sun stories

6 o'clock sun


Burn, burn, burn, burn! With the advent of the Vernal Equinox, a constant battle takes place between sun and fog.  Incessant duel between earth, air and sea. And yet, every time our star turns victorious, a beaten fog retreats, burnt out... The very first encounter took place last Sunday, as a defeated Haar allowed us to enjoy a very first evening of light till a lazy sunset and dusk. I never tire of those honey skies all around us. 


Latest sightings

Emerging from a cold and damp winter, I nearly forgot how an after 6 o'clock sun felt like. Quendale  & Brake looked so serene in light blue. A quick run around that shallow Loch of Spiggie remains a must in early spring, and it did not fail to amaze us.


Yes, geese, Goldeneyes, Long-Tailed ducks and other seasonal wildfowl - including Whooper Swan, Red-breasted Merganser, Northern Lapwing, Teal, Wigeon, Shelduck, Moorhen, shalder and a grey heron  - dwell on its edge. But somebody spotted the very first Bonxie of 2012 yesterday. So summer's definitely on its way! All seabirds need fresh water to wash off seaspray off their feathers, as salt burns the very fabric of plumage, keratin.  Damaged feathers will only make life difficult to a seabird, just as it does to our local population of otters. Any creature that feeds from our maritime world needs fresh water for survival. 


Pirate spirit, moi?

Not many of us like bonxies on the island. Although they were once highly hailed by crofters as the liberators from the Erne - and the last pair of eagles were last seen in 1911 - great skuas have since replaced the then "evil" eagle, and has been associated with more modern & economic folk tales. They are amazing flyers and fishermen, when our sea feels generous. Moorland nesters, their varied food diet ensures survival. Furthermore, many of us also forget that bird colonies would be plagued with disease during summer, for they act as muckrakers, cleaning off ledges with ill, injured or dead seabirds. Every creature has a function on our planet, or they simply do NOT exist. People need to accept this simple fact. As a species, we may have placed ourselves at the very top of the food web, however, financial greed can lead some of us to abuse of our homeworld's generosity and/or deplete the resources that are so vital to our healthy planet. The animal kingdom needs our help more than ever! Let's be reasonable and the laws of the karma will be favourable to the future generations.


Back to sun stories

Longer evenings enable us to wander around the island till a later dusk, especially in the unusual clement climate we've experienced till yesterday! Folk walk around, go to the beach and tidy up their gardens.
On the first of our British Summer Time season, we ended up on my favourite sandbridge and marvelled at a pale blue world.


The surf was gentle at our feet and my other half showed an amazing mollusc he found partly uncovered at the edge of the Atlantic: Arctica Islandica . Amazing find! 
  
As the sun dipped below our horizon, the edge of our world turns blue... 


The other end of day, I caught a bloodshot sun through the lens of my pocket camera, as we do not see very often. Our northern sky was filled with a uniform of grey but then, an unusual glowing red sun appeared amidst clouds from the front and I stopped the car to admire such spectacle. I trust other folk stopped on a passing place... It was awesome.


And as we are now reverting to a much more typical early spring spell for our latitude, I can only hope that this arctic moment will not last too long, and be kind to our much precocious spring. Our grass needs a first cut and birds begin to nest. It is no April fool.
Looking forward to the return of our closest flamboyant star :-).

half & half world

Beyond the stars, light, equinox


Nothing prepares us for such cosmic rite of passage. Not even the dazzling displays of aurora borealis that filled our sky since last summer's dusk... As we wandered through February, the island began to display precocious signs of revival. Strangely, our trees began to share so early buds... Winter bowed out without complaint, as milder air filtered through March. Not ice, but rain dominated our Nordic skies. March, month of rainbows and wild hares!

Revival, renaissance, a promise of return
From Imbolc to Ostara, our earthly calendar of life feels more than generous.
Celandine popped up with a good fortnight in advance... Avian movements have turned our skies into fantastic motorways! From wildfowl to waders, via blackbirds, skylarks and common guillemots, the island gradually welcomes back its summer visitors. 

