mooning around

so much color everywhere

It's evening, the sun shining low in the west turns the light buttery yellow, daytime harshness softens. I'm drinking Lung Ching Dragon Well green tea and it will probably keep me awake half the night, but who cares? It's the start of a Blue Moon night and there's a definite end-of-summer feel in the air. A different kind of quiet surrounds us. Still hot during the day, much cooler at night. Birds are already flocking together, gorging themselves on sunflower seeds and whatever else is in the fields and trees...chokecherries...

The birds make me think of a favorite chapter in The Wind in the Willows -- when they gather on a wire and discuss where to go and when to leave. Unlike them, we plan to stay. But we still gather (at a bistro table) -- my knitting friend Joan and me, discussing yarn and new projects -- the lure of cooler nights seeping into us much as the changing quality of light seeps into the psyche of the wild birds.

do not try this in the woods
Meanwhile I finished the socks I've been working on. They resemble rugged hiking socks, but hand knit socks aren't the best things to hike in. I learned that a long time ago, the hard way.

The mountains are turning pink now and I'm tired from a long full day -- friends, summer heat, good food, yarn. Resting up for a drop-dead-deadline weekend and a blue moon.

follow your Inner Moonlight
don't hide the Madness
                   Allen Ginsberg

blue moon musings

Tonight I'm thinking about beach houses I've stayed in. And leafing through that atmospheric photography book of Joel Meyerowitz, A Summer's Day (on Cape Cod).  I'm drawn to it every summer and place it on my coffee table here in the southwest until autumn comes and it's put it away for another year.

Something in the air this dusky sunset. I look through photos of beaches I've walked. Light begins to recede, breezes are cool, birds make last sounds before going silent for the night. I leave the slider open until the voice in the next room says "it's cold in here!" and I grudgingly close it. But not yet. I am reveling in that mysterious often-occurring sea scent that has always baffled me -- so far away.

The nearly full moon floats high in the darkening sky and we look forward to a Blue Moon in a couple of days. How cool is that! All those legends.

Can you hear the waves breaking? I can. Feel the undertow?

Inside water, a waterwheel turns.
A star circulates with the moon.

We live in the night ocean wondering,
What are these lights?
                                  Rumi

outflow=inflow=outflow

I was so in love with that sock-against-the-sky photo I posted last week that I put it on my facebook page. It triggered notes from writer friends and sock fans who own my handknitted socks. I haven't seen some of these women for years and their comments have opened up memories of mornings writing in a friend's zendo, a week at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, the Yuletide fair in Taos, a week in the Yucatan, the dream Trudy had about a drawer full of handknitted socks all the colors of the rainbow! And then Nita reminded me of the Clan of Sock Women.

Clan of the Sock Women
A few years ago, as one of a small group of zendo writers, we met once a week at a friend's earthship in Taos and meditated, walked, and wrote. I usually wore my hand knitted socks on those early mornings since my feet are always cold, even in summer, and Nat, whose place it was (and who is still a collector of my socks) wore hers. Gradually curiosity (and sock-envy) was aroused and I was asked if I had any more. Silly question! I always have far too many socks - either on needles or in lavender-scented boxes. And before I knew it, colorful wool socks were appearing on the feet around me -- which prompted Nita to proclaim us The Clan of the Sock Women. I wrote about it in my sock pattern chapbook, but sort of forgot until Nita declared it once again upon seeing the latest photo!  So now I love facebook (which I've been lukewarm about) and the unexpected reconnection it provides. These sock women are poets, writers, artists, a recent poet laureate, spiritual teachers, workshop leaders, celebrities...they live all over the country and in Mexico and England...in other words they are Remarkable Women. They have touched upon and changed my life in many unaccountable ways and I'm proud to have touched their lives in some small way and that they remember. And, yes, there's a new crop of too many pairs of socks once again. Outflow makes way for Inflow! S stands for Sanity and Socks. It's what I do - and I'm not a bit embarrassed by the sheer volume! 

Volume. The ornamental cherries, inedible, in profusion in the park. I walk under the tree, on top of a carpet of small slippery red balls, glance at the blue sky in between leaves and branches, a stage set; feel grateful to be alive on a cool morning in late summer, able to walk, to feel the sun on my shoulders, breeze in my hair. Remember how the cherry trees looked in spring. Yesterday?

And then I receive news about a friend who has been diagnosed with stage three colon cancer. And I understand that personal worlds and casual future projections can change in a moment. I thought getting old was the qualifier, but that's nothing compared to what could be waiting in the wings. So am I now more mindful? more grateful? I don't know. I want to be.  But it's hard to change a lifetime of belief and so easy to fall into despair.

