; included in one’s rent are “healthy, well balanced meals prepared by a full time chef served in the dining room, 24 hour emergency staff assistance, weekly housekeeping and linen service, local transportation, and all utilities.” As described, Bentley Commons sounds like a dream come true: the carefree community of one’s dormitory days, but with the peace and quiet of mature and settled neighbors. If only they accepted tender-aged dog-walkers, I’d be first in line for a room of my own. Instead, here I am in a non-historic apartment where I cook my own meals, wash my own linens, and drive for myself (occasional missed turns notwithstanding). They say that youth is wasted on the young, but maybe the opposite is equally true. When I’m 64 and thus eligible for senior housing, it’s nice to think this creature of habit could be hiking, biking, and dog-walking along the same paths and streams I occasionally explore now.

Click here for more pictures of the simultaneous destruction, renovation, and construction at Bentley Commons. Yes, those are snowflakes you’ll see in the photos: yesterday afternoon, at least one downtown restaurant set out tables for customers’ alfresco enjoyment, and today we saw snow showers. Such is March in New England.

 

Made in the shade

Noticing is addictive. Once you see one tree silhouetted against a building, you start seeing shade trees–the upright ghosts of living trees outlined as shadows on nearby vertical surfaces–everywhere you go.

I’ve talked before about color-collecting, the practice of choosing a particular color (say, red), and then taking a walk in which you try to notice every instance of said color (a stop sign, a passing jogger’s hat, a parked car, a cast-off Coke can). The first time I talked here about color-collecting, I reasoned “If we’re going to travel the territory of our mundane lives, we might as well notice the neighbors.” Now nearly four years later, I find myself nodding emphatically to my own argument. What better way to make yourself at home in your environs than by getting to know your neighbors, both the actual trees you meet and the ghostly shades they cast?

I took today’s photos last weekend, and over the intervening days, I’ve been seeing tree shadows everywhere: on buildings, on cars, on fences, on other trees. The natural place for any shadow to lie is on the ground, shade gravitating like water to low places. But in a forest of trees or a suburb of houses, there are many available objects to catch any given shadow. Presumably any of these shades would prefer to lie lazily on snow-blanketed ground, but instead, they’ve been snagged on verticality. Can you imagine the courage of an east-facing facade that stands unmoving even while knowing the weight of a shade tree will fall upon it every sunny morning?

In the summer time, these shade trees are shapeless and amorphous: dark blobs that bespeak the leaves of others. In a snowy season, shade trees are stripped skeletal, the shadows they cast tracing their inner anatomy. In summer, we see superficially, lulled by the loveliness of leaves; in winter, all that gets cast away like so many veils, and we see (truly) what lies beneath.

Some say shadows are unreal, the lingering after-affect of light and enlightenment. But why should we privilege the cause over the effect? Once a tree has grown, we have no use for its now-split seed; once we’ve reached our own adulthood, we’re discouraged from behaving as babies. Leaves are arboreal flesh, branches arboreal bones, and tree shades arboreal spirit. If over-arching trees add value to shady suburban homes, why wouldn’t the winter shadows these same tree cast be likewise prized?

Click here for the complete photo-set of shade trees. And while you’re collecting all things arboreal, click over to the March 2008 Festival of Trees, currently hosted on Orchards Forever. Enjoy!

 

Buddhist-flavored?

Forget about attaining the Zen of cleanliness or peace of mind in a gumball. If you’re too broke to buy good karma, apparently you can drink your bad karma away with a six-pack of Buddhist beer.

 

Memento mori

J was the one to spot “my” grave during our stroll through Newton Cemetery this afternoon. As much as I enjoy exploring cemeteries, today was the first time I’ve ever encountered a tombstone with my name on it. As far as I know, I don’t have any relatives living (or once living) in Newton, Massachusetts, so I’ll assume “DiSabato” is more common a name than I knew. Still, it’s a bit creepy to turn around and see a carved-in-stone reminder of your own mortality. There eventually go I, and you, and all of us.

I don’t normally find cemeteries to be creepy places…and yet, I occasionally see memorials that stop me cold, offering as they do a tangible reminder of the mortality we all share. Tombstones marking the graves of children always give me pause, and today, J and I saw several graves that were adorned with Valentine’s Day hearts and flowers, a sign that the Dearly Departed really are dear. After seeing the usual His and Hers grave markers with the name of a still-living widow or widower next to the birth and death dates of a deceased spouse, J talked of visiting his grandfather’s grave with his grandmother, her name chiseled alongside her husband’s. I suppose there’s a certain amount of comfort in knowing where and with whom your ultimate resting place will be,visits to your own (eventual) grave being one way of getting to know your (eventual) neighborhood.

Both J and I grew quiet when we approached a field of war dead, that portion of any cemetery always seeming too large. But the memorial that stunned us both into silence was this one, the death date (September 11, 2001) explaining why this particular loss happened far too prematurely:

After we got home, J went online find the face and story behind the stone. Some souls continue to be mourned even by those of us who never knew them in the flesh.