And wherever you decide to walk, Greylag geese feast about everywhere! Their sound and sights slash days and nights. I love to listen to bird calls in a crepuscular sky. Geese make the best use of stars for night navigation. Somehow, I think of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de Nuit.


Night. The one that weaves solace and fears  through a curtain of love & hate... 


Yet night will shrink even further as we jig with spring equinox! What began from late January will now accelerate at some amazing speed. So until then, I shall make the most of our stars and walk through spring till they faint away past Beltaine - enjoy a walk through the meadows and re-discover my world's palette of colours, though quite timid at first, when petals open to the sun. On Sunday morning, I heard my first skylark. Now I can truly welcome Voar, that wonderful dialect word for spring.

Voar haiku string 

Voar -

wind of spring in rattling blind,

distant echo of wheatears.

#haiku fae 60N

Let it out -

March, month of rainbows, ghosts & angels,

my grief still tattooed in grey sky.

#haiku fae 60N

Les choristes -

in their chocolate & white suits,

on every corner of the stack, guillemots sing.

#haiku fae 60N

one world, many tongues

world poetics under one roof


When Kate called me to read in French, I knew she was up to something. Let me rewind to that final week of February. Somewhere, I read that the Island's main Library would host one of those nights when folk gather to share a verse, a tune or a stanza... Karen usually orchestrates those wonderful nights, but for this once, she would ally with the Adult Learning Centre  for something very special. And so she did. With Jen Hadfield as Reader in Residence, who, in the past already requested such reading in my native tongue, The International Poetry Night was born.


And what a night. 

Genny & Kate

On Friday 2 March, the Library kept its doors open till late. Our co-hosts gathered so many voices under one roof.  Karen always hosts such nights in style. This time, Orkney beer and fudge were available to be sampled at the event's interval. 
Whereas Jen made a very brief introductory appearance, her co-hosts, Kate and Genny, enacted a farcical scene before a fifty strong audience. 

Polish born Klaudia Marosek

So many voices, languages filtered through the mesh of the open mic'. English, Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Russian, Frisian, Gaelic, Shetland dialect, French, Moroccan, Malaysian... A world symphony motion!  It felt just home.
Not only poetry, but songs and dance for some of the performers. 

Local fiddlers Bernadette & Jim

This night of world celebration united fantastic voices, who have elected their home on the island,   

Bulgarian born Radina, with Alan

Nordicblackbird in full swing

would remind us all that their respective native tongue adds so many colours to the poetics of such a small community such as ours. Cultural joy to be able to breathe and walk through life with more than one language. Too many folk take it for granted. And although Shetlanders experience such bi-lingualism through their own dialect and English,  their own midder tongue once suffered through cultural cleansing at the start of the 20th century, when English reigned king in the classroom. Too many local dialects, patois and languages have suffered too much already. In an effort to revive local languages and dialects, regions revive their own, hence declaring their unique cultural distinctions. At local level, the island thrives to keep it going and has even taken the step to re-introduce it in today's classroom, via Shetland ForWirds, even though it is fighting against  linguistic imperialism as notably exposed by today's media. 

Hungarian born Fari Batai

Jen at the mic'

For the first time, I discovered Robert Burns in Hungarian through Fari's voice. How enchanting! Re-discovered the magic of those more northern and eastern European languages. Whit a hansel! What a present!
To hear it, or any language spoken by folk in the island really defines the wealth of our local community.
Jen reappeared during the session to share with us her version of  a traditional Irish tune entitled She Moved Through the Fair - a song which is familiar to my heart thanks to Kate Bush's own version. Precious moment from our Reader in Residence.


Steve Davidson and Alan McKay closed the Open Mic' session with a Gallic tune, a bourrée. (Part One)
Scot born Steve is a francophile and an avid & very accomplished musician, who spends parts of his summer holidays somewhere in Auvergne (among his favourite destinations) with a gang of kindred spirits in an attempt to widen his love of traditional Gallic music. 


For Steve & Alan's Bourrée (Part2), please click here. 

Shetland Library's hospitality

My renewed thanks to Karen and Kate for such a brilliant night of celebration. Blending with the world feels such a privilege, especially when we live on an island somewhere in the North Atlantic.

