the first days of March

A little Ellis, because, LOVE.

The pasture is usually home to only grass and blackberries (and wild sweetpeas in the summer), but this morning I saw two yellow daffodils nodding their heads at me as I headed back to the house after my chores. I squealed a little, then felt sheepish, even though no one was around to hear me but the poultry. It must be the aftertaste of this cynical world - this feeling that wonder and joy are only for children and not for grown humans. I marched on down the hill and found another daffodil clinging to the stone wall along the garden and appreciated it loudly, just to make up for my earlier cowardice. The revolution will not be wonder-free.

I had plans to be working on a new novel right now, but I haven’t even begun thinking about it yet. I’ve been taking in the wisdom of Ross Gay instead, who insists that writing “comes from our bodies.” I’ve been deep cleaning, organizing, painting, getting the garden ready, baking; working more with my hands than just my head. I have to say, after several intense months of writing, this feels wonderful. It’s a good reminder that I am at my healthiest when body and mind are both active. And I know that while I clean and putter around, words are churning quietly somewhere inside and they will let me know when it is time to put them down on paper.

I’m glad to be busy with physical work right now for other reasons too. It keeps me from being too worried about things I can’t control, like elections, and finances, and the fact that we are supposed to go to Europe in six weeks to see our daughter and the whole world is sick right now. Ora et labora is my current motto: pray and work. That’s old wisdom, right there, from monks who lived in the Middle Ages and knew a thing or two about having to wait and trust God that everything is going to work out fine.

Someone asked me the other day what I do for a living and I fumbled around as usual and tried to figure out a way to put it into words, this hodge-podge life of writing, and nurturing, and availability, and home-making. I never know what to say. Sometimes the words fall on sympathetic ears, as they did this time, and I can feel the warmth and appreciation of a kindred spirit, but many times they don’t. I am finding more confidence now to let that disapproval and misunderstanding go. I know what I believe, that if we are going to hold together at the center as communities, there have to be people who make beauty, who tell the stories, who have time to lend a hand, who set a table for fellowship. Fortunately, it seems like many of the people who are most sympathetic and open to that idea are young people. I love our young people; they are so bright and smart and determined and open. I’m always listening in, trying to understand how they see the world, how they think we can change it. I hope I am always flexible enough to hear and understand.

Well, I should wrap this little ramble up. There is more work to be done today, (“I’m blessed with work!” Bonus points if you can name that movie). Hope you are all finding daffodil-surprises and celebrating them shamelessly.

Peace keep you,

tonia

P.S. I’m in the mood for some good farm life/homemaking books. Fiction, preferably, so send me your favorite titles. I love Miss Read and Gladys Taber (not fiction, but she makes the cut), Elizabeth Goudge, Rumer Godden. All those 40’s and 50’s authors who write so beautifully about making homes. Swoon!

tether

Last year I decided to try keeping a log of my days.  Most nights, before I go to sleep, I pull a notebook out of my nightstand and make a list of bullet points about what I did:  Gym.  Ideas for short story.  Novel brainstorming.  Draft for newsletter.  Drove to Portland to pick up xyz.  Backgammon with Mark.  Read.  Etc.  It’s boring reading, but it’s an attempt to unlock what’s hidden in my mind.  Often, I find that writing down went for a walk, reminds me that while I was walking I was thinking about one of my kids, or listening to an important podcast, or contemplating the best use of our property in a climate-altered future.   So the bullet points sometimes take on a life of their own and morph into little essays or lines of poetry or plot ideas for stories. 

This is actually the hardest part of writing for me, I think, continually mining my own life, not letting thoughts sink to the warm dark compost of the subconscious, but pulling them out into the light and pinning them to a page like tiny black beetles, or powder-dusted moths.  (Of course, even these skewered specimens are part of the continual composting in the mind.) The writer’s job is to be attentive to what we would normally ignore, to give shape and form to the humus of ideas lying quiet and fertile within us.  

Not everything that gets pinned to the page is worth bringing to life though.  Journaling (even in the form of logging) helps uncover my worn-out themes and tired tropes.  I can see on my pages the fixation on some experiences and the underemphasis of others equally, if not more, important.  I can see the pattern of biases, the pockets of anger that indicate I’m not in a state of forgiveness yet.  I can see the doubts that rise and fall with my hormones, and the need to build more mental stamina. I can see my fears pounding for attention.

I think often about the subjectiveness of our lives.  Unless we are in the regular presence of small children or the sick or very elderly, much of contemporary life is a helium balloon, untethered from the tangible and the earthy.  Food arrives on shelves in packages, money exists in pixelated bank statements, trash gets toted off in trucks to unseen locations, beauty is nothing more than photogenics.  Anchoring, like decluttering, is a survival skill for the modern age.  I’m a word person, so journaling is one of my tethers.  My husband is not; I don’t imagine he would find a daily bullet list enlightening at all.  He’s more likely to discover his thoughts on a run or mowing the lawn, which he does.  The point is, we need to tie the balloon to something or it’s lost. 

