On My Library Table - Ex Libris XI

Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
(Headline Review)
ISBN 0755305078

IT BEGINS, AS MOST THINGS BEGIN, WITH A SONG.

In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world.

They were sung.

The great beasts were sung into existence, after the Singer had done with the planets and the hills and the trees and the oceans and the lesser beasts. The cliffs that bound existence were sung, and the hunting grounds, and the dark.

Songs remain. They last. The right song can turn an emperor into a laughing stock, can bring down dynasties. A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs.

There are other things you can do with songs. They do not only make worlds or recreate existence. . . .

Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

I can't conjure up the right words to describe this gorgeous book, and Neil Gaiman's own opening is a more eloquent introduction than anything I can write here. As I read the first chapter, I could picture the beginning time clearly and "see" the first Singer with his (or her) arms upraised to the heavens, singing the many coloured worlds into being. A wondrous tale and a lovely read, one with trickster gods and ancient elemental beings, a bevy of Caribbean witches and fey eccentric characters in abundance . . .

Moonless Night

Moonless night, these
drowsing wind-stirred trees,
deep twilight, streaks
of rose gold, violet and
russet splashed
over the darkening hill.

Paint this hallowed night with
a broad and starry brush,
and remember this: the dark is
never truly moonless —

We simply cannot see.

Cate

Coming Forth

As the snow retreats slowly, green grass is starting to appear here and there, and more swiftly so on exposed sunny slopes. The gnarly old McIntosh orchard on the hill is awakening from its long winter sleep and there are already dense sticky red buds on all the trees — it seems the apple trees are conjuring up another verdant summer and another rosy harvest.

This is one of my favorite places. In Spring, there are masses of sticky red buds on the trees and later a profusion of leaves and blossoms, followed by perfect juicy McIntosh apples in late September. In early morning and evening, there are dozens of deer grazing under the trees and searching for windfalls from the last harvest. In blossom time there is much happy buzzing among the blooms, and in June there will be bluebirds in abundance.

Over the winter, I had vivid dreams of walking barefoot through the orchard in a chorus of bluebirds under a canopy of apple blossoms — those dreams kept me going when the snow was deep, temperatures plummeted, and the wind howled in the eaves. Now I sit with my back against an old apple tree and raise my face to the good Spring sunshine, in the wise words of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "lifting my heart toward heaven like a hungry beggar".

Quiet Visitations

I wander by the narrow private laneway to this cloister several times a week and always pause for a few minutes, drawn by the stillness of this secluded enclosure in Westboro Village, a place apart which is bounded by high stone walls and fences, whiskery old trees, dense grapevines and ivy. It is one of my favorite places in the village, and I wish I could capture its peaceful ambience on film.

The cloister is the residence of the Sisters of the Visitation, a Roman Catholic religious order founded by St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal in the early seventeenth century at Annecy, France — the Ottawa community was established by sisters from the French motherhouse at Annecy in 1910 and is situated in a magnificent old stone mansion off Richmond Road which dates from 1840. The Sisters of the Visitation are an old contemplative religious order composed of two distinct entities: the cloistered nuns of the First Federation (of which the Ottawa monastery is a member), and the uncloistered Visitandine (or Salesian) sisters of the Second Federation, who do not live "behind the walls" and work within their local communities as teachers, counsellors and caregivers.

One can see little of the monastery from the street, brown sandstone walls, roof tops, gables and upper level windows, and I suspect there are many Westboro residents who are not aware that the place exists — for me that is part of its appeal. Just visible over the vines and the edge of the white roof in the second photograph is a statue of the Madonna of the Visitation which closely resembles Tara, the Buddhist deity known and loved in so many different cultures as Kannon or Kuan Yin — Our Lady exudes a timeless sense of peace and serenity in her quiet place above the monastery entrance, and a few moments spent nearby are as restful and soothing as time in a faraway mountain temple or sanctuary garden. The best "long view" of the monastery church is from across the soccer field at nearby Hilson School.

Signs of Spring Among the Trees

At last, the Lanark Highlands are showing signs of sliding into a warmer season, and I did a little ecstatic dance in the snow out there yesterday.

