Bad News for the Microphobic

Recently I learned of this phenomena, described below, and as surprising as it is, it also seems completely predictable. (Is there a word for that?) The life cycle of these bacteria, if they have any sentience, must be one of the most thrilling joy rides ever.

From Science Daily:"Biological precipitation, or the "bio-precipitation" cycle, as David Sands, Montana State University professor of plant sciences and plant pathology calls it, basically is this: bacteria form little groups on the surface of plants. Wind then sweeps the bacteria into the atmosphere, and ice crystals form around them. Water clumps on to the crystals, making them bigger and bigger. The ice crystals turn into rain and fall to the ground. When precipitation occurs, then, the bacteria have the opportunity to make it back down to the ground. If even one bacterium lands on a plant, it can multiply and form groups, thus causing the cycle to repeat itself.

***

Yesterday's impending torrent curtailed our visit to the Salt Marsh so we headed home down Ocean Avenue, which must be one of the least commercial streets in Brooklyn, as the sky darkened, drops dropped, laquering the Avenue with distracting color bleeds, tapping out code on the windshield. Block after block the large apartment houses of various styles and eras seemed inviting in the gloom, aggregates of so many lives, refuge for so many people, each catalyzing infinite orders.

The Wonder Tree

Also the Igiri Tree. It's surmised that the common name arises from the rapture one feels when witnessing the tree's cascading panicles of red berries laid bare after the leaves fall, having modestly kept their secret all summer.

But that says nothing about the sense one gets when standing underneath the tree's domed canopy now while the berries are still ripening, nothing about the trees untouchable quality which refreshes the idea of lush internal worlds that turn one's isolation inside out, nothing about the sense that form is music materialized, and that what surrounds us is far more familiar than we know.

fanatics

love in the garden

negative positive

Both Eastern Tiger Swallowtails. I read it's just the female exhibiting either the dark and light form.

"A dark female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail mimics another butterfly called the Pipevine Swallowtail. Mimicry is when one animal looks just like another animal in order to gain safety or some other advantage. Pipevine Swallowtails eat a plant called Pipevine which makes them taste nasty to predators. Predators will learn to leave them alone. The dark female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail will also get left alone since it looks like a Pipevine Swallowtail, even though it is good to eat! Female tiger swallowtails will only have the dark form if a lot of Pipevine Swallowtails live in the same area. However, there will still be some light form females as well."

more here.

splash

The dynamism in the veins of the cabbage leaves seem to derive from a sudden impact as they respond to the solar intensity that beats down, washing them with the energy they strive to catch.

This beauty grows on one of the boundaries of the Childrens Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where my two youngest children are finishing their last week of camp. It's been amazing, my son now knows the names of weeds I've pulled up in ignorance my entire gardening career, and knows what it feels like to pull them up, if they resist or not, and if you can eat them. He's been coming home with harvests, multicolored chard, kale, turnips, basil and lately cucumbers, which he peels and slices himself. The little one loves to bring me nasturtiums, "the spicey ones" she calls them as she watches in wonder as I eat them.

These efforts to reinvigorate our relationship with agriculture do a little to redemocratize and and redeem the most basic luxury, soil, as seen in the Childrens Garden program, more so at Added Value in Red Hook and at various community gardens throughout the city which seem incredibly powerful agents in restoring lost richness to the barren figure of modern man, to teach that freedom is much more than a stop at 7-eleven and 6 Flags. I'm grateful my children have been able to attend this camp with this focus on the kind of thrills that are, without a doubt, worthy of a future.

Towards Bayonne

creature from the lake

We fished this out of Prospect Lake yesterday, at a spot the fisherman angling nearby called "The Alley." He says he and his brother are working on a map of the lake with the areas labeled according to their idiom, something I'd love to see.

The creature clings to the stems of duckweed, pulling them down. It is tubular, worm-like, still, lined with a fine visible strand of tissue resembling a slinky, a kinky slinky. I wonder if it's some kind of hydra. Whatever it is, it seems to be in good condition, no doubt thriving in the lake filled with the water sluicing in from the New York City water system, which serves up what some know as "The Champagne of the Adirondacks." It is amazing water, having gotten used to it, I can't drink DC water anymore.

