Glenda Burgess's Blog, page 37
August 16, 2011
Breathing Time
Much happens when we're not there.
Many trees, not only that famous one, over and over,
fall in the forest. We don't see, but something sees,
or someone, a different kind of someone,
a different molecular model, or entities
not made of molecules anyway; or nothing, no one:
but something has taken place, taken space,
been present, absent,
returned. Much moves in and out of open windows
when our attention is somewhere else,
just as our souls move in and out of our bodies sometimes.
Everyone used to know this,
but for a hundred years or more
we've been losing our memories...
- from "Window-Blind," Denise Levertov
It seems to me that we breathe time. That time is partly the stuff of oxygen, water to the amphibious, sun to the chlorophyll-seeking leaf. Heedless of from where or whence the abundant moments pass, we breathe in, exhale what is now past, and move on.
I was running beneath the maple trees this morning - towering expansive ancients that guard the park allees, in the French style, along the gentle climb up the South Hill. I felt myself inhaling the openness of life as I traveled the shady streets. My heart pumped blood, my legs and muscles propelled me through dimensional space: in and out I breathed the quiet trees. Today's poem, the beginning of a work by Denise Levertov, came to mind as I passed through pools of cool shade, hot white sun. More moves in and out of us than we are aware. I breathe the maples: their leaves breathe me. Earth and water filter across a slim unknown in which everything, a revolving door of shape-changing molecules, shares custody of this experience we call life.
I continued my run and my feet struck the hard pavement, aware of the rebuff of manmade surfaces. The difference in the way my feet traveled earth the week before, running the giving dirt along the lake shore, jumping roots of towering pines, following the twist of deer trail. Never alone but held in the organic equation of nature. On the asphalt the equation changed, I became solitary, making my way across the surface of a road designed to stand fast against change, against the erosion of time. No longer in the solar stream, the flow of ions through my body, time passing through beats of heart and muscle and thought. It felt lonely to leave the trees for the vaulted and impenetrable constructions of anti-time.
An ocean of time. Breath propels consciousness as we consume life in awareness, in sleep, in lovemaking, laughter, sobs in a darkened room. Draw life deep to the core as trees do. Exhale. Again. An unlimited ribbon of gilded molecules loop through us and out to the stars. Breathe.
Many trees, not only that famous one, over and over,
fall in the forest. We don't see, but something sees,
or someone, a different kind of someone,
a different molecular model, or entities
not made of molecules anyway; or nothing, no one:
but something has taken place, taken space,
been present, absent,
returned. Much moves in and out of open windows
when our attention is somewhere else,
just as our souls move in and out of our bodies sometimes.
Everyone used to know this,
but for a hundred years or more
we've been losing our memories...
- from "Window-Blind," Denise Levertov
It seems to me that we breathe time. That time is partly the stuff of oxygen, water to the amphibious, sun to the chlorophyll-seeking leaf. Heedless of from where or whence the abundant moments pass, we breathe in, exhale what is now past, and move on.
I was running beneath the maple trees this morning - towering expansive ancients that guard the park allees, in the French style, along the gentle climb up the South Hill. I felt myself inhaling the openness of life as I traveled the shady streets. My heart pumped blood, my legs and muscles propelled me through dimensional space: in and out I breathed the quiet trees. Today's poem, the beginning of a work by Denise Levertov, came to mind as I passed through pools of cool shade, hot white sun. More moves in and out of us than we are aware. I breathe the maples: their leaves breathe me. Earth and water filter across a slim unknown in which everything, a revolving door of shape-changing molecules, shares custody of this experience we call life.
I continued my run and my feet struck the hard pavement, aware of the rebuff of manmade surfaces. The difference in the way my feet traveled earth the week before, running the giving dirt along the lake shore, jumping roots of towering pines, following the twist of deer trail. Never alone but held in the organic equation of nature. On the asphalt the equation changed, I became solitary, making my way across the surface of a road designed to stand fast against change, against the erosion of time. No longer in the solar stream, the flow of ions through my body, time passing through beats of heart and muscle and thought. It felt lonely to leave the trees for the vaulted and impenetrable constructions of anti-time.
An ocean of time. Breath propels consciousness as we consume life in awareness, in sleep, in lovemaking, laughter, sobs in a darkened room. Draw life deep to the core as trees do. Exhale. Again. An unlimited ribbon of gilded molecules loop through us and out to the stars. Breathe.
