Frogs and Ravens

Time Rushing Past

Spring is upon us.  The trees are budding and blossoming and swelling with the promise of summer.  Grackels and robins swirl around the neighborhood in great clouds, their voices clanging from the branches, their beaks bobbing up and down in the grass.  Squirrels are attempting to remember where they hid all those acorns.  Sparrows are squabbling over prime nesting spots inside clothesline pipes and atop porch lanterns.  Inside the house, flies spontaneously generate out of air and dust and drifting cat hair; I have become a leaping samurai warrior, armed with a blue-tipped flyswatter, declaring death to these buzzing black concentrations of matter.

I pass among this bustling whirl of growth and energy, and I look at it, and remark upon it - and yet I fail to set it down in words and images, in pixels and megabytes and photons glowing through the screen.  Teaching is sprawling through my life like a massive underground fungus; the classes and lectures are only the fruiting bodies peeking up between the leaves.  Below the surface the tendrils reach out and infiltrate all parts of my life, waking and sleeping.  I find myself dreaming in PowerPoint slides.  I struggle to find clear ground, bare rock upon which I can stand and contemplate the changes around me.

In other words, I've been too busy to write.  Forgive me.

A Practical Sort of Hope

In a post at Creek Running North, commenter jmartin offered a great response to the question of how do we give kids the straight story about the condition of the world without destroying their hopes for the future.  I'm quoting what jmartin said, because I think it works well for adults too.

Cross-Species Play

The cat and I have developed a game.  Most of the time when I play with the cat, it is me taking advantage of her instincts to provide entertainment.  I trail a feather along the back of the chair, roll acorns at her feet, toss milk bottle rings in the air for her to catch. 

This game is one that she helped invent.  It is a game with rules, designed for two players taking turns.  It is fascinating to me that such a thing can exist, between two such different creatures, one a tall bipedal primate with lousy stalking skills and the other a small black feline who is not always very bright, even by cat standards.

The game is a combination of tag and hide and go seek.  One person hides behind the edge of something - a door, a wall, a piece of furniture.  The other slowly sneaks up.  Both players are hoping to catch the other one unawares; the hider by peeking out while the sneaker is still mid-sneak, the sneaker by surprising the hider first. 

Usually she is the one who hides, and I'm the one who "sneaks," poorly, in squeaky clogs over creaky wooden floors, my big two-footed self ill-suited to quiet dashes.  I'm almost always caught. 

Sometimes, I'm the one who hides, peering around the edge of the door in an enticing manner until she begins her creeping attack.  Last night I was hiding behind the bathroom door, and she kept creeping, and running away, and creeping back.  I had been looking around the edge of the door at head-height, and she was beginning to catch on, watching that spot before I'd even poked my head out.  So - a new strategy.  I hunkered down, and looked around the edge below the doorknob. 

I surprised her, but she had quick reflexes and leaped at my head, feet and toes spread wide.  Yikes!

I decided to go back to peeking out above the doorknob.

She leaps four feet into the air!

I startle!

I think she won that round.

Three Poems

Flugue State

I do not have the energy
for walking
fast
quick
confident

I drift along
at the pace
of
a breath

I tell
myself
that it is
a moving
meditation
a chance
to reflect
on
the world
as it
goes by

But really
it is
just...

slow.

Dreaming of a Wet Christmas

I always seem to settle into a semi-hibernation when I'm here in the winter. I don't know whether it's the quality of the light, the damp chill, or the rain. This visit, I was doing well in terms of getting up early until today, when I fell back asleep for another two hours after waking.

The sunlight is shining on dripping leaves and moss, a patch of blue sky moving among clouds to let it through. The light is bright and clear, and all the trees in the valley are outlined against the darker ridge in shadow. Birds shake gleaming droplets free when they land upon the smaller branches, their whirring wings lit up by the light behind.

Moisture is a fact of life here, especially in the winter, so one lives one's life under its cloud, setting one's rhythms to the beat of the falling rain. One accumulates layers of fleece and microfiber and wool like a tree growing moss; one concentrates more on staying warm, than staying dry.

