October 30, 2012

You can almost feel guilty about having such lovely fall days when a great portion of the country is having devastating weather.  I wonder if people in northeast have that feeling when there are hurricanes here along the Gulf, probably, it seems like a very human thing.  It seems strange to think of hurricanes happening where it is cold; I can imagine that only adds to the misery of it.  With so many people affected, it's easier to pray for everyone than try to single out anyone.  I know people all over the country are sending help and prayers to the storm ravaged areas.

It seems today that I wanted a poem that included everyone and everything . . . that there should be no separation between parts of the country, between one person and another . . .

To Be Found

We are always looking for the mirror

by which we might see

our true Self

Look closely.

There is no place that mirror is not

Yet the vastness that we are

cannot be captured

in a single image

Through that One, see all beings

We are always listening for the voice

by which we might hear

our true Heart

Listen closely.

There is no place that voice does not resound

Yet the vastness that we are

cannot be captured

in a single sound

In that one tone, listen

as the whole universe sings back to you

The need to be seen, heard

 through sacred reflections, and earthly echoes

 is the guiding impulse of our basic sanity

Surrender.

While looking and listening,

as we must and as we will

remember

the One

who looks and listens

Become the inward mirror of your searching eye

the inner echo of your true heartsong

become the very Beloved you seek

There is nothing you are not

Nothing.

Willow Pearson

It makes me think of particles, you know, the subatomic kind, where you act on one, and at a distance its twin reacts, a very strange phenomenon.  And yet true I think, we are all connected, whether we want to be or not, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.  That phrase, "there is nothing you are not/Nothing."  Kind of scary, yes?  We want to be the nice things, the day-born moon, the spring flower, the saint, but we are also the storm, the vulture, the sinner.  Hard to pick and choose just what to be when we are so much everything, when we long to be what we see as good and important and graceful, but wish not to be bad, or insignificant, or clumsy, yet who can't see all of that in themselves.  I would like to be that very Beloved but I always fall short, it's a good thing someone who is beloved is beloved all the way, unconditionally, that when you are loved by the capital "B" Beloved, it's everything about you that is loved, the whole you, the part that rises up and the part that falls down.  That love is all-inclusive, and sees our human soul that contains everything that is human, even the parts we would disown, and still loves us, and that is what saves us from despair, that we are so loved.

Today I hope the people affected by the storm know there are people willing to help, send prayers, and the truest words ever spoken are . . . "This, too, shall pass."  I know from experience it seems like forever, but it does pass, and things return to something approaching normal, and even some good things might come of this.  The very human way of putting one foot in front of the other may be the only response you can have to daily life and something this big as well.

October 29, 2012

Well, dark and cold this morning when I went to leave for school, but the biggest full moon I have seen in a long time, huge and gold and bright in the light just before sunrise!  Wow!  I was driving facing it as it sank behind the line of trees, it was just mesmerizing.  And after it set the sun rising made orange and red streaks behind me in the very pale blue sky, seen in the rearview mirror.  By the time I got to school, the sky was the clear bright blue it's been for a few days now, but it was still cold, windy in gusts and in the 40s. 

Now behind me, the news is covering Sandy, and the huge size of its wind field, and we have nothing like that here.  Hard to imagine such wretched weather elsewhere when it's so clear and lovely here, but not hard to imagine a hurricane, the wind, the power out, the flooding.  I hope, though people there don't have much experience with hurricanes, that they take it seriously; they can be so devastating.  The pictures of surf and flooding already bad and it has not made landfall yet. The moon this morning a full moon that means higher lunar tides.  I hope everyone in Sandy's path takes precautions and evacuates if it's called for.  Last time we had one, I did not want to go but was really glad we did.

For the moon this morning a poem full of ways of looking at the moon . . .

Day Moon

Too late or too soon, none can say,

the lantern you hold out mere

rumor now, your desert Sea

of Tranquility nothing more

than dust, or less, dissolved at last

in the waters of the sun's rays.

You the dime that midnight lost

to the bright distance of a day,

the coin that rolled through a ruin

of stars, out the acropolis

of our dead gods. You the crown

that handed down its human place.

What is your vigilance if not

the scratched mirror of our light.

Constellations cast their net

in the morning sky. Too late,

says the sky, and yet too soon

to tell, to read your beaten riddle

of things to come, the afternoon

of those who walk each year a little

closer to the ground, who would pull

through the hole in you, the hole

of you, as if you were the portal,

the pupil, the wound that never heals.

A window to the sun that stares

at you there across the room,

you the Cyclops of the nightmare

sent to wander over the rim

of dawn, unconscious of a fever

daybreak brings. You who howled

in the throats of us believers.

We were children then who held

you in the evening of our eyes

the way a bowl of water holds

a drink, a face, a dark sunrise

worlds beneath the underworld.

