delight

Today was the third consecutive session of the poetry marathon workshop. It's been a challenge with the editing bits I have to complete for other projects this week, but it's all good and will work out somehow. How? I don't know--it's a mystery (remember that oft-repeated line from the movie Shakespeare in Love?). I've included today's poem here, along with this morning's photo. It's a lightly edited version and may go through many drafts before it's really complete.

At Light of Dawn

I woke to the neighbors' dogs barking at the horses.
We'd slept soundly after the west wind stopped blowing,
didn't notice three horses had arrived from a nearby field
led by men with big hats carrying ropes, as they always do.
The white mare, resting in grass, resembled a unicorn in
a silk tapestry, spiral horn not visible in silvery-tinged air.
Her grey-brown filly, white diamond on her nose,
isn't a year old, but almost as tall. I remember the small,
squirming wet body, who stood up unsteadily while
her mother was still dispelling the placenta.
The chestnut mare tried to claim the newborn and was
taken away with much whinnying and head tossing.
It was all doleful and beautiful in its animal wildness
and blood's urge. To messy for refined sensibilities.
It spoke of animal sex and blood and afterbirth. But
it was wild absence. That foal was born on our land
on a June Morning. I said it was a blessing and now
things would turn in our lives, toward the better,
there would be delight, despite everything.

still crazy

There's a growing anxiety in many people's lives and minds these days. I see and hear it from friends, on fb, in the news, all over the internet. Threats abound. Asteroids, aliens, tsunamis, sun flares, guns, Yellowstone, tornados, war, invasion, terrorism, economic collapse.... How to deal with this? Last night in my dream I poked an irrigation shovel into a small hole on my land (I had been writing about acequias and irrigation during the day) and suddenly all of the land as far as I could see, became a great lake. Calm, but vast and infinite. I didn't quite know what to do about it. Awake, I need to find that calm place somewhere within and focus on it. It can be elusive. Meditation helps, but I missed going on Saturday and haven't caught up. We each find small ways to calm down. Receiving a photo of Dante helps. And the note that he's totally in love with cows!

 

Knitting for him helps. Like a couple of pairs of toddler-sized socks that I'll bring with me next month when I go east. The yarn is from Regia: Flusi das Socken-monster! I'm waiting for a second color to arrive, and a book. I discovered that there is a children's book that tells the story (in English) of the sock monster the yarn is based on. I'll bring that to him too. 

In the spirit of simple and calm, I'm matching (sort of) yarn, and nail polish for my newly revealed toenails (all pedi-ed up) in sandals. This polish from Essie has an eerily-knitterly name: angora cardi! The yarn is a merino/bamboo combo from Cat Mountain Fiber Arts in Colorado. I obsessed over what to make with it. I'm over shawls and shawlettes and there's too much yardage (420) for mittz, so it's being transmuted into socks. Soft. Warm/cool for summer nights in the mountains.

and over east (why do people from other regions refer to it that way?)
My son in Connecticut has his own way of staying calm. He likes a good cigar and has a nice green backyard and stone patio in which to enjoy it on late spring evenings before rain. I hope to be with him on one of those evenings very soon. I kinda like the smell of cigar smoke outdoors. It reminds me of childhood summers in The Bronx when my uncles smoked cigars in the backyard after dinner.  My mother put the coffee on and the aunts brought out the pastries. Conversation flowed (sometimes debate), nights were soft and sultry. Old oaks and maples muffled city sounds. Cigar smoke can instantly transport me to those long-ago/long-gone days so that I can believe that there really is no such thing as linear time. It all exists together. We just have to find a way to enter.

polishing it all up

The first of my two editing meetings today was at the Des Montes Gallery. Floyd has increased his menagerie to include a rustic longhorn sheep and a giant rabbit, Harvey-style, only visible.

Floyd tends to use every bit of metal and other materials that he finds and since he has lived with animals of all kinds his whole life as a rancher's son and a rancher himself part-time, he knows them intimately. No matter what he makes, he seems to always catch the creature's essence.