At this time of year, the woodlands are a hive of activity: streams, creeks, waterfalls and springs opening everywhere and making their musical way among the stones, groves and budding trees, Great Horned Owls hooting from their nest in the old oak beyond the pond, ducks and geese flying overhead and voicing their return greetings. There is glorious golden sunlight, and even the brisk March wind sings of warmer days and greening time.

The maple syrup season is in full swing, and the air is full of fragrant smoke from the cauldrons, kettles, pots and vats, boiling away in the woods and performing their sweet annual alchemy.

I feel as mad as the proverbial March hare. . . .

Weekend Road

Late afternoon in Lanark, a quiet stretch of country road unwinding over the hill in deep blue shadow, rail fences, snow drowned fields, stands of cedar, hedgerows and ironwood trees arching into the distance at the twilight hour. The view out from the gate and down along the lane is a work in progress — a ribbon or a map unfolding oh so slowly, carrying eyes and breath and spirit off to a calmer place.

Work with words cannot save us.
Nothing can do that,
but perhaps to be saved is not salvation.

I see the trees along this road
turn into smoke at sundown,
and know them for the very ones
I was meant to see.
Michael Hannon, Trees

Why We Tell Stories

1
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak

2
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would open only for us

and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

3
Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them

and though we listen only
haphazardly, with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and

Lisel Mueller 

Annointing the Walls

When we first planted ourselves in the village of Westboro some years ago, the old clay brick of the shops and buildings along Richmond Road was a pleasant discovery, and I spent hours pottering about in various neighbourhoods and looking at the patterns on the old brick buildings situated along well travelled arteries and tucked into cul-de-sacs here and there. So. . . . the truth is that the latest trend in the village is one which leaves me feeling more than a bit ambivalent.

Slowly but surely, the old walls in the village are being transformed and painted over, covered with bright murals which extol the charms of the village and the many virtues of living here. There are also a number of trompe l'oeil creations in the village now - these (sometimes) imaginative vistas place windows and doors where no windows or doors have ever been and send pots of flowers and tendrils of ivy scrambling skyward in all sorts of unlikely places. I liked the exuberantly curling ivy, the trompe l'oeil doors and windows and the trompe l'oeil potted ficus here, but I loved the old brick wall too. Behind the parked car is a perfectly rendered trompe l'oeil retriever sitting in the trompe l'oeil doorway, wagging his trompe l'oeil tail and grinning at passers by, but there always seems to be a car parked here, and I have not been able to take a picture of the wall which includes the trompe l'oeil doggie.

It's all a matter methinks of holding everything in memory, the clay, bricks and mortar underneath all the paint and and the artist's imagination as well as the trompe l'oeil door, window, plant and doggie (and waiting for the doggie to emerge from behind the parked car too). A ficus in winter, even a trompe l'oeil ficus, is a lovely thing.

On My Library Table - Ex Libris X

The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life
John Daido Loori
(Ballantyne Books) ISBN 0345462017

"Creativity is our birthright. It is an integral part of being human, as basic as walking, talking, and thinking. Throughout our evolution as a species, it has sparked innovations in science, beauty in the arts and revelation in religion. Every human life contains its seeds and is constantly manifesting it, whether we're building a sand castle, preparing Sunday dinner, painting a canvas,walking through the woods or programming a computer. The creative process, like a spiritual journey, is intuitive, nonlinear, and experiential. It points us toward our essential nature, which is a reflection of the boundless creativity of the universe."

John Daido Loori is a distinguished photographer, environmental activist and Zen teacher, the abbot of the Mountains and Rivers Order at Mount Tremper in upstate New York. His thoughtful and beautiful book is a permanent resident on my library table, and there is rarely a week when I don't pick it up and read a page or two, usually a whole chapter. There is much food for thought in this book.

Arts such as painting, calligraphy, drama, music, poetry, the tea ceremony and flower arranging have been part of Zen practice for centuries, and they are seen as creative pursuits existing far beyond the narrow and well travelled terrain of training and technique — "no mind", suchness, mystery, playfulness, and an awareness of the fleeting nature of life are understood to be as essential to full creative life as study and apprenticeship are for a beginning artist.

