Thanksgiving, 2008
...the dizziness of bobble-heads with lessons not remembered wobbling around Wall St. and beyond, that it has occurred to me for the first time in my fifty years to ask how my grandparents celebrated Thanksgiving when their children were young, when there was the Great Depression. But my grandparents are all dead. I find that my parents and their remaining siblings do not remember celebrating Thanksgiving as children. President Lincoln declared it a national holiday in 1863, but it was only randomly celebrated until FDR fixed it at the fourth Thursday of November in a controversial move to create more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I see commercialism has been around for a long time, the economy being at the heart of everything – that is, the heart of the machinery - the “everything” that keeps the manmade world in the constant motion of production, decline and redevelopment. Thanksgiving up until now has had no beginning and no end for me. It always was…and now I find…it wasn’t always. My grandmother was fond of repeating her favorite advice to “not get old” but I try to counter that with words from one of my favorite James Taylor songs “the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” I step outside to fill the birdfeeder with black oil sunflower seeds and look up at the sky – yup, still there.…a constant in the heavens and constant thanksgiving…
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
FIELD NOTES: From a distance, they look like broken eggshells...
After school
...the brown and beige and brittle oval leaves on the pavement scattered in the pattern that their tree chose to let them go in. With childish curiosity, I purposely walk on them to test their strength, to see if I can crush them, make them crunch, but their lifecycle complete, they seem to be apathetic to my footsteps. Some of Harrybrooke’s privacy has disappeared with the leaves; I feel as if I am in the shower tub with no curtains or standing by a bare window, exposed as the early dusk descends. The skeleton that supported the body of summer is now forced to show itself. I still find beauty, albeit coarse and gray and dry. It’s different and takes the sophistication of the senses to appreciate. Bony fingers try to point it out, but passersby linger less and find it necessary to keep warm with rapid movement. I read the Lake Lillinonah announcement of the annual draw down for seasonal service and dam maintenance, but nevertheless it is disappointing to find the Still River wizened. I sense an omnipresent dryness in the air and smell wood fires burning, feel my ears pinched and notice my nostrils dripping. I hear a far-off leaf blower and suppose there is a man at the end of it, earnest in his belief that he can control nature, at least a little part of it, at least for a little part of a day, at least from a distance...
...the brown and beige and brittle oval leaves on the pavement scattered in the pattern that their tree chose to let them go in. With childish curiosity, I purposely walk on them to test their strength, to see if I can crush them, make them crunch, but their lifecycle complete, they seem to be apathetic to my footsteps. Some of Harrybrooke’s privacy has disappeared with the leaves; I feel as if I am in the shower tub with no curtains or standing by a bare window, exposed as the early dusk descends. The skeleton that supported the body of summer is now forced to show itself. I still find beauty, albeit coarse and gray and dry. It’s different and takes the sophistication of the senses to appreciate. Bony fingers try to point it out, but passersby linger less and find it necessary to keep warm with rapid movement. I read the Lake Lillinonah announcement of the annual draw down for seasonal service and dam maintenance, but nevertheless it is disappointing to find the Still River wizened. I sense an omnipresent dryness in the air and smell wood fires burning, feel my ears pinched and notice my nostrils dripping. I hear a far-off leaf blower and suppose there is a man at the end of it, earnest in his belief that he can control nature, at least a little part of it, at least for a little part of a day, at least from a distance...
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
FIELD NOTES: Just for the record, I voted today...
Election Day
...as I always do. But I don’t always get to vote for hope. Or change. Or for a man of black ancestry. I voted for history. I voted for the next generation that includes my own children. I don’t usually mix politics with my field notes, but in a way politics is always underfoot because in some way I talk about it daily, because I notice when it gets stuck to my shoe or obstructs my path. Because when it gets me discouraged, frustrated, confused or weary I take a walk. Because I find clarity in nature, in motion, in feeling my heart pump blood through my veins, in making my lungs expand to take that glorious breath of fresh air. Because "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world” as John Muir said so insightfully many years ago. Just for the record, I admit I voted for Barack Obama today, knowing it will be for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, and knowing that, I did not vote for perfection, but for transparency and compassion that extends beyond personal ambition…I at least voted for the hope of all that…
...as I always do. But I don’t always get to vote for hope. Or change. Or for a man of black ancestry. I voted for history. I voted for the next generation that includes my own children. I don’t usually mix politics with my field notes, but in a way politics is always underfoot because in some way I talk about it daily, because I notice when it gets stuck to my shoe or obstructs my path. Because when it gets me discouraged, frustrated, confused or weary I take a walk. Because I find clarity in nature, in motion, in feeling my heart pump blood through my veins, in making my lungs expand to take that glorious breath of fresh air. Because "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world” as John Muir said so insightfully many years ago. Just for the record, I admit I voted for Barack Obama today, knowing it will be for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, and knowing that, I did not vote for perfection, but for transparency and compassion that extends beyond personal ambition…I at least voted for the hope of all that…
Sunday, November 2, 2008
FIELD NOTES: The eulogy came from the television weatherman...
