Kitt Peak Journals

These are snippets of journal entries from my trip to Kitt Peak in April.  I don't know that I've ever posted diary excerpts like this, but I wanted to share some of the photos, and didn't really know what to write to accompany them.  So here goes...

Friday, April 27, 2018
I wish I were a painter.  Because I would love to paint my favorite view of Baboquivari in between those two pine trees behind the Hiltner telescope.  I can't believe I'm sitting behind this dome again.  It feels like no time has passed now that I am back, but these two years seemed so long.  Ohhh I've missed this place so much!

Saturday, April 28, 2018
I've been reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, and her whole philosophy about creativity is that it doesn't usually come zapping out of the sky like some bolt of lightning. It comes from working at it. From practice. From showing up regularly at your medium. Which requires discipline, which, in theory, will eventually become a habit. What is my problem lately? All I seem to want to do is sew and garden... what happened to photography? Music? Writing?

(Hmmm... I realize that in the three months that have passed since I wrote this, my creative slump has passed. Maybe all that gardening and sewing helped move it along? In her book, Twyla also writes about the process of "scratching"... that pre-making time where you're mulling over ideas, fishing out good ones, trying things out in your brain. You might not realize it's happening, and it feels like you're not doing anything "productive." Family might think you're being lazy. I think this is where I've been.)

Twyla mentions that Beethoven went for a walk every morning and scribbled ideas that came to him in a little notebook, then came back and got to work on his projects. One of the gals in the writing workshop I took talked about something called a "commonplace book", which is basically, yeah, Beethoven's little notebook.  Someplace to write snippets of overheard conversations, ideas for projects, sketches & doodles—whatever—so that they're all there in one place like a little treasure box. I use my journal for all of that, but the gems are always buried under stupid daily drama and outpourings, and I forget they're in there.

Sunday, April 29, 2018
I am outside next to a little piney shrub who is kindly providing me with some dappled shade to lessen the glare of this paper.  Full-on shade is too cold, but sun-on-white at 7000 feet is positively blinding.  2pm... it is blustery-windy today and sooo much colder than yesterday. The wind is coming from every direction! I didn't bring enough warm clothes.  And no socks!

Monday, April 30, 2018
I was thanked in an official astronomical announcement!  Ha!  Last night, There was a star that burst forth a bunch of cosmic stuff and apparently it was quite the big deal. Don and I got to observe it for half an hour just after sunset. I got to type commands into the computer while Don analyzed results on another computer. For this—what a hoot!—I was given an honorable mention in the report. Sometimes I feel like Ferris Bueller.  It sounds like something he might have added to his amazing day: somehow getting thanked for his (minimal) assistance in some scientific paper.

That nova, in a tidy little graph!

Wednesday, May 2, 2018
This morning I woke up at 5:30 and instead of going back to sleep I just got up.  I am so glad I did!  Clouds were streaking past the building, rolling and swooping right outside the big windows in the lounge. I went for a walk with my camera (sadly, none of my photos captured the magic) and came back to write.  It felt good!  That walk, that creative time, even if I didn't have anything to "show" for it.  My friend Elizabeth says that's how she starts her days when she's at an artist residency:  Get up, go for a photography-walk, come back & get to work. Beethoven was onto something.  

Thursday, May 3, 208
I woke up a few times during the night last night.  The moon was bright and the dome was open, scooping up far-away starlight.  I'd hear it rumble now and then as it turned to find a new window for the telescope. I like being snuggled in my blankets, about to fall asleep, knowing that a mountain full of telescopes are awake, watching the sky, doing what they do. It reminds me of being a little kid, going to bed while my parents' dinner party was still in full-swing downstairs.

My dorm room digs.

3:45pm.  The Ledge.
It is so quiet and perfect.  A wind is picking up, winding its way through the boulders and trees, but other than that, hardly a sound.  A bug.  Echoey bird calls— warblers maybe?  A car driving up the mountain.  I realized that part of why I love the ledge so much is that it feels like I'm in a diorama. All those field trips to the American Museum of Natural History in New York when I was in grade school.  The dioramas looked so real, I thought if I stared long enough I'd catch a fox winking at me.

(later, just before sunset) The mountainsides look lush in the low light.  Velvety brown flocked with dusty green trees.  I would like to make a dress that looks like this. With a silver ribbon road and sparkly beads for the gray rocks that dot the bottom of the cliffs. 

What is it about this place that I love so much?  It's the quiet immenseness, for sure.  But it's also that it's the land time forgot— these old buildings with now-retro furniture. But mostly it's that all through the wee hours these telescopes carry on, peering into the depths of space and then sleeping all day long.  Like some mythical creature—creatures—doing miraculous work in the dark of night and then quietly folding themselves up, tucking themselves away, out of sight, when dawn breaks.  It's like having someone say, shhh, come this way... and they lead you through the woods to a field where you squint into the shadows and... wait!... there comes a unicorn.  How many times in your life do you get to see that? Every time I come up here.

Thank you, Eric, Tony, Don, and the powers that be at the MDM.

