an elusive narrative

It's so obvious that the season is changing. And how nice that it's going into the one most of us love the best ~ even though, here in northern New Mexico spring is not the best of the best of seasons.  Really, it can be quite awful. This morning's moonset -- last full moon of winter -- was gentle and lovely. I didn't dare go outside to photograph it in the biting morning cold ~ we'd had a fresh snowfall during the night ~ so, in my PJs and with a mug of hot genmai-cha tea steeping, I aimed the camera west from the kitchen window!

Tea and notebook in early morning. Sense of change in the air. Cold, but not threateningly so. Promise of cloudless sunny sky. Mercury may be in retrograde, but at this time, I don't really care!

Last night, snow. This morning
full moon sets into
pale pink blue light.
A raven flies low
over the house, followed
by a half dozen matching others,
whoosh of wing, I see
underside of deep black feathers,
each perfect shadow passes 
the last full moon
of winter.

so far so good

Browsing through older photos on memory cards looking for something that now I can't remember what or why, I came across this guy who I remember refused to move off the book, giving me sidelong warning looks.  I was visiting a friend and late at night we knitted together. Snowshoe (Shoe for short, had six toes on each foot) liked to knock around knitting needles and bite into them ~ I still have a pair of bamboos, size 13, with his teeth marks on them!

I'd forgotten about the button craze I went through. Same friend, different time, we were elbow deep in bins of vintage buttons in a dusty sewing shop in the heart of a city. Neither of us sews but a spell came over us and we were girls playing. I used a few of mine on felted bags, she decorates her knitted hats, and we make hardly a dent in our button collections. Padre Martinez in 1840 Taos, left 44 pairs of knitted socks in his will, it seems I'll have to list buttons in mine.


and the full moon gets closer...
I awaken two nights in a row. The house is light in spite of the overcast night sky. I go into the next room to see if a lamp has been left on. No lights are on. My sinuses are acting up, I can't sleep, I take a valerian capsule with hot rose tea, go back to sleep. Go out for a haircut this morning and then, looking less shaggy, take the mac to the coffee shop, find my favorite private corner table empty. Perfect! I get some work done among other seemingly serious workers at their laptops. Warm sun is shining through dusty windows and there's vernal magic in the air.

A wild incipience in the air
as if everything stilled
is deeply active, the night cascading
through the tall pines
until it's in the house.
     Stephen Dunn (first lines, "So Far")
  

up & down like mercury

Cheerful color in the snow. The new yarn I was existentially driven to work with a couple of days ago, has proven to be the cure I needed. It's working up beautifully and I'm feeling much better. Catching a sudden glimpse ~ you know that state where you don't name things but just suddenly see (there must be a Zen term for it) ~ it resembles a field of wheat in the sunshine ~ with wild flowers,  southern France, on a warm spring day, Van Gogh with his easel, me with my straw hat...yeah, I'm sick of winter and there are scratch marks on the walls...

Ravens and magpies are making a racket in the trees that sounds like a spring hubbub. Really. (The sky tells a different story but we won't go there). It's already bluer...

When we drove to Santa Fe yesterday I noticed the huge blocks of ice along the banks of the Rio Grande had melted and the river was running faster. Two intrepid fly fishermen stand up to their thighs in cold water ~ the trout must be running too. I so look forward to the release of the snow melt from our Sangre de Cristos and the Colorado Rockies as it rushes through our rivers. The drama, power and noise are awesome.

