On a walk at the reservoir, I came upon this tree decorated in the woods hung with bird feeders and ornaments with the names of loved ones, including pets. A woman came by and I asked if she knew about the tree. She said it was the third year that people have spontaneously done this. She hung an ornament for her Mom and we stood for many moments watching little birds feeding. This is why we are on this planet. To feed each other.

 

 

Lafayette Reservoir, Lafayette CA 

THROUGH THE WINDOW: Haiku

In the First Frosty Dawn I Lie

Birdsong prevails, but.....
separate (by pane and sash)
- the windows! - all shut.

FIELD NOTES: Through the Window

Listening to the wind...

...On an average Sunday morning, I might put light jazz on Pandora. Today, some might describe the wind as howling, but it is not howling. It is continuously crashing over the house like an ocean of wind, surging up the snow - bone dry from the extreme cold - like a sand storm and reminding the window frames of where their cracks are. So I need to be quiet….and write. The sun is in its usual place, but odd white clouds and snow dust wrap around it like a mummy’s cloth. It is blindfolded, beaming without the benefit of sight, using the branches on the towering locust trees like long bony fingers groping for something to hold on to. A few birds make a run at the feeder, perching on the railing, taking off like skilled fighter jets when the time is right. How are they out there? If it were me, just wearing feathers, I would die! But out there they are…and with plenty of company. The snow cover is not pristine; it is crisscrossed with a collection of tracks like Grand Central Station. There is a raccoon living on a shelf in the shed. A woodpecker flew out of a hole in the side of the house. I sometimes hear scratching in the attic from mice. I am a reluctant Dr. Doolittle. The violence of nature often draws me in, like a voyeur, but only when I know I am safe. I like to press my palm against a cold window and feel how thin it is. Right now….I see my whitened landscape as the direct opposite of desert on the other side of the world. Could I just flip it like an hourglass? I suddenly feel as dry as the desert – the furnace keeps running after escaped heat, the indoor air is static, my plants are brittle, my throat is dry, my skin is dry, my muscles cramp because in the absence of heat, we have all forgotten to drink! I listen to the wind unceremoniously taking down the things I once meticulously set up and I can’t do anything about it. I am physically apart from much of what I want, but I have sensed that the universe in general is through testing my patience and is stirring, preparing to reintegrate into something extraordinary.

FIELD NOTES: Of a different sort....

Shutting Out Joy Prolongs Despair 

     Singular snowflakes fell in playful flurry, red cardinals fluffed up at the feeder and the school hallways smelled cookie-sweet. It had happened to Scrooge and George Bailey and The Grinch. No matter how they tried to suppress, ignore or squelch goodwill, it still came back to the surface.
     Although I have always been able to find roses among thorns, it has been more challenging here, near Newtown, Connecticut, being a teacher of young children. Just before Christmas break, the Mayan calendar threatened and closed school a day too early. We were cheated further. And we continue to cheat ourselves.  
     I recently had to call a neighbor and because my number was unknown to their caller ID, the phone was answered with a relay of whispered “who-is-its?” It struck me. Is this a side effect of technology? Are we now conditioned to be suspicious of any ringing phone or doorbell because it must be pre-screened? I am not criticizing. I am in the mix. I am Pavlov’s dog. 
     It is no longer possible to walk into work and exchange pleasantries or selectively share information because thanks to social media, we all know what we’ve been doing on the weekend. It is deflating to regularly be answered with ‘yeah, I already know that’. Are we evolving into people with strong fingers, but weak voices? Do we constantly want the ‘next big thing’ because we cheat ourselves out of those small, daily discoveries? Do we have so much information about each other that we really don’t know ourselves at all? Have we turned into the ubiquitous car alarm that is so commonplace no one pays attention to it anymore?
     In fact, after Newtown, I can’t walk into my workplace any more. I arrived early for a staff security meeting with officials from the town police department to which I had been invited, but since I am employed by an outside education agency, I cannot be issued a key card. There is a buzzer and a security camera. I buzzed three times. I knocked. I watched other school employees proceed to the library for the meeting, but they weren’t authorized to let me in even though I have been affiliated with the school in some manner since 1993. I understood, but it also struck me that if I had anger issues…or an undetected mental condition…or a sledge hammer or…a gun…on that day…I still could have gotten in quicker.
    I’ll absorb as much technology as my aging brain can handle. I wouldn’t go back to my days of pounding a Smith-Corona, toting around a hefty dictionary and getting paper cuts in the library card catalogs. That was the ‘old normal’. But the ‘new normal’ needs more than the random acts of kindness that most editors and commentators have been wishing us for the New Year. I am not a fan of that catchphrase, though I appreciate its sentiment, because I should like to see it refined. As most people around here, I have been asking myself why. Not only why do bad things happen, but why do good things happen, too. What motivates my kindness?
     It has been acknowledged that giving makes us feel good about ourselves. Nothing wrong with that. They need. We give. They get. We glow. A happy cycle revolves. But I have been wondering about more. It’s almost time for Turbo Tax. What happens when I check off that I donated to NPR, the local emergency services, the library and Goodwill, among others? Should acts of kindness be random? I won’t take up space with a recitation from Dictionary.com on the many uses of the word random, but the Slang section is food for thought if you’re interested. My wish for the New Year and beyond, are the dictionary antonyms for random: constant and conscious.
     By profession, I am a teacher, but I write more as a student than as an educator because I am grateful for what I have learned from those I have met along the way. In one of my early office jobs, I thought one woman aggressive, overtly ambitious and curt. When I learned she had a non-life-threatening medical condition that was inconvenient and sometimes painful, it improved my demeanor and hers as well. I never pre-judged again. As a young working wife and mother, I did a lot of housekeeping and anticipated compliments. You can guess that did not happen, but when I looked at it differently, my satisfaction improved. I take my shoes off when I walk in the door and enjoy clean floors for yoga and large art projects, so I reasoned to take pleasure in cleaning the floor for me. If there were residual benefits for my family, then all the better. I was no longer doing it for them, I was doing it for us. My mood lightened, as it does to this day, when I mop.
    Yes, conscious acts of kindness. Conscious that I am doing it for the greater good and for unanticipated return. And I do mean unanticipated, from me to you to the guy next door to the cable company to Congress. No tax deduction, no cup of coffee, no name in the church bulletin or on a plaque, no brownie points, no votes, no pork, no dividends or personal profits, not even so much as a thank you from my spouse. I may in fact get all these things – they are pretty little trimmings that do make life more pleasant - but do not let that be my unconscious motivation or cause for my disappointment or my deposit of guilt. And the nastier someone is to me, I will be all the kinder back. Maybe they are having a bad day. Maybe they will pay it forward. Maybe they have a gun.

