I've added these pics from our drive into town where we saw this.
It looks as though the top of the spruce tree
was broken off by wind and fell on the flag
that was up for Memorial Day,
then the treetop was blown up against the house.
I'd say both the flag pole and the tree are "half-masted".
Power winds of 80 mph tore 100-year-old maple trees out of the ground or broke them at the base last evening while we were shopping at Trader Joe's an hour from home. The drive home was safe, but the fields, driveways and roads were littered with fifty-foot trees and branches. Anxiety built as we approached the farm, wondering what we would find. But thankfully just one maple branch lay on the driveway, and sticks around the yard.
Power is out, however, until late Wednesday Thursday, because apparently a power station was hit. So we have to find alternate ways to wash (we have a well, which uses an electric pump), cook and power up devices like cell phones, laptops and the internet air card. The bottom photo is where I took a sponge bath and washed my hair this morning after working at home in the garden and getting dirt in my finger and toenails: the girls' bathroom at Don's elementary school.
The happy list:
No one in the state of Michigan was seriously injured in this rush of storms, though around 100,000 homes are without power.
Our home was not damaged, and there was little to clean up.
Having laptops so we could get online last evening and find out the estimated time to power restoration and be in touch with family and friends.
Being clean and getting my hair washed before going back to work tomorrow (today's a holiday here: Memorial Day, a memorable one).
There's power at work (yes, this is good, there is much to catch up on after spring term).
It's finally getting warm today, in fact HOT, around 90°F (32°C), but ha, no AC
Peter and Andrea are coming over to play corn hole to celebrate the holiday this afternoon, and they're bringing sushi; beer is chilling on ice in the cooler at home while I finish up this post at a fourth grader's desk.
A camp stove with propane gas for meals the next couple of days.
No doubt more will float in on the hot breeze . . .
I hope you are safe and enjoying Memorial Day if you are in the U.S., and a normal Monday everywhere else.
"Praising Prairie Dogs" by Anthony Falbo used with permission of the artist
Squeals and laughter bounce on the air between the school and the schoolyard's bordering maples. Mr. M. presides over afternoon recess. His fourth graders dangle from monkey bars, swing on canvas swings, huddle in gossipy conversations, or play tag. Some kids in this grade are feeling the first tugs of the exhilarating and mysterious upswing of puberty. One of them, Ramon, stands by Mr. M., watching his classmates. He happens to be OCD, perhaps slightly autistic, and is loved by everyone in the class including Mr. M for his sweet, funloving nature. For example, he does not allow Mr. M.'s desk to remain chaotic, as it is wont to do on its own, and he teases Mr. M. with mock sternness when it begins to pile up with unfiled papers and miscellany. Then he proceeds to tidy it up, promising not to throw anything away.
Girls are running around the big fourth grade teacher and the tall fourth grade boy, playing tag, especially targeting the boys. Occasionally Ramon takes refuge from tag, of which he is usually the center. Sometimes he needs to escape that decisive touch. Sometimes he wants to be caught. At this moment, he stands by his teacher, "safe" from the maelstrom of arms, legs and whoops. A few girls break from tag to catch a breath and come up to discuss something serious with Mr. M. — a minor dispute needs settling. Ramon stands close behind them listening, his eyes closed, face slightly tilted toward the sky. Then off the girls run, captivated by the next chase.
As soon as the girls are clear Ramon says with his eyes still closed, "Mr. M., did you smell their hair?"
Mr. M. replies, "No, did it smell bad?"
Ramon moans out his answer, "Ohhhhhh" and hugs himself, swaying, his face upswung.
You lay your skin aside like a towel, to dry, until next time. You return to it and find it stiffly weathered, caked with rain and air.
What did you feel while it was hanging there, removed from your body? Did you notice how the rain seemed to tap on every cell of you, each drop on your moist flesh a pinprick?
The breeze was a flame, not a drink quenching your skin’s thirst for refreshment. Your eyes and ears remembered, longing to share the pleasure with your cheeks.
What did your lover’s fingertips feel like, unable to slide like the wind down your back, curling up and over sun-warmed peaks? Their touch burned and halted, antagonized, wounded.
What did you long for while your skin was off? You asked to hurt less, and feel more. To read pain in the news and heal with just your bare touch. You said that you would lie under boards of a stormed and crumpled house, waiting to be rescued, if only you could put your skin back on, and feel the weight, the darkness and mystery of what it is to be found, alive.