The light has broken through again, its clarity and strength catching the eye in the way a hawk's scream in the early morning hush startles the ear. The clouds drift, the clarion light fades into soft echoes, the glitter of water on yellow-grey lichen dulls into a subtle gleam. On the branch of an oak, a chickadee scolds.

The Potter's Ayurveda

Kapha.  Heavy and slow, the mixture of water and earth.

I bought a new bag of clay this month, having used up the first one.  I am returning to the clay I know best, porcelain.  The grains are fine, the body smooth, plastic, yielding.  On the wheel it turns into eggshells, the rippled whorls of flowers, small bowls for sipping something rare and precious.  In the hand it is pliant, waiting placidly to be transformed into tiny faces, mysterious creatures, wild-eyed birds with calm bodies.

Vata.  Dry and rough, light and quick, the mixture of space and air.

Dry greenware, the unfired clay, is brittle.  Drop it, and it transforms into dust and fragments. Push it too hard, and it crumbles.  Porous, it inhales moisture, absorbing the colors of pigmented slip, seizing them and holding them fast.  Abraded gently with sandpaper, the surface becomes as soft as sandstone, a rough-smooth matte texture like the skin of a toad.  Flaws are erased through the actions of the sand, silicon grains rubbing at other grains of earth and crystal.  Dry vulnerability becomes a virtue.  Passed through fire, it becomes strength.

Pitta.  Sharp, hot, and moist, the mixture of fire and water.

Bisqueware seizes the moist glaze aggressively, holding it tight, demanding swift action with no errors.  The element of chance cannot be avoided, only compensated for.  Wax buys some room, a moist-dry shell that transforms hungry clay into restrained form capable of resisting the call of color and shine. 

Pottery emerges from the final firing hot, shining, and bright with energy.  When glaze is applied too thickly, it puddles and forms a glass-sharp edge; too thin, and the clay looks through, resistant to transformation.  Cooling pots sing, a celebration of their survival and adaptation to the world beyond.  Dull textures have given way to brightness and color, fragility to surprising strength. 

There is alchemy in the firing, lessons at every stage; clay and water,  pigment and fire, the unpredictability of air -- all of these keep the potter humble, unable to take any of it for granted.  In the practice, all comes into balance.

Fire and Earth, Water and Air

*ting*

*ting*  *ping*

*ting*

*tong**tink**ting*

*ting*

It sounded like a small windchime, these random but musical sounds dripping gently into the air of the pottery studio.  I wondered if the fans were blowing a chime, but none was in sight.  I walked over to the corner where the sounds seemed loudest.

The shelves in the studio are arranged so that each object moves from wetness to dryness, from dryness to heat, from fire-baked dryness to completion.  The sounds were loudest in the area where objects fresh from the glaze firing are stored.  Every time I enter the studio, I end up peering and peeking my way around these shelves, searching for things that I might have made.  It turns out that my memory for my own work is surprisingly poor, even when you take the transformation from unfired glaze to fired into account.  So I'm always tipping my head from side to side to peer around the pots in front, raising up on tiptoe to inspect the topmost shelves, crouching down to search among the children's artwork on the lower ones. 

*ping*

*ting*

*tunk*  *ping*

The sound seemed to be hovering mysteriously over the freshly fired pots.  I touched one, tentatively; it was as warm as skin.  I heard pings on another shelf.  I could see nothing, just pots sitting motionless, and yet this gentle music was present, like a fairy orchestra.  My mind was sure that this sound had something to do with the pots cooling, but I felt unsure, unconvinced, because the sound was just there, with nothing to indicate its source beyond a coincidence of location.  (It turns out that ears are good at locating sounds, but not that precisely.  Clearly the source of the sounds was the shelves.  Not so clearly was where, exactly, on the shelves it was coming from, or from what.)

It was a pleasantly mysterious way to begin the afternoon's work, a session that ended up with clay in my hair, and small grey freckles on my skin, which lingered, unnoticed, until evening.

On the Downward Side of Autumn

The homeopathic remedy I've been taking for my allergies seems to be having some small effect.  Either that or the new filter I bought is finally clearing out the air in the living room.  I still feel either too moist or too dry, either snuffly and clogged or constantly running.

