January 30, 2013

What a difference a day can make!  Yesterday:  gray, humid, soft air, warm, springish.  Today:  clouds vanished by 9 am, windy, cool if not cold, dry air, winterish.   Everywhere the wind is making sounds:  the cane makes a rattling swishing sound, the chaste tree's little twigs clatter, pine trees sigh and moan, and when there is a big gust (and we have had some HUGE ones) the sound of wind itself, when you really understand what they mean when they say an ocean of air.  Wave on wave of sound moving between the houses, out onto the road, making everything move and vibrate its own peculiar song.  Clouds pop up for a moment, bloom like skyflowers, then just as quickly go to seed and vanish.  An enormous one appeared right in front of me, not there one minute, slowly it built up luscious whipped cream heights, then . . . poof!  Vanished just like that, torn apart and swallowed up by the dry wind!  Amazing! 

And what would be more appropriate than a poem about . . . wind! 

Wind 

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons. 

Ted Hughes 

I think our house has felt like that today, "the windows tremble to come in," and our birds too seem to be having trouble with the wind.  A large vulture made a rough landing in the tree they have claimed as they own.  It seemed that is skidded down before it caught a branch and huddled there.  I see a couple of them, dressed in their somber undertaking suits, hunched facing into the wind.  The sun is strong and bright and the sky is the color you think of when you say sky blue.  Empty at the moment of any cloud at all.  When it rained last night, the wind was already strong.  We heard this scrabbling sound, and just having gotten rid of the squirrel that had taken up residence, I was afraid we would have another, but it sounded bigger than a squirrel.  When Mikayla and I went out to look in the beginning of the rain, it was a raccoon that was scrambling there and it took off up the roof and away in the dark.  I heard it a while later come down again, evidently having found no way in.  My husband did a good job of plugging up the holes with tin and foam. 

It's been an interesting morning, even the students were unsettled by the wind I think, more talkative and louder than usual.  I had to remind them several times that it might be our classroom but it was still the library! 

Hope you have a blue sky day, with or without wind.  I am basking in the sunlight and hope it continues for awhile!

January 29, 2013

A gray and overcast morning, making me feel sleepy, and out of sorts.  My new Windows seems some morning just too much to deal with.  I think I will get used to it in time but its awkward, kind of like stiff new shoes that make you feel every step instead of just walking without thought.  There is hardly any birdsong and no light this morning, everything in that hazy gray, not fog but not clear either, too much humidity.  One of the big roaming dogs is across the street rolling in the grass.  Perhaps his back itches. 

Today wants a poem of joy and I am going to send one of my favorites.  I have given myself permission to send my favorites any time I need them and today I need this one . . . 

Love Calls Us to the Things of this World 

  The eyes open to a cry of pulleys

and spirited from sleep, the astounded soul

hangs for a moment bodiless and simple

as false dawn,

                       outside the open window

the morning air is awash with angels. 

  Some are in bedsheets, some are in blouses

some are in smocks: but truly there they are.

Now they are rising together in calm swells

of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear

with the deep joy of their impersonal breathing; 

  Now they are flying in place, conveying

the terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving

and staying like white water; and now of a sudden

they swoon down in so rapt a quiet

that nobody seems to be there.

                                                   The soul shrinks

  From all it is about to remember,

from the punctual rape of every blessed day

and cries,

            “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry.

Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam

and clear dances done in the sight of heaven.” 

  Yet, as the sun acknowledges

with a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,

the soul descends once more in bitter love

to accept the waking body; saying now

in a changed voice as the man yawns and rises, 

            “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;

Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves,

Let lovers go sweet and fresh to be undone,

and the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating

of dark habits,

                       keeping their difficult balance.” 

                                           --Richard Wilbur 

Today is my wash day and so a poem about laundry is perfect.  My favorite line is "Let lovers go sweet and fresh to be undone" and I remember the nuns who taught me all through school in the last line, "keeping their difficult balance".   Today I need the poem to supply the "world's hunk and colors" as there are not many today, though I will say the grass is coming in a bright spring green. 

While I am doing the laundry, folding the sweet smelling towels, and hanging up the clothes to keep them smooth, I will think of all going out into the world to be . . . undone by the beauty of it, in clean clothes, in care taken for all the everyday things we do!