FIELD NOTES: The rest of the 'tail'...

The cat that ate the birdies.

Suspect #1:

DESCRIPTION: white, gray, tail-less; last seen wearing a pink collar with fake diamonds.

NYT: How Many Computers to Identify a Cat?

FIELD NOTES: Peeps

Have had trouble finding time to write, but...

here is inspiration found...

two birds in the bush are worth more than a bird in the hand...

FIELD NOTES: Storm Alfred's haiku...

Found: red feather, while
collecting tree arms turned to
harpoons, arrows, rams.

My Top 10 Gifts From Storm Alfred - Java

FIELD NOTES: The heron has flown back...

Some of Marissa's photo shoots

FIELD NOTES: “It’s ten o’clock. The day’s almost over...”

Sunday morning

...is something I say that makes my children laugh. I am a morning person…I can get up easily…that is to say, at whatever time the sun breaks and the birds chirp …not when it is thirty degrees out and still as hard and black as cast iron at five or six…then, I do have to force myself out of my quilty nest to prepare for work…but this morning, it is Sunday…it is spring…the windows are open – they have been all night – due to above average temperatures (whatever ‘average’ is for New England) and I notice a perfect Symphony of Quiet…an adagio of birds and people sleeping…I go to brush my hair and can still hear the arpeggio of my bacon and eggs in their little skillet and the whispering rondo of the coffee pot…I write a little, surf a little…and then comes ten o’clock…like the surface of water or snow, the air does not stay undisturbed…a crescendo of working vehicles, tools and machines…the neighbors have started their weekender’s construction project…hammers, drills, power saws, male voices in a language I do not understand…I hope they will be finished soon…and then, oh, if I could have a week of spring-like Sunday mornings, what a vacation that would be!

The World's Quietest Places

FIELD NOTES: I hear one bird…

Through the (weekday) window

...its song muffled through the closed up winter window sashes. The heat clicks through the hot water baseboards in my bathroom, the morning news speaks so thinly from its cave in the other room that I can barely hear what’s new in the world today…but this one bird is what alerts me that I have been in a stupor of sorts, buried in snow and government paperwork. But that is the character of February. It is a good month for Lent. It is the month in which I write the least…move the least…eat the most and sleep the most. The attic overhead feels pregnant and overdue. The household file box needs its yearly purging. I take stock in my inventory, both in what I have collected and in what has somehow slid in around me like a storage facility. In February, its closeness turns claustrophobic and fills my nostrils like so much dust. I mull over things, incubate ideas about what’s next, brood and hibernate and absorb and fidget. What relief the one bird is, nature’s town crier, chirping that what is not here now, is preparing to return. Bulbs are energizing underground; they simply cannot be flowers all year round. So, back to the drawing board...

