Heave Ho

I wore myself out today shooting upholstered furniture, although there were ample possibilities for seating there was no time for lounging because pillows had to be fluffed, lighting balanced, shadows created or eliminated, hang tags hidden, depth of space cleared. Although Lime and Tony Bones were there to help me, I tried to move an upholstered chair that turned out to be much heavier than I anticipated, and noticed as I did the way in which a determined tug depends upon one's center of gravity being swung sharply back, the rump dropped steeply.

I suppose there's a better way to describe this, but would you really want to? I do because it brings to mind a scene I noticed walking home from the F train Monday along 10th Avenue. Nothing special, just a handful of starlings attempting to pull the seed pods off an Eve's Necklace tree, which was already bare except for a few leaves and some bundles of those translucent green pods containing black seeds the size of small olive pits. I'm not sure if the Starlings wanted the seeds, the succulent flesh of the pod or both, but I saw their determination as they flexed invisible muscles in their twiggy legs, pivoted to the back, yanking the heck out of the pods. (Are those beaks yellow or black now, I missed that detail...) It took the birds 5 or 6 severe rump-driven yanks to tear the fruit from the tree, after which I saw one fly to the roof of a nearby row house, wings lined with sunlight. The light was beautiful that afternoon, the glassy green flesh of the pods illuminated, each spot on the starlings' breasts and the edges of each feather in high definition.

The necklace tree nearly naked now and everyone very bundled up, snowflakes visible from the train window at 4th Avenue Tuesday on the way to work. I especially like the assortment of hats on people's heads, many handmade, all different, many flattering, some resembling navels, outies of course. I hope Eve had a fetching hat to go with her smashing necklace, and if she had a naval, was it an inny or an outie?