January 28, 2013

When I sit down to write the morning note after class, it's a different world out there, though today it is so overcast it might be early morning.  However, the cast has changed.  The morning dog walkers are at work or doing other things, the school buses are all in the barn until afternoon, and the birds are so busy with whatever birds do this time of day they forget to sing.  It's so quiet, the absence of wind making it even more so.  And the light, the sunlight and shadows are missing today, everything looks kind of flat and dull, the sky more white than gray, though there are some grayer bits, but there is no blue and no sunshine.   Trunks of trees look darker, the wood of the crepe myrtle does not glow is streaked and almost gray.  I noticed everything is growing a quick bloom of some kind of green mold, taking advantage of the humidity and the unseasonably warm days we've been having. 

When I looked for a poem this morning, I found this one and I had to laugh, remembering all those dandelions gone to seed in the median the other morning, and the weeds that make up most of what I fondly call "grass" in my back yard, and the cane so many find . . . annoying! 

Meeting of Mavericks 

Milkweed grows by my fence.

Don't ask me to pull it.

Weeds were my friends in childhood--

emerald explosions

in the dull cinders of train track,

green lace a the sleeves

of our water trough.

Eyes starved for color

were well fed by fireweed

elbowing tin cans aside

to take over the dump. 

I live in the city now,

but claim kinship whenever

an uncombed head of a dandelion

pops up like a gopher

in the midst of a groomed lawn,

or a purple thistle--

remembered from roadside ditches--

looms insolent

in an enclave of roses. 

Today a prickly thing

I don't know the name of

is exploiting a crack

in our sidewalk.

I greet it as friend:

"Hello, I too

like to challenge the fissures

in my firmament,

squeeze through, sometimes,

more often fracture my skull." 

My new acquaintance braces his spine

along the crack, and shoves.

Cement crumbles.

I think tonight

I will sneak out and water

this one! 

LoVerne Brown 

I, too, think I would have watered that one!  It's always been amazing to me why some things with flowers as lovely as in garden grown beauty are called weeds.  For example, loco weed or Jimson weed have weed in their name, yet they are the same flower painted by Georgia O'Keefe under the title White Trumpet Flowers.  It's a beautiful flower, yet considered a weed.   This morning I guess I am feeling a little sympathy for the weeds.  Our school had tours for the mini-courses for the incoming sixth graders and their parents.  They have had them for years now and today's was no different.  Yet one of the parents was . . . horrified, is that too strong a word?, to learn I was not teaching my students any techniques only explaining how things might be used or answering their questions about whatever they wanted to know.   I had already explained I wanted them to experiment, and was trying to foster confidence in their own choices, and giving them time, and a place to share their art.  Somehow, that did not seem to satisfy at least that one parent and I am sure others might have been thinking that a class like this was too . . . easy.  But on of the hardest things to learn is to trust your own judgment and to develop your own . . . style, faith in your idea about what is art.   When the tour was leaving, one parent, a dad, came up and asked my name and shook my had and said, "You are a very interesting person."  And I am hoping he meant that kindly! 

And from the poem, we have those purple thistles with huge tufty blossoms, and people cut them down by the trunkful from the side of the road to dry them and use them for . . . decor!  So even the weeds among us can have a "useful and unpretentious" purpose! 

Glory for today in your maverick tendencies!  You can be the thistle instead of the rose, they both have thorns AND lovely flowers!!

January 25, 2013

Foggy again . . . thick fog in patches, mostly by the water.  It seems that we're destined to have fog for a few more mornings at least.  But this afternoon is lovely, warm and springy, blue and bright and breezy!  I wish all the people north of us who are having such terrible cold and ice could have some of this lovely weather.  I'm not sure how they survive such cold!  I hear temperatures like 6 degrees, or zero, and think there are few things in the world that would be worse for me.  I kind of agree with the Vikings that hell must be a very cold place!  Again, I am glad to live where I do.  Today if it gets up to 81 we will set a new record and last time I checked it was 78, at around noon, so . . . we just might get to it! 

