To Weave Her Patterns.....

I have seen nature's patterns while travelling - and in books and online - that show the amazingly intricate designs in nature, particularly underwater creatures such as spectacularly complex ocean shells, reefs etc, and the exotic patterns on birds and fish .... and it is awe inspiring.

My own world is more simple than that - so I explore patterns which I find in my garden and in the natural things I discover at my lake district in NW Ontario. By noticing, and then studying, patterns (that I often saw in my camera(!), I started looking for them with a kind of obsessive eagerness.

I find the smallest and most secret patterns are the most interesting, while those that I don't recognize by eye (until they pop up in my camera) are always the most surprising.

We are all taught patterns made by humans - like those in music, and of course, patterns in mathematics, visual patterns in forms of human art, in language and in other "human created" patterns. But to see them in nature, not created by humans -- but by a complex form of earthly energy (that we still wonder over), is always a miraculous thing for me.

Humans had nothing to do with the creations of the patterns below, but for me they have  allowed me to appreciate and to know deep down, that despite global warming and changes in the environment, nature will adapt - and that those things in nature  - created outside of human skills will always survive, even after we are long gone - creating new and old patterns of  - right down to the sheer perfection of perhaps a newly designed  single feather - or butterfly wing.

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave 

her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric

reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Richard P. Feynman

Spider Web Coated in Morning Dew
Photo: © Margaret Buffie

For most of the history of our species we were helpless 
to understand how nature works. We took every storm, 
drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and
 spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of natures. 

Ann Druyan

Black Swallowtail Butterfly wing  Photo: © Margaret Buffie

There is no better designer than nature. Alexander McQueen

Marsh Mushroom

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Goshawk Feather

Photo: © Margaret Buffie 

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

John Muir

Gem Studded Puffball

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in nature, which 

if we consciously yield to it, will direct us aright. 

Henry David Thoreau

Brown Marsh Mushroom

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Frog  Skin

Photo: © Margaret Buffie



The interpretation of our reality through 
patterns not our own, serves only to make us 
ever more unknown, ever less free, ever 

more solitary. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Wasp's Nest

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.  Lao Tzu

Brown Foliose Lichen 

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

I go to nature to be soothed and healed

and to have my senses put in order. 

John Burroughs

Orange Tree Mushroom

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

I consider myself a farmer of patterns. 

Alexander Gorlizki 

Dried Tree  Trunk

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

To understand is to perceive patterns. Isaiah Berlin

Web over the water 

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

A repeated shape is not actually the same – 

the more subtle, the more poetic this repeat is, 

the more we feel that resonant pulse. 

Suzanne Northcott 

 

Arrow Head Rock 

Photo: Margaret Buffie

The only difference is our perspective, our readiness 

to put the pieces together in an entirely different way 

and to see patterns where only shadows appeared 

just a moment before. 

Edward B Lindaman

"Magical creatures" Found Under An uprooted Tree

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

                                    

We artists have been affected by patterns in nature 

since day one. Every line we lay to paper and every move 
we make is part of the magical sequence - and the 
line goes where it needs to go depending on one's influences. 
Kristi Bridgeman 

Island reeds

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and those phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another. Gregory Bateson

Slanted Light on Lily Pads

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

In the Egyptian we have no traces of infancy or of 

any foreign influence; and we must, therefore believe 

that they went to inspiration directly from nature.” 

Owen Jones

(Note, while at my lake cabin is in NW Ontario I  love to find feathers lying around in nature - and in this one, I see a First Nations Moccasin in its pattern!)

Baby Loon Feather

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Look deep inside nature, and then you will understand everything better. 

Albert Einstein.

Canadian Anemone 

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

All my inspiration comes from nature, whether it's an animal or the layout of bark or of a leaf. Sometimes my patterns are very bold, and you can barely see where they come from, but all the textures and all the prints come out of nature. Diane von Furstenberg 

Hosta Leaf

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Sedum 

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that 

makes the intellect fruitful, and give birth to imagination.

Henry David Thoreau

Tulip Petal

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Cone FLower

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Knapweed with Honey Bee

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Rhythm. Life is full of it; words should have it, too. But you have to train your ear. Listen to the waves on a quiet night; you’ll pick up the cadence. Look at the patterns the wind makes in dry sand and you’ll see how syllables in a sentence should fall.   Arthur Gordon

Sun on Moving Water 

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

First Drops of Morning Rain on the Lake 

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Some of nature's most exquisite handiwork is on a miniature scale, 

as anyone knows who has applied a magnifying glass to a snow flake. 

Rachel Carson

Very Tiny Snail Shell in the Marsh

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair?

