parallel worlds

A Time of New Weather is the title of a novel by friend Sean Murphy who conducted a great writing and meditation workshop this past weekend. I'm still reaping the benefits of it and trying to keep up a practice until we meet again in three weeks. And it certainly is a time of new weather. Bits of my world have shifted slightly. Things are different, unusual. Certainly the most profound are images of superstorm Sandy's devastation. I woke up yesterday morning with a premonition that something bad was about to happen and didn't let go of the feeling until I'd contacted the family in CT and knew they were safe. But I spent a disconcerting day with my body in New Mexico and my mind 2200 miles away. My mind has not yet returned. I'm leaving a light on.

triggering towns
There are certain towns and cities where I once lived that linger in my mind and which I still feel connected to. Author Richard Hugo calls them "triggering towns". Mine are Narragansett, RI. New York City. Rowayton, CT. There are others on other coasts and in other countries, but those three were uppermost in my mind as they got blasted by a record-breaking superstorm with a gentle name. Daughter-in-law Debbie sent me this photo of Rowayton taken early in the day. I don't know what happened later, but it probably wasn't good.

The image triggered a recollection of a long ago nor'easter in Rowayton when we lived there and my kids were young. They got stranded in various places when the storm hit and the tide was expected to be higher than normal due to a full moon. While the phone was still working (pre cellphone era) we knew approximately where they were. Their father and I went out on a rescue mission wearing boots and warm clothes (was it late October, too?) -- it was growing dark, the tide was coming in and we could go no further once we noticed a small bridge under water and icey, slushy seawater rushing onto the road and over our boots. The water illuminated in the streetlights looked pale green. My teen sons got home somehow, with reports of seeing floating Volkwagons on the road,  but their younger sister didn't make it.  She stayed overnight in the home of a couple of strangers who lived on the other side of the bridge. She reported drinking hot cocoa and being wrapped in blankets on their sofa. It was that kind of town in those days.

the lost pies
Meanwhile, here in Taos, the weekend cold snap passed and the days are quiet and sunny again with cloudless blue skies. Many more trees are bare, the migrating birds are gone, and the remaining leaves and fields are bronze going brown. Fruit still on trees are way past prime. This tree on a busy road in town was laden with slowly rotting apples. Pies anyone? Too late. Move on.

It's hard to take it all in, it's all so new. I look at the creek at my feet. It smashes under the bridge like a fist, but there is no end to its force; it hurtles down as far as I can see till it lurches round the bend, filling valley, flattening, mashing, pushed, wider and faster, till it fills my brain. 
It's like a dragon.
      Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, "Flood"

rise and fall

The weather turned cold on Thursday (19 degrees in the morning!) and has gradually built up again so that returning from a weekend workshop tonight, the temperature was 52. More about the workshop later. For now let's talk about the magical sight that greeted me on two early mornings as I drove to UNM for the workshop. Balloons! Balloons in the sun. Balloons against the mountains. And more balloons! The valley filled with them. Launched from a field in town, dotting the hazy autumn sky like slow motion floating confetti.

I was late for class because I kept stopping to take pictures! I drove irresponsibly, pulling over, pulling out, but there was hardly anyone on the road so early and probably those who might have been on the road were in the field watching the launch closeup -- which is pretty dramatic when it starts at dawn. Fire. Cold. Hot coffee. Whoosing sounds. Huge balloons unfolded, fluffed up and filled with hot air.  People in small baskets rising into the morning sky. Waving. Like a scene from The Wizard of Oz. Once we went there to watch the launch with daughter and granddaughter when they came to visit. A long time ago. I can't bear to go again, without them.

another kind of rising
At a few minutes after midnight, tonight's moon will be full. It's huge. So perfect with silver light and portent of winter. But tonight I watch it rise over the mountain. For as many years as I've seen this, it still registers as awesome.

and something falls
At the same moments that the moon rose in the east, the sun was sinking into the western horizon. On the second floor deck I turned quickly -- one up, one down. Double awesome!