And now the great spring skies are here, the more dazzling because the snow is still three feet or more deep all around. But there is a lift in the air, in the spring notes of the jays and chickadees, in the stirring of sap in maples and in me.
     (May Sarton, March 1 entry: Journal of a Solitude)

limbolandia

I'm trying to stay positive on this cold white long drear day. Swirling snow, momentary bursts of light that resemble sun, disappeared mountains, not a trace of color. Let me tell you dear reader, it's hard and I'm failing. I've done quite a bit of writing which is not what I should be doing with two deadlines looming. One in six days, the other in two weeks, with little progress on either one! Is this is why I fall into existential holes so often? and why so susceptible to changes in weather? Weather informs my life when I'm in this place of being and nothingness. Or maybe I'm down because my friend is leaving tomorrow for a romantic week on a Mexican island with her husband and said she's only taking a pair of sandals, a bathing suit, a chocolate dipped frozen banana (?) and some yarn and needles. Or is it because it's my east coast daughter's birthday today and I want to be with her and it's also my west coast friend's birthday and I want to be with her -- at her beach house this weekend!

from Turkey with love...
...there's hope...in the form of lurid vivid color in two balls of quality sock yarn (infused with aloe), found this morning in a sort of job lots store in town....

The pink, which I started on immediately (quickly abandoning the boring 50 Skeins of Gray sock project), is quite seven-year-old-girlie, but an antidote for the blahs. It's getting to be late afternoon now, there are still a lot of comments going back and forth among my fb friends over the last episode of Downton Abbey (we're all pissed! even getting mad at innocent Dan Stevens who simply wants to advance his career) and soon I'll pour a glass of Sauvigon Blanc and think about what to do for dinner (Chinese takeout out sounds like a plan). I'll be fine. Really. I will.

In our eaves and around our dormers
the wind cries and moans with increased
force, and the night comes on.
     Hayden Carruth (last stanza: "Snow Storm")

mountain dwelling

We're all about snow, wind and cold again ~ just when the ice and packed snow on the north-facing side of the driveway finally melted a couple of days ago! Abstract patterns emerge...and I'm out there freezing and taking pictures...instead of working again....

In fresh snow I drove to an editorial meeting this morning in a friend's studio and it was a nice change from an office setting. We sat at the old heavy wood table in the kitchen/sitting area of the studio, paintings on the walls and coffee and sweets from the restaurant next door. Two small well-behaved doggies stayed near and I picked up some lately-lost dog energy (I do miss Spike). One of the dogs had the calico colors that Spike had that makes four-leggeds look deliberately artistically rendered. Dogs, snow, cloud-smoke mountains, mystery, color and pattern....always present...the necklace I wore...

...an ancient (600-800 years old) Indonesian clay bead ~ from my friend Mag at Magpies Beads (check it out). It's my favorite piece, not due to its value which is relatively low, but because of age, history and craftsmanship. Whose hands fashioned it? where? The beads were common and plentiful, used in trade, and I guess they still are as they circulate down through the ages. I feel fortunate to have one. It almost feels as if I'm the current bead custodian, allowed to wear it these many years, but I don't own it and it will continue on, as it should, long after I'm gone. God-knows-how-many stories and places have been absorbed by it through the centuries. Imagine being able to see and hear them? Put bead to ear and listen....

things of the past are already long gone
and things to be, distant beyond imagining.
     Ch'ing Kung (d. 1352)

she asks

Despite editing, writing, knitting; despite lattes with a friend, grocery shopping, movies, Downton Abbey (don't even ask me about Matthew!), fb, text messaging, books to read, pictures to take, walks, dark chocolate, poems, I'm somehow feeling that this is a contemplative simplified time. This winter teases with springlike days and freezes with extreme winds and deep mountain cold. Perhaps it's the meditation practice I'm back into. Just once a week for two hours, but it's making a difference as the weeks pass. At least I think it's that. Or maybe I've moved into a different phase...just because. It's hard to tell and I'm not going to force an answer, just keep going round with the occasional unexpected thrust in a slightly different direction. I'm trying to regain acceptance and mindfulness. Notice more. The way white tree trunks look against a blue sky and adobe. The rosehips on the gravel in my friend's otherwise stark winter driveway.

