shore – whereIwonder&why

Have you ever thought about the myriad meanings attributed to the word air?

When I wrote the title above, I had just completed downloading several photographs I took yesterday at an estuary, marsh, beach on the north shore of Massachusetts. And just before downloading those photographs, I had been out in front of my house initially to bring in my recycling bin, which had just been emptied by the waste services, but stayed standing on the curb because the air was so weightless and light bearing (baring too!). In terms of weather, it is a beautiful morning.

yesterday morning, also beautiful, but bearing some weight and motion

Then as I came back in and opened my computer to begin this post, and proceeded to title this post, I was drawn to the thought of air. How many definitions for “air”. It is visual, it is actually, viewable sometimes and not to be seen other times. In fact Collins dictionary notes that it has 27 definitions. I will not list nor discuss them all. But after noting with my passing by neighbor that today is a beautiful day, the air is so clear, I, smiling, came back in and the thought that came to me when I raised my fingers to the keys of this laptop is that in addition air is audible; consider the definition (one of 27!!):

Air is a song-like vocal or instrumental composition. The term can also be applied to the interchangeable melodies of folk songs and ballads.

So air is music. Imagine a beautiful voice raised to praise a beautiful invisible yet not the least bit empty sensation. Sensations stand alone and yet they cannot be without having been noticed. Sensation, according to Collins dictionary, is a noun with five meanings.

Go where you want with these two words aka experiences aka actions aka recipients. (I had another connecting word that was not aka, but these days it is losing the meaning I intend for it, and I didn’t want to jar you with the more frequent associations that word currently brings; yet obviously I have by bringing this sentence into the text.)

Jar! think of that noun and verb. Ugh, I just looked it up. In addition to a created vessel and to a sudden poke (mental, physical, or emotional) it also is a computer file format that serves to aggregate, archive and compress a file and its associated metadata and formats.

Words are remarkably malleable. And think of a word in the myriad languages extant today, and in those that have disappeared. Why do we have so many languages? Why do we separate ourselves from one another? Why do we erect so many walls?

How did I get from the beauty of this day and its clear, musical air to heaving, burdening, disrupting walls? It seems, of late, it takes a conscious effort not to stumble down those descending stairs.

So, I am placing my hands, palms down on the concrete, and pushing me up. I am rising up to the light air that is what I breathe and is singing in my head right now. I am going to tell you that yesterday was such a day of beauty, as is today, and that I saw, count them, 47 types of shore and marsh and raptor birds in one perhaps two mile length of ocean back (these viewings, these soundings, these delights were not even while on an ocean beach, rather they were within the brackish waters that meet and converse with the ocean, river, reeds, muds and sand). Did I personally recognize them all without other voices speaking their names? No! I do not have that knowledge. Did I learn a few more things about these lovely, feathered, visiting and resident avians? Yes. Did I love being there with 14 other people, all of who knew far more than I? Yes. Did we have any moments of disagreement, distress, disregard? No. Yesterday was so lovely that even if I were standing out front this morning and it was 95 degrees farenheit and 95% humidity, I would have thought the air is so clear! It is a beautiful day! Beauty carries with it beauty.

Remarkable how much joy good can carry and convey and place before one.

I, as you who have been here before know, have not the finest “camera”, nor the most artistic “eye”, but here are more couple of photographs from yesterday. They include Greater Yellowlegs and/or Lesser Yellowlegs, Long-billed and/or Short-billed Dowitchers, Least and Semi-Palmated Sandpipers, and Greater and Lesser Egrets. I am not sure if the Yellowlegs I photographed are greater or lesser. I forget. I am not sure if I captured Long or Short-Billed Dowitchers. I believe I caught both Least and Semi-Palmated Sandpipers and Greater and Lesser Egrets. And among them a Herring Gull or two. But you will likely not be able to critique me anyway because the photographs are way too unsharp!!