Enchantment under the Tree

It is a pretty cold night even with the wind dying down some.  We were prompted to start a fire, make some espresso and just enjoy the indoors...even the cat, who makes a run for outside at first stirring, decided this was not a fit middle-night for man nor beast nor feline.  Well that was banal enough writing, but fires in the fireplace with a grey dawn pending, the room to ourselves and music does that to you - well does it to us.  We are often surprised that composers wanted silence around them as we think it is very difficult to work or thing great things without some background - not that we think great things - but unless we are incredibly into something difficult that takes every synapse - well some background makes us think more interesting things.

This little bonbon (down at the bottom) went by on the Internet radio just a bit ago and we was struck by what it is we hear other than the natural sounds and what others say or cause to happen.  Classical music - and hearing a piece, an unusual one - is an almost lifetime event; there being so much of it and only so many listening hours in the day.  It seems that last fall  (Sept. 7, 2010 in fact) someone must have heard this piece.  It is the Magical Snuff Box by the Russian composer Anatoli Liadov.  It is a miniature - and think about those Russian artists who write the Lord's Prayer on the side of a grain of rice. 

We all had those snowflake in a bottle things growing up - you know - the winter scene and you shook up this liquid filled container and it looked like snow inside. We had one for the longest time that had a little battery light in the log cabin and when you shook it and hit the switch light came out the windows and shown on the snow falling and the trees glued to the base. We can remember it clear as a bell and smell the cold in a Michigan winter night and hear my bedroom radiator click-clink as it cooled;  listening to WBCM when it switched over to classical music after 11p instead of simply going off the air.  The moonlight always is bright-on in these remembrances and I, depending on the music played, thought it out about the little cabin in my snowbubble thing - Geppetto probably lived there or some wood carver in the Black Forest - someone alone, practicing a craft where things were actually made and maybe sold but mostly made for the pure enjoyment of staying up late and doing something you could admire in the morning.

This little bonbon snuff box is like that snowball glass thing perhaps.  If my granddaughters lived 100+ years ago and had it they would have dreamed so many dreams and put themselves in the scene within - whirling to the music in a brightly lit salon, talking good talk and laughing innocent laughs.

We should be showing grand kids the snuffbox every tonight.  It doesn't move or whirl of clink-clank.  We are going to, instead, ask them to open the door to it and go inside while the music plays.  They will be too young to really be part of the party but will find a place, perhaps peeking out from behind the drapes or crawling under the sofa in the corner, and watching as the others swooped and swayed in the light, the music playing, the sounds of laughing and light talk; the smiles radiant.

For kids it is a time of making a spot in the world; the real one or the one that has much more in it, is never silent, and always finds something the leads to something more.

Things that go blink in the night

In the early evening our paths cross in a number of ways and everyone, signs included seeming to be crossing, from the light figures bound up by the "library this way" sign to our cars shooting on by down the street.  Even the little ped x'ing sign seems to be waiting for someone to show up.

Our attention is drawn to the Village Holiday tree, all decked in blue lighting and on the other side of the street, a rather wobbly set of street lights who have never heard of a straight line.  We have yellows, and reds, bright white and blue. Even the big rock seems to bask in it.

What fun it is to walk the village at early evening.  People have gone home only to come back out later. Traffic is nearly gone and the streets are pretty much wide open.  Our guess is that it is this time that the lights most enjoy as those of us moving around can see them in uninterrupted glory.  We aren't dodging cars  or cars dodging other cars...just we and thee.  It is as if we have this show to ourselves.

Signs

Our Fire Department has a new sign.  It appeared the other day as if dropped from space and frankly gives a little modernity to the Village for save some little blinky illuminated signs on the outskirts, there just aren't any.

This must have looked like some black magic if it had appeared a while back in our village history. We are pretty sure the early settlers would have come across it with the same curiosity, fear and awe that the ape men did in 2001 A Space Odyssey when they ran smack into the obelisk.  In taking a little tour today, we think that this sign is the only one in town that gives the time and temperature readable at a distance.

