Robert F. Bukaty - Maine Cold
I’ve been reading One Hundred Years of Solitude again. I read it every so often – usually after a long period of rain in the Pacific Northwest. The book acts on me like a tonic. I love the way the inhabitants of Macondo, the village Garcia Marquez creates for the novel, see ordinary things as wondrous. A magnet, a magnifying glasses, a cake of ice – the ordinary is extraordinary. Sure, a young woman can float off into the sky – but ice? Ice is a miracle.
Here’s how Garcia Marquez describes the moment a gypsy giant brings ice (hidden in a pirate chest!) to Macondo:
Disconcerted, knowing the children were waiting for an immediate explanation, Jose Arcadio Buendia ventured a murmur:
“It’s the largest diamond in the world.”
“No,” the gypsy countered. “It’s ice.”
Jose Arcadio Buendia, without understanding, stretched out his hand toward the cake, but the giant moved it away. “Five reales more to touch it,” he said. Jose Arcadio Buendia paid them and put his hand on the ice and held it there for several minutes as his heart filled with fear and jubilation at the contact with mystery
It’s easy on a day-to-day basis to allow the mystery or ordinary things to sink below the surface. But part of the joy of reading Garcia Marquez is that wonder is refreshed. We come away ready to see the world with new eyes.
The photo of the bird above, taken by the wonderful AP photographer Robert F. Bukaty, has the same effect on me. How unexpected it is – the bird’s breath in the cold Maine air, the frozen whistle. That photo is a poem.
Which reminds me: April is National Poetry Month. I’m going to read some poetry. And write some poems. I might go out and play with magnets or buy a magnifying glass or hold an ice cube in my hand. I’m going to try looking with fear and jubilation at what surrounds me. Christopher Fry, the British playwright, once said that poetry “is the language by which man explores his own amazement.” I’m going to go exploring.
Ice!
Ann Dalton
Bonny Becker
Julie Paschkis
Julie Larios
laurakvasnosky
Margaret Chodos-Irvine
Books Around The Table 
I love that idea of amazement, Julie! I am amazed by so many things. The intense beauty of where I live. How they get the voices on the CDs. That my two-year-old recognized a sketch of Saturn on TV as the same planet in his picture book. Venetian glass blowers. Snails. So much to explore, indeed!
Magnets are cool, too. And marbles.
I had never considered that a bird’s breath could show – lovely!
(And amazing).
Or maybe it had a cigarette tucked under its wing.
How could I have lived this long without seeing a bird’s breath? This is a wonderful
post.
That bird’s breath is just shockingly beautiful, Julie. Some music has that effect too, of mesmerizing us into wonder? In all, the sensory body is such an instrument of wonder. You make me want to stare at the horizon and contemplate this post for the rest of the day!
I was hyper-aware of the birds in the woods this weekend thanks to this post, Julie. It was chilly enough that I imagined their breath, even if I couldn’t see it. And I tried to whistle back their songs to them. It seemed to me that they responded. I heard calls I’d never heard before, and one that I thought might be an owl. Thank you for opening me to amazement.