Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

As time went by, I realized that the particular place I'd chosen was less important than the fact that I'd chosen a place and focused my life around it. Although the island has taken on great significance for me, it's no more inherently beautiful or meaningful than any other place on earth. What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it's flat or rugged, rich or austere, wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received.

Richard Nelson, The Island Within

Maples in the Pink

Friday Ramble - Radical

This week's word is radical, a natural choice for this madcap season when greenery is popping up all over the place, and we are thinking about planting flowers and veggies in our gardens. It comes to us through the late Latin rādīcālis meaning having roots, and the Old English wrotan meaning to root, gnaw or dig up, both entities originating in the early Indo-European wrad meaning branch or root. 

Synonyms include: fundamental, basic, basal, bottom, cardinal, constitutional, deep-seated, essential, foundational, inherent, innate, intrinsic, native, natural, organic, original, primal, primary, primitive, profound, thoroughgoing, underlying, vital. They also include pejorative words such as anarchistic, chaotic, excessive, extremist, fanatical, far-out, freethinking, iconoclastic, immoderate, insubordinate, insurgent, insurrectionary, intransigent, lawless, left wing, militant, mutinous, nihilistic, rabid, rebellious, recalcitrant, recusant, refractory, restive, revolutionary, riotous, seditious, severe, sweeping, uncompromising and violent.

I have always admired the indomitable spirit of plant entities putting down roots in unexpected places, sunflowers sprouting from cracks in the asphalt on busy thoroughfares, wildflowers coming up between the concrete slabs in sidewalks, tiny trees planting themselves in granite rock faces and glacial dropstones.  

Those who live by different beliefs are often called "radical". Ditto those who live outside the mainstream, who don't follow accepted social standards and tend to do their own thing rather than just placidly following the herd like sheep. The word has been used in that context since the sixties, and being called "radical" might have been a compliment then, but these days it is often pejorative.

How odd that a word used to describe the unconventional, independent, mildly eccentric and rather peculiar actually means something as lovely, organic and simple as being rooted or connected. Do I consider myself radical? Anyone who sketches, scribbles, takes heaps of bad photos, rambles in the woods in all sorts of weather and talks to trees is a tad peculiar, so I suppose I am. Rooted.

This week's word is one of my favorites in the English language. It signifies (for me anyway) a bone deep kinship with everything that matters, with the good dark earth under my feet, the sky, the sun and the moon, the stars over my head - with timeless notions of rebirth, transformation, belonging and non-duality.

Roots down, branches up and away we go...

Thursday Poem - Bio

I am a leaf-dance in the woods.
I am the green gaze of the ocean.
I am a cloud-splitter in the sky.
I arrived robed in red
out of nowhere and nothing.
I whisper between pages.
I disappear in the painting.
I rest between musical notes.
I awaken among strangers
in a country I never imagined.
I am timbales and bells,
a parade under your window.
I am the riddle I cannot solve,
hands on the clock's face,
seven crows on a branch.
I am the one whose footfall
changes the pattern of stars.

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

For Earth Day

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.

Marshall McLuhan

The Dutchman's Breeches

Dutchman's Breeches

(Dicentra cucullaria)

One can barely see them at reduced photo size, but draped along the stem and flowers in the second image are the season's first strands of spider silk. Since the north woods are still cool and wet, perhaps the spiders wore coats and gloves to do their work and sheltered under leaf umbrellas. I applaud their determination to get out there and spin in such brisk weather conditions. In a week or so, Dicentra cucullaria will carpet the woods, but these early bloomers were blooming in a protected alcove against a rock face warmed by the sun.

The feathery gray-green foliage and nodding white flowers like upside-down pantaloons were endearing, and the filaments of spider silk held my attention for some time with their shimmer and floating windblown motion. Larger and more lavish clumps were in bloom several feet up on the rock face, and I briefly considered either climbing up or dangling from the top to capture them with the camera, but decided to avoid such assuredly risky pursuits and shoot from right where I was standing. No fancy footwork or rock climbing this year...

