Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

It’s just a shadow after all, but I had the sun, I knew the moon, I owned a grey wall full of maps, A hankering to travel.  I had a star one time, but I cannot recall the color. Today crashed into me again, with sweet wind and a sun-swept sidewalk, stinging my hands like ice, Sucking me out through a black day-hole, Shifting into ecstasy.

Just focus! Focus is what people say you should do when there’s too many to-do’s in play. So today I focused on pizza and tea. Yes I did! You may think I just wanted a rhyme, it’s not true!  I wanted a pizza, you see.   The tea was just something to go with the lime, left over from shopping last month sometime. So I tried very hard just to focus at all, on a single event among billions this fall, on one tree at a time, among millions of trees. One leaf at a time among thousands of these. With hundreds of branches on each one of them, I selected, at random, a beautiful gem, full of rubies and gold with a silvery stem.

Pale by comparison to the male, I have heard said, but how is it possible to compare beauty with beauty? Female Mallard Dines in the Harlem Meer More information: Algae @ the Meer

Our young fall-colored tree is two years old! There's no doubt now that this tree is a Horse Chestnut.  Look at the the leaf cluster donated to the young leaf-collecting  girl.  It's a Horse Chestnut for sure, and it's name is TrippleC. TrippleC at two years old TrippleC's first Central Park Autumn

Amid the Milky Ways A stem of sunrises

At first I saw nothing at all

Typical Young Woman multitasking on her way to the subway.

I love a half and half, and here's a beauty. A bouquet of Amber Hybrids floating in the sun. http://www.wildflowers-and-weeds.com/Plant_Families/Poaceae.htm (courtesy of our Horticultural Specialist Christian F.)

Love leaves a quiet coal that smolders in your gut Damped down and waiting for a wanton spark Waiting to ignite your ribs and seer your heart Burning wormholes through the warp and weft of minutes shooting new life through leftover bones.

 This single  monarch was sited dining on Blue Salvia in the English Conservancy Garden.  According to this week's Monarch Butterfly Migration update , "Temperatures across the north have been unusually warm. With an extended growing season, late-season monarchs have had time to complete the life cycle. Monarchs are still being seen, and often in large numbers"  The sighting was reported to the Annenberg Global Sighting webpage (with a photo...)! Annenberg Learner Site - Journey nouth, A global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change Monarch Butterfly dining on Blue Salvia in the English Conservancy Garden of Central Park.

I was minding my own business, aiming to shoot the reservoir path, when this pushy bouquet of flowers came out of nowhere, practically shoving the people into the water! Flowers have no manners anymore!

I was swallowing the day whole, Inhaling the deep yellows and wet green, when I chanced upon a new yellow tree, near a set of tall, unattached, helter skelter fence posts. The posts were maybe twelve feet tall. "What they intend to confine must be extremely big," I thought, and I drew closer. I saw that New Tree was planted in what appeared to be an old fishing boot!  Could it be that someone intends to use these posts not for a fence, but as a set of pilings meant to hold up a large waterproof basin?  And just what sort of fauna is expected to dwell within this gigantic puddle? Puddle? Puddle!   Aha!  Clearly, this basin is meant for neither fauna nor flora, but is another classic Parks Department puddle eradication scheme!  They will attempt to trap each mudpuddle and move it to a sort of mudpuddle reservation in the North End of the park.  What a relief.  Firstly, the Parks Department will never capture the essence of the puddle, since they...

Can you believe it?   This apple tree has appeared out of nowhere!   I've been  round and round the Central Park Reservoir a thousand times, and not a single apple!  Is it the hurricane?  Perhaps it took a small Earthquake?  What a beautiful sight.

There it is again, the wild heart, pulsing in its quiet nest. I took a walk about the arteries, checking on the valves, firming up the infrastructure, smoothing out the veins. The hardware’s all in order, running the latest version. Nothing here to cause this stretchy wanting feeling Or that longing shiver warming up the ribs.

Meet Sea, our newest water friend.   We were walking along the East River preparing to cast bread into the waters to begin a new chapter in life, and out of nowhere came Sea!  Sea loves to play Air Catch Player 1 prepares to cast a slice over the rail. We have found that casting away the turmoils of life is so much more beneficial if it also nourishes the creatures of the Sky as well as the Earth.    Player 2 casts a piece of homemade bread into the waiting wings of Sea.

There is  no apparent reason to circle a London Planetree with daisies.  Nor is there a good reason to amputate the trunk.  Nevertheless, here is a thriving speciman representing just those behaviors!

There’s a current swimming just below the surface of my mind. You feel it too, I know it! Colored flashes stirred up and splashed in with pieces of today, Splintered hopes and fractured memories Tumbling with those brilliant sharded yesterdays. Wasn’t it October when that red sparked letter vanished in a careless grate? It was, I know it was!

Many of you may have wondered, as I have, how it happens that buildings in large and small cities come and go with such relentless rapidity.  Entire skyscrapers vanish overnight! Well!  Our tenacious architectural photographer has discovered their secret. It was late afternoon and an innocent mist appeared to settle quietly; as if on silent cat-feet, one might say.  Slowly and imperceptibly a tall, newish building on the far left seemed to be disappearing.  At first our photographer was simply captivated.  And then she gasped.  Could it be?  Yes it could! These buildings were evaporating  overnight!!   And here we have the very, very first documentation of this improbable phenomena. New York from Sheep's Meadow, evening

Shooting star wishes for another chance To be a simple asteroid Orbit after orbit Time and time again