this is a strange place. It’s very odd. But I think there are time warps, field effects,
and all kinds of scientific phenomena that we don’t know or understand that are
quite adequate to explain these things.
Place, no. It’s, I suppose in a way, a harness to be attached to a place and people.
The only things I can’t live without are my typewriter, my typewriter ribbons, my
paper, my books, my paints, my music.
I have a beautiful view out of my Scriptorium window...
There’s one place I suppose that I remember with great fondness, and that’s
Connecticut in the USA where I lived for 14 years. Mostly because to an Australian,
and I had spent 4 years in Europe before I went there, I had no concept of what
four seasons were all about and in Connecticut it’s the most incredible cycle. I n the
spring everything bursts into flower, from the biggest tree to the crocuses and tiny
little things in the grass. The dogwoods, pink or white, with the blossoms laid on
the branches, every blossom looking exactly up into the sky, and the planes of the
dogwood trees in blossom – such perfect oriental harmonies. Beauty wherever one
looked. Beautiful days, beautiful nights!
And then comes summer, which is 100° and languorous, humid – it’s that
real Porgy and Bess summertime, when the livin’ is easy.
And then comes autumn when the nights go below freezing and the days
are in the 80’s and every tree has turned to more colours of the warm spectrum
than I ’ve ever seen anywhere else. You can cross the border into Canada, you can
cross the border into New York State, but nowhere except the little New England
states do you ever see the full glory of the Fall and the autumn colours. I t’s just
mind-boggling. You drive down the road and you see the world’s most perfect tree.
And you stop and; you look at that tree, which might be purple, or plum. Some of
the maples, each leaf has about ten different colours in it and I suppose it’s all
those variations give such individuality to forests. But then you turn the corner and
drive on a little way and you find the world’s most perfect tree. And so it goes.
And then comes winter, when it’s so cold that the harbour freezes over and
the snow gets a gold sheen on it from the sun. I t’s very fine. I t gets up to 28°
Fahrenheit – which is well below freezing. You think it’s a heat wave. And
everything freezes. And sometimes it rains and it rains below freezing so every
minute twig on every little twig branch and so up and up to the whole tree.
Gravestones are wonderful if there’s been an ice storm ... to go to a cemetery is just
magical. The eves, everything, is coated, encrusted, with an inch of transparent
ron
(Ron)
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