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!!