True North

Tiny

Stella and I were out of the house all day on Sunday, and it was the longest I had ever been away from Maeve. We had a wonderful time (more on that later) but I missed that baby something awful and have been smothering her with kisses ever since. So you must forgive me for this favorite sights post and remember that I am dragging my nose away from the sweetest smelling baby neck ever to write it. Without any further ado, may I present one of my all-time favorite things to look at: baby fingers and toes...

For real, is there anything cuter?

These are all from the archives of obsessive Mama picture taking from the past four and a half years.

Friends know that I have always loved hands in general. It's how graceful they are, how capable. On babies they seem particularly extraordinary, little evolutionary tools but in miniature.

But toes? Forget it, I'm a goner. Not grown-up toes, you understand. Grown-up toes I can take or leave. Baby toes, however... I LOVE baby toes. I have a totally sick fantasy of going to an old-fashioned sweet shop with giant glass jars of candies, like something out of a Roald Dahl book, and being able to order scoops of baby toes to gobble up by the handful. I know I know, I'm such a big weirdo.

Sometimes it's just about noticing the small (tiny! itty-bitty!) things.

Sparkly

Noticing water lately, the way it beads and bubbles and acts almost like jewelry.

No Sky Lovelier

{Difficulties with our network connection kept me away from the internet for a few days. This, therefore, is a belated Favorite Sight posting, even though today is no longer Tuesday...}

Perhaps it is just some lucky inborn memorizing ability and a flair for dramatic oration, or perhaps it is the result of a post-War English education predicated on recitation - probably both - but it often seems like my mother has a passage of literature on the tip of her tongue for any and every occasion. Every year around this time I get to hear the opening lines of this poem:

Than these November skies
Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep;
Into their gray the subtle spies
Of colour creep,
Changing that high austerity to delight,
Till even the leaden interfolds are bright.
And, where the cloud breaks, faint far azure peers
Ere a thin flushing cloud again
Shuts up that loveliness, or shares.
The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as
Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain,
Holding in bright caprice their rain.
  And when of colours none,
Not rose, nor amber, nor the scarce late green,
Is truly seen,—
In all the myriad gray,
In silver height and dusky deep, remain
The loveliest,
Faint purple flushes of the unvanquished sun.

(November Skies, John Freeman, 1920)



Indeed.

Thorny

For Favorite Sights today: thorns. Big sharp ones, on thick, ropey stalks. Totally extravagent and overdone, like pattern on top of pattern, but also, oddly, kind of romantic. I blame this all on Sleeping Beauty.

Glorious Decrepit

I have been thinking more about the idea of collecting beautiful moments out in the world, and about how photography is a great way to archive such a collection. So I've started a new category here at True North, called favorite sights. I plan to post a new favorite sight each Tuesday, and I invite you to play along with me: observing the sights you tend to collect as you go through your life, photographing them if that's your thing (and even if it's not!), letting me know all about it back here in the comments section.

I am enamored of broken down old buildings, especially homes and warehouses. I don't know why. This is one of those things I try not to analyze too much. The eye just likes what it likes, and asking why is so language-oriented, so rational - I think it often stifles the magic to know why an artist does what they do, whether that artist is a renowned playwright, or your own collecting self. That's a topic for a whole other post. Suffice it to say I have some Miss Havisham tendencies and like it when things look a tad bit decayed. So on our recent drive out to the Rockaways and back through Brooklyn, I was thrilled to discover these lovely, decrepit old buildings:

 

 

 

What are some of your favorite sights?