In late afternoon after the meetings, I sat in my car in the parking lot for a few minutes trying to remember what I was supposed to do next. Buy food for dinner? Go pick up a prescription? Stop by the optometrist's office to see if my new RX progressive glasses had arrived? So what did I do? I went to Star Nails and had a pedicure! (it's right next door to the optometrist). With a new polish color from Essie called "angora cardi"! (good name for a color that defies description), my feet got pampered into softness. If there's something else as affordable and more satisfying than a good pedicure, I don't know what it is. It deserves a poem, but I don't think I'm up to it at this time. Maybe next week during the five-day poetry marathon I'll be participating in.

I had my first pedicure four years ago at an advanced age (for pedis). My BBF Gayle convinced me to go with her. We sat in adjacent chairs and gabbed and watched our feet be transformed into something admirable. She chose a New York red (the only color she ever allowed) and I chose an iridescent purple. Her mother, she said, would have disapproved. I immediately understood because I'd known her mother for half my life and she was a self-proclaimed Manhattan sophisticate with strict rules of taste. In her fifties, she wore designer leopard one-piece bathing suits from Saks on our little private beach, when she came to visit her daughter in Connecticut. Purple toenails were out. In her opinion, purple conveyed trashy taste.  I liked the way my purple toenails looked, but the next time I chose red. Now when I have a pedicure (about twice a year) I remember that day and miss my friend.

to rise, to fall

There is something about an empty stage before the performance begins. An expectation, mystery. And so it was at Metta Theatre last night as the audience waited for the performance of "King Laz" to begin. A one-woman show written and performed by Susana Guillaume, directed by Maura Dhu Studi.

"behind every great man there's a...daughter"
This production is the third in Susana's autobiographical series. I took photos without a flash so they're not crisp, but maybe you will catch the feeling. She shuffles onto the stage as her 94 year old father Lazarus (in real time he will be 98 soon). "Six apples a day" he says.

Within the next hour or so we take a non-linear, woven journey through Susana's life through ages fifteen, age four, middle age; as her parents move through being vital and strong to a frail couple in their 90's living in Nice, France in a tiny apartment that they love. Other characters enter. The nurse, the housekeeper.

 

She becomes each of those characters at every age and we always believe her. We traverse youth, old age, health and illness, changing times and bodies, determination, joy, fear, hope.

There is one more early performance today at 4 at Metta, and then Susana heads back home to Santa Fe. It's been a treat to see each of her three productions and I look forward to the next chapter.

momentary calm

All I want to do on these 70+ degree days with gentler winds that don't sting or feel like they're ushering in catastrophe, is sit outside and write and draw (lame as the latter effort might be) ~ in a notebook (paper) with a pen (fountain). Running out of that lovely French ink called "moon dust" I found something close from Noodler called "nightshade" (confession: I'm an ink snob).

I have taken a few days off this week. The manuscript is in the designer's hands and I have to write a couple more things for it (like intro, acknowledgements, contributors), but I still have a day or two in which to do it (procrastination reigns around here). Meanwhile, I've learned a bit more about my iPad. Especially how to use the mini keyboard and how to create documents that can go back and forth between iPad and laptop. I couldn't figure it out on my own so I emailed the developer of the UX Write app. He actually answered within 24 hours and I was able to hook up. It seems that they are also updating the app regularly so it will probably be able to do lots more as time goes by. Highly recommend this tool.

The Logitech keyboard is a very cool gadget. Light, thin, responsive. Closes up with the iPad into a very slim package. You can't type on it in the usual manner since it's so small but it's easy to adjust and I've already taught myself a modified version of touch typing. Still having some difficulty managing my photos though, but I guess I'll get it eventually. For now, I'll have to just let it all be and prepare to get back to work tomorrow. For tonight, I'll be going to my friend Susana Guillaume's performance of her one-woman show, "King Laz" at Metta Theatre. More about that tomorrow. And after?  Late dinner at La Pomme d'Amour. Golly and gosh, another night out after dark!

devil in the details

she gazes into the abyss...

