Crossroads

 Influenced by Steven's marvelous post, I've planned my day:

 

here the road of hurry and rush

here the street of noise

here the way of helter-skelter thought

here the path of forest and tree

here the hush of clouds

here the way I chose today to walk

It Won't Be Me

Over and over I thank my lucky stars that I am not responsible for inventing new things. If I was in charge, we'd still be back in ancient times, hanging out in trees and eating fruit with worms. There'd be no fire, no wheel, no sewing needles, no sickles or hoes or threshing machines, no cotton gins or paper or railroads, no TV or packaged food or rocket boosters or cell phones. Think how far we've come just in the past twenty years. Then watch this and be amazed at all you didn't know!

Did You Know 4.0

www.youtube.com


photo courtesy of: abc.net.au

Monuments to Imagination

My refrigerator has always been a repository for fine literature and great works of art. Stick figures drawn by tiny hands, mosaics made in art class from bits of colored paper, cartoons cut from newspapers, scrap paper quotes, their ends curling against magnets, a few photographs, a poem, a recipe or two—whatever catches my eye or piques my interest is apt to spend some time stuck to the door or the side of the fridge where I can see it often.

Since magnetic poetry was invented, my refrigerator has also become a poet’s corner. My kids gave me the artist’s version for Christmas. Words like sculpt, create, and masterpiece abound and short poems, one-liners, and clever quips are blossoming like forced paperwhites all over the door.

For example, “Live wild, weld nude.” (The thought gives one pause, doesn’t it?) How about, “dazzle with metaphor,” or “chisel her beauty in concrete.” One of my favorites, “stop inside and water the moon,” is right next to, “she is more like an angel than I imagined.”

I’m especially taken with a short poem that appeared behind a departing guest. “Come see the glorious green water, like harmony and rhythm painted on a shimmery canvas.” You can tell a lot about people by the poetry they leave behind.

Now and then, I take all the phrases apart, scramble the words and lean against the counter, letting my eyes scan the offerings until some new combination appears. The words seem to associate on their own. The next thing you know, “black ink looms as a monument to imagination.”

To Look, To See

Ancient wisdom suggests we look at each day not as if it was our last, but with new eyes, as if every day was our first. Finding that thought compelling, I step out into the sunrise and am struck by the beauty and the mystery of everything around me. I leave my yard to walk along the edge of the pond in the growing light and watch the sun coat the ripples with silver. Last year’s dried oak leaves dance toward me in a sudden gust of wind. I look up and my eye is caught by the movement of small birds high over the pond, swallows perhaps. They are too far up for me to tell, but their joy is clear as they swoop and rise and sail out over the water and back, diving and skimming and soaring again and again. The sun touches the undersides of their wings so that they seem to float on feathers of pure light.

The wind swoops through the tops of the pines, rushing from one to the next, whispering green secrets. The boughs rise and fall as though breathing and I am caught up in the sound and the rhythmic dance of dark needles against blue sky. Then the wind is at my feet, whirling the loose snow into miniature cyclones before blowing off across the open fields, losing itself in the woods at meadow’s edge.

Later in the afternoon and into the evening as the light wanes and the day’s colors melt into darkness, I will walk again beside the pond, watching the water, different water now, new water, make its way to the falls. I will understand again that nothing lasts, though nothing appears to change, and tomorrow and tomorrow I will see again with new eyes the same ordinary things.

Here and Now

Life

is good

in my little corner

of the

world.

Good News

A natural upper: There will be an increase of three minutes of daylight over yesterday...

WInter Day

My days are filled with birds.




Dawn brings the seed-eaters to my doorstep. The two feeders that hang from the bare branches of the lilac bush are always filled with millet and sunflower seeds for the small songsters that winter over. By first light the chickadees, the little white-breasted snowbirds, and a pair of cardinals are breakfasting just outside my window. They come unannounced and speak quietly among themselves. Only the jays make noise. They perch and sway on the bendy branches at the very the top of the lilac and screech. I stand at the door and watch them, the steam from my teacup curling up and fogging the window. When I rub it with my sleeve, the motion frightens them and the jays take off like buckshot.

Most times when I open the door the chickadees merely flutter and hop to the far side of the bush. They are not as timid as the snowbirds or the tiny finches that dart off at the slightest movement. If it is not too cold, and it is near their feeding time, I can stand still with my hand outstretched and a chickadee or two will light on my fingers and eat the seed from my palm.