I am learning (slowly) to cultivate Zen mind when creating something, to enter what Dogen called "whole body and mind seeing", a state in which subject and object, seer and seen, self and "other" are merged and become one seamless entity. That means not fussing, trusting one's self, and letting go of the need to prove anything artistically with pen, camera or paintbrush (or anything else for that matter) — cultivating "clean drive" and allowing the work in progress to flow right through one and onto the canvas, paper or film. It may take many lifetimes to get there, but perhaps there will come a day when I am no longer just the scribe, photographer or sometime painter, but also the pen, the camera, the paintbrush — and the view.

In the meantime, I take a lot of terrible photographs, write some very bad poetry and paint canvases which no one in her right mind would consider hanging behind the bathroom door, but what a fabulous interesting journey this is.

That Cold March Ramble

Winter's late week return to the Lanark Highlands was not entirely unforseen — one can reasonably expect the long white season to linger in deep forest hollows and make surprise appearances until April at the earliest.

When winter finally retreats, the woods green up rapidly, and within a short time the whole forest is carpeted in Bloodroot, Trilliums, and Dutchman's Breeches, small blossoms of Spring Beauty and purple Wood Violets. No quiet and subtle entrance here for Lady Spring, but an triumphant fanfare, running footsteps, an explosion of shaggy green leafage and a riotous profusion of blooms bursting forth, almost within minutes. . . .

Last night in my sleep I was wandering along in a cloud of wildflowers and lacy green foliage and listening to a flock of grosbeaks singing in the trees overhead. (Sigh) early days yet, and those dreams will have to sustain me for another several weeks — at present the Lanark woods are a realm of snow and deep blue shadow, and so they will remain for quite a while.

Thoughts on the Vernal Equinox

Now on the twentieth day of March, light and darkness are in perfect balance, and according to ancients and astronomers, this is the first day of Spring.

There was little or no Spring in evidence here in the Lanark Highlands yesterday - it was very cold and windy, and there was an abundance of hard icy snow on my favorite walking trails which made the Sunday pottering something of a treacherous exercise. As cold, windy and precarious going as the woodland paths were yesterday, I indulged in a small Spring Equinox custom which is all my own, sliding carefully down a glistening ice-bound hill to the spring in the woods, then perching on a large rock nearby, listening to the water for an hour or so and quieting the breath until my own thoughts flowed as effortlessly as the icy water beside me.

Yesterday's sitting exercise by the stream did not include birdsong, but from my cold place among the cedars, I summoned the Springtime within, and amid the morning's fluently cursive thoughts by the water, I was surrounded by the uplifted voices of woodland grosbeaks and migrating warblers.

Timeless blessings of Ostara and the Spring Equinox to all of you,

Cate

A Slowly Greening Meadow

Fields are resilient and eternally hopeful entities, and they do not wait long to regenerate, sending fragile shoots and tendrils of green forth before the winter's snows have settled back into the earth. Amid these dried grasses of last summer's harvest are small islands of green nestled among the feathery drifts of gold and brown.

After a few days of Spring weather here, we are back into winter, a renewed winter which makes hard ice underfoot and sends raw winds scouring across the hills, poking frigid fingers through boots, gloves and parks, stinging one's face and lacerating all exposed skin. In spite of the winter weather, my fields in Lanark continue to send out their trusting sprigs, reminding me that even on such a cold day, there is life in the earth below.

Friday's Sunset

I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of stars in the sky, watching the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and of immensity above. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Tonight, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and Listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.
Linda Hogan, Dwellings

Beannacht (For St. Patrick's Day)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

John O'Donahue, Echoes of Memory

The Returning

Tuesday's full moon brought a special gift, the return of the Canada Geese to northern fields. Skeins and skeins of the majestic birds flew over the little blue house all night long, several hundred of them passing overhead before dawn. Huddled under an heirloom quilt and deep in my dreams, I heard jubilant honking and the rhythmic beating of great wings and knew that my favorite birds had come home. Hallelujah, the geese have returned.............

