February 28, 2013

When technology works right, it is such a blessing, when it's not working right . . . ohhhh the frustration!!!  For some reason my MS Word seems to want to give me a window that cannot be moved or closed, disappears my editing tool bar, and puts this big wide sidebar on my blank document page.  <BIG SIGH>  I was having such a hassle with it, I decided not to deal with it for a few days so I could approach it in a more rational manner.  Yelling and beating my keyboard tray brought no efficacious solution. 

Today I did something, and no, don't ask me what because I don't know, and I can move the window and my husband said I could make it so I couldn't see the distracting side bar by just making it really tiny.  So, I'm going to try this and see if I can actually get through this note without having a stroke or anything similar. 

Wednesday when I came out of school, it sounded like an electronic orchestra was tuning up in the field next to the school.  There is a flock of grackles that are there most mornings, but, except for an occasional whistle or electronic note, they are pretty quiet.  Well, yesterday they sounded like an electronic orchestra tuning up, runs of whistles, clicks, chirps, all sounding like they were made using a Moog synthesizer.  I stood there on the sidewalk just amazed at what I was hearing.   I find myself doing that a lot, stopping in amazement at something weird or wonderful.  Some of it sounded like the birds were cooperating to make cool lines of melody, though I suspect, with what I know about birds, that it was some kind of competition.  Never mind the cause the sounds were just fascinating.  I love the songs the birds make, so many mimic other birds or sounds in the environment.  We used to have a crow that called out "ow, ow, ow!!" because that's what it heard every morning when I brushed Mikayla's hair.  And a mockingbird that made our electronic alarm clock's sound at 4 am for weeks on end. 

I'm sure everything growing thinks it's spring whether the forecasters think it is or not,  ash trees are getting their fresh green leaves, the oaks are blooming and getting leaves at the same time, the bald cypress is hazed with green, and some little tree we saw yesterday on the median on Bay Area boulevard was awash with purpley pink flowers, no leaves yet just flowers.  My maple is covered with ripening seeds, still very red but now drying out so they have a little less red and a little more orange from the ones that are close to ripe, the tan-in-the-middle ripeness they get before they let go.  If they were ripe already, they would have been stripped off by the wind we have been getting lately.  What's missing today and the last few days is the soft humid warm air that is the hallmark of spring here.  A front has moved down and dropped both the temperature and the humidity.  Last time I saw the news, our humidity was 19% and that is certainly dry for here.  The low humidity coupled with the wind has made trying to get my hair up a real challenge.  Every strand want to repel every other strand until it stands out like a corona when I brush it. 

This poem is sort of what I felt like, standing there on the edge of that field of shiny black and brown grackles, surrounded by their wild and weird music: 

And For No Reason

And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.

And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the Sun's mouth
And dissolve.

And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.

And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!

When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am. 

Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Though I don't think I could manage skipping like a child, I can still feel like doing it!  The birds choosing my head for a conference table, and passing their cups of wine and their songbooks, well, that was very close to the experience yesterday!  I love it when the world just smacks you up the side of the head with beauty and wonder and you get that dazed feeling of gratitude and gladness just to be alive!

February 25, 2013

This has been a very strange day for weather.  When I got up, before I even looked outside, I knew it was foggy because several places and ships were doing their foghorns, and when it finally got light enough to see the weather, sure enough, it was very foggy.  When I left for school, it was one of those fogs that was so thick you couldn't see too far ahead and it was worse over water and bridges.  When it's cold and we get fog, it's bad over open fields, dense and low to the ground.  When it's warm, water and bridges seem to exhale the fog as if they were relieved for it to be warmer.  Today they were VERY relieved!! 

Then we had a couple of brief showers, more like sprinkles really, and the temperature started to drop and the wind started to blow as a cold front moved through the area, no snow, but you could feel the temperature falling, and the clouds are gone now, oh, there is a stray white puffy cloud but it's sunny and most of the sky is the color you think of when you say "sky blue".  It's quiet a wind and will only get windier as the day goes on.  And if nothing changes we could get down to freezing by the weekend, at least at night, but I don't think we will get that low . . . too close to the water here.  It is true, if you don't like Texas weather, just hang around awhile, it changes quite often and quiet dramatically. 

