Every green room of the forest planted: Trillium and quince, alder and salmonberry, … —Robert Sund
You could go on, I know— green room to green room, names scrolling off your tongue like bark from madrona trunks. Snowberry and salal, Douglas fir and elderberry. Have I told you cedars are my favorites?
I see more rust-colored cedar boughs; “flagging,” a mutual friend explains. For me a new meaning. Things are changing, but this flagging— natural, this time of year. Nothing to worry about. Have I told you I’m feeling my age, am more prone to cliché? Natural, this time of life. Weakness and pain in my right arm is new to me. Go on. I’ll sit here and rest, with the old meaning— in this warming up, drying out rust-colored room.
I’m sorry for harm I’ve caused. Why do you think I started walking, breathing in the ragged poison bouquet of particulates and exhaust? Here, spiderwebs are mostly intact and blackberries flourish. At the tip of my old hiking boot, holey, a beetle evades my attention, strolls under a leaf from a trailing blackberry vine, hides. For me a new beetle; no name scrolls from my tongue.
I lift the leaf, only to say, Hi. I haven’t seen you before. You’re safe. I’m uninterested in causing further harm. Should I buy new hiking boots? It depends. Have I told you our time together has been holy, a benediction? Go on. There is nothing to fear. Don’t worry. Know I loved you. Go on.
Yesterday I was early for a meeting with a friend. Decided to walk around the block when a building caught my eye that had huge photographs of seniors mounted against its facade. Mind you, I have walked down that street many times, since I often go to Fleur de Lis, the cafe where I was expected. It’s strange how attention waxes and wanes.
Turns out it was the Hollywood SeniorCenter that I consciously perceived for the first time. A window display spoke of a project that paired middle schoolers with seniors for photography, one, as I was told when I entered the halls to inquire, that had happened years back.
The friendly manager, apparently not bothered by my curiosity disrupting her work, told me of something more current which I thought I’d share.
This Friday, June 28, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm – 1820 NE 40th Ave, Portland, OR 97212 – they have an event that introduces a topic even richer than the mouthful of a title: The Grandma Reporter Intimacy Issue Magazine Launch Party.
It might be late(r) in life but the issue of intimacy remains a focus, particularly in a world preoccupied with body image and visions of eternal youth. The Grandma Reporter seems out to crack stereotypes, provide pragmatic advice and encourage fun. How can you not adore a Manifesto like this?
The Grandma Reporter (TGR) is a publication committed to the subculture of senior females and their rich worlds existing across the earth, where elderly women have lived forever. TGR aspires to be accessible to young and old but especially to elderly women. We hope to energetically connect our readers, contributors and interviewees in a senior female culture movement. We believe in: proudly declaring your age and keeping it a mystery; dressing up, down and from the heart; talking about death and thinking about past and future lives; walking sticks, wheelchairs and flying in your dreams; wrinkles, bulges, spider veins and bunions; ‘old’, ‘elderly’, ‘senior’, ‘nag’, ‘ageless’, ‘prune’, ‘sage’; discussing disease, incontinence and great television shows; sharing stories of crime, adventure and nonconforming genders; considering the struggles of growing old in a young, technology-focused world; food, genes and other things passed through generations; uncovering long loves, heartbreaks and sex that evolves with age; swimming as a magical way to keep fit in spite of on-land mobility challenges.
– TGR editor, Xi Jie Ng
Ok, those of us personally familiar with a variety of concepts mentioned above, surely will.
I could not tell if “growing up is” optimal or optional. Not sure which one I prefer, either.
———————-
It was time to visit with Judith Arcana, so back to the café I went. We met during the making of a documentary where I photographed her, and have had many thought-provoking conversations since. The poet, writer and activist just published a new edition of her book Grace Paley’s Life Stories, an unusual literary biography based on countless interviews with Paley during the 80’s. From feminist consciousness to political activism of Paley, Arcana’s perceptive narrative triggered a spontaneous “It takes one to know one…” in me. Folks around here can pick up the book at: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, 523 SE Morrison. Other wise you can order it here.
I wanted to close the arc back to early, though. Here is one of Arcana’s poems that struck me for both (familiar) content and (unfamiliar) form.
Eight
Awake and asleep or both or between I traveled in my bed, voyaging grey waves and storm foam under black skies ripped by fierce winds, or
The bed bobbed and eddied in slow breaking circles of sunlight on flat green water; or rocked on smooth blue pools, riding slow swells easily.
And every time, great sharks swam round my bed: I saw their strict fins, saw they were not orcas marked like magpies, mimes and clowns. Not dolphins.
I would lie rigid under the sheet: to stay alive I must not move, not stand up against the headboard, brace muscles for action,
Raise the sheet into a sail; I must not sit up when they swim alongside, toothed skin raking the mattress, gill slashes red above the water line.
From the smallest corners of my eyes I’d see them thrust their thick torpedo snouts from the water; they rose with gaping gullets, baring mythic teeth.
But the bed did not grow sodden, capsize, slip below the surface and slide me paralyzed under water to the circling sharks’ open throats.
In the darkened theater of childhood, I turned away from the screen, from the shadow of danger. Closing my eyes, I learned nothing of death, only of fear.
You may choose today between a poem by a man who prefers to be a mystery and a man whose wife descended into madness. How is that for an offer on a dull Wednesday morning? My way out, of course, given that I am busy with a larger writing project and so need to borrow others’ words.
Both poems made me think (one of them I liked), and each offered an opportunity to be paired with some of the pictures I recently took at a barbershop window and a market stand (Grindstone – Knife and Tool Sharpening), respectively.
When I saw the knife sharpener he was too busy to talk to me.
His partner did instead, revealing that that trade had been handed down for several generations. Her grandfather’s picture – he was an immigrant from Italy – was among the display in front of her.
She expressed deep reverence for tradition.
I expressed awe at these two:
Here is the poem by Kotaro Takamura ( 1883-1956 / Japan) who documented his wife’s descent in much agonizing poetry.
A Man Sharpening A Knife
In silence a knife is being sharpened. Though the sun is already sinking, it is still being sharpened. The back and the front tightly placed, the whetting water changed, it is being sharpened again. What on earth is intended to be made? As though without knowing even that, concentrating the mood of the moment in his brow, behind green leaves, the man sharpens the knife. Bit by bit this man’s sleeve tears. The mustache of this man becomes white. Resentment? Necessity? A vacant mind? This man is simply endless. Is he pursuing the nth degree?
————————-
Well as you know I am interested, to the nth degree, in linking topics together, and since in my mind a barbershop needs knife sharpeners to deal with dull shears, scissors, razor knives etc. I found the connection. In truth I REALLY wanted to get the photos out from this window, which held strong visual interest for me.
On offer, then, is this by Larry Bradley, who is something of an enigma, with only three poems online and a bio that stresses achievement and is silent on anything else.
Today’s blog serves as a Thank You note to a dear friend who invited us to a splendid dinner on Saturday. I chose a poem from Ben Jonson (1572-1637) because he, like our host, was a purveyor of literary criticism and known as someone who put an emphasis on critical learning.
All cook books
For one like me who hates to cook and loves to eat, these occasions are blissful. Cold fennel soup, rack of lamb with asparagus and potatoes, and a divine Pavlova with raspberries were to the the belly what the table talk was to my mind: stimulating, satisfying, and ultimately providing sustenance extending beyond the evening.
Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I Do equally desire your company; Not that we think us worthy such a guest, But that your worth will dignify our feast With those that come, whose grace may make that seem Something, which else could hope for no esteem. It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates The entertainment perfect, not the cates. Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate, An olive, capers, or some better salad Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen, If we can get her, full of eggs, and then Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony Is not to be despaired of, for our money; And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I’ll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some May yet be there, and godwit, if we can; Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe’er, my man Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book to us, Of which we’ll speak our minds, amidst our meat; And I’ll profess no verses to repeat.
To this, if ought appear which I not know of, That will the pastry, not my paper, show of. Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be; But that which most doth take my Muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine; Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as so their lines, till now had lasted. Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring, Are all but Luther’s beer to this I sing. Of this we will sup free, but moderately, And we will have no Pooley, or Parrot by, Nor shall our cups make any guilty men;
But, at our parting we will be as when We innocently met. No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight.
Source: Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1974)
Since the decor of French posters was catching my eye, we shall have some French music that celebrates the senses: it’s actually a sweet little film
Today you get a simple (could not echo the rhyming) translation of a poem that appeared in a German newspaper yesterday. Written by Cornelius Oettle and titled My Homeland, it captures for me something essentially true for us here in the US as well, including the current debate of labeling camps as what they are – but also other developments. The tenor about willful blindness and subsequent surprise applies to this discussion as well, as was so perfectly demonstrated yesterday by Ta-Nehisi Coats.
Photographs were taken at Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp that was not officially an extermination camp.
Where Nazis teach school, Where Nazis complain on the internet, Where Nazis appear on nightly TV, Where Nazis buy Facebook friends, Where Nazis use tricks to cheat on taxes, Where Nazis trend on Twitter, Where Nazis are not blocked, Where Nazis fly to Mallorca, Where Nazis are contributors to Focus (weekly German magazine,) Where Nazis remain in the police force, Where Nazis serve as soldiers in the military, Where Nazis dine with reporters, Where Nazis invite Reinhold Beckman, Where Nazis don’t threaten anyone’s reputation, Where Nazis blog for Springer (rightwing mainstream publishing house,) Where Nazis vigilantly jog through Chemniz, Where Nazis run soccer clubs, Where Nazis wave fan club banners, Where Nazis walk alongside of Hoecke (AfD), Where Nazis don’t see any Nazis, Where Nazis prepare for war games, Where Nazi rap runs high in the music charts, Where Nazis bring rock to Themar, Where Nazis sing a song for you, Where Nazis means number of clicks, Where Nazis ring bells for Hitler, Where Nazis appear in throngs on the talk shows, Where Nazis interrupt book expos, Where Nazis demand upper limits, Where Nazis order true fruit smoothies, Where Nazis support Victor Orban, Where Nazis protect the constitution, Where Nazis listen to Rainer Wendt (a former German policeman and since 2007 Federal Chairman of the German Police Union (DPolG), Where Nazis disrupt the rescue of drowning refugees, Where Nazis shred the files of Nazis, Where Nazis destroy memorials, Where Nazis grieve for a dog, Where Nazis regret the comment of birdshit (inhalation to the Holocaust,) Where Nazis found Nazi villages, Where Nazis like to burn down refugee homes, Where Nazis form alliances, Where Nazis shoot foreigners, Where Nazis annually whistle to Wagner, Where Nazis kill members of the CDU (a prominent government director was shot to death on the terrace of his own house by a neonazi last week – the first assassination of a politician since the Weimar republic) – there everyone is wondering right now, where do all these Nazis come from?
The Reuters photo below was attached to the publication.
Plastic garden dwarves with their arms outstretched in the stiff-armed Hitler salute are pictured in the Zeise cinema to promote the movie premier “Little Germans” in Hamburg, Germany May 9, 2019. The garden dwarves with their arms outstretched have been part of the 2008 installation “Dance with the Devil” by German artist Ottmar Hoerl in Germany, and first time with 700 dwarves in Ghent, Belgium, with the title “Poisoned”. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer
Music is from an album by the Grenzgaenger who collected songs from the anti-fascist resistance, many derived from interviews with camp survivors who recalled what was sung.
Yesterday I learned that Joy Harjo has been appointed as new US poet laureate, the first Native American to fill this role. If you are a regular reader you might remember that I linked to one of her deeply moving poems in an earlier blog this year, which I am attaching below.
For today, I’ll let her do the talking – or the singing as the case may be: the recitation of her poem towards the second half of the clip is literally through song.
I have no photographs of Oklahoma where Harjo is from. But I learned that the state generates more than a third of its energy with the help of wind turbines. So images of them, photographed in WA, have to stand in.
There is a bit of music by Muscogee/Creek Indians and a fascinating discussion about politics in this archival video – long though, only if you have time..
By now you might have noticed that this week’s blogging is dedicated to the beautiful things in my immediate vicinity – bugs, bees, bird, flowers, you name it. It was an attempt to remind myself that you do not have to travel far to find wonder – I had just declined an invitation to a wedding in an exotic location, my (now thwarted) lust for adventure severely at odds with my desire to reduce my carbon foot print, and to boycott a destination life-style, among other reasons.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with travel – it will always be one of my favorite things. I just want to be more conscious in what kind of travel I choose and for what reason.
Sunday’s chance encounter with the hummingbird (Kolibri) in these first two photographs, and the many more I found in my archives, was the best possible reassurance that I want for nothing in the beauty-and-awe department.
Hummingbirds are important pollinators; the fluttering of their wings moves loose pollen around until it finds its destination. Their bills are often covered with sticky pollen that gets transferred to the next flower when they move on to take another nectar sip somewhere else. And pollen even sticks to their heads when they move deep into a blossom, brushing again the anther. True friends of any garden.
Below is a poem by Pablo Neruda that paints with words the colors and the joy you feel when near these oscillating creatures.
Ode to the Hummingbird
The hummingbird in flight is a water-spark, an incandescent drip of American fire, the jungle’s flaming resume, a heavenly, precise rainbow: the hummingbird is an arc, a golden thread, a green bonfire!
Oh tiny living lightning, when you hover in the air, you are a body of pollen, a feather or hot coal, I ask you: What is your substance? Perhaps during the blind age of the Deluge, within fertility’s mud, when the rose crystallized in an anthracite fist, and metals matriculated each one in a secret gallery perhaps then from a wounded reptile some fragment rolled, a golden atom, the last cosmic scale, a drop of terrestrial fire took flight, suspending your splendor, your iridescent, swift sapphire.