Sometimes you just want a poem to say something you have thought of before in words you hadn't thought of, so it is with this poem.  Charles Bukowski often put things in a way that makes you think of bold-faced type, that what he wants to share means a lot to him and he wants to be sure you are taking it all in! 

the laughing heart 

your life is your life.

don’t let it be clubbed into dank
submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the
darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you
changes.
know them, take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death
in life,
sometimes.
and the more often you
learn to do it,
the more light there will
be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have
it.
you are marvelous.
the gods wait to delight
in
you. 

Charles Bukowski 

I like that this poem does not promise a lot of light, but any light beats the darkness, and that the more often you beat death in life, the more light there will be.   There is such light today that it's hard to imagine it was so dark and foggy this morning.  There is a saying here, "If you don't like the weather, just hang around awhile, it'll change."  And it's true, very few places have weather that can be so different so often.  The sky is always changing, and it gives you the feeling that anything can happen, just like this poem.  This life is your life, and every day darkness can be defeated, maybe not forever, but long enough for you to see what the sky offers, to wait it out for a different kind of weather.  At the moment, I am watching a noisy blue jay bounce around the bare branches calling out in his little crow voice.  I don't know what he is saying but I like to think its a salute to this lovely spring day in what should be the dead of winter!

January 24, 2013

Fog again, the early morning gray should give way to bluer sky, but the sky hangs low and gloomy this morning.  The maple buds grow steadily, now visible easily from the window.  Everything is looking limp and wet. 

 

The birds are quiet, only the mockingbird making song.  A tiny green anole raced up the crepe myrtle's trunk and disappeared, like a stroke of chartreuse lightning but leaving no char behind only a streak of green lingering in the vision.

Today a longer poem because I recognize it, because of the aggie bird at Armand Bayou, that chased the mullets down the length of the murky brown water always entering where the mullet popped out of instead where it was, so it escaped and the bird went on its silly way chasing the dream of mullet always ahead of it. 

Mullet 

The stupid joy of mullet.

All along the Laguna Madre, mullet

fling themselves into the air for the tiniest sliver

of eternity.  Thinking they're flying .  Stupid mullet.

Escaping their watery world by three inches, maybe six.

The weight of their tails pulling them back

even as they ascend,

so they never complete an arc,

never cut loose of those watery bonds.

The soul of mullet escaping gravity

for a millisecond.  And then the dull splash.

Over and over, their short-lived conversions.

All along the Laguna, the plop, plop,

plop of mulled sucked back home.

And again they're at it.  As if throwing themselves headlong

up into the abyss.  Falling short.

And throwing themselves again.  And again the splash.

Their hope and my despair.

The pure illogic of mullet. 

A plover flying watches this.  Then skims the surface,

three inches above the water, beak open in

  expectation.

It owns the air.  It is the anti-mullet.

A grebe calling, cackling, hooting.

A gull drops headlong

into the water, breaking its glassy plane

on this still day.

Redwing blackbirds, slightly heavier

than a breeze, ride cattails down to the bog.

On shore the cattails are beaten down

  where alligators bed.

Water, sand, air dissolving into each other

at this convergence of the physical universe.

A place of shifting gravities.  And again, plop,

the mullet.

Geoff Rips 

There's something satisfying about both the "stupid joy" of the mullet and the dogged determination of the bird that was chasing it.  That the mullet just had to see what was beyond its watery world and that the bird just knew sometime it was going to actually catch one and satisfy its hunger for that silver flesh.  And me, I can root for both of them impartially, wishing there were some way for both to have what they want.  Sometimes I think I am like that mullet, just trying to see what is beyond the daily world, and sometimes like that bird where what I am chasing, the wisdom or the knowledge is always just beyond me.  And there is always the natural world, open for observation, for entering in, for learning, and most days, that's enough for me.

January 23, 2013

The fog horns tell me what I will find even before I get out of bed.  The dark is compounded by dense fog, the streetlights are shrouded, the trees just dark silhouettes, barely visible.  The gray is slowly made visible by the sunrise, though you really can't see the sun from the house, and the light is feeble at best.  When I get out and on the road to my class, the sun is a red rubber ball just barely visible above the horizon of the bay.  It looks very red with orange leaking out the sides and top pushing away the fog and streaking the sky until it is too light to see that deep a color.  The air is calm, motionless, sounds muffled by the quilt of air. 