My friend Stratoz invited me to write a Nouvelle 55 based upon one of his stunning stained glass pieces. This poem is the result. I feel drawn to connect Stratoz' piece with art by Marc Chagall and Carl Jung (who found in mandalas representations of the Self), two people whose souls exploded in creativity, as bright and wild as Stratoz' "Four Directions." This piece is a square mandala, when most manadalas are a circle (some with a square inside). Read Stratoz' post about the healing ways of mandalas here.
The story of Israel — of Jews, of Arabs— of the great conflicts that never end, was made more poignant for me this morning when I read that the large Arab population in the Galilee region of Israel is predominantly Druze. Some believe that the Druze people descended from the Tribe of Zebulun, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Oh that the tribes of the world could be joined as skillfully as Stratoz melds the living colors of his stained glass, and as Chagall did his stained glass, and as Jung did the colors of the unbreakable self.
The Star
prompted by Stratoz' "Four Directions"
Break the mirror. Four-square hands reunite in sacred sand.
Gather saturation, arrowed imagination
east-ended by the sea a sky-blue Galilee
in the colors of this dream. Gate my red leaf-paint the green
Bright my heart— good this art circling the sacred soul apart.
Pull into light, my star— Self, borne into near and far
Lithograph, by Marc Chagall
"The Tribe of Zebulun"
from The Twelve Maquettes Of Stained Glass Windows For Jerusalem, 1964
We rode with 3,000 or so people in the Zoo-de-Mack from Boyne Highlands to Mackinaw City Saturday. Mackinaw City is where the Mackinaw Bridge crosses from the Lower Peninsula of Michigan into the Upper Peninsula. It was wonderful to ride and play with our son Peter and his girlfriend for the weekend, one of the last times before they move to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks. (I am trying not to think about that.)
This Tired Body
This tired body settles into stillness as if it is trillium floating on the forest floor that I biked past for hours two days ago. It did not appear to be reaching
for sun, the layered white spread of it lying in repose under hemlocks like tossed handkerchiefs waiting to be picked up and returned to the fainting ladies who dropped them.
Today the memory of climbing, of coasting, of steadying on, coalesces with the bed of silence inside, gently tugging me back to myself, to the rest only I can grant, the surrender to age, to the uphill bodily climb of what remains of my life.
If only the mind, and the heart were all of what it takes to live and this tired body were as light as tissue petals reaching, finding pockets of light even in deepest shadow.
I pedaled 51 miles, a triumph, and now I languish, a weary kind of human who could coast toward a finish line, but I want instead to find sun at the leafy edges of my fingernails, wind in my gnatty eyelashes, to keep finding a heart in steady, pedaling thumps, pushing on, pointing toward the light inside this life.
Diane Wakoski not only taught me about writing poems, she helped me excavate the pieces of my religious past. Last week thirteen of Diane's former students read tributes to her in a reading celebrating her and 35 years as Poet-in-Residence at my university upon her retirement. I wrote this poem a couple of months ago for the occasion and read it to her at Thursday's event as she sat in the front row. The title is an allusion to Diane's poem "Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons". . .
I want to thank my mother for working and always paying for my piano lessons before she paid the Bank of America loan or bought the groceries or had our old rattling Ford repaired. (excerpt from Wakoski's poem)
My poem is a palindrome, and in this case, at the middle the lines repeat in reverse order. (Palindromes can also repeat words or letters in reverse, as in the sentence, "Madam, I'm Adam.") If you are not familiar with the Greek myths of Persephone and Demeter (Proserpine and Ceres in Roman mythology), and of Orpheus and Eurydice, you can link to them in the names. To read about Diane Wakoski's important place in American poetry, go to the Poetry Foundation's page about her here.
Thanking Diane Wakoski for Poetry Lessons
Is it the pomegranate juice you pour from an earthen pitcher at your table that draws me into this world of dark fruits my mother hid from me?
I leave her and the hymned piano lessons, in a missionary field of corn, and you, Poetry, appear like Charon ferrying me across the Hudson.
Even after death she, like Demeter and Orpheus, searches for me among sepulchers of jazz, but I am innocent in these tombs of joy! I crave cigarette torches in dark tunnels where little deaths are a relief from high heavens.
