One year ago on August 1, right here in the orchard under a cathedral tent where apple and pear trees circled us, we witnessed the marriage of a woman and a man. They, Lesley and Brian, with their grandpas and Lesley's dad, planted a Wedding Plum tree, not a tradition I've heard of specifically with plums, but when we decided to plant a tree in the orchard as a symbol of a new life together, Don asked what fruit it should be. "A plum, it has to be a plum," I said. During Lesley and Brian's ceremony, Nature contributed its perfect gift: a warm, tender rain that watered the Wedding Plum.
In the spring, it blossomed.
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Today, one year later, there is ONE plum on the Wedding Plum tree, one solitary singular sole unique significant plum. I find this to be a very plum plum (remember Hana feeding a plum to the English Patient, scraping the fruit from the skin with her teeth and feeding it to him as if he was a baby bird?). The bride and groom will be here in a few days from NYC, and they will have to decide what to do with this dandy plum -- maybe eat it like a bride and groom going after the same piece of wedding cake, slobber slobber. There was no unity candle at the wedding, remember those? There was a unity plum tree.
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August 1, 2009 was among the happiest days of my life. To see our precious daughter joined with a man who is perfect for her, to gain a new son whom we adore, to be surrounded with family and friends, to have planned and prepared for this celebration right here where we live and have it turn out better than we could have hoped (so much love, you could feel the energy, like a beautiful veil), even with "dreaded" rain that turned out to be a surprising gift, was just stupendous! (Here's my original post of the wedding.)
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Don, me, Lesley, Brian & Peter Photo by Bella Pictures
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These silly Japanese beetles heard that it was Wedding Plum Day, and so they . . . . um . . . . celebrated. First they made some wedding lace in the plum tree leaves. Then they had a wedding . . . type . . . unifying embrace. Isn't that charming? (Personally, I think they should hide behind their lacy leaf veil.)
In the harbor of autumn the husbandman thumbed gondola-shaped cloves into the dirt. They slept under snow moons. In spring’s growing sun they sprouted, and by July, he pulled them from the ground by their leaf swords and hung them like pendulous bolas to dry.
Today, he carried them to me where I waited under the maple tree with empty hands. Like a midwife, I cradled them in my arms -- eggs in a nest, clams in a tangle of kelp.
Oh, my children!
I felt the leap inside, as if I myself had birthed them from my own canal. Being from the center of me, it was my duty to rub the dirt from their faces -- fat and cherubic, their fragile skin falling like petals to the grass, my papery hands weaving braids like a crone.
When death comes, send me down the river with garlic -- pearls of life pressed in the soil of my hands.
This is my second ode. The first was an Ode to Quinoa, written shortly after Pablo Neruda's birthday July 12, when I was re-inspired by his odes. Here is a nice bio timeline of Neruda's life.I don't know how many odes he wrote, to simple, ordinary things. My favorite at the moment is his Ode to my Socks. I especially like it when you can see his original poem in Spanish next to the English translation, which you can at that link. It adds a deeper awareness of the nuances he intended. Neruda wrote odes to salt, tomatoes, a chestnut on the ground, and many more. I think that reading his, and writing my own, is a perfect way to meditate on the essence of simple, familiar things.
Two years ago, in the spring, Don's cell phone rang at 4:00AM. It was the Post Office saying his chicks had arrived and to please come pick them up. They were peeping like they had something to crow about.
Since then he has bought more, and some he raised from eggs his chickens laid.
The Polish chicken varieties have spiky head feathers that resemble Samuel Beckett's hairdo. My Dutch sister-in-law Astrid named this one Kuifje (which I believe means this kind of top-heavy hair).
The two chicks below left are Polish, Honey is in the middle. You can already see their dominant bird brains, ha. You'll see more of Honey, below, when she's grown up.
Memorial Weekend 2008 was the first time Don let his first flock of chicks, the Ornamentals, out of the coop. Honey already needed a feather cut, because she couldn't see. So Lesley held her while Don played barber. Peter was Dr. Doolittle.