I noticed a whole raft of things had changed over the weekend, there are many more red maples that have bloomed and are going to seed.  The ash trees are getting more and more leaves, that thin bright chartreuse.  The little volunteer magnolia is making fist sized buds,  hard smooth and green, and a fan of new golden green leaves at the end of each branch.  Mikayla will be happy because I believe this is the first year it may bloom!  The cane, what's left of it, is whipping around in a frenzy, the longer stalks bending close to the ground and then springing up with what's left of last year's tassels when there is a momentary lull.  They're top heavy and you wonder how they can stand upright with their heavy heads!  I love it when there is sunlight on that crepe myrtle, that has got to be the prettiest golden wood, smooth now that all the bark is shed.

Everything seems to be blooming, so I hope we don't get that freeze.  The little fruit trees that make the white flower are already starting to look like a popcorn explosion. 

The contrast between this morning and this moment is just amazing, makes you shake your head in awe over how quickly things can change! 

Still 

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own: 

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is 

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me: 

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up 

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe: 

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place: 

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being! 

 A. R. Ammons 

Well, he would find nothing lowly about today either, wind, cloud, fog, sunlight, grackles, chimes, blossoms, and new leaves, not a lowly thing among them.  So, is there nothing lowly in the universe, I think not. Everything comes together to make the day, and the night, though you know some of those planets you can see are rock and dust, nothing lowly about where they are, and how they appear to us at such a distance.  Especially today, everything seems to be bursting with existence, or magnificent with being, even me! 

February 24, 2013

I feel like singing "Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day"!  The sky is so blue and clear, you can hear birds, lots of birds, there is a gentle breeze, every thing is conspiring to make it one of those rare mornings that seem just about perfect.  It isn't even cold . . . I bet the lady out power walking her big fluffy dog is thinking it's a terrific morning as well, perhaps even the dog is having equivalent thoughts! 

Since it's the morning for the blessing, and this morning I feel particularly blessed . . .  

Prayer for Another Sunday 

For all that changes

Seasons, a glad morning,

Sliver of moon, red sun

Give thanks

 

For all that changes

Silence, shifting clouds,

Squabbling jays, white iris

Give thanks 

For all that changes

Wind sound of the bay

Cut grass, cheeky squirrels

Give thanks 

For all that changes

The everyday heart

The mind of questions

Give thanks 

For all that changes

Is everything we have

All we want  all we are

Give thanks

For all that changes. 

S. Crowson 

That's what this is . . . a glad morning, and I know even the most perfect morning can change and still be perfect.  In Richard Bach's book Illusions there is a point where he asks "Have you ever seen the sky when it's not perfect?"  And you know, I haven't, even when it's cloudy and gray and gloomy, it's the perfect sky for that moment.  What would you do to change it?  Still, this glad morning I'm glad for this bright sky, the wind chimes softly ticking, the pair of blue jays that visited the golden bare branches of the crepe myrtle for just a moment, and the lady walking that impossibly fluffy dog . . . The lovely world that exists, like the sky, perfect in every moment, always changing to we can have a different perfection, a unique blessing for which we can give thanks.

February 22, 2013

We've had some interesting weather lately, not dreadful as some areas of the country, just interesting.  Today has to be one of the most unusual skies I have ever seen.  It looks like someone spilled a bag of cotton balls in various shades of gray across the sky then pushed them into long narrow rows, with some openings to let a silver white light shine through.  Some rows are a little darker and some almost white, but they all look so soft and fluffy, you'd like to sleep on them.  There is a little wind and the temperatures are on the mild side, right around 60 in most of our area.  I have great sympathy for all those digging out of so much snow, and such cold weather.  Listening to NPR this morning they interviewed some people about the storms.  After several telling how terrible the storm had been, one dairy farmer had something different to say.  He said it made work more difficult but they were in drought and looking out over all that snow, all he could see was better grass than he had last year!  So silver linings for even the worst kind of weather. 

Our weather report was not much help after the temperature, he said mostly cloudy, patches of sun, possible showers, and it sounded to me as if his predictions were about evenly divided among all the possibilities.  My students chose the theme of storms for this week, and it seemed perfectly appropriate.   Next week they are going to do rainbow things, perhaps we'll get a rainbow or two. 

I found a poem about a tree, a sycamore, like the one down at the end of the street, one I can barely see, but I have see other trees in the same condition, and people too. 

The Sycamore 

In the place that is my own place, whose earth

I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,

a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.

Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,

hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.

There is no year it has flourished in

that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it

that is its death, though its living brims whitely

at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.

Over all its scars has come the seamless white

of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history

healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection

in the warp and bending of its long growth.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.

It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.

It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.

In all the country there is no other like it.

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling

the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.