Where summer birds herald the sunrise, winter birds don’t sing at all – they talk. They twitter to one another. They might chirp a warning or tootle a couple of notes but they don’t sing melodies the way songbirds do. They’re too cold, I suspect, and too busy eating. Their limited tonal offerings only accentuate the great silence, that deep hush that descends with the cold and underlies all sound.

Car Games

It used to be the custom for children to be seen and not heard. When I was a child, it was our duty to be heard, especially in the back seat of the car on a long journey. (Any car trip that took more than seven and a half minutes was considered long.) To keep us occupied—and reasonably amused—my parents relied on a number of car games. Now that kids have their own mini-TVs and video games installed by auto manufacturers, these games will probably go the way of the Model-T.

Our favorite was the license plate game simply because it had the most variables. We began by seeing who could collect the most out-of-state-nameplates. Shouts of, “I’ve got six New Yorks,” and “Yeah, well that Vermont one is mine!” made my father’s knuckles go white on the wheel after a few miles.

Next, we’d make the numbers on the passing plates add up to a hundred. When we tired of that, we spelled words with the letters. I’ve never told, but often before the hour-long trip to Holyoke to visit our grandparents, I would look up words in the dictionary, hoping to stump my little sisters. “Spell acrimony,” I’d suggest. They’d just look at me. “No,” Jackie would reply. “I’m going to spell monster.”

We often expanded the list of available numbers or letters to billboards and the numbers tacked to signposts. Or, instead of spelling words or adding numbers, we found all the letters of the alphabet, or the numbers 1-100 in succession.

Our efforts at amusing ourselves weren’t limited to math and language arts. We sang songs, favoring the unending rounds that eventually made my father threaten to leave us by the side of the road if that %$#@ bear went over the mountain one more time. My mother would look at him and say, “Jay,” very quietly. He knew she meant he ought not to be increasing our vocabulary. In retaliation, he taught us Army songs. We’d bowl along the highway, yelling in unison, “And those caissons went rolling along,” until he was sorry we knew that song, too.

One of my uncles let slip that if we did not hold our breath going past a cemetery, the ghosts of the dead would enter our noses or mouths, a thought so horrible that when we knew we were approaching a cemetery, we would hold our breath ahead of time, just in case. My mother disapproved of such nonsense. My father welcomed the respite.

As we grew older, the games became less sophisticated and more physical. The boys favored punch-buggy. Anytime we spotted a Volkswagon Bug, the first to see it cried out, “punch-buggy!” and whatever color the car happened to be. A solid punch to the upper arm was delivered at the same time. My arms were perpetually “punch-buggy blue.”

Padiddle was the girls’ favorite. It required a kiss at the appearance of a car with one headlight. My eye was keener at night, apparently. It was an especially exciting game if there happened to be two fellows and one girl riding in the back seat. It’s a shame, really, about those in-car TV and video games.

Resolutions

Big things insist on our consideration. They are in our faces, demanding action. It’s the little things, the quiet moments, the often unnoticed inflection of voice or questioning of eye, the small tootle of a morning bird, the singularity of a snowflake, that need our awareness.

So, we begin to listen to the unspoken, to see beyond the obvious, to open the eyes and ears of the heart. We begin to pay attention and in the very act of noticing, we acquire what we need most – perception, insight, patience.

In the silence, we get to hear ourselves – and that just may be all the incentive we need to make a change.

Clean Slate

January snow
a crisp, white page
a new year.

Nature sketches
last years grasses
to remind us of next June’s.

Hardwoods show their bones
redbirds paint
the hemlocks.

In the cold pewter sky
a crow featherstitches
the clouds.

White flakes drift like
windblown curtains -
January snow.



Photo curtesy of Russell
http://iowagrasslands.blogspot.com/

New Year Haiku

Of Gods and Astrology

Janus and Pisces
look both ahead and behind.
The old is made new.

Tis the season...

1. Apple cider, eggnog, or hot chocolate?

Yes, please. Let’s warm the apple cider and swirl a cinnamon stick in it, sprinkle the eggnog with a generous dash of nutmeg, and drop a puff of whipped cream or marshmallow fluff in the hot chocolate while we’re at it.

