It’s too soon to find them in bloom. They’re mostly two feet tall at best, thus far, and not nearly ready to flower. And the sky is overcast today. Quite grey and a little bit dark. Any sunflowers would be hard pressed to find the sun and smile at it.
The thing about sunflowers is, they believe in the sun even when it’s not visible. I do, too.
The more the situation calls for me to behave with gravity and proper decorum, the more I’m likely to drag my heels and stubbornly glue myself to being silly and irresponsible and to frustrate any attempts to make me act however is deemed suitable to my age. Those nearest and dearest to me have long since learned the futility of asking me to behave in any sort of adult-appropriate manner and they tolerate, or to varying degrees, enable this impossibly impish attitude on my part. No wonder I love them so.
. . . so I'll just keep lying around and looking at the pictures in the clouds . . .
Perpetuating Childhood
In all probability I’d be prone
to be an insufferable old crone,
a hag, a harridan, full of mold,
if I had to mature–grow up–get old–
because, in truth, the prospect’s grim
when responsible heart meets creaky limb,
and milky eye and baggy middle
drag joie-de-vivre down a little–
I’d rather, by far, annoy my peers
by being unfitted to my years,
guffawing, as boisterous as a sinner,
and eating six Popsicles for dinner;
skipping like a stone across the Square
and having wild grass seeds in my hair,
wearing skirts too short; taking much too long
to figure out what I’m doing wrong,
yet enjoying the doing things just the same,
since it’s all a bit like a great big game
anyway–this journey we call a life–
so why should we let it sour, be rife
with tedious, tiresome old-age gunk?
I’d rather go back to school and flunk
for excessive dreaming and foolish pranks.
Grow up? Grow old? Mature?
No, Thanks!
My big sister flew out and visited here for a couple of days last week. It was heavenly. Besides that I just get a big ol’ kick out of her company at any time, there are a number of reasons that time spent with her is a great treasure.
An early appearance of one of the most frightening of biker gangs ever to terrorize Ryan Street . . .
One, of course, is that having known her my entire life, I can happily be myself without any fear of shocking her. I can (and do) even revert to my most immature self and she never skips a beat but joins me at whatever level of silliness most promotes our laughing until our eyes turn into faucets and we choke on our drinks from our big snorting guffaws. I can, in the safety of my own kitchen, drink a few more of those drinks than I would do on my own, and be just as ridiculous as that makes me be. No repercussions. Well, she might tell Mom when she gets home. But it’s usually the duty of the younger sister to be the tattle-tale, right? So I should be safe for now.
When I get to be with my sister I can catch up on all that’s happening in her life, something that is not even remotely the same over the phone because it lacks the drama of the whole pantomime portion, not to mention all of my interruptions to ask what X or Q player in the story is currently doing. We can rant shamelessly about the current state of the world and everyone and everything that we know in it, and know that the Top Secret information and occasional swear-slippages need never leave the room. I can tell her my own life’s updates and make them seem as glamorous or pusillanimous as I wish, knowing that she will listen to it all with whatever sisterly sympathy or elder-sibling disgust is requisite in the event, just to help me sort out what’s believable and what’s merely my imagining.
I take it as not only excuse and permission but a virtual requirement that I eat any and all of the junky but deliriously tasty things I would normally consider inappropriate for regular dining, starting with chips and a big bowl of ice cream for lunch and not budging impressively far from that sort of menu for the duration. Now, granted, if the visit exceeds a week, I might be better behaved, but (a) this was a short visit (so there!) and (b) I probably wouldn’t be better behaved (so there!). Guess it’s just as well she didn’t test me on this. But it was a danged delicious few days, even if my body may take a while to recover.
And it’s certainly amazing how much my spirits recover from any time lost between visits, when I get just this one little dose of sisterly vitamins. Having three such stupendous sisters is probably an unfair advantage of mine, but I am not in the least apologizing for it. You have to admit, if it’s a selfish trait on my part to revel in such wealth, at least it’s one of the least of my offenses. She said, grinning just a little devilishly.
Equal-opportunity educator and sharer, my sister started early with the indoctrination of her three younger sisters (and our many cousins, like Mark with us here) in what a jaw-droppingly amazing world it is and all of the excitement we could find in it, even if we had to manufacture the excitement ourselves . . .
Earthen Vessel
Who am I?
Breath captured
in an earthen vessel
Spirit wedded
to primeval soil
Imperfect Mirror of
essential Being
Wrapped in the terrestrial
winding-sheet
of Human clay
Simple creatures, perhaps, we humans–but is there not a mote, a speck, a spark in us of something grander than what we usually appear? Some bit of wonder that belies the humble forms of mortality and speaks of the transcendent? The perpetual questions that pull at us when we regard an existential view must at least spring from something larger than the plain facts of our selves . . . what can it all mean?
I certainly have no expectation of answering any such things, or even approaching their periphery, in my life, but like generations before me, still feel compelled to ask. That in itself is an intrigue, an oddity of being what we so proudly name Homo sapiens. Does this merely prove that we are so self-centered and hubristic that we assume importance in our existence that no other species dares–or bothers–to impute? It may. The idea of a dog, a pig, a horse or elephant, no matter how intelligent it is, bothering to sit around and study itself and its centrality in the universe so intently is amusing but ultimately quite ridiculous; it wouldn’t in fact be an utter shock to discover that they think the same of us, if they could be troubled to notice it at all.
Most particularly I hope that there is much that is far greater than we are, knowing how puny and foolish and improbable and fallible we tend to be even at our finest times. It’s highly reassuring to me that, when I’ve done my puzzling and my contemplation of my place in space, my purpose in appearing here on earth, it’s still quite insignificant; that a real and precious Otherness is more than all of us, more than enough to fill the emptiness of space whether we little creatures stay or grow or cease to exist. This is comfort enough that I can go to sleep at night, content that I am not the sun or the source of anything necessary, that all will go on long, long, long after I have returned to shimmering dust.
I’ve never understood the horror some people have of others knowing their age. Among other things, it requires endless forms of subterfuge and denial, from falsifying mere statements of age to all of that domino-like cascade of phony documentation and historical records that must be juggled over time–though, according to those claims, that will have stood quite still. In more extreme cases, it leads to a compulsion to alter oneself to fit the imagined character of the mythical preferred age. I find lots of highly stylized and generalized and ‘flawless’ dolls unappealing, weird and creepy, and ever so much more so, living beings who have had themselves altered by cosmetic means (temporary or, in extremis, surgical) to be less age-appropriate or individual.
Yes, I do understand the urge to fit in, to be accepted. But perhaps my having felt, most of my life, that I look pretty average and ordinary–none of me either bad- nor good-looking to any extreme–makes me inured to the pain of those who think themselves terribly, awfully out of sync with others in appearance. Certainly I know that there are many who have had external reinforcement from thoughtless or cruel others that they are unattractive or unfit or otherwise unacceptable. That is one true form of ugliness: bullying. Demeaning and hate-fostering and belittling are as terrible in their way as any forms of torture, because they scar the soul just as effectively as physical abuse scars the body and spirit. And that can make anyone feel old ahead of time.
But when it comes to the simple and petty desire to deny the years spent on earth or the effects of living a full life on one’s body, skin and hair, I still don’t quite get it. I watch those hair-coloring commercials where fabulously primped and preened models assure us that those smart enough, like them, to use X brand are obviously grand and wonderful enough to warrant the expense of that harmless form of self-adornment “because I’m worth it.” Well, good on you! But it so happens that I think I’m worth just as much with my own dull dishwater brown hair sprinkled with hard-earned threads of white. Plastic surgeons are always eager to inform me that I could be smooth, cellulite-free, and have perfectly formed chin, nose, breasts and cheekbones if I’d only let them perform their magic upon me. In addition to my having seen a long parade of walking evidences to the extreme contrary, or at least extremely contrary to my own tastes, I am shockingly content to have a mole practically right in the middle of my face, one ear far lower than the other, shoulders of quite different sizes, stubby hands, remarkably pasty and slightly sallow skin, a couple of scars from clumsiness and carelessness, and–oh yeah–quite the growing collection of wrinkles here and there upon my entire personage.
Get used to it. I’m a used vehicle. I’ve driven this body through a lot of history, which, if not remarkably rough or exotic, takes its toll in bits and pieces, softening up that muscle tissue which once was a tad more taut, stiffening the formerly flexible joints, adding a few pounds here and a lot of freckles and spots there, and all of the other signs of ordinary aging. Beyond beating, as it’s said, the alternative, growing older has some distinctly positive aspects to it in my view, not least of them that I know, like and respect myself and my finer features far more than I appreciated such things in younger years. I am finite, yea, even slithering down the slope of the latter part of my life, and I will die. Before then, I plan to live it up.
And if that shows in my greying, thinning hair, my spotty memory (which was always a hair more colorful than reality anyway) and my thickening waist and glasses, my slowing reflexes and my ever speedier increase of dithering and forgetfulness, so be it. If it shows in my increasingly complex network of wrinkles, why then Good on Me. Literally. I earned all of these insignia of my fine, me-sized-adventure filled life, and if they make me look less than smooth and perfect and doll-like and youthful and conventionally beautiful, I don’t mind one tiny bit. I certainly never liked ironing anyway, and I earned the right to savor my wrinkles just as they are.
P. S. I was born in 1960, and I still have hopes of getting a whole bunch older than I already am, if all goes well.
Morning doesn’t always bring peace. Sorrow may linger, grief that is not wiped away by night or sleep or even tears.
Beauty, though, can help approximate the sense of peace, help me to recollect a meditative, even if it’s melancholy, calm. This, too, brings some small measure of what I remember as true peace, and lets me know that the capacity remains. In possibility is hope. In hope is rest. In rest, I can let go, if just for now, the troubles of the hour.
A cloudless dawn has its own quiet way of pouring out benevolence that, if not cure, brings respite of a kind and momentarily distracts the heart from its dull void. At the morning’s break, low-lying mist pools, thick and velvety, swirling so slowly in its densely silver gleam, it seems to be a lake–indeed, a mystic lake where it would be no great surprise to see that shimmering arm emerge that bears Excalibur.
Along the horizon creeps that cottony blue, transforming first to palest violet, then rose, then saturated orange, and finally, shooting sun-flares so bright and dazzling they blind when they reflect from glass sky scraper walls, pillars of wholly molten gold blazing beacon-sharp against the now bright-cobalt sky. Silhouetted there, a hawk perches on its lamppost throne, surveying all as if to say, I’m looking out for you. Let go of worry; I will see that all’s as it should be. And with a sweep of his unfolded wings, plunges off the lamp into the broader light of day.
I’m sorry to say I’m not cut out to be the savior of the planet. I’m not even very good at saving coupons or saving your reverence. There are lots of saints and superheroes better suited than I am to rescuing goodness, health and happiness. I’m just pleased with myself if I can get the recycling out on time for pickup, fix the wiggly leg on a chair so I don’t have to get a whole new chair to replace it, pull up about six weeds about twice a week. My part in world betterment will always be a smallish one.
But I do have a part in it. I’m ready and willing to play it. One little thing that is on my list of preferred universe-improvement techniques is to work on gradually including a bit less in my daily eating habits and freeing up those calories for people who actually need them more. Ideally, I’d like to find a few ways to see that those people who actually need them get them as well, whether it’s because I feed them myself with my cooking or my modest attempts at micro-mini-farming (I expect to successfully grow up to eighteen vegetables in this season alone), or because I support causes that are better equipped to feed them through charitable or communal means.
Another dainty little improvement I am willing and possibly even able to make in the condition of the quality of life as it exists on this planet is to find more ways to make less waste. I am researching how to capture both the rainwater falling on and the grey-water produced in my house for reuse and distribution in the garden. In Texas, that’s not just a potential money-saver but if drought conditions like last summer’s return or persist, a potential life-saver. But it shouldn’t be too terribly hard. The water’s there. It just needs to be corralled and redirected to where it can be most useful. It’s a natural adjunct to the aforementioned dinky farm-let of a garden with pint-sized patches of vegetables, plus a greater devotion to native, drought-resistant and wildlife friendly plantings that should, over time, reduce the whole yard’s dependence on additional water, provide a bit more natural cover and food for the local bugs and beasts and birds, and ultimately, require less maintenance and far less artificial or chemical intervention to preserve it all in vigorous health and beauty.