Bruce Bond

So many ways of looking at something we see so often, Cyclops of the nightmare, window to the sun, coin rolling through a ruin of stars . . .  I thought of the men who stood on airless plains and saw earthlight the way we see moonlight.  Of all the lines that appeal to me it's the last lines that speak to me, children who held you in the evening of our eyes, as I did this morning, both the evening of my eyes and a new look, the rocky shore of the moon holding a sea, a face, and its own dark sunrise.  The window to the sun as I look out each morning to the changing light, and sometimes glimpse the moon before it sets.  And, especially today, those of us who walk each year a little close to the ground still marvel at the moon, still can't resist staring at it when it appears in its reflected glory to light up an early morning.

October 28, 2012

A beautiful cold morning!  The sky so clear you marvel at it, and so sunny it makes you smile to see things so clearly!  The wind has torn green flags of leaves from the trees, not only single leaves but clumps of them as well.  The birds are out this morning and while Mikayla and I were out we saw the biggest crow fly along the trees and land, its dark silhouette against the bright sky.  The striped cat has returned, wandering the back yard as if he were lost, finally sitting at the foot of my heron statue, which in the strong sunlight this morning is almost white, the shadows of its feathers outlines of dark against the bleached out clay.   Quieter now, the wind has slowed like someone breathing into sleep, only an occasional snore marking an intense gust.  The stalks of cane lie mostly bent and getting browner, a jumble of lashing leaves and thin bodies, stirring sleepily.  Each tree addresses the wind in its own language, stately bows, head tossing, flickering like fire, embracing it, or resisting it.  Pines seem to embrace the wind their long furred arms slowly opening and closing, while the maple resists, its flat leaves taking the brunt of it, fluttering and fussing but the branches barely moving. 
And the blessing . . . one for the season . . .

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The huge summer has left us, and the wind is passing through to some other country, sometimes more that we could want or need.  This week it will be cool but next week back to summer again.  Here, autumn slides in and out until it's spring, such mild winters as we have you might think of them as one long fall.  The trees take so long to go bare and then almost immediately leaf out again.  I'm not sure about whoever has no house won't have one, it could be the cold will be an incentive both for work and for gifts of shelter.  But the alone can always be fixed, if it needs to be.  It sounds like alone can have its place, time to think, to write, to engage the restless feeling this season brings with it.  Farmers are probably glad here there is very little time of frost to damage or kill their crops, so they can be left to their fulfillment.  The changing light overlaps the trees now at different times, bringing the shadow earlier and from a different angle, the changes a blessing to keep us interested in what we see, in the world around us.

This week someone sent me a reminder to enjoy the little beauties, and I am enjoying them this morning, and also keeping in mind gratitude for all the blessings in my life, large and small.  Even the restlessness I sometimes feel is only a different way of experiencing the world, or perhaps the desire to experience more of the world, yet what more could I want than what I already have.  I write long letters to friends and family, teach young people to have confidence in their own choices, and to see the world in a different way if only for a little while, read whatever I want, so much is available, do daily work for love, and am surrounded by that love.   Sunday is a day to remember all of that and rejoice!

October 27, 2012

All night the wind railed at the windows, pinecones dropped onto the roof like tiny bombs, leaves like confetti swirl down from the trees, green as well as the fewer gold and brown ones.  Clouds raced over the moon like a goose-gray quilt blowing in the wind.  The dark always seems darker when there are clouds, though you would think dark is dark enough.  This morning the clouds are breaking up and blue is leaking through, becoming a flood of color.  All around you can hear the wind sounding like waves crashing against the shore, an ocean of air on the move.
 
And so today, when the birds seem to be scarce and even the cat is not out and about, a poem about what is present . . . the wind!

LXXV

Of all the sounds dispatched abroad, 
There’s not a charge to me 
Like that old measure in the boughs, 
That phraseless melody 
  
The wind does, working like a hand     
Whose fingers comb the sky, 
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune 
Permitted gods and me. 
  
When winds go round and round in bands, 
And thrum upon the door,        
And birds take places overhead, 
To bear them orchestra, 
  
I crave him grace, of summer boughs, 
If such an outcast be, 
He never heard that fleshless chant        
Rise solemn in the tree, 
  
As if some caravan of sound 
On deserts, in the sky, 
Had broken rank, 
Then knit, and passed       
In seamless company.

Emily Dickinson

I had not read this poem by Dickinson before, it's odd rhyming caused me to reread it several times before I was comfortable with it.  Some images are so arresting, the wind "working like a hand/ whose fingers comb the sky" and the other images of music . . . bands, thrum, orchestra, chant, but my favorite is "some caravan of sound" that breaks rank, then comes together seamless, where I imagine the sound of thousands marching footsteps drumming overhead passing over and around the house, and they continue unopposed, on and on in seeming ceaseless waves.  The wind has always made me nervous, and such a continuous wind even more so.  I guess I am uneasy reminded of how little we control in this world, and grateful to be sheltered from it, and that it will not be more than walls can bear, at least today! 
 