...just my Eagle Creek pouch containing chargers, headphones, extra camera batteries, cables and readers...ready for travel whenever I am. What technological creatures we have become. What will we do when those predicted sun flares happen? Or the tsunamis and alien invasion and the earth turns on its axis? Oh yeah, and war. When there is no electricity much less Wi-Fi and cellphones and iPads... We will certainly travel lighter, our handbags and backpacks will be smaller, we may even appreciate the present moment more without having to check if we have new text messages or emails to answer, and we won't have to learn new procedures for new devices. Or take Valium because we're so po'd at the dumb way instructions are written (or not written). I've pretty much figured out what works for me on the new mini iPad -- and happy that I held out for it. It works great and the apps I downloaded (for writing and photography) are helpful. Added a mini keyboard and managed to get it all connected last night. It's supposed to be capable of transferring Word docs back and forth between laptop and iPad but I haven't learned how yet. Today I'll use the Mini almost exclusively (excluding this blog) to do basic stuff and maybe learn a couple more things. The nearest Apple store is 140 miles away so I'm not going! Or I could go to the gorgeous one in San Francisco...all white and chrome and glass...just grab my pouch, my mini, grab my bag and go!

Or wait until sunset when there will be another show. This one over Taos Pueblo last night at 8:15 and still light! Lovely!

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need any more of that sound.

(Mary Oliver, first stanza "The Poet With His Face in His Hands")

murder by technology?

Okay, I do love my devices and I seem to have acquired a trio of Apples. MacBook Air (the smallest one), an iPhone 4, and now the one that may crush me or lift me to new heights: an iPad mini. This is my first blog try and I'm not sure what will actually happen here. I ordered the Lightening SD reader & the camera downloader. However I didn't know that there is no logical way to add pics from the iPad to the blog so I'm researching till my eyeballs fall out & it seems that I'll have to buy an app -- deemed the best -- not expensive but oh, so complicated. I watched all the how-to videos and should have earned 3 credits for doing so....although I'm sure I'd fail the final. 

I'm typing this now rather blindly. Not sure what will happen when I try to post -- probably more id's & passwords that I don't remember....if any of you, dear readers, have suggestions (or medications of choice) please let me know. Signing off now to go to the eye doctor for my new glasses. 

don't fence me in

After meditation this morning, Brigid and I went to her home/farm where I met the goats and their babies and even got to hold the little brown one you can just spot in the picture. Brigid took my picture holding the two-week old kid but I look so awful that you won't get to see it. Vanity! The beauty of digital? Poof! it's gone! No evidence.

Then it was off to the book shop for Bonnie's lecture and reading. She's been locally touring since the book came out.

The place was packed; people were sitting on the floor, standing against walls. In fact, all of Taos seems to be crowded and buzzing this Mother's Day weekend. There's a craft show in the park and other events happening all over town.

poetry & art 
Last night I participated in the Art Walk and Ekphrasis event at Town Hall; labeled as Poetry Influences Art, it was really the opposite. Poets chose artwork and then wrote something influenced by it. The painting I chose was slightly abstract and titled "Road to Albuquerque" by Linda Henderson. After the reading and art show, most of us drove to a wonderful home hidden in a narrow road loaded with old tall trees just greening out. Once there we enjoyed an abundant display of food, wine, conversation. I'm always amazed at the unexpected various homes and locations around here. Every home I've ever been in since I've lived here has surprised with something special that you'd never guess driving or walking by.

Three Bald Eagles

That last clear day I should have reconfirmed/
their presence--it might have been the last day./
I'm a failed witness. A moment passes, another, a third,/
the sun doesn't really set or the Wolf Moon rise./
There are no edges to contemplate./

Yesterday I saw the translucent waxing moon/
suspended near the peak, the sun facing it/
                                               across the river,/
thick rectangles of ice strewn along banks--/
a landscape's achievement or catastrophe./

I could go back today, park somewhere,/
look for eagles and the moon, write poems/
but I'm lost in the clouds--not metaphorical clouds/
--real ones that erase sky and distance, conceal/
mountains behind veils disguised as pure fact./

