Poetry in a time of war

I made a rule for myself a long time ago not to feel pressured or guilty about commenting or not commenting here on current crises. There are enough words going around at any given moment that mine are rarely needed, and I don’t think they are needed now with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. I just want to point you to poet Ilya Kaminksy (a USSR-born Ukranian poet who now lives in the U.S.) and his work Deaf Republic. I’ve seen We Lived Happily During the War around in several places but the whole book is worth your time. Especially, if you, like me, lie awake with a head and heart full of feelings and questions about war and its myriad agonies and dilemmas. I find I often don’t want “answers” so much as I want to acknowledge the way it feels to live in safety while others suffer, to just be helpless and confused and saddened. That’s what poetry allows. Maybe you will also find it a place of refuge.

Padraig O’Tuama’s take on We Lived Happily During the War.

For me, I’m sitting with this selection for awhile (from the final poem, In a Time of Peace)

“All of us

still have to do the hard work of dentist appointments,

of remembering to make

a summer salad: basil, tomatoes, it is a joy, tomatoes, add a little salt.

This is a time of peace.

I do not hear gunshots,

but watch birds splash over the backyards of the suburbs. How bright is the sky

as the avenue spins on its axis.

How bright is the sky (forgive me) how bright.”

May peace keep the people of Ukraine and all of us.

tonia

January, Fourth week :: 2022

Most of last week I kept a silent(ish) retreat. I didn’t go anywhere, I was just at home, opting out of the extra noise. I kept the phone off except for a few texts with loved ones, no music or podcasts, no television or movies. I wanted space to think deeply, to listen to my inner self for awhile. But my brain didn’t cooperate. It kept churning up weird bits of media I’d previously digested - pop songs, advertisements, movie scenes - like some kind of mental off-gassing. I began to feel uneasy, imagining my neural pathways coated with the greasy streaks of junk food culture. I considered the disturbing question: what if at the end of my life all that flashes before my eyes is an 80’s soda commercial and a scene from an Avenger’s movie? I might laugh about that idea if I didn’t recognize the way my mind latches onto such things, if I didn’t know those things were designed to manipulate my attention and stay lodged in my consciousness.

At the end of my allotted quiet time, I ran an errand and came home to find piles of feathers in the yard. Not the scatter of a sparrow or a blue jay (or one of my ducks, thank goodness); something bigger, different, something I don’t quite recognize. I kept going out to visit these remains, trying to imagine what, who, when, how. Was I asleep in my bed when it happened? At the grocery store? Eating dinner? The thought disturbs me unreasonably: life - or rather, death - occurring right out in the yard where I might have seen it, but didn’t. It tangles up with the week’s earlier feelings of regret: what else have I not seen? Have I missed what’s important? Am I a part of the real world or only the manufactured one?

For the rest of the day I felt the weight of these questions. How much am I shaped by what I truly value - the sacredness of earth and her creatures, my relationships with others - and how much am I shaped by the noise and expectations of a world that dismays me?

I went out at twilight, doubt clinging to my heels, and was startled by a deer, my old familiar, grazing on the pasture. She stood gently, her neck bent to the earth, entirely undisturbed by my presence. Deer have always arrived for me in moments like these; I read her like I once read scriptures. She was there for herself, but in another way she had come to comfort me, to remind me I cannot be ejected from my belonging. It was a grace, and I felt it as such. I called to her, she flicked an ear, we shared the last of the day’s light and then I went back to the house unburdened for a while, determined to stay a few more days in the quiet. I feel a spark of hope that there is something more inside, something else that might arise if I just give it the time - and silence - it needs.

We all know how to turn off screens, at least in theory; here are some other quiet practices to try:

Carry a book of poetry with you for waiting times. Or just look around, observing what other people are doing.

Don’t check news headlines.

In conversation, listen and encourage other people to talk while you say less.

Turn down the lights and sit in the semi-dark.

Welcome boredom and stay with it.

Doze off any time you can.

Sing to yourself.

Practice pranayama.

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Gathered this week:

~ A friend sent me this lovely little dance clip.

~ Your Bubble Is Not the Culture // Even though this article is about popular culture, there’s a lot to take note of in regards to how we perceive the world around us.