Now the sky reaches the peak of blue, cloudless and bright, and still the wind marches on, that caravan of sound, carrying leaves, and making waves which I can hear adding their rush to the wind's march!

October 26, 2012

Boy, fall has arrived with a vengeance!  Twenty degrees cooler at the moment than yesterday!  When standing out in front of the library waiting to vote, I thought I would freeze, having forgotten my shawl because when I left it was still pretty warm.  At least I didn't need my sunglasses, as it is cloudy and gray for the most part, and windy, I shouldn't forget to mention really gusty blustery wind!  I heard a bird a few minutes ago that had the sweetest voice, one I have not heard before.  I went to the back door to see if I could see it, but I couldn't.  Its song was like a random collection of the sweetest notes with long pauses between.  I wish I knew what bird had that lovely song.  My wind chime is making its own wonderful music because the wind is directly from the north and hard enough to really blow the long tubes of it around.  It's supposed to be in the 40s tonight, and only barely into the 60s tomorrow.  All the weather folk are talking about a possible "perfect storm" for the east coast, they just don't know where it will go yet, but it looks like no matter where it ends up, lots of people are going to have really bad weather!

This poem has wind and an attitude I understand lately . . .

In our souls everything
moves guided by a mysterious hand.
We know nothing of our own souls
that are ununderstandable and say nothing.

The deepest words
of the wise man teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is flowing.

 Antonio Machado

I feel that I know nothing of my soul, that it exists, I believe that, but what makes it mine, what keeps it tethered to the body, how it influences what I do or believe, I don't know.  Does the soul keep its own accounting?  Does what we know affect it?  Is it what makes the "me" inside me?  The wise man's words, the whistle of the wind, the sound of water, they all exist in the moment, when we take them in with our senses, and the soul somehow also responds to them, or I do.  Some days I feel like my soul is just bursting to be free of this flesh, that it would not take much, a mere pinprick to release it, and other days it seems immortal, firmly ensconced in its clay housing.  Perhaps it's the soul that gives us that restless feeling we are subject to at times, when nothing seems to fit or make sense, maybe it is looking for something, something deeper than we are giving it.  Is the soul mute, or are we its only voice?  How to answer the question with no answer?   I don't know and for awhile I will just listen to the wind rattling the trees and shaking leaves down.  And, then . . . I will grade papers <smile>.   Even if there are ten thousand unanswered questions, the day goes on!

October 25, 2012

A long quiet morning, mostly sunny and warm today, with the promise of cooler weather tomorrow, but it's a weather promise, who knows it if will be kept.  The air is still, the leaves hanging limp and fading under a bright blue sky, cloudless and empty.  The striped cat has been touring the yard, just walking around and stopping to sit and moving on; he looks . . . bored.  The birds are coming and going, blue jays came to the water bowl, but it is empty and they were not happy.  I have to get a new bowl as this one is beyond repair now and I hate to disappoint the birds.  I have looked for one but it needs to be wide and pretty shallow, and so far I have seen nothing that I thought would work.  Now I am considering a dishpan, with the pumice rock it in, it might not be too shallow but it will be big enough to have room all around the rock for the birds perch on.  I saw one of the big woodpeckers fly through the back yard earlier.  I am always amazed at how big they are and how really red the feather on their heads are!  They are very showy with their bright white and deep black plumage. 

I spent some time this morning going through political research, as I will vote early tomorrow after school.  If both sides are telling the truth then we live in a very strange world, and you know I think we do.  I am amazed at what politicians will say, all of them.  It seems they all say only those things they think will be approved of, and if something is said that is not, then they change it until it is.  And that seems to me all sides not just the one you might favor.  They only point to the best of what they have done, ignoring any aspects that might be less than favorable.  I have to vote because I want to have a say, but more and more I think my vote doesn't really make any difference, that it's too hard to know what any candidate stands for or what any of them can or will do once elected.  You just have to vote and take your chances.  All those people seem to me so far removed from my regular life that I don't understand how they can say they understand it.  And my circumstances are not bad compared to so many people in dire straits.  I hope everyone who is eligible to vote does.  Even if you think it's futile and no one is speaking to you or about your circumstances, it's the process that makes up democracy.  In a world where children are shot for supporting education for everyone, not just the males, where so many really have no say, it seems important to vote even if feeling less than sanguine about the candidates.  We have both the right and the responsibility.

Self Portrait

I lived between my heart and my head,
like a married couple who can't get along.

I lived between my left arm, which is swift
and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.

I lived between a laugh and a scowl,
and voted against myself, a two-party system.