Rails and Fences

The woods in Lanark are full of surprises, and I am never sure what I shall find when I go rambling among the trees. Late last autumn on a deep woods walk, I discovered the remains of a capacious cedar log cabin in a secluded grove far from the road. The cabin was without roof or windows, but the cedar logs of which it was crafted are durable, and the walls stand proud, alone and abandoned in their sunny wooded clearing. There are no artifacts, no old bottles, rusted knives or bits of crockery laying about, so it is difficult to figure out what uses the cabin fulfilled in its day, but it was probably used as a sleeping cabin by loggers in the late nineteenth century - the property is crisscrossed by old logging trails and lavishly studded with the stumps of huge white cedar trees removed by hand and skidded out by horses many years ago

Here and there in the woods are panels of old split rail fence marching short distances into the trees and stopping suddenly, brought to unexpected termination by rocky outcroppings, granite gorges and beaver ponds. The weathered cedar rails have a wonderful dry silvery patina, and they are silent reminders of what life must have been like in the beginning, of the strength, resilience and obdurate self sufficiency needed to carve out a life in the wilds.

Whenever I find another old rail fence, I think of the first settlers here, gazing in astonishment at the panorama of endless pine clad ridges and valleys before them and knowing in their blood and bones that they had come home. I think too of the grueling work which lay ahead of them in clearing land and putting up cabins before winter arrived and the first snows fell. In reminding me of the past, the old rail fences continue to be of valuable service, long after their makers have departed, and I am reminded too that we are merely caretakers of this place.

March's Full Moon of Awakening

March's litany of full moon names comprise a cantrip which sings of burgeoning springtime, of melting snow, high winds, birds returning, new life and green things emerging from the earth. The season of long white nights has ended, and when the astronomical Vernal Equinox (Oestara) arrives on March 20, day and night will be perfectly balanced in length.

For me, this is the "Moon of Earth Awakening" and a time of sylvan alchemy. What are my own markers for this season? I think of black bears awakening from their hibernation, of Saw-Whet Owls (known in the Lanark Highlands as "sugar birds") singing in the forest, of sap being gathered and brewed into maple syrup in great cauldrons and vats in the woods, of geese and ducks returning north, of the Great Horned Owls who are nurturing their young in an old oak tree on my place in Lanark.

Alder Moon, Awakening Moon, Big Winds Moon, Blossoming Moon, Bud Moon, Catching Fish Moon, Chaste Moon, Cold's End Moon, Crow Moon, Crust on Snow Moon, Daffodil Moon, Death Moon, Deer Moon, Eagle Moon, Flower Shower Moon, Flowers Moon, Goose Moon, Green Moon, Growth Begins Moon, Hertha's Moon, Hyacinth Moon, Kono Moon, Lenten Moon, Little Bears Moon, Little Spring Moon, Longer Days Moon, Maple Sugar Moon, Moon of Opening Hands, Moon of the Crane, Moon of the Whispering Wind, Moon of Winds, Moon When Buffalo Cows Drop Their Calves, Moon When the Leaves Break Forth, Moon When the Geese Return, Moose Hunting Moon, Plow Moon, Princess Flower Moon, Purple Glory Tree Moon, Rebirth Moon, Renewal Moon, Sap Moon, Seed Moon, Sleepy Moon, Snow Melting Moon, Snowshoe Breaking Moon, Spring Moon, Storm Moon, Sucker Fishing Moon, Sugar Making Moon, Third Moon, Tibouchina Moon, Trail Sit Along Moon, Tree Peony Moon, Violet Moon, Water Stands in the Ponds Moon, Wind Strong Moon, Windy Moon, Worm Moon

Grey Day, Great Grey Owl

Sunday was a dark rainy day in the Lanark Highlands, but I stood outside underneath the cedars for some time, attired in wellies and anorak and becoming soaking wet in the process, but happy as a clam and looking at this magnificent owl for almost an hour. A visitation from a rare Great Grey is the stuff of which dreams are made. This owl of the far north only visits in winter when her native place is so frozen and snow bound that she is unable to find food underneath the snow. My friend will be returning to her northern home in the next week or so, and in spite of the dense soaking rain, I was happy to see her yesterday.

What To Do. . . .

Early Riser

Am I not among the early risers
and the long-distance walkers?

Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider
the perfection of the morning star
above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees
blue in the first light?
Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though
sheets of water flowed over them
though it is only wind, that common thing
free to everyone, and everything?

Have I not thought, for years, what it would be
worthy to do, and then gone off, barefoot and with a silver pail,
to gather blueberries,
thus coming, as I think, upon a right answer?

What will ambition do for me that the fox, appearing suddenly
at the top of the field,
her eyes sharp and confident as she stared into mine,
has not already done?

What countries, what visitations,
what pomp
would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods
on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?

Here is an amazement -- once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

Above the modest house and the palace -- the same darkness.
Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.
Above the child who will recover and the child who will
not recover, the same energies roll forward,
from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.

I bow down.

Mary Oliver (From the West Wind)

Light, Wood and Snow

I shall miss the snow fences when they are gone, hopefully within a few weeks. All winter long, whenever Cassie and I went for our walks, we always seemed to find ourselves standing somewhere near a snow fence. The patterns formed by the chance meetings of sun, snow and these rustic fences provided us with endless entertainment, and the shadows and shapes were never the same from day to day.

We love the fact that snow fences are seldom straight - they list every which way, and they lean at crazy angles, more so as the snow begins to melt away and they draw closer to the earth. They billow, ripple and flow, curving to accommodate trees, frozen streams, big boulders and half buried park benches. They curl gracefully around buildings, parking meters, fire hydrants and street lights. They weave their way merrily across snow drowned hills and around icy parking lots, and there is seldom a straight line to be seen.

Casual, carefree and downright insouciant, winter snow fences do their own thing and in their own time. They ramble wherever they please, shunning the old "up and down" routine, straight lines and linear thinking and choosing something more organic instead, rhythmic flow and gently undulating contours.

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep

when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun's midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

Jeanne Lohmann

On My Library Table: Ex Libris IX

Wind Cloud, Martha Glessing
(Authorhouse) ISBN 403332207

Once there were two women who were executives working in the glamorous world of American public television. Both women loved mountains and the natural world, and they shared a deep love of the Himalayas, Oriental philosophy, art, music and journeying.

On being introduced in a television production studio, they recognize each other instinctively, and later they come to realize that they have been friends and journeying companions through many lifetimes - they remember meeting for the first time in a remote bardo high in the mountains called Wind Cloud. Although their career paths will diverge widely over the years, and they often find themselves living in opposite corners of the country, they remain close friends, for their bond of friendship is karmic, and it transcends time, distance and life itself.

Marisa loses her job and moves to California to live a quiet life far from the madding crowd. Jen makes a career change and moves to Colorado where she falls in love and is diagnosed with cancer a short time later - she dies after undergoing surgery and prolonged chemotherapy. In sharing their memories before Jen's death, the two friends find their way back to their mountain bardo again, and they derive comfort in knowing that they will meet in another life and continue on their journey together.

The late Martha Glessing of Inverness, California, was a journalist, television producer, writer and activist working in areas related to ecology, sustainability and human rights. This beautiful book relates the story of her deep and enduring friendship with Jeanne Mulcahy who passed away from cancer some years ago. Martha died in late 2003 after her own long battle with cancer. Wind Cloud was her first book, published not long before she died.

An Officer and a Gentleman

I wanted to write something about Brigadier this morning and say goodbye. In life, the big guy was magnificent, a gentle giant, a towering and dignified presence on the street and a fine police officer who possessed a noble spirit and a huge heart. He was well loved by his colleagues and by those who came to know him while he was out working his beat. Brigs was fatally wounded in the line of duty several days ago by a sadistic hit and run driver who deliberately drove into the horse at top speed, and it was necessary to euthanize the gentle giant at the scene of the attack. I cried when I heard the news.

There was a fair bit of opposition here to the public memorial service which was held yesterday for Brigadier by his fellow officers (a memorial service for a horse???), and the opposition was first cranked up and then stoked by the media, who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves - I'm just disgusted by the whole flaming lot of them. Brigadier deserved his memorial service, and he deserved much more than that.

May the big guy run free in the wide, green and eternally sunny meadows beyond the fields we know, kicking up his heels and whinnying, covering the ground in great floating strides and leaps and bounds as he did in life whenever he had a chance to run. He was poetry and power in motion.

