My first blog friend, M.A. Rauf

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I am one who knows how this blogging experience can change a person, for I have been profoundly changed. Later this month it will be six years since I began synch-ro-ni-zing. While it is my spiritual practice to write, and my creative play to take photographs, is it also an act of rapt listening to sit in the blog "theater" where you, my blog friends, share your own explorations. I evolve, much as a result of our engagement with one another.

Within just a couple of months of starting synch-ro-ni-zing, my outlook was transformed by one blogger. When I had just a couple of family members reading my blog, including my sister Ginnie who explained to me the ways of blogs, having published at In Soul for a year already, M.A. Rauf stopped in from India for a warm and welcoming visit. Ginnie had taught me to reciprocate blog visits as part of bloggy etiquette, and so I visited Rauf's Daylight Again after that first greeting from him. ("Rauf" — or "rauf" as he prefers — is pronounced "rah-oof.")

There isn't a way to summarize Rauf, or his blog! But I can say that he is a stunning photographer with heart, a writer with compassion and deep respect for those who are "untouchable" or otherwise downtrodden (you will see this for women in his photography), a lover of science, and a fervent lover of his India, with all her complex layers and intricate arts. He opened my eyes to atrocities; he encouraged me to think for myself. His humor, honesty, irony and sometimes outrage over what humans do to each other—including at home in India, and in the U.S.— shook me out of comfort. His love and compassion taught me to see people differently. He took over where my big brother Bennett left off when he passed away, whose worldview had shaped my own, environmentally and politically. He teaches me tips about photography, too, like Bennett.

Rauf doesn't blog much now, a real loss to me and his many followers from all four corners of the world. But he still takes photographs on his travels around India, and he still rages against agri-businesses that threaten not only all of our health, but the very lives of farmers in India who literally cannot survive financially and consequently commit suicide as families. When you watch this YouTube slideshow I made of a sampling of Rauf's images (please watch, it's just six minutes), observe the faces of his subjects, who cannot resist his charm: even Mother Earth smiles when Rauf lifts his camera.

Today is Rauf's birthday (January 8; it's already the 8th in India). Even though he and I have never met in person, and may never meet (though I hope that one day Don and I will get to India to meet him!), he is my brother. Happy Birthday, Rauf! This is a small "thank you" for the gift you are to all who know you. Watch full screen to be wrapped in the photos, and listen to "Time Remembered" by the Bill Evans Trio.

Photos by Rauf

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A new blog in a new year: sparks and mirrors

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“Go into yourself and see
how deep the place is from which your life flows.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

Some of you found me, with Lorenzo (of The Alchemist's Pillow blog), at our year-long blog where we posted readings from the book A Year with Rilke in 2011. It feels impossible to summarize the year there, much as it did after I finished RUMI DAYS, another such blog of soul and spirit the year before. I know that I have been changed as a result of those daily readings, and the interactive commentary from readers. It was deep and wondrous, opening doors and windows onto light I had not imagined existed. Sometimes I think we created light, together, following Rilke on his path. And now, I can't recall what or who I was before these transformations.

In a letter to Witold Hulewicz Rilke wrote:

All the worlds of the universe plunge into the Invisible as into a yet deeper reality. Certain stars increase in intensity and extinguish themselves in the angels' endless awareness. Others move toward transformation slowly and with great effort, and their next self-realization occurs in fear and terror.

We are the transformers of Earth. Our whole being, and the flights and falls of our love, enable us to undertake this task.

Because of that power of transformation, and the joy of community Lorenzo and I found with our friends at AYWR, we have launched another such blog called sparks and mirrors. We didn't want it to end, that daily dive into waters of discovery, truth and beauty. We want the practice to continue. We will post at our new blog every few days, mostly passages from authors who have themselves opened windows onto the universe within and without, with a few words about how and why they have inspired us. We would love for you to dive in with us there, with a hearty and warmly welcoming splash. (Swimsuits optional.)

I will, of course, continue here with poems, photos, art, music, and whatever else wants to be shared. I am so very grateful that you are in my life, and how we learn from one another.

May the year ahead be awake and alive for you!