My left leg dawdled or danced along,
my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.

My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation,
my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.

Let's just say that my left side was the organ
donor and leave my private parts alone,

but as for my eyes, which are two shades
of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.

Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow
while Adam puts his right foot down.

No one expected it to survive,
but divorce seemed out of the question.

I suppose my left hand and my right hand
will be clasped over my chest in the coffin

and I'll be reconciled at last,
I'll be whole again.

Edward Hirsch

This poem is a schizophrenic as I feel some days, like there are two or more of me trying to live in the same body, inhabit the same mind.  The aspects he finds divisive I do as well . . . right and left, two takes on a shoulder, sinister and righteous, but yes, divorce is out of the question, and in the end I will come to some kind of accommodation, I hope somewhere short of death <chuckle>.  I feel it's the same with the country, divorce is out of the question and we will just have to live with all sides of those questions and their consequences.  No one knows what will be helpful, each side thinks they have the right answers and the facts to prove it, but I am raising my left eyebrow, and live somewhere between a laugh and a scowl, the only two party-system to which I think we all belong when it comes to politics.

October 24, 2012

It's dark out and I have to leave early for school.  It seems so odd to be going out into the dark, but it's the season of later dark.  I heard that same mocking bird, same run of songs this morning but only once.  Perhaps he was trying to go back to sleep . . .

A friend sent me a poem that she had written, and it was full of all the daily things I love to write about.  I asked her if I could send it in my morning note and she gave me her permission.  I've known her a long time and it is great to send out work by her.  She usually writes science fiction stories, and non-fiction books about space for children.  I'm glad she has not given up on poetry entirely!

Just Another Day of Another Year

by Marianne Dyson, or someone like her

It's just another day of another year

His mug on the table

Basket full of inside-out socks

a trail of grass clippings across the floor.

He can't hide anything from me

That popcorn smell lingers

Here's another bookclub book we didn't order.

Kids might like it

We both know they won't

We walk around the block

19 years, the same block.

The eyebrows say it all

So and so's grass is high again

Really should fix that driveway

Wouldn't you like a door like that?

We should at least paint ours

All those greasy hand-prints

Rather have a new car

What, to drive to the dollar movie?

Why not. It's only a dollar.

He hits every light on the way

The movie is okay

Kids think it's stupid

Everything is stupid.

But it was only a dollar.

Long line in the lady's room

He waits for me, hands in pockets.

Don't feel like cooking

Send out for pizza

Really shouldn't eat that stuff.

God is great. God is good.

Kid got an A on his spelling test.

Someone found a 2-headed turtle in the ditch.

We are not surprised.

These things happen.

It's just another day of another year

Let the cat out and come to bed.

For us it's the leaves that trail across the floor, and the one-sock phenomenon instead of inside-out.  And I often wonder what people walking past our house make of the sky blue door with white clouds.  After a trip downtown once, where I saw a lovely red door with a black vine painted on it, I came home and painted our door sky with clouds, and I have loved it ever since.   Our dollar movie theater closed a short while back, we will miss it, as we often didn't think to go to see a new movie until it had been out awhile and the only place it was still open was the dollar theater.   A litany of ordinary and some surprising things, that don't really surprise because . . . these things happen.  Another day of another year, and I have to leave and meet with twenty students wanting to learn a new skill, to make something creative!  Though dark, it's a good morning already! 

October 23, 2012

Clouds giving way to an absolutely clear vibrant blue sky, the kind that makes your eyes ache to look at it!  It's warm and humid, but still a very lovely day.  Every thing appears as if you are looking through a lens that makes it sharper and clearer.  The nice thing about fewer leaves is you can see more of the birds.  Two blue jays are bouncing around the bushes outside, as they bounce from branch to branch they look as if they are creating there own storm of movement in the smaller branches, which flip up after their passing and tremble, eventually quieting only to be bounced on again.  The mockingbird with the terrific repertory was outside this morning, singing in the dark, and I was lying there listening to him.  He must have sung the same really long sequence of song at least seven or eight times, I was amazed that he could remember the order of something that long and complicated, and it sounded like he was having a great time!  Usually I don't here any birds often in the dark except the owls and one time that loon, but occasionally something makes the mockingbirds wake early and start singing, and I was glad to listen this morning.

Sometimes we are what we know . . . and sometimes what we don't . . .

Not knowing

I may not know my original face

but I know how to smile.

I may not know the recipe for the diameter

of a circle but I know how to cut a slice

for a friend.  I may not be Mary or the Buddha

but I can be kind.  I may not be a diamond

cutter but I still long for rays of light

that reach the heart.

I may not be standing on the hill of skulls

but I know love when I see it.

