#59: The Bold and the Beautiful

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.” - Goethe

The spring season is often characterized as delicate, tender. Yet all around me here in New Brunswick, I can’t look at the vibrant displays and describe it as anything less than boldly beautiful.

Apple trees and hawthorn are bursting with white blossoms, and even the warblers and orioles pause to admire the blooms before feasting on the nectar or bright inch worms slowly trying to escape their bills. As Ben and I slowly circle around the marsh that sits as the focal point of Salisbury Highland Park, we’re amazed at the volume and breadth of birds. A veritable ornithologist’s paradise.

This yellow warbler knows he’s a pretty bird. (Bryn Robinson, 2023)

At Salisbury Highland Park, we watched a pied-billed grebe dive, and then surface with, a catfish breakfast. (Bryn Robinson, 2023)

A flash - no, a flame - buzzes by my head. I look up and see the trees alight with Baltimore orioles, previously only known to me as the team that just recently finished a series versus the Toronto Blue Jays. (Bryn Robinson, 2023)

“Whenever we focus the lens of our camera on anything, we are also focusing it on ourselves. Something in the material world, matter in other words, has ‘called,’ however gently or strongly, to our inner self, our spirit, and we are responding.”
Freeman Patterson, Embracing Creation

These days, the weather is affording us plenty of opportunities to explore the world around us, and by proxy, the worlds within us. Time not spent listening to music or a podcast while walking or gardening turns the camera lens inward, and what emerges is not only pictures, but words. On the latter front, I received a new journal the other day - a lovely green Dingbats* A5 journal gifted to me by

Mark Dykeman

as one of the lucky recipients of his anniversary draw. It has a forest green cover embossed with a deer, and thick pages sturdy enough to withstand a heavy hand with ink.

I don’t know about you, but when I get a new journal - and I do love stationary - I can feel guilty by not following through on the original noble purpose. (One only needs to look at

Noted

to see post after post of stunning examples, which I know were created without much thought but now appear to be meticulously designed works of art.) The key this time, though, was to remind myself not to make it too precious; it would be full of mistakes and marvels and messiness. It wouldn’t be perfect, yet it also would be.

In other words, I need to eliminate any excuses this time.

The new Dingbats* journal, ready to receive. (Bryn Robinson, 2023)

“Last time” was during grad school. I knew I didn’t want to be an academic, but what “non-academic” life would look like was still without form. One of the avenues I toyed with, though, was the idea that I could be a freelance writer, so I started looking for groups to attend. I found a local writers’ group that met monthly in the basement of a funeral home, and when I wasn’t choking down the burnt coffee from the parlour carafe, I was trying to swallow the reality that I couldn’t be a writer if I didn’t write. This dish was served to me by the eldest member of the group, who held court with an acerbic tongue and said little to me except to give me shit for not writing enough.

And, while I tried to make excuses like a thesis and teaching, she wasn’t completely wrong. The type of writing I set my eyes on wasn’t (and couldn’t) be my priority at that time. All I had were drabbles in a document that started during one summer term when, in a period of heartache, I spent late nights aiming to type genius but mainly edited the same sentences while listening to sad nu-metal before being distracted by others’ LiveJournal posts. Eventually I did cobble together about twenty poems for a chapbook, and looked at self-publishing because I didn’t want to “deal” with publishers. It was the exhaustion of a dissertation, but also, youthful hubris and, deep down, not being ready to put in the work.

Am I ready now? I think so, if the routine and commitment to a weekly post (and lack of sad nu-metal in my Spotify) has shown me. I’ve thought about it a lot over the past few months, motivated in part by the kind words and examples set forth by folks like

Mark R DeLong

,

Tom Pendergast

, and

Brian Reindel

. Wining the notebook seems like the universe is giving me a sign¹ to be bold, and to embrace the beauty around me into words.

No, spring is not for the delicate, the tender. So, how will your spring be bold and beautiful?

Let’s do this, bird. (Bryn Robinson, 2023)

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1. As much as any atheist can believe in such things?