Blog-azic

On my last day of training in Bradenton, FL, I woke up before dawn to make it back to Celery Field one last time. The air was humid but cool, and the skies were clear. The whole western sky was bright, liquid gold. I had to stand behind the roof supports for the shade. The pond seemed fully awake, but there was no great bustle. I heard some cranes trumpet as they flew low towards the rising sun, and there were small birds chirping in the reed grass. On a distant shore, a limpkin walked along. The yellow, decurved bill, the eggy body shape, and the snaky neck reminded me of a Dr. Seuss character. It plodded along in the water, dropping its head down the mucky bottom. After a few minutes of watching, I saw it pull up a mussle and take it on shore to open. "The whole western sky was bright, liquid gold." Off in the distance, a line of trees outlines a peninsula of land in the marsh. Plain above the branches, perched and surveying his territory, sat the Lord of birds. ...

My lunch breaks in Florida were spent surveying the nearby ponds. Watching the surface of the water through binoculars, I could see bubbles rise up to the surface of the dark water. Every so often, something would splash sending out telling ripples. It was clear to me that the water was quite alive. Right outside the office, sheltered by trees at three sides, and located on a dead-end street, was a small pond. It was here that I first spotted an alligator, as I returned after a walk. He swam across the water, partialy submerged, so that no movement from his tail or feet could be seen. As I approached, he sunk low leaving only the tip of his snout and his black eyes above the water. The next day, I went back to find him floating motionless on one side of the pond near the drainage input. In addition to him, I could see two turtles poking just their heads above the water (black and streaked with yellow), a small, diving duck, and a Florida cormorant. I sat on the bank and watche...

You can barely see the limpkin perched on the rail (near the center of the picture). Class on Tuesday drug on, like a slow turning wagon wheel on the long road West. The distance to a half past four was beyond reckoning, and my body felt stretched and twisted watching the clock tick slower, and slower, and s-l-o-w-e-r . . . The instructor even kept us a few extra minutes! By five o'clock, though, I had arrived at the parking lot of Celery Field, an expanse of wetlands in Sarasota surrounding a large and out-of-place hill - perhaps a reclaimed landfill. I waited my turn then dashed across the highway and began down a long wooden bridge that ended with a covered gazeebo out on the water. It wasn't long before a great blue heron swooped in front of me and landed at waters edge near the bridge. I watched it slowly stalk along the shore, pointing its neck and head out like a ballarina might point her toes, then step forward bringing its body underneath its head, curving it...

In the flat, coastal lands of Florida, one can barely step outside his door without falling into a swamp, and should he manage to avoid the murky waters, he will take not one more step before noticing some unabashed bird or reptilian take full advantage of the natural abundance. Indeed, as I write these words, I look out the window and see dark ripples spreading across the surface of a pond, and having now two weeks to feel the dirt and smell the air near Tampa, Florida, I can imagaine a few choice critters from which the ripples may radiate. Out in the full moon of a Gulf Coast night, with the stink of decaying plants wafting off the wetlands, the King of all predators glides without sound down through the millenia. I intend to meet him, if from a distance - a cautious yet thrilling distance. To that end, earlier this week, I studied what I could of this environment. The Cabbage Palm, state tree of Florida. It can be distinguished from other palms by observing th...

I purchased a new harmonica (key of D) while I was in Sarasota Springs, NY this summer. Almost immediately, two of the draw reeds started to stick in the lower register. After a few google searches, I gathered the confidence to take the harmonica apart. Look on the left of the picture near the "A440." Those small, round pieces are tiny nails (brads) not screws. By wiggling a knife under the silver plating near the brads, the etched cover can be removed. Underneath the cover, the reed plate is also held down with brads. On one side, the draw reeds are set, and the blow reeds are on the other. The reed plates were fairly gunky, so I soaked them in nail polish remover and carefully wipred them. In addition, the two reeds that were sticking were just slightly askew. Notice that the individual reeds are riveted on one end. Below the reeds, the plate is cut out to allow air to flow over the reed. If the reed is blown too hard, or otherwise jostled, it can pivet...

 Can you spot the Heron? Taken at a pond across the street from the office at which I'm training.  I'm walking along the sidewalk from my hotel to the office, marveling at the palm trees and guzzling down a familiar scent, absolutely drinking the air as much as my lungs can take. What is it? Ah, yes, the moisture, salt, sand - it's tropical, and I have not smelled it in years. I remember long stretches of beach, the solitude, blessed sunshine, stiffling heat, and the feeling of poorness. Nothing at all was mine, save an old banjo and the beach full of sea glass, frosted green and white . So now, day dreaming in class, I'm already cherishing the moments I'll have this weekend, when back home in Raleigh, my lady and I will wrap up frosty glass memories with wire, and dangle them from pine boughs in the living room.