I asked myself recently, why do I write? And let the answers flow as I scribbled in my notebook, thoughts moving faster than hand (hence the scribbles). First reason? I like notebooks and pens. Do not feel daunted by the blank page. Love to fill them, even with junk - and hope for the emergence of a few shining nuggets . I can be on my own schedule. Nobody is forcing me do it. There are things I need to speak of with someone who understands ~ namely, myself. I like coffee shops, lattes with foam and designs in the foam - a leaf, a heart - fleeting gifts. I write to deal with joy and loss, longing, vague pain and emptiness - explore why there is emptiness. I want to tell it slant (like Emily) and honest and that takes a lot of ink. It is a way to pin down the huge temptation to slip into fantasy and the desire for a soundtrack to my life. The words are a soundtrack I guess. No clipped montage will take me to some place I long to be. And occasionally, when all the elements converge, I can board an airplane or take a road trip to manifest something more  tangible. Like Rome or London, Durango even, San Francisco - or once, Paris and a Left Bank bookseller's extensive Betty Boop selection...

Chance is always powerful.
Let your hook be always cast
in the pool where you least expect it.
There will be a fish.
     Ovid

light of the South

joy today
It's all about sunflowers. Sunflower season, as dictated by nature, occurs at summer's end around here, but now in the midst of winter, a beautiful yarn has brought it to me.

It's Opal's Van Gogh series of yarns and this one, of course, is based on his sunflower paintings. I enjoyed working with the yarn so much that I think it actually embedded some cheerful energy into my psyche. These socks are the February project in my year long goal of a pair a month.

Working with this yarn kept me in a sunny arts and poetry mode for a couple of weeks. I remembered walking into the Van Gogh room of the D'Orsay in Paris a couple of years ago and how the vibrant colors of his paintings nearly knocked me over so many years after they were painted. Don MacLean's song Vincent kept strumming in my head as I knitted and I remembered my friend Richard singing it and playing his guitar as we all tried to sing along with him, stumbling over the words. The colors running through my fingers kept me from descending into memories of times and friends long gone. I reread my friend Marjorie Agosin's book, Starry Night. The poems came from her embracing the light of southern France and "the spirit of Vincent van Gogh who took me there". The whole experience of poetry, music, art, transcended knitting a mere pair of wool socks with pretty colored string and four thin sticks. Highly recommended as an antidote to winter. All of it.

Mad about yellow,
faithful follower of
sunflowers
I go into the storm,
shredded by light.
I set my easel in fertile
fields
I paint blind and drunk
glorying in my work.
     ("Yellow", by Marjorie Agosin, from Starry Night, White Pine Press, 1996)

the wind doth blow

Happy Valentine's Day

Ginger cookies not baked by me.

Sunday bake sale. Gone now.

It's a sunny blue sky day with fluffy white clouds hugging mountaintops picturesquely. It makes one think that warmer days are coming. Wrong. The winds are back! and they'll probably be with us until summer. Today blowing hard and cold! Pushing through every crack in window frames, under every door, as I huddle at my desk, with hot tea, in my Mrs. Patmore gray cardigan. Well, it's cashmere, but it's still a gray cardi and I don't look like any of the Ladies Crawley. But now I have to tell you a story that you will judge on your own. Your conclusion may be that I'm nuts, or need a vacation on a warm windless beach, or that it's just an ordinary nervous breakdown.

one last trick

As you know if you've been reading this blog, our dog Spike left us a couple of weeks ago. The next day I decided to set up a little "altar" in the kitchen. It's a practice here when someone passes on  -- you know, that follow the light thing? So why not our doggie? I found the last picture taken (I often tested the "kids & pets" settings on my cameras on him), set up a candle, incense, and we added one of his favorite bone-shaped biscuits. Nice.