By the time I get out of school, the sky is a bright blue with few clouds, mostly high, thin, almost puffy ones.  As I write they are schooling together like fish, gathering and moving in the same direction.  The fog has vanish and there is a little breeze now.

 

This morning I found a book in the school library, quite by accident, a book by one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye.  It's an anthology of work by Texas poets and artists, Is This Forever, or What?  Makes some interesting combinations.  She starts the introduction by saying Texas has 2, 842 miles of state line, and that from Texarkana in the east to El Paso is farther than from Chicago to New York.   When I am talking about Texas to people not from this country, they think it obscene that a state has enough width for two time zones, yet Texas is not the only state with that distinction, just one of the larger ones.  So I thought I would send some poems from her book.  I liked a lot of them, and not just because of the Texas connection.  She seems to have a knack for picking poems that encourage us to notice the world and keep believing in what we find there: natural beauty, the kindness of strangers, the home of the heart which is the family.

 
something

I look to you
keyboard
to say something to me
to bring me some intuitive wisdom,
to console me, construct me,
converge me
to send me a message through

  my fingers

and your page

to reveal something

I wish I already knew. 

I look to you

mailbox

to bring me something wonderful

to bring me something special

to change my life

to put something priceless

in my hands

that perhaps is already there

but I have no way of seeing. 

I look to you

telephone

to transmit some important message

  to my ear

to give me news

good news to make a connection

between me right here right now

and me someplace

in what I can be

and might become yet

but am still a stranger to.

 

I look to you

new day

perhaps tomorrow

perhaps tomorrow

always waiting for something

something

to happen. 

Carmen Tajolla 

The things that connect us to other people, keyboard for me for sure, the mail box, the phone.  It does seem we are always waiting for something, some distant time when conditions will be right for what ever we want to do.  When today things are as right as they can be, but we can't recognize that, we are caught up in the searching, in the fear of beginning, in what failure might come, so we miss the rightness of the hour and keep waiting.  I'd like to think that somewhere in that waiting will come a moment that hits us like a sucker punch and we realize that it's time to start, time to make that change, time to do what we are meant to do. 

It's a new day, let's stop waiting, let's do something with the day, begin, move along, finish!  Something!  Night will be here all to soon, but it's in the day that dreams come true!

January 22, 2013

The sky slowly faded through all those lovely shades of indigo until it was the familiar dawn shade, welcoming the sun, lighter toward the horizon.  Birdsong started out slowly but soon you could hear several kinds, mockingbirds, one of the owls hooting sleepily, a crow, and a bunch of the little twitters.  More birds than I have heard in a long time so early anyway . . . 

The long slanting light fills the yard in stripes of sun and shadow; the two cats, the striped male and the jungle black one have each had their turn of inspection.  A woman walking three dogs at once rounded the corner and seemed to have things well in hand, the dogs of various sizes all trotting along, looking glad to be outside. 

It's chilly but not cold this morning, the coffee smells wonderful and I will have to get some before it is all gone.  There is a bit of breeze but only enough to show you there is a breath of air.  Not even enough to ring any chime at all, but it might be picking up because earlier there was no wind.  One of the squirrels has been sitting still as stone in the sawtooth oak, every once in a while you can see the tail twitch but that's all.  I'm wondering if it's asleep or just enjoying the sun. 

Now It Is Clear

Now it is clear to me that no leaves are mine
no roots are mine
that wherever I go I will be a spine of smoke in the forest
and the forest will know it
we both will know it

and that the birds vanish because of something
that I remember
flying from me as though I were a great wind
as the stones settle into the ground
the trees into themselves
staring as though I were a great wind
which is what I pray for

it is clear to me that I cannot return
but that some of us will meet once more
even here
like our own statues
and some of us still later without names
and some of us will burn with the speed
of endless departures

and be found and lost no more

W. S. Merwin 

This poem reminds me that though I look out the window every morning and think of this as "my" yard, I think I understand that it is only on loan, that all those things I enjoy every morning really belong to themselves, I just get to enjoy them.   It reminds me that friends even far away are always as near as thought and I only have to remember them for them to be found and lost no more.   I'm not sure I am praying for a great wind, it seems to me that wind only makes cold colder, but it does make the trees converse with it and each other, and holds the birds I so enjoy seeing aloft in their familiar sky!  If I were a spine of smoke in the forest, that could be a dangerous thing, where there is smoke there is fire, and I am sure the woods would not want to deal with fire, however I like the idea of drifting through the trees and seeing all there is to see.  It would certainly make me . . . lighter on my . . . does smoke have feet?  I suppose not.   And smoke would soon vanish, and I would rather stick around.  