Shadows we loved and the patterns they covered the ground with
Tapestries, mystical, faint in the breathless air.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dew On Spider Web in the Grass

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature. August Rodin

--------

Pay attention to the intricate patterns of 

your existence that you take for granted. 

Doug Dillon

Black Swallowtail Caterpillar

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Gypsy Moth Caterpillar 

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Luna Moth Caterpillar (sitting on my camera strap!)

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Very Tiny Marsh Snail Shell

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Snake Skin Shed Sliding Through Rocks

Photo: © Margaret Buffie

Final thoughts from someone I deeply admired:

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. Rachel Carson

"MURDER YOUR DARLINGS"

How not to create purple prose.....

When someone, usually a critic, says that a certain style of writing is purple prose, what exactly do they mean?

In his 1914 lecture "on Style", Arthur Quiller-Couch. (from his reprinted 1913- 1914 Cambridge lectures "on the Art of Writing") talked about extreme ornamentation in prose.

"If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."

So what are the darlings that must be murdered?
Imagine you are at a local fair and an enthusiastic friend buys you a huge pile of purple cotton candy on a paper stick as a "treat." In my case, I might attempt to eat a bit, just to be polite. But, even now, just the thought of it makes my teeth hurt.

Cotton candy is fluffy, sticky, and sickeningly sweet. It melts in your mouth leaving a saccharin syrup to swallow. Once every ten years I might try a mouthful. But that's the most I can suffer. It's all about personal taste, really, isn't it? Not to say it's wrong to eat it, but one should be aware of the downsides of eating too much of it. Purple prose can be like that. 

There are a lot of definitions about purple prose out there but they are all pretty much saying the same thing. The most obvious purple writing is like making the reader eat an inordinate amount of sticky sweetness - the kind that sticks to your teeth and makes them ache.

It also can force the reader to take part in an overabundance of crashing, slicing, dicing and swooning if there is a lot of dramatic action in the writing. 

Swashbuckling historical novels are called Bodice Rippers for a reason.

(But if you want to actually write a book full of purple prose ... for fun or because that is what you like to read ... be my guest. Let's get that out of the way right now. )

But for those of us who do not, how does a writer recognize that they are actually writing purple prose and not strong, creative descriptive writing? How can they see when they are whipping up images that are simply too sticky or "over the top" or embroidered in a way that will hold their readers back from participating in a real world that involves them and makes them want to read on?

Here are four simple things to remember:

1. Purple Prose first and foremost is distracting. 

If you're reading a novel and become only aware of the words being used while the story, characters or plot are taking second place - and you realize that many of the words the writer has used seem to too ornate, overly descriptive, full of old cheesy cliches,etc  then chances are pretty certain you're reading purple prose. 

That is not to say that rich language should be left out of strong writing. But good imagery should slide its way easily and seamlessly into a reader's consciousness as they read.

Beautifully crafted writing has words and imagery carefully placed in a story in order to allow just enough  atmosphere, emotion, and visual description - in the just right way -  to allow enough room for the reader to fill in the rest of the created world themselves. This is vital to clear, strong writing. It is the kind of writing that holds the reader captive, breaks down that forth wall, and tumbles them  right into your story  -- and, best of all, offers them the gift of making your story their story. 

The opposite  of writing purple prose (and we've all tried to grind our way through this kind of writing), is when a story lacks any kind of descriptive writing, or strong characterization, or compelling story to the point where the piece becomes a stodge of blinding dullness for the reader because of the complete lack of imagery and "life" in it.

So this is a balancing act we are talking about here.

2. Purple Prose is exaggerated, ornate and off-putting


Purple prose is verbose, extravagant, overly descriptive, and  full of worn out cliches. It doesn't mean the entire book will be made up of it, but often just enough phrases and repetition of certain words (like "munching" on food) will clang the purple bell at regular intervals and put the reader off. 


Here are a few "over the top" examples of purple language:

The first couple of quotes come from a Sci-fi "book" called The Eye of Aragon. It was written anonymously and sent via computer to readers. It has been described ... (according to Wikipedia) .... as one of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose and is well known on the net. And remember this is really over the top!

Quote 1:

 A sweeping blade of flashing steel riveted from the massive 
barbarians hide enameled shield as his rippling right arm thrust 
forth, sending a steel shod blade to the hilt into the soldiers 
vital organs.  The disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his 
saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched dust 
with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid.

Call the EMTS!

 
Quote 2:
The girl burst into a slow steady whimper, stooping shakily 

to her knees and cringing woefully from the priest with both arms 
wound snake-like around the bulging jade jade shin rising before 
her scantily attired figure.  Her face was redly inflamed from 
the salty flow of tears spouting from her glassy dilated 
eyeballs.

Scantily clad! Glassy dilated eyeballs and bulging jade shins!! Swoon! (Not.)