FIELD NOTES: Sweet nothings...

...from a Sunday morning...

...hadn't filled the feeder on the deck for some time since the raccoons made off with the can filled with about 30 pounds of black oil sunflower seed...but a storm was brewing and I was missing my wild "pets"...so I loaded up on seed and suet...and they came! There they were...all of them: the tufted titmouse, black capped chickadee, nuthatch, wren, sparrow, downy woodpecker, flicker, a cardinal couple and, of course, the spoiler blue jay whom the male cardinal lost his patience with and flew up from the deck post to claim a turn. They hadn't forgotten me...

...and then on the TV (yes, the intrusive TV!) came a sweet nothing from the past, the early 1970's to be exact...R.O. Blechman's delightful animation...(please, treat yourself)

Never forget the things that make you smile from the inside out...they don't forget you...Joyeux Noel!

FIELD NOTES: Food in the air...

First Sunday of Fall


...I tend not to do my power walking in the rain, but today it was just a mist…and I really needed a walk…the diminutive swan family that I had seen streaming by me in Harrybrooke awhile back was waiting for me, but in a much larger form…clustered on the island looking like great scoops of mashed potatoes rather than the delicate floating line they once were…the water is getting colder now…the newly colored leaves of autumn are making a pretty collage on the wet black pavement and altering the aroma of the air…the Fish & Game Club is hosting a picnic in the pavilion and on my first walk around there is the charred salty scent of hot dogs…I don’t crave hot dogs, or even eat much meat, but this smell makes me believe that I once lived in a cave in the woods and hunted, tearing apart roasted meat with my canines, wild-haired, wiping my mouth with the back of my earthy hand…on the second go ‘round, the smell is toasty sweet…marshmallows on slender sticks…and I arrive at gentle thoughts of civilized campfires…I smooth my hair from the frizzling rain and think about standing in my kitchen making Cortland applesauce…

FIELD NOTES: It was as if I saw my backyard for the first time…

Through the window
Monday, September 14, 2009

…newborn… primal…existing in its own place and time…rather than mine. A mist of fog at dawn softened all its blemishes…its rough spots at areas of neglect or natural consequences were out of focus. It was the opening day of my preschool class and it was a gentle…and very lovely…reminder to fine tune what I see, to put on a shelf my frustration with actions of true innocence that may come by the way of the wild things or the young charges in my life at present. Years ago, I had to drive late at night to pick up teenagers in a very thick fog and recall the nerve-wracking lack of visibility, but this day, there were no nerves, there was just a blanket tucked in around me, the birds chirping like a wind-up crib mobile and remembered feelings of safety and comfort and the hedge of childhood that guarded me against the hard edges that would come…

FIELD NOTES: I'd been away...

Sunday morning

...then jumped right into a new school year - hadn’t walked or considered my home place in weeks. Finally, sitting down with a glass of wine and a novel at my back deck ‘bistro’, a feathered friend reminded me - no, reprimanded me. “Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten?” Its partner (some variety of sparrow) joined in the trill that was somewhere between aria and lecture, delight and indignation…..somewhere between “nice to see you” and “where the hell have you been?” With unusual boldness, they perched practically in my face, causing me to put down my book, remove my reading glasses, get aroused from a mentally dulling week and respond audibly with “thanks, I needed that.” I see missing relatives in the actions of creatures around me because my grandmother, my father and his brothers, would recognize it as a reliable conduit for uncommon communication. I needed that kind of jolt from the minutiae of management, from packing and unpacking, laundering and bill paying, food shopping and cooking, cleaning and sorting and realigning with routine. The next morning on my way north, an ethereal image of heron-on-green-pond-in-morning-fog appeared. Had I heeded the advice of the sparrows, I would have had my camera with me and would have stopped - staff development be damned – because there can be value, and very personal liberation, in having that 'cat who ate the canary' feeling.

FIELD NOTES: Only the haiku remains...

Walk in Harrybrooke...
Red-winged Blackbird in the marsh!
Camera not; but...EYES.

Image link found at mayo.personcounty.net

HAIKU for PEOPLE

I and the Bird #100: Most Said in Less Award (22nd on the list)

FIELD NOTES: Ticket not required...

