In Detroit

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We finally watched Gran Torino last night, Clint Eastwood's 2008 film, set in Highland Park, a suburb of Detroit where Walt (Eastwood) lives, a retired Ford factory worker. It reflects the changes happening in urban areas worldwide, where people are migrating from their homes to new homes in foreign places. It is about figuring out who you are, what you want. This is not a movie review, but a small notice about a tender film that touched me deeply. It's hard enough to understand yourself, let alone another person. Mix into that another culture, and it takes a great deal of listening and walking in another's shoes to begin to see. I watched more movies this weekend than I have in many months, another was The Fog of War, an amazing and also tender film, a documentary that touched me at my center. Robert McNamara emotes, and expresses in hindsight why we should not kill people and destroy nations, for how do we begin to understand one another -- enough to talk, let alone annihilate the other?

Anyway, when Gran Torino was over, and the credits rolled, and this song came on, the first of the film, it was one of those moments when characters and plot came together in perfect emotional release, and satisfaction. Please have a listen to this beautiful song written by Clint Eastwood, Jamie Cullum, Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens. Embedding of the YouTube video has been disabled, so you'll need to click here for it.

Gran Torino

[*Sung By Clint Eastwood*]
So tenderly your story is
nothing more than what you see
or what you've done or will become
standing strong do you belong
in your skin; just wondering

gentle now the tender breeze blows
whispers through my Gran Torino
whistling another tired song

engine humms and bitter dreams grow
heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

[*sung by Jamie Cullum*]
Realign all the stars above my head
Warning signs travel far
I drink instead on my own Oh! how I've known
the battle scars and worn out beds

gentle now a tender breeze blows
whispers through a Gran Torino
whistling another tired song

engines humm and bitter dreams grow
heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

these streets are old they shine
with the things I've known
and breaks through the trees
their sparkling

your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you've left behind

So tenderly your story is
nothing more than what you see
or what you've done or will become
standing strong do you belong
in your skin; just wondering

gentle now a tender breeze blows
whispers through the Gran Torino
whistling another tired song
engines humm and bitter dreams grow
a heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

may I be so bold and stay
I need someone to hold
that shudders my skin
their sparkling

your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you've left behind

so realign all the stars above my head
warning signs travel far
i drink instead on my own oh how ive known
the battle scars and worn out beds

gentle now a tender breeze blows
whispers through the Gran Torino
whistling another tired song
engines humm and better dreams grow
heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

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travel, transience, transition

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I have been thinking that we are now living in an age of change, so rapid that it is hard to keep up, and that this is sort of new. Change is so prevalent, we're wired for it. Before the latest iPhone is released, we're anticipating the next version. But the truth is, everything is transitory. It always has been.

There is a way of living that is called wabi-sabi and looks at the transitory nature of things. My friend George has been talking about the wabi-sabi way. His excellent posts are here and here. I also wrote about it back in April 2008. It's hard to sum up wabi-sabi, as George says -- a world view that has been around thousands of years, but this is what I'm focusing on in this post: it emphasizes the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

My friend Tracy is moving soon, transitioning, traveling from her temporary home in Australia, back to Texas. She sent me a poem she'd heard the other day, which made her think of me, because it's about Michigan. I told her I'd posted it back in 2008, accompanied by this temporary map collage of Michigan I laid out with some significant Michigan symbols. (See that post for good comments about them.)

The map of Michigan existed for an hour or so in June 2008, then I put everything away. But the photo is still here for us to see. Think of photographs, and how they last and last, making us feel that things are permanent. They make us think we can hold on to something. As Susan Sontag said, on top of the already overwhelming happenings in the world, we also have photographs of them, adding to the weight of what we "know." Somehow by seeing those images, we think we understand, or think we should understand.

So. Things change, evolve, wear out. Funnily enough, I have a preference for material things that do change. Patinas that evolve. Not chrome. Not plastic. I love organic things. Wood. Leather. Paper. Natural fibers. Have you noticed that for the most part, organic materials age gracefully, but man made materials do not? A wool carpet is better after decades of foot falls. A wooden door frame gets polished with oil from hands. The marble floor of a cathedral begins to lie less perfectly flat after centuries of scuffling feet, in beautiful subtle waves. But a chrome fender is less attractive after a few decades of spreading rust. Plastic just looks dirty over time, with embedded grime in those artificial textures that factory molds create. Do you think it's an accident that my laptop made of steel and plastic is called Apple. And I named mine Apple Blossom?

It's time for another temporary collage -- this time, of me. Ruth. Featherhead. I have already been dismantled and elements put away. What is doesn't stay is for long.

But guess what. Sometimes things stay constant too. A little synchronicity I just found, post script: the tiny striped feather slipping down off the Upper Peninsula in the Michigan map collage is the same feather in the me collage below, in the middle of my forehead. Post post script: 2 more items in both collages, I just noticed -- two petals of the orange flower in Michigan became my lips, and the shell near Lake Michigan became my nose. EEEEEE.