2. Turkey or Ham?

Erm… yes, please. Why make a choice between the two when you can have both? But, keep these two meats for pre-and post Christmas Day sandwiches, please. I like Roast Beast for Christmas dinner.

3. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?

The jolly old elf sets them in my hands and I wrap them.

4. Colored lights or white on the tree?

Oh colors, please! Blue, red, green, gold – lights are the reason I still keep setting up a tree, even though I live alone in a tiny space.

5. Do you get a fake or real-you-cut-it-yourself Christmas tree?

All my trees have been real. Most of them I’ve tromped into the woods to cut down myself, but now and then, when I can afford it, I buy one whose roots are wrapped in burlap for planting after the holiday season is over.

6. Favorite Christmas song?

Manheim Steam Roller produced a Christmas album some years ago that is still my favorite. Next come Brenda Lee’s Rockin Around the Christmas Tree and Elvis’s Blue Christmas (can you tell what era I grew up in?). My favorite carols are Silent Night and Away In A Manger (holdovers from a happy but Catholic childhood).

7. How do you feel about Christmas movies?

Give me the Grinch Who Stole Christmas every year. I also loved the World’s Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever and the one about Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

8. What is your favorite holiday dish?

Oh, that should be plural! Warm, sugar-frosted stolen on Christmas morning; rare roast beef for dinner; the addictive almond brittle smothered in chocolate that I learned to make as a teenager; my mother’s dark fruitcake laden with fruits and nuts and soaked in brandy; decorated cookies – spritz, sugar, gingerbread; a high, three layered, lemon-filled white cake, frosted with buttercream icing and smothered in coconut; warm cherry-cranberry pie.

9. When is it too early to start listening to Christmas music?

Start the barrage two weeks before the day. Anything before that makes it all redundant.

10. What is your favorite holiday smell?

Another plural. Balsam; snow; cookies baking; chocolate, warm bread.

11. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?

Do you mean the truth that he still exists despite the silly rumours to the contrary?

12. What kind of decorations are on your Christmas Tree?

My tree is a haven for nostalgia. There are old glass ornaments from my parent’s first Christmas, some frosted, glitter-sprinkled ones from my childhood, a number of wooden ones from my children’s home years, and a few newer ones that have been gifts. Colored lights weave amongst the branches and reflect in the tinsel that hangs from each branch tip. A small angel overlooks it all from her perch on the spire.

13. Do you open a present or presents on Christmas Eve, or wait until Christmas Day?

Both. We have always had a Christmas Eve celebration where one gift each is opened. When I was a child, we drew names and bought for that one person. The rest of the gifts are opened in the dark of Christmas morning. We light the tree, make coffee or cocoa and take turns oohing and ahhing.

14. Go to someone else's house or do they come to you?

Both. When I was a child, my grandparents came to our house. When my children were small, their grandparents came to our house. Now that I’m the grandmother, I go to see my grandchildren on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is spent with my brother and his family and whichever of my children can come home to me.

15. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?

Both! There is great pleasure in either one; such fun to watch someone unwrap a gift you’ve chosen especially for them and equally fun to unwrap a treasure someone else has chosen just for you. If we don’t receive gracefully, how do we allow another the pleasure of giving?

Happy Holidays to all.

Between the sky-blue-pink
hours of today
snow and then rain
fell from a quilted sky,
the trembling branches of a fir tree
yielded to the ax,


squirrels vied with birds
for suet and seed,
ordinary objects were
wrapped and ribboned into
gifts, soup bubbled on
the back of the stove,
while the cat, wise soul,
slept.

After the Storm

My footprints are like
indecipherable words.
Ink on new fallen snow.

All the evergreens look like Christmas trees after a snowfall.

Even the huge red maple on the front lawn was frosted.

Yesterday the geese left - we should have heeded their warning...

Took a walk in the black and white landscape between the snowfall and the coming rain.

Poetry & Silence

Author John O'Donahue says poetry is the language of silence. I walked the Cobble on Sunday to live those words.








In the crystal woods
The water talks to itself.
Poetry stalks trees.

Waiting for Snow

There was no visible sunrise this morning, just a lightening of the sky above an army of threatening clouds marching solemnly along the horizon. Small birds fly before a heightened wind, zig-zagging from fence post to tree branch to bird feeder. In the strange half-dawn light, tree branches become arthritic fingers trying to snag the flapping crows that cut a razor-winged path through the morning sky.

