This morning, as every morning, I am confronted by improbable things: that the downy woodpecker should be able to beat his head against a tree with machine-gun speed and fly away. That the squirrels of the daytime should fling themselves through the treetops with so much abandon and not turn their bodies into aerodynamic leaves like the squirrels of the night. That the sky should get so red — redder than wine, redder than blood — and then in the course of minutes fade so completely, leaving no trace of a stain.
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The Manual series, when complete, will tell you everything you need to know that you didn't learn in kindergarten. Belgian video-artist and soundcreator Swoon is making videos for some of its sections. Guest-author Luisa A. Igloria has been writing a poem a day since November 2010 in response to Dave's posts at The Morning Porch. Yet another on-going collaboration is the dialogue in poems and photos prompted by late-night conversations between Dave and British blogger Rachel Rawlins, a project we call Conversari. Finally, the Words on the Street cartoon, featuring Dave's urban doppelganger Diogenes, returned at the beginning of 2012 as a weekly feature after a several-year hiatus.Categories
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Recent Comments
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Dave Bonta (3184), Luisa A. Igloria (424), Todd Davis (9), Teju Cole (5), Steven Bonta (3), Chris Bolgiano (3), Marcia Bonta (2), Bruce Bonta (1), Abdul-Walid of Acerbia (1), Sarah Bennett (1), Nathan Moore (1), Kristin Berkey-Abbott (1), Joan Ryan (1), Alexis Aguilar (1), Peter Stephens (1), Alison Kent (1), Dick Jones (1)
Thank you for your daily Morning Porch on Twitter. I quoted this one on my Daily.Mykl.org tumblelog. Your words remind me of my own porch, when my travels take me too far from it.
Weirdly, Dave, I had precisely the same reflections as the first two & in the same order when I was hanging out washing last spring. A woodpecker hard at work then on the wing followed by two squirrels in momentary free-fall.
Love this.
Hi, Mykl! Thanks for reading (and linking). Front porches are the best, aren’t they? Good places to think one’s own thoughts and interact with the world at the same time – kind of like blogs.
Dick – Huh. And I suppose they might’ve even been the same species of squirrel, since I gather from Frizzy Rachel that our gray squirrels are invasive in the London area.
Of course, they can fall from quite a height without apparent damage.
…deb – Thanks for stopping by.
amen