Somewhen

Sep. 11th, 2008 01:14 pm
madshutterbug: (c)2001 by Myself: Photographed in the Miyazu Gardens, Nelson, New Zealand (Meditation)
Somewhen right close to now on the clock, because where I was on this day, that year, I woke up nigh on to 05:30 and watched the sun rise over Otago Bay in the hills of Dunedin, and it's right on about quarter after five in the morning there now. Only, because I'm talking about Dunedin NZ not Dunedin, Scotland or Dunedin, Florida, the date was also September 12. A quiet morning, peaceful, with a beautiful sunrise.

I photographed that sunrise.

I've been moaning and groaning at myself that I need to post more of my work, that there's no time because other things come up and shove aside the time for art and photography.

In another place I commented that I remember certain names, the names of the five people who died in this town when another someone went on a bit of a spree. I refuse to state that name.

I don't know all their names, the people who I learned, on that peaceful sunny morning on September 12 in Dunedin, New Zealand when the alarm radio came on, had died halfway around the world in the city of New York, on the fields of Pennsylvania, and on the banks of a river in Virgina. There are many people who know some of the names because they are related to them, friends with them, worked with them. Probably there are even some who know all the thousands of names. Someone, somewhere, may even know the thousands on thousands of names of those who died in the seven years subsequent to that day... are still dying. Because of that act.

And right about now is when I learned about it.
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Default)
It's 01:00 9/12 in Dunedin, New Zealand. Do you know where your memories are?

Tuesday 11 Sept. 2001 dawned clear and bright in Dunedin. We'd arrived the evening before on our first stop of our driving tour of South Island, a place called Castlewood on the hill above Dunedin. We ate breakfast and chatted a bit with our host, Peter, then set out to walk down hill and find the train station. There we boarded a tour going up the Taieri Gorge. Shot quite a bit of film that day; a bit of it's scanned, but I don't have the pictures immediately avaiable. Dinner that evening at a marvelous place, A Cow Called Berta. Highly recommended. Then off to bed about 22:00 or so.

That is how I spent my 9/11, but note the time on this posting. It's 09:00 here in the Eastern Time Zone, and we were fast asleep at the time, on 12 Sept. 2001. I've mentioned before about waking up, rather relaxed, photographing the sunrise, and then learning the news...
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Kitten!)
New Zealand seems not quite a dream to me now. True, it's a memory, the trip we made in 2001, and as I posted yesterday we've a lot of photos from that trip. So it's not quite a dream.

And it is. Other ideas fostered on that trip didn't come to fruition, or not yet depending on how one looks at things, and how patient one might be. It all occured at a time when we proved quite ready for the experience, and as things worked out, fairly well thought through... and some luck.

I tend to think about it quite a bit, I do, on this date.
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Expostulation)
I've looked at this particular screen several times this preceeding week. Just never got around to typing anything.

Ten years ago today, we wandered through a shopping center near where I'd grown up, looking for a few Christmas presents for some people. We'd flown up to Detroit for my father's funeral, which would need to wait until the day after Christmas. It proved an interesting time, lots of feelings of bitter-sweet. We'd not all been together as a family at the same time for, oh, a long time, eight years or so. It was the last time I saw the house I grew up in, because we cleaned it out and sold it during that family get together.

My Dad once said to me that on Christmas Eve, the animals can speak to celebrate the Christ Child's birth. We both knew that to be legend, and we were talking about that because Ruthie and I had started raising goats. The year before that comment, he'd sent a present of cash to replace the metel shed we'd been housing the, at that time, seven goats in. It was one of those garden sheds you can get at any garden center, and because it wasn't anchored to the ground if a big enough wind came along it would lift the shed off the goats. Dad figured out how much one of those would cost, and sent that to us.

We had some other building supplies here already, and his gift allowed me to purchase the parts we needed to put up a small pole barn instead of a small metel shed. It measured 10 by 20 feet, providing shelter not only from rain but also from most wind and definitely north wind. We named it the John and Rita Macheski Barn for Barnless Goats, made a sign, and photographed a ribbon-eating ceremony when we completed it. Mom loved that photo; Dad probably chuckled over it too. He did appreciate becoming a philanthropist, and told me, "I've never had a building named for me before."