On the other side of the window, lamplight makes soft shadows in the corners of the room. The teakettle sputters and hisses, the grey cat curls up in the rocking chair to sleep, the leaves of the geranium plant in the window lean toward the pane, seeking the pale light, waiting on the promised snow.

*note: the season's first snow started falling at 3:00 PM

Sunshine on my shoulders...

and leaning against the trunks of winter-bare trees...


gilding the undersides of the oak leaves that cling until January winds blow them far and wide...

Making pen and ink sketches of solitary elms...

and a watercolor of the pond.

Live the question, be the answer

The old homeplace...

I came across this list of questions recently. I like lists. I like the places questions like this lead me. I like rereading the answers years later and comparing then to now.

1. A person opens a fortune cookie ~ what does the fortune say that you have written?

Your good is coming to you now. I like that phrase - it can mean all manner of things from what's good for me to what I think is good. Covers all bases.

2. You are having a long lunch at the TimeTravel Diner ~ what three people from history will be joining you?

General James Longstreet (he’s a relative and we can talk strategy), author Richard Bach (so we can talk about Illusions), and Albert Einstein (so we can talk about everything).

3. What has been the primary area in which you have worked and what other job would you be most interested in pursuing?

I am an author and a teacher simultaneously and have been for years. I’d like to be retired with time to sleep in on rainy mornings; I'd like to get in my car some day and just keep going until I tire of traveling, then I'd like to come home and rest; I'd like to search for rare, unnamed plants in the forest and get paid for it; I'd like to learn to play a musical instrument and jam with fellow musicians late into the night; I'd like to play one whole day with a bunch of three year olds. I've been working since I was eleven - now I'd just like to be a volunteer rather than pursue any one job.

4. The last thing you had to eat was what?

A piece of pumpkin pie.
Well, that was this morning when I started this. Now it's past dinner time and I've just polished off a few Thanksgiving leftovers.

5. What has been the most memorable musical performance you attended live? When was it?

I watched Arlo Guthrie (who lives down the road apiece) perform a long, long time ago. He sat at a piano on a stage in a small theater in Vermont and the audience danced in front of their seats and in the aisles and in front of the stage and in the back of the theater and out into the streets.

6. Your favorite fragrance is what?

The earth after rain, the scents of most flowers, almost anything on the BBQ. (I am allergic to most perfumes.)

7. What happens to you when you die?

You change form. All that electricity that keeps us alive has to go somewhere...

8. What do you collect?

Mixing bowls, old kitchen utensils, books, friends, ideas.

9. You have the opportunity to spend one day anywhere in the world ~ where do you go?

Somewhere cool and green and shady. Home - I'd love to go back to the old homeplace but for far longer than a day. I want to stand again on Bredon Hill in Birlingham, I want to see the French countryside and spend time in Italy. But if it's just one day, let me go back home.

10. The thing you find most interesting in nature is what?

That it exists at all. The known world is so intricate, so interdependent, so varied, so bent on surviving, and yet everything is crawling, flying, walking, swimming, and hithchiking to its death.

11. Given the opportunity to order one meal {Your last?} ~ what do you have to eat?

If it was my last meal and I knew it, I wouldn’t be able to swallow so that’s a moot point. Now, if you’d asked, “Given the opportunity to have my favorite meal,” I’d have said whatever I happened to be eating at the time. I love food (except for avacados and artichokes. And fishy fish).

12. The first thing that comes to mind when you see the word romance is what?

The word, 'novel'. Maybe I've been living alone too long?

13. You are getting a tatoo {or another one}? Where are you getting it and what will it be?

No, I’m not. I never did see the point of marking or marring, or decorating the flesh. Except for clothes, of course. But I wear no makeup, no perfume, no jewelry, no tattoos. I would have made a good Quaker, I think.

14. Friday night, what is your favorite thing to do?

Depends on the hour and the company. That goes for any night now. Friday night when I was a teenager was something to look forward to. There was no homework, no school the next day. It had the aura of freedom about it. Anything could happen on a Friday night.

15. The last television program you watched was what?

I have a TV set for watching videos and DVDs and though the landlord hooked me up with cable last year, I rarely watch anything other than the news and old Seinfeld and MASH reruns.