He was a smart corgi mix, his language was always in his eyes, and now they seemed to watch us from the photo like those Jesus-eyes in velvet paintings.  The candle burned night and day, we got used to the effect. A couple of mornings later the biscuit was gone. It's only Ron and me in the house, the counter around the candle was kept clear, we'd had no visitors, there were no open windows or wind, neither of us had removed it. As realists we decided it had to be a mouse. But, I ask you, can a small field mouse (the only kind we've ever seen here) cart away a 4 inch long, 1/4" thick biscuit? I leave you to your own conclusions. You can guess what I think...please send donations to get me out of town pronto.

je me souviens

I remember...the last needlepoint...
Once upon another lifetime I lived in north Yonkers a couple of blocks above the Hudson River with my three young children and their father in a nice town house complex. The place was filled with other young families of diverse backgrounds and cultures. As young parents are wont to do, we developed friendships of proximity that involved children, dinners, parties, outings. Through the years there were careers, divorces, marriages, illicit love affairs (it was the late 1960s and early 70s after all) and eventually we moved on and away into other lives.

and then...
yesterday I picked up a package from the post office that turned out to be from BBF Bonnie whom I haven't seen in 40 years.  In that other lifetime we were both fiber fanatics and our main obsession interest was needlepoint. Along with our own work, we designed and sold original painted canvasses. We called ourselves The Needle Bees. Our business cards had a tiny sketch of what looked like a bee but we knew was actually a fly. So what was in the package from the PO? omg! floods of memories assail me...and make me smile, too...(that fly)...

We were invited to participate in a mushroom show in a posh needlepoint shop. Incredibly, improbably, amazingly, I found my piece in the garage. It's unframed stained and soiled but ~ by goddess! ~ it's one of the mushroom designs I entered in the 1970 show!

At that time, my oldest son (who will turn 50 this summer) was a boy - a dreamy outdoorsy sort. He came home one afternoon with sprigs of bittersweet and autumn leaves. Together we arranged the collection and traced the leaves on paper. In the wee hours, when the kids were asleep, I transferred the design onto needlepoint canvas. It became a pillow that has been on one sofa or another in every place I've lived since. It's still beautiful  - and I can't imagine ever doing something like it again.

For a few years by Long Island Sound I tended toward sea themes: fish, shells. When we moved to the southwest (children grown, new husband, grandparents) I was back into knitting and had abandoned needlepoint -- but a cotton floss kit at the local Yarn Shop compelled me to record our huge move west. Where will all of this go next? When my eyes and patience have faded like that last skein of tapestry yarn in the old leaf pillow and my son will be joining AARP....?

nothing rhymes with orange
so I'll paint the town red
go out of my usual way
and triangulate
be surreal without 
starting points or
endings ~ just keep forming

lemons? make lemonade

My day didn't start out well. I got up early and prepared to make Lemon Pound Cake for the SOMOS Valentine's Day fundraising bake sale at one o'clock.

Humming along (I like to bake), I popped six small loaves of batter into the oven. Within 20 minutes or so I smelled something burning. Turns out that the oven decided at that moment to go wonky on me. Half the loaves were burning, the other half were pure liquid! I was already stressed out due to other unrelated circumstances and went a little ballistic - tossed it all into the trash accompanied by a variety of creative loud expletives that sent Ron to his studio and would have driven Spike under the bed if he was still with us (sad).

I didn't have the time or desire to start over or go to the supermarket for more eggs and butter and yogurt.  Instead I decided to just go to the sale to help and sell.

Turns out there was an abundance of fine baked goods and my famous lemon cake wasn't missed one bit. This photo shows only about half of what finally arrived (omg! that coconut cake in the center! and the almond tart at the front...!).  I came home with meringues, corn bread, gluten free chocolate cupcakes and a book, La Bella Lingua.

The SOMOS office is pretty special since it was moved into new quarters last year. Writers and readers donate books all year long and the walls are lined with a selection better than the best used book shops. It's all organized by Danielle, a former book shop owner - and she knows what she's doing. So today, folks left with cookies, cakes and books. What's better than that? There was even coffee and tea available.