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My personal work spaces and books

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William Blake's workroom and deathroom

painted by Frederic James Shields

"In the universe, there are things that are known,

and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”

—William Blake

Friends Brendan of Oran's Well, Hedgewitch of Verse Escape and Mark Kerstetter of The Bricoleur bared their bookshelves and journals for us to see, shone a light on their work spaces, and encouraged others to do the same. What drives us to do such a thing? Something in me wants a peek at theirs and yours, and something else in me wants to show you mine. Will you be utterly bored? Intrigued? Curious? Will you relate to my shelves a little, or not at all? Personal libraries are just that, personal, intimately personal, driven by soul and spirit in ways we can only speculate about. I love that even the ways we organize our collections reflect our personalities. That and where we sit and do what we do: read and write.

So here goes.

(I'm not showing you our collection of classic and contemporary works of literary fiction, or children's books. Maybe another time.)

I have four personal bookcases and three workspaces, but I'll show you one two workspaces. I don't use a desk, just my laptop. I don't journal much any more, as writing longhand is nearly impossible for any longer than a card or note because of carpal tunnel. I have many poetry books on my shelves at the university office as well.

Bookcase #1: Poetry 

This is one of my three study spaces: the corner of the living room,

behind a screen my Grandma Olive made, creating a makeshift private space.
The chair is old, as you can see, from my grandparents;
pen and ink with watercolor on the wall: Paris;
Navajo rug inherited from my great grandparents,
who were explorers and mountain climbers;
stack of NY Review of Books waiting to be read

Most important here:

Jane Kenyon, Rilke, and Neruda;

Cartier-Bresson from MoMA

Key here:

Volumes of my mentor: Diane Wakoski;

Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Anthologies from college

Bookcase #2 Poetry and Spirituality, mixed

This one is in the bedroom.

The Chinese fellow on the wall is practically a brother,

I love him so much; and hanging from him is a talisman

made by my friend Alek Lindus in Greece for protection;

I think of this photo (found in an antique store) and talisman

as representative of all my friends around the world

with a charmed prayer for their safety and health;
my mother's waste basket, which I remember by her desk;

my dressing table is to the right of it.

Notable here:

Pagels, Moyers, Gospel of Mary Magdalene;

much study from these books as I began to rethink

spirituality from my religious past in Baptist churches;
I don't know where Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now is,
I must have given it away.

Years of studying good poems here:

Extra poetry stack in my spare room workspace;

anything that's stacked, not in a bookcase, is being read daily or weekly;
most important here: Rumi and Dickey

Bookshelf #3: Spirituality and Paris

Notable here:

James Hillman, Jack Miles' biography of God,

Jung's Answer to Job, and my grandfather's book on astrology

Most important here:

Gurdjieff, Ken Wilber's Brief History of Everything (!),

Oxford very short introduction books on the right,
bought in the Oxford bookstore:

these two on the Celts and Quantum Theory

Getting down into the France reference books now:

Three very significant books here:

The NIV Study Bible, Rob Brezsny's Pronoia, 

perhaps my most valued book: my Plan de Paris,

a street by street map of Paris (the blue and red one)

Bookcase #4 Oversized:

Flowers, Plants, Art, History

This is the bookcase Grandma Olive picked up

secondhand somewhere in NYC and painted.

Here you go, Montag; I had this closeup photo of the painting above on file:

Notable here:

Carolyn Roehm flower books, The Way We Live,
a fabulous look at dwellings and lifestyles around the world;
Better Homes & Gardens reference book

standing up in the middle, importantly;
the "Donald" and "El Freda" mini-planters
we found at a secondhand store:
guess which of us is which?

My primary workspace:
The Red Chair

I sit here in the dark every morning, starting at 3AM.

Current stack of books read daily or weekly:

Table by the red chair with handy stack and quilting thread;

glasses of varying strength, for reading books and for quilting

Collection of postcards from museums used for bookmarks;

thread and scissors for quilting;

my Kindle

What's on the Kindle:

most notably:
War & Peace by Tolstoy,
Fermor's A Time of Gifts
Rumi's Big Red Book

Phew! Well, I wonder what you'll find interesting.