The entire story reads like this. Once again, that's not to say rich descriptive language shouldn't be used. But it must be used with care and in the right place. 

Here is a short list of some purple phrases and  cliches that make me cringe - to give you some idea of  what not to use  - unless you want to, of course.....

-Twinkling eyes --  and that includes sparkling, teasing, and glittering.
-Rose red lips, parted and moist... ack... nooo
-Tears slid like oil from her blue orbs....
- Do not ever describe breasts as orbs, mounds or globes... or any other part of the anatomy as in the above!
- Trembling limbs, trembling lips, trembling anything....
- Call a moon a moon - do not resort to one writer's description of the"lunar orb". In fact, delete the word "orb" from your vocabulary!
-  he had a thick mane of hair.... Please. No.
- avoid the use of imagery that involves nature and the character - that is, describing lips as opening petals, hearts as full of ice, arms as snake-like, hair as sun-kissed tendrils, fingers as lily white .... and on and on and on.

If you find yourself thinking, wow, that is a wonderful rich phrase I have just penned, chances are you need to murder it!

3. The ultimate aim of writers who use purple prose is a skewed one and often simply misplaced.

People who write purple prose are either pulling your leg (and this is a new "trend") or are eager writers who somehow just fall into purple prose - usually beginners or unedited writers. Their misdirected, but ultimate aim is to manipulate your emotions and to also to make you remember their writing. They think that overly sensual, overly rich and ornate descriptive language will get your pulse racing and your heart beating faster and hold your interest longer. It just doesn't work that way - unless the reader is inclined to fan themselves often while reading.

Adjectives and adverbs are useful tools for writers - if done in moderation - judiciously placed so they can offer something special for the reader -- a scent, a colour, a rich setting, an intensity that can will only enrich writing.

But when overused and repetitive, they will actually make a reader feel as if they are being smothered in cotton candy  - and the writing then becomes an intrusion into the reader's intimate and private reading of a story that should be theirs and no longer the writer's. It's like having someone tap dancing frantically all around you while you try to read - all the while shouting,  "Look at me, look at me I'm a writer! I'm your writer!  Are you feeling it? Are you feeling it?" 

When you throw a book across the room, you are really aiming at the writer not the wall!

Here's a simple example of wasted purple writing: 

Real writing: The waitress set the cup of coffee on the counter.

Purple prose writing: The buxom curvaceous waitress, blond curls twisting like vines around her head, lowered the enormous red mug of fragrant nutty coffee onto the glossy surface of the counter. (If that is the only time this character appears, you can murder all those darlings!)

4. Purple Prose is simply "overwriting".

Overwriting is when you use three or five qualifiers when you could use one. If you are having a herd of wild horses pounding down a dirt road, dust boiling up behind them ... you don't need to add slathering, wild-eyed, sweating, dusty, whipping manes, crashing hooves or any other qualifier. 

Once again, I must reiterate, that by overwriting, you will remove the reader's innate ability to put images into their own visual interpretation of what is happening. That balancing act is one of the hardest things to learn about writing. One that all good writers fail now and again. This is why Quiller-Couch says to go ahead and write it all in - but then go back and kill the sugary darlings that adorn, embellish, festoon, or decorate your verbose overwriting. Like I just did ...

Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" has a chapter called "An Approach to Style." This is still one of the best books to read for any writer. 

A few of their pieces of advice in that chapter are:

Do not overwrite
Do not overstate
Avoid the use of qualifiers
Do not construct awkward adverbs (like "redly" in one  of the above samples)
Avoid fancy words
Be clear  

They say, quite rightly in my opinion"...since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one."  

"Style means the right word. The rest matters little.”

—Jules Renard

Illusion

Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.

Arnold Newman

Boreal Marsh Illusion    © Margaret Buffie
(Click to see the larger image.)

.

Gliding over Earth's Eye

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W.B. Yeats

Paddling Through Reeds, photo © Margaret Buffie

It is almost time to return to the lake. In Manitoba we never refer to any lake by name unless giving directions to it. No ... if someone asks me, "When are you going to the lake this summer?", they are referring specifically to my lake -- the long narrow waterway in Northwestern Ontario that breaks into two wide bays like the head of a double hammer. I live on one of those far quiet bays every summer. This is the same bay where my grandfather pitched tents with his wife and family in 1918 - and with like-minded friends from the railway  -built a beautiful log cabin using the pine and spruce that grew on his property. 

My parents moved across the bay from my grandparents and built their own log cabin - their three small daughters (at the time) in tow. My father was a young German from the North End of Winnipeg and he was taught the art of cabin building from my English grandfather.

Lake time was a time for coming together as a family. And for me it was a time to be vigorous and useful  by helping in my own small way to clear land and to help strip the rough sticky bark from the spruce and pine logs that would eventually become our three-room cabin.