August 14, 2011
An Exactitude
There is so much communication and understanding beneath and apart from the substantiations of language spoken out or written down that language is almost no more than a compression, or elaboration - an exactitude, declared emphasis, emotion-in-syntax - not at all essential to the message. And therefore, as an elegance, as something almost superfluous, it is likely (because it is free to be so used) to be carefully shaped, to take risks, to begin and even prolong adventures that may turn out poorly after all - and all in the cause of the crisp flight and the buzzing bliss of the words, as well as their directive - to make, of the body-bright commitment to life, and its passions, including (of course!) the passion of meditation, an exact celebration, or inquiry, employing grammar, mirth, and wit in a precise and intelligent way. Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.
- from "Three Songs, Number 3," Mary Oliver
As a writer, the medium of language, the building blocks and substance of words, is endlessly fascinating to me. This paragraph from the poet Mary Oliver is an homage to the human effort to domesticate the wild word; and in itself, a beautiful block of language. It would behoove the budding writer to read carefully her sentence structure, attend her use of parenthetical thought, sentence break, extended meaning, clarity, acuity, and sensuous, open possibilities - all in explanation of how language couples and divides to expand our thinking and take thought beyond given boundaries toward discernment. That thinking itself is a kind of fluid design that has at its core an inner symbolic landscape: the complexity of mammals attending to existence. Language as reflection, as action, as description, as framing that which we do not know or dream to know. Language was no doubt the first art, the first creation. An ever-evolving map of human consciousness as it stretches, like the weed or the necks of geese, toward the necessity of sun.
Enjoy what you speak today. Hold words like wine on the tongue. Write, and look at the shapes of meaning, the flows of thinking, the mystery in where these small strokes of creativity come and drift away to. Your mouth a brushstroke, your hands a drum. Let language tell you about you. Words contain more than the known vegetable, mineral world. They seep the quintessence of the mind. They create as they describe. Mirrors, lakes, panes of glass. Reflections of reflection. Lightning from thunder. May a new word find you today.
- from "Three Songs, Number 3," Mary Oliver
As a writer, the medium of language, the building blocks and substance of words, is endlessly fascinating to me. This paragraph from the poet Mary Oliver is an homage to the human effort to domesticate the wild word; and in itself, a beautiful block of language. It would behoove the budding writer to read carefully her sentence structure, attend her use of parenthetical thought, sentence break, extended meaning, clarity, acuity, and sensuous, open possibilities - all in explanation of how language couples and divides to expand our thinking and take thought beyond given boundaries toward discernment. That thinking itself is a kind of fluid design that has at its core an inner symbolic landscape: the complexity of mammals attending to existence. Language as reflection, as action, as description, as framing that which we do not know or dream to know. Language was no doubt the first art, the first creation. An ever-evolving map of human consciousness as it stretches, like the weed or the necks of geese, toward the necessity of sun.
Enjoy what you speak today. Hold words like wine on the tongue. Write, and look at the shapes of meaning, the flows of thinking, the mystery in where these small strokes of creativity come and drift away to. Your mouth a brushstroke, your hands a drum. Let language tell you about you. Words contain more than the known vegetable, mineral world. They seep the quintessence of the mind. They create as they describe. Mirrors, lakes, panes of glass. Reflections of reflection. Lightning from thunder. May a new word find you today.
August 10, 2011
On the Wing
When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt--
A Flight of Hopes for ever on the wing
But made Tranquillity a conscious Thing--
And wheeling round and round in sportive coil
Fann'd the calm air upon the brow of Toil--
- "When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt" (fragment),
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
As I sit by the edge of the blue wild waters of Priest Lake, the sky stretches over the ripped edges of the Selkirk Mountains - untamed, vast. This quality of hugeness is the prime power plug of tranquility for me. That something, perhaps everything, lies outside the venue of human control and to a certain extent, destruction. The world exists around us, and despite us.
Over the still waters, beyond the bald scarred peaks of granite, rise the wishes of others winging back at me. Somehow, in this shared hope, I feel the connection to Colegridge's words. "A Flight of Hopes," as he put it, "for ever on the wing."