Please double click the image to see it in more detail.

A little Manhattan

Sunday around the Boathouse

From the Viaduct

You only get a good view of this traveling into Manhattan frompoints beyond Smith/9th on the F train. I spied it before, a few times when heading towards Coney Island, but it's not worth a photo from the other side of the track. The roof, before it caved in, was expansive and sparsely outfitted with apparatuses resembling space capsules qua retroviruses, translating easily into a low-lying lunar landscape. Beyond the ruin, the area which I believe is called the public space, toxic, I hear, and now boasting one of the most extensive meadows I've seen in Western Brooklyn.

Seeing it, I think of Guskind, and wonder how he would have reacted to the ceiling collapse, and what he knew about this site that I'll never learn.

The subway window schmutz apparent in the images I gift to you at no extra charge.

brown birds

I've been watching the young Starlings, the color of hot, dull dirt, desperately scrambling alongside their parents, squawking aggresively, beak open, neck wrenched forward. In the parking lot of a carwash, two youngsters hounded their mother for crumbs, though they stood nearly as tall as she. The two screeched at their mother, who glistened in the summer heat with all her galaxies lit, until she picked crumbs off the filthy Caton Avenue asphalt with her yellow beak, placing them quickly and delicately into their mouths.

What feathery mirrors these birds are. As for the Superb Starlings, glazed in blue, black and rust, you only see them at the Aviary.

Composite

Rounding the block -I suppose I should say "squaring it" - we came across these sunflowers guerrilla-planted in a fallow tree pit where 10th Avenue dead ends into a small plaza at 18th St, before the drop off into the Prospect Expressway, the river of cars whose roaring engines make the public enclave a site of restlessness and avoidance.

The sunflowers in the vacant square don't have ears and seem to thrive. Like many similar blossoms, they aren't actually single flowers but a collection of hundreds of flowers that evolved to grow as a unit, so each petal is a remnant of one flower, and pairs with an anther and pistil and eventually seed taking their places among the Fibonacci ranks within the central orb.

It numbs the mind to consider the process by which the individual flowers wove themselves into one radiant banquet for numerous creatures, pollen and nectar appetizers served to the insect kingdom, oil and nutrient-rich seeds the entree, graciously benefiting birds and others, a few crucial seeds falling to the wayside. How many thousands of years did it take to orchestrate such harmonic alignment, and who or what pulled the strings?

Tatterfly

Question or Comma, I just learned they're pretty hard to tell apart. You have to see the outerwings to view the stigma, and this one doesn't have much wing left. I think I'll just call them Punctuation Butterflies from now on, and let the powder wings keep their secrets.

Another Visitor

They don't call them Butterfly (butter?) Bushes for nothing. I haven't been able to identify this one.

flying crawfish?

One visitor to a stand of Butterfly Bushes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Hummingbird Moth? Hawk Moth? What is it?

moonshine yarrow

Coney Island Creek

While on the subject of the wetlands of coastal Brooklyn, I thought I might as well post this information about Sunday's lecture "The Secrets of Coney Island Creek." Here's the information I received from the Coney Island History Project.

July 26: Charles Denson Slide Talk on The Secrets of Coney Island Creek

"Ask the Experts" Sunday Lecture Series at the Coney Island Museum

On Sunday, Charles Denson, Executive Director of the Coney Island History Project, will give a slide presentation and talk about the fragile and endangered beauty of Coney Island Creek.

Denson, a Coney Island native, began photographing Coney Island Creek in the 1960s and 1970s when the waterway was at a low point, surrounded by industry and suffering from neglect and pollution. Since then, portions of the creek have been reclaimed, drawing both wildlife and residents to its shores. The photographs in Secrets of Coney Island Creek document those early decades and offer a fascinating and comprehensive portrait of the creek today and its relationship to the Coney Island community, from the people of diverse cultures who visit the creek and its new parks to the environmental challenges that lie ahead.