Stop for the flowers in the early morning sun, breathe deeply (as my daughter is always telling me to do). Think about knitting something the color of a tropical sea with the Aslan pot-dyed yarn I found the other day in that odd store that recently opened in Taos. Nice yarn. Lovely color. Color heals. Doesn't it? Or the three poem drafts I wrote today? I can knit a pair of socks to keep her feet warm as hot summer fades into cool, cold, autumn. She might be cold.

I slept in a bed 
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
                 Jane Kenyon

falling into a blue hole

I'm not bored with this sock anymore -- nor with the incredible cloud work in our skies these days.

We have had some rain and the fields are turning green. So much beautiful green. The color of creativity, the color of life. It always amazes me the way nature operates in a sub-alpine desert area  -- the way plants and seeds disappear until moisture hits them and they sprout overnight. I sometimes think that if the climate around here changed to moist, we'd quickly be living in a jungle -- all those seeds growing in time-lapse photography style, into gigantic trees and bushes.

three tall women
Last night I attended a staged reading of Edward Albee's two-act play, Three Tall Women. It was presented as part of the SOMOS Summer Writers Series at the Harwood Museum. The three performers were Judith Kendall, Heather Antoniesson, Judith Rane, otherwise known as A, B, and C. Three ages, three women. Directed by Steve Parks. All four are actors have performed numerous times in venues in and out of Taos.  It was the first time that SOMOS deviated from authors' reading their poetry and prose, occasionally with music, and was quite successful. The play itself, of course, is somewhat dark. There are humorous moments and the compelling subject of the life and times of a 90 year old women. There's something about that compressing of a lifetime that leaves a big existential hole. So I'm in recovery today. And if I can just finish up my editing commitment...and not fall into a hole...

and it feels like rain

coffee in the sky
A favorite coffee shop, Elevation, has replaced their nondescript sign with this giant cup perched above a sculptural monolith. I stopped to pick up a latte with a splash of vanilla syrup in it and was surprised to be greeted on high by the largest red cup I've ever seen. Especially since I'm suffering one of those gray-sky-gray-mind days. Explained, perhaps, by my trying to readjust to my quotidian life with the result that all I'm experiencing is restlessness and lack of imagination and wondering why I'm embroiled in yet another editing project. The sky matches my mood, even though I can appreciate cooler temperatures and relief from unrelenting sun. If only it would rain. Storm threats abound in the north. A few sprinkles fall, stop. No stars visible tonight.

Heard about and visited a new store in town called Tuesday Morning -- an offshoot, I learned, of Marshall's and Target. A fun store to browse in with a hodgepodge of unrelated items. Tucked away on a bottom shelf I found boxes of yarn! Nice yarns, but not much of it. Still I managed to find a ball of sock yarn in exactly the black, white and gray of my mood at a shockingly inexpensive price. But, alas, even starting a new sock didn't move me off center. I admit it: I was bored.

So now I've escaped into Pride and Prejudice -- which I've read so many times I could probably be one of those wandering people in Fahrenheit 451 who memorized books in a world that burned them. P&P surprisingly fits my escapist mood with its pleasant unreality and romantic denouement. Especially after reading The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka -- an award winning novel about Japanese women (and their men) who made lives in California and ended up being forgotten in internment camps during WWII. An excellent book, sad and poignant. Builds up so compellingly that I couldn't put it down until the very last page.

"It's true that I sometimes can't separate what I actually feel from what I know I'm supposed to feel"
             Danny Gregory

tipsy & full

oh no, we hardly knew ye...
It certainly doesn't feel like the end of summer, but there are signs...windfall apples and cool nights that require a light extra blanket.  Fresh veggies pulled from the earth of our neighbors' garden...

washed and ready to be cooked (if I can figure out how to cook beets)...

you've got a friend...
Mag left this morning after more than a week together. We entertained Maria and her husband (who took the photo), feasted, laughed loud and long, exchanged gifts and ice cream and flowers. An unforgettable day that started at noon and ended at 9:30 p.m.

After a long editing meeting this afternoon I return home, eat too much, try to find a still point, illustrate a journal page (what I do when rest is needed - the editing session was long). Drawing for me is a right- brained effort that requires stillness without expectation of mastery -- I am not an artist or illustrator, but who cares. This effort is not necessarily dependent upon wine or chocolate and therefore more of a meditation. (Well, maybe chocolate).