A rabbit dashes, shadowless, across patchy snow./
Imagine a pounding heart. Time and I mean nothing to it./
Even if I stood for an hour at the window,/
listened for the silence of souls and mountains/
                              --it comes down to this--/
I cannot sort out imbalance, put it all right./

sparkle plenty

I actually worked for several hours today, getting the anthology manuscript ready to give to the designer by the weekend. By late afternoon I was climbing walls and had to get into the car and drive somewhere. I wasn't quite sure where I was going but just turning the key in the ignition and seeing that the travel range was nearly 400 miles was enough (I love that addition to new cars - my 10 year old car didn't have it and I always wondered how far I could go on a tank of gas, worrying when it got down to the last quarter). All those miles available for the open road. Should I head south? or north? Where would I be 400 miles from home? I ended up in town, 10 miles away. Stopped in Moxie and in spite of my vow to not buy any more yarn till I'd completed several UFOs, I found the most exquisite fingering weight yarn. It was the only skein in that color combo....

You can't see it in the photo, but it's shades of olive, rust, grey, and has a nice addition of stellina - that sparkly stuff that never shows up in photos. It's from Greenwood Fiberworks,  called "Gold Dust", made in England, hand-dyed in USA. I love it and will probably start something tonight while Ron watches a baseball game (I'm not opposed to baseball games, but they do go on for a very long time). Maybe I'll start a Stephen West Colonnade shawl. It's a fun pattern to knit and as a shawlette it doesn't make me feel like an old lady (no comments please).

Well, back to the drawing board, or the ball winder, needles, or my pillow.  I ate too many gluten-free chocolate chip cookies tonight and I should take a walk. But it's getting dark now and this isn't a city with sidewalks and bustle and lights. This is a city that sleeps. Early.

a windigo?

windigo: a cannabalistic giant; a monster. One who devours...
 
It's wild plum blossom season in Taos again. The fuzzy blossoms smell sweet and although it's hard to explain, they smell like they look. Unfortunately, this is a dry spring (it did rain yesterday -- first time in weeks and weeks) but it's been freezing at night and other blossoms that tentatively came out have been zapped. The wind up here in the north country is relentless, too. So we're calling it a windigo (monster). Not one who eats human flesh as some Indian legends tell, but one who devours blossoms and by default, the fruit it will not bear. Nice while they lasted, gone now.

There are no peepers to be heard. I noticed it last evening. For years, in spring, after a rain or as soon as the acequias start running, choruses of frogs call in the dusk -- but we haven't heard them in a couple of years. Even birds, busy building nests, are relatively quiet lately. It hasn't snowed, but this is the way it feels.

Cashmere sweater time for sure -- and the alpaca socks I'm wearing at this very moment that happen to match the changing sky....

roots and things

It's Saturday evening. I've returned from a meeting of The Italian Cultural Society of Taos at mondo italiano restaurant and found this photo message from my son in Connecticut.

He makes wine. It's good. Spring has arrived in southern Connecticut. I tell him that I'm planning to fly east in a few weeks. I tell him about the meeting where we talked about Italian citizenship and that I've become a member. I asked: why do I want to become an Italian citizen? Then I remember that no matter how many generations have passed, even if your parents, grandparents, great grandparents were long time citizens of the USA and loved it, and you are thoroughly American, you still have a connection to Italy. Once an Italian, always an Italian. I've written about this. The unreasonable feeling of exile from the homeland, which just happens to be Italy which you may or may not have ever visited, with a language you don't speak, and a history that isn't yours. Or maybe it's just that almost everyone who has ever been there loves Italy. The food, the art, the people. I have an Irish friend with an Italian soul. Her mother took her to live in Italy for three years when she was thirteen, and she feel in love with an Italian boy. Maybe he was from Sicily, maybe northern Italy. It doesn't matter. Fifty years later she thinks of him fondly and wonders....and she's still in love with the country...has gone back often....