~ My family is practicing yoga with Tim these days. He’s got loads of free videos on youtube. He focuses a lot on correct form and building strength, which is just what I need. Plus he’s corny and sweet. (His subscription service is also amazing and well-worth the money - especially if you don’t go to the gym anymore, like us.)

~ I am happy living simply

“I am happy living simply:

like a clock, or a calendar.

Worldly pilgrim, thin,

wise - as any creature. To know

the spirit is my beloved. To come to things - swift

as a ray of light, or a look.

To live as I write: spare - the way

God asks me - and friends do not.”

(Marina Tsvetaeva, 1919, HT: Holly Wren Spaulding)

…

There are a few new readers here (welcome!) so I thought it would be nice to show myself and say hello.

Some things you might want to know about me - just for fun:

*I’ve been writing online since 2005. I’ve changed A LOT in that time.

*I write serious and live happy. Mostly. :)

*Enneagram 1/INFJ (Also a Gemini, which makes no sense to me.)

*I like kindness, fidelity, integrity, and generosity in people and I’m generally attracted to people in the margins.

*I dislike arrogance, proselytizing, over-confidence, loud voices, and selfishness. Also, those sheet cakes that come from the grocery store and people who don’t put their carts away when they’re done with them.

*I despise fundamentalism, whether it’s on the left or on the right.

*Part city/part country.

*Glasses, braces, mullet, perm, religion: middle school was hell.

*Definitely swear a little.

*Herbal tea, black tea, coffee with lots of oat milk, and red wine.

*I like talking to people who read here, so please say hello!

That’s all for now!

peace keep you, my friends,

tonia

January, First Week :: 2022

Meditation for a new year, snapped out the window on a trip downtown.

The beginning of any new season, for me, requires a lot of self-forgiveness. I’ve failed at nearly every goal I set for myself in 2021. I went backwards in some areas. I made devastatingly stupid mistakes. I lost huge amounts of time to my own mental fog and fatigue. It wasn’t a year of obvious successes (though there were some!). So this time around the circle, I’m allowing January to be a quiet, reflective month. I feel hesitant to choose a word or theme, to make too many plans. I’m tired of dictating to the year what I’m going to do. I’d like, instead, to leave room for surprise, to practice accepting what comes with equanimity.

During this first week of the year, I’m trying to shed whatever excess I can. When I cleaned off my office bookshelf last week, I found a small stone - a piece of pumice, formed from lava-froth in some distant past - that the kids had once collected outside. I had forgotten what it was; I picked it up expecting the weight of stone in my hand and found a marvelous lightness instead. Holding that stone in my palm, I felt an answering leap within myself: Porous. Weightless. Light. Steady. These are qualities I want to nurture in 2022. So, not a word or theme, per se, but an image, a stone to set on my desk to remind me that I am not some capitalist automaton required to pump out content with the blade-edge of the calendar at my throat, but a living woman, both fluid and solid, tidal and receptive, firm and still.

“I wonder what we will do with this year, what it will do with us and what together we and life will create during the twelve months ahead.”

Jean Hersey, The Shape of a Year

Oliver Burkeman says, “What you need…are tiny goals and a commitment to incremental progress ("small wins"), plus a willingness to encounter failure after failure as you stumble toward improvement.”

Thanks to Burkeman, I’m including failure and stumbling in my expectations for the year. It’s strange, I know, but already I can breathe deeper.

This month, I’m taking a class with Holly Wren Spaulding that I hope will help reignite a vision for my work. I’ve got a clean desk area, waiting journals, and nourishing books, but mostly, I’ve got my eyes open. I’m looking for the little patterns, the ways I sabotage myself, the places I knuckle under pressure, excuses I make, as well as the things that inspire me to create.

Two examples:

1. A reframing: I heard someone say the other day that they are a full-time practicing artist whether they are actively writing or not. Sometimes this person needs to work for awhile in other medias, but they are always an artist. This immediately allowed me to accept the seasons when words aren’t flowing and I need to work with my hands (everything from baking to knitting or gardening). Until she said that, I didn’t realize how much seesawing I was doing in my own mind, afraid I wasn’t committed enough. Now I know that every season is part of my process as a writer and I don’t have to shame myself for not being at the desk. A different way of understanding what I already am.

