Where the Thunderbird Flies

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

I snagged this shot today. Mostly by accident.

Oh, I was trying to get it, but what you don't see in the photo, just out of range to the viewer's right, is the massive raven harrying the harrier. He'd chased her from the west field up into the middle willow on the banks of the pond, thence upward and over and over and around and around, spiraling higher, heading north as they danced in combat.

It was nearly impossible to catch her, and I didn't actually think I'd gotten anything in the single shot I managed to get off before they disappeared over the ridgeline.

She's going to put in an appearance elsewhere.

I'm setting up a new site — well, strictly speaking, it's already set up, but there's nothing there yet. It's going to be a home for my fictionish stuff, stuff that mostly really isn't fiction at all, but . . . certain things must be changed, and so I can't really call it what it is in spirit (and mostly in fact). Stories that have been rattling around in my head and heart and mostly my soul for too many decades to count, spirits who want their stories told, even if only one person ever actually reads them.

The title of this post is the subheading of my new place. This one will remain in daily use, of course — for Wings's art, for substantive pieces on the issues of the day that are part of my portfolio, if not necessarily by choice, for whatever else I feel like sharing here.

The Interstices will be for my version of art: Words, my words, in short form and flash form and poetry and possibly even things longer, punctuated by my photography. 

Actually what it will be is . . . me.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Four Corners

Some days, two worlds is one too many.

Transgressive Space

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

It's the only tree in the east field. Technically, it's on Roy's side of the fence — or, rather, now Camille's — but the branches extend west over the slanting posts strung with barbed wire. 

It seems not quite alive, but neither is it fully dead, apparently. 

Short and stunted, its hard bare branches spread outward at broken angles like those of trees in the haunted forests of childhood fairy tales. Sepia-toned bark, hard and splintery, peels off in strips in some places; in others, it's solid gray iron.

Inhospitable . . .or so it seems, especially in this season when the air is so icy that simple breathing burns.

And yet . . . .

Home it isn't, but it is a way-station of sorts. Throughout the year, the ravens gather in its branches, as do their smaller, more colorful magpie cousins. At dusk the tree is alive with their chatter, avian shouts and laughter and eventually lullabies.

It stands above a coyote crossing, and the birds use it as an outpost, keeping watch over their own, and occasionally, over others, too. Even when camouflaged deep in its recesses, in the crotches and notches where the branches first emerge from the trunk, their voices carry loud on the winter air when they feel the need to raise the alarm.

It's a perch, a blind, a hunter's lair for the raptors, the red-tails and harriers and Cooper's hawks who come to visit in ones and twos.

It's a threshold, a boundary, a wayfarer's landmark; a stile, an outpost, a line of demarcation.

It's a marker of interstices, itself an interstice, hovering in a state of being between that which lives and that which does not; trunk on one side of an artificial line, roots and branches transgressing the space freely and openly; a host but not a home to those who travel through and above and beneath it.

It's probably why it feels like home to me. 

Sun and Shadows

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

I know, I know. I've written a lot about interstices lately, and it's mostly difficult stuff. [Some of it, while seeming not to be directly on point, in fact is, and is difficult in the extreme.]

But this is different.

This is a meditation on imagery, via one of Wings's photo entries in his recent show. It's much more pleasant, even if not exactly easy; it does require some thought.

And it's up now at The NDN Silver Blog.

Go take a look, and use the social-media buttons at the link to share if you're so inclined.  Thanks.