This is one of those exercises in which it's hard not to immediately focus on one's own spaces when seeing someone else's. At least that's what I found looking at Brendan's, Hedgewitch's and Mark's. Won't you join us?


Painting at top: Frederic James Shields, "William Blake’s Workroom and Deathroom," c. 1880.

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The Willow Ball!

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As Winter gets ready to hook her come-hither finger around the neck of the sun, our inner rooms begin to come alive with the warm glow of lamps, candles, a fireplace or wood stove, and a samovar for tea. It can only mean that the holidays are coming, and to start the season off properly, the Lady of Willow Manor shall throw her annual ball where everyone is welcome, no one excluded. With our bloggy imaginations we can publish fantasies right here with our fingers, choosing our dream escort and rich attire to adorn our perfect bodies. We are able to dance like gods and goddesses all cyber-night long. Maybe every girl who dreams of her someday-wedding gown at age five is really just dreaming of a ball. Which of us dreamed of anything as elegant (and sizzingly fun!) as Willow's Ball? And guess what, it's on the night of the full moon. With or without a full moon, no matter how perfectly envisioned and planned, things can go wildly out of control; you would not believe the stories from years gone by! Half the fun is reading reports of goings-on in the comments at Willow's blog the night of the ball! (Last year's here.) The ball is tomorrow, there's still time to gather your accoutrements and wits. Your invitation is here; Tess will have a Mr. Linky up in the next 24 hours or so. I didn't think I was in the mood for a ball, and here I am going on and on!

Update: Willow has declared the ball open, there are already acres of cars parked and terabytes of blogs to visit. The festivities are here!

I chose the white lace dress with yellow trims by James Tissot, at top. The whole scene is evocative, and although the painting is titled The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth), some call it Remembrance of an Onboard Ball. A ball on a small ship? Wow. The dress looks good from this side, I think, the side you see on the dance floor.

As for who will go with me, I don't plan on taking a chaperone, as in Tissot's painting. Just a man.

I learned last year, with my fine escort Fitzwilliam Darcy, that a dreamily handsome and charming date is not necessarily the best choice. I barely got one dance with him. He was popular even with the men! Quite a change from the snob who turned his nose up at dancing in certain ballrooms. But he had lost his pride, and anyway he could see that at Willow's Ball, everyone is a fine dance partner.

Because Leo Tolstoy has been my close companion for over a year (I hold him affectionately in my hands: War and Peace), after fingering through potential escorts in my heart's little black book, I realized he would be the perfect partner for the ball. After he picks me up in his skiff and we bob up river to the Manor, he will settle in with a book in a nook. (I offered him my Kindle—not Nook—to re-read W and P, but he said he's more interested in Rilke's letters from Russia.)

Tolstoy is not one for balls, despite his noble upbringing. But his choice of an ascetic life, he assures me, will not cause him undue discomfort in the presence of so much frivolous ruffle and draped satin. He craves the music. He is well on in years, and tired, so he will sit and listen, or read, while I dance the night away with whomever I wish. When I am fagged from waltzes and fox trots and need a few moments' rest, he will be waiting in his radiant corner to captivate me in conversation. Don’t worry about him being bored and neglected. See how he holds the chair open next to him? You too can sit and carry on discourse with Monsieur Tolstoy when you need a rest. I will concede this so long as I can cut in. I doubt very much that the chair will be empty for long, as we will all need a rest now and then, and hushed dialog about many things. (I want to tell him, for instance, what came of his epistolary acquaintance with Mohandas Gandhi a few decades after they corresponded for a year about nonviolent resistance until the end of his life in 1910.) At Tess’s Willow Ball, all things are possible, because while Monsieur Tolstoy speaks Russian and French, and I don't, we will magically understand one another.

