Take a second look …
The yellow eyes of the Saw-whet Owl are so startling, their gaze so steady, that we tend to ignore everything else. It’s easy to miss the trace of blood just below the owl’s bill, a smear of something that changes the way we look at the bird, that deepens our understanding of it. What discoveries might we make if we took that second look more often, if we trained ourselves to see?
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Dylan’s Voice, Part Two
The elderly boy topic “Yeah, I’ve got lots of his poetry and every one of his records,” the woman said, smiling. She looked at me for a moment, then looked away and cocked her head wistfully. “His poetry’s really good, you know. There’s a lot of this in it.” When she said “this,” she tapped her temple a couple of times. Then she told us a little story. “A lot of people around here look down on Bobby,” she said. “And they can’t figure out why everyone listens to his songs. One of my friends couldn’t stand him when he … Read more
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Dylan’s Voice
The old man—boy complex How could something originate in its antithesis? Truth in error, for example. Or will to truth in will to deception? Or the unselfish act in self-interest? Or the pure radiant gaze of the sage in covetousness? —Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Or a grandfather’s voice in the body of a boy barely out of his teens? Right from the beginning, on the first album he recorded for Columbia, twenty-year-old Bob Dylan sang with the weathered and weary voice of an old man. Many of the things he sang about were an old man’s concerns, death being … Read more
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The Wounded Mink
A few years ago, I was having a slow day on the Leslie Street Spit, the reclaimed landfill and Important Bird Area that juts into Lake Ontario just east of downtown Toronto. Over the years, I’ve seen more than 240 species of birds on this five-kilometer-long peninsula, including such local rarities as Connecticut Warbler, Northern Hawk Owl, and Boreal Chickadee. But on this late September afternoon, I wasn’t seeing anything other than a few migrating hawks. In fact, it may have been the hawks who were keeping the other birds out of view. I’d just decided to call it quits, … Read more
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