In that same mode: I remember as a child in New York in Spring....Italians lined the roadsides cutting dandelion leaves for salads and to add to dishes with olive oil and garlic. Sharp knives, grocery sacks, bent over, big butts and small -- quite a sight as we sped by in our cars -- dandelions the focus, not self-consciousness. Dandelions were not a noxious weed to be poisoned, but a delicacy briefly gathered and enjoyed. The bitter taste of young dandelion leaves enhanced iceberg lettuce when it was the only lettuce they could find in the local produce stores. I eschewed it -- a child snob. It took years before I could appreciate and understand the mystery of dandelion leaves. And then I became temporarily obsessed. I made dandelion wine, quoted on the label words Ray Bradbury had written in his memoir "Dandelion Wine". I gave the bottles of wine as gifts. One nasty gallery owner (where Ron's work was selling) said, "I hate dandelion wine." So much for her. What goes around comes around and her day came. Then my neighbor Dorothy gave me her recipe for dandelion jelly, I made jars and jars and they were given away, accepted gracefully, and enjoyed.

On Monday, when I visited Dorothy in her new digs, she had jars of dandelion jelly on her kitchen counter. With my friends Bonnie and Marge we bought out her extra inventory! I'm looking forward to opening the first jar. Toast, lamb, whatever...it's good and I appreciate the yellow flowers that are currently taking over my driveway...hardy plants that shoot up through layers of gravel. Lovely!

everything exists

"...[she] wishes it were otherwise, but things are never otherwise, are they? Things are always as they are."   (Richard Russo)

It's been more than a week since I've written here. I apologize for the gap. I made a vow to myself a couple of years ago to never let more then two or three days elapse between postings, but lately it's been harder to keep up.

I completed the second 3-day-weekend meditation/writing class on Sunday evening. I now have some new material in my notebook that I may expand and work on; also a deeper understanding of Zen meditation practice. The latter is helping me to deal with the "otherwises" in my life and the busy and complicated thoughts that invade my mind. They're not going to disappear, but when they come I can bid them adieu. What a relief! (the above photo is a closeup of the lap of the small Buddha on my desk and some of the stuff it's accumulated over the years).

and then Monday came...
Bonnie, Margaret, and I visited Dorothy Zopf at her cheery light-filled apartment in Taos. She served tea with Margaret's homemade cranberry/cinnamon scones.  (left to right: Dorothy, Bonnie, Margaret in front of D's newest quilt).

Years ago Dorothy invited me to become part of her New Mexico quilt research team. A group of three to five women traveled all over New Mexico over a period of about five years. We drove to places that hardly even required a dot on the map: Pie Town (where I saw a circus train go by while eating homemade green chili soup), Mountainaire (where we stayed in a hotel with swastika decorations ~ not Nazis, but ancient Native symbols) Deming (I can't remember it), Mora (with its popular raspberry farm), as well as a few larger cities like Santa Fe, Silver City, Truth or Consequences. I was a scribe and backup photographer. We collected quilt stories, measured and recorded what we saw. Dorothy's research resulted in an amazing book called Surviving the Winter (UNM Press). She is a popular speaker in Taos and a quilt demonstrator at the Martinez Hacienda Museum. She continues to be an active quilter and painter ~ and I loved visiting her workroom.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Bonnie's new book, How to Make an African Quilt, about her years living and teaching quilting in Segu, Mali has recently been released. It was natural to bring Dorothy and Bonnie together. Because D's apartment is not a vast space, she stores her quilting frame on the ceiling.

Which prompted Bonnie to tell how she built a frame in Mali with bamboo poles and sawhorses.  Without a car, in 105 degree heat, she rode her bicycle six miles home with the bamboo poles attached to it. "I was lucky that I didn't have to make any sharp turns during the ride," she said.

Margaret and I are not quilters. In fact, truth be told, I hate sewing! I have once or twice thought I wanted to make patchwork squares and even bought fabric and notions (especially after the inspiring quilt trips), but after cutting and sewing together a few half squares of strips and shapes, I had to face the fact that quilting isn't for me and it would not happen in this lifetime. Instead, D made me a quilt using my mother's old cotton house dresses and in exchange I knitted a sweater for her!

Zazen socks

Which brings me to the latest sock-in-progress. Yarn picked up at random in a non-yarn store but which I'm enjoying in a Zen way. No expectations came with it ~ I didn't know if I'd even like it, but I let it happen and it turns out to be fun and a good portable movie-watching project. Actually I think they'll make nice socks for my next meditation practice.

When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity.

         Shunryu Suzuki (from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind)