brother wind

This is just all kinds of good:

one day in yosemite

heart racing

...breath is caught right in my throat.  Thanks Rob

which

These two things came to me very nearly simultaneously, one and just after, the other.  I found one and the other was a perfectly timed gift.  

V

I don't know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
-Wallace Stevens, from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

value

In the universe there are only a few absolutes of value; something is valuable because it can be eaten for nourishment or used as a weapon or made into clothes or it is vaulable if you want it and you believe it will make you happy.  Then it is worth anything as well as nothing, worth as much as you will give to have something you think you want. ... looking for something you want is a comfort in the clutter of the universe, but knowing you don't have to look means you can't be disappointed.

-Susan Orlean, from The Orchid Thief

field notes

While I am spinning around like a wild top among the perfect turnings of the wheels of this universe, I am sometimes awake and attentive enough to meet on time at happy destinations.  Often I'm "a day late, a dollar..." but this week I happened to mention this book to a gardener friend of mine and she says to me, "Oh, do you like orchids?" My response went something like "well, not exactly, but they're interesting..." trailing off uncharacteristically before rambling on -- this time about having a small fascination for people's obsessions and the objects of those obsessions... but, I digress.

So as these things will happen, I learned from her that orchids are currently featured at the Franklin Park Conservatory, which is a perfect place to be on a late January Sunday.  How nice it is to be spinning in time with the rest of the wheels.

pines II

pines I

between

We travel for pleasure, for a door-slamming sense of “I’m outta here,” for a change of air, for edification, for the big vulgar boast of being distant, for the possibility of being transformed, for the voyeuristic romance of gawping at the exotic; and sometimes we travel because we have been banished...

Nothing to me has more excitement in it than the experience of rising early in the morning in my own house and getting into my car and driving away on a long, meandering trip through North America. Not much on earth can beat it in travel for a sense of freedom — no pat-down, no passport, no airport muddle, just revving an engine and then “Eat my dust.” The long, improvisational road trip by car is quintessentially American.

--Paul Theroux

January is difficult.  Not for the reasons you might think.  Several years ago I self-diagnosed and cured my tendencies toward seasonal affective disorder.  I make no claims for those who may suffer similarly but, for me, it was a fairly simple cure.  I sprung for some warm clothes and went outside.  I bought snowshoes even (if only we could get enough snow).  Oh, and I drink some red wine...

I have discovered that winter is not exactly a foreign country but still something new and different and therefore full of potential and new experiences.  Exotic though it is, it does not quite cure me of a certain malaise that comes from being held in place by all of the things that have to be done in between summers.  But.  I don't like to wish for time to go by.  I don't like to miss anything.  So I am suspended -- laid over, at the halfway point between memory and anticipation.

In this meantime there are, of course, other ways to travel.  Currently I'm wandering with Wallace Stegner and Bruce Chatwin.  The west has such a death grip on my soul (or perhaps it is I, with a death grip on the western soul...).  If I never get past it at least I will have read otherwise.  

Paul Theroux's wish list, which prompted a scavenger dig for some of my favorite pictures from our tour of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana, is here.

collection

This week's haul:

love

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

fisherman's daughter

I laid awake a whole night long
Waiting for the sun to beat down on my head
In this broken bed

I laid awake and dreamt of ships
Passing through night
Searching for shelter
Stopping at no harbor

I heard the screaming waters
Call sixty sailors' names
Raging words, pounding on the sail
Like an angry whale

I felt the iron rudder skip
The smell of seeping oil
The heat of slipping rope
Failing hands, failing hope

Every sailor asks
Asks the question about the cargo
He is carrying

God's anger broke through the clouds
And He spilt the cargo for all to see

The fault of the sailor
The fault of he who asks no questions
About the cargo he is carrying

Fishes and tales and a fisherman's daughter
Walks in the rain, she walks to the water
To the sea

-Daniel Lanois, Fisherman's Daughter

waiting

I passed so many vacant acres and looked past them to so many more vacant acres and looked ahead and behind at the empty road and up at the empty sky; the sheer bigness of the world made me feel lonely to the bone.  The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go.  I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageble size.  It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility.  If I had been an orchid hunter I would have seen it as acres of opportunity where the things I loved were waiting to be found.  

