Who knew?  Dante Alighieri was a contemporary writer despite having died in 1321.

My November began with this view and it’s been straight down, as in hurtling toward the center of the earth Dante “The Divine Comedy” style, since then.

Nothing life threatening, just life numbing.

Dante got close to naming it when he designated “Limbo” as one of the circles of hell.

If he were writing his “Inferno” today, he’d have to include a sub menu for Limbo, initially written as a more ontological state of being.  This modern limbo would be called Automated Limbo: a voice mail hell-state of limbo where live human beings are perpetually promised but fail to appear.

I took this photograph early Monday morning, November 2, and since then I’ve been on a permanent loop of  10-30 minute blocks of automated voice hell alternating between “Your call is important to us” to muzak surely composed by those undergoing electrocution.

The object of my calls has been Verizon and Comcast and a local physician’s office but I know this could be just about any customer service line still in business today.  All businesses with the exception of Nordstroms, which unfortunately (Are you listening President Obama?), is not yet in charge of Utilities such as internet, phone and cable services or the “public” health plan option and medical prescriptions.

The result of all this voice hell?  My residential service was inadvertently canceled so now I have to use my cell phone to get to Dante’s Limbo.  Ever listened to Musak on a cell phone speaker for 10 minutes?The next call shall be to the ear doctor.

Oi.

Dante and Virgil, his guide, survived the rings of hell, right?

I’m not sure they’re making it out of Limbo Voice Hell to Paradiso in 2009.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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At last, the passenger seat.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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I don’t quite have the words and I think that is the way it is supposed to be.

I was photographing the sunrise at the pond in the magical fifteen minute period just before the sun appears.  It is still dark out for all eyes except the lens.  It has become almost a ritual with me since September began to go the pond to photograph the early skies that bring morning in ever-increasing spectacular ways.  This is the first time, though, that I knew I was not alone.  The birds in the surrounding trees began to stir.

I couldn’t see them.  They were behind me in a stand of trees across the parking lot when suddenly they flew en masse over my head in two waves, seconds between intervals.  They felt just feet from my head but I know it was not that close.

The sound of their wings in motion is still in my ears now as I write this hours later, but at the time, this sound simply commanded that I look up, not in Hitchcockian fear–no, far from it—this was awe, pure and simple.

It was the spaceship door opening at the end of “Close Encounters of a Third Kind”, the 1977 Steven Spielberg film.  I was swept on to the rising ramp and disappeared with them into the morning light and storm clouds.

I imagine that National Geographic Nature Photographers must feel these extraordinary moments as they encounter nature and wild life in the furthest most regions of the world, but here in Franklin, Massachusetts?

I am still a bit shaken to realize I am back on earth and not entirely sure people will believe my tale.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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I am her play buddy but.

She’s got to keep an eye on me cuz I might check my phone for messages to which she says, “Pappy, we are playing right?  You are helping me with my puzzles, right?”

Or, I might be taking her photograph.

Or daydreaming and looking out the library windows wondering if we’ll go to McDonalds or Islington Pizza for lunch.

She lives in the absolute moment and has an inner radar for my wanderings.

Is there a message I absolutely have to get?  No.

Do I have to daydream looking out the window about where I’ll take her next?  No.

Do I have to take her photograph?

Hell, yes.  It’s my way of living in the moment, Miss Mary.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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I ask you.

What’s Indian Summer for if not to showcase a white truck whizzing by me and the blazing color of autumn trees?

©Pat Coakley 2009

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If you watched any professional football this Sunday, you probably saw the New England Patriots playing the Tennessee Titans in a blowing snow storm at Gillette stadium in Foxborough.

I watched the first three minutes (three minutes more than I usually watch) and saw two players get their knee and shoulder filleted and then helped off the field.  Don’t get me started on professional sports.  I think they all are concussive numbskulls calling assault and battery a “hard hit”.   Shane!  Shane!  Come back, Shane!  The Wild West wears athletic supporters, though.  God forbid something should happen to THAT region of their cranium.

The stadium is fifteen minutes south of where I live and the storm started out as rain and by mid-afternoon was snow, flakes-the-size-of-quarters-snow, and some even larger.

Nothing tells me summer is over more than snow at the beach and the weekly publication of those on the Disabled List and, my personal favorite category: those listed as “Questionable”.  I think Pixar should make a movie called, “The Questionables”, don’t you?

The superhero would be on crutches, arm in a sling, and head wrapped in bandages talking about respect.

Oh, yeah, and talking about how he’s questionable for next week’s game.

And, double-oh-yeah: talkin’ respect and questionables ONLY IF the coach allows him to speak at all, which come to think of it- oh-yeah the third time–that last one about free speech?

This constitutional right insures that Pixar’s superhero shall not be on the New England Patriots.

Belichick world (coach of the Patriots) is well known for operating without the First Amendment.

That’s not even a questionable.

It’s a fact–along with playing football in a snow storm is slippery.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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©Pat Coakley 2009

Yesterday, I was saved by a cow.

I am not exaggerating.

I decided to cook Chicken Chili from a free video recipe that was sent to me in an email from American’s Test Kitchen.  According to their website, America’s Test Kitchen is Public Broadcasting’s most watched cooking show, and silly me, who really doesn’t like regular beef chili all that well, said, “Let’s make THAT.”

They want you to be a subscriber for a fee and regularly send recipes to entice you to reach for that credit card and break out of the “free” world.

I have to admit, I was tempted to sign up… until yesterday.

I watched their video on how to make Chicken Chili.  It involved three different kind of green chillies: jalepeno, pablano, anaheim.  The woman was chopping the poblano and anaheim chillies in what she called a crude chop and then added them into a food processor.  She added two jalapeno chillies that she had minced apparently by hand “off” camera into the mix without any explanation of why she didn’t cut them along with the other chillies.