Don has also raised quail, ducks and turkeys. Last Thanksgiving he gave his organic, free range turkeys to many families around Michigan.
After more than two years of feeding and watering twice a day -- including in the deep freeze of Michigan winters -- cleaning coops, brooding, hatching, and gathering eggs, Don has decided to gradually thin the herd and be done with raising birds altogether. We don't eat eggs or chicken any more, and so raising them just to give away or sell is losing its appeal. Plus, we can't stay away more than one night, so we're feeling tied down. Don has raised some birds for meat to sell, but the first batch we got, the Ornamentals, we raised for farmy ambiance, and eggs. We named that first group, like members of the family. We would never, ever eat them.
Bob the Crèvecœur raped and pillaged. Squanto and Khan bit the hand that fed them. They, um, got the axe.
Our girls who were named have all been sold in the last few weeks to nearby farmers, except Jolie, who got sick and died this past spring.
At full coop Don had 116 birds. Now, all that are left are 8 turkeys, 7 quail, 7 chickens and 2 ducks. All the birds we named are gone. He wants to sell the rest, and by Thanksgiving in November, when these turkeys will be 30-40 pounds dressed out on a platter, he plans to be featherless.
When Don told me he was ready to be done with birds, I asked, What about Honey? What about Floozie?
He replied with a question, "Do you want to feed and water them?"
Pause.
Pout.
"No."
I was like a head with my chicken cut off.
I miss Honey, Floozie, Dahlia and Jolie running around the yard. (I don't think Bishop does.) But I did little or nothing to keep them alive, and as the saying goes, I shouldn't cackle if I haven't laid. Is it worth all Don's hard work, just for the pretty atmosphere they create on the farm? Do I want to venture out to the coop every morning and every evening, spring, summer, autumn and winter?
Don has promised Lesley that when she and Brian start a family, he will get chicks before they visit, so their kids can learn about animals, play with them, and gather eggs, as many kids have done here, like Kaeley, our niece.
Until that happy day when Lesley and Brian start their own nesting, ours will be empty.
Don has a blog called A View from the Green Barn, where he chronicled his chicken and other farm escapades. It's wonderful. He doesn't post much any more, but there is still a lot there worth reading.
There is an emotional intimacy that certain performers let us share that expands musical pleasure, into rapture.
Lansing. Monday evening we took our seats in a small venue for a hundred people, the Creole Gallery in Old Town, with bohemian brick and mottled plaster walls, wooden chairs and old porous wood floors. It feels familiar and homey, as the venue for small, casual concerts. The gypsy jazz John Jorgenson Quintet seems to prefer these small, informal spaces, from what I gather touring their YouTube videos, and I can see why. If they were up and out on a remote stage in the Great Hall of the Wharton Center, where they fully deserve to perform with their outrageous skill and polish, we would be an audience, not participants.
Gypsy jazz is energetic at the get go. Many of the numbers are so fast paced that you have no breath left when one is done, and you're sure there are no note-stones left unturned in the musical riverbeds of the world. But John Jorgenson and his rhythm guitarist, bassist, drummer and violinist knew we couldn't take that pace any more than they could keep playing it for two full hour sets. So they mixed in Edvard Grieg (sorry, I don't remember which song), "Melancholy Baby" and "La Mer", among other calmer tunes. But for the most part, the rapid guitar picking, plucking, strumming, fingering, harmonics and violin bow stroking made it hard for me to sit still. So there was this energy in the room, flowing from the stage, and being boomeranged back from us, the listeners, many of whom were aging band members, exploding with appreciative whoops. There was also another force at play, and that was repartee. In the middle of John's frenetic strumming, violinist Jason Anick would reply with a decidedly schmaltzy quip, or a sarcastic violin moan, and the corners of John's mouth would turn up. Or vice versa. Again and again. The musical conversation of joy, love, and fun.
Here is John Jorgenson's Quintet playing Ghost Dance, but the only musician who is the same besides Jorgenson himself is the bassist, Simon Planting. The current members we saw are at John's site. And while you can catch a smile or two in this video, you can't sense the subtle frivolity we experienced at the show.
