2004-07-19
LOCAL SCENE
v-- Georgia O'Keeffe 1929 / collection Wadsworth Atheneum
Our Georgia O'Keeffe was Destroyed! | Until about 1530 hours local time [GMT+5] on Saturday, we lost our Georgia O'Keeffe to a windstorm | Ripped in half and thrown to the ground, then subjected to a sudden violent burst of rain and windshear | It was priceless and irreplacable and we did not have insurance that allows for suitable compensation | Oh well | That's life | All gone now |
Seriously, We didn't actually own the painting [even though the one shown here is within easy driving distance] but that image evokes the century old horse chestnut tree that stood guard over the front stone steps to the house | Many a night we'd look up and knew just what she saw, and marveled at the fact that in such a simple outline she gave us what she saw every day / and night |
What remains of that lost treasure is on view to the right | Once home to many birds and small mammals | Unlike it's distant relative the chestnut it had little useful value as lumber, though it's seeds have long been seen as an herbal remedy | And. rather like the chestnut tree itself, the presence of the species is now uncommon enough to almost be rare |
Fast forward to now, losing the tree was, we knew, only a matter of time | For years it had been sickly, the interior rotting, the exterior greadually choked out with a small arboretum of vines | Earlier in the year, the neighbors even mused about getting in cut down though the acceeded to my concerns about the wildlife and of the tree's rare nature | As luck would have it, no one was injured | 
A neighbor's car suffered a small ding and a lost aerial antenna |
We lost electricity for a couple of hours | And the id-jots who come speeding down our steep, blind-cornered road were temporarily inconvenienced [you know I'm not distressed about that!] But no one was injured, no humans lost their home | no major property damage
occurred [tell that to the birds, so suddenly and rudely evicted] | The same first responders to last night's car mishap arrived within minutes | The first repair guy from CL+P was here within the hour | Tree cutters from Asplundth [Tom * Edwin, to the left] arrived just under two hours later | ...and I was content to pull out the chainsaw and start at the branches I could deal with | More firewood, you know |
In a small, inexplicable way, the tree's departure marks a point in local history | Not unlike one of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, it's presence for me, was like a representative of the Spirit ~ elusive, mystic, eternal | It won't be something quickly easily replaced | It's presence always seemed so, well, permanant yet it was transitory | And, again, as with Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, when she'd found an imperfection in a painting, she was known to destroy it rather than keep some imperfect image around | So it is with impefections in nature | Some whim ~ or windshear ~ can strike it down, and life starts over, again | Mystic rthymns begin anew |
FOR MORE about Georgia O'Keeffe: Georgia O'Keeffe Museum || Ellen's tribute to Georgia ¶ 20:53
v-- Georgia O'Keeffe 1929 / collection Wadsworth Atheneum
Our Georgia O'Keeffe was Destroyed! | Until about 1530 hours local time [GMT+5] on Saturday, we lost our Georgia O'Keeffe to a windstorm | Ripped in half and thrown to the ground, then subjected to a sudden violent burst of rain and windshear | It was priceless and irreplacable and we did not have insurance that allows for suitable compensation | Oh well | That's life | All gone now |
Seriously, We didn't actually own the painting [even though the one shown here is within easy driving distance] but that image evokes the century old horse chestnut tree that stood guard over the front stone steps to the house | Many a night we'd look up and knew just what she saw, and marveled at the fact that in such a simple outline she gave us what she saw every day / and night |
What remains of that lost treasure is on view to the right | Once home to many birds and small mammals | Unlike it's distant relative the chestnut it had little useful value as lumber, though it's seeds have long been seen as an herbal remedy | And. rather like the chestnut tree itself, the presence of the species is now uncommon enough to almost be rare |
Fast forward to now, losing the tree was, we knew, only a matter of time | For years it had been sickly, the interior rotting, the exterior greadually choked out with a small arboretum of vines | Earlier in the year, the neighbors even mused about getting in cut down though the acceeded to my concerns about the wildlife and of the tree's rare nature | As luck would have it, no one was injured | A neighbor's car suffered a small ding and a lost aerial antenna |
We lost electricity for a couple of hours | And the id-jots who come speeding down our steep, blind-cornered road were temporarily inconvenienced [you know I'm not distressed about that!] But no one was injured, no humans lost their home | no major property damage
occurred [tell that to the birds, so suddenly and rudely evicted] | The same first responders to last night's car mishap arrived within minutes | The first repair guy from CL+P was here within the hour | Tree cutters from Asplundth [Tom * Edwin, to the left] arrived just under two hours later | ...and I was content to pull out the chainsaw and start at the branches I could deal with | More firewood, you know |
In a small, inexplicable way, the tree's departure marks a point in local history | Not unlike one of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, it's presence for me, was like a representative of the Spirit ~ elusive, mystic, eternal | It won't be something quickly easily replaced | It's presence always seemed so, well, permanant yet it was transitory | And, again, as with Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, when she'd found an imperfection in a painting, she was known to destroy it rather than keep some imperfect image around | So it is with impefections in nature | Some whim ~ or windshear ~ can strike it down, and life starts over, again | Mystic rthymns begin anew |
FOR MORE about Georgia O'Keeffe: Georgia O'Keeffe Museum || Ellen's tribute to Georgia ¶ 20:53