16. What do you find most confusing in life?

I’ve read several rational explanations about how life started on earth but I still want to know why. I've read any number of explanations for that, too, but they are all wanting.

17. What question do you wish had been on the list? And what is the answer?

Do you think life has meaning beyond the urge to continue?

Only the meaning we ascribe to it. There are so many ideas about that. It makes life interesting if not comprehensible.

Beware What the Cook Won't Eat

I'm off to visit family for a few days. This was written long ago when my granddaughter was small (now she's 9) and I knew next to nothing about blogging. I posted half a dozen entries in one day and this one got lost in the shuffle. Because of the time of year I am trotting it back out.
........................................................................

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I’m making a pie. “Can I help?” asks Fia. At three, she’s interested in being part of any cooking going on.

“Sure,” I say and we push up our sleeves, haul out flour and sugar and spices, find the rolling pin and two pie plates (one for each of us) and get to work.

She clambers onto a kitchen stool and leans her elbows on the table. “One, two, shtree,” she counts as we measure half-cups of flour and shortening into a bowl. I cut in the shortening, add the water, and mix the dough into a lump. I pull off a small piece and hand it to her. She presses it between her small hands. “We’re making pies, right Memere?” she beams. “I love pies.”

She nibbles a bit of the dough and makes a face, then watches as I sprinkle flour on the table. “Uh oh,” she says. “Memere, you’re supposed to put it in the bowl.”

I explain that I need it on the table so that when I roll out the crust it won’t stick. “Oh,” she says and helps me by spreading the flour all the way to the edges of the table and onto the floor.

I let her use the rolling pin first. Her small ball of dough rolls right around the pin. She picks it off, balls it up, and starts again. While she is busy, I measure pumpkin, milk, and spices into another bowl.

“Let me do it,” she begs when I take up an egg to crack. She whacks the egg on the edge of the bowl and drops the whole thing in. “Ick,” she says. I pick out the shells. When I hold the second egg out to her she shakes her head.

She scrapes her pie crust off the table and plops it in her dish, then kneels on the stool and puts her whole weight on her hands as she presses it flat. “How’s this?” She holds the plate up for inspection. The dough falls on the floor. She scrambles down, picks it up and blows on it. Flour dust puffs into the air. “It’s okay,” she assures me. “It was on the floor for not even one minute.”

I roll my own crust and fit it in the plate, crimping the edges carefully. Fia watches, then tries to crimp her own crust. When she is through, there is just room in the center for a dab of pumpkin mixture. I pour the remaining pumpkin filling into my pie shell and slide the pies into the oven. Fia helps me set the timer.

The kitchen looks like the aftermath of a fight in a flour mill. There is white dust on every surface, bits of sticky dough on the table, the floor, and Fia's chin, and spatters of pumpkin on the table and the stove. We fetch the broom and the dustpan. I sweep while Fia wipes off the table. I sweep again. When the last dish is dried and put away and the floor is clean enough to eat from, we turn on the oven light and check the pies.

“They look delicious,” I say to Fia. “We can eat yours tonight and save mine for Thanksgiving dinner, okay?”

Fia looks at her pie. She looks at me. “You can have it, Memere,” she says. “I just only like making pies. I don’t like to eat any.”

One November Morning

The early November air is mild and sunny. There is something about Indian Summer weather that feels like a reprieve, a reverent moment handed out before everything goes all cold and white. What's left of the bright leaves spiral down in a soft wind that, in the shade, has a bite to it though the sunshine where I sit is pure, warm gold. The blueberry bush at the corner of the house has gone all crimson. Amid the pines in the back, maple leaves blaze like yellow flames.


It has been a long, sweet fall, broken only by a rainy spell in October.

I puttered in the garden a short time this morning, pulling dead squash vines from the fence and yanking up withered pepper plants and eggplant stalks by the roots. When the wind stops blowing, I will rake the leaves and bring them by the wheelbarrow full to mulch the garden beds. In the flower garden, the rosebush by the door is still blooming.


The roadsides, however, are bereft of flowers. Only the skeletons of Queen Anne’s Lace remain. When the snow comes, the small brown seed cups will collect the flakes and offer them up like gifts.

Too soon the warm sun drops behind the western mountains and dusk falls, leaving only the cool breeze and the drifting leaves behind.