Paris. There was another concert of strings that had the same effect on me. It was Vivaldi, in an evening concert in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, another small venue for an audience of 100, one of three times I've sat in that stunning, historic space to listen to musical ensembles. (If you are interested, please read more about this jewel, Sainte-Chapelle. Here is one place to read more. You can read more about Sainte-Chapelle, and John Updike's poem after a concert at Sainte-Chapelle, at my post at Paris Deconstructed.) In spite of 6,500 square feet of windows telling biblical stories, rising 60 feet above and around us like a stained glass forest - reds, blues, purples muted in the softly lit chapel - the setting feels intimate, yet as unlike the Creole as a room can be. Old in the Sainte-Chapelle means 13th century. An ensemble of half a dozen musicians on cello, bass, violin and piano played many pieces, and often, there was the same camaraderie - the grins, the nods of understanding, the snickers while raising eyebrows and attacking strings with a bow flourish. I was so magnetized by the tangible connection between the musicians, that I left that concert floating on a cloud of euphoria. When I'm in Paris, all my senses are heightened (something I'd like to bring into the now, everywhere), which made this experience especially ecstatic.
At first, in both concerts, I wondered if the smiles, the quips, the fun, was put on. Was it just part of the performance, something to entertain and hold the audience? An act? At the Creole Gypsy Jazz concert, my eyes bored in on John's and Jason's faces to see if I could find a clue of artifice in their looks. They seemed genuine, though I couldn't be certain. I let it work its magic anyway. I believe that exuberance from us, the listeners in the wooden chairs, also amplified their emotive energy. When I glided out into the darkening warm summer night of Old Town after the Jorgenson concert Monday, with my hand in Don's, and a smile and a beat still lighting me up, it hit me that this fun, joyful exchange is necessary to their level of music. The musicians need it, as they need to practice thousands of hours to hone their skill. The music needs it, for the seeds of the notes to be broken open, and brought into the light of loving attention, to take root in the listener, and come alive, emotionally, and spiritually.
Here are 37 seconds of a concert in Sainte-Chapelle, not taken by me.
That night in Paris back in 1997, after listening and watching young violinists and cellists play like children on a playground of delicate but robust equipment, lying in bed, my soul left my body and met with those musical "children" in impassioned, playful conversation, all night. I woke up wondering, Was the conversation words, or did we speak in music? Was it a dream?
No matter how a violinist interprets Bach, Vivaldi or Mozart with bow strokes that are collé, legato, louré, martelé or staccato, or how many notes a gypsy jazz musician like John Jorgenson can strum and pluck out of a guitar in a minute, with joy and the force of love, the notes can't be squandered, or used up. The more you give, the more you get back. The riverbeds will always refill, and refresh - a far, far better immersion than what mere technical skill, melody, arrangement, and orchestration combined can provide.
I found this gypsy wagon at a flea market in Holland, Michigan in 2008
Jean "Django" Reinhardt was a French gypsy who was the first European jazz musician to make it big, and he started Gypsy Jazz - Jazz Manouche in French. 2010 is the 100th anniversary of the year he was born, in a gypsy wagon near Brussels. John Jorgenson was asked to play Django in the 2004 feature film, Head in the Clouds. How's that for synchronicity for this July in Paris? And you know what? I did not know until just now, at the tail end of this post, about that title Head in the Clouds. All that floating euphoria. I think I'd better see this film.
My dear friend Barry left us Tuesday, yesterday, at noon, after a hard fought struggle with esophageal cancer. Special thanks and love to Barry's beautiful wife, Linda.
On February 18 I joined bloggers around the world and rang the bell for Barry's health, when he finished a round of chemotherapy. I shared something of what his exploration of life meant to me in that post.
Just five days ago, on July 16 Barry posted: Where Am I? Today I flew. Look for him now, resting on a wind current. Good-bye, kind, tender, smart, funny, brave story telling man. Thank you for sharing your life, right up to the end. I will miss you, and I know your dog Lindsay will too.