That barn lasted about 15 years, despite having the posts beaten on and broken by horny buck goats trying to impress each other. But it blew down last year during Hurricane Frances. About 15 goats were trapped under it. Several goats died before we could go get them out. There's more goats now; this year's kidding replaced them, and the Winter Kidding is just starting.

I think I'll go out and listen to them talking tonight.
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Expostulation)

Remember...


STRANGE MEETING

(1917)

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.




Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.


With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'

'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled,

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery,

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot- wheels,

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.


'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now . . .'



Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918

madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Expostulation)
Resolved: That two Battlaions of Marines be raised... That they be enlisted and commissioned for and during the present war between Great Britain and the Colonies...


To those I know, and knew, and the many, many more I don't;

Semper Fi

365

Oct. 5th, 2005 05:23 pm
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Kitten!)
Not all anniversaries are of pleasant occurences.

Over time, I've become more comfortable with the knowledge that I don't do anniversary well; and that I do anniversary all too well. Accepting that bit of contradiction meant that those unpleasant occurence anniversaries took somewhat less sway over my life. But only somewhat. I still tend to underestimate how much impact they might carry. That they will carry the impact, though, that I no longer deny. It does help in my little goal of keeping on keeping on.

Today might well have been better spent staying on the Ranch; away from slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and in the company of the Border Collie Bros and Mom, and within enough privacy to remember and let go. On the other hand, I chose not to do that. Throughout the day I didn't feel like killing anyone, though I didn't particularly enjoy the company of my colleagues at hospital either. I didn't enjoy the reminder that I'm still dealing with being in a situation I'm ready to be out of; nor of the reminder implicit in the day that the situation is also of the same age, as it were. It is good to know my skills in that situation are strong enough to overcome even this personal barrier... no one suffered because I couldn't provide my part.

And, shortly before starting to write this I found a side-path, a short little trip through a pleasant virtual garden of sorts, where another human (who it may be deduced is finding some similar elements of A Day Like This in their life) and I exchanged some rather more positive energy. Enough to get the distance, change the viewpoint, and move along.

A year is done; 365. Tomorrow starts another one. In a couple months, it'll be ten years done, and start another one. Not long after that particular date, by a more widely accepted reckoning it will be 2005 done, and another one starts. Pick your own New Years Day; we all possess a lot of them.
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Expostulation)
I am ... drained. I've been thinking about this time last year, for lots of reasons. This was the Month of Storms, and it is again, though this time around the storms are spreading out a bit more.

Storms aren't the only thing on my mind, though. I'm being cryptic, probably, but I also need to get out of hospital. Stayed after normal time to catch up on some things in office because I've not been in office much this week.

Eh.

I will hunt and gather calzone on the way home.

Imagine

Sep. 12th, 2005 06:56 am
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (Kitten!)
Imagine (if you will) waking up before your alarm radio goes off, and puttering about doing some very pleasant things for a bit. Then your alarm radio wakes up too, filled with news of a terrible, terrible happening in one of the biggest cities in your country. Only, you're not in your country. You are literally halfway around the world, not simply on the other side but also in the other hemisphere. You are a stranger in a strange land, a place wonderful and welcoming, awesome and friendly. Just... not home.

It is a place so far from home that, due to a convention reached in years past by whatever the powers that be were then, today is tomorrow back home, where and when the terrible thing is happening.


I don't need to imagine. This is a memory, a part of my reality. For me, because my wife and I were in Dunedin, New Zealand, those nearly 4,000 people lost their lives today, when today was September 12, 2001.


May they rest in peace.
madshutterbug: (c)2009 by Myself (BullWinkle)
Three years ago I woke just a wee bit before dawn on this date, in the wonderful (though now closed) Bed & Breakfast known as Castlewood in Dunedin, New Zealand. Looking out our east-facing window over Otago Bay, I realized it would be a marvelous sunrise, and snagged my wife's Canon AE-1 as my Mamiya C330 was not currently loaded. I spent the next half-hour photographing that same sunrise. Not having quite worked out the means to post links to images here, for now you'll simply need to accept that (IMOHO) the dyptych of that sunrise is one of my best pieces.

Behind the Click-here thing. )

Yes, I mark 9/11 with memorials along with my countrymen. But I hold my own personal memorial, for two people who went out of their way to help two travelers, strangers in a far land, to feel at some ease; as well as to remember all those who died on that horrible day. For me, because of where I was, because of who shared that day with my wife & I, it will always be today 9/12 that those terrible things happened.

May 2020

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