A Flight of Hopes for ever on the wing
But made Tranquillity a conscious Thing--
And wheeling round and round in sportive coil
Fann'd the calm air upon the brow of Toil--
- "When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt" (fragment),
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
As I sit by the edge of the blue wild waters of Priest Lake, the sky stretches over the ripped edges of the Selkirk Mountains - untamed, vast. This quality of hugeness is the prime power plug of tranquility for me. That something, perhaps everything, lies outside the venue of human control and to a certain extent, destruction. The world exists around us, and despite us.
Over the still waters, beyond the bald scarred peaks of granite, rise the wishes of others winging back at me. Somehow, in this shared hope, I feel the connection to Colegridge's words. "A Flight of Hopes," as he put it, "for ever on the wing."
August 8, 2011
Less Rill Than Rivulet
Hello Friends,
Normally I begin the blog with a line or two of poetry that anchors the essay to follow. Today I give you a poem as the essay. Campbell McGrath is to me, a poet with a soul as subtle and shining the inside of an abalone shell. As a poet his themes and ideas are so concise they cut through murk with an un-dissuaded intention. As a wordsmith, he gets you there on the blue highways; the scenic route, the path of surprises. And as a writer, his poems are imbued with a respect and mastery of language and subject matter that cannot be falsely constructed. The wizardry of McGrath's art burns from within, the sun in the orbit of his seeking, the light that guides his unique and questing intellect. As most of you know, I chose Campbell's astounding neon poem, "The Human Heart," as the epigram to my memoir, THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOVE - a poem that says all I think I would want to say about love, and its small stories of human frailty, survival and that schmaltzy thing that makes us string Christmas lights on the turquoise-white Dew Drop trailer.
The poem below tells you all I would want to tell you about landscape and language and the paintings we make with our imaginations. So for today, my gift to you is Campbell McGrath. Enjoy.
The Prose Poem
by Campbell McGrath
On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row upon row upon row. To the right, a field of wheat, a field of hay, young grasses breaking the soil, filling their allotted land with the rich, slow-waving spectacle of their grain. As for the farmers, they are, for the most part, indistinguishable: here the tractor is red, there yellow; here a pair of dirty hands, there a pair of dirty hands. They are cultivators of the soil. They grow crops by pattern, by acre, by foresight, by habit. What corn is to one, wheat is to the other, and though to some eyes the similarities outweigh the differences it would be as unthinkable for the second to commence planting corn as for the first to switch over to wheat. What happens in the gully between them is no concern of theirs, they say, so long as the plough stays out, the weeds stay in the ditch where they belong, though anyone would notice the wind-sewn cornstalks poking up their shaggy ears like young lovers run off into the bushes, and the kinship of these wild grasses with those the farmer cultivates is too obvious to mention, sage and dun-colored stalks hanging their noble heads, hoarding exotic burrs and seeds, and yet it is neither corn nor wheat that truly flourishes there, nor some jackalopian hybrid of the two. What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected, even in winter, when the wind hangs icicles from the skeletons of briars and small tracks cross the snow in search of forgotten grain; in the spring the little trickle of water swells to welcome frogs and minnows, a muskrat, a family of turtles, nesting doves in the verdant grass; in summer it is a thoroughfare for raccoons and opossums, field mice, swallows and black birds, migrating egrets, a passing fox; in autumn the geese avoid its abundance, seeking out windrows of toppled stalks, fatter grain more quickly discerned, more easily digested. Of those that travel the local road, few pay that fertile hollow any mind, even those with an eye for what blossoms, vetch and timothy, early forsythia, the fatted calf in the fallow field, the rabbit running for cover, the hawk's descent from the lightning-struck tree. You've passed this way yourself many times, and can tell me, if you would, do the formal fields end where the valley begins, or does everything that surrounds us emerge from its embrace?
Normally I begin the blog with a line or two of poetry that anchors the essay to follow. Today I give you a poem as the essay. Campbell McGrath is to me, a poet with a soul as subtle and shining the inside of an abalone shell. As a poet his themes and ideas are so concise they cut through murk with an un-dissuaded intention. As a wordsmith, he gets you there on the blue highways; the scenic route, the path of surprises. And as a writer, his poems are imbued with a respect and mastery of language and subject matter that cannot be falsely constructed. The wizardry of McGrath's art burns from within, the sun in the orbit of his seeking, the light that guides his unique and questing intellect. As most of you know, I chose Campbell's astounding neon poem, "The Human Heart," as the epigram to my memoir, THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOVE - a poem that says all I think I would want to say about love, and its small stories of human frailty, survival and that schmaltzy thing that makes us string Christmas lights on the turquoise-white Dew Drop trailer.