The woods are slow to leaf out and bloom this time around, but these images were perfect for a late April week, a few days before Beltane or May Day.  They need no description from this doddering photographer and occasional wordsmith, although I have done just that this morning and tried to describe them.

Sequestered, Week 291 (CCXCI)

Happy Easter!

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Turn off the lights. Go outside. Close the door behind you.

Maybe rain has fallen all evening, and the moon, when it emerges between the clouds, glows on the flooded streets and silhouettes leafless maple trees lining the curb. Maybe the tide is low under the docks and warehouses, and the air is briny with kelp. Maybe cold air is sinking off the mountain, following the river wall into town, bringing smells of snow and damp pines. Starlings roost in a row on the rim of the supermarket, their wet backs blinking red and yellow as neon lights flash behind them. In the gutter, the same lights redden small pressure waves that build and break against crescents of fallen leaves.

Let the reliable rhythms of the moon and tides reassure you. Let the smells return memories of other streets and times. Let the reflecting light magnify your perception. Let the rhythm of rushing water flood your spirit. Walk and walk until your heart is full.

Then you will remember why you try so hard to protect this beloved world, and why you must.

Kathleen Dean Moore, from Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

Awakening, Little By Little

Friday Ramble - Tea and Redemption

The world outside is still dark, and the village is a collection of indistinct shapes and muffled sounds. A waning yellow moon is visible behind the whiskery trees in the garden. In the early hours of the day, the kitchen is a place of shadows, and I lean sleepily against the counter, my bones, sinews and joints protesting the weather. Summer seems like a lovely dream from long ago and very far away.

How does one banish inclement conditions at such times? Looking for a fine hot potion to start the day and drown my doldrums, I rattle around in the larder, opening canister after canister and sniffing them appreciatively. Freshly ground espresso? Royal Cream Earl Grey? Constant Comment? Cloudberry (Arpiqutik) or Crowberry (Paurngaqutik)? Rooibos? Ginseng? Lapsang Souchong? Perhaps a simple Orange Pekoe?

The last container is way in the back of the tea cupboard, and it holds little nubbins of dried chrysanthemum buds, rustling gently. When I open it, the dry golden fragrance of last summer wafts out, and for a moment, I hear tinkling bells and exotic musics. I am not sure why, but for some reason, the late Margaret Lawrence's exquisite memoir of her time in Somaliland (The Prophet's Camel Bell) comes to mind. I must locate the tattered paperback copy in my library and read it again. OK, this is the ambrosial stuff we will quaff on this murky morning. Bring on the bells.

The name "chrysanthemum" derives from the ancient Greek word χρυσός, chrysos meaning gold and anthemon meaning flower. No doubt about it, I will definitely be planting more golden "stuff" in the garden this year. Brewed into tea, chrysanthemum flowers light up a bleak morning wonderfully.

Waiting for the kettle to whistle, I do a little whistling of my own and glance at the long shadows falling across a favorite mug and the little bowl of loose tea on the counter. There is chiaroscuro at work, and the shadows contrast wonderfully with the fragile porcelain and its aromatic holdings; there is light on the verges of their inclination. Forget cold weather and darkness, this morning scene is perfect just as it is. Tea anyone?

Thursday Poem - Swiftly

Swiftly the years, beyond recall,

Solemn the stillness of this fair morning.

I will clothe myself in spring clothing,

And visit the slopes of the Eastern Hill.

By the mountain stream a mist hovers,

Hovers a moment, then scatters.

There comes a wind blowing from the south

That brushes the fields of new corn.

T'ao Ch'ien (translation by Arthur Waley)

Reginald H. Blyth thought T'ao Ch'ien's creation was the finest poem ever written. We are still several weeks away from seeing new corn, but for me, the eight lines are the essence of April and springtime.

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

And there in the woods...

Siberian squill (Scilla siberica)

  

One day, there are deep snow drifts everywhere. The next day, the snow has vanished, and little green shoots and delicate wildflowers are poking their heads out of the sun warmed earth on the edge of the woods.