After a pale winter of neglect, the potted schefflera has been brought out like an old man in a wheel chair for some sun on the porch.
I, the negligent caregiver, lounge in the big padded wicker, reading about art forgeries. Is La Bella Principessa a real Leonardo?
A tractor down the road stutters: Who cares?
At that, I look up just as a breeze draws its brush across my bare arm, and then lifts two yellowed leaves off the poor sickly plant. Down they fall, like eyebrows.
A triangle of robins has been singing something vital from the trees. For how long?
Me? I'm ill equipped for it. French 101. That's it. Unless you count my mom sitting next to me on the couch, enlightening me on French pronunciation as a young person, starting with that vexatious phrase, qu'est-ce que c'est que ça. Really? KESS-KUH-SAY-KUH-SAH? When it comes to French, I am sandwiched between my mother who studied it through college and read Les Miserables in the original language (no doubt it's there in one of those floor-to-ceiling stacks in George Whitman's Paris bookstore at left), and my daughter who speaks it gracefully after six years of study. I learned Latin in high school, and I know some Turkish from living in Istanbul. On the ILR scale (Interagency Language Roundtable), I got to about a 2.5 out of 5 in Turkish (5 being that of a native speaker). In French, I'd say I'm at around .2, maybe .3. How profoundly inadequate I was on my seven trips to Paris. Yet shamelessly, well almost shamelessly, I went anyway.
Many people take vacations in a variety of places where the language spoken is not their own. But I venture to guess that Paris is the one place where, first of all, the gap between the written word and its pronunciation is a wobbly bridge to cross, and second of all, it is spoken by people who are perceived [by some] to be mean and rude. So the image of waiting in line at a patisserie for pain aux raisins with French customers and having to fumble with Je voudrais une (or is it un?) pain aux raisins s'il vous plais and the correct francs, well now Euro coins, while also trying to find one's glasses to read said coins is just too frightening to contemplate. What scowls, what high scoffing eyebrows will fill that tiny space like arcs of raisins!
Yet I have found that when I have made the least effort to open a conversation with shop keepers, restaurant workers and taxi drivers with my limited (but I am certain very well pronounced, hawnh-hawnh) French, I have received gracious and helpful responses. When I haven't (I remember one particular taxi driver who I thought would break his transmission, he shifted so hard, and a certain crepes waiter in Montmartre who implied that I should order more than I did - What else was on the menu, s'il vous plais?), I have stood my ground and said in English something to show that I am not intimidated, and immediately there was respectful deference (at least in my presence).
One of the best moments in Paris was the spring Don and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary (2003, photo at right where we lived for a week). We were in a fromagerie the size of the postage stamp below, on Ile Saint Louis, picking up a Roquefort for supper. Don requested the cheese in French, and the seated French woman readied to slice with her big knife, adjusting it wider or narrower according to his hand instructions, cutting a wedge at last. She took his Euros and sweetly chirped with the song of a little sparrow, "Au revoir, Monsieur Foreigneur . . ." When we got outside the shop, in an incredulous tone, Don asked, "How did she know I wasn't French?"
I have a Paris blog called Paris Deconstructed, which is like Jacques Derrida's "literary revenge on philosophy" in that it is my revenge on the myth that Paris is the Eiffel Tower and rude people. I call it synchronicity that this post today happens to be exactly one year since my last post there, July 18, 2009, the second part of a story of meeting Mrs. Schott. And here's a post about that Shakespeare & Company Bookstore, and my encounters with the legendary Mr. George Whitman, which was my very first post at PD. I'll post there again when I get a round tuit. (Today that's pronounced to rhyme with Paris (the French way) and Ile Saint Louis: a round too-eee.)
This post is part of my participation in the Paris in July blog theme sponsored by Karen at BookBath and Tamara at Thyme for Tea, and told me by my dear friend DS at Third-Story Window. So, if like me, you can't afford a trip to Paris this summer, do start your reading tour de Paris at those and other participating blogs where the lingua franca is just, well, PARIS. Bon voyage!