The poem below tells you all I would want to tell you about landscape and language and the paintings we make with our imaginations. So for today, my gift to you is Campbell McGrath. Enjoy.
The Prose Poem
by Campbell McGrath
On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row upon row upon row. To the right, a field of wheat, a field of hay, young grasses breaking the soil, filling their allotted land with the rich, slow-waving spectacle of their grain. As for the farmers, they are, for the most part, indistinguishable: here the tractor is red, there yellow; here a pair of dirty hands, there a pair of dirty hands. They are cultivators of the soil. They grow crops by pattern, by acre, by foresight, by habit. What corn is to one, wheat is to the other, and though to some eyes the similarities outweigh the differences it would be as unthinkable for the second to commence planting corn as for the first to switch over to wheat. What happens in the gully between them is no concern of theirs, they say, so long as the plough stays out, the weeds stay in the ditch where they belong, though anyone would notice the wind-sewn cornstalks poking up their shaggy ears like young lovers run off into the bushes, and the kinship of these wild grasses with those the farmer cultivates is too obvious to mention, sage and dun-colored stalks hanging their noble heads, hoarding exotic burrs and seeds, and yet it is neither corn nor wheat that truly flourishes there, nor some jackalopian hybrid of the two. What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected, even in winter, when the wind hangs icicles from the skeletons of briars and small tracks cross the snow in search of forgotten grain; in the spring the little trickle of water swells to welcome frogs and minnows, a muskrat, a family of turtles, nesting doves in the verdant grass; in summer it is a thoroughfare for raccoons and opossums, field mice, swallows and black birds, migrating egrets, a passing fox; in autumn the geese avoid its abundance, seeking out windrows of toppled stalks, fatter grain more quickly discerned, more easily digested. Of those that travel the local road, few pay that fertile hollow any mind, even those with an eye for what blossoms, vetch and timothy, early forsythia, the fatted calf in the fallow field, the rabbit running for cover, the hawk's descent from the lightning-struck tree. You've passed this way yourself many times, and can tell me, if you would, do the formal fields end where the valley begins, or does everything that surrounds us emerge from its embrace?
August 2, 2011
Rhapsody
I am so busy among
Shelley's long poems, Plato. Godwin's
Enquiry, Carlyle concerning
the failed revolution that bloody sorrow, and,
as always, Emerson.
Now and again, of course, I look up; a person must.
Maybe I eat an apple or a pear.
Maybe I walk out with the happy dogs.
Maybe I come back into the house, calling your name.
Or maybe you whisper mine.
- from "Rhapsody," Stanza 3, Mary Oliver
I am leaving for the wilds of northern Idaho this weekend, for a luxury of days, a long desired vacation at the lake. Accompanied by my books, notebooks, sketch pad and pen, running shoes for the forest trails, trusty Macallan. And yes, the dog McDuff, and happily, a daughter flying in from the east coast. When I read this excerpt of Mary Oliver's "Rhapsody," a poem that weaves between exquisite small joys of the heart, in and amongst moments, ordinary and fabulous, abundant in nature, I think of how much I love this summer sojourn out of the city. Up to the lake - cold clear waters, inky lavender skies empty of all but the glittering stars, the dark, silent forests shouldered against the shore. Distant from the quotidian, the endless chores and errands. Far away from the brick-colored walls of my office: the stacks of work lined in tilted stanchions at the foot of bookshelves, the mysterious glinting new ideas already gathering dust under the sharp, evocative photographs by Sexton and Caponegro of glassy, rippled brooks, of mist in black trees. And the Don Worth trio - selenium black and whites - the cactus, the beach rock, rain drops on glass. I know that feeling in the center of my chest. The urge to breathe. Once again it is necessary to re-infuse what has become image with the sensory alphabet of the objects themselves. The feel of round stones under bare feet along the beach, the rough cracked bark on the windward tree, the tap-tap drumming of rain on the mossy roof.
It seems as though work and ideas will only once more begin their pirouette across my consciousness after I empty my thoughts in the quiet woods. The lap of lake waves smoothes the sand. The stress and detritus drains from my soul, leaving a blank canvas for creativity to scrawl large.
I am so busy, as Oliver notes. Maybe I will walk out with the happy dogs. Maybe I will come back into the house, calling your name.
