Home
The Flying Dutchman & Other Tales
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1690
Meanwhile...
The days, crisp and sunny, wet and snowy, sometimes a fine mix of both...
Days, too cold, too wet, too slippery to go far, then, some days just right. Head off with Chris, exploring above the fluorite seam, find an old silver mine (another one, this mountain, it's a swiss cheese filled with them), shallow adit that ends in perhaps 30 feet. Interesting growths - crystals forming on the ceiling.
Going through the tipple, some shiny crystals, at first Fluorite (I think), but no, then Calcite (but too hard), take them to Brad at the Chamber of Mines. "Quartz" he tells me, only, to my eye, they're a bit different than quartz, and first of all I mean the weight, more an "Ore" weight than a quartz weight, heft it in your hand and you'd know, but - until I have better information I have to defer to his expertise, and I should, really, but - heft it in my hand again - the weight, surely it must be something else - a transparent silver ore? Hmmmm.
When the snow is melted walk the beach, look for arrowheads, none, but this:
Remains of a blue crayfish, invasive most probably, but a vivid, electric blue...
To the valley, other things to be dug for, exploring to be done. But no, get out of the car, walk to the cliff, find yourself waist-deep in snow, unable to move. Lake level is dry, but only a few meters off the road and things can get hairy in a hurry. Other locations, similar results, too much snow still to do any finding. Back to the sapphires, crawl into the crevice that leads behind the pegmatite, a narrow squeeze into a tight cavern filled with icicles, trying to squeeze my way out crushes my phone, a hundred bits to be glued and taped back together...
The blue-jays, now 16 in total, word spreads, wait in the tree every morning, a few, more vocal, hop along the rail, try to wake you up, it's time for breakfast!
The evening, moon-dog, my camera on the phone isn't up to getting the shot, maybe there's some pro-settings I could adjust, but I'm not finding them, play with the settings, results vary, are the same, it's just a blobby of light in the sky with what appears to be a lens-flare.
Bringing us to yesterday. Morning, snowing - again, 4 inches already and there's a raging blizzard of sorts, white caps on the lake, trees bending and ducking, the blue-jays have hidden themselves away for the day, hunkered down. And enjoying my first cigarette, looking out over the lake - where the falling snow meets the white-capped waves there's a boat...
Small fishing boat, cabin, you can just make it out, who would be on the lake at this hour? In this weather? And so I watch it, it's going up lake with the waves, now turning, again, and again, I try to take a picture but it's disappearing into the horizon, too far to make out precisely. It spins, and again, bobs, it's not manned, clearly, there's something haunting to watch a boat come unmoored dancing on the edge of the foreshortened horizon, spinning, to be carried up to a further shore or to capsize and sink, these speculations already irrelevant as it's disappeared...
Naps, High Waves & Turtles
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1720
The first nap, I dream that people have let themselves into my place while I'm having a nap and babysitting the kids. My kids, younger, and these people, I don't know, friends of a friend maybe, and I should get up and talk to them only I'm trying to have a nap. The lake, it's got huge waves today, towering 20, 30 feet in the air, I can see them below the deck, the water's heavy, but not rough, the waves aren't breaking, there are no whitecaps, merely large heavy waves reaching up into the darkening sky...
The people, eventually they leave, then there is another group that let themselves in, they're waiting for a bus, I know them, took them on a prospecting tour of the Kootenays, friends of Marks, still, I'm trying to nap, and eventually they too leave...
And it's time to get up, and I dreamed that I was trying to nap...
****
That I'm somewhere near Creston, the marshy plains before ascending the Kootenay Pass, there are signs explaining the Turtles, the area, I have the urge to go prospecting, above the marshes is a mountain that I recognize from other dreams, with tea-huts and caves and crystals and gold...
But for now I'm reading the signs at the foot of the marsh, reading about the wildlife and first discovery of the area by John from Halifax and I'm wondering if it's the same John from Halifax I knew some 30 years ago back in London....
Now my desk, wooden, small oak desk like you see in every second hand store, it's on fire, there's a cold blue fire flickering around it's a foot on the base, I'm wondering if I've kept any liquor in the drawer that might have started this, trying to put it out...
****
And so, fragments of dreams poorly recalled and that make little sense.
2 Via Reddit
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 799
The first, a 130,000 year old Neanderthal Skull found in a sinkhole in Italy.
The second...well, look at it and figure it out. You could write a Novel on that subject.
2020 Films to See
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1414
Looking back at the best films of 2020 there were a few that I'd seen, and quite a few I'd never heard of.
That's fine, I could use the inspiration, something to look forward to.
In no particular order:
EMA - YouTube Trailer
Dick Johnson is Dead - YouTube Trailer
David Byrne's American Utopia - YouTube Trailer
Nomadland - YouTube Trailer
Never Rarely Sometimes Always - YouTube Trailer
And, finally - one - or rather, 3, it's apparently a trilogy I've never even heard of but for some reason has great appeal:
Don Hertzfeldt's World of Tomorrow - Episode Three - The Absent Destinations of David Prime - All three trailers (and films) can be watched on his website: http://bitterfilms.com/
So that's it. Some cultural fodder to absorb before once again I find myself living out the back of my jeep!
Page 273 of 877