hidden sweetness

Dawn always tells us something,
always.
(Adam Zagajewski, Mute City)

...that it's cold...very cold. Minus 7 yesterday morning when I left for meditation at Metta. Snow doesn't melt, ice patches treacherously dot parking lots and sidewalks. I've been hibernating. So I tell my friends. It's true, my own version of overwintering. One friend said, "glad to see that you're moving during your hibernation." To Santa Fe, casino-ing, going out to lunch, to the movies. What we hardly ever do together, Ron and me. Just the two of us. No parties. The hibernation part is that I'm not meeting friends for lunch or coffee, shopping, or making other appointments that pull me away for great chunks of the day. More of a quiet time - like the Pueblo people do for a month in March. This is my quiet time. I'm not  actually doing any work either. My personality contains a "no sense of urgency" clause and I'm realizing it fully during this dark season. It will soon come to an end, of course. And I'm already writing the official To Do list starting after January first - when I'm sure the days will be pleasanter and the light longer.

I don't have a cat and this one's long gone, but I 'm in a cat and tea mood and can conjure the mood without props. My dog Spike, who normally loves snow, avoids going outside as much as possible and when he comes in I have to check that his paws aren't encrusted with ice and snow. He seems grateful, stands still, looks at me with soulful eyes as I touch him.

And then the night comes. The bright last full moon of 2012 engenders occasional inspired moments. Unexpected things happen, some good, some not so good, but it seems I can deal with it. What's the alternative? Do I wish I was somewhere else this winter? Well. Yes.

 It was a holiday, but we turned away from the holiday.
Books lay on the table, we didn't read them now.
In the distance was the great world, a world of love and betrayal,
unknown, unnamed, always, still completely new.
     (Adam Zagajewski, It Was a Holiday)

gone woo-woo again

This morning dawned in a most dramatic way and revealed a few inches of fresh snow that had fallen during the night. Now at mid-afternoon the blue sky is tattered with thick pale grey clouds. New weather is either moving in or moving out. It's a low energy day for me, almost as low as the clouds that obliterate the mountains and touch the ground. The final full moon of 2012 is coming tonight and I hear that it will be extra potent on an emotional and psychological level and contain strong energy for transformation and healing. It will "illuminate that which is hidden or buried." Batten down the hatches. We're in for it!  So what do I do on such a morning? Make popovers.

I call these Zen Pops because the recipe is so simple: 1 cup flour, 2 eggs, 1 c milk, pinch of salt (beat till smooth).  Fill buttered and floured muffin cups 1/2 full. Bake 20 minutes at 450 and 20 minutes at 350. Makes 9. Serve with anything.

next...
With Earl Grey tea and two Zen Pops in my stomach I finished Loretta's mittens! Making mittens is not my favorite thing to do, but this pair turned out fine. I'd started one last week and wrote about it a week or so ago (ripped twice and reknitted) and it turned out to be a size small. My eyes strayed and stayed on the wrong numbers and I thought I was making a medium - until I tried it on. It is a nice single mitten though, completely useless as such, and I have to decide if I want to buy more yarn and finish a pair or just forget the whole mitten thing.

It is late afternoon.
I have put Beethoven on.
It is foolish to impute pain
to the intense sky
but that is what I have done.
And I will impute loneliness
to the appearing moon.
     Leonard Cohen (first stanza, "It is Late Afternoon")

dear life

when was the last time you did something for the first time?
Ron's 75th birthday was yesterday. "Most inconvenient," I tell him jokingly "what with Xmas and all". But he heard that throughout his childhood and most of his adult life, resulting in one gift to cover both occasions -- until I came along -- and a handful of sensitive family members who make sure he isn't cheated out of birthday and Christmas greetings and gifts. He isn't easy to buy for, but this year, along with a regular gift, he received a fleet of Hot Wheels Ferraris! He's really still a car guy and drives a Miata (in lieu of the elusive Ferrari). I caught him playing with the cars on the kitchen table this morning...cheering on #23...his birth date...(should I worry?).

and back east...
daughter Melissa enjoys her couldn't-wait-til-Christmas pair of hand knitted cabled socks named "pretty in pink" by the yarn dyer. She threatened requested new socks a couple of weeks ago. More are in the works. Sorry kid,  they won't be ready until next year.

We're all up for Dante opening his gifts whenever they arrive. How cute is he?

wear your heart on the page and people will read to find out how you solved being alive
     Gordon Lish

only the present

butterflies like memories

We don't make a big deal of Christmas since we moved to Taos many years ago. Back east Christmas Eve was the special time when family and friends came to our house. We did the usual things gladly: turkey, cookies, cakes, gifts, a real tree with ornaments collected over decades, each with a little story attached that we had to tell again. A fire blazed in the stone fireplace in our remodeled lake house. It was built in 1925 by a couple that came to Candlewood Lake from New York every summer with their best friends, another couple who built their house next door. You couldn't see the lake but it was only a two minute drive away. Since we moved to New Mexico we haven't been with family at Christmastime. Somehow it doesn't work; distance, weather, money, other extended family commitments. So we celebrate, Ron and me, in our own modest way. A tabletop tree that's been around for 10 years (there were two but the other one blew away last spring when I was organizing the storage room). Every year I decorate the 18" tree(s)  with whatever whim is prevalent. Lights, clothespins, angels, tiny glass motorcycle and train ornaments, penguins. This year I found lovely paper butterflies at Wabi-Sabi. They look real -- like they just flew in and landed on this unlikely tree.

A doll as old as me (don't ask) sits beneath the tree. I have no idea when she came into my life and I don't remember actually playing with her. She is immodestly not wearing underwear and her sweater was borrowed from a stuffed bear who arrived here a few years ago. However, we believe in fun at any age and I think she's beautiful (in spite of a slightly chipped nose) and I hope she's enjoying her reemergence.

convergences
Ron's birthday is tomorrow and we'll do something festive that he likes. Maybe lunch in Santa Fe, or a special gift. Maybe I'll bake his favorite chocolate cake. Whatever we do, I've gotten past the holiday blues. Even though there is more to be blue about this year than in previous years. When I compare those blues, the past seems quite trivial and I will try to be more mindful and grateful during this time. After all, we're still here, after the dire end-of-the-world madness -- and the light is returning.

Your mind is all stories
     Dipa Ma

manifesting

I have the ability
to stay poised and centered
regardless of what
goes before me
     Wayne Dyer, Living the Wisdom of the Tao

It's been a difficult week since I last posted. Some of it due to senseless tragedy here and abroad, dire predictions of the end of the world as we know it, other things close up and personal. The holidays bring their own unique stresses and this year wins the prize for quantity. As a man on line behind me at the post office said yesterday as we waited forever to mail our packages: "and in the outhouse it's piling up".

Buddha in hand
I'm having a difficult time focusing so I've spent a lot of time scribbling in a notebook and knitting. I received a call from my neighbor Tere yesterday with some requests. Can I replace a lost mitten? -- one of two calls for replacements (those naughty kittens!), and the baby in Denver outgrew the tiny infant hat I made her and needs a larger one, and a sister with a difficult health problem needs full mittens to keep her hands warm when she's moved from wheelchair to car and other places. I had to check my stash and triage the requests -- mittens first! Nothing perfect in the stash. Found, in town, some Viking Nordlys soft and cheerful. Started immediately upon returning home. Nearly finished the first mitten this morning, feeling smug and accomplished, when I realized that I'd read the instructions wrong (because someone was talking to me) and I forgot that I can't multi-task anymore. You know the rest. But that's one magic of knitting -- all mistakes permanently obliterated. If only....

finito!
The good news is that I finished Dante's sweater and it's soooo cute! Can't wait to see it on him. He was the reason I stood on that long line at the post office yesterday -- I wanted him to have it soon.

Do you believe in that thing about opening a book randomly and finding just the words you need at that very moment? Well, Dyer's book was next to me on the table, I opened it....

The softest
of all things
overrides the hardest
of all things

shutterbabe

took a licking and 33 years later...

I've started using my beloved 1980 35mm Olympus XA2 again. It turned up this morning when Ron was searching for his misplaced passport because we'd just read an article about how the state of New Mexico, on January 15 2013, will require passports from anyone attempting to pass through security at any NM airport. Drivers licenses will no longer be valid for that purpose because apparently there have been thousands of licenses issued to illegal immigrants without much screening; an unsuccessful attempt by former governor Bill Richardson to reduce the number of uninsured drivers on the roads. This follows a federal REAL ID law that the Bush administration passed in 2005 and which is going into effect next month (anyone recognize shades of Casablanca here?"show us your papers"  "uh, I don't think I have them with me" -- and we know what happened).

So, back to the discovery of the camera. I'd given it to Ron several years ago when I was newly into digital with my Canon 4MP. He asked for the XA2 because he liked the design and felt it would be a classic someday. He never used it. He can do that: appreciate an object solely for its design and beauty. When I saw it again this morning a flood of memories came rushing in. It was my first compact camera and I carried it everywhere, every day, in my purple LeSportsac bag (long gone). Most of the photos we have from our first decade together were taken with that very camera because of its easy portability.

still clicking...
The body is worn in some places from use, but miraculously, when I flipped a lever the beeping red light sounded -- the batteries still had juice! and I found a roll of film in a desk drawer. I learned that Walgreens in town sells film, batteries, and developing. I'd driven there earlier after clearing off 6-8 inches of snow from the car and driving through the rest on our unplowed road, only to discover upon arriving, that I'd left my bag at home in my haste to get out and buy film! It was snowing by the time I got home so didn't go out again. Sometimes patience is forced upon me. It will be fun to see what comes of this. But how will I get those pictures onto my computer to share? Like this yellow-snow-on-the-mountain one I took a few minutes ago as the sun got low in the west? Do I see a scanner in my future?

When dropping a stone into a well,
one never knows what the echo will be;
when you send a photograph into circulation,
it is out of your hands.
     Henri Cartier-Bresson

the Zen of things

As the year concludes--
wanderer's hat on my head,
sandals on my feet
     Basho

When winter comes, as it has in the last couple of days, I tend to pull inward as many people and bears do. Not exactly hibernation. I do not live in a cave (although I could probably live off of my fat for a couple of months if I had to) and I definitely do not have to drive to work or be on someone else's schedule. That has been an advantage of the dramatic move we made to New Mexico two decades ago. When I work, it's freelance and can be done in my own space on my own schedule (a blessing and a curse). There were other prices to pay for our choice (there always are), but that's another story. Our house is partially passive solar and it gets pretty warm on sunny winter days. In response, I tend to wear flip flops in the house on most days. But my feet can get cold. I few years ago I knitted, with the softest sock yarn I could find, two pairs of tabi socks (the traditional name for the Japanese split-toe sock).

I wore them for a winter or two and then, frankly, forgot about them. Until a few days ago when my friend Mag was visiting and we went shopping (which we do together a lot; eating also) and went into Wabi-Sabi in Taos where they had a basket filled with authentic cotton tabi socks. I bought a pair and then remembered the ones I'd knit.

In a book my friend Gayle gave me before she left this world, Wabi-sabi is defined as:
a beauty of things imperfect, 
impermanent, and incomplete.
It is a beauty of things modest and humble.
It is a beauty of things unconventional.

On this day after a heavy snowstorm, when there has been such a major senseless tragedy in my former home of Connecticut, in a town I passed through every day on my way to work, where I stopped often in the little Newtown yarn shop on my way home, where I was once almost arrested for talking back to the town's one bad traffic cop, a place a few short miles away from Danbury Hospital where my husband's life was saved so very long ago -- there are numerous heartbreaks that I can't reconcile on this cold day. Heartbreaks awakened by that tragedy. A reality check, perhaps.

My feet are warm and all I can do is practice the mindful breathing my friend Pearl taught me--and knit. Dante's sweater, another pair of socks....a simple act, string passing through my fingers, the sense of things modest and humble. A nothingness alive with possibility.

now will I sing

 the river is starting to freeze

That line from a Leonard Cohen song haunts me today. A muted sort of day as a heavy wet snow blows and accumulates. I don't know if the rivers are freezing, but I know that our cars have disappeared into the driveway and the baby horse a couple of acres away is experiencing her first real snowfall which seems to exhilarate as she suddenly takes off, kicks back legs and gallops. But never too far or too long away from her mother, white, who has definitely disappeared into the landscape. So I'm disappearing into my warm house, writing, reading on my Kindle,  I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons (excellent) and knitting Dante's sweater which is going super fast. I bought the yarn, Lamb's Pride Worsted "tormented teal" on Wednesday! I'll start the sleeves later.

the life of...
as I read the biography of Cohen, many of his past books are mentioned. Remembering something vague, I searched my bookshelves and found an old 1968 poetry collection, The Spice-Box of Earth. I bought it used decades ago and it still survives. In all the moving and giving away of books through the years, somehow this slim paperback survived.

...and it's pretty fragile at this point. This altitude with its dry air is hell on paperback books. So I carefully leaf through the pages and read poems I haven't looked at in ages, recognize some that became songs, and note a line in the current bio from an early publisher of his work: "we know you're great, but we don't know if you're any good."  Caveat: I think he's great. And the bio is a compelling and informative read.

never lament casually
     L. Cohen

artisans of all types

I write to realize the world as one has come to live in it, thus to give testament. I write to move in words,  a human delight. I write when no other act is possible.  
Robert Creeley

the wind is up again
It's Wednesday now. My BBF (best best friend), staying with us, left for the airport an hour ago. We had a lovely time together. Cooking, eating, knitting, writing, talking, talking... We each managed to get a bit of Christmas shopping done. Much less for me since I try to keep the gift thing simple and limited. Toddler Dante is our main recipient now. I had planned to knit a sweater and a hat for him by Christmas. I haven't bought the yarn yet. However, he just turned two and has no idea about dates. Whenever it arrives, it will be a surprise. Little kids get too much stuff at Christmas anyway (I tell myself) and he has lots of family, extended family, and family friends who will shower him with loving gifts -- he's a very popular guy.

I'm still thinking about that freaky Sunday snowstorm. Freaky because it's so long since we had snow and the weather has been so benign. Suddenly it was freezing and windy. I'm also remembering the rugged rocky off-road drive we took to get to the destination where our friends actually live and travel to and from every day. And I love the way summer furniture looks in winter snow -- as long as one is inside and wearing alpaca socks on one's feet and can take the picture from the window.

I've started replenishing my sock yarn supply and although I didn't take a picture of the latest acquisition yet, believe me when I say it's the colors of the veggies I prepared for the Moroccan Stew we ate last night (New Recipes from Moosewood). The stew was good, the yarn is tempting me. But not as much as the incredible chocolates from chokola at the Chocolate and Cashmere shop: basil lime, earl grey, passion fruit, coffee ganache, caramel sea salt, vanilla chai...sigh!

stories & food

Cookbook event at Moby Dickens bookstore yesterday afternoon. Lots of the contributors showed up and signed books, visitors and buyers drifted in and out. The book is already in its second printing and has been a great success. Editor Bonnie Lee Black organized everyone and a talked a bit about the genesis of the book which couldn't have happened without the participation of many people.

SOMOS Executive Director Dori Vinella, the SOMOS Board, publishing liaison Rebecca Lenzini, photographer Dan Cassidy, designer Lesley Cox....

I'll share my story here, but you'll have to buy the book for the recipe and the other 84 stories.

Zeppole
I learned to make zeppole the night Charlie died. I was sixteen years old, my boyfriend Donny was coming to take me to Christmas Eve midnight services, and Charlie was my canary. I'd named him after a cute 1950s TV singer, Charlie Applewhite. I couldn't take my canary for a walk on our New York City sidewalks, but he warbled cheerfully from his cage every day, making us all feel happy for a brief time. 

