About finding joy in the landscape of life, in the everyday luminous-- family, friends, food, flowers, books, films—wherever beauty is to be seen, laughter to be heard, peace to be savored.
Tea & chocolate Stretched out on the couch under my youngest son's blanket bathed in golden sunlight not working! reading a novel not a great novel just a story about a woman who is not sure which way to turn. Maybe life is like a garden. You could design it this way or that and it would probably be just fine either way, there are probably lots of ways it would be really lovely. And Nature will come in and do Her own majestic and messy things, too.
I don't mean to freak you out, but I have a dead hummingbird lying on my nature table. I found it on the pavement outside of Talbot's two weeks ago, where I had gone to buy a new pair of black pants. My old pair, which could go anywhere from work to the opera, had died. I don't know about you, but I really need a good pair of black pants.
Karen, the best saleswoman on the planet, was there because I was praying the whole time I was walking up there that she would be. She's even tinier than I am, knows the merchandise in and out, and has the gift of knowing exactly what I, not a good shopper, should buy. I explained my predicament. She walked several paces to a rack of trousers, plucked off a trim pair-- exactly my size-- and swung them in my direction. "This is it," she said. "You can wear them anywhere, throw them in the machine and they're ready to go. Perfect every time."
Leaving the store triumphant, I noticed a speck of emerald green on the expansive esplanade in front. Emerald is an unusual color, so I was curious and approached the speck. A dead hummingbird, of all things, in the middle of the sea of pavement! My immediate thought was to fish a tissue out of my purse, scoop him up and gently deposit him under a bush. But-- how often do you get to see a hummingbird? If you see them, as soon as you see them, they are gone, out of there, faster than the blink of an eye...
So at first, I stared. At his plumage, shimmering emerald. At his long, needle-thin beak. At the tiny ruff of feathers around his neck-- a circlet for a prince. (I'm guessing this bird was male because male birds seem to get all the gorgeous colors.) How did he come to be in this sea of pavement?
I walked home holding him in the tissue, and soon, when I can bear to let him go, he'll be buried amidst the ferns of my garden, ashes to ashes, green to green, another bit of stardust in this shimmering web of life.
Leaves scattered like runes on the sidewalk portents, prophesies glistening, serpentine ribbons slug trails signs telling of the past and foretelling the fall to come. And the little black squirrel filling his belly with scarlet dogwood berries relishing this warm September day.
September 15, 2009
Yes! There are dogwood berries. But look quick, or they'll all be gone
I hear someone’s spoon clinking on a cereal bowl craving sustenance a teenager abroad in the night stepping away from imming looking out the window above the sink into the velvety darkness should be in bed not quite done with homework not quite done with life for the day ready for more and his mother’s upstairs hoping that he gets it and that it’s everything he hopes for.
January 31, 2008
For Arran, my 17 year old son who left this week for France. xo
Summer wanes but it’s doing it with some pizzazz, some splash and flair. Thunder storms crackle, summer annuals are rich with flame-colored blooms, and while the cicadas are winding down (the husks of their huge green and black bodies are sadly starting to litter the sidewalks) their confreres the snowy tree crickets and katydids are thrumming in the tree tops, squirrels are scurrying (there’s a little black one dashing along my fence right now), and the farm market overflows with goodness, corn, peaches, tomatoes, herbs and greens, so death is just a whiff, a note in the singing symphony so full of life and juice and the tap-dancing celebration that is summer’s end.
Have you tried Twitter yet? I began tweeting this summer as an experiment, doing research on social networking on behalf of the non-profit I work for. Twitter content can be inane and totally disconnected, as if each person is chatting to the universe with no response, over and over-- “I wish someone would buy me sushi” or, “I’m giving a presentation on 21st century algorithms”.
But there have been some highlights. The way Twitter works is that you find people who’s thoughts interest you, and you follow them. Ditto for others who find your thoughts interesting (or who want you for their sales lists). Then whenever someone you’re following posts a thought, it appears on your list. You might follow the BBC (too many tweets for me), the White House or Number 10 Downing Street. I recently discovered the Joint Chief of Staff is tweeting!
My top 3 highlights so far : A poem of mine was re-tweeted (RT for short, i.e., shared around after I had tweeted it) on Poetry Central, by a medievalist at Yale; Yoko Ono is following me (of course, I ‘followed’ her first); and Greg Mortenson just joined twitter, and is tweeting from Afghanistan! He happened to start the day I finished reading his greatly inspiring book Three Cups of Tea (see previous post). How utterly thrilling! Rather like Mother Theresa tweeting.