I suppose it's appropriate that my body is acting this way, because the weather itself feels locked into a similar pattern of irritable daytime dryness and nighttime dew.  Mostly we're seeing piles of leaves and blowing winds, cold-puffed squirrels hoarding acorns and nuts, clear cold mornings and nearly horizontal golden rays of light at the bookends of the day.  The rain continues to elude us; for the most part I am unaware of its absence, except when I wonder about the last time it rained - then it seems so long ago - and it is.  In the yard, the leaves stand on end, turning from the brilliance of their early days to a rich dusky orange.

On the door hangs a sheaf of Indian corn, an autumnal garland that has been there since the end of September or so.  When the days roll into December, I intend to replace it with a conifer garland, but I am dragging my heels because it seems perverse to be talking about winter holidays when the grand harvest dinner of Thanksgiving has yet to take place  They say that snow usually comes during the last week of classes, and I wonder what the cat will think as she stares out at it, fur fluffed in memory of being a stray in winter.  In her thickening coat white freckles are appearing on the blackness of her flanks, a feline echo of crisp late night, late-fall skies.

My own coat thickens, even as my skin and sinuses dry.  I wear cashmere and merino, live in handknit socks and soft warm hats.  Today I wore my mother's Frye boots, creased and furrowed by the shape of her feet, by years of pressing down in stirrups.  As I stomped my way through the fall air, the sharp light of late fall crossing my eyes, I felt myself clearing, opening up, ready for the bright chill season to come.

Allergy Season

The sheet is covering my nose, creating a warm, moist space in which I attempt to breathe.  One nostril is completely clogged up; the other feels swollen and there's a sticky snicking sensation every time I inhale.  I try breathing slowly, then quickly; both ways elicit that faintly panicky feeling that says you're not getting enough air.  I roll to the other side.  Perhaps the clogged nostril will drain?  No dice.  I breathe through my mouth, faint hissing replacing the mucousy snuffles. 

Now the medicine begins to kick in.  My sinuses feel curiously empty, dry air echoing in their cavities.  I seem to vibrate softly, every cell buzzing gently like a drowsy bee.  I teeter on the edge of an adrenaline rush, forestalling the incipient panic attack by thinking about breathing.  I turn over again, frustrated in the warm soft dark.  My nose is still clogged, my inhalations still thin and meager.  I return to breathing through my mouth.  It grows dry and tacky, my taste buds rasping against my dehydrated palate.  I summon up saliva, but it provides only a modicum of gummy relief.  My tongue and cheeks and lips grow arid again.

I stagger out of bed, neither awake nor asleep, in search of water.  I wobble and stumble past the cat, grope blindly for the cup and pitcher, and drink down water in great gulps, staring blearily at nothing.  I shuffle and weave back to bed, crawl back into our soft nest.  Before long I am hissing through my teeth again, wearily.

I repeat this several times.  The tinging of the alarm offers a meager blessing; I am upright, and the dawn air is cool and fresh, even if I am not.

Wildfire

I've been following the coverage of the San Diego fires closely.  The eerie thing is how much of the area I can picture from just the line-by-line descriptions and evacuation alerts.  I knew the region far better than I realized.

The color and smell of those smoky skies is something unreal and unlike anything else.  Growing up, the smell of brush fires in the distance was a regular feature of childhood; one of the hardest things about living in the Midwest was not freaking out when people burned leaves in the fall; I'd smell that leaf-brushy smoke and worry about wildfires.  Some people worry in the night about burglars or terrorists; my midnight fear has always been fire.

When my friends' houses in the backcountry burned, many things were vaporized, not even leaving ash.  It's somewhat disturbing to think that less than an hour's drive away I was inhaling things like televisions and automobile tires while the soot drifted down to coat cars and plants and windows.

And now the cycle's repeating.  My friends evacuated with time to spare, and are hopeful that this time the fires will spare their new homes.  Even though it's a horrible time, and I'm thousands of miles away, I have this odd regret that I'm not there.  Smoky and dangerous though it is, California is part of who I am - even though it's likely I'll never live there again.

(In response to this post at Creek Running North.)