                                                                              

february & ravens

LOVE YOUR HEADLAND


February remains an extraordinary month. It is a time when life returns, even if only through whispers. For every journey through the land, familiar sounds add to the light. If gales still prevail through most mornings, precocious signs of renewal become more flagrant after dawn. One hears excitement through the bare trees of my garden. 
Blackbirds, sparrows, gulls, corvids of northern kinds... Geese in gaggles or above heads. All so more noticeable now. It is a hymn to early spring.

That main trunk of tarmac that links the island from north to south. 
My daily run to the town means a good opportunity to watch one of my favourite birds: ravens.
February draped by their early aerial display, those majestic jet black flyers defy laws of acrobatics. Now they come to perch by the roadside for breakfast. Tarmac offers free restaurants for them and all our local gulls that come to feast on carrion. Some unusual and strange way to survive... Yet their success for survival depend on our rate of road kills, mostly rabbits that plague the land.
Ravens have learnt to tame tarmac. Usually found perched on fenceposts, they reconvene every morning in gangs of three, four, five or six and clean the roads of fur and bones...
They've learnt patience and great timing on the approach of vehicles, and will get aloft as headlights become too near to their feathers. As morbid as it may sound,  those muckrakers have turned such formidable opportunists, and their dare-devil flying skills have made them one of the most successful species in our world.


Fascinating species that inspires tales of all kinds.
From folklore to music, their jet black wings do not cease to amaze and awake musings of all sorts. According to culture, they turn devil or gods... In Native American realms, they bring change and  allow you to travel between worlds. In Scandinavian history, Vikings came to our land to collect young ravens as means of GPS - by launching them at sea to find land ahead - on their travels westwards/north-westwards.  
They are present in so many folk tales, songs and omens!

In Music, as here:

And There, the tale of The Three Ravens, Germanic style.

To my humble heart, ravens remain fantastic birds that symbolise freedom in flight.
Every morning begins with them.

day of sun

day of sun, day of light


my fleeting soul, as Bertie sings. It all felt aerial, so ethereal and magical from dawn till now.  The Met Office application on my iPod had somehow whispered to make the best of our Sunday... Dazzled by blue from dawn till dusk, the island weighed its mass of gold. Fuelled by might of our Nordic light, I packed my heart with adventures found on the shore of the South End - its very tip made of white sand. 


West Voe was littered with uprooted kelp forests tides bring to rest on silver shores after each storm. Warmth on my skin, as I stepped out of the motor and began my first wandering. Whereas folk made it to the other side of arch, I followed the song of the waves and scrutinised the very edge of my own world. Life comes and feasts on rotting kelp,  
from wading friends to the tiniest!


What better spectacle but watch waders - turnstones and purple sandpipers - mingle with lace made by the surf. Each one looked so mechanical every time they got their feet wet! I soon sealed time in a bubble and let my eye play through the lens. 

And yet, behind me, the magic of our elusive jenny wren that too made the most of earth bonanza and played hide and seek in boulders. Magic moments. 





A drive around Spiggie led us to geese - greylag, white-fronted and bean - scattered around the loch and the lush fields in-between Spiggie and Bigton. 

Bigton, la voie royale to Arcania! So I went to salute my dear sandbridge for the first time since Yule and found new rocks on its shoreline... We shall never underestimate the power of water. Oceans and seas carry the world in their currents. We came to find shells of all kinds. And so we did... As spray flew high half-way though the tombolo and tide was high, we found happiness at its base. I marvelled at the game of light through marram grass... Like angel hair all around us. When the world sounds so loud, I always come back to the shore and listen for its earthly song. And love the island in such light. 


By mid-afternoon, I reconvened with my troupe in the town, as theatre needs rehearsals. Dusk draped Sunday without a word. This epilogue back inside night - somewhat distracted by a glow of Aurora in the evening - hovers like a silvery cloak of a day more than well spent. 


And I want to remember how it all began, 

here it is, immortalised, inside a triptych of haiku.

Vol de nuit -

des oies sauvages en escadrille

par delà tuiles dans bleu de l'aube.

Night flight -

wild geese in a squadron

beyond tiles in blue dawn.

#haiku fae 60N

Cri de l'aube -

des fers de la nuit,

merle noir se déchaine.