Shelley's long poems, Plato. Godwin's
Enquiry, Carlyle concerning
the failed revolution that bloody sorrow, and,
as always, Emerson.
Now and again, of course, I look up; a person must.
Maybe I eat an apple or a pear.
Maybe I walk out with the happy dogs.
Maybe I come back into the house, calling your name.
Or maybe you whisper mine.
- from "Rhapsody," Stanza 3, Mary Oliver
I am leaving for the wilds of northern Idaho this weekend, for a luxury of days, a long desired vacation at the lake. Accompanied by my books, notebooks, sketch pad and pen, running shoes for the forest trails, trusty Macallan. And yes, the dog McDuff, and happily, a daughter flying in from the east coast. When I read this excerpt of Mary Oliver's "Rhapsody," a poem that weaves between exquisite small joys of the heart, in and amongst moments, ordinary and fabulous, abundant in nature, I think of how much I love this summer sojourn out of the city. Up to the lake - cold clear waters, inky lavender skies empty of all but the glittering stars, the dark, silent forests shouldered against the shore. Distant from the quotidian, the endless chores and errands. Far away from the brick-colored walls of my office: the stacks of work lined in tilted stanchions at the foot of bookshelves, the mysterious glinting new ideas already gathering dust under the sharp, evocative photographs by Sexton and Caponegro of glassy, rippled brooks, of mist in black trees. And the Don Worth trio - selenium black and whites - the cactus, the beach rock, rain drops on glass. I know that feeling in the center of my chest. The urge to breathe. Once again it is necessary to re-infuse what has become image with the sensory alphabet of the objects themselves. The feel of round stones under bare feet along the beach, the rough cracked bark on the windward tree, the tap-tap drumming of rain on the mossy roof.
It seems as though work and ideas will only once more begin their pirouette across my consciousness after I empty my thoughts in the quiet woods. The lap of lake waves smoothes the sand. The stress and detritus drains from my soul, leaving a blank canvas for creativity to scrawl large.
I am so busy, as Oliver notes. Maybe I will walk out with the happy dogs. Maybe I will come back into the house, calling your name.
July 31, 2011
Word Play
I would rather see words out on their own, away
from their families and the warehouse of Roget,
wandering the world where they sometimes fall
in love with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
a small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.
- from "Thesaurus," Billy Collins
This idea of words adventuring into the world, finding new meanings, new bonds between strangers, is delightful to me. You could probably replace "words" in this poem with "youth" and have yet another new construct on the idea of the universe of one personality discovering another. Today I have buckets of words on my mind. Pages and paragraphs - words still on the tip of my tongue, lost in the fog alleys of my mind on a morning following half-painted dreams.
As a writer, my days often begin with a long half-awake gaze out the windows at the birds, the delicate quail bobbing and dashing across the patio, the Scottie with his nose in the fresh scents in the grass. The days debut with half-formed sentences (alas, I've continued to write in my sleep, dreaming edits and scene changes, a keen line judge over volleys of language). Sometimes, to make sense of these fragile, half-shell sentences, or escape the endless cargo trains of coupled words thundering around inside my skull, I hit the trails for an early run. In the slant of early sun through pines my thoughts find tranquility. Colors and pens and crayons - pots of unbundled thoughts held aloft, midpoint, content to float until called into action.
Billy Collins' poem suggests ways in which words might be set free to find themselves and others, to play and adventure in ways we usually do not permit. Isn't this an idea for us to consider as well? Now and then set ourselves free to explore in ways that awaken us inside, that open our thoughts to chapels of new meaning and fierceness and beauty in unexpected places? I like to think so. Plot the constellations that lie beyond the North Star. Throw the shovel out of the sandbox and unearth the power of the silly and unexpected.
Why not find a simmering, chuckling, restless book this summer and see what happens inside? Follow those bird tracks across the white pages. Invite your imagination to a wedding.
from their families and the warehouse of Roget,
wandering the world where they sometimes fall
in love with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
a small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.
- from "Thesaurus," Billy Collins
This idea of words adventuring into the world, finding new meanings, new bonds between strangers, is delightful to me. You could probably replace "words" in this poem with "youth" and have yet another new construct on the idea of the universe of one personality discovering another. Today I have buckets of words on my mind. Pages and paragraphs - words still on the tip of my tongue, lost in the fog alleys of my mind on a morning following half-painted dreams.