Stephen Levine

The one I like is . . . I may not know the recipe for the diameter of a circle . . . I love that it's a recipe not a formula, a recipe, something we use every day, an ordinary thing, the sharing.  And I can be kind . . . everyone can be kind, but most of the time we forget to do it, or are too busy, or are not forcefully presented with the opportunity, which is when we need to just look around and see what needs to be done.  I would like to think that I know love when I see it, but sometimes love takes strange forms that we may not recognize.  I may not know my original face, but I like the face I have now, and it does know how to smile! 

Sometimes in looking for poems I find a website that is worth exploring and gives me a lot to think about.  Today I found a website that asks the question . . . why do you do what you do?  And people answer with a photo and a sign that gives their answer.  Some answers were heartbreaking, some were joyful, some were hilarious, literally!  Anyway I thought I would include a link here www.wdydwyd.com so that you might see what I am talking about.  My favorite one so far showed a person in a wave, the ocean big and roiling and in pale white letters it says:  Because the line between persistence and futility is often less than clear.  It cracked me up because it is so true and we all know it!

October 22, 2012

Such lovely weather we've been having, but warmer than usual and more humid, still you can't complain too much, it's better than snow or bitter cold!  This morning I left a little later, late start to school today, and there were so many birds making so many kinds of song you would swear we lived in an aviary!  Little birds, big birds, sea birds, crows, jays, cardinals, mockingbirds, woodpeckers, and more adding their small notes to make up the overall song!  Amazing!  While it started out kind of overcast, now it's large tracts of blue with a scattering of thin white clouds, and still we have the breezes.  Been awhile since we've had stillness.  Everything is moving, and leaves, ones besides the crepe myrtle's, are falling.  Each day the gold crown creeps down the maple tree.

Yesterday, I'm not sure what happened to the blessing . . . I didn't remember to do it until it almost wasn't Sunday any more and by that time I was too sleepy to stay awake to do it, so I thought I would just send one today.  Mondays are good days for a blessing because sometimes we don't feel so blessed about having to get up and go to work!

Morning Prayer: Prayer for Expressing Gratitude

Gracious God,

in the busy-ness of my day, I sometimes forget
to stop to thank you for all that is good in my life.
My blessings are many and my heart is filled with gratefulness
for the gift of living, for the ability to love and be loved,
for the opportunity to see the everyday wonders of creation,
for sleep and water, for a mind that thinks and a body that feels.

I thank you, too, for those things in my life that are less
than I would hope them to be. Things that seem challenging,
unfair, or difficult. When my heart feels stretched and empty,
and pools of tears form in my weary eyes, still I rejoice
that you are as near to me as my next breath and that,
in the midst of turbulence, I am growing and learning.

In the silence of my soul, I thank you most of all
for your unconditional and eternal love.

No author cited.

This prayer, a prayer of gratitude, says a lot of things I think about, some of the most important gifts are ones we don't often think about as gifts, the ability to love and be love, sleep, and even water.  How many places in the world go without fresh water, something we too often take for granted.  And even when things are not going as expected, we are learning, and growing, never far away from the One teaching the lesson, the One to bring us comfort.  So this is a great blessing bent on reminding us we are blessed even when we don't recognize those blessings.  Being reminded, I will even be grateful for going to the grocery store, as it could have been . . . otherwise, and is otherwise for a lot of families in these hard times.  NPR is having their fall campaign today and teaming up with Meal on Wheels, ready made food for senior citizens, making it possible for them to stay in their own homes, surely a blessing for them!

Today find something to be grateful for, something you might not have noticed . . . otherwise.  I am grateful for 20 new students ready to learn something new and make beautiful things!

October 20, 2012

It's a lovely morning, the sky is cloudless and the deep vibrant blue of low humidity, a blank slate waiting for whatever the day brings.  There is a warm breeze and the birds seem happy to be among the changing leaves.  The maple is getting its golden crown and more than half the little gold coins of the crepe myrtle have been shed.  Sitting here, I have seen two pairs of cardinals in the trees chirping at each other, and the little flock of wrens, gray and tiny, swoop among the trees not alighting but just flying for the sheer joy of it I believe.  Earlier a woodpecker was rapping out a quick tattoo on the tree at the end of the neighbor's drive way, the dying one across the ditch.  It must be infested with some kind of bug because the woodpecker was there quite awhile.  More people have been out walking this morning than is usual for a Saturday and later too!  Women friends chatting as they walk quickly around the corner, kids with dogs at their heals walking in a troop, excited, talking loud enough for me to hear them in side, their hands making broad gestures, as if to help explain whatever they are trying to say!  The black dog from our near neighbor went running up to them and they didn't even notice I don't think, just kept on walking and talking.  The dog stood in the road and watched them go!  The deep rumble of a couple of chrome and black motorcycles with riders in shiny helmets (riders with brains) took the corner slowly, almost crawling as if to prolong their scenic ride.  Everyone seems to be enjoying their weekend.