2. An observation: I’m at my most receptive and creative early in the morning, which makes it a perfect time for writing, but I noticed that if I engage in conversation before I sit at my desk (either digital or face to face) I will not only get pulled out of that receptive space, but I am also likely to start doing household tasks, or looking up something online, or getting involved in someone’s emotions. It’s the smallest of things, but it can delay my work for the rest of the day. One January question is how to guard and use that precious morning time. (Keep the phone turned off? Earplugs? Blinders? Move to a desert island? )

Tiny steps. One by one.

I know I’m not alone in this wrestling at the new year. We’re all struggling in various ways with loss and fatigue. I sure wish we could meet up for some good food and conversation around a table. (Wouldn’t that be great?) But since we aren’t able to do that, we’ll meet in the places we can, and we’ll just keep going, all of us, messy, unproductive, inconsistent, and occasionally wonderful. At least that’s my hope.

with much love,

tonia

Gathered:

~ “Consider that rest is not a time set aside, but a spirit brought to every time.” L.M. Sacasas

~ Lesley’s silent films feed my soul.

~In praise of reading “old” books - and a list of ideas. Maybe it’s better to let books ripen, see what sticks around, instead of rushing to get the newly published books straightaway.

~ A word to adopt for 2022: ”Respair”: fresh hope, a recovery from despair.

December, Fourth week :: 2021

The chair where the owl perched is covered in snow now, but I don’t ever pass it without a tiny uptick in my pulse, a split second when I wonder if that blocky brown shape will be waiting there, will fool my eye again. At first, I’d thought a limb had fallen from the apple tree in the night and somehow landed upright on the arm of the adirondack chair, but a moment later, it swiveled its impossible head and fixed me with an amber stare. Twice this autumn, it came to this spot; two days in a row I stood frozen, pinned like a moth under its gaze until at last, it blinked, unfolded its wings, and disappeared into the trees.

Biologists say that an owl sighted during the day means that a disturbance has occurred - it has suffered a loss of habitat, a disruption in hunting patterns, or maybe, a lost mate - an affirmation of the folklore of North American Indigenous peoples who say the owl is a bad omen, a messenger of death. I joked about it with friends later, my own early morning harbinger of doom perching on a pink adirondack chair.

I don’t know if the owl I saw is one who regularly lives in our woods. During most of the year I can lie in bed and hear several calling through the open window. Their whoo-whooing among the night trees is as reassuring and comforting as this daytime appearance was unsettling. Despite my joking, the weeks after the owl showed itself to me were a storm of loss. Our new dog was hit on the road and killed instantly, relationships frayed, depression stalked loved ones, plans upended and collapsed, I lost months of writing and I couldn’t find the nerve to sit down and write again. I’m not particularly susceptible to omens and signs, but the owl unnerved me more than I’d like to admit. I feel the ghost of it hovering around that chair every morning I go by. Its remembered shape is a fixed point, a talisman of my own vulnerability, but also a symbol of another year of disruption and loss for all of us. It hovers over all the breakdowns we’ve endured, the painful exposure of our true beliefs, the shock of our disconnections and malaise, the revealed power of the market, the media, and the moronic, our fear of getting sick, our proximity to death. Of course I flinch when I think of seeing it again - how much more loss will we face?

A great deal, most likely. I feel the world I once knew passing by, receding into the past. It is not the owl I flinch from, it is the demand that I look truth in the eye and see it as it really is. I want to continue on in my comfort, believing untenable beliefs, assuming my neighbors and I agree, feeling confident that someone somewhere will make disease and extinction and turmoil go away, but that luxury is past. The owl stares at me without blinking and it won’t look away.

Strangely, now that the shock of these realities has settled in, I arrive at the end of the year feeling a little steadier. The owl has come. Change is here. Death has arrived. But I am strong enough to live within it. I know what lies ahead requires courage, as well as creativity and hope, and that’s what I want to mine in 2022.

As MFK Fisher wrote: “When the wolf is at the door one should invite him in and have him for dinner.”

I’ll be writing more about that and the image/theme I’ve chosen for the new year later. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying this quiet-ish week between the holidays. I’m looking forward to a new year of sharing and learning with you all.