The bouquet of daisies is still perky, I'm not. But it's raining! Blessed, wet, cool, rain. Heavenly. Remembering last night's sumptuous dinner at Lambert's, Ron back from long drive home from Las Vegas, tired but in rare form, like last hurrahs before death (he's already asleep at 7 pm), Mag and I getting in last words and ideas and plans until next time together. (December?  March? here? there?). Duck, steak, porcini mushrooms, Grappa (which nearly killed me). I write words in my notebook, sip the chilled leftover Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and think about an early bedtime.

thanks for he dance
I'm sorry you're tired
the evening has hardly begun
thanks for the dance
try to look inspired
one two three, one two three one
                  Leonard Cohen

what it is

Early morning or sunset, the sky is a canvas on which the angels (and CameraBag app) paint.

So what is it about Thursdays? The last two have been insane in many ways. Meetings, guests, problems, wine, food, anxieties, pleasures, remembering. Like yesterday. And then blessed in the early evening by an unexpected gushing, pouring rainstorm. So welcome. When I returned home Spike was dripping wet and there was a rain puddle in the living room. The air outside was washed clean and the wet earth, chamisa and sagebrush, smelled like honey and vanilla.

Mag and I drove to Chimayo on Wednesday. To the Santuario with it's sacred dirt.

And it's holy gift shops.

In the Santuario part of the church, miracles and healings are recorded through dozens of crutches, casts, shoes, walkers, and canes left behind.  Walls of photos. People who have passed on? Or healed? I'm not sure of the protocol, but it makes you think.... What I do know is that if you lose something valuable it's best to lose it in a Catholic Church. Mag lost her expensive prescription sunglasses there, but they were found and turned in. She's driving back today to retrieve them.  On the way home we stopped at  Las Trampas church - one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest in northern New Mexico. Didn't stay long as the sky was darkening and we were tired and hot facing a longish drive.

But today there is a new moon and astrologer's think it's a good one. Oh, and about the end of the world on December 21st? Saw a cartoon that puts thing in perspective. The dialogue goes like this:

Ancient Mayan guy (holding famous round calender): "I only had room to go to 2012"
Other Mayan guy: "Ha! That'll freak somebody out someday"

it's all good

see the world through a glass of wine
Welcome to Lori's Diner! Well, the one in the photo is in San Francisco, the other one is right here in my kitchen. My good friend Mag is visiting this week from the aforementioned city and we have been drinking good wine, eating good food and visiting with good friends.

It's girl time. We planned a simple lunch yesterday for friends Maria and Roland and it turned into a feast that lasted from noon to about 10 p.m. I haven't laughed so much or talked so loud in years. It was perfect.

the city different
Before arriving here, Mag spent a few days in Santa Fe. Ron wasn't feeling well after dental surgery so I drove down for a sleepover and left him to recover quietly on his own. We celebrated my birthday for an entire day and ate in two great restaurants: La Boca (lunch) and SantaCafe (dinner with dessert).

Wine flowed, a rainstorm came in and lowered the temperature considerably. I hadn't brought a sweater (it was blazing hot when I left home) so had to borrow one, oh poor me, I had to wear the raspberry cardi she'd bought in Paris last month! We talked, closed the restaurant down, walked back to the sweet Chimayo Hotel and fell into dead sleep. I returned next morning and Ron was feeling better, getting ready to drive to Nevada to visit our son. He said he'd rather hang out there, 750 miles away, than listen to the two of us yakety-yaking. He left wearing the vintage Hawaiian shirt he received as a gift. He's never owned one before, his style tends more toward faded blue cotton shirts and a tee, but when he put it on, he was transformed in looks and spirit. I hope he has a great time with son Scott in Las Vegas, wearing his Hawaiian shirt with all the colorful fish on it.

other people's masks
While in Santa Fe we attended an ethnographic show held in several venues in the city. Mag is a jewelry designer and uses old beads in her creations so this event was an important one for her business, Magpies Beads (check it out). While she hobnobbed with her suppliers, I wandered around looking at tribal masks from the more exotic places in the world. I love masks.

savor
So, this morning, we sit quietly at the kitchen table eating toast and drinking green tea from small Chinese teapots -- and eating fresh figs. I love figs more than masks - and it's all the more appealing because fresh figs only appear at this time of the summer in the organic market. They're small in size this year. Sometimes less is more.

anatomy of mid-summer

Had a sort of domestic Zen day today. Anticipating a visit from my good friend in a few days I dedicated myself to cleaning the house and preparing her room (which is also my workroom). Because I didn't resist, it turned out to be not only productive but satisfying -- a meditation in disguise. The house is clean and I found a basket of dolls on top of the tall trastero in the living room that I'd forgotten about a long time ago. They were dusty, but happy as dolls go. The two rag dolls in the left front were embroidered and sewn by my mother when she was a girl. Which makes them about 100 years old! I remember she told me they represented her (blue eyes, auburn yarn hair) and her sister (dark eyes, dark hair). They are in amazingly good condition.