The wind has risen, and is shaking the bare branches, making stick music, clattering and stiff.   When there are leaves it sounds more like ocean, but absent leaves it makes a different kind of music, harsher, more percussion than woodwind.   I am blessed by an abundance of beauty here in this place, where even the rapacious cane dances its own brand of joy, and the birds come and go as they please!

January 21, 2013

Well, it's an afternoon note today.  Just got distracted this morning, and it slipped my mind until now, and I actually had something interesting to talk about today.  This morning there was a great blue heron in the yard, right at the end of the driveway.  I saw it as it became light, the sky the blue ash color just before it gets to be daylight.  It was foggy and the heron sort of appeared there, kind of like a weird magic trick.  It did nothing for the longest time, just stood there on its improbably long stilts and bobbed its head.  This was one of the biggest I have seen, easily 4 feet tall, perhaps taller, I have a hard time estimating height, but it was only a couple of feet from Mikayla's car and it looked like its head was just a little shorter than the car and it was farther away.  I watched it to see what further magic it might perform, and I was not disappointed.  When I looked down at the keyboard for a moment, it was gone when I looked back.  I did not see if it walked away or flew, it had just vanished.   For some reason, the large birds like the herons, egrets, cranes, the ones with long stilty legs, they are just so fascinating!  They are improbable, elegant, and amazing, and continue to be so no matter how often I see them or how long we have lived here where at least the herons and egrets are pretty common.

When we went out this afternoon to go to the movies, I realized it is spring, and my maple tree has the right of it.  Dandelions had gone to seed in the median by the park, making their white alien puff balls in long bare gray stalks.   And when we went past the bank, the temperature sign said 77.  And it's January!  At least that's what the calendar would have us believe!  I will be glad if we have a long, long mild spring!

Looking for a poem today, I found a new magazine, Orion Magazine, that has poetry and deals with environmental issues as well.  A lot of their poems are nature oriented or seasonal.  They actually had one about . . .

The Blue

heron is gray, not blue, but great enough

against brown-tipped bowed cattails to be

well-named, is known for its stealth, shier

than a cloud, but won't fly or float away

when it's scared, stands there thinking maybe

it's invisible though it's not—tall, gray,

straight as a pole among the cloudy reeds.

 

Then it picks up one stem leg. This takes time.

And sets it down just beyond the other,

no splash, breath of a ripple, goes on

slowly across the silt, mud, algae-

throttled surface, through sedge grass,

to stand to its knees in water turning

grayer now that afternoon is evening. 

Now that afternoon is evening

the gray heron turns blue, bluer than sky,

bluer than the mercury blue-black still pond.

So when did it snag the bullfrog

hanging, kicking, in its scissor beak?

To look so long means to miss the sudden.

It strides around like a sleek cat

 

from pond to bank and back, blue tall bird,

washing the frog, banging it against stones,

pecking almost as if it doesn't know

what to do now that it's caught such a thing.

How fast its beak must be to shoot out

like an arrow or that certain—as it's called—

slant of light. Blue light. Where did it go? 

David Baker

I will agree that the great blue heron is more gray than blue and I have seen them move with their careful balanced gait.  The backward knees always seem so . . . odd, but then no odder than the rest of the bird.  And I have seen them catch fish, and they are definitely fast, a blur of beak and feathers, then a lot of swallowing with their head tipped to the sky.  The last line is so perfect for what happened this morning, "Where did it go?"  I don't know but I like to think it just dissolved with the fog and perhaps will return with it some other morning.