Through the window

...but the birdsong is so amazing this morning, it seems like it ought to be. The eighties are much too hot for April in New England - early morning and all the windows open from the night before. A lumbering breeze tries to stir the indoor air as I try to smooth out the night from my face and hair in the bathroom mirror – not an easy task as I’ve just recovered from my first stomach ‘bug’ in about ten years. But the cardinal is as brilliant as a soprano at the Met and the other small birds in chorus add their melodious backup with verve, as well as the raucous crows that try out like high school ne’er-do-wells who think Chorus will be less boring than Study Hall. Birdsong trampolines my soul…rebounding whatever is weighing it down to airy heights…over and over and over. Good thing no one is listening as they’d be bored with how many times I utter words like…beautiful… gorgeous…amazing…alright already! This will be the most comfortable portion of the day…early morning is my favorite and I wish it would last all day, but then of course it wouldn’t be morning. But imagine having to have a ticket issued in order to hear morning birds or bells or chimes, to smell flowers or rain shower or fresh wash on the line, or view an amazing spider web or bird’s nest. Maybe it would cultivate a culture of new values; values for things not currently taxed, calculated, counted, packaged, adulterated, tested or hyped. As for me, I thank my feathered friends…well, maybe just not the woodpecker jack hammering my cedar shakes!

My Life in Birds (a winter story) short PDF

FIELD NOTES: My head is turned by the sound of something coming out of water...

Early Sunday afternoon

...but it is too cold for what comes to mind. A late winter storm predicted and some of us are out at Harrybrooke as if we need to take a deep breath before we are submerged yet again. New England creates greediness for the smallest scrap of palatable weather and, at the same time, an abiding appreciation because we are so often waiting outside paradise looking in. Later, I will take a drive by Candlewood Lake and marvel at the way its surface motion from the sixty degree day we had on Friday has been frozen as if stopped in mid-stir. But just now, the sound of a lone man in a sleek canoe, slicing through the cold in the low water with conservancy and control is the score and choreography of the day…and my head is turned as if it were a swan…

FIELD NOTES: A hum briefly hung outside my writing window;

Labor Day, the first seconds of September, 2008
...I thought it was a bee or my garden pinwheels oddly spinning without breeze. It lasted only seconds…brrrrt…but luckily sound pulled eyes from computer screen to window screen in the very instant a hummingbird hovered at the window box. Both the bird and I were delighted and deliriously hopeful for a split-second until, as it so often happens, fascination turns to disappointment. We both returned to our quests, astutely aware of our powerful senses, but now, all the more possessive of them because the bright red geraniums in the window box were fake.

FIELD NOTES: Death came with humor...

Through the (car) window

...when I drove out of the neighborhood this morning. Transporting my oldest son to yet another doctor’s appointment, the inside of our car was filled with an air of concern, yet a hint of resolution with the sun shining and the radio tuned to NPR for edification. We were interrupted by a coffee klatch of mourning doves congregating on the road. As the flock reluctantly dispersed in slow motion, one bird still sat in the middle of the pavement as if he assumed that no one would have the audacity to run him over. I assumed that no creature capable of flying would procrastinate himself to death. Continuing to talk while automatically glancing in the rear view mirror, I saw feathers pouf up into the air like a pillow bursting open...and a laugh came out like a cannon ball...its black humor surprising me.

FIELD NOTES: Freedom came not from learning to ride my bike, but from leaving...

August afternoon

...my yard and driving on the mother-forbidden street! At Harrybrooke today there are lucky children, lucky because they have parents who brought them here. A toddler boy jogs alongside his stroller. The preschool teacher in me smiles when I hear the dad ask his boy to count the Canada geese. Although liberated from his stroller, he was not liberated from his parents’ fears: “Don’t go so fast, that’s how you fell last time. Slow down, slow down! That’s how you fell! Don’t go near the geese. Geese are very, very mean. They will bite you!” A helmeted elementary-aged boy learning to ride a two-wheeler is cheered on by his parents until he tumbles in the pathway. As I approach from behind in my power walk, I prepare to root for the boy myself and tell him to keep it up, but Dad is sputtering next to Mom: “Don’t stop pedaling! Come on, pedal, pedal…aw, not again! Don’t stop pedaling! (sigh) He KNOWS how to do it!” I close my mouth not wanting to go into the fray of family frustration. Instead, I notice how the cattails have evolved into their coveted state, brown and velvety and oblong, the frankfurters-on-a-stick of nature and how the voice of Harrybrooke has deepened from the soprano of spring peepers to the bass of bullfrogs. So will the voices of the young boys I notice today. It’s true that geese can bite and boys often don’t learn their lessons as fast as we’d like, but the streets of nature have often taught me to stand back and watch with my hands behind my back. Some things...water, wind, storms, weeds...will take their own courses anyway. And it is I that needs to find freedom in this loss of control. (Sigh)