I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,

and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Wendell Berry 

Sort of like the farmer . . . no year that has not harmed the farm but it continues and looks forward in the snow to the grass of spring.  All the scars we have, all the accidents, all the injuries, are gathered into some purpose we may never know or understand, but our lives are the sum total of our experiences, all of them, the easy beautiful ones, and the stark tragic ones as well.  In all the world there is not another one of us, we are all unique in our suffering and in our blessings, we are fed and fed upon, there is no other way to be, we cannot escape the native life we own, it makes us who we are.

February 20, 2013

Such an unsettled day, gray and the wind making it feel a lot colder than it is.  So much gray that it's hard to imagine it was hugely sunny and cheerful yesterday.  It's almost like the birds know something is up, the storm they are predicting they can predict as well from feather and bone and the turning wind.  At school, the grackles were everywhere, on every line, the empty field, the parking lot.  After I got into the truck, I could hear a couple on the roof hopping around.  Sitting here I saw the biggest mockingbird, gray like the sky the white bars at the edges of its wings proclaiming the species just as its song does.  It bounced about three hops across the yard and flew away, off past the window where I could not longer see it.  Big as a crow, it just seemed astonishing. 

The day grows darker and darker like traveling in reverse, soon it will travel so far back it will seem like the hour before dark, already we are back to just after dawn.  This light makes everything seem to shiver in the dull finish of the clouds, as if there were reason to believe the sunlight will not return, that something essential is missing and will never be found.  People like me, the solar powered ones, tend to slow down and want to sleep, or weep in equal measure.  Since it was sunny yesterday, I am not to the weeping stage yet! 

A few years ago I sent a poem that has the perfect title for today! 

NIGHTMORNINGSKY 

I'd like to see the tree as it once stood

before me, childhood, the branch and leaf

a single form of transport, ecstasy

shaking my body I give to the leaves,

the leaves return, my stare all interchange.

 

But that was when I had a sky to name

since I had a belief in constancy

like everyone. The sky was my background,

the drama of the tree and me, one act,

then three, then five, a Shakespearean play script.

some tragic flaw in hero, heroine,

yet to be discovered

                             But now the sky

clouds even dawn with a black mist that falls

from all things and all imaginings. 

The tree in my backyard is caught in this.

When I look for the sky it is still there

but now a matter of my memory

or prophecy.

 

                 Where is the root, bough, stem

set clearly against a morning, clearing? 

Peter Cooley 

The bare trees look so different when the sky is this dark.  The crepe myrtle's lovely golden trunk is today dark and gray streaked with ocher.  The light has stolen its gold and left behind the smooth wood but devoid of its usual loveliness.  A flock of the tiny birds, wrens maybe, just swirled up the tree as if wind-tossed and the bright spark of a cardinal ignited for a moment then went out like a light, I did not see where it went. 

I want to see the morning, clearing, but I fear tomorrow will be worse than today.  I can't even complain about rain or gray days because so much drought is fresh in my memory, making rain the gift it truly is.  The drama of the maple tree, now it's branches heavy with the winged seeds not ready to let go yet, is unfolding and every day it changes, and soon there will be a raft of seedlings that will grow for awhile then die, sprouting some place lethal or from lack of water.   the maple does not defend its territory like the oaks, perhaps that's why I have such love for its gentle beauty.

February 18, 2013

All day it's been trying to rain, sunny in patches, but mostly gray and windy and getting colder.  We've had the darkest gray, almost to thundery black, and sunlight for a minute or two before being extinguished by flat smooth cloud cover again.  It's almost ludicrous for sunlight that traveled 93 million miles to be blocked by some random water vapor creation.  We do not often get clear nights, too much of that water vapor, too many lights, but Saturday when we were out, Brian remarked on how clear the night was and how many stars we could see, and he was right.  You could see a lot more stars than usual.  And it made me think of Marianne's idea for her next class, star stories, telling the stories associated with the constellations, and having the students pick stars for constellations and make up their own stories, or stories about constellations we recognize already.  I bet she gets some terrific stories.  I find that letting the students make up their own stories about familiar things really tends to fire up their imagination.  If you don't give them some place to start, like a constellation, they tend to flounder with too many ideas or not enough.  They need an . . . anchor; adults may be able to create things off the top of their head, but I find children often do not have enough experiences yet to be able to make up something out of whole cloth as it were, but give them a prompt, a jump start, and they do great. 

For today, when we are unlikely to see stars tonight, a poem about stars . . . 