Cry Dawn -

from night's shackles

blackbird unchains itself.

#haiku fae 60N

Chant du monde -

au dire du matin,

les étourneaux en rang par trois.

Earth song -

to what morning whispers,

starlings in rows of three.

#haiku fae 60N

With everlasting thanks to my other half for his precious shots of geese :-)

Stravaig is out!

Geopoetics in motion


Feel free to click. The Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, led by Scottish poet & essayist Norman Bissell, released Stravaig online. Issue 1 has found freedom inside the cyberworld and its content is exciting! Friends, poets, writers, essayists, artists, photographers, designers and filmakers creatively mapped, chartered inside one world. It's... Exciting! There is a place for everyone who practises the discipline of intellectual nomadism. 


I still remember a friend who once asked me, "what is Geopoetics?" My poetic heart & mind attempted to describe something like "the natural art of opening to a world, finding our place within it and celebrating our connection with this very world within the realms of every rock, mountain and shore... This natural, real world, in which every rock, shell, sandgrain, snowflake, birdsong, flower counts. Not somebody's delusional mind - but the very cross-disciplinary movement to this world in which our human intelligence interacts. The widening of our knowledge to cross-cultural bonds, just like the crossing of continents via the ancient (now submerged) land bridges... Kenneth White speaks of walking away from those motorways of western civilisations in which too many generations of our ancestors met a dead-end by keeping their scope on one-way roads. Geopoetics offers freedom to wander whilst embracing a world intelligence, the human spirit and creative genius, irrespective of civilisation. This international movement has found many adepts over time, and The Scottish Centre for Geopoetics belongs to this Archipelago of current, practising intellectual nomads for our region (and beyond), which remains, White's native homeground. 

Stravaig, this wonderful Scot word meaning stroll, wander, will cross your way, I hope. 

Place, culture, world,  in the words of Kenneth White.

wishing well

To each&everyone,


Reader, 
dear friend, 

compagnon de voyage, you have walked with me through many paths, earth, heather, peat bogs, sand & marram grass - stood at the edge of sea lace, and shared in world foot prints.  As 2011 will soon belong to ice, let me wish you all the very best for the forthcoming year.  May each new day be engulfed with fair winds in your sails; may 2012 help you realise your dearest projects and wishes. 

looking South to Sumburgh Head

I love to walk the very top of my favourite hill on New Year's Day. As you know already, the view is breathtaking, but it also helps me to enjoy a very special moment, which, in turn, will fuel my spirit for the twelve months ahead. 
Already some projects are now well under way. 2011 fulfilled some of my dearest wishes already - 2012 will continue to help them reach fruitfulness. And I wish you all the very same, happiness above all.

Happy New Year!

Bonne et heureuse année!

prost Neujahr!

ath bhliain faoi mhaise!

godt nyttår!

feliz ano novo!

szczęśliwego nowego roku

С Новым Годом!

bliadhna mhath ur!

gleðilegt nýtt ár!

feliz año nuevo!

mwaka mzuri / heri ya mwaka mpya!

unyaka omusha omuhle!

Etat d'esprit

frame of mind


in 
one
world,


in one song.

And now the storm has gone, let's wander to the shore.

waiting for white

ice inside grass


It's barely 3 o'clock, and light is vanishing beyond the great sub-arctic lid that settled in our sky. The wind might have died by morning, but winter's claws now in firm grip of the island. We have been warned, a strange-shaped yellow bubble engulf our shores by the Met Office... So we've nailed apples on the edge of the composter and scraps litter the iced grass blades since mid-morning. 


Latest tale from the Far-far-north


The garden never quite sound asleep,

Long-Eared Owl, photographed
at Hoswick - Dave Hall

Last night alone, at 0026, a Long-Eared Owl graced our sight, as it perched for a while on June's tree, just opposite our kitchen window. I lit the garden for a last check of the grass when the nocturnal predator flew into the spruce. Its silencers makes it a ghost. Magic moment! I just could not really believe my eyes, as the bird landed so gracefully and turned its eyes towards the lit backdoor. Majestic. 