My mother baked Neopolitan sweets every holiday. It had been a long day of baking. Tables held plates of cookies and pretty pyramids of Struffoli and Zeppoli dripping with honey, decorated with candy sprinkles. Heavy frying pans were cooling on the stove when Charlie escaped from his cage. Not used to free flying, he landed in a pan of still-hot Crisco oil. We cleaned him off with tea towels, but he succumbed.

Then Donny arrived. Through tears I told him that I'd left the cage door open and now Charlie was dead. Perplexed momentarily, Donny finally understood, provided sympathy all around and took me away. My mother cleaned the kitchen and my father disposed of the body. Returning home with Christmas magic and adolescent love in our eyes, Donny and I found hot tea and Zeppole waiting for us. They were delicious.

and on the third day

I'm supposed to be writing tomorrow's poem for the workshop, but my mind is a blank, thoughts blown asunder by the vivid sunset and too much chocolate. I step out onto the deck, barefoot, take a photo -- even the pond water is orange. Then I putter. Check the handknits inventory. Not much left. Not leftovers, but what is available. Two Kool Aid dyed merino sock pairs and one hand-dyed cabled pair. It's been an amazing season. So many people sending notes about how much they love their socks and mittz and other items. I've started new ones and will post photos as they come off the needles, as always.

Received a bag of bamboo sock yarn today in a variety of great colors for spring.

Meanwhile, will try to resist sudden strong desire to knit a Central Park Hoodie. I still have that 2006 issue of Knitscene with the pattern and it seems as fresh as ever. I never finished the one I started a few years ago; angry over negative associations with the yarn (it's complicated), I ripped it out, rolled the yarn into neat balls, sold them at a stash sale, broke the spell. I do believe, as Salmon Rushdie wrote in Midnight's Children, that bad thoughts and evil, can get knitted into a garment and passed on. Think of all the stories of spells conjured up with bits of yarn. Mine was a hasty move I know, ripping it all out, but it was the right thing to do at the time. When I start a new one it will be quite a different approach -- all good vibes and moon shadows.

time for drifting and waiting...
I'll return to the blank page now and hope for the best. Or wait until morning, let it perc during the night.

or you knit...
This is the time of listening. You are trying to hear the inner siren's song at the center of your soul. You take little stabs at writing. You hold the pen and write a phrase. And pause, for the Voice is gone. Too frail. Too weak. You draw pictures to give presence to the pen.
     Sophy Burnham (For Writers Only)

sometimes the mountain

Slow and soft. This Sunday morning. Earl Grey tea. Toast with Belgian butter and cinnamon sugar. Browsing through a couple of poetry books looking for inspiration for the poetry marathon workshop coming up starting tomorrow afternoon and for which I'll have to write a new poem each day for five days.  Peaceful here now after days getting the house ready for my BBF's visit from California, trips to Santa Fe for yarn and food, meeting one more writing deadline, one knitting deadline, and finishing the pair of socks for the friend dealing with chemo treatments and whose feet are probably cold. Alpaca warmth. Soft color, soft touch. Wearing my own blue alpaca sox as I write on this cloudy morning that promises...what? snow? Not in the forecast. Just woodsmoke drifting up from neighbors' chimneys.

The blue socks make me think about the the day I walked a faraway beach under a cloudy sky, my unfinished alpaca sock in my bag and how I was irrationally inspired to photograph it on driftwood and seaweed.

Every time I wear those socks, that day on the Pacific shore, with all its scents and sounds, comes back to me in full array. It was as near perfect as a walk can be.

As much as I love sunshine, 50 degree days, sweaters instead of jackets and coats, I am now begging asking the Universe for moisture. It's getting serious. Moisture level is 75% below normal and all of us running on well water. I notice light snow along the mountainside this morning. Maybe it's been there for awhile, or maybe it fell during the night. A strong west wind blew in before dark, maybe it brought moisture from the northern California coast where I hear it's been raining "in torrents".

By this date, the mountain peaks that I can see from my kitchen should be thick and white with snow.

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence
     Denise Levertov ("Witness")