As a writer, my days often begin with a long half-awake gaze out the windows at the birds, the delicate quail bobbing and dashing across the patio, the Scottie with his nose in the fresh scents in the grass. The days debut with half-formed sentences (alas, I've continued to write in my sleep, dreaming edits and scene changes, a keen line judge over volleys of language). Sometimes, to make sense of these fragile, half-shell sentences, or escape the endless cargo trains of coupled words thundering around inside my skull, I hit the trails for an early run. In the slant of early sun through pines my thoughts find tranquility. Colors and pens and crayons - pots of unbundled thoughts held aloft, midpoint, content to float until called into action.
Billy Collins' poem suggests ways in which words might be set free to find themselves and others, to play and adventure in ways we usually do not permit. Isn't this an idea for us to consider as well? Now and then set ourselves free to explore in ways that awaken us inside, that open our thoughts to chapels of new meaning and fierceness and beauty in unexpected places? I like to think so. Plot the constellations that lie beyond the North Star. Throw the shovel out of the sandbox and unearth the power of the silly and unexpected.
Why not find a simmering, chuckling, restless book this summer and see what happens inside? Follow those bird tracks across the white pages. Invite your imagination to a wedding.
July 26, 2011
Colored Lawn Chairs
Our lives were stored in our heads.
They hadn't begun, we were both sure
we'd know when they did.
They certainly weren't this.
We read, we listened to the portable radio.
Obviously this wasn't life, this sitting around
in colored lawn chairs.
- from "August," Louise Gluck
Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition." - Robert Henri
These two ideas, from the poet and the philosopher, explore the tension between imagined life and reality. The dream and the truth. What we dream our lives to be and the way we see them unfold. Do we see them unfold? As we while away the long summer days in lawn chairs, do we see this is life? The poet Louise Gluck observes, "Our lives were stored in our heads." Life, the very stuff spooled by our brains in the time spent constructing it in our heads. Sometimes we are not living, but re-living: absorbed in nostalgia, lost in musings, given to fixation on the past. Robert Henri warns us, "Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday."
There is something to be said for becoming tuned to the given moment, noting the quality of freshness. The expiring, momentary quality of the never-to-be-repeated. We may have sat in lawn chairs all summer, but if each day was in the company of a new friend and conversation, a new page in a book, held a unique insight, favorite tune on the radio, then the moments are not re-living but genuine. There is a difference I think between fresh and new. The "new" is something never before known, "fresh" is given to this day and may very well be familiar. The real punch line in the poem by Gluck is her young narrator's confident statement she would be sure when actual life began, when life as they imagined it would spread in technicolor across the white screen of their summer days. The future selves imagined contained like simple ungerminated seeds within the ordinary hours of their days.
What I know from the blessings of growing older are that the ordinary hours are the honey of life's busyness. We condense the swell of moments that link days to years in waves of freshly gathered experiences. Experiences that hang like heavy droplets of morning dew in the throat of an iris. We are this. This universe in the universe of one. And it is beautiful. And ordinary. The summer of books, the radio, and colored lawn chairs.
They hadn't begun, we were both sure
we'd know when they did.
They certainly weren't this.
We read, we listened to the portable radio.
Obviously this wasn't life, this sitting around
in colored lawn chairs.
- from "August," Louise Gluck
Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition." - Robert Henri
These two ideas, from the poet and the philosopher, explore the tension between imagined life and reality. The dream and the truth. What we dream our lives to be and the way we see them unfold. Do we see them unfold? As we while away the long summer days in lawn chairs, do we see this is life? The poet Louise Gluck observes, "Our lives were stored in our heads." Life, the very stuff spooled by our brains in the time spent constructing it in our heads. Sometimes we are not living, but re-living: absorbed in nostalgia, lost in musings, given to fixation on the past. Robert Henri warns us, "Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday."
There is something to be said for becoming tuned to the given moment, noting the quality of freshness. The expiring, momentary quality of the never-to-be-repeated. We may have sat in lawn chairs all summer, but if each day was in the company of a new friend and conversation, a new page in a book, held a unique insight, favorite tune on the radio, then the moments are not re-living but genuine. There is a difference I think between fresh and new. The "new" is something never before known, "fresh" is given to this day and may very well be familiar. The real punch line in the poem by Gluck is her young narrator's confident statement she would be sure when actual life began, when life as they imagined it would spread in technicolor across the white screen of their summer days. The future selves imagined contained like simple ungerminated seeds within the ordinary hours of their days.