My self-improvement plot is mighty simple by comparison even to these extremely modest proposals. I’m just going to try to give in to my less-than-ideal motives and personality quirks less frequently than is my native inclination. I’m going to push myself to consciously and conscientiously do more of the nicer and better and more productive things I am capable of doing, more of the time. Beyond this I’m not certain I can go–but my plans being undersized as they are, I hope that I have just that much more chance of making my individual pin-prick of a difference for the better in my portion of creation, however puny, circumscribed or insignificant it may be. Better by far than not making the attempt. Reality is overwhelming and bemusing enough. Why not work on tweaking it one sweet, precious atom, if I can?
This is where I landed. Where can I fly from here?
Color Infusions
Velour of the lawn is deep, deep green,
sun breaking sideways grey
or silvery-white, like the moon of night
pulled over the edge of day–
The mirroring water Caribbean blue
on the patio table and chair
to reflect the sky or the azure eye
of a hoverer in the air–
So winter to spring is giving ground
by violet margins and rose,
to erase from sight the black and white
of the season’s reticent clothes.
On the horizon I spotted a kite
That swung in the wind to the left and the right
And splashed all its colors, exuberant paint
To swirl in the sky with a dip and a feint
Toward the grass, toward the sun, to a hill, to a tree,
A brilliant kaleidoscope there just for me
And the child whose hand guided the string of the kite
As it painted our world with new colors and light
One of the rituals of fending off the dregs of winter’s chill is to linger in the hothouses and aisles of flower shops and every place that stocks us up with ideas and plants as we rejuvenate the landscape for the year. A splash of heated color draws the eye; the flash and gleam of leaves caught in each little draft pulls us in, from some pale-margined broad-leafed plant off to some lacy other. The faint sound of their fluttering evokes both sylvan breeze and birdsong and reminds us, beyond those, of springs and fountains drawn to life as winter thaws.
Perhaps the most evocative and pleasing sense that spring and summer lie in wait somewhere not far at all: perfume–the heady redolence that wafts from hyacinths and jasmine blooms, from sweet Viola odorata, from each little honeyed heart that says that life will soon return to earth. One of my favorites for sheer intensity and unstained loveliness of scent is Lily of the Valley–those clean, brilliant bells that cloister in the moss and keep their meditative calm a little secret ’til I’m close enough to catch their drift and see their whiteness glinting in the green. It may be, too, that breathing that intensity of air when these petite white satin blooms nod in the breeze calls up an atavistic searching in my blood. I start to hear that most beloved of Swedish songs (forgive me, my Norwegian forebears–but we were still ‘run’ by our cousins the Swedes until we parted ways in the early 20th century) resonating somewhere in the distance of earth’s slow axial turn, tolling in a sweetly sorrowful voice the tale of the grieving Lily King. Spring is like that–pierced with the lingering poignancy of winter’s deadly grip, but with an insistent, gorgeous urge to let earth be reborn; no matter the loss, the sorrow and the bygone things, to carry forward with what perfumed sweetness it can find.
The Romantic Nationalism that has periodically gripped the music world and produced such pleasures as David Wikander’s exquisite melody for poet Gustav Fröding’s Kung Liljekonvalje is that way too: longing for the old, but wanting something new raised up in it, like the rebirth that comes with spring. Sorrow and joy can mingle then, glowing with possibility and pain, with hesitation and with hope.
The text is sorrowful but evocative, I think, of the intensely bittersweet beauty of the Lily of the Valley; it isn’t hard to see how this must have captured the dark imaginings of many a Northerner in a Romantic frame of mind. I’ve included a translation of my own, meant not as a literal one but rather an attempt to understand something more of the character of the tale and perhaps, indeed, how it grew out of dreaming over the bowing bells of a tiny blooming thing, searching in its ice-white blossoms for promises of better and brighter things.
