setting

Smoke and flames ... Frederick, MD

rising

Headed east into a misty sun-drenched haze.

what not to write in a journal

Not long ago, my friend and I were talking and the discussion came to our journals and the sorts of things we filled them with.  We were each adamant that the contents were never to be shared --that in fact, we could barely stand to read our own words.  We declared that we must have a "journal burning" well in advance of any foreseeable personal demise so as to prevent the discovery and examination of our deepest (most inane) thoughts.  

And for a while, I did not write.  

I have always kept a journal ... at some points in my life, more faithfully than others.  It is a practice I learned from my great-grandmother.  Every morning she would rise, dress, and brew Sanka.  Then she would move into her TV room -- which was really just the extra bedroom -- outfitted with a television, her chair, and her things within easy reach on a kind of table that they must not make anymore -- a combination sidetable with a lampstand running up through the center.  There she would start her day by reading the devotion in The Daily Word and writing in her diary.  Though she impressed it upon me that this was a personal and private practice, this much I know; every day she began, "Dear Diary,"... 

It was she who gave me my first diary.  I was able to write, I remember that, but I must not have been older than six or seven.  It was blue with flowers and it had a lock and key.  I don't have it now, nor do I do not know what happened to her volumes.  She was ninety-three when she died.  She must have filled a mountain of diaries and I wonder what she wrote for all of those years.  

I don't remember all of what I have written over my own years but what my friend and I were so troubled by were the things that we found ourselves writing lately.  I have long practiced the technique of putting down whatever comes to mind but the problem with that is, for so long, it has been the same thing.  When I stopped, I was determined not to write again until I had something different to say.  Here is what I decided; the journal is not a whipping post -- not a catalogue of faults, not a to-do list, not a litany of plans for self-improvement.

The thing about writing is, if you let it be, it's a method of travel.  You can make your way back to things that you thought you had lost or move beyond anywhere you've been.  Writing is not just an act of symbolically representing the things you know -- but a process where mind and experience and life goes farther -- without limit.  

I'm writing again, but with different rules.  I want to be transported.  

(write a poem and use the following words:  moth, angle, cloth, tangle ...)

tangles of memory

woven into ragged cloth

moth-eaten holes where truth might have been

light passes through the weave

and bends

shining through at odd angles

there are shadowy places

there has to be light to make shadows

finding the way

We have worn out a lot of things over the last few years ... clothes, coffee makers, lawn mowers, etc.  Even I am a little more rumpled ... a bit worn around the edges ... slightly faded -- all of these things are a welcome improvement.  Despite what one may dread, time can be kind -- softening and smoothing, turning us into river rocks.  But I digress ...

What I wanted to talk about is this atlas.  I pulled it out yet again today.  It has proven indispensible for wandering -- both planned and spontaneous.  It's been battered and abused but still it remains constant and true.  Few of its pages are unstudied, most of them bear the marks of planned and actual routes -- splashed and splattered with the various detrious of the road -- food, drink, dirt, tears.  I am still amazed by how simple it is though -- look at the map, look at the road and there you go, there you are.

sunset storm

Came on just like that and I rushed around to strategically open windows and doors.  I love the smell of summer rain -- especially through the screen door.

after

There is no before.  We had business to get down to.

A worthy feast ... Flying elbows -- and sauce, minor injuries and a lovely mess.  This is how we fortify ourselves.

tenderness and fear

This was the drama in our backyard today -- a fledgling so awfully young to be out of the nest.  It fluttered around in the brush as its parents perched in the trees overhead.  They swooped in to bring it food, and maybe reassurance.  My instincts were that I should do something, but it's natural for many birds to leave the nest before they can fly.  The nest gets small and uncomfortable and instead, they live in the cover of the brush while parents hover near continuing to care and nurture them until they can fly.  Despite this, I  say "crazy little bird, why didn't you stay up in the trees, its such a dangerous place down here on the ground?"

I watched the bird and its parents for most of the morning and then left for work -- reluctantly.  Details aren't necessary but the outcome is predictable, and natural, but that doesn't mean it rests well with my sensibilities.  Sometimes life is very Wild Kingdom.


I can't stop myself from making the inevitable associations with the fitful balance of holding and letting go and the bittersweet task of nurturing life so that it can go out on its own and let nature have her way.  "Fledgling" has often come to my mind when I consider my child as he moves further out into this world.  It's big and we're small.  There is only so much you can do and the rest is just hope and prayer.

buzzing

We have little claim to any landscaping talents.  Our yard is not likely to inspire many accolades ... unless you were to ask the bees.  They live pretty well here and yesterday it was bright and hot, just the way they like it.

I can feel the low, deep vibration of all this life as summer rushes to its peak.  Best to heed this advice from The Hammock Papers.

a riddle...

Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply,
Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie.
-- Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne 


A fly can't bird but a plane can:

Stopped to watch this plane soar and dive over, and over, a cornfield on my way home today.  I cannot believe that the pilot could have been experiencing anything but pure exhiliration and I was so overcome, vicariously, that I stood right there riveted -- and unconcerned that I was being gassed with pesticide.  I have a pretty good fear of heights and commercial air travel ranks right up there with all the other sometimes necessary evils.  That said, I would have given quite a lot for the opportunity to bird for a while today.