Yoko Ono, by the way, tweets lovely things about world peace and love. On August 11th she wrote, “The town is shining, sun, rain, or snow. We live in a beautiful universe. Enjoy the miracle you are part of.”
I sat on a bench in the shade in Lenox town square, waiting for the Peter Pan to Providence. Two benches down a noisy family shouted to each other rather than spoke. They seemed kind of crude, even vulgar. They picked up all their things and joined me, kind of engulfed me, a mom, an unidentified man, and a teenage girl (who could have been a boy, with androgynous length hair) large, wide people, waddling my way. With an unexpected, uncalled for sweetness they took it upon themselves to ascertain my level of experience with the Peter Pan bus line, and to provide me with all the information necessary for my comfort as a traveler, most especially the important fact that the bus driver on this route is fond of air conditioning and I might freeze without a jacket handy. The girl, who lives in some kind of home and travels to her real home on the Peter Pan bus line periodically, Insisted on carrying my heavy suitcase for me and is not entirely 100% with us, but is as sweet as can be and looked so joyous running back and forth to the corner to watch for the bus with her mother’s big old sweater flapping around her waist.
Saturday morning ripe with the pleasure of summer and family books to read lazy sun juicy peaches farm market neighborhood errands friendly hellos smile on me, life, smile on.
She was standing on a busy street corner near a Metro stop looking tentative, traffic roaring by, her white cane probing in an arc around her-- a slightly plump young white woman with pink cheeks and long, wavy brown hair. I wasn’t sure if she needed help and didn’t want to intrude, but I slowed down as I passed just in case. “Excuse me?” she called out. “Could you tell me what street we are on?”
I suggested we walk together, since it turned out we were heading in the same direction. She kept bumping into me as we walked along, quite companionably, searching for the noodle café where she had arranged to meet her boyfriend. I inquired if she was vision impaired, and she was amazingly jolly as she explained that from birth she couldn’t really see, and that it took eight years to establish that she wasn’t stupid or mentally inadequate-- during which time no one knew what to make of her, or do for her, or with her. It was eventually determined that she had a severely and unusually limited range and field of vision. Her mother’s love was her constant solace.
We found our way to the noodle café, where we said goodbye. I continued on with my day savoring the memory of Leah, her warm and sweet sense of humor, and picturing the field and range of her vibrant personality as she navigates through the world, bumping into people and things.
It's a sticky cool summer evening on the terrace. One sticks to the chair a little but there's enough of a breeze barely a zephyr but enough to imagine that one is someplace exotic especially because the father and son having dinner nearby are speaking in a mysterious language. So while I wait for my son to finish baseball practice down the road I am far away drinking water on a terrace urbane and alive at one with the sticky cool universe.
It’s been raining and raining this summer and there’s been thunder rolling over the landscape and torrential downpours soaking through shoes puddles and rivulets streaming down the sidewalks and the daring art of dashing between unpredictable deluges has been busily practiced all across town… Rosenny and I arrived at our destinations soaked through to the skin, which is not fashionable, especially when it has stopped raining and everyone else (having driven) arrived dry as a bone.
Gemini Team Member Beth Phillips Mallon & Renowned Chef/Author Rebecca Katz backstage at Food As Medicine / CancerGuides II, 2009- beautiful friends & colleagues
I recently helped create and orchestrate a Center for Mind-Body Medicine training for 500 people, mostly health professionals, held here in Washington, DC. On the last day of the program, numerous people came up and thanked me for my hard work and my part in making the program such a wonderful experience-- so nice! The largest single group of our attendees were physicians. They are so accustomed to very different, considerably more cut-and-dried atmospheres at conferences they attend, so it came as somewhat of a shock to them to find the environment warm and nurturing.
One of them said to me, This is the best medically-oriented program I have attended in my 40 year career. I looked her in the eyes, and out of my lips came the words, There is no law against doing it with love.
Wow... that’s really what I have to say. There is no law against doing it with love, whether it’s the way you work with colleagues, family, friends, community, country, or the world…
In putting this program together, our small staff at the Center formed ourselves into a team. We had a name—‘Gemini’, because we were doing two trainings at once—Food As Medicine and CancerGuides II. Each of us identified and committed to a role, which we took on and saw to completion, whatever it took to do so. Each of us counted on the other, 1000%. We met weekly and brainstormed, and helped each other troubleshoot rough spots. We worked with creativity and love. The training was made out of this sublime material—and it showed.
