Here, as promised, is the bottle house 2. This time we visit the chapel, and what a lovely spot it is, as you will see, if you are brave, play the game, and click on the next link to the bottle house 2 The last time I visited, rain was falling, not heavy rain, but a light sprinkle that set the skies free and watered gardens and flowers. I should have some photos of the gardens too. If I have, I will post them. I promise!
A house made entirely of bottles? Well, not quite: the bottles are set in concrete, but the light … the light is unbelievable. Fragmented, many-colored, a tribute to he man who thought of the idea and then turned it into reality. House and gardens are both well worth visiting and I will do two posts on the bottle houses. Houses, for in fact there is more than one house. There is also a tiny chapel and I visit it every time I go to Prince Edward Island.
Be brave. Play the game. Take a look for yourself by clicking on one of the links to the bottle house.
Commentary:
Nine o’clock in Oaxaca is the ‘witching hour’. That’s when the young children go home and the balloon lady packs her bags and walks with her balloons out of the square. She really does build a castle. She stacks her balloons around her and lives within its walls selling balloons to children. Each Oaxacan child receives a balloon on his or her birthday and name day. These balloons are cherished, held carefully by their strings, walked like aerial dogs through the square.
The State band practices most nights int he central square and the balloons are moved by the music, especially that of the wind instruments, and then they wander to and fro. Sometimes they take on a life of their own and escape, skip away, go absent with out leave, and seek the freedom of the open skies. Sometimes they get caught in the trees. Then the strings are jigged and older children, experts in the art, place sticky tape on their own balloons and send them upwards in rescue missions which can be surprisingly successful. Oh what joy when the errant balloon returns to earth, stuck to its new mate. Oh what wailing when a birthday balloon bursts and the deprived child must persuade its parents to purchase another!
I can see them now, those colored balloons, floating skywards, sailing freely into the freedom of those blue Oaxacan skies. Up and up, level with the cathedral roof, ascending the cathedral tower, up, up, and away … soaring like souls into the innocence of a sky blue heaven.
Mannequins
McAdam Railway Station #12
“He startles the unaware, that man by
the door, in uniform, with his youthful
looks and old-fashioned peaked cap,
fingers poised by his silver watch chain
ready to pull out his Waltham pocket watch
and check the time against the master-clock.
Two ladies wait in the waiting room.
One wears winter robes of red and black
while the other wears velvety green. Both
are motionless, one seated, one standing. Yet
if you watch them from a corner of one eye,
you will see shadowy gestures as their lips move.
Overnight they have changed into summer
clothes, gauzy, almost see-through, flowery
patterns, light-weight wedding boots, laced,
restful, cool, thin-soled. ‘Are you for real?’
I ask the standing one, for a joke. When she
nods and winks, a chill settles over the room.”
Faces
McAdam Railway Station #10
“White at windows
when trains pass through
in June on their way
to summer and sand.
Wind-tousled, tanned
at summer’s end
returning home to
Boston and Montreal.
I remember them
waving their hands,
flickering white hankies
as they went by.
This station is a ghost train
that travels through time
instead of space. Stand
still as silent stone. Wait.
Look: there’s someone,
waving at us now
from that window
on the second floor.”
S. O .S.
McAdam Railway Station #8
“Dozing in the cab, I was.
Smelt a different smoke.
It wasn’t my engine’s.
Looked around.
Saw flames. One, two,
three houses on fire.
Steam was up. Yessir.
Three short hoots I gave.
Three long. Three short.
S.O.S. Mayday. Mayday.
S.O.S. S.O.S. Kept going
till house lights came on.
People running. Leaving homes.
Jumped out of the cab.
Ran out to help them.
They thanked me.
Said I had saved their lives.
What else could I have done?”
Comment: This is a third hand poem. It came to me from Geoff who heard the story from the hardware store owner who witnessed the fire. The narrator is the anonymous engine driver who raised the alarm. Of course I don’t know exactly what he did, said, or thought. Our knowledge of history can be divided into two great moments: the momentous events, recorded by expert historians via diligent research, and intra-historia, as Miguel de Unamuno, that great Spanish philosopher and rector of Salamanca University called it, referring to those small, individual moments when history is made by anonymous human beings who did what they had to do and then faded into the anonymity of a distant past, now wrapped in silence, as is the store-keeper and the driver of the train.
Joy & Love
(1936 – 1969 AD)
sunbathers sunbathe
swimmers don’t swim
except for one silly fool
in a clear patch of water
swept clean by the current
towed under by the undertow
swimmer fights back
goes against the flow
tires so swiftly
raises his arms
throws up goes under
comes up throws up
a beach ball thrown
misses the target
kicked with more accuracy
a soccer ball heavier
lands by his side
he grasps it hangs on
kicking more slowly
sun-bathers sprint
across sand to the shore
linked hands a life-line
reaching out through the waves
to rescue the swimmer
no longer fighting back
summer-sun kisses
resuscitation
sun-bathers victorious
this great chain of being
restoring humanity
sweet victory of man