Flowers are springing up everywhere, reaching for the light over their fragile heads. Grasses thrust themselves out of puddles in the park, and a few ducks paddle up and down the little stream among the trees. Everywhere, there is birdsong, every feathered singer in the overstory declaring its delight in the season.

On morning walks, we (Beau and I) look for sprouting bloodroot, trout lilies and daffodils in the woods, and we rejoice whenever we see a tiny green leaf lifting its head from the moist, crumbly soil and desiccated leaves.

It will be a week or two before there is full blown flowering in our favourite haunts, but a few purple squill are already blooming in last autumn's tattered residue on the forest floor, and we were happy to discover them on a recent ramble.

There were times when we thought this winter would never end. There are days now and then when we still think so, but for the most part, we can hardly believe our good fortune. Every dancing sunbeam and tremulous wee fleur is a gift.

Sequestered, Week 290(CCLX)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

Into the Light

White Crocus (Ice Queen)

Friday Ramble - Atomy

An atomy is a tiny part of something, a minute particle.  Scientists once thought atoms were the smallest possible units of the physical universe: dense, central, positively charged nuclei circled by electrons whirling around in ecstatic orbit. Complete within themselves, they were thought to be irreducible and indivisible except for constrained processes of removal or transfer or the exchange of component electrons.

This week's word comes to us from the Middle English attome, the Latin atomus and the Greek atomos: a- (not) plus -tomos (divided), tomos hailing from the Indo-European temnein meaning to cut. Kindred words (of course) are atom, atomism and atomic, epitome and (not so obviously), tome which now refers to a book or a volume of reading material but once meant simply something cut or carved from a larger entity. Synonyms include corpuscle, mote, particle, speck, molecule and grain, as in "a grain of sand" or "a grain of sugar".

Physicists now think the much smaller quark may be the fundamental element of creation. Named after a nonsense word coined by James Joyce in his novel Finnegan's Wake, quarks come in six eccentric flavors: up, down, charm, strange, bottom and top. Up and down quarks bond together to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable being the protons and neutrons resting in the heart of atoms. Other quark pairs (charm/strange, top/bottom) have no function in our universe as we know it, but they had an important role to play as it was coming into being. Wonder of wonders, everything is in constant motion, these other quark pairs becoming up and down quarks as they decay and taking their rightful place within atoms.

Atomies come to mind when I awaken to gray skies and rain on the roof beating staccato time without reference to meter or metronome, to a puckish wind capering in the eaves and ruffling tiny green leaves in the garden like tangy decks of playing cards, to drifting fog wrapping the old trees, rooflines and chimneys in the village.

Each and every drop beyond my windows is an atomy, a minute, complete world teeming with vibrant life, a whole magical universe looking up and smiling at this ungainly creature bent over in wonder with a camera in her hand. I don't think I will ever get a handle on using my macro lens to its full potential, but it is teaching me how to look at the world in new ways, and that is a fine old thing.

Thursday Poem - An April Night

The moon comes up o'er the deeps of the woods,

And the long, low dingles that hide in the hills,

Where the ancient beeches are moist with buds

Over the pools and the whimpering rills;

And with her the mists, like dryads that creep

From their oaks, or the spirits of pine-hid springs,

Who hold, while the eyes of the world are asleep,

With the wind on the hills their gay revellings.

Down on the marshlands with flicker and glow

Wanders Will-o'-the-Wisp through the night,

Seeking for witch-gold lost long ago

By the glimmer of goblin lantern-light.

The night is a sorceress, dusk-eyed and dear,

Akin to all eerie and elfin things,

Who weaves about us in meadow and mere

The spell of a hundred vanished Springs.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Wordless Wednesday - Adorned

Budding

Sequestered, Week 289(CCLIX)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

When we plant a tree we are planting ourselves. Releasing dolphins back to the wild, we are ourselves returning home. Composting leftovers, we are being reborn as irises and apples. We can "think like a mountain," in Aldo Leopold's words, and we can discover ourselves to be everywhere and in everything, and we can know the activity of the world as not separate from who we are but rather of what we are. The practice of the "nonlocal self" means that when we work for the restoration of the rain forest, we are restoring our "extended" self.