In the same way, I have always thought that if you stir the rice with love, that’s what your family will taste. Put the raw rice in the pot, rinse it with water, stir with your hand. Smile as you stir, and think loving thoughts…. The rice will be sweet and nourishing to those you love.
Go, Gemini! Our team at a pre-program planning session / picnic with microplaners (a great piece of cooking equipment!) They look like pirates! Or- are those magic wands?
And no planning session would be complete without a bowl of cherries....
I trod across the hillside rounded the corner and was stunned by the ineffable fragrance of you. Suddenly I became all about finding you, buried in woodland thicket, the cause of this glorious infusion, this piercing, classic, delicious only-in-springtime aroma. And there you were, modest in size and appearance, but Empress of the lands around you, and I your slave.
Still exquisite, spring moves majestically toward summer, sharing the luxurious gifts of iris, poppy, peony, alium, salvia, nepeta, along with herbs and leafy greens... Here, a late-May tour of the Bishop's Garden and the glories therein on a recent Saturday.
Salvia, poppies & boxwood
Fennel
Ladybug friend with Dandelion Greens (?)
Two views of the upper border, with (l to r) aliums, amsonia, salvia & peach-colored iris
Happy Mother's Day to all women, who care for their children, their families and each other...
A dear friend writes, There are times you provide wise guidance to me, like a mother, and for that I am grateful....
And another friend writes, I am so thankful and grateful not only to my own mother, but to the many womyn who have guided my life and made me feel special and loved.
It's such an honor to be a part of their lives! And to be a part of the community of caring women who bring love and integrity to all that they do.
I thank my mother, no longer with us, and my mother-in-law, whom I dearly treasure, for their love and guidance. I thank my beautiful women friends and colleagues, who enrich all around them with their strong and joyous spirits. And I thank Mother Earth, who provides for us all...
There she is! In all her pretty ruffled glory-- the first peony, the zenith of spring incarnate, with opalescent petals of maximum floriferousness, serious star power in the kingdom of springtime, for all to admire and adore in her fleeting moment of gorgeosity!
If all else failed, these are the books I would want in hand, these invitations to explore and savor nature. Louise J. Halle, Spring in Washington(NY, Atheneum, 1947)-- chief among them. Halle was a young State Department employee in 1945, when he slipped out daily before sunrise, swooping through city, riverside and marsh on his bicycle, observing with relish the progress of spring along the Potomac. An especially keen birder, his writing is fine and nimble, from the scientific to the philosophic and lyrical, with a dash of humor. Such a pleasure! What I perhaps most admire is the quiet independence of his preoccupation, his solitary choice to spend each dawn in the natural world.
To snatch the passing moment and exaine it for signs of eternity is the noblest of occupations.
Edwin Way Teale, A Walk Through the Year(NY, Dodd, Mead & Co, 2978). In the winter of 1998 - 1999, I was bedridden for 2 ½ months (sounds rather Victorian) and survived thanks to my family, meditation, and this book. For 18 years, I had been a landscape designer, and enjoyed daily contact with the out-of-doors. This book was like water to the parched-- a daily sojourn through the seasons, with Teale recording daily observations of natural life on his Connecticut farm.
From his entry for May 9:
Out in the meadow I look up High above me two red-shouldered hawks spin in an updraft. Just as I get my glasses focused on one of the soaring birds, it sweeps back its wings, tilts steeply downward, and like an arrowhead, streaks in a long plunge toward the earth. I follow it down and down. I see it near the ground, open its wings, check its descent and begin climbing upward again. A hawk sporting in the air of spring.
Get's me every time.
Marie Winn, Red-Tails in Love(NY, Pantheon Books, 1998). Switching back from countryside to town--Marie Winn, nature columnist for the Wall Street Journal, tells a tale of love and high drama along with the inside scoop on the Central Park world of New York naturalists, the Regulars, as they are called. Delightful!
And lastly, favorite field guides, trusty companions:
Roger Tory Peterson, Peterson Field Guides: Eastern Birds(I'm sure there are more up-to-date editions than mine). My mother recorded every bird she ever saw in her copy, and I consult this more than any other single volume in my library. Though I still haven't figured out which kind of hawk used to soar by my office window last spring...
National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies. Irresistible. The chocolate-brown butterfly with blue spots I saw on Huntington Street on March 6 was, I learned, a Diana.
A Golden Guide to Insects. "Full-color," the cover helpfully states, "Easy-to-use". No truer words were ever written. See bug, can find. And, after all, there are more of them than there are of us, so it's kind of nice to know their names.
Posts
