Nina MacLaughlin's Blog, page 4

In winter, we get inside each other. The erotics of the dark,...

In winter, we get inside each other. The erotics of the dark, cold
season differ from that of summer—not the flirty, sundressed frolic, not
sultry August sweat above the lip, not tan lines or sand in shoes or
voluptuous tulips. It’s a different sort of smolder now. Quilted,
clutching, we wolve for one another, ice on the puddles and orange glow
from windows against deepest evening blue. In summer: lust and laze,
days are loose and lasting. In winter: time tightens, night’s wide open,
the hunger says right now.

Part Three of my series on the Winter Solstice for the Paris Review.

[Paul Cezanne, Leda and the Swan, c. 1882]

The December has been dark. Morning is night. Afternoon...

The December has been dark. Morning is night. Afternoon is
night. The sunsets at the close of the year are the best of the year, as though
offering consolation, as though the sky says, I know it’s early, but here, these golds and pinks and lavenders, they’re
the deepest I know how to make. Small consolation now, nothing seems to
smooth the edges all the way, but I will take whatever passing approximation of
comfort I can get.

The year is fading. Light is fading. Solstice means...

The year is fading. Light is fading. Solstice means
sun-stilled. We light candles and raise toasts, we smooch in doorways
under strung-up plants, we hang lights along the roofline peaks, give
gifts, make wishes, laugh and pray and fear. We bring the light into the
earth and try to harness the great forces. It’s a wild sort of
stilling, a thrashing frenzied sort of stilling, a stopping of time, a
de-metering, a holding of the breath as the tension builds, as the dark
expands, until it cracks and light drives in. That’s the hope. The
far-off tinkling of bells you hear could be the harness of the reindeer
or the bells around the neck of a goat. Hoofbeats on the roof, hoofbeats
thudding in the warm and living hollow of your chest. Here in the wild
quiet, something in the shadows whispers and you can’t tell if it means
you good or ill. Pomegranate, holly branch, birch switch, mistletoe.
We’ll leaf with life and pass below the secret places of this earth.

Part Two of my series on the Winter Solstice for the Paris Review.

Loss is in the air. Summer’s juicy verdure gives way to...

Loss is in the air. Summer’s juicy verdure gives way to something
crisped and husky. The colors dull and the plants fuzz, release last
seed, go black. There’s something cruel about it. On a plane some years
ago, the stranger strapped in next to me talked about winter in Chicago.
“You never been to Chicago in winter?” he said. “I’ve never been to
Chicago,” I said. “Well we got a wind so cold we call it the hawk,” he
said. It sounded like a mean thing.

Heat slips off, chased by the hawk, and the smolder has to come from
within. Winter makes us know the hollows. Darkness creeps in from both
sides and pushes us to that pure ridge, all the way exposed. Peer over,
scope the abyss. The fear is ancient, part of our human-animal
inheritance, the surging fury of survival: will I be warm enough, will I
have enough to eat, will it keep getting darker, will the darkness
swallow me, will it swallow us all together?

For the Paris Review, I’m writing a four-part series about the Winter Solstice. The first part asks, what’s death in a world of stories?

Inhale the Darkness

Tenth month. Ten future spoons. October’s almost over. Thetrees...

Tenth month. Ten future spoons. October’s almost over. The
trees are in full flame along Mount Auburn Street. Ivy clambers along a fence;
leaves – red now – engulf the pickets. A heightened moment of the change, earth’s ripeness
sensed on every inhale, and it’s hard not to wonder (with fear and hope, as
always, but especially right now) what might happen next. The Japanese maple
will hold onto its leaves longer than the rest of the trees on the block. Curls
of maple will collect on the floor as I carve another spoon (I write that and
think: don’t jinx yourself, who knows if you’ll be so lucky). Two full
moons this month, and the trees, as in all Octobers, call our attention, but do
not care if they get it or not.

I catch myself with a clenched jaw. Stroke a thumb acrossthe...

I catch myself with a clenched jaw. Stroke a thumb across
the bowl of a spoon, a gesture that feels almost like a wish, and something
seems to soften. Thumb across the smooth, and the smallest moment of unsnarl. Here, two small spoons made of
maple and coffee in a cup.

A maple came down and I made this small spoon. What themaking...

A maple came down and I made this small spoon. What the
making teaches again: there will be splinters, times when the edges are jagged
and misshapen, when it seems the shape of spoon will not reveal itself; don’t
be afraid; don’t run; time and touch; trust; be tender with the knots—they’re
the spots that mark the death of other branches after all. Underneath you’re
offered the softness and the strength.

Thin-shaved and the ribbons curl. The wood makes...

Thin-shaved and the ribbons curl. The wood makes silent,
spiraled celebration, gleeful twists announcing the tree’s spirit. Not in
protest or pain but in exuberance: now
this? So many sensations, so many different forms, seed sapling tree spoon.
And I am glad to hold this piece a maple in my palm and feel it respond, to aim
my attention away from my own dim interior and what it makes of the major and
minor tragedies everyday unfolding, and toward wood and blade instead. Wood in
palm, spoon in progress, a kind of cure. An alleviation, temporary, welcome,
from dread and shame.

One need not summit to see. To know what is above, one need only...

One need not summit to see. To know what is above, one need only lie on
the grass and look up, float on one’s back on a pond and look up, tilt
the chin toward the sky and look up. Any moment, a mountaintop. What do I know? Only that for
a moment I became the sky and touched everything at once. Only that
this possibility exists. The possibility to reach a state of
all-nothingness again. That somewhere way beyond the summit, sky, time,
death — these things are the same.

A series of essays on the sky for the Paris Review Daily concludes with this, on fear at the base of heartbreak and grief, voids and mountaintops, and the ways we aim our devotion.

What shape is the sky?

[Painting: Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara, 1857.]

Objects we use to flirt with the...

Objects we use to flirt with the sky:

Kites.
Fountains.
Hammocks.
Ice skates.
Balloons.
Weather vanes.
Parachutes.
Mobiles.
Trellises.
Diving boards.
Birdbaths.
Flags.
Beach towels.
Wind chimes.

With more to be found as part of this essay on the Sky for the Paris Review Daily, which asks, what does the sky feel like?