Where little deaths are a relief from high heavens, I crave cigarette torches in dark tunnels but I am innocent in these tombs of joy, and Orpheus searches for me among sepulchers of jazz, even after death, like Demeter,
ferrying me across the Hudson, and you, Poetry, appear like Charon in a missionary field of corn. I leave her and the hymned piano lessons.
My mother hid from me. That draws me into this world of dark fruits from an earthen pitcher at your table. Is it pomegranate juice you pour?
I'm trying my first Magpie, Tess Kincaid's (of the grand Life at Willow Manor) writing prompt from her blog Magpie Tales. It's so nice to be part of a community of writers around here, isn't it? I just love you all. This is Magpie 65, and if you click on that, you will be able to link to lots of other writers' responses to this image of a lovely St. Francis statue offered by Tess.
Birds
Were they the center of your being?
Their bones impossibly light like straw
blown from the barn floor out the door
spiraling a shadow on the air
with no darkness at all
like this stir stick and cream swirling
infinite questions that dissolve in the well of my morning coffee
. . . the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 which marked the beginning of the Muslim era; the Muslim calendar begins in that year
. . . a cross country trip from Maine to Los Angeles by Joni Mitchell
. . . her album of that name written on that journey in 1976
. . . the title track of the album
Albert Camus wrote: "What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country... we are seized by a vague fear, and the instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. This is the most obvious benefit of travel. At that moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being... There is no pleasure in traveling, and I look upon it as an occasion for spiritual testing... Travel, which is like a greater and graver science, brings us back to ourselves."
~ Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935-1942
I love to travel, but I agree with Camus in this note. When visiting places away from home, it is as if I wake up with new, more expectant skin. Especially in the somewhat familiar strangeness of Paris, more than anywhere I have been, every sense is alert, intense, as if I am a china cup full and ready either to spill, or crack in the quake of each encounter.
Joni Mitchell is a traveler, always in some vehicle. She loves the wind from Africa blowing through a village on Crete under the moon, but soon gets back to missing her familiar white linens and California scenery. To, and fro, she goes. I don't know how many times I've listened to this song in the last couple of weeks on my drive to and from work on straight Meridian Road, farms opening like wings on either side. Countless times. It embodies just at this moment of the world how everything is everything, while everything is also nothing, and I think very importantly, how nothing is also everything, in the cycle of our life . . . between the forceps and the stone. Her melancholy minor melody, the dark tones, the strings touched in variance like the fragrance of parfumetfromage, her love of Paris that is always there even if unspoken, her freedom, her longing for the road — sometimes in strength and vulnerability as a hitchhiker, her concert tours where she is not always comfortable in her astonishing success, that clear voice sparked, like a car's red-eyed tail light at dusk on the Champs Élysées, or the lit end of a cigarette.
In Paris in May, the wind blows up the Seine, tearing horse chestnut blossoms from trees like snow, and our eyes fill with allergic tears, blinding every walker heading toward the setting sun. We weep in our human weakness, unable even to look upon the light, blinking, trying to wipe our eyes clean. Maybe it is necessary to filter that radiance from too much visibility. Maybe that much light would take us too early to the stone.
It's nice to listen to her sing in the YouTube below while reading her witnessing words. Or, just load it and close your eyes.
Hejira
by Joni Mitchell
I'm traveling in some vehicle I'm sitting in some café A defector from the petty wars That shell shock love away There's comfort in melancholy When there's no need to explain It's just as natural as the weather In this moody sky today In our possessive coupling So much could not be expressed So now I'm returning to myself These things that you and I suppressed I see something of myself in everyone Just at this moment of the world As snow gathers like bolts of lace Waltzing on a ballroom girl
You know it never has been easy Whether you do or you do not resign Whether you travel the breadth of extremities Or stick to some straighter line Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock They're either going to thaw out or freeze Listen Strains of Benny Goodman Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees I'm porous with travel fever But you know I'm so glad to be on my own Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger Can set up trembling in my bones I know no one's going to show me everything We all come and go unknown Each so deep and superficial Between the forceps and the stone
Well I looked at the granite markers Those tributes to finality to eternity And then I looked at myself here Chicken scratching for my immortality In the church they light the candles And the wax rolls down like tears There's the hope and the hopelessness I've witnessed thirty years We're only particles of change I know I know Orbiting around the sun But how can I have that point of view When I'm always bound and tied to someone White flags of winter chimneys Waving truce against the moon In the mirrors of a modern bank From the window of a hotel room
I'm traveling in some vehicle I'm sitting in some café A defector from the petty wars Until love sucks me back that way
In December we saw an installation by visual artist Jitish Kallat at The Art Institute of Chicago called Public Notice 3. (The Art Institute's page about it is here.)