In his lecture, Charles Denson will delve into the history of Coney Island Creek, which was originally an estuarine wetland that in the 1600s supported a colonial salt works. The creek's verdant salt marshes were among the most significant in the New York City area until development began in the 1820s. He will also discuss the creek's comeback, its value as a community resource, and the pressing and future environmental issues.

This program is part of the "Ask the Experts" Sunday afternoon lecture series at the Coney Island Museum. Please note the Denson slide talk replaces a previously scheduled lecture by Reverend Billy and Savitri D which was cancelled.

When: Sunday, July 26, 4:00 pm
Where: Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Ave between Stillwell Ave and West 12th St, Coney Island
Cost: $5.00, Free to CIUSA members

photo by Charles Denson

lushlife

More Salt Marsh, images taken while on a visit there with some friends new to the spot, and we were all enraptured. Gazing at the throngs of fiddler crabs emerging from their innumerable holes, I, for one, felt drugged.

I found this in a small guide to the Gerritsen Creek Nature Trail.

"At the turn of the century developers began making elaborate plans to turn Jamaica Bay into a port, dredging Rockaway channel to allow large ships to enter the proposed harbor. Speculators, anticipating a real estate boom, began buying land along the Jamaica Bay waterfront. Fearing that the relatively pristine marshland around Gerritsen Creek would be wiped out by developers, Frederic B. Pratt and Alfred T. White offered the city 140 acres of land around Gerritsen Creek for a park in 1917."

I move to rename all things Gil Hodges after Alfred T. White. But then again, I'm not a sports fan. Still, I don't think I've come across a single thing in this Borough named after the visionary philanthropist, except of course the book recenlty published by Proteus Gowanus, The Social Vision of Alfred T. White, which I hope to read soon. And today I discovered that the Brooklyn Public Library doesn't have a copy in circulation. Thar's a little irony thar.

We left the marsh around 7, unwilling to leave the light and the briny-fresh air of the marsh and mugwort, dawdling even while the children played at bludgeoning each other with their shoes. When does school start?

Ritual as Distraction

Since upon the apex of the triangle of my heart
I am raising, raising the butter-flame of clear light
I have no time for offering the sacred fire.
~Jetsun Milarepa, one of history's worst consumers.

marsh whites, mostly

The White Crab Spider eating a fly, its face surprisingly human, its abdomen, suprisingly face-like. The Egret I saw a little later, too fast for my shutter finger.

What the eclipse looks like from here

Hiding beyond the shield of darkness there is fire, like the turtle quickening beneath its shell.

Naught Thaught's compelling post on the black sun contrived a meeting between me and my profound ignorance, which I experienced in too much relief trying to understand Reza Negaristani's comments.

I'm grateful. I haven't had this date in a long time, the sense of trust in that which I can't know, or what I once knew but have forgotten. I'm not talking about Reza's writings now, although I'm sure they're worthy of the effort it would take me to crack his code. I'm talking about trust in the great unknowable that lies behind the intricately woven shield of ignorance we inherit as human beings, having been seduced by the delicacies of time and place by the likes of succulent apples, jewel-toned pomegranate, sweet-tart tamarind, attraction and aversion.

How often do I feel that the darkness I call my blindness is alive with wisdom hidden from me? How often can I feel the company of the sublime darkness of a black sun hiding supersensual rays I'm not strong enough to absorb, meted out only in increments equal to my receptivity?

I don't stand here below the dark sun nearly enough, not cowering, but in wonder at the infinities articulated beyond my comprehension.

BTW, I expect I'll edit this and add to it later, because there's a lot of strands regarding limitations of sight. For instance, those included in the raw material of the comment I left at Naught Thaught, below. Please forgive all the self-quoting, it's just that I think my mind got places at that moment I can't get back by any other route. So here goes:

I’ve been compelled by the subject of your post for some reason, and now it seems like you were anticipating today’s eclipse. Today the black sun also reads to me as what is incomprehensible or unseeable, blocked by something, swallowed by a monster. And in trying to read Reza’s comments, I feel like my intellect has been swallowed by a monster, or perhaps it never amounted to much than that of wood lice. My eyes! My eyes!