You doze on a nut, fit into a diminutive blossom; you are an arrow, a pattern, a coat-of-arms, honey’s vibrato, pollen’s ray; you are so stouthearted– the falcon with his black plumage does not daunt you: you pirouette, a light within the light, air within the air. Wrapped in your wings, you penetrate the sheath of a quivering flower, not fearing that her nuptial honey may take off your head!
From scarlet to dusty gold, to yellow flames, to the rare ashen emerald, to the orange and black velvet of our girdle gilded by sunflowers, to the sketch like amber thorns, your Epiphany, little supreme being, you are a miracle, shimmering from torrid California to Patagonia’s whistling, bitter wind. You are a sun-seed, plumed fire, a miniature flag in flight, a petal of silenced nations, a syllable of buried blood, a feather of an ancient heart, submerged
The osprey, or more specifically the western osprey (Pandion haliaetus) has many names. It is also known as sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk — and is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. I don’t remember all the details, but some early scientist screwed up his Greek mythology memory bits when naming the bird. Savigny, the ornithologists, remembered something about a Greek king named Pandion and a bird. Never mind that it was his daughters and their awful husband who were turned into birds…. here, I looked it up. You’re welcome.
At least I know the common name – in contrast to one of my favorite poets of all time, Billy Collins….but then again he makes a poem out of it that, just like yesterday’s, so very much values connectivity. Naming. Knowing. Taking in.
The poem I really wanted to think about today, though, is the next one – hey, it’s Friday, you have all weekend to read a double dose.
Here is the bio blip from the poet’s website:
HAI-DANG PHAN is the author of Reenactments: Poems and Translations (Sarabande, 2019). His writing has been recognized by fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the American Literary Translators Association, and has appeared in Lana Turner, New England Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2016. Born in Vietnam, he grew up in Wisconsin and currently lives in Iowa City.
Osprey
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is of course an American multi-mission, tiltrotor military aircraft with both vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), and short takeoff and landing. – Note, it is a military transport aircraft. I thought in this week where the saber rattling towards Iran was drowned out by the concerted din of the legal attacks on abortion, we might pause and think.
Two musical moments: Haydn’s description of an eagle soaring on his strong wings…
and, since my role this week was to catch the birds for you, a true war horse, or should it be war bird….Mozart and I wish you a delightful weekend!
I have never seen a dying bird. Plenty of dead ones, mind, but never one at the very moment. Small mercies, I used to believe. That was before today’s poem came across my way, opening my eyes to the connection a small act of compassion can establish.
Or perhaps simply an act of seeing. Linda Hogan, the poet I chose for today, a member of the Chikasaw nation, and a volunteer and consultant for wildlife rehabilitation and endangered species programs, reminds us: “Between the human and all the rest / lies only an eyelid.”
(And before you worry, all images today are birds so very much alive.)
Hogan, author of several poetry collections, has published essays for the Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club, her honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Nature Writing, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her fiction was listed for the Pulitzer.
If you want to give yourself a gift or simply a lasting distraction from the current abysmal news, check out her volume Rounding the Human Corners. Barbara Kingsolver said:“Linda Hogan’s vision is breathtaking.” Who am I to argue.
The Heron
Linda Hogan
Herons are most elegant, until they open their beak – out comes the screechiest croak. it always makes me laugh. Music, then, shall be something to make us at least smile, if not laugh. I am thinking of Ligeti –
When looking for a poem that would fit with today’s bird images, I came across, just like earlier this week, yet another accomplished Australian poet I had never heard of. The poem is not exactly matching my goal which was to describe birds hanging out on infrastructure rather than trees. But it alludes to the fact that we take some things as common, if not vulgar, and delight in the unfamiliar, when “the truth is that nothing with you is common at all.”
That resonates deeply with my own approach to birds; the passion is not all about imagery of freedom or escape in flight, but also about their tenacity and ability to adapt to and thrive in altered environments. The more common birds excel at this, masters of survival in a world of stone and steel.
Birds do adapt, most cleverly so, but they might need a helping hand when living in noisy traffic – song birds change their tunes so that they can be heard over the din, but that means the tune loses attractiveness to potential mates….
What about music? Funny you ask. Recent experiments have cleverly exposed common urban birds to music and tried to figure out their preferences. Musical taste seems to vary, with Metallica’s heavy metal attracting more finches than sparrows. However, Debussy ruled, with more birds coming to the feeders set up with Pandorabird than when it played than when it when it was silent. Debussy it shall be! The Preludes, to make my Wednesday morning. Hopefully your’s as well.