Stars 

I sit and rock my son to sleep.  It rains

and rains.  Such as we are

both asleep, we swim past the stars,

bad stars of disaster, good stars of the backbone 

of night.  We know these stars as they are

and as we'd wish them to be, Milky Way,

Dog and Bear, hydrogen and helium, the 92

elements which make all we know of beauty.

 

We know nothing of angular size or

of the inverse square law of the propagation

of light, and swim through a cold, thin

gas, between and among stars, 

which swim likewise between two creations

like children who know sleep intimately.

                   *       *     * 

First the collapse of the interstellar gasses,
then the final collapse of the luminous stars

like eyes turning backward in their sockets

returning the atoms they have synthesized 

back into space, to dust, back to what they were.

We look from some kind of opening to nothing.

We locate the red giant and the dwarf star

for nothing.  They are going away -- 

their explosions from within and their luster,

their mixed-up views on time and space.

I know that those I love are some

of the falling objects, and those dark waves

rise toward us from the past, dark

that falls with any particle of light. 

Ralph Burns 

It's that line that reminds me of today, "dark/ that falls with any particle of light" like the sunlight dimmed by clouds, like how often a tiny annoyance will dim the radiance of a perfectly lovely day.  I like how there were two kinds of stars, "bad stars of disaster, good stars of the backbone/ of night."  And how we wish the stars into constellations, and don't have to know the science of them to know their beauty, but it's nice if you know a little about them, just makes them more wondrous.  Every culture has star stories, not one missed looking up at the stars and wanting to know them.  We are all falling objects, all in orbit, all falling through gravity, personal, planetary, and universal, all swimming though space spangled with stars of all kinds, all those stars making everything we are.

February 17, 2013

Beautiful Sunday morning, clear and crisp, sunny and still.  When I look out, there is sunlight everywhere, light striping the grass, illuminating the wood of mostly bare trees, shining off the chrome of occasional cars.   After the wind of the last couple of day, this stillness seems so peaceful.  The bald cypress is blooming its long thin flowers, looking like little bottle brushes, gold and brown.  The helicopters of the maple are emerging from the red flowers, the red fading now mixed with tan and orange of the maturing seeds.  A lot of mockingbirds are in the trees and thrashing leaves and twigs in the grass.  The backyard striped cat is on his morning patrol, visiting all his favorite places, the water bowl, the old boat, the sunny end of the driveway.   A pair of cardinals, the bright male almost the color of maple seeds, are snuggling in the crepe myrtle, leaning against each other, the perfect example of "billing and cooing"! 

When we went out to dinner last night, Brian had researched the prospects for a new restaurant, some place we had never been.  So we went to the Main St. Bistro, and were very pleasantly surprised.  A friendly place, small, maybe 15 tables, the walls a warm red and hung with posters ranging from famous paintings like "The Scream" to ones for old concerts and art shows.  The food was delicious and presented in a lovely fashion, elegantly but not overly fussy, and everyone enjoyed the meal, from stuffed mushrooms to their chosen entree, and we even had desert and great coffee!  We all decided we don't go out often enough and made plans to change that.  It had been at least 15 years since just the four of us had gone out together, usually it's a bigger group, some variation of kids and/or friends added.  It was such a pleasant evening, that we all want to repeat it.  Now Honey and I will have to see if we can find someplace as nice for our next dinner! 

It's Sunday, a day to realize all our blessings.  After the dinner last night, I thought to acknowledge that a feast is not just for the body but for the heart and soul as well.  It's nice to be reminded that relishing the world of the senses is both a natural and a holy experience. 

For the Senses 

May the touch of your skin

Register the beauty

Of the otherness

That surrounds you. 

May your listening be attuned

To the deeper silence

Where sound is honed

To bring distance home. 

May the fragrance

Of a breathing meadow

Refresh your heart

And remind you you are

A child of the earth. 

And when you partake

Of food and drink,

May your taste quicken

To the gift and sweetness

That flows from the earth. 

May your inner eye

See through the surfaces

And glean the real presence

Of everything that meets you. 

May your soul beautify

The desire of your eyes

That you might glimpse

The infinity that hides

In the simple sights

That seem worn

To your usual eyes. 

John O'Donohue 

Food prepared by hands that seem to take such pleasure in tastes and textures and beauty of the meal seem to consecrate the meal and remind us that such bounty and beauty is a blessing.  I find that my every morning visit to my window on the world is also a blessing and one that never seems worn to my usual eyes. It's a continuous, constant source of joy, even on days when there are clouds and gloom and rain, as a contrast to remind me of the more light-infused days.  All our senses remind us of the world which is the ultimate gift and blessing.