I finished preparing for my new class yesterday, a basic beading class, the last one at Westbrook this year, as I will teach at a new school next nine weeks.  They have just started this program for gifted/talented students there and needed teachers who had done mini-courses before to help them get started, so the last two nine weeks I will teach there.  I had such a good class this time, they certainly seemed to enjoy it and I could tell a lot of them had not only improved techniques they were familiar with, but had tried a lot of new ones, some discovering new loves among the art supplies provided.  Some had never used stamps, some had never used stencils, or done collage, or used oil pastels, and so they got a chance to work with all those new things!  When they did their cards "In the Style of . . . " the students not only got to explore the artist they chose but got introduced to the ones other students chose, and I did too!

Several of my students chose Degas for their artist and in honor of closing out this class, a poem by Philip Levine where he imagines Degas had come to his intermediate school to give a lesson . . .

M. DEGAS TEACHES ART AND SCIENCE AT DURFEE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL

Detroit, 1942

He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, “What have I done?”
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, “You've broken a piece
of chalk.” M. Degas did not smile.
“What have I done?” he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. “M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles triangle.” Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. “It is possible,”
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
“that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn.” I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I’d be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, “You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark.”
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.

          Philip Levine

I love that it is a middle school where he imagines Degas giving the lesson, that the same girl who gives the triangle answer also gives the one separating the dark from the dark . . . and this could go on forever, each one seeing what they would see and thinking about what the others would see.  I love this poem, and I know that a lot of my students would have enjoyed it, perhaps next time I will read it to them.  Now I just like the way even a single line, when noticed, can mean whatever it calls up to us, and not only will it be different for each of us but different on different days, and unending realm of possibilities that, thankfully, will never end.  The same, I think for poetry, or any art, more meaning than even the poet intends and not always the same one, but as varied as the light spilling through the trees into the back yard every moment, and even the dark is full of its own meanings.

October 18, 2012

A blustery shadowed fall morning, cloudy to start but growing brighter as the morning passes.  Some days I get distracted trying to find a poem; I feel like a small child in a candy factory with every thing around so delicious and shiny and attractive!  The internet is like that factory, every click brings a new world and takes you further and further away from your original intent.  But sometimes it brings you back too, and that kind of exploring opens doors that you might not have gone through otherwise.  It seems the wind is doing some exploring of its own today, coming and going through the doors of trees, and though I know it's mostly coming from the north, my chime is singing loudly and with gusto, it is swirling about the yard as if coming in from every direction.  The fat squirrel is sitting on the thick branch of the crepe myrtle, all hunched up with its tail twitching as if blown about by the wind.

I'm glad not to have to go out today, glad to do this morning note, and then grade my students projects, and their work from this week.  I enjoy seeing what they choose to do when given only a framework they must fill in.   Some are okay with that, and can make cards that show a variety of techniques and styles and themes.  Some are more comfortable with doing the same type of thing for nine cards, same technique, same theme.  I would like to dump some of them out of their comfortable box and encourage them, really encourage them, in the truest sense of the word, engender them with courage to try something new, to not be afraid to make mistakes, to take a risk or two.  It seems to me that for them making a mistake is a tragedy, something to be avoided at all costs, and they don't realize how much you learn from mistakes, that mistakes can open whole new ways of doing things, that mistakes are often made because you are moving on, getting into areas you have not explored before, territory without a map.  Perhaps these students are too . . . safe, too protected, risk is not encouraged, not part of their lives.  While no one wants their child to fail at anything, or be hurt, those experiences are part of life and how we deal with them make up a lot of our character, and are very educational.  I am sure any adult can remember a lot more about how they coped with hurt or failure than they can any number of good weeks where nothing untoward happened.

I did not find the poem until I was writing about getting into unexplored areas, then I remembered a short poem by Wendell Berry about taking a spiritual journey.  I found it among some poems I had saved.

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,

no matter how long,

but only by a spiritual journey,

a journey of one inch,

very arduous and humbling and joyful,

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,

and learn to be at home.

 Wendell Berry

I would like my students to take that one inch and find themselves at home in a world where mistakes are common and knowledge is more important than getting everything right the first time.  I think it is an arduous journey to embrace mistakes, one I am still making, still mapping out.  It does seem that is one of the gifts of age, you are not as afraid, are willing to be wrong and admit it. 

This morning the ground at my feet is full of wind and noise and movement.  There is something exhilarating about wind, something in us that recognizes the urge to travel, to move along and touch everything.  I am continuing on the spiritual journey to love my mistakes, to take in all the beauty that surrounds me every day, learning to be at home wherever I am, in the moment of now. 