Notes about the paintings:

The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth), circa 1876, sometimes called Remembrance of an Onboard Ball, by James Tissot, Tate collection

"Tissot often painted a man with two women in order to explore the subtle nuances of flirtation and attraction through body language and facial expression. Here a chaperone separates the young naval officer from the object of his attentions, the woman hiding her enjoyment of his flirtation behind her fan. Tissot focuses here on the boundaries of Victorian propriety and social convention, and their transgression. The languid pose of the nearest woman, and Tissot’s frank concentration on her fashionable hour-glass figure, inevitably led to the picture being criticised when it was first exhibited. The author Henry James dismissed it as ‘hard, vulgar and banal’." (From the display caption August 2004)

Leo Tolstoy, by Leonid Pasternak

This painting of my companion was done by Leonid Pasternak, father of the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak, best known for his novel Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak was a friend of Tolstoy's and painted illustrations for Tolstoy's novels. More info about Pasternak in a short bit I wrote for the Rilke blog here.

André Rieu is rehearsing Shostakovich's Russian Waltz for tomorrow night!

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Full House

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The week walks like a little girl in a brand new pair of black patent leather shoes, in a full house, ready for a huge piece of pumpkin pie with real whipped cream.

1Wednesday Inge and I toasted to eight years of good health and friendship since her breast cancer diagnosis. There is no way to express what this person I trust with all my being, with whom I have shared every discovery in tandem, means to me.

2Saturday the five of us (Don, me, Lesley, Brian, Peter—six with Poppy Seed) squeezed into Don’s new Chevy Cruze to drive down and help Don’s 83-year-old parents move into their new apartment. While the men moved the heavy stuff, Lesley and I made three pies: two apple and one pumpkin that we roasted a couple weeks ago. (If you don't have molasses in your recipe, add two tablespoons; you'll thank me.) I made pie crust from scratch for the first time in I don’t know how many years, and it was well worth the effort. (Ina Garten’s recipe was perfect.) A rare-for-me baking fest felt so good. Then feeding it to the five weary men felt even better.

3Tuesday is my Rilke blog partner Lorenzo’s 55th birthday. (Oops, I didn't ask him if I could tell you that, hope he doesn't mind.) Who'da thunk I'd have a blog partner in Spain whom I've never met? It just shows that you don't have to be with someone physically to develop a close friendship. Lorenzo's blog The Alchemist's Pillow is a haven of art enthusiasm and history, poetry, Spanish culture and other beauties that belie categorization. Happy Birthday, Lorenzo!

4Wednesday is the Willow Ball, and the moon goes harvest-full. Last week I wasn't feeling the ball thing, and then I got inspired. I'll tell you next post. I hope you'll go, because if you don't you'll feel like a slug. Everyone's invited. Go to the link and look at the invitation.

5Friday is our son Peter’s 29th birthday. He is now back in Michigan to live after moving to L.A. in the summer. All five of us are in Michigan now (six with Poppy Seed)! After Peter's accident last month, you can imagine my feelings hugging him a couple of weeks ago. His jaw is healing well; just a couple of more weeks of wiredness, and then we'll cut loose and celebrate his birthday a bit late with SOLID FOOD.

Now if only the Detroit Tigers win the American League title in the baseball playoffs against our son-in-law's Texas Rangers, we’ll be "hitting on all sixes ." To "hit on all sixes" is Jazz Age slang for performing at 100%, as in hitting on all six cylinders. Don's new Chevy Cruze doesn't have six cylinders, but it is a six-speed, the new Eco model. Sweet (but claustrophobic for five, especially when one of the five has a sixth in her).

The Wes Montgomery Quintet gets the idea of this glee in "Full House," recorded live in Berkeley in 1962. On Piano: Wynton Kelly; on tenor sax: Johnny Griffin; on bass: Paul Chambers; on drums: Jimmy Cobb. I love watching Wes's five l - o - n - g fingers on his right hand on the strings and the left five on the frets, then Wynton's five+five fingers on the keys while sun flare music and Wes's smile drive headlong on all six cylinders into my heart.

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synchronizing art & fashion continued: New York Fashion Week Spring 2012

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I painted and designed clothes for fun when I was young. I should have done more with it. Maybe it’s not too late. One way I get my fill of art and fashion now is during the fashion shows when I challenge myself with a visual matching game between pieces of art and new clothes designs. I become a junky looking for color and pattern every day at Fashionologie to see when the next designer’s photos get loaded, and then I go scour online art galleries for matches. It’s creative hedonism. I ignore the news. I forget about poetry. It’s also creative masochism, as my right arm, shoulder and wrist ache with mouse overuse.