Happy New Year!

tonia

September, Third Week :: 2021

The neighbor, we think, has a new gun. A semi-automatic from the sounds of it, as he does target (?) practice (?) in the late afternoons. The stutter of explosions ricochets around our tiny valley doubling and redoubling until the dog tucks tail and runs indoors and we follow suit, ears ringing. We’ve lived rurally for over 15 years now and while I will never own a gun, I understand why other people keep a rifle in the back closet. It’s helpful for scaring off coyotes and cougars, dispatching a suffering hen, or bringing home a freezer full of venison. To each her own.

I don’t feel so gracious about the semi-automatic though, and I confess that my neighborly feelings have taken a hit lately. Every barrage bouncing its echo around our woods seems a reminder of all that is wrong with America; I have to bite my tongue to keep from shouting something rude into the void. Honestly, it’s just one of the many ways I’ve been floundering for weeks. The computer fiasco (that is still unresolved, cross your fingers for me!) combined with upended wedding plans (still waiting on a visa), the emptied house, plus the whole world being broke in all the ways…I don’t even know what to do with myself some days.

My funk these last weeks led me, as funks do, to revisit some old social media haunts. Can I just say that two years out from having my own social media accounts I am finding those places absolutely bizarre and frightening now? I scrolled through pages and pages of people turning themselves into set pieces and still lifes, dousing themselves with cynicism, or swimming in a stream of crisis/argument/drama that never stops. I saw lots of beautiful things and a lot of wonderful people, too, of course, but it leads me to wonder what we are doing to our minds and our ability to process, reason, and think independently. (If you’re so inclined, maybe step back a moment and see how much everything in those places looks and sounds exactly the same depending on which pond you’re swimming in.)

It took me a while to shake off the heaviness of that social media immersion, but I’m finding my energy again and thinking about new routines and rituals. I dragged myself back to the keyboard this week to work on a story. (“Why tell stories? We do it because we’re sick of reality and we need to create what isn’t yet there.” ~ Colum McCann) And I’ve got a spare room now, which I’m making into a quiet space for yoga and early morning meditation to start the day. I find that early morning time essential to recovering my calm and equanimity. It’s a place I can deliberately set down the things that cling to me, like my neighbor’s choices or my self-flagellation over the lost work, or the weight of the world’s calamities, and choose to reorient myself toward the peacableness and gentleness I want to inhabit.

“Because the mind is an important and sacred place, keep it clean and clear.” ~ Ryan Holiday

Next week I have plans for a little Autumn reset, an idea I gleaned from my Ayurvedic counselor. Autumn is my golden time of year, but I often find the transition from summer to fall a little harsh, so I’m going to take a couple of days to eat simply (gentle foods and warming broths) and rest my mind and body around the Equinox.

I hope that will lead naturally into my other Autumn goals:

• retreating from Internet persuasion,

• seeking less commentary and pursuing more deep reading,

• taking in less news and spending more time around a table in conversation*,

• making fewer plans and doing more consistent, patient work on whatever is in front of me.

Plus all the good baking and cooking with autumn foods, leaf walks and rainy days, and the first fires in the woodstove to look forward to.

Do share what plans you are making for Autumn and what ways you are finding peace in the midst of the world’s noise and complexity. I look forward to hearing from you.

xo

tonia

Gathered:

~ Finished the delicious translation of the Reynard the Fox tale this week. Gorgeous Old World storytelling featuring the wily, feral, charismatic Reynard evading the King and his crowd and naturally exposing the hypocrisy and machinations of power. Beautiful interiors, food, and vocabulary (plus female characters who are useful and intelligent!) Such a fun change of pace from my usual reading.

~ The Hawthorns are ripening here so it’s time to make Hawthorn Cordial again. Last year I served this at our Samhain dinner and it was delicious.

~ My daughter is writing the most charming kid’s novel about a girl who moves to France and can talk to animals. It’s absolutely fabulous. (And so is she.) You can find her website here and if you want to cheer her on, subscribe and help her grow a community online. <3

~ Mary Beard’s lecture on the classic myths and how they aid the cultural exclusion of women from power. “The ancient world is preoccupied with gender because patriarchy is never easy with itself.” I’m looking forward to getting her book, too.

*Ivan Illich: “Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge…I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship.”