January 20, 2013

Oh, I am loving this sunny day where there is only a wisp of cloud against the brilliant blue! Yesterday when Mikayla and I went out for errands the sky was so weird. There were long thin lines of cloud, some thick enough to be a little puffy but a lot of them thin like wrinkles, as if someone pushed up a sheet of blue and white silk so that the white part was raised up and the blue part was flat against the table. It looked sort of like blue and white corduroy, and I don't think I have ever seen clouds quite like that before, the further distant they were the thinner the lines, gave you a kind of vertigo to just look up at them. You really couldn't tell much from our house because the trees close in but out where there is more a vista of sky, it was a remarkable sight! One I am glad I was out to see!

Today there is a faint breeze, just enough to rock the wind chimes and have the hard drive one catch the light but not enough for any of them to make a sound. The yard is so sunny, it seems the grass, or what passes for grass under all the trees gets greener in the winter because there is a lot more sunlight with no leaves. Just about the time it's looking pretty good, the leaves return and it dies back again! And it won't be long before there are leaves again. My maple trees is already putting out leaf buds and it just lost the last of its leaves last week. That was a really short rest for it, but I have to suppose that it knows what it is doing, it's been doing it for years now, but this is so early for new leaves. I believe this year the trees are just a little confused about the seasons. It's warmer today than it has been and though the house still feels chilly to me, I suspect that is just my reaction, though my husband is still wearing a long sleeved shirt <smile>.

There have been more birds out this morning, from the time I got up, mockingbirds and mourning doves, and in the distance crows calling. The vultures are not in residence in that old tree across the ditch, perhaps they are out for a ride on the thermals, today we might actually have some warmer ones!

I think there must be a blessing for sunlight somewhere, because Shawn called and even he was glad it was sunny after days of cloud for them, unusual for El Paso. I think he must live in the right place just like I do, he, too, gets gloomy when the weather does.

Today is the day for the blessing . . . and we all could use a little . . . balance!

For Equilibrium

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind love to call things to dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of God.

John O'Donohue

I like this prayer because it calls us to be lighter than we are, light like the day, like water, like time, like listening. If we give up our . . . gravity, taking everything so seriously, so importantly, I think joy has an easier time entering us. I love the idea of wind calling things to dance! And the dignity of moonlight, and taking various shapes like water. I am sure I have the hang of that one, as I think sometimes I am too easy to take the shape of whatever appeals to me at the moment, but like the idea that I am still becoming, so it's all right to like new things, to have enthusiasms, to get caught up in the excitement of learning something new and practicing it! I know God laughs when I discover one more thing to be amazed about, but it's the kind of fond laughter a parent has for a child that still has so much to discover! And I am discovering, boy, am I discovering!

And just to make me smile, the line about irony makes me think of the nice young lady who orders my cards at Texas Art Supply. She often has on a black tee-shirt that says, "IRONY the opposite of wrinkly" and it makes me chuckle every time I see it. What a creative way to use language! A fine example of thinking out of the . . . circle that tries to encompass all the "useful" definitions of words! I think that is a very useful use of irony, it's joyful!

So have a joyful week, listen for the laughter of God, you know it's got to be out there and in us as well. There can be a lot in this life that just reminds us not to take it and ourselves so seriously! Look around, human beings are . . . funny, it's one of our redeeming qualities, as well as being able to see that humor not only in others but in ourselves as well!

January 18, 2013

It's been awhile since I have heard the birds so early.  One lone mockingbird is singing a short run of song over and over, and one of the male cardinals is making the "swee, swee, swee, swee" sound every few minutes.  The sky has slowly faded through that beautiful indigo into a kind of baby blue, the sort of color you might chose for a newborn boy, smooth and fresh and young.  To the east there is a little fading, kind of lavender and rose.  High above I can hear a jet trailing its huge roar across the empty sky.  Trees still cling to the darkness, shadows are everywhere and only the faintest wash of light enters the yard.  The cat is up, and is patrolling the perimeter, stopping now and then to raise its head and look at the sky.  Two little wrens or sparrows flashi upward through the tree, the twigs shivering as they pass. Lighter and lighter it grows . . .