October 17, 2012

Home from school and the morning has moved through its hours already.  This morning when I left the sky was gray chalk over a watery turquoise, and the sun that just barely showed over the horizon looked like it was floating up from the bay, washed out and dripping pale yellow light.  Yesterday it rained from late morning through this morning early, a gentle steady rain that soaked everything.  The trunks of the trees this morning are still darkly streaked with wet, and the leaves have lost some of their dusty yellow look.  The banks of black-eyed susans and ragweed look fresher and more gold, the ground saturated with all that rain.

What I tend to notice after such a rain is how dark the earth becomes, how rich it looks under it scattered cover of leaves, and the smell of it so thick you almost can't breathe.  I never thought about it but I guess I believe in . . .

The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever
Mary Oliver

We certainly know this rain is not forever having gone through last year's seasons of drought, knowing so many places still struggling with that.   The god of dirt seems to talk to me, it's the god of green growing things I need translated as I don't understand anything he says but . . . tree, and tree, and another tree!  I often hear the crow voice with its loud and insistent now, and the tiny frog voice, peeping and chirping like a flock of tethered birds.  Even the dog voice, the mutter of the small one next door and the baying of some hound in the dark last night, so mournful and loud enough to carry over the whole neighborhood.   Over long years of days and waking nights, I have learned that nothing is forever, but when you are young there are things that feel that way.  When older, you will find it's much easier to slip on the sweater of now against the chill of forever, and it's now that will keep you warm, and the mornings filled with light.

October 16, 2012

Now it's beginning to look as much like fall here as it ever does, most of the trees are beginning to turn some shade of brown or yellow.  Scattered leaves are blowing around in the winds this morning.  Over head blue is receding draped in a thin cirrus haze, my favorite gauze curtain look.  Some kind of bright red berry has ripened and is glowing on a vine outside the window, small clusters of impossible red.  The mini-magnolia continues to put out fans of new leaves, lighter green than the older ones with some shades of rust along the edges and close to the start of the leaf.  Only the gray striped cat is out this morning, and very few birds, though I could hear some jays earlier.  They seem to be out most often, though I would say cardinals and mockingbirds are not far behind.  Once in awhile there are sea birds, gulls or terns, the occasional egret or heron, woodpeckers both small and large, somehow unless the tiny wrens and finches come to the water bowl I rarely see them.  Texas just has a LOT of birds most of the year, and I don't think we ever see half of them.

Yesterday there was a news story about how amateur astronomers found a planet orbiting a binary sun, and what was really strange is that two other suns orbit the two suns the planet orbits.  Just when you think things can't get any stranger, something comes along and . . . well, I guess there is never enough strange!  So I found this poem about an unfamiliar outlook, with a "punny title" and thought I would send it because you know the amateurs who found that planet are wondering if it would be like that planet in Star Wars with the binary sun . . . Tatooine.  Seeing our planet from space has change the viewpoint of a lot of people, and not just astronauts.

Mars Poetica    

Imagine you're on Mars, looking at earth,

a swirl of colors in the distance.

Tell us what you miss most, or least.

Let your feelings rise to the surface.

Skim that surface with a tiny net.

Now you're getting the hang of it.

Tell us your story slantwise,

streetwise, in the disguise

of an astronaut in his suit.    

Tell us something we didn't know

before: how words mean things

we didn't know we knew.

Wyn Cooper

I think that must be a common experience among poets and writers and other people who deal with words, as we all do:  they often mean things we didn't know we knew.  That writing sometimes surprises us with something new we didn't know, or something old we just didn't want to acknowledge.  What will the first people who get to Mars think of the Earth, their left-behind home?  Will they be too busy with their life there to give it much thought, will they find that leaving behind a whole planet is sort of like growing up and leaving home, wrenching to begin but soon you get used to it?  I want to say I can't imagine being in that situation, but I can imagine it, just don't know if that imagining would come anywhere close to  the truth of the experience.  You can say that for a lot of things.  Can someone from Pakistan imangine my life, or I theirs?  How about people in Alaska, do they know the heat we have here or can we really imagine an entire white winter?  I am sure alien is a word that simply means not like me, and in that respect there are a lot of aliens here already, yes?  

October 14, 2012

When I went out to shake the rugs this morning it was more like spring than fall, so many birds chirping and conversing, and generally making a lovely musical racket!  The sky is falling, from the clear pale blue when I got up, it's falling into white clouds and thicker and diminishing the sun to a smooth even shadowing over all.  You can still see the blue above but it's fading fast as the cloud clump like so much instant pudding being stirred by the wind.

Sometimes I find the Sunday blessing on Wednesday as I did this week and keep it and reread it until I send it this morning.  I love this morning's blessing because while remembering the needs of the body, it also prays for the needs of the mind, prays for bread and insight . . .


The Blessings of Earthiness: The Next Step

Hawvlan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana

(KJV version: Give us this day our daily bread)

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight:

subsistence for the call of

growing life.