Paris Album, Part 2

My favorite quiet corner of Paris was the cemetery at Montmartre.  Away from crowds, tended to by various cats, overseen by angels. I spent a lot of my early photography days taking pictures in cemeteries in Vermont, and back then my dream was to visit ones like these in New Orleans, in Paris, in Savannah, in Prague. Ancient.  I don’t think John and Katherine share the same affinity for cemeteries that I do, but it’s okay.  I still got to spend time wandering.

Staying off the main streets on our way to Sacré-Cœur from the cemetery, we were rewarded with the beautiful Allée des Brouillards and, at the end of it, this man on a bench in front of a bit of Paris spring.  I loved that shock of yellow!  

Another favorite: this tree at the top of Montmartre’s famous steps.

A view from the Coulée Verte...

... and from the Tuileries...

I was pleased to see that the fleet of ships at the Luxembourg Gardens pond included not just boats from regular countries, but also a pirate ship.  Ha! John and Katherine sailed Norway…

On my birthday, we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  We arrived early, the line wasn’t long, and we’d stocked up on baguettes for breakfast, eating them while waiting. We bought the stair tickets, and climbed until we were finally forced to take the elevator up from the second level. I still remember being at the top with my Dad when I was four years old, and although I don’t remember what side we looked over, I remember the railing being just at eye level, and my Dad having to lift me up to give me a better view. I’m pretty sure that wooden railing is the still the very same, and the second I put my hand on it, I got goosebumps. I still remembered the feel of the wood on my palm.  Of course it made me cry — I miss my Dad, and I know I am lucky to remember moments like that from so long ago.  I know Katherine will grow up and remember this trip with her own Dad, being at the top of the world in Paris.

** See my other Paris posts: Paris Album, and A Day in Paris.

New York Weekend

I spent last weekend in New York for three good reasons: 1. To visit my friend Lynn, 2. To take a writing class, and 3. To buy a typewriter... 

This is my new-to-me Royal, from the late 50's, here appearing with its restorer, the famous Paul Schweitzer of Gramercy Typewriters, a New York institution since 1932. I knew right when I walked in that this was "the one." (More about this in a future post.)

One of the highlights of the weekend was finally getting to visit with my photo friend Aleya Lehmann Bench. After meeting up with Lynn and dropping our stuff off at our Airbnb, we headed out to Brooklyn. Seeing Aleya's new work in person at her Industry City studio was such a thrill.  She sews these beautiful costumes and photographs them in motion. I was fascinated by the fancy pleating, which she commissioned through one of New York's renowned pleat makers.  I had no idea there even was such as a thing!

After that inspiring outing to Brooklyn, it was back to the Airbnb. This was the view from our balcony. I love that we could open the door and walk out to the city sights and sounds and smells.

At night it was even more magical. It's funny how soothing the sounds of the city are from 25 floors up, even the car horns and different-toned beeps of random trucks backing up. Everything echoes and feels woven in layers, and somehow seems there and not there at the same time. I felt like I was standing in the middle of some Brian Eno soundwork.

In the morning, Lynn visited with her son and daughter-in-law who just had a baby (congrats, Ryan & Emily!) and I headed off to my writing class near Union Square.  Ohhh it was so fun to sit at a school desk again. I loved every minute of it!  Gotham Writers' Workshops has lots of online classes in all sorts of genres, but also these one-day intensive introductions in Manhattan. I'm so glad it worked out that I could be in the city for this one. We had a great instructor and a class of students who were really engaged. No pretension or useless, thoughtless critiques, just people who wanted to be there to learn. I could not have asked for a better first experience in a writers' workshop.  Thanks, Janet Flora & Gotham!

I was the last to leave the classroom that day. Before shutting off the lights I couldn't help but stop to photograph what was left on the chalkboard. Kinda gave me goosebumps and made me chuckle at the same time.

After my class I met Lynn under the clock at Grand Central. I know New Yorkers don't think twice about this, but I haven't met anyone under that clock in years and years, so it was so exciting. Especially lugging my typewriter and having just been to a writing class... I felt like I was part of the ongoing creative history of the city. New York!

And then there was this. I thought the juxtaposition of our flag with the "If you see something, say something" sign (which used to innocuously announce train schedules and holiday greetings) was particularly depressing. What's going on, America?!

On our way to track 109 to catch the train out of the city, Lynn and I stopped for drinks and appetizers at the Oyster Bar.  I have never been there! My Mom and Dad used to go when they worked in New York in the early sixties, and Lynn remembers going there with her father, who used to be an NBC producer. 

Sunday, with the exception of dinner at McKinney & Doyle in Pawling, was spent in my pajamas, scribbling in my journal, reading, and helping Lynn excavate her parents' old patio furniture (now hers) out of the garage to set it up for the upcoming summer days. It made me happy to see Lynn so happy.

The next morning: an easy train ride, a baguette from Zaro's, and plenty of available seats on my standby flight back to Columbus. It felt like a an entire week happened in three days. Perfect.