 

In reading through poems for this morning, I stopped at this one . . . I've sent it once before and remembered it fondly.  For me the daily things in life, the view out my window, routines, creative work and a lot of not so creative work, all make up the bones of my life.   I can dress the flesh how ever I want to but the bones still support everything else that goes on.  Though I am sure my old bones may be getting tired of the work, they still go on, as I do.

The Inner History of a Day 

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

John O’Donohue 

We do seldom notice how each day is a sacred place for the eucharist of the ordinary, the bread of daily life.  That the sacred is not relegated to places of worship set aside for holiness, but rather part of each day like bread, or the silence of early morning, or the thoughts we take for inspiration with the air we breathe.  I like to think we have more dignity than fear, that we are betrothed to the unknown, now there is an idea I find really appealing and full of wonder!  It takes a lot of the fear out of the concept of what is unknown or what cannot be known.  I am doing the secret work of trying to get the mind of the day to lend me enough wisdom so that I can learn from whatever I am doing, whatever the day brings. 

Today it brought several fields of frost and one field by the school of the smaller cattle egrets and grackles.  I think I noticed it because the egrets are so very white, but what was really peculiar was how the egrets had on portion of the field and the grackles another.  I am going to start carrying my new camera around in my purse because I was wishing I had it.  The stark black and white of the two flocks was softened by the muted frost and wisps of ground fog.  When I came out after class, the field was empty, the sun had melted both fog and frost, and . . . who knows, possibly the birds as well!

January 17, 2013

It's dark out, too dark to see more than the ghostly shape of the crepe myrtle tree outside my window, a pale reflection from the light of this room spilling out. The wind has moved on and it is silent and still. I can feel the cold creeping in from the glass, one of the drawbacks of lovely big windows. I got our little space heater and put it on a chair beside my desk, it makes a soft whirring as it moves some warm air around but still I find myself shivering occasionally. I am such a wuss when it comes to cold, that I am glad I live where I do, that heat is mostly what we have, and that the cold is only a short term thing. The truck that brings the paper every morning when around the corner, its characteristic throbbing engine revving up down the road past the curve, its taillights like twin red comets through the dark. Yesterday on my way home from the market, I noticed most of the trees have lost all their leaves now, except for some of the little tallow trees that are still holding on to those deep maroon leaves they sometimes have. 

One of my students was drawing an odd tree for one of her cards, when I asked her to tell me about it, she said it was a binary tree, that she had to look up binary tree for math and once she did, she decided to draw one. Her tree had a trunk that went straight then divided into two big branches, each of which divided into two, and so on until the branches got really small. She put the occasional leaf on a branch but mostly they were bare. I told her I would have to look up what a binary tree was as well. And I did, it's a diagram where every node has at most two choices, or at least that's what I got from the explanation. And I realized, after learning this, that her tree was a pretty good representation of the concept as well as an interesting . . . tree! I like how kids make such connections, she took something from her math class, something that appealed to her and made it into her art. This is why I love doing these classes, to see just that kind of thing! Looking for a poem this morning, I found one that seemed to do the same thing, make some really odd connections. It made me laugh! 

To David, About his Education 

The world is full of mostly invisible things,

And there is no way but putting the mind’s eye,

Or its nose, in a book, to find them out,

Things like the square root of Everest

Or how many times Byron goes into Texas,

Or whether the law of the excluded middle

Applies west of the Rockies. For these

And the like reasons, you have to go to school

And study books and listen to what you are told,

And sometimes try to remember. Though I don’t know

What you will do with the mean annual rainfall

On Plato’s Republic, or the calorie content

Of the Diet of Worms, such things are said to be

Good for you, and you will have to learn them

In order to become one of the grown-ups

Who sees invisible things neither steadily nor whole,

But keeps gravely the grand confusion of the world

Under his hat, which is where it belongs,

And teaches small children to do this in their turn.