It was there that my own fragile and uneasy self began to set sturdy roots deep into the peat-sandy ground. A place where I felt safe. Free. Happy. I could breathe there. I could fish with my father in the old flat bottom boat. I could canoe by myself, under the watchful eye of my parents, until it was time to float around the bay on my own. It was a secret world. A magical healing world; separate from the bustle and stress of school, the city, and all the anxieties a young introvert like myself drifted through all winter long, in a watchful, absorbing way. 

My Manitoba prairie roots grew much slower and really deepened when I started researching my father's German Galician family, and understood the many complex and deep struggles of their immigrant lives in Manitoba. I am an unabashed Manitoban, too!

As each year went by, my lake roots grew deeper - as did my father's. Sadly and most grievously,  my dad died from cancer when I was twelve and my mother took over the care of our cabin, as well making sure we spent as much time there as possible. Her roots also went deep, as she grew up in my grandparent's cottage until she married. Those were tough years without our dad, but all four girls (we had another sister by then) never missed one summer at the the lake. And we still don't.

We also don't have a road onto our lake land. When I was first married we cross country skied in in the winter. But it was hard going and the old cabin was not insulated. My husband was a teacher - so we finally decided as we got older that we would keep our lake time to two months every summer including most weekends until freeze-up. Together we built our own cottage on the property. Meanwhile, all winter long, I could and can still only dream of the cabin, sitting under layers of snow waiting for me.

In a few weeks I will be back again. To the quiet solitude of time alone, as well as time shared with my own family. But as soon as I walk the paths behind our cottage, my roots will dive deep again. Walking around the lake, and into the forest I will take my camera and my eyes and learn so many more secrets of the boreal forest. In my canoe, in the as I paddle each misty morning and quiet evening through the bays and the islands and marshes, I will heal, and change and become me again - gliding on Earth's eye. 

My Old Canoe The Beetle Photo © Margaret Buffie

The Lake

"In spring of youth it was my lot

  To haunt of the wide world a spot

  The which I could not love the less -

  So lovely was the loneliness

  Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

  And the tall pines that towered around."

Edgar Allan Poe

Coming Storm:  Oil on Canvas © Margaret Buffie

The Marsh at Twilight, Oil on canvas, © Margaret Buffie

"The white heat pales the skies from side to side;

But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content,

Like starry blooms on a new firmament,

White lilies float and regally abide."

Helen Hunt Jackson

Frosted Water Lily Photo Art © Margaret Buffie

Splendid White Water Lily © Margaret Buffie

"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." 

Loren Eiseley



Angel's Wing Mist Photo © Margaret Buffie

Early Morning Glow Photo Art © Margaret Buffie 

Rainbow in the Water Photo Art © Margaret Buffie 



"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be 
unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a 
childhood summer beside a lake… "
Diane Ackerman 

"Arrival at the Dock", Watercolour, © Margaret Buffie

"A lake carries you into recesses of 
feeling otherwise impenetrable." 

William Wordsworth

Note from Margaret: Across from our property is a high bank of rock. When the water was low last year, this beautiful form appeared combining rock and water to create a beautiful arrowhead.

Slopping Rock (below) is called this by our family because when waves hit against it, you can hear the slop and slap of the waves echo across the bay.

Arrowhead Rock Photo  © Margaret Buffie

Slopping Rock Photo © Margaret Buffie

"A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." Henry David Thoreau

Trees Giving Thanks for Another Sunrise Photo © Margaret Buffie

Early Mist Photo © Margaret Buffie

Light Veils of Cloud Photo © Margaret Buffie

Darkling Light Photo © Margaret Buffie

Into the dream and the distance

    Of the marshes that southward lie,

With their lonely lagoons and rivers,

    Far under the reeling sky.       

     Across the silences of night.

Sundown on the Marsh Photo © Margaret Buffie

Serene Bay Photo © Margaret Buffie

Storm Moving In Oil on Canvas © Margaret Buffie

The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with base notes, or dark lake with the treble.
Wassily Kandinsky

Yellow Lily Photo © Margaret Buffie

Dark Warning Photo © Margaret Buffie

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore. . . .

I hear it in the deep heart's core.” 

William Butler Yates

 Water Lapping Against Rocks Photo© Margaret Buffie

Slow Rolling Waves Photo © Margaret Buffie

Moody and withdrawn, the lake unites 

a haunting loveliness to a raw desolateness.

Dale Morgan

Silent Sunrise 6 am Photo © Margaret Buffie

"Paddling Into Morning Mist" Oil on canvas,© Margaret Buffie

Storm Brewing Photo © Margaret Buffie

Hail Clouds Forming  Photo © Margaret Buffie