Sunday Creek

Today I had enough of being held hostage by the heat -- still too hot for most outdoor activity, but not for an afternoon behind the wheel of an air-conditioned car.  Sunday drive ... a likely cure for summer cabin fever.

I head south on Ohio 13 and drive through Perry County to the route’s terminus just north of Athens.  The landscape changes quickly and once past New Lexington, rolling farmland gives way to wooded hills.  The curves in the road become sharper and the cuts in the sides of the hills, steeper and rocky.  I drive on and ask myself questions that I’m not likely to answer.  “What goods line the shelves of the Moxie Mini Mart?” “For whom or what is Tatman road named?” “Who is the mayor of Duffyville?”

The road winds through the northern edge of Appalachia and as I make my way south, I cross both the Norfolk and Southern Railway and the Sunday Creek countless times.  The railway still moves coal from the Buckingham Mining Company near Glouster and the Sunday Creek flows south from Corning to Chauncey before emptying into the Hocking River.  The creek is part of a watershed restoration project that spans three counties.  Coal is the common denominator here and while the rise of this industry contributed to economic boom, the environmental effects and the subsequent decline in the industry have left scars.  The towns along my route show the signs of suffering -- mostly deserted but still managing to support churches and taverns.  

The Sunday Creek Watershed Group, headquartered in Glouster, is a non-profit organization working to restore and reclaim the creek, watershed and surrounding communities.  For more information: http://www.sundaycreek.org/about/index.html

Languor...

Just the sound of this word conjures images of empty porch swings, lazy dogs and still water.

This heat we are experiencing is capable of inducing a state of being where the only thing happening quickly, is nothing.  The resulting lull in activity, while uncharacteristic, is not unwelcome.  There is pleasure in doing nothing when it's too hot to do anything with real enthusiasm.  Here these spells of heat don't last and when they pass we can pick up and move on with our usual bustle.

I spent a summer travelling in the Yucatan and parts of Central America and when the sun is high it is white hot, yet no one complains.  It isn't even remarkable.  Air-conditioning is uncommon, only rarely encountered in banks and large groceries and the entrances of these buildings are heavily patrolled to discourage loitering.  Instead, in the midday sun the streets are deserted.  Shops are closed.  Sashes and shades are drawn against the heat and glare.  It is customary to retreat into the dim.

As I remember, nothing I can typically describe as productive occurred during these hours -- watching telenovelas on pirated cable, reading, nibbling, drowsing.  It was unsettling at first, having years before been conditioned to abandon afternoon napping and similar idleness. 

Still, I quickly fell under the heat's languid spell.  Sometimes it's best to surrender. 

food for ...

''One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be 'balanced.' Of course, where countless humans are herded together, as in military camps or schools or prisons, it is necessary to strike what is ironically called the happy medium. In this case, what kills the least number with the most ease is the chosen way.''
M.F.K. Fisher

odds

While I was out running on my favorite trail this morning I found a four leaf clover.  I was running up a long hill and at the top I stopped to take in the view (and catch my breath).  I guess I looked down, and there it was.  This is the second four leaf clover I have found in two weeks and the third since June.  I find them often -- always have, though I am never intentionally looking for them.  They just seem to jump out at me.   

What are the odds of finding a four leaf clover?  Informal research suggests that the ratio of four leaf clover to three leaf clover is approximately 1:10,000.  So what are the odds of finding three in less than two months?  Why do they reveal themselves to me with a frequency that even I would not bet on?

A few weeks ago, while we were running errands in preparation for our trip out west, Will called out from the back seat of the car, “Mom, I found a quarter and guess what state it is ... South Dakota.”  The next morning I was clearing some clutter from the top of my dresser and I picked up two quarters.  I don’t know what made me look at them but I did turn them over and don’t you know they were Montana and Wyoming.  These were the three major western states we planned to explore.  

I am divided in my appraisal of these events because they happen often in my life.  The pragmatist in me dismisses them as interesting coincidence -- but my inner mystic lives for this.  I save fortunes from cookies and tape horoscopes to the refrigerator.  I am always looking for the connection I have with each person I meet.  I want to believe that there are no accidents -- that every event is connected and carries weight and meaning, potential and bearing.  And I do.  So much of my life has unfolded as a result of these strange “coincidences.”

If I went out looking for four leaf clovers I know that I would quickly grow frustrated and bored and likely give up, but there must be something within us that is always subconsciously seeking and finding.  Serendipity, by its very nature can neither be summoned, nor forced.  Instead it requires a sort of attentive wandering.  There is much to distract and it’s easy to miss the signs.  I wonder about luck but I think that the luck in finding the clover is not in what its possession may yield so much as it is in being able to see it as you move through the field.  

Some photos from South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming...

navigating by sky

We must have always looked to the sky to find our way.








The sun rises in the east and sets in the west -- the earth rotates on its axis under a map of moon and stars that guide all travelers who understand the code -- explorers, sailors ... birds.  You could easily say I was led here by the sky.  Led by and drawn to.





The July full moon, by the way, is know as the Thunder Moon, or the Buck Moon, for when the new antlers of buck deer begin to grow from their foreheads.



Thanks S, for this last photo.

Boys of Summer

Sometimes things are just as they should be...

Thanks GP for doing all the things that a boy will think of when he remembers his tenth summer.  (too bad I didn't get a go-cart photo)  Love you.