Saving Hope

Because we spill not only milk

Knocking it over with an elbow
When we reach to wipe a small face
But also spill seed on soil we thought was fertile but isn't,
And also spill whole lives, and only later see in fading light
How much is gone and we hadn't intended it
Because we tear not only cloth
Thinking to find a true edge and instead making only a hole
But also tear friendships when we grow
And whole mountainsides because we are so many
And we want to live right where black oaks lived,
Once very quietly and still
Because we forget not only what we are doing in the kitchen
And have to go back to the room we were in before,
Remember why it was we left
But also forget entire lexicons of joy
And how we lost ourselves for hours
Yet all that time were clearly found and held
And also forget the hungry not at our table
Because we weep not only at jade plants caught in freeze
And precious papers left in rain
But also at legs that no longer walk
Or never did, although from the outside they look like most others
And also weep at words said once as though
They might be rearranged but which
Once loose, refuse to return and we are helpless
Because we are imperfect and love so
Deeply we will never have enough days,
We need the gift of starting over, beginning
Again: just this constant good, this
Saving hope.
Nancy Shaffer

The Ash Tree By the Trail

I often think that my life can be measured simply by the number of great trees in it, along with cups of tea, stacks of books, tattered umbrellas, scraps of paper, odd gloves, hiking boots and walking sticks.

The towering ash tree along the trail in Lanark is welcoming and stately, and she is an old friend and a dear companion, someone to whom I bow respectfully on my weekend forest walks. She lives near my favourite woodland trail in a small round grove which is filled with her descendents, and her exquisitely entangled boughs leap and dance as the wind flows through them. Now in the blustery month of March, she resembles a great ship under sail, masted high and straight and moving along in a veritable symphony of sighs and creaks. Every chilly gust of wind liberates clouds of fine powdery snow from her swaying branches and sets it flying free and fast among the root children who dwell in the grove.

Labyrinth Concealed

Only an eccentric would consider treading a labyrinth on a blustery day like Friday, but yesterday's desire to tread the outdoor 7-circuit Cretan labyrinth at All Saints' Church in Westboro Village was (alas) not one which I could gratify.

After a fast walk in mid afternoon (bent over almost double to avoid the excoriating north wind), I arrived at the courtyard of the church on Richmond Road and found to my dismay that the labyrinth is now concealed beneath heaps of snow, and snow drifts are climbing steadily toward the rafters of this lovely old stone building. Not a single stone of the labyrinth can be seen this winter, and there is no sign of the meditation space where I spent happy moments of reflection last fall.

A sign beside the weathered oak entrance reads, "If you are in need of food, please call..." One of the many things I admire about the community at All Saints' (and that includes the architecture of the old stone church and the labyrinth, of course), is the heartfelt commitment of its members to the health and well being of the village.

This year, All Saints' are holding a Vernal Equinox Labyrinth Walk to celebrate the changing season as they usually do, but they will be using their indoor labyrinth, and participants are encouraged to bring their own percussion instruments and bells to liven things up.

Superior Sunset

I've always loved liminal moments and threshold places, but find I have a special affinity for them now, and that may have something to do with the fact that I am moving into my elder years and a liminal time in my own life. Sunsets are a great pleasure, and wherever I am and whatever I am doing, I pause in my thoughts and activities and step outside to to watch the sun go down. On nights when a glorious sunset is attended by an an equally glorious moonrise, there is magic all around, and the air is filled with a vast thrumming indefinable mystery.

This is not the Lanark Highlands, but a wild rocky place which is equally dear to me, and one I go back to frequently in late afternoon woolgathering and nighttime dreams. The rocky north shore of Lake Superior was known as "Algoma country" long before Tom Thomson and later the members of the Group of Seven put up their easels there in the early 1900's and took out their paints.

There is a wealth of paintings "out there" which depict sunsets on Lake Superior's rocky shores, and that is not surprising, for there is absolutely nothing on this island earth like an Algoma sunset. The setting sun goes down over the great inland sea like a ball of fire: it flames over the icy northern waves, it caresses the islands way out in the lake, dances over the Sibley peninsula (which my ancestors named "the Sleeping Giant"), and it plays on the great weathered rocks nearby - it lingers in the shallow pools along the shoreline, and (here) on one thoughtful and very contented observer.