Give us the food we need to grow

through each new day,

through each illumination of life's needs.

Let the measure of our need be earthiness:

give all things simple, verdant,

passionate.

Produce in us, for us, the possible:

each only-human step toward home

lit up.

Help us fulfill what lies within

the circle of our lives: each day we ask

no more, no less.

Animate the earth within us: we then

feel the Wisdom underneath

supporting all.

Generate through us the bread of life:

we hold only what is asked to feed

the next mouth.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

 Neil Douglas-Klotz  

Yep a good prayer, grant what we need in bread AND insight.  And believe me, I need a lot of insight!  I like the idea of each only human step toward home lit up, light seems to be especially important to me, after seeing dimly for so long I am flooded by light, and animate the earth within us, if we knew the earth like we know our homes, and it is our home, we would easier find the greater Wisdom, don't you think?  Take only what you need and leave the rest, is a hard lesson to learn, we all have so many wants that when we are given what we need we look around for more, and sometimes feel that we are not getting our share.  I am not sure what my share is, but I am sure I am not sharing enough, and sometimes need to be reminded that we have so much already.  Today when I order beads from Beads for Life for my class coming up, I will be reminded that such a small thing as buying beads from these women gives them so much!  I use them so the students can be introduced to how even small businesses set up to actually give the profits back to people who make what they sell can create such a difference in lives and futures, and to help them realize we live in a global community, and what benefits one helps us all.

Make your own prayers this Sunday, and I hope the greater Wisdom grants us all bread and insight!

October 13, 2012

This morning the lavender sky was so pale, and as the morning filled with light, until clouds appeared trailing across a blue that was more imaginary than real.  Now, it's blue all right, the high shining blue of early fall, and the clouds come and go without notice.

We went to lunch early today so I might talk to a friend's mother about having cataract surgery.  She was so full of frightened questions, and I am sure what I said did not answer them all, but I am also sure that she understood I am filled with nothing but admiration for my doctor and excitement for how well I see now.  Perhaps just talking to someone who has had the experience will relieve her anxiety.  I hope so because there is nothing I can say that comes anywhere near how miraculous the result is.  And if she got nothing else from it, she could see that I was pleased with everything I could see, and had elected to have the second eye done as soon as possible, even enlisting my doctor to go to another hospital so I would not have to wait three weeks to have it done, and that he did it says a lot for him as well!!  Once she has had the surgery, I truly hope she will be as pleased and amazed as I have been!

I spent so much time looking for a poem this morning I almost did not get ready to go out in time.  Now, almost the first one I see is one I had not read before and which moved me, thinking of us walking through all the woods of our youth! 

In a Blue Wood   

The couple in Van Gogh's blue wood is walking

where there is no path, amid tall,

seemingly branchless blue and pink trees. The tree crowns

are beyond the frame, reaching up into our mind's eye—

because we know where trees go and that they are full

of wind and a thousand softly stirring

machines that are alive. Equally out of sight, for

nests of intricately woven strength and fragility hang

like proofs that there are no diagrams or maps

for life's most important journeys. The horizon

at the couple's back, between the trees, is black.

They walk toward light. Crowds of waist-high flowers,

on thick-leaved stalks, sing in stout slurries of pink and white.

The couple cannot think of anything good

ever coming from anger, so they are more happy than not.

That could be true. Maybe I want it to be

true of me, of us. And like us, they may have worn paths

to the most forest-deep secrets in each other's lives.

Or perhaps they are only now on their way to the place

where they will become lovers, the excitement of their flesh

through their clothes singing, making them careless,

giddy, and light as birds in flight.

Of course, we can't know any of this. Perhaps, even Van Gogh

didn't know anything about them: so many unseen possibilities

lived in a blue wood, so like ours.

Richard Levine

I often look at paintings and make up stories about the people or the scenes in them, it's half the fun of going to a museum, all those stories to see.  I also happen to believe there are not diagrams or maps for life's most important journeys, otherwise each new couple would get their own marriage manual, and all new parents would get a book of instruction when the baby comes into this world.  And for us, we also cannot think anything good ever comes from anger, and so mostly we are not angry and when we are it easily fades into our normal good nature.  All our possibilities have come to this reality, and I cannot think of anyone I would trade with, for all there are times of annoyance and being out of sorts, they are just that, annoyance and out of sorts, not big upheavals or fights, because we cannot think of where else we would like to be or of anyone else that would share so much of our lives or love us for just what we are, warts and all!

It's a lovely Saturday, the sun pouring a clarity of light in the windows, and little pieces of the blue sky with loud voices hop up and down the tree branches exuberant and raucous.  People are out walking, families, lovers holding hands, kids on bikes, dogs, cats, all enjoying sun and breeze.  Hope you get a chance to do the same, enjoy the day!

Van Gogh: Undergrowth with Two Figures