Jelisava

Observations

Me looking down and observing the woman looking down and observing / Dubrovnik, Croatia / June 2001

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes."

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Steps like a smooth dance floor

A city that sits on the edge of the sea filled with steps like a smooth dance floor / Dubrovnik, Croatia / June 2001

“The city stopped at the point of my pen. And power multiplied like steps on a smooth dance floor. And the evening’s necklace, like eyes strung on the track of the dark, began to rustle.
    Meshed summers behind the doors of houses and inhabitants from quiet shadows sensed this prismatic joy in the bready warmth of the sun and deaf peace of the rain.
    It happened at a troubled hour when all that is red pales, when all that is yellow quiets, when every shadow rests on the oars and sails, and when a darkened track hovers over all, for no clear reason.
    And I recognised at once that condensation of violet. Of course I did: in place of the edge of the sky a city had stopped at the point of my pen.
    And I watch it, and I watch myself, standing here at the edge of the table, and my gaze is a border of lights and of angles, intricate and lazy, because it belongs to me; while  roofs and towers come down the darkened corridor, islands and seas come, sounds and city-squares come. While I go by.”

~ Stairway by Croatian poet Gordana Benic

Having a fine time

Old Postcard from the wonderful collection at the Museum of New Jersey Maritime History / Beach Haven, NJ / July 2008

               “Dear Lucille, I wish you
were here I am having a fine time. We
are staying at the Seaside Hotel.
     Gladys Supplee.”

I just love the phrase “I am having a fine time.”
My dictionary lists 15 definitions for the adjective fine and the 2nd one is very satisfactory, enjoyable — and its example sentence is “We are having a fine time.” A search of the phrase reveals that it was frequently written on postcards mailed in the first half of the 20th century. It was such a popular phrase that many postcards had “Having a fine time” pre-printed on them.

An icon of the 1960s

A MINI Cooper (an updated version of the most popular British-made car ever made, starting in 1959) and a MINI Cooper-sized garage — perfect! / Beach Haven, NJ / July 2008

“If we want things to stay as they are,
     things will have to change.”

~ Tancredi in the book "The Leopard" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (via Sicily, Through the Eyes of the Leopard)

Forever boy

Riding my bike right on and on / Beach Haven, NJ / Aug. 2006

“ALL day and many days I rode,   
My horse’s head set toward the sea;   
And as I rode a longing came to me   
That I might keep the sunset road,   
Riding my horse right on and on,   
O’ertake the day still lagging at the west,   
And so reach boyhood from the dawn,   
And be with all the days at rest.   

For then the odor of the growing wheat,   
The flare of sumach on the hills,   
The touch of grasses to my feet   
Would cure my brain of all its ills,—   
Would fill my heart so full of joy   
That no stern lines could fret my face.   
There would I be forever boy,
Lit by the sky’s unfailing grace.”

~ A Wish, By Hamlin Garland

Whither we will walk

“We'll go for a walk, we'll have a nice talk; On the dirt road, Hey — there's a dead toad; It's just a mile, back with a smile'; We're goin' round the lake” (We Ain't Goin' Nowhere, Mountain House Version, 6) / Mountain House / Sept. 2005

“What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.”

~ Thoreau, from Walking

Draw back the better to leap

Discovering a new world that feels like part of me / Dubrovnik, Croatia / July 2001

“There are many reasons to have a holiday. Reculer pour mieux sauter, say the French: draw back the better to leap. We may want nothing but relaxation and rest. But as Sherlock Holmes knew, the best form of R&R is to do something different: a change is as good as a rest, if not better; and the best kind of change is to enter another world.”

~ Henry Shukman, To Walk a Landscape Is to Know It, Jan. 6, 2008, NYTimes

Good land to fall in with

In the shadow of the Wildwoods sign on Rio Grande Ave. / Wildwood, NJ / June 2008

“A very good land to fall in with — and a pleasant land to see.”

~ The first recorded description of the Island of Five Mile Beach (the present-day Wildwoods); written by the English navigator Robert Juet in 1609

Even before the English arrived, the Lenni Lenape Indians (also called the Delawares) spent summers at Five Mile Beach. They cut two trails through the dense forest (the wild woods?). One was a continuation of the mainland King Nummy Trail that began at the north end of the island and stretched southward. In the middle of the island, it met another trail that entered where the Rio Grande Bridge was eventually built (via The Wildwoods Historical Society). King Nummy was the last chief of the Unalachtigo Tribe, a branch of the Lenni Lenapes (via New Jersey History's Mysteries). Unalachtigo means “people who live near the ocean.” 

Do beautiful things

We do have beautiful things to do (celebrating 15 years) / New Jersey / June 2007

Where am I going? The high rooks call:
“It's awful fun to be born at all.”
Where am I going? The ring-doves coo:
“We do have beautiful things to do.”

~ A.A. Milne from “Spring Morning” (thanks to CK)

The name that sings

Out and about at the cafes / Ljubljana, Slovenia / May 2005

Today's temperature is 98 degrees. The hourly news on the radio repeatedly mentions a meeting in the friendly, walkable city with the name that sings — Ljubljana (loub-lee-yan-ah). I sit in the heat beneath the roar of my ceiling fan and recall Ljubljana's lively outdoor cafes next to the river Ljubljanica. The ice cream carts at Prešeren Square. The Robba fountain of the three rivers with its constant flow of water. There. I feel cooler already.