In thousands of LED lights, Kallat spells out words on the risers of the stairs in the Woman's Board Grand Staircase — an open, radiant space. The brightly lit words were intentionally designed in the five colors of the United States Department of Homeland Security alert system. At first, seeing the neon-like letters mounted on the Beaux-Arts stairs felt jarring. The Art Institute is my favorite museum, and the multi-directional staircase under a skylight has always been a magnetic center of the million-square-foot building where I love to sit and watch people, listening to the echo of voices and footsteps. Once I learned the content of the words illuminating the risers, I read up and down and watched people climb, descend, sit, stand, and snap pictures. We were surrounded by words like stock exchange tickers (though not in motion, and not driven by commerce).
Kallat said, "Treating the museum’s Grand Staircase almost like a notepad, the 118 step-risers receive the refracted text of the speech. I see Public Notice 3 as an experiential and contemplative transit space; the text of the speech is doubled at the two entry points on the lower levels of the staircase and quadrupled at the four exit points at the top, multiplying like a visual echo."
What speech? The words Kallat mounted on the stairs were spoken by Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda to 7,000 delegates more than 100 years ago, in the first attempt to address religious tolerance worldwide: the First World Parliament of Religions, held in conjunction with the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. (Detailed synopsis of the Parliament at Boston University's Encyclopedia of Western Theology's site here.) This art installation was opened last year on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack, September 11, 2010. Part of what captured Jitish Kallat's imagination was the fact that the gathering of delegates of different faiths in 1893 in the museum's Fullerton Hall happened also to be on September 11 that year. Below is Vivekananda's speech, words that light the steps of the grand staircase like prayers rising and falling, adjacent to the hall where he addressed the hopeful delegates. (The building of the Art Institute was built for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair — officially the World's Fair: Columbian Exposition — with the agreement that it would house the Art Institute thereafter).
When you get to the last sentence of his speech, what do you feel?
Swami Vivekananda's speech to the First World Parliament of Religions, September 11, 1893 in the Art Institute of Chicago's Fullerton Hall:
Sisters and Brothers of America,
It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions, and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.
My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: "As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."
The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me." Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.
After reading this speech, I feel as I did when I woke up early Monday morning, before Don, to his hand written note from the night before after he'd heard the news and I was in bed. I feel: empty. Not joyful. Not sad exactly. Not hopeful, not hopeless. I'm somewhere floating in a noxious ether of mystery. How have we come to this? How did we get even further away from Vivekananda's closing wishes in these decades since he spoke them?
To watch and listen to an 8-minute video of artist Jitish Kallat's interview with the museum curator about his installation, go here.
You are a constant bridge between mother and child.
I walk from this side a sprout to the other shore’s bones
and back again and again
through your unfolding womb — your opening mouth
where I go inside and listen to our unwrinkling skin.
My blog friend Susan of Everyday People invited me to share three poem podcasts on her nationally aired public radio program 51% The Women's Perspective for this week of Mother's Day. Susan's excellent program focuses on issues that are relevant and resonant for all of us, not only women. The poems are ones I have previously posted at this blog and are "A world, and you in it,""Aubade" and "Little One." I'm pretty excited. (Did I say "nationally" enough times? Eeeeeeee.) The poems are on the topic of mothering, which seems to be where I live these days in my heart. The 30 minute show airs live Wednesday, May 4 at 3 PM EST on her station out of Woodstock, NY, WAMC. The program will be archived Thursday, May 5, show #1138 here. You'll be able to download an mp3 of the program at NPR here. (Yeah, well I'll probably be the only one doing that, ha.) To find a station that airs 51% The Women's Perspective, go here. Thank you, Susan, for liking my poems enough to broadcast them on your show!
UPDATE: Listen to the archive of Susan Barnett's very interesting 51% The Women's Perspective show from yesterday (archive #1138 here), a special Mother's Day edition in which Carla Goldstein explains the feminist origins of Mother's Day, and the intent of its founders to end all war. Then listen to a young woman from Ireland talk about her heartbreaking last days with her mother, who had dementia (a story I understand personally). The 30-minute program is well worth listening to. My poem "A world, and you in it" is at the end of the program. Thanks again, Susan, for hosting an important program and for airing my poem in such fine company.