What I know from the blessings of growing older are that the ordinary hours are the honey of life's busyness. We condense the swell of moments that link days to years in waves of freshly gathered experiences. Experiences that hang like heavy droplets of morning dew in the throat of an iris. We are this. This universe in the universe of one. And it is beautiful. And ordinary. The summer of books, the radio, and colored lawn chairs.
July 24, 2011
Sail Away
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowline. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain
Twain's call to adventure has niggled at me all morning. I think of our youth and the drive to risk and discover. How modern society has strapped that adventurous impulse to a desk. The newspapers this weekend were filled with articles about college grads returning to campus life for graduate degrees, unable to find employment, slipping back into the "prepraring for life" apprenticeships that are the pillar of academic life. I, too, chose this path in the late seventies: driven back to campus for a professional degree in the midst of national unemployment and inflation. We are here again? The national economy fails our fledging new work force. But isn't the real issue the compression created between these years of childhood, education, and work? Where is the adventure, the dream, the joy of discovery found within scheduled lessons and sports, "summer educational opportunities" we used to call camp, and the anxious college grad? Have we robbed our children of the spice of independence and freedom? A life to be made in the living?
On a recent televised sports event, the Longboard Channel Crossing Race between Molokai and Maui, one of the top surf board competitors mentioned having taken a year off to sail the world, a dream of his. And now he wondered if he'd jeopardized his professional sports standing by doing so. Then suddenly he grinned into the glare of the sun and said, "Nope. Best year of my life!"
Can you say that? Can I? Can we look at a single grand adventure in our lives with such satisfaction? And isn't life just a little bit less if we can't? I can't believe it's ever too late to explore, to throw off the bowlines. Let Twain's words fill our sails. Choose to not regret, choose to do what we dream of. And by all means, blow a big wind into the sails of our children as they poise at the edge and embrace the unknown of the world. There is so much to do.
- Mark Twain
Twain's call to adventure has niggled at me all morning. I think of our youth and the drive to risk and discover. How modern society has strapped that adventurous impulse to a desk. The newspapers this weekend were filled with articles about college grads returning to campus life for graduate degrees, unable to find employment, slipping back into the "prepraring for life" apprenticeships that are the pillar of academic life. I, too, chose this path in the late seventies: driven back to campus for a professional degree in the midst of national unemployment and inflation. We are here again? The national economy fails our fledging new work force. But isn't the real issue the compression created between these years of childhood, education, and work? Where is the adventure, the dream, the joy of discovery found within scheduled lessons and sports, "summer educational opportunities" we used to call camp, and the anxious college grad? Have we robbed our children of the spice of independence and freedom? A life to be made in the living?
On a recent televised sports event, the Longboard Channel Crossing Race between Molokai and Maui, one of the top surf board competitors mentioned having taken a year off to sail the world, a dream of his. And now he wondered if he'd jeopardized his professional sports standing by doing so. Then suddenly he grinned into the glare of the sun and said, "Nope. Best year of my life!"
Can you say that? Can I? Can we look at a single grand adventure in our lives with such satisfaction? And isn't life just a little bit less if we can't? I can't believe it's ever too late to explore, to throw off the bowlines. Let Twain's words fill our sails. Choose to not regret, choose to do what we dream of. And by all means, blow a big wind into the sails of our children as they poise at the edge and embrace the unknown of the world. There is so much to do.
July 19, 2011
Luck by Design
Luck is the Residue of Design (by George Torok)
I like, and have adopted Mr. Branch Rickey
I like, and have adopted Mr. Branch Rickey
July 17, 2011
Last Page on Childhood
THE BOY WHO LIVED
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
- Chapter One, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," J. K. Rowling, 1997
The end of childhood was celebrated this weekend. My daughter and son, aged 22 and 20, grew up with Harry Potter, the self-doubting, bespectacled misfit boy, aged eleven, who enchanted young readers from the moment Hagrid, the Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwart's, left him on the Dursley's front doorstep. Hooked from the beginning, the kids and I would race to the bookstore for the latest book of Harry's adventures in the wizarding world. We would stay up late nightly as I read the early books aloud, the kids tumbled across my lap in their pajamas. Harry's misfortunes, friendships, and madcap mastery of both his fate and talents held us enthralled. The final 759 page adventure, "The Deathly Hallows," was claimed from the postman by my then high school-aged daughter, who holed herself up in her room and read the book straight through. And joy! The films and J. K. Rowling's imaginary world were brought to life by gifted actors and evocative stage settings cast perfectly to the story, kept true by the author herself.