The top of November
...“the growing season has ended” and today I awake an hour ‘too early’ because my body does not know that Eastern Standard Time has now begun. The ancient Celts, 53 latitudinal degrees north from the equator, simply called it the dark time, or Samhain (SAU-en), one of the two great doorways of their year. This Celtic ‘calendar’ of two seasons seems more authentic in design as anyone who has grown up in New England knows there are not four seasons that abide by the division of our mathematical grids. Although I am not a participant in pagan beliefs or rituals, I am intrigued by historical origins and mysteries, like Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Easter Island, Machu Picchu, Pompeii, and the Etruscans. The older I get, the more I relate to the ‘nature’ of nature - its lightness and darkness, its warmth and coldness, its growth and dormancy, its cycle of life that includes dying. I don’t exactly look forward to ‘the dark time’ as I do the summer, but now I can welcome it. For, as written by Mara Freeman, a leading teacher of Celtic spirituality, “…it was understood that in dark silence comes whisperings of new beginnings, the stirring of the seed below the ground.” So, I can welcome it like an estranged relative, the rejected or the ignored, the unaffiliated ones who keep their irregular beauties under covers that often require too much effort for society at large to bother with. The time of light is more pleasant and less challenging to welcome. It is joyful and giddy and less potent. We do not kick up our heels at this time of year. We gather and store. After a pot of strong coffee during this writing, I will cook some bacon for myself, dress and go out to my ‘estate’ (as I like to call my little half-acre!) and rake and prepare to hunker down. I will stuff my jean pockets full of tissues for my sensitive nose that runs like a spigot at temperatures below 50 degrees. There is a kind of devilish pleasure this time of year in putting tingling toes and fingers to hot cups of cider or tea or wood fires or baking ovens just as there is, conversely, in sweating in the sun and plunging into a cold lake. Having memory of senses and observation and inquiry take the edge off the coming of the dark time because I know there will be a time of light.
...“the growing season has ended” and today I awake an hour ‘too early’ because my body does not know that Eastern Standard Time has now begun. The ancient Celts, 53 latitudinal degrees north from the equator, simply called it the dark time, or Samhain (SAU-en), one of the two great doorways of their year. This Celtic ‘calendar’ of two seasons seems more authentic in design as anyone who has grown up in New England knows there are not four seasons that abide by the division of our mathematical grids. Although I am not a participant in pagan beliefs or rituals, I am intrigued by historical origins and mysteries, like Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Easter Island, Machu Picchu, Pompeii, and the Etruscans. The older I get, the more I relate to the ‘nature’ of nature - its lightness and darkness, its warmth and coldness, its growth and dormancy, its cycle of life that includes dying. I don’t exactly look forward to ‘the dark time’ as I do the summer, but now I can welcome it. For, as written by Mara Freeman, a leading teacher of Celtic spirituality, “…it was understood that in dark silence comes whisperings of new beginnings, the stirring of the seed below the ground.” So, I can welcome it like an estranged relative, the rejected or the ignored, the unaffiliated ones who keep their irregular beauties under covers that often require too much effort for society at large to bother with. The time of light is more pleasant and less challenging to welcome. It is joyful and giddy and less potent. We do not kick up our heels at this time of year. We gather and store. After a pot of strong coffee during this writing, I will cook some bacon for myself, dress and go out to my ‘estate’ (as I like to call my little half-acre!) and rake and prepare to hunker down. I will stuff my jean pockets full of tissues for my sensitive nose that runs like a spigot at temperatures below 50 degrees. There is a kind of devilish pleasure this time of year in putting tingling toes and fingers to hot cups of cider or tea or wood fires or baking ovens just as there is, conversely, in sweating in the sun and plunging into a cold lake. Having memory of senses and observation and inquiry take the edge off the coming of the dark time because I know there will be a time of light.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)