There is a bit of a howl in the Village regarding this sign. It was apparently donated but that somehow doesn't register - as in what part of donation isn't understood - but for better or worse there it is, and we know the time and temperature with a little holiday greeting tossed in to boot.  There is of course a neon sign ordinance floating around and some have assigned this sign "neon" status. We want to rush out and buy a copy of the periodic table but what would be the sense in that.  Just good money after bad.

We have a memory of a sign sitting at the far end of a downtown street when I was growing up. It replaced the clock or was added to the clock at the old Peoples National Bank building in Bay City. It seemed to always be snowing this time of year and a clock face was out of the question and the little thermometer that hung outside Twentieth Century Cleaners on Main Street was out of the way and we always thought it was colder than it register or hotter depending on the season. It was a reassurance driving into town during a heavy snow to see that bank sign emerge from the flakes - a beacon as sure as the lighthouses that surround us. 

There seems to be something uplifting about all this and in a year it will be hard to imagine the Village won't find it a centerpiece - a crown jewel of the new age.

Crowds will gather -  no doubt about it.

Moonlight

We had a terrific storm last night when a cold front came through.  Some of us happened to be out this evening when the sun went down and things had calmed down a bit. It is pretty cold and just a little past the "comfortable brisk" stage so we hussled back inside, found a fireplace and a hot dinner.

We did notice the full moon in the east - rising from the direction of Orient and darting some with the last of the clouds. It is the last one this year, this full moon. Take one peek before calling it a night.

We put Mr. Moon's picture up just in case you don't want to venture out but just a word to the wise, its real and its fabulous.

Toys

This is the second Sunday in Advent and generally a prelude to the holiday season to come.

We are just pointing that out because - well because - we were at a store this morning and outside wasn't the Salvation Army but a food truck asking for cans of food for those in need.  We see this all time and like everything familiar, we tend to just let it slide off our of sight.

We think about a couple things now, in this season, regardless of religion or not, social values or not, politics or not.  We think about kids.  Obviously we all think about kids. We should never stop thinking about them.
We have two weeks to go through Advent. During this time we are going through all the holiday periods, the end of the year, and most importantly "have and have nots".   If you are a have, then give to a have not. It is pretty simple. 

In the next week or two, just judge your position.  If you have a toy to give, then give it. If you have something to regive or regift, then do it.  There is simple no reason whatsoever for doing something so simple that might mean a lot to some who has so little.

This blog isn't to right the world or the universe or the block on which you live.  It does have a mission just to say things, simply, and just to bring things to your attention as the need should arise.

Arabesque

An arabesque is a pattern on tapestry for instance that is intricate and interwoven.  Here is one perhaps seminal expression of the pattern and reading about it some this morning I found out that it s a. an Islamic form or from that heritage and there is a "western" form of it that probably is more Moorish and turned up in the Mediterranean costal European societes; Spain, south France, Italy which is even more intricate.

 

While we are thinking of the holidays, and dance - swirls and twirls..well we couldn't resist coming to this.

Debussy, the French composer, wrote a couple pieces called Arabesques in about 1888. We know this because some among us was something of a Debussy studier- a  dissertation area - and his early works, this one below for instance, appealed to us and still does to this day.  Debussy was from  a region in France that had this Moorish influence and he was also taken by Spain and all things Spanish - including of course these so it is no wonderment that he would evoke and invoke a tapestry.

Enjoy.

Gradus ad Parnassum

We have a friend who came here as a youngster and has now moved literally halfway across the world from our Village. He has come back on occasion and graced us with a picture of his wife climbing these 67 steps.

Now that winter is approaching and the north wind off the Sound will be howling, it may be a good thing to venture out to these steps before they get too icy and just take a look.

Finding them is half the trick but if you go north out of the Village on Main Street and follow some of those roads that run north off the highway, we venture you will find the top. It is up to you to climb down and then totally up to you to make your way back.