It isn't often I say thank you to another author for more than just his or her sheer talent. But Rowling deserves credit for more than the gift of young reader books so well written they turned thousands of children, including my own, into avid readers. Suddenly kids lined up with Harry Potter books in their clutches at our elementary school Scholastic Fairs, asked for the new Potter books for birthdays, read and reread the stories. Harry Potter books gave parents a reason to chuckle as they read them aloud, enjoying J. K. Rowling's subtle wit and word play, and thankful for the occasional direct words of wisdom all parents hope their children absorb. At one point the Head of Hogwarts School of Wizardry, Professor Dumbledore, says to a young Harry, "It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." The great wise wizard isn't speaking of magic or great accomplishments and awards, but of values and integrity, choosing good from evil. It is not our talents that make us who we are, it is what we choose to do with them.
J.K. Rowling has my unending respect as a fine writer, a spinner of tales, and someone who did her homework - knowing precisely what each successive group of readers would want in a gripping tale as Harry's young fans grew up with her hero and his friends. The writing grew a bit more complex, deeper, darker, riskier, her young protagonist and his friends ever more aware and affected by the struggles and danger of the outside world. Part II of "The Deathly Hallows" film finale, released this weekend, left my daughter and her friends teary eyed in a packed Manhattan IMAX theatre. "That was the end of my childhood, Mom," she said to me over the telephone. She sounded sad and grateful and wistful all at once. Me too. I will always look at those seven books on our family room shelf and think of the small children I held in my arms as we read until little eyes grew tired, and of the young teens later sprawled on their beds, deep in the latest installment.
Thank you J.K. Rowling. And thank you Harry Potter.
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
- Chapter One, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," J. K. Rowling, 1997
The end of childhood was celebrated this weekend. My daughter and son, aged 22 and 20, grew up with Harry Potter, the self-doubting, bespectacled misfit boy, aged eleven, who enchanted young readers from the moment Hagrid, the Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwart's, left him on the Dursley's front doorstep. Hooked from the beginning, the kids and I would race to the bookstore for the latest book of Harry's adventures in the wizarding world. We would stay up late nightly as I read the early books aloud, the kids tumbled across my lap in their pajamas. Harry's misfortunes, friendships, and madcap mastery of both his fate and talents held us enthralled. The final 759 page adventure, "The Deathly Hallows," was claimed from the postman by my then high school-aged daughter, who holed herself up in her room and read the book straight through. And joy! The films and J. K. Rowling's imaginary world were brought to life by gifted actors and evocative stage settings cast perfectly to the story, kept true by the author herself.
It isn't often I say thank you to another author for more than just his or her sheer talent. But Rowling deserves credit for more than the gift of young reader books so well written they turned thousands of children, including my own, into avid readers. Suddenly kids lined up with Harry Potter books in their clutches at our elementary school Scholastic Fairs, asked for the new Potter books for birthdays, read and reread the stories. Harry Potter books gave parents a reason to chuckle as they read them aloud, enjoying J. K. Rowling's subtle wit and word play, and thankful for the occasional direct words of wisdom all parents hope their children absorb. At one point the Head of Hogwarts School of Wizardry, Professor Dumbledore, says to a young Harry, "It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." The great wise wizard isn't speaking of magic or great accomplishments and awards, but of values and integrity, choosing good from evil. It is not our talents that make us who we are, it is what we choose to do with them.
J.K. Rowling has my unending respect as a fine writer, a spinner of tales, and someone who did her homework - knowing precisely what each successive group of readers would want in a gripping tale as Harry's young fans grew up with her hero and his friends. The writing grew a bit more complex, deeper, darker, riskier, her young protagonist and his friends ever more aware and affected by the struggles and danger of the outside world. Part II of "The Deathly Hallows" film finale, released this weekend, left my daughter and her friends teary eyed in a packed Manhattan IMAX theatre. "That was the end of my childhood, Mom," she said to me over the telephone. She sounded sad and grateful and wistful all at once. Me too. I will always look at those seven books on our family room shelf and think of the small children I held in my arms as we read until little eyes grew tired, and of the young teens later sprawled on their beds, deep in the latest installment.
Thank you J.K. Rowling. And thank you Harry Potter.