So I dusted everyone off, cleaned the basket and the top of the trastero, and now I don't quite know what to do with them. My house doesn't lend itself to cutesy displays and I'm still in that decluttering mode (will it never end?). And, really, can these old, old, dolls be considered clutter? Can I be considered clutter?

bringing up baby eye to eye

She came close to me yesterday and I touched her for the first time. She is soft the way all babies are soft, and unafraid. Her mother stood close by and didn't seem at all disturbed by my presence.

I spoke softly to both of them and congratulated mother on her beautiful foal (we hadn't had a chance to talk before) -- while the two other mares continued to annoy each other in the background. Kicks and whinnies galore. Jealous? PMSing? Baby is curious about everything and had came by to check out the pile of old adobe bricks slowly melting back into the earth.  How cute is that! Her mother stands between the feuding mares and baby.

A mountainous music always seemed
To be falling and to be passing away.
               Wallace Stevens

chaotic miasma

Carrots from my neighbor's garden. Who knew carrots came in so many colors? Small and sweet.

Baby is back! She's grown so much. Neighs in a high-pitched tone. 

She's curious. Spent a long time exploring a rototiller left in the grass. I watched her sniff it, lift her front leg to touch it -- and then get tangled up in the arrangement of handlebars. Eventually she figured out how to extricate herself and trotted away. She wanders further from her mother now, but they are always looking for each other and don't stay apart for long. It's lovely. The other horses are back too, still kicking and nipping each other.

next?
Suddenly the next two weeks of my life are chock full of responsibility and yet another publishing deadline. I am totally looking forward to my friend's visit next week and hoped that I'd be completely free. As it stands, I'll have to continue juggling. Fortunately she has lots of friends here whom she hasn't seen in several years, so will be catching up with them at various times during her visit--while I go to editing meetings and other things.  The family dynamic is still prominent. I received today a "wire" recording made more than 50 years ago of my nephew John, his grandparents, me, my boyfriend. His brother (who wasn't born at that time) sent it -- a cacophony of voices with a dominant, "bye bye daddy's car" and something about grandma's cuckoo clock. I haven't heard that recording since it was made and it felt like yesterday. The tyranny of time strikes again.

Good long gossipy lunch with Maggie at favorite El Gamal restaurant -- mid-eastern, organic fresh. Falafel and hummus, Israeli salad, lemonana (lemon juice/mint/crushed ice).

On her recommendation I'm reading Pen/Faulkner Award winning novel, The Great Man by Kate Christensen. Ostensibly centered around the death of an elderly renowned male artist, it's really about the women in his life. One reviewer said the characters "break the stereotype of the aging female protagonist". Yes! I started it this afternoon and am only a third of the way through it, but find Christensen's writing as sharp and discerning as promised. I don't know much about this author, but her photo shows an attractive younger women. How does she know so much about aging? The way we feel when we look in the mirror? The way we feel we could start a new life, but know we won't get it.

storied recipes & other tricks

Having fun with my camera phone! Learned another new trick today...

Pictures can show you things you might not see in the normal way--a trick of focusing--of seeing things as they really are and not the way people want them to be--looking for things the eye doesn't see...ghost-lights, the truth...
Joanne Harris, Lollipop Shoes

Upstairs the slider is open, wind is blowing, sky overcast, the air smells like a New England beach! How? Why? Wind from the Gulf? Pacific? Seas so far away. Tricks of the senses. Ghost of the ocean that covered this land millions of years ago? The foal and its mother are back in our field (pictures will be forthcoming as soon as I can get out there). Small pleasures (like baby) are returning to my stretched-thin life.

nice work if you can get it
Attended an editing meeting at friend Bonnie's home. She is an award-winning (Gourmand International) writer and chef (How to Cook a Crocodile) and whenever we gather for a meeting at her place, she calls it a "tea" and bakes something extraordinary. Today it was an apricot brioche! FYI the result of our meetings will be a book called Storied Recipes. Not an ordinary cookbook by any stretch of the imagination - a bedside read, a kitchen reference. It will be published in October and there will be a launch party and feast one night during the weekend of the Taos Wool Festival. So if you're in the area, you are invited. More info to come.

