every song is a love song

naked

I look at naked trees with the same fascination that other people have for other naked things.

I never seem to tire of the endless variation of the silhouette of a tree stripped bare and laid against the winter sky.  Consider yourself warned.

a little taken

with the way the rain has turned hollows in the pavement into fragments of windowpane.  

recipes...

early this morning i read a poem and thought "this is what i will do"...

Da Capo

Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.
You may do this, I tell you, its is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.
Jane Hirschfield

and it's true -- it is a pretty good soup, though i am a bad Buddhist and must confess that i substituted bacon for the chestnuts.

commonplace

Thanks to our gracious hosts for a lovely holiday...  

The commonplace is the thing, but it's hard to find.  Then if you believe in it, have a love for it, this specific thing will become universal. 

Andrew Wyeth

thanksgiving

Thankful for this peaceful easy day.  Thankful for family within hugs reach and for those, family and friends, who are farther away -- but not beyond hearts reach.  Thankful for the blessings of health and comfort and freedom -- in all the forms that we are able to experience it.  There is nothing to want.

appreciation

There are so many good reasons to defy common opinions of good sense.  

My run tonight was about rain soaked ground, incapable of holding another drop of rain even though it continued to fall -- and dry creeks, swollen and rushing again as they have not since spring

and heavy clouds, hung just above my head and thick enough and thin enough to melt into the horizon and the limbs overhead, bare, but still able to catch the rain -- diffusing, dispersed water barely cascading down thick trunks, black and shining-slick in the faded light.

time machine

every song is a love song

trees

a meditation

many thanks to my art director whose recommendation, that i leave out the last three ("boring, boring, and creepy") pictures above, i am disregarding ... even though he's probably right.

into the life

I met MAel at the KOA in Rawlins, Wyoming -- a rail town in the middle of an eerily desolate stretch of high desert interstate.  We had driven that day down from Jackson Hole for an overnight layover before heading south into the Colorado Rockies.  As we checked in at the campground the host asked if we would mind camping next to a lone traveler, a young man from France who was travelling to Alaska ... on a scooter.  I guess she thought he might like the company.

It was my ever gracious mama who struck up the conversation by offering him a glass of wine.  I returned from the bath house to find them sitting at the picnic table, taking in the view and discussing the details of our travels.  We compared entourage and outfitting, his -- none and what would fit on the back of his tiny scooter, ours -- an intrepid, if somewhat unlikely threesome, in a VW Jetta bursting with everything we could carry, and then a few more things for good measure.  Our intentions were the same -- an American romance.  To take on the road and wander the wide open miles.  To be one of few instead of one of many.  To breathe in the enormous space of the wild west and feel very, very small in the presence of such greatness.  To experience life as great adventure.

Into the night we sipped beers and chatted -- France, U.S., family, school, work, food -- life.  MAel had come to Rawlins via New York and Denver where he had purchased a small scooter.  That day he had driven over Rocky Mountain National Park.  He was headed for the Tetons, Yellowstone and into Canada through Glacier.  From there ... possibly Alaska.  We had come south from Montana and Yellowstone/Tetons and would head the way he had just come, but ultimately bound for home.  A lot of road lay ahead yet of MAel; much of our road was already in the rearview mirror.

The postscript is one of my favorite kind of surprises.  I was checking my e-mail at work this week and found MAel's name in my inbox.  He looked me up to write that he was back in France and that he remembered meeting us and sharing conversation.  He also shared a link to the blog he began writing shortly after we met.  Read his epic and see the rest of his amazing pictures here.

Thank you sun, sky, clouds, mountains, wind, bears, buffalos, dears, trees, rivers, roads and of course the Chinese scooter! I had some pretty good time...

Thank you, MAel.

                                   

jack frost

ready or not...

the editors...

have suggested that I liven things up a bit.  

Thanks Will, for keepin' it real.

sky: an assay

A hawk flies though it, carrying

a still-twisting snake twice the length of its body.

Radiation, smoke, mosquitoes, the music of Mahler fly through it.

The sky makes room, adjusting its airy shoulders.

Sky doesn't age or remember,

carries neither grudges nor hope.

Every morning is new as the last one, uncreased

as the not quite imaginable first.

From the fate of thunderstorms, hailstorms, fog,

sky learns no lesson,

leaping through any window as soon as it's raised.

In speech, furious or tender,

it's still of passing sky the words are formed.

Whatever sky proposes is out in the open.

Clear even when not,

sky offers no model, no mirror - cloudy or bright -

to the ordinary heart: which is secretive,

rackety, domestic, harboring a wild uninterest in sky's disinterest.

And so we look right past sky, by it, through it,

to what also is moody and alters -

erosive mountains, eclipsable moons, stars distant but death-bound.

--Jane Hirshfield

*not Mahler -- Chopin, Etude in A-Flat Major, No. 1 from Trois Nouvelles Etudes, Vladimir Horowitz

play time is the most important time

collection

The collector's need is precisely for excess, for surfeit, for profusion.  It's too much---and it's just enough for me.  Someone who hesitates, who asks, Do I need this?  Is this really necessary? is not a collector.  A collection is always more than necessary.  

--Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover

Accordingly, I may not have the soul of a true collector because I agonize over my inability to resist the accumulation of things -- as it is in direct conflict with my desire to maintain the ability to travel light.  Still, some of the things that I cannot resist picking up along the way, in no particular order, are:  leaves, shells, rocks, old things, things made by the hands of those who are dear, books, fabric (not that I sew), thoughts and ideas in the form of scribbled pages and photographs, maps, ticket stubs, birthday cards, recipes... the souvenirs of experience and miles. 

This collection spills from closets and shelves and clutters our surfaces and window sills -- fills the basement and garage, and at times is oppressive -- but it is a luxury, to be sure, this accumulation of luck and love.  I wonder, if I had to take only what I could carry, what would it be -- a baby tooth or a lock of hair, a photograph tucked into a bible, a band of gold...

***An oddly coincidental postscript:  As I finished writing this, a late season tornado warning sent us to the basement, but not before Will impulsively gathered the things he needed:  his backpack with a couple of his current favorite toys -- and his trumpet.  

attention is vitality

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

black venus

Manet, Portrait of Jeanne Duval, 1862

Baudelaire, on his creole muse:

Bizarre déité, brune comme les nuits,

Au parfum mélangé de musc et de havane,
Oeuvre de quelque obi, le Faust de la savane,
Sorcière au flanc d'ébène, enfant des noirs minuits...

Strange goddess, brown as evening to the sight,
Whose scent is half of musk, half of havanah,
Work of some obi, Faust of the Savanah,
Ebony witch, and daughter of the night...

--from Sed non satiata

Angela Carter described her thus:

I will tell you what Jeanne was like, she was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

getting lost

  Put your dreams away for now

I won't see you for some time
I am lost in my mind
I get lost in my mind

Momma once told me
You're already home where you feel loved
I am lost in my mind
I get lost in my mind

Oh my brother
Your wisdom is older than me
Oh my brother
Don't you worry 'bout me

Don't you worry
Don't you worry, don't worry about me

How's that bricklayin' comin'?
How's your engine runnin'?
Is that bridge gettin' built?
Are your hands gettin' filled?
Won't you tell me, my brother?

'Cause there are stars
Up above

We can start
Moving forward

sunrise service

self taught

speaking of things you can teach yourself:

well, if you're Mark Knopfler that is.

notes from the morning

I am interested in the things that we can teach ourselves by sitting with the same thoughts.  Working through all the knowns.  Laying them down over and over again in until they roll out in a new order.  The unknown revealed -- a small miracle to find something that wasn't there before.