I now know why.

She was probably chopping them with latex gloves on both her hands as that apparently is the only sure fire way to avoid having your hands go on fire from coming in contact with the jalapeno juices.

I noticed the redness right after putting them into the food processor.  I tried cold water and that seemed to make it worse.  One hand literally was burning while only part of the other.  It was red and inflamed and at first I thought it would simply go away.  I continued to make the recipe and remembered something about the jalapeno being tricky but, honestly, not having cooked all that much, I didn’t bring a lot of “chili” awareness to this video.

America’s Test Kitchen, on the other hand, is a cooking show.  These people know their chillies, one presumes.  She didn’t warn the viewer, nor did the host, Christopher Kimball, a bespectacled professorial man who has written many cooking books and is a magazine editor and publisher of Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines.  He is generally quite genial and if cooking steak, for example, lets you know what part of the cow is being eaten, complete with a graphic.

I had to Google to find what part of the cow was the antidote to America’s Test Kitchen and the jalapeno juice: milk.  I had to soak my hands in milk, several times in the course of two hours, before they returned to normal.  The antidote came from a woman who had suffered with her hands for over 12 hours until she had finally came across the antidote that worked.  It was also clear that if had I gotten it in my eye, I’d have been in an additional world of hurt beyond the powers of milk.

So, my hands were saved by a cow yesterday and they also were saved from reaching into my purse to get my credit card for Public Broadcasting’s most watched cooking show as well.

Maybe if you are paid subscriber they’ll tell you what foods can make your hands spontaneously burst into flames and your eyeballs fall out just in time for Halloween?

©Pat Coakley 2009

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I listened to an interview with the writer, Sherman Alexie, the other day and he talked about artists living in the “in-between”.  In his case, he identifies this as the territory of truths inbetween being an indigenous Native American and an immigrant to the colonists’ culture that took power.

Blew me down, this idea.  Not only this explanation of his own “in-between” status but attributing it to the territory of every artist.

So, to conclude my week-long, “The Growing Season Ends, The Series”  on Singular Sensation, my photo blog on all things flowers, plants and often peevish photography tips, the byline of which is “breaking photographic rules lowers your cholesterol”, I got out my wide angle lens and put it on the ground (thank-you, Razz) and shot upward to show the spaces in-between the dessicated Queen Anne’s Lace stems and blossoms along the pond, a territory of truths that is mine for some (as yet) unknown reason.

I began the series to demonstrate through one subject (Queen Anne’s Lace) that when the growing season ends, a photographer’s growth can just begin.

This is a perfect thought to end the series and one that I thought belongs on SFAR as well.

So, one for two, today.  And, do yourself a favor, listen to that interview with Sherman Alexie (linked above) and Eleanor Wachtel of “Writer’s and Company”.

You won’t be sorry.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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“How’d ya like the movie, Pappy?”

I had taken my 7 year old grand niece and 9 year old grand nephew to see “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”.  Their 11 year old sister had seen it and loved it.  We had tried to see it one rainy Saturday two weeks ago but it was sold out.

I picked them up after school on Tuesday, traditionally the slowest day at movie theaters, and off we went.

It was in 3-D which seems to be the new normal.  Last year when a movie was in 3-D, you also had the option of seeing the “regular” movie.  That choice appears to be gone.  Now, you have to see the 3-D movie and that of course costs substantially more, even in a matinee.  Three of us for a matinee cost $39. I bought them some lunch and then movie snacks and before I had put on my 3-D glasses I had spent $79.50 in total.

I didn’t realize the 3-D was on your wallet as well.

Perhaps that soured my mood for the movie but I don’t think so.   In my years of movie going, this one ranks somewhere near the absolute bottom and if I had waited to buy them lunch AFTER the movie, there would have no takers.  All this monstrous food dropping from the sky, enlarged and growing at alarming rates was so repulsive that I’m going to suggest  the movie to my Weight Watcher meeting.   If you are struggling to eat within your points per day, this movie will reduce your intake to zero.

No, I mean it. I felt sick for two days after seeing this movie.

The kids?

They loved the movie but I noticed no one ran home and opened the refrigerator but just ran to the bathroom.

When I asked them, “Seriously, what did that huge gigantic brown greasy pulsating mother of a galactic meatball look like to you?”

My grand niece started gagging.

Yep, apparently, she hadn’t thought of it at the time she was watching it, but got my drift.

What are great aunts for if not to speak the truth while filing for bankruptcy?

And, one more thing.

Who needs Roger Ebert with a quality movie review such as this?

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Visit the  Lens Blog of the New York Times today which features a photographer, Brenda Ann Kenneally.  Her photos are called, ” Upstate Girls”.

It demonstrates the power of one’s own creativity when darkness creeps into our room and takes over.  In this artist, it is about demonstrating what human beings look like in a black hole from which no light escapes.  It reminds me, and perhaps other creative souls who visit this blog, that the impulse to create is not first about aesthetic beauty but, simply, putting a light on.

A single unshaded light bulb hanging from the ceiling with a chain is all we need find.

It’s about our hands trying to find that chain, our fingers waving in a line hoping to grasp it.  Creativity is the gift of knowing it is there even if we must struggle to find it.  But, finally, creativity is about finding and pulling that chain, (releasing that shutter, painting that single brush stroke, writing that one sentence) and telling the truth as only we know it.

It is a reminder I needed this rainy, gray morning for all sorts of reasons.

Perhaps, you may need this reminder, too?

©Pat Coakley 2009

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