From my present and far off place, I feel the remembered warmth of the setting sun on northern Lake Superior and hear the waves hitting the shore. I pull my cloak more closely around me and remember how bitterly cold the wind was, how haunting its song. I remember the burnished perfection of the slowly ebbing light.

On My Library Table: Ex Libris VIII

Summerland, Michael Chabon
(Hyperion) ISBN: 064156855X

"A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day."
Michael Chabon, Summerland

Summerland is an enchanted baseball field on the tip of Clam Island, Washington, a green place where the sun always shines in summer, the sky is perfectly blue, and it never rains during baseball season. Eleven year old Ethan Feld is a reluctant member of "Ruth's Fluff n' Fold Roosters", a little league baseball team which plays all its games at Summerland, and he is the worst baseball player in the whole history of Clam Island. Ethan and his recently widowed father, a freelance dirigible designer, are recent comers to Clam Island, having moved there from Colorado Springs a short time after the death of Ethan's mother.

One afternoon during a baseball game, the unthinkable happens, and it begins to rain on Summerland. The fairies (ferishers) who watch over Summerland and ensure its eternally fine weather are under attack by ancient evil forces, and not only Summerland, but the World Tree (or lodgepole) and all of existence are in grave peril.

Ethan is recruited by a mysterious old baseball (or hero) scout named Chiron "Ringfinger" Brown as a mythic hero or champion, someone who will undertake the heroic quest, pick up his baseball bat and save the four worlds from certain destruction by Coyote and his evil rade. Ringfinger has been in the business for centuries, and he counts Achilles, King Arthur, Toussaint, Crazy Horse and Ulysses S. Grant among his finds, but an eleven year old boy is something else again, particularly an eleven year old boy with no skill at baseball.

The fate of the universe will be decided by a cosmic baseball game in which Ethan, his friend Jennifer T, and their motley team of ferishers, shades, werefolk, giants, changelings and one lonely sasquatch named Taffy, take on Coyote and his demonic baseball team on the playing field at Diamond Green. Old Man Coyote created the worlds, stealing rain from Thunderbird and fire from Old Man Wood himself, and he is the author of the designated hitter rule. He invented the game of baseball, but he doesn't play by the rules - any rules. Along the journey, Ethan will discover that he is a phenomenal baseball catcher, and his friend Jennifer T. will learn that she is a natural born pitcher with a sizzling fast ball and a perfect slider.

Summerland is pure magic, and it reads like a glorious interweaving of The Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia and Bull Durham all rolled into one book, a heroic quest in which a vast array of folklore, fairytale motifs, aboriginal beliefs, shamanism and mythology form key elements. Within Summerland's pages, we encounter the realms of ancient Norse mythology, Ragged Rock (Ragnarok or Armageddon), the World Tree or lodgepole (Yggadrasil), the sacred well which nourishes the World Tree and the serpent who lives in that well. We meet oracular clams, and we encounter old Trickster himself and his evil rade along with a whole crowd of demons, gremlins, goblins, frost giants, ogres, werewolves, ghosts, changelings, shapeshifters and sasquatches.

For some reason, Summerland is marketed as a children's book, and I suppose that makes me the oldest kid around, but that is quite all right. The book took me right back to my softball playing days and the perfect golden summers of my childhood, and I loved it. Thankfully, I did not have to confront my dismal juvenile batting average - I was a far worse player than Ethan Feld.

Questo Muro

Quando mi vide star pur fermo e duro turbato un poco disse: "Or vedi figlio: tra Beatrice e te e questo muro."
- Dante, Purgatorio XXVII

You will come at a turning of the trail
to a wall of flame

After the hard climb and the exhausted dreaming

you will come to a place where he
with whom you have walked this far
will stop, will stand

beside you on the treacherous steep path
and stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame

that blocks your vision of what
comes after. And that one
who you thought would accompany you always,

who held your face
tenderly a little while in his hands---
who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass
and washed from your cheeks the soot, the tear-tracks---

he is telling you now
that all that stands between you
and everything you have known since the beginning

is this: this wall. Between yourself
and the beloved, between yourself and your joy,
the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft

of sunlight on the rock, the song.
Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume

whatever solidness this is
you call your life, and send
you out, a tremor of heat,

a radiance, a changed
flickering thing?