Joan Halifax Roshi, The Fruitful Darkness

Coming Up Purple

Friday Ramble - Patience

As I started off on the Friday ramble this week, the word that came to mind was patience, although I have already written a ramble on that word.

This week's offering has its roots in the Middle English pacient, the Middle French patient and the Latin word pati, all meaning to undergo something, to suffer through, get through, or put up with something and do it with grace and dignity - no whining, screaming or going completely off one's nut. It's a fine old word for someone who aspires to authenticity or enlightenment, but it's not a word for wimps and sissies, True patience is anything but limp, indecisive or docile. Sometimes, it requires bags of forbearance and not a little cussing.

By now, winter snows should have disappeared from the eastern Ontario highlands, and its forests should be carpeted with wildflowers, but recent recent storms brought ice, snow and bitterly cold winds. There will be no wildflowers in the woods for a week or two, and there are times when I think springtime will never come.

What is one to do??? I pick up my camera or paint brush, brew a pot of tea, pummel bread, stir up a fiery curry, go walkabout with Beau, curl up in my favorite chair with a good book. I just breathe, in and out, in and out, in and out.

For some reason, the elegant keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (Mikhail Pletnev) and the Bach preludes (Glenn Gould) tuck everything back into place, and so does Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik or Die Zauberflöte. Grieg's Holberg Suite works wonders too, and in recent weeks I have also been listening to Sibelius.

Whatever the weather, we head out and look at the sun rising or setting somewhere, watch frozen cattails rattling their bones along the shore of our favorite lake. We listen to the wind in the bare trees, lean against the old rail fence and watch last autumn's desiccated leaves whirl through the air like confetti. We cling to the fragile hope that springtime will show up any day now and stay.

I am learning that patience is a wild and fierce emotion, and being patient with one's own self is the hardest thing of all. As Spirit Rock's Jack Kornfield says, “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” Equally true for patience. I may get there one of these lifetimes, but I have a very long way to go.

This morning's image is a bloodroot bloom from another year's wanderings. In early spring, the wildflowers emerge from the earth and dead leaves of my favorite place in the whole wide world, and they glow like little suns in their shaded woodland alcoves, all snowy white petals and golden hearts. Colonies of sanguinaria canadensis always leave me breathless when I encounter them, and in a week or two, I will see them again. I am counting the days until I do, perhaps not as patiently as I should.

Coming Up Purple

Purple Hepatica (Hepatica nobilis)

Thursday Poem - Sometimes I Am Startled Out of Myself

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - Emergence

Homecoming

First come jubilant skeins of of geese flying in from the south and singing their return, then ducks splashing about in the melted alcoves of local rivers and streams. There is a lot of happy quacking in roadside ditches and puddles.

A single heron perches on the frozen shore of Dalhousie Lake and wonders why on earth she has come home so early in the season. Trumpeter swans and loons will not return for weeks, until there is more open water.

On the Two Hundred Acre Wood, there are larks and killdeer, beaky snipe and woodcock, a handful of plucky robins, the graceful "v" shapes (dihedrals) of turkey vultures soaring majestically over the trees and rocks and rocking effortlessly back and forth in their flight. From below, the light catches their silvery flight feathers and dark wing linings, and the great birds are as magnificent as any eagle.

A solitary goshawk perches in a bare tree on the hill, and a male harrier describes perfect, languid circles over the western field. Both birds are hungry after their long journey north, and they train their fierce yellow eyes on the artfully frosted field below, always on the lookout for a good meal.

This morning, a male cardinal is singing his heart out in the ash tree in the garden, and an unidentified warbler lifts its voice somewhere in the darkness.

Even the weather foretold for this day will be a friend.

Happy April, everyone!