I love being in the kitchen of a real cook and master baker. In my next life I want to go to culinary school in France and become a pastry chef. Create artistic masterpieces with sugar and eggs and vanilla. Read about chocolate (ala Joanne Harris's entertaining novels and French cookbook), take pictures...

this singing light

Storm clouds move in with the sunset. Wind picks up. The air is cool now. It is the end of two days not on any calendar. More than three weeks have passed and today, those who loved him, said goodbye to nephew John. I could not physically be there, in Connecticut, this weekend. Thanks to technology I participated in a sort of shadowy way. But I would have liked to hug my cousin Carl, my brother and sister in law, Anne (her sister) who was my idol when I was 17 years old (she was a beautiful young nurse and looked like Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. I wanted to be her! She was independent and confident). I haven't seen her in decades. My daughter talked to her for me and Anne told her that when I married her father in 1961 I wore her wedding gown. I'd forgotten that. That gown and veil, lost wedding, lost marriage. The bouquet. Who caught it?

mangia!
After the services today everyone met at a local Italian restaurant and did what our families have always done after a funeral - feast and tell stories over a long memorable lunch. Addresses were exchanged and promises made to keep in touch. Some folks were mindful, perhaps for the first time, of Time, how it passes, how lives whoosh through years on separate trajectories - good intentions sometimes coming a tad too late. We've all been affected in some way and I hope we won't forget the gift that has been given.

Darkness descends now, but for a few brief moments vivid yellow light suffused the land beneath the clouds like poems reaching up to be heard.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.  (Rumi)

everyday & the moon

I'm not feeling quite myself today
Recurrance of sinus problems (I must get to sea level!) and the inevitable antibiotics. Pressure from the ENT PA to have a C-scan because "maybe you need surgery". Which I actually scheduled yesterday (the scan) and cancelled this morning. It's a bit of overkill I think. It makes you wonder. But wondering doesn't get me anywhere and instead I took myself out to browse Pieces, the consignment shop, where it's easy to get mesmerized and waste a lot of time wading through an ever-shifting array of mundane and interesting objects. Like the Balinese mask above. Or this unidentifiable something-wheel (too crowded where it stood for me to get a wider shot).

I rarely buy secondhand or vintage clothing. Other people's clothes don't seem to do it for me - and I'm not being a snob. If it worked, I'd buy it. I have a sophisticated friend who dresses almost entirely in consignment shop clothes and always looks fabulous. She visits the shops every week and calls it hunting and gathering - a challenge. I do get tempted sometimes and have to ask myself: do you need it? how will you pay for it? where will you put it? (questions I learned to ask after reading the book on clutter - it works every time - I refrained from buying the 4 foot tall/wide Balinese mask). The phonograph caused a blip, but I remembered the one I refused to take from my parents house ages ago when it was offered (and wasn't old), and who has 78rpm records anymore? and where would I put it if I did? I escaped unencumbered.

snAPPshots
Then picked up the new book that arrived at the post office. A fun informative guide to taking great pictures with a smartphone. My iPhone, in the brief time I've had it, has opened up a whole new superficial world of photography to me. Making pictures with special effects, not taking them seriously, just having fun. This may be a passing fancy, but I'm enjoying it. It's not all everyday stuff though. Adam Bronkhorst, the author, writes about how in recent years, global events recorded on phones often provide the majority of "first-day news footage" - while professional news crews and photographers take longer to arrive on the scene. Highly recommended if you love your phone's camera.

one night of dreaming
with the summer moon
                  Basho
Last night's full moon filled every corner of our house of windows with bright silver light. Rainstorm came in, obliterated the moon for a time. But when I awakened at 1 a.m. unable to sleep, I sat at the kitchen table with lemongrass tea and clear light touched me. No candle or electricity needed. Some full moons cause agitation but not this one. It languidly rose over the mountain, a gold disc to inspire poets. My cameras can't capture the crispness of a full moon and always pick up the invisible (to my eyes) atmospheric disturbances - so you will have to imagine it - or look out your window tonight and see it for yourself, for I think that this moon is glorious wherever you are. I'm grateful that it's a quiet, perhaps sad and accepting moon. I don't need emotional agitation from celestial bodies when there's enough of it down here.

Wonderful coolness
Is packed intact
In the lumpish moon
Of a summer evening
                  Basho