,

I send these pictures to my family and friends in the east, with love and a wish that they could share it with me tonight -- and every other night to come. There's a price to pay for every decision we make. Mine is billed by distance, unassailable, 2200 miles that might as well be light years.

rhythms of seasons

Yesterday was a special day. I picked up Phyllis Hotch and we drove down to Santa Fe through an incredibly magical world of yellow. The trees along the banks of the Rio Grande cast yellow reflections in the water and leaves formed shimmery paths of feathery gold coins that we drove through with wonder. Canyon walls on both sides were veiled in a soft summery haze. It was hard to keep my eyes on the road. I couldn't take pictures of course, but this one taken from my kitchen window today shows the intensity of color that assailed us.

The very air was golden, the sun warm, the breezes soft. It was a living delicate balance between seasons. The last beautiful days of autumn. When strong wind or rain or snow finally comes, it will quickly strip the leaves off the trees and plunge us into winter. Better not to think of that yet.

amigos de las mujeres
We were on our way to meet Marjorie Agosin who was in town from Wellesley, MA for a special event at the Hispanic Art Museum in Albuquerque. If you don't know her or her work (she's on the right in the photo), she is a critically acclaimed Chilean-American poet, short story writer, a human rights activist who has received, among many other honors, the United Nations Humanitarian Award. She also happens to be the friend we love and don't get to see often. (That's Phyllis on the left).

poetry and gossip
We three enjoyed a very long chatty catch up lunch, some shopping, then nice quiet conversation back at M's hotel before saying goodbye again for awhile. Phyllis and I drove back to Taos as the sun sank lower on the horizon and the golden light took on a coral tinge. It was like Brigadoon, it really was, the feeling so strong that this was a fragile and fleeting moment in time that might not happen again for a hundred years. Today a wind picks up, but the glow remains. And the foal is back! Like Brigadoon, she magically appeared during the night after months out of sight. She's almost 4 months old, tall and beautiful. I'll post pictures soon.

There are women like angels
obedient and disobedient
fed by pity
and water
and celery
      Marjorie Agosin (from Council of the Fairies, 1997)

inaudibly in thought

Long ago in the 1950's in the land of the northeast Bronx, we repeatedly referred to autumn as Indian Summer. It was generally mild with warm days and flowers that bloomed until November's winds blew leaves off trees and the first frosts came. It was when old Italian men wearing hats and handknit gray cardigan sweaters wrapped their backyard fig trees in burlap and canvas. It was when my mother, in her pink cardigan sweater and white cotton socks, went into the backyard with scissors in her apron pocket and snipped the last flowers, the final basil, and maybe one more hidden and sheltered red rose. It was when the aunts came over on weekends with the uncles for coffee and pastries and went home with gigantic bouquets of chrysanthemums to brighten up city apartments.

It's Indian Summer here now and today I bought a pot of coppery chrysanthemums. Their pungent scent and familiar color beamed me into another time and place.

A white picket fence ran along the length of the wedge-shaped city lot where my father built our two-story brick house. It separated us from a vacant field behind which were a couple of acres of old oak woods. Behind the woods, a two-car subway train passed regularly on its way to the last stop. Going in the other direction it picked up cars (how? where?) and trundled to Grand Central Station. The first summer in the house, my mother Elvira, a 46 year old lifetime city dweller, suddenly became a gardener. In a few years the weedy backyard became a garden with iris-lined pathways, azaleas, roses, plum trees, cosmos, dogwood, marigolds. In late autumn she filled her apron pockets with dead flower heads, ruthlessly cut down the dried stalks, left them for my father to burn with the piles of leaves he'd raked.

Elvira dried the flower seeds over the winter and planted them in spring alongside the new shoots. As a result, the entire length of the fence was thick with tall chrysanthemums in all their colors. Inside the house she kept vases, empty mayonnaise jars and water glasses filled with them. Flowers weren't allowed in the bedrooms because she believed, as did others in her circle of immigrant and first generation Italian-American housewives, that flowers and plants in bedrooms took oxygen away from sleeping humans.

the fall
The woods are long gone. The year my parents died (more than four decades after the first tentative backyard garden), all the trees were cut down by a developer to make way for a densely populated condo community. Not a sapling was left standing.  The house was sold before construction began and I haven't been back since. I remember the woods I explored as a child and the pungent smell of untold numbers of chrysanthemums in Indian Summer. Nothing has changed.