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Farm Day(s) 2010

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Farm Days 2010.

My family came to the farm for the weekend, just to play. Oh, I love them! It was a small group this year, 26 of us, about two thirds of our usual group.

Fresh air, cornhole and ladderball, picking and shucking sweet corn, eating our fill of tomatoes, chasing ducks, creating masterpieces with sidewalk chalk, picking and eating loads of wild blackberries and catching and cuddling with quail. Tents, bonfires, a huge RV, fireflies, shooting stars, making bamboo & shell wabi-sabi windchimes, eating DeeDee's exotic Thai fruits, playing euchre, walking the path, sitting in the shade, playing tag, jumping on Brian, Don and Peter, looking for pumpkins in the pumpkin patch, eating Lesley and Brian's thawed wedding cake one year later and watching them eat their wedding plum, Peter coming in from LA for the last day. Just being together.

I'll let the photos fill in the blanks. You can click to make them bigger.

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-We are only 21 here, as some had left or hadn't arrived.

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teacups & raspberries

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While I am here at the farm with family for a few days, playing, leaping, tossing, eating, talking, laughing, watching fireflies high in the poplars and bonfire sparks mimicking them, please help yourself to a cup of tea or coffee, some raspberries, and a ride on this sweet poem steered by Elliot Figman. Oh, and listen to Lord Huron go wild on my sidebar, the band Peter is playing with this weekend in LA, far away from Farm Day.

Riding In

by Elliot Figman

raven hair
held by
a silver pin
something turn
of century about
the elegant curve
of cheek
the way she
turns easily
away her small
hand gripping
the bright chromium
pole a raspberry
scarf wound
loosely round
her neck she
will say
nothing I
will say
nothing back
as she moves
through the door
a lovely
white boat lifted
by a gentle wave
gently further out

From Big Spring by Elliot Figman. Copyright © 2003 by Elliot Figman.

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Pre-Farm Day: Fun & Games

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Don is building a game; these ramps will lie down, 

and we will toss small bags of sand corn toward the holes.

If it were left to me, Farm Day this Saturday (Family Reunion #3) would consist of eating lunch and dinner, and between meals, 30 people (my siblings, their spouses, and their children) sitting around in a circle of lawn chairs, carrying on in discourse, while my siblings' grandchildren are occupied in something or other. So it is a very good thing that Don grew up playing games, sports and excelling at being a kid, which has made this hobby farm where we live a very fun place for Farm Day three years running. (2006 was the first Farm Day, then 2007. 2008 was the last one, as last year's Farm Day was Farm Wedding Day.)

Some fortunate people are nimble of mind and body. My mom was one -- a genius, and a tremendous athlete as a young person. By the time I knew her (I was born when she was 40), she was no longer agile of body, but her mind was a great resource to me, and to everyone who knew her. She also understood the value of games for mental as well as physical acuity and played word games such as crossword puzzles and solitary Scrabble to “clear the cobwebs." It was Mom who taught me the rules of American football, baseball and basketball, so I could watch them somewhat intelligently. At our house, we were not encouraged to play sports, as church was the important thing.

Recently, as I’ve focused more on writing, my mind has gotten more limber. That quote on my side bar by David McCullough is becoming more of a practice: " Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's hard." But I’m afraid my body is still not nimble for games. I do Pilates [sometimes] to keep muscles and tendons flexible, and I run and lift hand weights, to try to stay in some kind of reasonable shape. But games? I didn’t play them much growing up, and I never played in sports or participated in track and field, or did much of anything besides ride my bike around town. It's hard to develop coordination if you didn't do it when you were young. Oh, if you saw me throw something, a ball, anything, you would weep, or laugh. It's OK, I'm used to it. I learned not to cry when my brother taught me to sing, "Hahaha, look at me, I struck out" after striking out at softball for the umpteenth time in our neighborhood. Now I laugh. I didn't play many board games either, and learning to play euchre (a Midwest card game) with my in-laws was terrifying.

Thanks to Don, Lesley, Brian and Peter, game lovers all, there will be badminton, croquet, ping pong, and Ladder Ball at this little farm fest. There may even be tournaments. And this sand bag tossing game in the top photo, that Don is building. I forget what it's called. Hole Bag. Sand Bag. Sand Hole. Hole Toss. I don't remember, and Don isn't here to ask. All I know is I will be great at it.

I’m off work this week, part vacation, part sprucing up for Farm Day. Phoebe's steps need cleaning, and the parsley, sage and basil (and the corn, kohlrabi, tomatoes, mint, cucumbers, beans) have to be set free from those choking, unsightly weeds.

I wonder if you grew up playing games, or if you're like me and saunter off in the other direction when someone asks, Let's play . . .

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The Wedding Plum

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Photo by Bella Pictures

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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.)

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Ode to Garlic

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Ode to Garlic

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.

~ Ruth M.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

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.

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