But more than that is the need to know we exist in this world for a purpose.  “That we are here is a huge affirmation,” John O’Donohue says.  “Somehow life needed us and wanted us.”  Being attentive to the whispered messages of common life may be the writer’s job, but attentiveness to the messages of our individual lives is everyone’s job.  The disconnectedness that pervades our age leads to anger, fear, anxiety, and a sense of un-reality.  If we are here, it is not to be plagued by the spirit of the age, but because we have something to offer, something to combat it, to bring us together, connect us and nurture life. 

So, consider this post, rambling and mundane as it is, a whisper in the dark, an encouragement to dig and discover, a wave to bring you into harbor and an anchor to help you stay.  Find your way, then find your way.  We need you here.

If you want to share, tell me about your journaling habits, or the other ways you tether and discover yourself in the comments!

there is a place

This weekend, we took to the woods to learn how to find mushrooms. We had a gorgeous day, and the woods were eager to share their treasures. Our guide took us off-trail, taught us to let nature lead us. We looked for open, mossy spaces, free of tangled undergrowth, the places where mushrooms want to grow.

Every species has its ideal conditions for growth, he told us.

I thrive in these cool, damp, shadowed woods.

I would like to unwind time like a ball of wool, get back to the unformed part of myself and let her know: not every creature thrives under the sun. There is a place where the soft, deep parts of you can live.

Give me the quiet, secret spaces. Let me hear birds and rain at their work, follow truth like a deer trail through the trees.

A long time ago I lived under a steely sun, among false prophets, confident of voice and reasonable-eyed. They said the path to truth was too difficult to find, I would lose my way. They taught me to harden and to doubt.

But now I know truth spreads itself secretly underground, waits on every trail, waits for me to arrive and take it up at the right time.

I am un-hardening, un-doubting. I am looking closely for what’s real, what emerges from the fern-soft ground.

It was the Romans who taught us that time is a line stretching forward, but the Greeks believed time was a circle that comes around and back again. Perhaps that unformed girl is here, only waiting for me to come back round to her.

Perhaps she will step out now into this kinder world, perhaps she will find a place to fruit and grow soft under this understanding sky.

hips and haws for the equinox

Today I brought a basket and clippers on my walk and gathered some rosehips and hawthorn branches for the Equinox altar I talked about in my newsletter. It was a cool, rain-free morning, and the sky was the perfect shade of grey to make the greens and reds look deep and vivid. (I never know why people complain about the grey skies here…they make everything else glow!)

I also gathered a jar full of hawthorn berries to experiment with. Did you know they are good (emotional and physical) heart medicine? I plan on trying a hawthorn cordial and I will dry the rest for tea. Maybe next year I’ll make a jelly with them.

My simple altar, honoring the gifts of the season, the softening light, and an attitude I want to take into these next weeks.

This print was a gift from Lesley and it captures what I’m longing for in this time of life so well. I’m learning that I do best when I focus on small, seasonal goals, a week or a month at a time, instead of big, ambitious goals (like say a no-shopping year….sigh). It makes more sense, doesn’t it? Realizing we are tidal in our own way, ebbing and flowing out of attentiveness, circling over and under the same ideas but responding to a changed shoreline each time we approach. Most of this year has been gathering, building, sending, and now I approach the quieter months with a need for rest and contentment, a time of trusting that what we have is enough.

Today the sun rose here at 6:59 am and will set at 7:06 pm. The midpoint again. Tonight after the sun is gone, I’ll make a simple supper of brown rice, mushrooms, some kale from the garden, and roasted sweet potatoes. Earthy things, dark and full of life. We’ll have apples and pears for dessert, some good wine, and welcome what Keats called the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

“The hedges are full of berries now, Hips and Haws; Elder-berries and Black-berries are the most conspicious, also the bright crimson berries of the Bitter-sweet. There is a plentiful crop of Acorns and Chestnuts.”

~ September 22nd entry, Edith Holden, The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady

Happiest of days to you. I’d love to hear how you are celebrating your own place on earth and its particular beauties.

Peace keep you,

tonia

September, just this side of the Equinox

I got outside this afternoon in a break between rain showers. It gave me a chance to read a little and see how nature’s been handling things without me the last few weeks. Just beautifully, as it turns out. She’s a little less tidy than I tend to be, but I think she knows what she’s doing.

Easing back into this space with some images from today and a current read.

Growing flowers instead of vegetables may be the best decision I’ve made all year. Look at how happy they are!

I’ll always grow kale though,

and cherry tomatoes,

and big, fat garden spiders. (Big love to my hardworking organic pest control crew!)

Abby (who now, at 13, and getting weirder by the day, is known as Miss Havisham)

Current read. Ugh. Necessary and eye-opening.