And so on into winter
Till even I have ceased
To come as a foot printer,
And ony some slight beast
So mousy or so foxy
Shall print there as my proxy.
        (Robert Frost, last stanza, "Closed for Good")

high on a hill

the way it's going
I'm trying to loosen myself from outside commitments but it's oh so hard. I find myself swept into various worthwhile events and days definitely have fewer hours -- even though I awakened at 4:30 this morning. Not by choice, but acceptance of no more sleep forthcoming, got out of bed to write by candlelight in the kitchen although my hands were hurting after all the knitting I'd done the night before because the handwarmers I've been making are going out the door faster than I can keep up with them. whew! It's gratifying of course -- for others to love what you love to make. But the bottom line is that I do need to have an inventory at the end of November that will last for three whole days of holiday shoppers. So what to do? Make an emergency cashmere run to Santa Fe as soon as day breaks.

hunting and gathering
A few days ago, in hopes that she hadn't used it, I negotiated with long time knitting pal Josie to buy back the cashmere she bought from my stash several months ago. Why? Because the small stash I kept turned out to be the bestseller in the Mittz department. Gorgeous basil-colored Mongolian cashmere. The price of the same yarn this year, from the same source (and others) is astronomical -- way higher than it was two years ago. What's going on with Mongolian cashmere goats? Have they formed a union or something? Did the goat herders leave for the Bahamas? Taking their combs? Leaving the goats with Rasta locks? Josie hadn't used the yarn, was saving it (in the freezer) and although she stated that it would be akin to cutting off her (gorgeous, long) hair, she'd sell the cashmere back to me. Arrangements were made for a parking lot deal at Trader Joe's while Ron was inside getting lost in the wine section. So now the yarn is home again and as soon as my hands stop hurting, I'll get back to work on another mitt for the future pair above. It's already spoken for. And start the next one...and the next one...

take a break today
Focaccia. Delicious. Rosemary-studded. Fresh-baked. Focaccia! Bonnie conducted a private class for six of us at mutual friend Judy's place at the top of a winding gravelly dirt road, "turn left at the large rock near the small arroyo" (first sort-of-off-road test for new non-SUV-car which passed with an A). Judy is a retired long time Taos art gallery owner and her contemporary home is filled with beautiful tasteful things. Bonnie gave us a demo and tips (Jeannie and I studiously scribbling notes on the backs of our recipe sheets), and invited some of us to knead (I didn't, because that I know), popped the olive oil-drizzled dough into the oven and by the time we were pouring wine for lunch, the first loaf was ready. Yum! to the whole afternoon.

(storytellers and food) reminder: 

Bonnie Lee Black is editor of Storied Recipes, available now from the SOMOS organization in Taos (www.somostaos.org). The books are a good read, make a great gift, are filled with interesting recipes (sorry, no focaccia) and selling like the proverbial hotcakes. This is the book I co-edited and managed production on, so I have a personal interest in seeing it lead a successful life. Trust me. You'll love it.

rhythm of my time

it's like a novel
First snow, yellow leaves, cotton candy sunset, morning frost that changes the landscape for a brief time, afternoon warmth. It's all magical (and a little unnerving) at this time of year.

Each night is a bit colder than the one before, I now regularly wear warm sweaters with scarves during the day, handwarmers while walking and driving, rummage in the wool socks drawer for the pair I like best that I haven't seen since May. Feel pleasure of their warmth on my cold feet and remember when I bought the yarn in a tiny shop in Arizona, thought it looked like candy, bought it, immediately walked back to the creepy hotel in Winslow to start knitting socks, surrounded by knitting friends, most of whom I have lost contact with.

this oldish house
I want these fall days to last until spring. I dread winter with it's snow and frozen mud, bone-chilling winds that bring the breath of the highest peaks to our door.  Our house was designed nearly 30 years ago (by someone from Alaska) as passive solar with supplemental radiant heat. If you're a hardy sort (and he must have been) the passive solar works. We're not. It doesn't. We've tried alternative heating through the years, but nothing works perfectly in an unperfect house.  But we do have views. Oh yes, we do have views! Our living arrangement sort of falls into that "let 'em eat cake" category.
  