The subject brings me to a level of faith in the virtue of all the workings of the universe that are unknowable to me because of the limitations of my instruments of knowing, and I always appreciate becoming aware of that aspect of my blindess, which seems to bring me a little closer to whatever is on the other side of the shut door, the black sun. Reza’s meanings, in all their richness, for example. Out of my reach, but still resonating. (OK, I do get the Reich paraphrase, which is lovely.)

This is Bloodcore posted this selection from the Popol Vuh today, also commentary on what prevents seeing/knowing:

“The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer… They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven, and the round face of the earth… Then the Creator said: “They know all… what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth!… Are they not by nature simple creatures of our making? Must they also be gods?”

Perhaps we can only see what we are equal to, and the black sun acts as gaurdian of powers we haven’t earned, or are unable to resonate with, but which we hope to steal. Consider me kneeling here with my ear to the door.

r u in china?

I hope so, so you can get a good view of the total solar eclipse happening at 10:35 Eastern time, and lasting longer than any other eclipse occurring in the 21st Century.

no remorse for poppy pods

Last year I showed my son how to harvest marigold and chive seeds, and since seed collecting has become a job he's avid for. As soon as he noticed the poppy pods had dried and opened, the disk of flaps that covered the seed vents opening up in less than 24 hours, each dried disk seeming frozen in the act of a wild whirling twirl, he climbed into the garden and snapped them off their dry stalks, brought them in and prepared to surgically remove the hidden wealth with a hand drill.

Technical difficulties allowed me the chance to squirrel them away long enough to take the portrait, after which he found them again, and now, they have a new look. He gave me a dish of seed and the broken pieces of pod, their secret vaulting revealed, wrapped up in paper.

brooklyn habitat

...and the smallest one was Madeline.

What about that crack in the ceiling shaped like a rabbit? That's quiddity for you. Oh strangeness, St. Bemelmans is burried at Arlington National Cemetery, the most regimented cemetery ever! All in a line for sure. Not so over in Green-Wood, much more in keeping with his moody, lyrical sweeping brushwork. I can just imagine his rendition of the gates of Green-Wood, replete with parrots, umbrella wielding dancers, giant puppets and perhaps a bad hat.

behind the beat

"During the time needed by the Earth to complete a rotation around its axis (a sidereal day), the Earth moves a short distance (approximately 1°) along its orbit around the sun. Therefore, after a sidereal day, the Earth still needs to rotate a small extra angular distance before the sun reaches its highest point. A solar day is, therefore, nearly 4 minutes longer than a sidereal day."

...from Wikipedia. Had me thinking of Misty Mountain Hop. It's a synchopated world we live in.

morning

This morning there were a few beautiful moments as I stood making coffee in the kitchen, for a flash I felt like I was on a high hill with a crystal clear view among women wearing skirts 100 years old, the hems and ruffles making dark cubist compositions in the clear, lovely aether. From Boehme I had an insight into the word quintessence, as he wrote it as quinte essence, the fifth element, which at that time was considered to be ether. So after air, water, earth and fire there was aether, and I think this is still the case in some eastern esoteric belief systems.

Recently quintessence was given a new usage by cosmologist Paul Steinhardt who describes it as the force that seems to be causing time to accelerate as the bits and pieces of galaxies more farther and farther apart. I wonder how people can prove that time is moving faster now than it did at the dawn of civilization. Who's still around to compare? Anyway, it seems like life is always speeding up, then slowing down.

On Tamarix

Reading up on this shrubby tree, the 5-Stamen Tamarisk, (Tamarix Ramosissima) I learned that the genus, called salt cedar, thrives in saline soils, and discourages the growth of competing plants by sending the salts through their systems to the blossoms and foliage, where it falls onto the ground currying the soil with too much salt for seedlings of other plants. In places, Tamarisk varieties have crowded out Willow and Cottonwood. Varieties were also planted heavily to reclaim the prarie once overgrazing and inept farming turned it into a dustbowl.

I was drawn to this plant at the BBG because of its feathery foliage and delicate, airy, wandering habit. What drew so many honey bees, bumble bees, fire flies and syrphid flies to it, I can't say. Every clump of flowers crawled with life. Perhaps the insects crave salt.