We're up and on the road north, over the piedmont. Some of the oak trees are holding onto leaves, deep red and crinkly brown. I remember the fire that burned this fall from sumac to creeper. It climbed up the hickory and set it to orange flames! Now I'm staring down a wall of mountain. It reminds me of a silky grey ribbon blowing in a breath of wind and slowed down so that i can follow each ripple. The ripples look frozen, solid, unmoving and unchangeable. After a moment of reflection, though, I realize that the mountains are moving. As I draw nearer, time begins to slow for me. Cars passing me become streaks of color and then disappear entirely. The sky is a pulsing strobe of night and day. Then, the mountain's face slowly comes alive. Gashes open in the rock, grow, and race along the mountain chain. Arms are thrust out and recoiled. Dirty flesh is shorn away showing grey bone. It dissolves itself into soil and is thrown away. The earth under my seat becomes like wate...

On my last job with Clearview Networks, I've been sent to midtown Manhattan to install wireless internet at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel. It's a grand hotel, if I've ever seen one: intricate paintings on the walls, vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, and elaborate plastered ornamentation. Beyond the building itself, the service here is four star, and the price is quite high. It has made me a little uneasy to be here - an Ohio boy with holes in his breeches - but I am acclimating. This evening I was looking up something sweet to take home to Susan. I stumbled upon a gourmet chocolate shop last night as I was searching for food after a very long day of travel. I can't decide yet: champagne truffles or swiss chocolates ? I'll plan to take a trip there on Thursday to decide upon a gift. As I sat perusing the web selection, I heard a knock at the door. When I answered a maid greeted me and asked if I'd like the bed turned down. I really had no idea what that mea...

Passiflora and compost... my two favorite things, right? Susan and I - mostly I - were vegging out on the downstairs futon, trying to stay cool, enjoying some L&O (Law and Order) and listening to Dre (I'll explain that in a later post). I was content, but Susan wanted to move. So she poked and prodded me until I fell off the futon. Then, she jumped on me and rolled me up stairs as if I were a barrel. On the way up, I grabbed a paint brush, not to paint a picture, but to pollinate! We've been trying to get the passiflora to produce fruit, and have had no luck with just our fingers. Perhaps this paint brush will help. Even better, the bumble bees have finally begun to notice the flowers. The vine is growing out of control! I'm so pleased to see that. This is our first fruit just a few days after pollination. After playing with the passion flower vine for a bit, I quickly switched gears to the compost. I had a couple buckets to empty into our comp...

Marsh Fern. The New York woods, upstate, are crannied, rocky and moist (in spite of an early summer drought). They abound with tumbled boulders, beech and oak, fen and fern, and I was downright taken aback, when I first ran through the old trees, the air buzzing with mosquitoes, through the lush shrub layer (witch hazel, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild ginger, blood root), to see the fern bounty. The community of ferns is lush and abundant. Christmas fern dots the wood edges, where the path runs straight under sweeping hemlock boughs. Where the path switches back and slowly climbs a hill, maiden-hair fern stands most delicate. In dappled sun of a wooded fen, marsh fern bursts from the muck. Sensitive fern parallels the Amtrak rails, where I sat one hot afternoon and keyed-out bracken fern, its leaf three feet across (its rhizome buried deep below the ground - impervious to the drought), and was awoken from my deep concentration by the loud whistle of a commuter train! My heart was poundi...

Near Times Square. In this past week, I've spent more time in the Big Apple than I have in the last five years. First, I met Susan, her sister and brother-in-law (almost, if domestic partners count as in-laws) near Penn Station after a train ride from Saratoga. We spent the weekend riding bikes through lower Manhattan, on the East River Ferry, and bar hopping at night. I heard a blues band playing a warehouse show. I was surrounded by hipsters, bikers and erotic dancers, and when they started playing an electric "Cross Roads" I couldn't help but tap out that off-beat. Then, today and yesterday, I made a stop to support a couple of hotels that were just brought online this past week. I worked like a fury, buzzed like a beehive, and still found time to hit Times Square at night, snap some pics, and get service by one of the best bartenders I've ever met. A burly man, from Ireland, who insisted on giving me a complimentary "splash of beer" to wash do...

A warm rainy day is all the company I require. It's an old friend, a warm blanket. "Reminds me of Ohio," I am fond of saying. So, I'll take a rainy day as a good omen to start my little adventure to New York city. The man at the Amtrak counter informed us - we, the passengers - that the train would be late to Saratoga "because of customs and immigration at the border." Of corse, I thought. I knew the trains ran late but couldn't imagine why. In fact, the train comes from Canada, snaking through the swampy Adirondacks - hills, mountains inundated with marsh fern and mosquitos; woods that whisper old words; ash, beech, oak, and gnarly sugar maples. Where I come from, cotton woods are king. Where I live, oaks are regal and massive. Where I am, sugar maples are healthy and refined, old and quite impressive. Today, it's the train to the city. I feel like I'm sneaking away from work at three in the afternoon, when in fact I have ea...