Zen, the internationals, and good vibes
Nice zazen yesterday lead by good friends Sean and Bruce at the latter's Metta Theater. Years ago the three of us and a handful of others, met regularly at a friend's earthship to sit, write, walk. Many things have changed through the years, the friend moved to Santa Fe, we all started doing various other things connected to our writing (Sean Murphy has authored three books since), acting (Bruce is a playwright, poet, actor, runs the theater), other practices (they got enlightened, I knitted). They continued their Zen practice, are still in Taos and it was a pleasure to renew the connection.  We plan to meet regularly through the winter.

chicken soup for whatever
Still in an enlightened state, I stopped at the organic market and bought a bunch of ingredients, came home and made a huge pot of chicken soup. Then off again to RuYi Studio for the closing events of the week. Music, food, exhibits featuring beautiful interesting things to buy. Julia happily went away with a pair of Mittz that she said inspired her.

She's a new knitter working on a Vogue pattern that she is fearlessly modifying. It took me years to get to that point, but she's undaunted I'm sure she will be designing her own patterns before long and I'll soon be inspired by her work.

ole
Rachel  gave an impromptu demonstration of flamenco dancing. Her movements were poetry. I didn't get any good photos, but this one will give you an idea of her grace.

You'll have to imagine the rest.

whoever brought me here

start with saturday morning...

Two words that say it all. I left the house in the morning calling to Ron that I was going hunting and gathering and didn't know when I'd be back. I was on my way to the 29th annual Taos Wool Festival in the park. Several hours later I returned with a large modest bag of yarns. Two gorgeous autumn days of blue, yellow, green. The weather stayed chilly and sunny. Perfect! There were some new vendors and lots of stuff to inspire, warm, gather.

At home I immediately started knitted with the incredible, expensive, delicious, luxurious, Jabberwocky Farm cashmere. Made a pair of handwarmers that I wore this chilly morning working at the computer -- well, I wasn't really working, just facebooking about the weekend and looking for an excuse to wear a luxury that almost makes me swoon with delight.

Jabberwocky is run by two women from Guffey, Colorado. They raise cashmere goats and the wool from these animals-with-names is then dyed and spun. Every year I try to buy at least one skein of cashmere from them. There usually isn't a huge supply and I never know what colors will be featured from year to year. That's what makes it interesting and, therefore, more desirable. Like when we could only get strawberries in summer? I usually make a beeline to their tent upon arrival at the park -- which I did on behalf of friend Joan who was away and asked me to pick up two skeins of any color ("except faded longjohns red"). All day I revisited her yarn (it was in my tote after all) and left it up to fate as to whether I'd go back to buy some for myself (I'm trying to moderate my yarn-buying). And then...just before leaving several hours later, fate intervened and I bought the last skein of aubergine. Drove home, rolled it into a ball, and immediately started knitting with it.

yakkety-yak
Went back next day to pick up yak down yarn. It's almost as soft as cashmere and I'm curious to see how it works up and wears. Truthfully, though? I bought it because of it's romantic/exotic Himalayan connection (and nice color). This yarn is from Tibet and Mongolia through Bijou Basin Ranch in Elbert, Colorado. All in all, it was a lovely weekend and I wanted to pitch a tent on the grass, drink tea, eat cinnamon roasted almonds, and live there until it was over.

saturday night
continued my unusual social whirl weekend that began with the very successful Storied Recipes book launch party the night before. I somewhat reluctantly put aside my needles and yarn and with a different brand of enthusiasm went to RuYi Studio where Pearl Huang's Taos International Society was sponsoring a...well...international event. Turkish poet, historian, musician, storyteller Latif Bolon was performing. Handsome, articulate and knowledgeable, he had the packed audience mesmerized.

At one point he read some poems of Rumi and Nasim in Turkish and asked someone to read in English while he accompanied them on a stringed instrument that's existed in Turkey since ancient times. Pearl, who in a former life, was a performer in Los Angeles, read the English version and then spontaneously performed it again in Chinese! Truly international.

