Video

This past week a winter storm blew in from the antarctic across the waters of Storm Bay bringing first wind, then freezing rain. I thrive during these days and want to be no where else. Certainly not in a city as I strongly feel there is a lesson to be learned in being blasted by the elements.

As the storm approached, I went to the top of the Wombat Circle and did a short video; my second attempt at this new artistic discipline.

I am including two videos to get some sort of reader feedback. The first is with only the wind. The second video has a voice over of a poem by Rilke. I’d be interested in people’s responses.

I had to omit sections of the poem to fit it into the video, but what-the-hell, I’m on a steep learning curve.

The Man Watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
the Angel felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever is beaten by this Angel,
(who often simply declines to fight)
goes away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneads us as if to change our shape.
Winning does not tempt us.
This is how we grow: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly; adapted Peter Adams)

trees and wombat circle 1 from Peter Adams on Vimeo.

Here’s the second video with poem

trees and wombat circle 2 from Peter Adams on Vimeo.

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Solstice dawn at the Peace Garden and I’m standing on frosty ground about to begin my first time-lapse video. Nothing like a new challenge.

Over an hour and a half I press the shutter button every 15 or so seconds only to find out later this could have been done automatically. I also inadvertently leave the auto bracket switch on and during editing have to delete 2/3’s of the photos (hence, the bumpy video posted below).

As I said, “Nothing like a new challenge”.

Luckily, my web master has tremendous patience and over the next few days works with my techno inabilities and a slow upload satellite internet speed so that this blog “Life on the Edge” can begin a new era of posting the occasional video.

Besides the crisp beauty of the early morning landscape so easily evident on this most propitious of days, what really caught my eye was the sunlight coming through the polished Split Rock and the resultant “split” shadow cast across the pond water.

This double shadow only happens around the winter solstice when the slit in the rock is perfectly lined up with the rising sun. Sort of Stonehenge magic as it points to and grabs hold of the reflection of the Peace Pole spiraling down into the water.

So, dear reader, take 51 seconds of your time and view the Windgrove Winter Solstice dawn.

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