Hello, I’m Jeremy Beaudry. Welcome to my place. Words, photos, drawings et cetera.*
* It's a work in progress.
In “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad” (1942), George Orwell muses:
Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning, under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird’s song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenomenon which does not cost money and does not have what the editors of left-wing newspapers call a class angle?
I learned of the essay in this short film by G Anthony Svatek (via Aeon.co), which features a wonderful reading by Tilda Swinton.
Orwell wrote this essay during the winter of 1942, deep in the winter of a devastating world war. Orwell, again: “The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”
We have our winters, too — real and metaphorical. The privilege I enjoy is immense. My family and I are safe, when so many others are not. As far as I can tell, we will not be abducted by ICE. We will not be deported. We will not be disappeared, or made illegal because of our identities.1
Like Orwell, I can decry the inhumanity of these times, the cruelty of these wannabe autocrats, and I can seek wicked, subversive joy in observing the seasonal changes of Spring.
Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis, a first flower of Spring
Diffuse Dawn
Diffuse dawn spills over the eastern ridge
floods the room
not to drown
but to fill up this cubic space
for today, light is love
for no other reason than
I am alive
I am here
I feel this life
The atoms of matter
congeal into slow time
radiant energy
I hold in my hands
like cool morning sand
And can you hear the birds?
The chickadees alight
duets, trios, quartets
the constellations of frenetic song
the rise and fall of melodic habit
they sing — regardless!
How embarrassing that I
would ever think otherwise –
the hubris of humans
to orient, to bend this world
to our willful eye
Now, the golden orb crests the
summit, capping these
reflections like punctuation –
exclamation mark!
The dusty film on the window
glass glows (another task
undone, the window washing)
I sit in this moment
a cosmic sponge, the matter
of my soul
depends on it
ICE and CPB are detaining and deporting immigrants and migrants in Vermont. See “US Border Patrol arrests 8 migrant workers at Berkshire dairy”, “Palestinian man legally in the US detained in Colchester during citizenship interview”, “Tufts graduate student was held in Vermont after arrest in Massachusetts by immigration agents, feds say”. One way to help is by donating to the ACLU of VT and Migrant Justice / Justicia Migrante.↩︎
Athaneum
Sit still in the balcony. Sound is the scratch of graphite, scuffle of black boots. A deep sigh. A squint into the light, to focus the distance into the Bierstadt, into the Domes of Yellowstone. From St. Johnsbury, Vermont, now, to the West, then, 1867. Smell is burnt dust, furniture polish, oil varnish. Climb down the wrought iron spiral. Feeling is hand-worn oak, hardwood floor settling to steps. Light headed and under stated at the Athaneum.
From the desk of
Saturday laid out like a buffet table — sweet or savory?
Words feel different in the morning sunlight.
Venetian blinds of Vermont.
Fitz the house cat presides like a Sphinx.
Chimeras and half-humans run the autocracy.
Political concepts keep breaking apart at the feet of our real lives.
de Certeau: “the practice of everyday life.”
The bedside table cannot hold everything I need for rest.
New music comes to me, unexpectedly, like a butterfly to my shoulder.
I struggle to impart the lessons I’ve learned to my children.
What are you thinking right now?
Sometimes, declarative sentences — singular, muscular even — are the best we can do.
I’ve forgotten the names of the house plants.
Speaking Spanish to think like someone else.
Lichen on snow
I step out and listen for the chickadees, smell the earth beneath the snow melt, wrap my arms around the sunshine, and greet the change.
Night paces
Knitting at night
She is knitting at night. Her back is turned to me because she is keeping the cat company, who is dozing on the sofa. Her companion. Her audience. The click of the needles keeps time. My pencil slides over the tooth of the paper, searching for contours and volumes. The two of us keep focus. She, on yarn and pattern and movement. Me, on strands of wheat silk, draped cloth, and folds.