Howard Nemerov 

I'm not sure that even putting your nose or the mind's eye in a book is going to help with the confusion! But I will say it does make for more interesting confusions! Now when I see a bare tree with all its branchings that student's binary tree will be part of that lovely confusion of ideas that comes in with the idea of tree. We learn so many facts, it's how the brain arranges them, all those connections that make them revelant to us, and I love how Nemerov teaches David in such a clever way about those connections that often make more confusions but in such an interesting fashion. Children are not so confused by the world, they just take it as it appears and make up their own stories about it. Perhaps that's what appeals to me about poetry, poets make up their own stories about things, make slant associations, make me see the world for a moment in a wildly different way. Who when hearing of Plato's Republic after reading this poem won't think of rainfall there, or the calorie count of a Diet of Worms <chuckle>! Now I wonder how many times Byron goes into Texas, or if he ever did! Too bad we often try to teach children to keep those luscious confusions under their hat <smile> instead of, like my student, making art of them! The world is full of facts, what we need is more . . . confusion!

January 16, 2013

Well, it's about time now to start the new year! It's been cold and gray and miserable for days but today . . . today there is sun! It's still very cold and very windy but the sky is a hard winter blue, empty as a slate, no cloud scribbling across that vastness, lifting higher and higher. My maple has finally lost all its leaves, almost overnight, it's bare and thin against the wind. The new green leaves the sawtooth oak put out are now rags of brown fluttering from twigs. Now that the trees with leaves has let them all go, there is so much light, when there is sunlight that new things are visible, curved gray trunk of the sycamore, its branches bare now as well, are dark on the side away from the sun where they are still wet. They look like a charcoal drawing against the cold watercolor sky. The ground is sodden, wet and rumpled under foot, though I try to avoid the biggest puddles as my shoes are not made for water. The wind is drying everything up though as is the sun. It's supposed to be warmer this afternoon, but I'm not sure the forecasters and I have the same idea of what is warm, not in the least. 

I am amazed at how much better I feel when there is a little sun. The dark gloomy skies leaking slow rain seemed to be pressing down on my spirits, and this morning's sun suddenly arriving has buoyed them up the way a calm sea lifts a sailing ship on its long quiet swells! The light, an abundance of it here nearly at noon, seems to be content to paint everything with the same bright brush, huge swathes of color, green and gold with shifting patterns of shadow, the almost white-gray of the road, the warm brown of the roofs, the dark feathery green of the pines, all highlighted by sunlight! Nice to be able to see so much! 

I wanted a poem about light this morning, about the birds flying, about the bare trees . . . After all this time I wanted something that speaks not only to the day but to how I find myself this morning, how this day means . . . 

Unknown Age

For all the features it hoards and displays
age seems to be without substance at any time

whether morning or evening it is a moment of air
held between the hands like a stunned bird

while I stand remembering light in the trees
of another century on a continent long submerged

with no way of telling whether the leaves at that time
felt memory as they were touching the day

and no knowledge of what happened to the reflections
on the pond's surface that never were seen again

the bird still while the light goes on flying

W. S. Merwin

The light goes on flying this morning, and I don't know how the leaves that hung on so long this year touched the face of the day, and then vanished in the wind, but they did, they went flying as the birds do, as the light does from this huge blue deep of air. For all the features of age, perhaps the one I like best is having more time, not being so busy that I don't notice the world. I ask my students what they observe, had them draw one card about one thing they observed closely, and it was hard for them. They really are so busy that they rush past nearly everything but the next class, the next assignment. They don't seem to have time to just sit and think about things, to talk quietly to other students, several say they love to draw and make "art" but they don't have time. So, now they do, and it's taking them a while to realize that this class is about that time. Not about techniques, not about art history, not about instruction, this is a class for having time to play, to experiment, to make choices. I see it on their faces that they don't really believe it, not yet, but they will. Some are getting the hang of it, in a couple of weeks their cards will get better, they will let go of the idea of right and wrong and just do. Sometimes I think I have not got there yet myself! In one of my student's paper about What is Art? She said that you should not be afraid of doing something wrong but more afraid of staying the same. Wow! That really hit home with me! Most people are about doing what they know, what they know they can do well, and I include myself in that group, but what if we were all afraid of staying the same? What if we were more afraid of NOT changing than we are of changing? It would certainly be a different world. That's why I like teaching these classes, I learn so much and they keep me reminding me of things I know already and making me see things in new ways. So today, I am working on not staying the same, on not being afraid of trying something I will not be good at. We'll see how it goes . . . I need a lot of practice! 

The light is getting in everything today! Bravo light! Paint the world joyful!