Next to him, I feel soooo unfocussed. Writing about music today, and wine tomorrow, flowers one day and letters the next. Ah, well. I tell myself it's not about continuity, or a following. This is my journal - a living document, private yet public, a record ad infinitum. Or, sometimes ad nauseum. Check out this Blog::::::::: http://saratogawoodswaters.blogspot.com/

It's been a while since I've written. I've got about 3 or 4 half finished posts. So, I wanted to get something up today.  This song by Brian Eno  struck me when I listened to it yesterday morning. Ambient music like this is exactly what I've been trying to create lately. You can hear it in my guitar playing: do-re-me-sol-la-do! A pentatonic scale has the sense of space and ambiguity that appeals to my ear. I find such pleasure in the call of a wood thrush deep in a lush forest; the sigh of a cotton wood in a warm breeze; the wash of white noise as I nod off to sleep. Music to me is more than just the aural quality. It also encompasses space and time. When I think about music, I step back and look at the place, I think of quality of space. Music should be a bit disarming, disorienting to follow too closely. I want to create something that you fall into. Undo the sense of beat in time. Let it wash out your mind.  Anyways, here is a piece I made a few months...

Last week was great because my family came down for a visit. My mother, sister, Jessica, and sister Rosalie came in Monday night. Tuesday morning when I awoke and went to shower, I was greeted by an unfamiliar site. It's a particular contrast in my apartment, which is soothingly sparse.

I got my second letter from Susan today! She sent me a nice variety of flowers. Check out the pic below! My summer roomie said that he has never seen anyone actually send a letter, and suggested that the postman would slap someone who sent a letter and tell them to send an email! So, the columbine is fairly well preserved. That's the pretty red and yellow one. The one in the middle, I believe is marsh marigold. What can I say about this one? I think Susan put it best: They are more commonly known as cow slip because cows are supposed to slip on them and fall. However, after countless hours trekking through cowslip I have decided that it is more likely the mucky, marshy habitat that cowslip grows in that is at fault. The actual plant is not slippery at all really. Gawd, what a natural blogger! A gurl after my own heart, indeed.

My home, on and off, for the next six weeks is Saratoga Springs, NY, where I am in charge of a networking install at Skidmore College. The town is high in the mountains and rich in history. It has a legacy of horse racing and wealth. There are mansions that rival castles here. Parks and lawns decorated with Italian statues carved from stone. Rich woods with giant fern and eight-lobed bloodroot where you don't stop for a closer look because of the swarming flies. Yesterday, my co-worker and I visited a music store (where I picked up a new harmonica, key of D), and then a garden restaurant where I took the picture above. After lunch, our hostess gave us directions to a tiny candy store so I could get some treats to send to Susan. I've been able to dig into nature here. The air is sweet with the smell of clover and linden. Hillsides are blanketed with wildflowers: vetch, bird-footed trefoil, red and white clover, daisy, black-eyed susan, and St. John's Wort. This old...

Clitocybula abundans On cool summer mornings, I sometimes find my front lawn carpeted with streaked coincap mushrooms. They grow after dark falls, all together, and wither and die in the hot sun. By the time I come home, there's little left of them except some wiry, black stalks. Peterson's remarks that their edibility is unknown. Does anyone want to join me for a taste test?

Susan tells me the one on the top, with the red flowers, is a wild onion. The bottom one, I'm not quite sure about what it could be. At first glance, it reminds me of pussytoes: silvery stem, small flowers. But, pussytoes produce white flowers, and look! The flowers are not clustered solely at the end of the stalk. Hmm. How about solidago? Is it too early for goldenrods? I might just have to buy a western wildflower ID book.

There's something about the way sunlight falls, through an oak's boughs, through an ash, and onto stone - that is hard to capture with a few words. It's harder to capture with a picture, which is worth a thousand words, but if I played a song about it, you might understand. It's would sound like Bach, rolling melodies over an evolving harmony. Progressions that are organic, that breath, grow. Melodies that are ephemeral, that disappear and come back. There's a slow pulsing to the whole thing, a current of energy, a cosmic background radiation. Maybe our own universe started with a song? The part of me that is compelled to say that, is the same part of me that took a picture of this outside of Coker Arboretum, taken not for the sake of the picture, but for the sake of telling you about it. Again, there's just something about a yellow flower in the sun, and there's something about meeting an old friend in the forest. I'm speaking, of course, of ...

A while ago, I mentioned that I was working on an arrangement of Meditation from Thais. Here is the first page of the arrangement. I also put down an arrangement of Ave Maria, by Schubert. I've been playing this one for years, and just decided to get it on paper. Both of these were made with Symphony Pro for iPad2. The app provides a touch sensitive staff in a Finale-like environment. It's rather intuitive, but also rather buggy in the latest updates. The program often crashes if you get too much notation on screen, as can happen if you add extended chords to a work. For example, a G#dim makes it crash every time! Also, check out the final sixteenth note in measure 2 above. Symphony Pro put it in measure 3! Still, I find the app quite useful and worth the small price I paid over 6 months ago. If you'd like to see more of either piece, I'd be happy to oblige for a small fee. Email me at c_tomazic@hotmail.com.