Emergence!

Order: Hemiptera

Family: Cicadidae

And She (I) Was (Having Fun With the Talking Heads)

Thoughts on Visualizing Time

I'm embarking on this new effort to create a visual representation of time as I feel it. Not time as I feel it when I look at a clock, ticking away the uniform moments of "now" linearly, though round and round. I want to figure out a way to visualize the holistic present that I feel when I sit and experience my senses. It won't be easy, but I'll figure it out eventually. Baby steps! This is just my brain getting down what it's thinking.

Language thoughts...

For the Koyukon Indians of NW Alaska, the landscape is considered a source of knowledge. For the Koyukon, the great horned owl is the most skilled prophet of all the birds...yes, birds can tell the future. Its name, for the Koyukon, is nigoodzagha, which means “small ears,” or nodneeya, which means “tells you things.” Certain “phrases” the birds say mean either good, or bad omens. The worst thing the bird can tell you is that you will cry soon, which means someone close to you will die. The bird can predit storms, and let you know you will have a good hunt! It is said that a few decades ago, the great horned owl said the “black bears would cry”…soon, I forget why, I will look, the blackberries in the area, that the bears needed to eat disappeared, and the bears suffered. The interesting thing about Koyukon language, is the extent to which its sounds reflect that of its surrounding natural environment. The name of certain birds, such as the great horned owl, may mean to the Koyukon “small ears,” “tells you things,” to the non-Koyukon speaker, the same sounds would remarkably mimic the sound of the great horned owl. I only know this because some dude, Richard Nelson, studied them. The interactive nature of oral language, blurred the boundaries between what was human, and what was animal or divine.

"Many bird calls are interpreted as Koyukon words...What is striking about these words is how perfectly they mirror the call's pattern, so that someone (outside the tribe) who knows birdsongs can readily identify the species when the words are spoken in Koyukon. Not only the rhythm comes through, but also some of the tone, the "feel" that goes with it."

Language was not something on paper, as you read this; the letters in these words represent phonetic pockets, sounds that a human makes that we represent in these little figures. You are turning them into sound in your head. Your vision and auditory perception are being blurred. Can you hear what you see here? For the Koyukon people, there was no written component to language. It was an expression of nature. It’s a big difference, aye?

I was reading this sweet book Spell of the Sensuous for three hours at work today, now I can't stop thinking about it.

Snail

All Good Music Festival July 8-11

Silly Afternoon at Rosebank Farms

Kiawah animals are up to something...

Nature gets development angst and people leave

Just for fun.

Kiawah Island

- Kiawah Island.

In this video;

- "Vanderhorst Allee of the Oaks," which follows a path dating to 1772 from the Vanderhorst Plantation. At this time, the Vanderhorst Plantation had fields of indigo, cotton, and rice. In order to get from the plantation to the beach, the family would follow this route through the forest, lined with oak trees.

-Spider eating grasshopper. That's all I know about that.

-Wildflowers. Kiawah Island is making an effort to plant wildflowers and to reintroduce people to their significance. Why are these pretty little dancing flowers important? Because, beyond their aesthetic appeal, they are a vital component of the life of pollinators- species such as hummingbirds, bats, beetles, ants, mice, and more that depend on seeds, pollen, and nectar for food, and behavioral purposes.

-Fiddler crabs. These little guys are active on the mud flats during low tide. The males have one giant claw, called a cheliped, that they use for defense and attracting mates. Australian ecologists have been finding that male fiddler crabs are "bluffing" with the size of their claws- although they are supposed to be attractive to females because it means that the male is a good, strong fighter, males are growing big claws that are actually pretty weak. When males get into fights and lose their claws, they have been growing back even larger ones, which gives the benefit to the loser of fights not the winner! They are called fiddler crabs because the movement of the claw when the male is eating resembles someone playing the fiddle. Apparently people like to keep fiddler crabs as pets.

-Osprey (Pandion haliaetus). These are also sometimes called sea hawks. They collect seaweed and sticks, and build their nests in the forks of trees located near water, as seen in video. They nest near water because they eat fish, and they want to make sure to have an abundant food supply for their babies. They like to nest high up in trees, which is becoming a problem in areas where there is either too large a population of osprey, or due to habitat manipulation, a shortage of tall nesting places.

Shakespeare referenced Osprey in Act 5 of Coriolanus, saying

"I think he'll be to Rome

As the osprey to the fish, who takes it

By sovereignty of nature."

Cabbage Palm. These can tolerate a lot of soil saturation, so grow well, either singularly or in groves, near coastal swamps and wetlands.

Mmm, this place reintroduces you to the sky, the tides, the "vacation" absence of time.

The clouds always seem to form recognizable shapes here; the make me realize the way that nature must have spoken when written language didn't take the form of alphabetic sounds, but represented the images of the visible world. The clouds could say sentences with their shapes, that must have been so exciting! And the sound, the wind and ocean. We have debated which is louder, but as I blow gently into the rim on my bottle of beer, trying to make the fluting sound, the wind never ceases to do a better job...capturing all the acute angles that my single breath misses. Wonderful!

-Kelly