My arm will recover, and the somber and complex tapestries of the world will go on being spun without me paying attention for a week. Poems will keep. (But the pears wouldn’t, so Don and I canned six quarts of them after we got home from work last night; bruises and soft spots were spreading.) Of course I was also with our son Peter in spirit through his scary accident when our world did stand still. Thank you for your caring wishes, he is on his way to recovery after reconstructive surgery Monday.

Truly, I look forward to these creations as much as I look forward to morel mushrooms sprouting overnight after April rains when we practically crawl through the woods by the pond and the fallen apple tree scouting for their weirdly beautiful brainy patterns.

I am especially excited by one pairing today. You'll see why in a minute.

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Sometimes a girl just really gets lucky. I don't know how Zac Posen could have designed a suit to look any more Picasso-esque. That peplum on Posen's jacket: serious cubistic hips! Zac Posen, a Manhattanite, first began designing clothes as a boy when he stole yarmulkes from his grandparents' synagogue to make ball dresses for dolls. If you're into clothes like Zac, browse his entire collection of ball gowns, it's simply gorgeous.

Don't you wonder what's happening in this painting?

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 "Interior with a girl drawing" by Pablo Picasso

 Zac Posen suit with Picasso Peplum

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More cubism from Carolina Herrera. Every season this woman's designs knock me out with simple elegance, and this spring collection she does it again. There are actually many cubist paintings of gray that this dress reminded me of, by Braque and Picasso. I settled on Juan Gris.

Painting by Juan Gris

Dress by Carolina Herrera

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Another designer who never fails to satisfy with her confident sense of design and beauty is Donna Karan. She manages to be playful with pattern without being silly. Some of her fabulous collection had pattern, like this, which instantly reminded me of this textile by Lucienne Day, though I had a time finding it, since I didn't know the artist's name. Now that I do, I have learned that Lucienne Day (who just died last year) was a British textile designer who was inspired by abstract art by the likes of Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Hellooo! After the print pairing, see the graphic browns and blacks Donna Karan designed, which reminded me of Paul Klee's painting "Intention."

Lucienne Day's textile "Calyx"

Donna Karan dress

Donna Karan

"Intention" by Paul Klee

Donna Karan

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Now here are my favorite pairings. My charming friend George is one of those people who does many things very well. He ponders, writes, travels, walks, paints, photographs and blogs with utter grace and beauty. If you are not yet familiar with his posts at Transit Notes, you are in for a treat for the eyes, mind and spirit. On his sidebar, George has posted a few of his stunning abstract paintings, and it suddenly occurred to me in my last fashion post a few days ago that I might be able to match his paintings with fashion this season. Although I'd hoped to match clothes with more paintings of George's than one (I'll keep looking), I confess I didn't expect to find anything this well matched, by two different designers: Timo Weiland and Peter Som. "Subterranean" is among my favorites of George's work, partly because it represents an invisible world where life swarms and vibrates, like the inner realms we discuss at his blog, the Rilke blog, and elsewhere.

Timo Weiland dress

 "Subterranean" by George McHenry of Transit Notes

Peter Som dress

Suit by Peter Som


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Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; 

and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

~ Luke 12:27

And now for the local show room. These simple jewels around the farm are beautiful in color, form and pattern. Any designer would be envious, and I imagine that songwriter Solomon himself would compare them with his beloved . . . 

My beloved is unto me as a cluster of pokeberries . . .

As the goldenrod in the field glows like the sun, so my beloved's love is to me . . .

My beloved's lips are the color of the sumac blossom, and as soft . . .

You have stunned my eyes, my beloved, with even one of your lips,
red like the sumac leaf . . .

I have come to your garden, my beloved, and gathered your peppers, as colorful as the jewels of my temple, as sweet as flowers and as fiery as the days of our youth . . .

All fashion photos from Fashionologie.

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