Thursday, November 4, 2010

Autumn Rain


I took this photo a year ago. It reminds me of today. I'm not sure why — it's raining much harder now. Perhaps it's just the memory of that chilly, damp day.

"I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms."
~ Louise Erdrich

2 comments:

  1. Such a beautiful photograph. It has a haunting feel, but also suggests so much soft beauty and possibility. It's a comforting photograph. It's warm on the West Coast. We are having the last late summer warmth, which used to be called Indian Summer, a phrase I loved, until I, half Indian myself, read that Indian came to mean false, as in Indian Giver, and therefore that term is lost to me even if I don't necessarily want it to be. And, interestingly, because of my musings about the phrase, you follow your photograph with a quote from Louise Erdrich whose ancestors are from the Ojibwe Turtle Mountain band, close to
    my own Grandmother's White Earth Band. Today, a strangely warm day in San
    Francisco, I'm grateful to think of your cool autumn, your amazing city, and an
    American Indian writer I love, who despite everything, has moments of pure bliss
    in the rain, in love with the world.

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  2. Thank you, Katherine. The photo is the product of pure luck. I took it with my cell phone. The mist and wind were swirling and I could barely see through the lens.

    I've always known about Indian Summer, but not the negative connotation. My childhood reasoning led me to believe it was a North American phenomenon that Indians knew about and Europeans didn't. What a shame that it comes from an old lie. And such a bald lie: when the government violates the treaties it signed, who's the liar?

    I love that Louise Erdrich quote. How wonderful that you are somehow connected.

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