-Susan Orlean, from The Orchid Thief

wandering with forks

I keep odd lists of favorite things that are constantly changing and evolving.  As if I could choose a favorite song, book, pasta, cheese, cuisine...  Yet if I am wielding the tongs, my food consistently refers to that of France or Italy and most frequently, I am a fan of the braise method and pieces of meat that you can't buy shrink-wrapped from the meat pile at the megamart.  Briskets, shanks, and oxtails.

So we happened to have some oxtails in the freezer (who doesn't, right?) which is where I've been "shopping" lately due to New Year's austerity measures.  My first impulse was to Google Mario's oxtail ragu but my husband had something more exotic in mind -- an adaptation (add butter beans!) of this intoxicating, spice-drenched Jamaican trip that warmed us to the bone.  I can't describe what a long slow simmer (oh-so-sexy) does to allspice berries, habanero chiles, and oxtail, but we could not put our forks down and when we finally did, we mopped up what slipped through the tines with coco bread -- my contribution to the party.  In typical fashion, we did it up (austerity?!).  My "sweet mama" brought a chocolate cake and we popped the tops on some Red Stripes and shook our hips to a little Soca on the hi-fi ... Which reminded me of some younger wanderations -- Caribbean and Central American trekking when I first bought Soca music from shops where they dubbed your selections for you while you waited.

meditation

Nope.  Not 10 minutes on the bedroom floor in lotus pose.  Road miles.  Pick them up, put them down.  Breath in, breath out.  Right here.  Right now.  Right here.  Right now.... Face numb from being forced into the wind -- until I turn and then I have to run with my eyes half-closed against the brilliant spray of sunrise.

falling

O'Keeffe, Patio Door with Green Leaf, 1956

Beech.  Oak.  They hang on and let go quietly, one at a time, long after the fall shower. All afternoon, like meteors, they stream at me from the periphery, but when I move to focus, they have faded into the field.  Close your eyes.  Freeze the frame.  Another easy argument for the superiority of paint to photo.   

I did catch a falling cloud though.

simple

THIS is my letter to the world,

That never wrote to me,—

The simple news that Nature told,

With tender majesty.

Her message is committed         
To hands I cannot see; 

For love of her, sweet countrymen,

Judge tenderly of me!

-Emily Dickinson

5 things

4. The quiet of the kitchen after everyone has gone, hoods shut down, lights out
5. Late afternoon moon viewed through a tangled weave of winter branches
6. Grass-fed beef patty melt with steak fries roasted in duck fat and dusted with truffle salt

Well, yes, technically six

delight

January can get stale.  I feel a bit like I am continuously recycling the same day.  Missing delight.  Sometimes a conscious effort is required.  "Five things."  I wrote, "Today I will find at least five things to take delight in."

1.  Venus looking out from her bedroom window just ahead of the sunrise.

2.  Crystal cold, so much so, that it seems as if a well aimed flick of a forefinger might just shatter everything.

3.  Violent Femmes on the car radio -- on a Friday morning.  Love the base.

... off to a pretty good start.

field notes

I gave myself permission to do as little as possible today.  It worked out pretty well.  I still managed to get to all of the important things.  

sunday night poetry

embedded

"this journey is ... actually a harkening back to a deep restlesness that I think is embedded in our bones.  It's a re-creation of a journey that all of us have made if you just go far back enough in our family trees"

Journalist Paul Salopek begins his seven year, 21,000 mile walk from Ethiopia to Patagonia.  The details here -- and follow his epic wanderations here. 

Alt-J - Matilda

field notes

Sunset:

The weak January sun is no match for the west wind blowing over these acres of ice.

Patty Griffin with Emmylou Harris : Mary

the way it is

You must know by now that this is the way it is.  There are variables and there are constants.  I go around thinking that I'm in the market for variables, but constants are what I most often seem to find.  And sometimes it is just plain pointless to look past what is laid out right in front of you.