Meanwhile, the International Bazaar exhibit at RuYi continues until next Saturday when there will be a closing event. I'm honored to be exhibiting some of my handknits there -- and to be teaching a mini workshop Thursday evening on knitting & writing memoir.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
            Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)

balls & biscotti

my life so far

Because I'm knitting for various shows coming up,  I've had to gather yarns for my palette. These are current leftovers from finished mittz. So what does one do with dozens of small balls?

One year, new grandmother and fellow crafter Beth, excited about a pattern for a knitted toddler poncho that used numerous colors of leftover sock yarn in small amounts, imagined her beautiful little granddaughter wearing it and  asked if I know where she could find yarn for it. aha! said I...and next day presented her with a heavy, lumpy pillowcase filled with hundreds of balls. I didn't ask, the next time we met, if she'd actually made the poncho. I had a sudden shuddering fear that she'd return a  thousand or so unused balls. 

I plan to donate current leftovers to the Craftistas (as they call themselves) who have yarn bombed Taos Plaza for the Wool Festival this weekend and planning similar (town sanctioned) high jinks for future events.

ahh, the wool festival! 
Missed it last year because I was staying at MBF's Pacific beach house (yeah, I know). We knitted together in the evenings and drank good wine. Daytimes were spent beach-walking and taking photos of the socks I was working on (same color as the blue-gray sea) draped over lovely seaweedy driftwood. This year my knitting pals are out of town, there's no driftwood or ocean wind to distract me (just flying yellow cottonwood leaves). I'll be on my own. All the better to contemplate (or ignore) an over-scheduled life and disappointment in someone who let me down. Don't ask.  Or why I woke up this morning at 3:30 and furiously wrote 2100 words into the mac, at the kitchen table, in the dark, ate breakfast at 5:30, and then, spellbound, began baking a double batch of Italian biscotti I promised to bring to the SOMOS Storied Recipes cookbook launch party tonight at the La Fonda Hotel. I vowed to take a nap this afternoon, but it's nearly 5 and it's not going to happen.

Some ahtful sprinkles of XXX sugar, a fresh paper doily, and the biscotti will be dressed and ready to go. This recipe was not the one I included in the cookbook (Zeppole), but is a traditional Italian recipe that doesn't have a story (required) -- except that they're baked three times and are excellent coffee dunkers. While I waited for each batch to be done (slowly, laboriously), as the room filled with delicious smells and warmth, I knitted in the dawn's early light, thereby waking up Ron and Spike who followed their noses to the newly ordained Zen Kitchen Early Morning Knitting Bake shop. The recipe page is old, faded and splattered. Just the way I feel. We're kindred spirits. Be kind.

all about wool & words

ooh la la

Gorgeous autumn days are full. Cool breezes blow through green and yellow leaves, magpies clonk and murmur mysteriously, ravens are ubiquitous and noisy, we need a warm blanket at night, and every morning we see at least one more rabbit on our land than we saw the previous day.  With white cottontails.  They are getting to be as numerous as prairie dogs once were on our land. I learned that they often take over abandoned prairie dog burrows and that is hopeful since we have had an ongoing war for two decades with those rodents (who have been known to occasionally carry bubonic plague!) and maybe now they're moving out. You may ask: aren't rabbits rodents, too? I just learned that they are Lagomorphs -- hares and pikas (remember the invisible giant pika Harvey?). I know. I have to get a life.

At present, life is chock full of knitting and felting like mad to meet the deadline for the RuYi Fiber Arts show opening this weekend.

I'll be teaching a two-hour mini-workshop at RuYi Studio on Thursday afternoon, October 11th,  called Woven Words Journaling. We will talk about combining a passion for craft with writing  memoir and personal essays, and have fun doing it. This is a shortened, tweaked version of an intensive called Writing & Knitting Memoir.

If you're in town and would like to participate, please contact me so I can add your name and reserve a spot for you. The cost is nominal and space is extremely limited.

so Emily Dickinson
I'm increasing my inventory of handwarmers for end of November when they usually sell out.

It's been fun this year as I make each one a bit different and a bit wilder (see previous post - the ones pictured above are rather conservative).  A way-cool clothing boutique in town wants them, but I'm not sure it's a good idea.  I don't want to become a one-woman knitting factory. There are poems to be written...
 These are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June,
A blue and gold mistake. 
            Emily Dickinson, Indian Summer, stanzas one/two)