The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...: September 2017

Sunday, September 10, 2017

upside down at the park

Upside down

Easton likes to look at things upside down. Here he is demonstrating by hanging over my lap at the Rock Bend Folk Festival, just getting a new perspective on the huge crowd of funky people. It's a really good idea, the upside down version of the world. When you start to get a little glum or grumpy, tip your head and look at things in a new way.

The park was filled to the brim yesterday. Many vendors (which I will look at more closely today), wonderful music, good friends and family, food and drink. A bee took a bath in Regis's beer and fast little bugger that he was, managed to bite him on the end of his tongue before being spat out upon the grass. Other than that, a good time was had by all.

We're going back today because there's more music that we love: The Frye, City Mouse, Everett Smithson, Erik Koskinen. It must be what heaven is like...good music in the sunshine surrounded by all this hippiness. Peace and love, man.

Friday, September 08, 2017

morning

Ever since the election, I have felt compelled to check the news first thing every morning just to make sure the person occupying the White House hasn't done anything crazy. Most days he has which only serves to reinforce this bad habit.

This morning, there was political news but also forest fires, the aftermath of Harvey, the impending doom of Hurricane Irma, and two more hurricanes forming and lining up to pummel the already battle-weary islands in the Caribbean. Did I hear something about earthquakes, too? It's all exhausting but for some reason, this round, I am able to watch it and let it go. It doesn't weigh on me all day like it sometimes does.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours with Easton who is almost 8 months old. He loves to watch the cars and trucks roll by on Broadway, he loves his toys, and he loves to play pat-a-cake. He grins at me now when I go in to pick him up after his nap. It's fun to watch him move...for a baby who doesn't crawl yet, he's pretty quick!

Yesterday, the sedum in the garden was covered with painted ladies. A sweet calming for the spirit.

Today, I'll go to yoga. And I've been spending time outside every day. Every single day.

Funny how we mark time with firsts and lasts and every years. So many first day of school photos are being posted on Facebook. I love them all. For most of my life, I went back to school in September, either as a student or as a teacher. One of my friends who is considering retirement is going through all the last of the firsts. Bittersweet in many ways.

The local folk festival, Rock Bend, started in 1991. I'm pretty sure I have been there for at least a part of it every year for 27 years. The weather should be perfect for it this weekend and if want to experience some pure soul cleansing, this is it. Sitting in the September sunshine, listening to music while the smell of BBQ drifts across the park talking to friends and maybe holding a baby. Bliss.

I'm working at the Arts Center this afternoon. Ah, life.

Thursday, September 07, 2017

ah, september

The shorter days in September serve to remind me of the things I usually do in the summer that I didn't do this year. Woody and I like to start the morning on the back porch, he in the window and me in the hammock chair with a cup of coffee. Not this summer.

We went to a furniture store yesterday and bought me a recliner. I have always loathed recliners because they are gigantic and ugly. I found one that is less gigantic and therefore not as ugly as some so it should be satisfactory. I may be able to rid myself of the low back and shoulder pain that has come from sitting awkwardly in a chair that allows me to slouch. I could have picked out a custom fabric but that seemed like too much trouble. The fabric on the chair I bought is called Brass and I like that. I always bought wine by the label and I guess I do the same with chairs.

Since last week, I have been true to my word and I'm spending at least an hour outside every day. Some days I do something productive like work in the yard and some days I just sit and watch the sun go down. I'm storing up Vitamin D for the long days of darkness.

We have a new tiny girl grand-daughter since I wrote last. She was under 6 pounds last time I held her. Her bitty legs didn't go to the bottom of her newborn sleeper. Such a miracle. We're still waiting on the other baby...the boy named Sullivan. I wish he would make his appearance because, well, because I worry. The doctor is hoping for one more week in the womb and I guess he knows best.

A not so busy day today. House picking up this morning and Arts Center this afternoon. Music in the park to look forward to this weekend.

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Winter Grace

by Patricia Fargnoli

If you have seen the snow
under the lamppost
piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table
or somewhere slowly falling
into the brook
to be swallowed by water,
then you have seen beauty
and know it for its transience.
And if you have gone out in the snow
for only the pleasure
of walking barely protected
from the galaxies,
the flakes settling on your parka
like the dust from just-born stars,
the cold waking you
as if from long sleeping,
then you can understand
how, more often than not,
truth is found in silence,
how the natural world comes to you
if you go out to meet it,
its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,
its vacant birdhouses, and dens
full of the sleeping.
But this is the slowed-down season
held fast by darkness
and if no one comes to keep you company
then keep watch over; your own solitude.
In that stillness, you will learn
with your whole body
the significance of cold
and the night,
which is otherwise always eluding you.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Permission Granted

by David Allen Sullivan

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don't have to bury
your grandmother's keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don't need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube—the machine's wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world's pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes ...

See the homeless woman following
the tunings of a dead composer?
She closes her eyes and sways
with the subways. Follow her down,
inside, where the singing resides.

"Permission Granted" by David Allen Sullivan,

from Strong-Armed Angels.

Gratitude by Barbara Crooker

This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war

grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer,

or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of

for twenty or thirty miserable years—

And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man

with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times

have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines

through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves

as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree

that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow:

cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings,

and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up,

so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers,

Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world

sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s

sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock—

And at least today, all the parts of my body are working,

the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter,

finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page,

know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing

on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in,

flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought.

And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands

in gratitude, bend to the sky.

From Line Dance (Word Press, 2008).

Starfish by Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life's way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won't give you smart or brave,
so you'll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
stopped when you should have started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Do Not Expect That If Your Book Falls Open

Dana Gioia

Do not expect that if your book falls open
to a certain page, that any phrase
you read will make a difference today,
or that the voices you might overhear
when the wind moves through the yellow-green
and golden tent of autumn, speak to you.

Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the
dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon
your shadow walks beside you on the wall,
and the days stay long and heavy underneath
the distant rumor of the harvest. One
more summer gone,
and one way or another you survive,
dull or regretful, never learning that
nothing is hidden in the obvious
changes of the world, that even the dim
reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass
is more than you will ever understand.

And only briefly then
you touch, you see, you press against
the surface of impenetrable things.

Riveted by Robyn Sarah

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious dénouement
to the unsurprising end — riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

"Riveted" by Robyn Sarah from A Day's Grace: Poems 1997-2002

I Was Always Leaving by Jean Nordhaus

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through.

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself

Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.