On the way home in late afternoon the shadows on mountain snows were magical and amazing and all the cars coming down from the Ski Valley after a day of skiing were heavy with several inches of new snow (only a dusting down here at 7500 feet).

I talked with friends, met new people at the bake sale, and my stressed-out mood dissipated as I remembered to breathe and think positive thoughts and be thankful and mindful, to take time to talk to my son in Connecticut and at home, pay attention to the small package that I picked up at the post office on the way into town that contained a note and item from a friend - a BBF  I haven't seen or talked to in 40 years! More about that tomorrow.

All in all, SOMOS received a nice infusion of funds, very few of the baked goods were left, and a good time was had by all ~ and I'm in a much better mood.l

balancing the blues

Yesterday, the sun moved a notch past mid-winter and closer to spring. Josseph the Starwatcher told us so. Today I absolutely believe it. Fifteen minutes into my walk in the park, it was so deliciously warm that I had to remove my purple leather gloves, my Qiviut cowl, fleece vest and wool hat. My new distant vision sunglasses (Elle designer frames on sale)...

sharpened my outlook so much that I was surprised I hadn't noticed things getting fuzzy in the last year or so. Since I've only ever needed reading glasses it never occurred to me that anything would change. Driving home from the optometrist I was po'd that my distant vision needed correcting...what? said I to myself...I've had 20/20 distant vision my whole life! At home it occurred to me that I've never before been this old. So. There are two ways to look at this. One is that now I'm past a certain age and certain things will inevitably fail. Or...continue to not give aging much thought. I hope to be able to maintain the latter point of view as long as possible ~ and be mindful of what the Dalai Lama said: today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.

designing my existence

A gorgeous day! Balloons outside of Elevation coffee shop and a clear view of the man-in-the-mountain in the distance. I walked in the park without my pal Spike, knowing I never would walk with him again, and somehow it was alright. I need the exercise badly and have good memories of his enthusiastic, bold and confident park walks. All winter so far, I've been sedentary and aware of it (wish my legs really were as long as that deceptive shadow -- it would be nice to be able to reach the second shelf of my kitchen cabinets).

Greg fixed me a poetic latte and I've decided that Elevation is my favorite Taos coffee shop. It was mid afternoon when I was there, an hour before closing time, and mellow enough to write for an hour sipping my sweetened foamy decaf latte.

Back home I'm finishing up another pair of bamboo socks. Just a little bit of toe left for later. I'm calling them purple-people-eaters because the yarn kept un-plying itself in a most annoying way causing lots of rip back and reknit. That doesn't affect the finished product (which is silky and lovely) and only I will know about the yarn chaos I had to deal with.

I needed an afternoon to myself and took it. So important in a busy life (aren't all our lives busy?) where it's easy to forget what's really important.

In all of nature,
no storm can last forever.
     Wayne Dyer

pushing off

Tears do not wash away the debris they bring any more than rain empties the sky of water. I go to my desk... (Anne Riophe)

Acceptance of a different Sunday morning in a slightly emptier house. Slanted thoughts this past week ~ and still vaguely off-center. Many thanks to friends and family who empathized and supported. Everyone has at least one loss/love/pet story to share.

A profusion of emotions have temporarily drained my winter reserve of energy. I accomplished next to nothing except knitting, reading, writing in notebooks ~ drinking a lot of tea and talking. We decide to bury Spike's ashes in the hole he dug under the bench by the adobe wall. The one he usually sat in ~ cool earth on hot summer days ~ cosy burrow to sleep in. Snow makes it all picturesque now.

It reminds us that we still have, in a small dusty painted tin box, the ashes of the sweet dog that preceded Spike. It's been on a windowsill in the kitchen for 13 years! oh dear. Time to pull ourselves together. For now I'm not going forward as much as going around, but like Persephone, I hope to emerge soon.

...you don't need to feel isolated. You only have to open yourself to the support that is all around you and in you....breathe in awareness and your smile will return.
     Thich Nhat Hanh