Earlier on today, Mr Robin was visible again, as it played around June's drystone wall and our fence posts.  It whizzed and darted around stones and long grass, as elusive as a kingfisher perched on the bank of some river... Starlings and blackbirds made a meal of the half apples well before dusk. Precocious roosting time, de rigueur on this latitude.

The zoomed-out view from my kitchen door pedestal did not look too dramatic this morning. However, hailstones littered the garden and white dusted the nearby hill NW of us (not visible on the photrograph). I heard a gaggle of wild geese, very possibly Greylags, calling from Brakefield, as starlings gathered on my neighbours' ramskull and washing lines, June's and mine's. Such a familiar sight. Light remained dimmed through such short days. 

If winter, as a season, selects the fittest of survivors, a hand from our part helps to limit the damage through this yearly carnival of death. Mother Earth and Father Sky have their way in dealing with the natural world, and many plant and animal species have adapted to cope with the gradual or sudden change of temperatures. For those who stay in one place all year round, they have no choice but face the perils of sedentary life, or rather, survival. 
Like many thousands of us, friend & local wildlife photographer, Paula Moss, based at Girlsta, north of the town, invests in her local patch by feeding her local birds. Although she confessed she was "plagued" by over some "forty pigeons" (mix of Collared & Rock Doves), she found so much delight in mixing sheep fat with seeds & nuts. Her avian friends certainly appreciate her generosity, as they depend on such helping hand! Such gesture is now embedded in our hearts, and nature gives back in beauty what  is so graciously offered to it. 

Each solstice and equinox make 

the very fabric of our world. 

Meantime, we prepare for whiteworld as much as we can.

Coal, bagged and stacked against one wall, 

the hearth now glows till late in the night. 

Fat water-filled roasting dishes provide a little bit of goodness to our avian friends when left around during the day.  Now  night has overridden dusk, it will be emptied, washed and re-used for tonight's dinner.                                

Still keep  an eye through the window, with a thought for my little feathery friends roosting in the trees of the nearby community garden, as well as those, such as wrens and robins, tucked in  between stones of walls. Daily survival has its price.

Le(s) Peuple(s) Migrateur(s)

Migration


We, who follow the sun.


For millennia, or at least, since our homeworld became inhabited by animals, most species (including our own!) have endeavoured such perilous treks across the vast expanses of continents, across oceans, via ancient land bridges. Man has invented rafts of all shapes and sizes to defy the even larger expanses of water. New lands, from atolls to entire continents, have been colonised in such ways.  If only a few nomadic tribes still roam the most remote parts of our world, the vast majority of us have become sedentary. The invention of farming has turned the page forever, as settlements began to appear. Kingdoms, duchies & principalities later reinforced the trend; the concept of nationalism, nation-states & the invention of the passport ultimately sealed the fate for many of us... However, and as man invented imperialism, newer forms of migratory movements began to appear. Today, the concept of globalisation regulates (as much as it can) human migration according to "economic" needs. The old European & North American continents have turned into fortresses, an El Dorado, to many men, women and children, either in search of a better life or persecuted in their own homelands, whilst the Asian and African continents providing incessant and cheaper labour... (Mind you, within our own continent, the masses act as such in their own way). Migration, either within or from one to another island or continent, forced or voluntary, continues. 

Fish, sea mammals and other dwellers of the great big blue  do so solely for survival & natural life cycle purposes. Birds, on the other hand, as members of the avian kingdom, have, just like butterflies and moths, wings. No creatures need passports. They follow the cycles of our homeworld in the most natural ways. The only thing they are bound to is life. 


Now, and just as I enjoyed reading Juliet Wilson's blog entry about her reaction to Oceans - the film - earlier on today (please click on link post above), I cannot help but add my stone to the edifice.
Jacques Perrin  is as passionate as Sir David Attenborough when it comes to the natural world. He is a French actor and producer, with a formidable and poetical eye for the world he lives in. Together with partner in crime Jacques Cluzaud, he has signed tremendous wildlife documentaries, including Microcosme (Microcosmos) and Le Peuple Migrateur, or Winged Migration.


Here, Le Peuple Migrateur, for pleasure.

Oceans remains to be enjoyed :-)