Kung Liljekonvalje King Lily of the Valley
Kung Liljekonvalje av dungen King Lily-of-the-Valley’s in the green-wood,
Kung Liljekonvalje är vit som snö King Lily-of-the-Valley, who is white as snow,
Nu sörjer unga kungen The young king now mourning his maiden,
Prinsessan liljekonvalje mö Princess Lily-of-the-Valley, in woe
Kung liljekonvalje han sänker King Lily-of-the-Valley now lowers
Sitt sorgsna huvud så tungt och vekt His heavy head so burdened with grief
Och silverhjälmen blanker And on his silver helm gleams the sunset,
I sommerskymningen blekt Pale dusk that can bring no relief
Kring bårens spindelvävar Round her cold bier the cobwebs are woven,
Från rökelsekaren med blomsterstoft And hang from censers flow’r-filled & spent,
En virak sakta svävar Their frankincense drifting down slowly,
All skogen är full av doft The forest all filled with the scent
Från björkens gungande krona From birches’ swaying crowns to their bases,
Från vindens vaggande gröna hus From winds that rock the green-wood’s home
Små sorgevisor tona Small tunes, songs of sadness and mourning
All skogen är uppfylld av sus Fill all of the woods as they roam
Det susar ett bud genom dälden And rustle as wind through the glen; find
Om kungssorg bland viskande blad The King all cloaked in whispering leaves
I skogens vida välden As full sorrow falls on the wood-world,
Från liljekonvaljernas huvudstad The whole of the Valley still grieves . . .
I’m never quite satisfied that I’m getting as much done as I want to do, doing it as well as I wish, improving at the rate I think I ought to manage. I’m hardly a perfectionist, nor am I particularly obsessive (at least about things that I think truly matter)–I’d guess I’m just a fairly typical person who thinks I’m always running just a bit behind the pace and always crossing things too slowly off the To Do lists. But I don’t think that’s grounds for quitting or even for not trying at all.
It just requires that I take a step back and regroup–reassess my priorities–once in a while. Hence my recurrent list-making and all of those times spent sitting and, to all outward appearances, staring off into space, when what I’m really doing is having a long hard look at what’s in front of me that I’d forgotten how to see, or what’s inside that’s not quite getting its message heard clearly enough anymore.
For one thing, my time-management method, if any, is often the old familiar one of doing what appears right in front of me, often leading to that state I’ve mentioned many a time wherein I set out to do one task, get diverted from it partway through by something else that catches my attention, veer off from that toward another thing that drew my eye, and so on ad infinitum but rarely ad finitum. That’s hardly the end of the world, because of course the short and simple tasks that pop up midway do get taken to completion and crossed off the list, and eventually the original plan will recapture my attention. It’s just wonderfully inefficient and sometimes I prefer to reevaluate whether those bigger tasks aren’t better broken down into groups of manageable smaller ones, ones that might perhaps get finished if stumbled upon tangentially in this habitual way.
All of this is a rather sidelong way itself of saying that I haven’t reestablished my drawing habit as firmly and regularly as I’d like, so I’m revisiting my intention to create a specific schedule or plan that encourages me to focus better on drawing, even a little bit, more often again. I know that I will do this; I can do it and have done so before. But I must choose to do it, and how, and that’s the agenda of the day. Other things (like, oh, blogging, f’rinstance) have stolen my attention and intentions away from drawing, and I would like to rebalance my doings a bit.
Needless to say, this has led to a fairly large overhaul of my household Fix-it lists, because I always prefer that there be at least the possibility of my getting those things done that will keep a solid roof over our heads and a comfortable living environment in which to do things like drawing and blogging surrounding us. That list is as big as always, full of everything from essential repairs to the rearrangement of rooms to better reflect and accommodate how we actually use them, to long-range and perhaps highly fantastical proposals for things I might attempt to build, create or accomplish sometime down my long and wayward path of homemaking.
But there is also this quick-fix remembrance that what I always advocated to my students had better be usable advice for me: To begin drawing again, make a mark. Waiting around for the Inspiration Fairy to appear and bonk me with a magic wand of fully fledged ideas and a baptism of heartwarming motivation makes for delightful internal pictorials, but not an iota of drawing to show for it. The best cure for a staring, empty piece of paper is A Mark. Directionless and indecipherable as any random thing, it may well be, but it’s amazing how very brief the time usually is between seeing a dark scratch on an otherwise pristine piece of paper and my hyperactive editorial mind kicking into gear and critiquing that mark as something that ought to have purpose and attempting to decipher what that purpose is, steering my hand to further scribbling or erasure, and either way, toward something specific and concrete, even if entirely abstract and nonobjective. That’s what’s going to happen, for starters. Where it goes from there, I’ll have to report back to you when it begins.
Art-Colored Glasses 