“I HAVE to do this: believe that there is the possibility of reconstitution. I have to be sure of the fact that there will always be those who are already engaged and can be joined, so no one has to go it alone.” Such were the thoughts on my hike last week, when assaulted by the heat and the views of so many oak trees either diseased, or dying, or dead.
The grasses will recover.
So will the wild blackberries, although the fruit dried on the wine, hard little balls of no use to perusing wildlife.
The trees, though, are suffering.
Eventually I made it to sturgeon lake, now just a puddle. Small California sunflowers lined the shores where there is usually water, a golden band screaming: beauty!
The herons and egrets joined the pelicans, some of them roosting in the trees behind the water.
A flock of Western sandpipers, really a murmuration, undulated as a cloud in the air, and looked like blossoms on a tree, in a particular spot. They were miraculous, shimmering, moving hard in the hot air. They are difficult to photograph and to detect, just look closely.
I had to sit down in a shady spot twice during a hike that I used to do briskly, without any sense of fatigue then. Yet, I am still hiking. I am still casting my lot with those who love nature and try to raise consciousness about the climate crisis. I still believe change is possible. And the birds still signal wonder.
Music today is the same mix of sadness and resilience that colored this week – from Poland with decidedly Jewish melodies perfect for the upcoming High Holidays, I’ve been listening intently.
In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
On Auden’s grave marker, in Kirchstetten, Austria.
***
Their Lonely Betters
As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade To all the noises that my garden made, It seemed to me only proper that words Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.
A robin with no Christian name ran through The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew, And rustling flowers for some third party waited To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.
Not one of them was capable of lying, There was not one which knew that it was dying Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme Assumed responsibility for time.
Let them leave language to their lonely betters Who count some days and long for certain letters; We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep: Words are for those with promises to keep.
W.H. Auden’s 1951 poem depicts him thinking out loud in the garden shade, less praise and more lament, in my opinion. At first sight, the poem is presumably about language, which makes us “betters” as a sign of evolutionary development, but also introduces lying and consciousness about how much our days are numbered. Is language something that improves our existence or is it a curse, and we would be better off to be like plants and critters, who thrive in the absence of language?
Our tomatoes
Underneath it is, as so much of Auden’s poetry, about love. The one we wait for, the one which is withheld, the absence of which is felt as loneliness. Words manifesting in broken promises. Auden was known to connect over and over again to Freud’s writings in ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’, which posits a negative relationship between how civilized we are and how happy we might be. The rule, Freud claims, is that humanity will show increasing unhappiness the more civilized we become. Human progress, and note I am oversimplifying his claims here, is closely linked to increases in loneliness and depression. So, there is this whiff of sadness lingering around Auden’s words.
I, on the other hand, was sitting in my garden chair in the shade, too hot to venture anywhere else, eternally grateful for words. They made it possible to read Auden and noticing the link to words written in the 17th century by another poet, Andrew Marvell, in his renowned poem, The Garden. Here is my favorite line:
“(To) a green thought in a green shade.“
Salvia on its way out
The next stanza after this line describes a paradisal state (and he refers indeed to the biblical paradise) until it becomes clear in the stanza after that that a solitary existence won’t do – and things go downhill from there, with Eve’s appearance. But let that wait for another day, for now let the soul glide into the boughs.
Zillions of zinnias
Pictures today obviously from my garden, with eternal gratitude to our friend M. who donated all the tomato starts. We now have regular salad nights with homegrown lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, unless the deer got to the beds first. Speaking of which – one of them, plunked under my plum tree, surely had green thoughts in a green shade, of green plums shifting to a sweeter blue, most likely.
And given that we prefaced this today with an exhortation to praise: I am so eternally grateful for a tree- lined place in the heat, and my heart goes out to the houseless who fight this on asphalted streets and dusty roads. We are so privileged.
Too hot to write. So I borrow words and burrow in the archives to find the matching images. Have not yet made it to the beach so far, a deep regret. And now it’s August, crowded, hot. But looking at these creatures so amenable to metaphors is at least cooling….
Difference
The jellyfish float in the bay shallows like schools of clouds,
a dozen identical — is it right to call them creatures, these elaborate sacks
of nothing? All they seem is shape, and shifting, and though a whole troop
of undulant cousins go about their business within a single wave’s span,
every one does something unlike: this one a balloon open on both ends
but swollen to its full expanse, this one a breathing heart, this a pulsing flower.
This one a rolled condom, or a plastic purse swallowing itself, that one a Tiffany shade,
this a troubled parasol. This submarine opera’s all subterfuge and disguise,
its plot a fabulous tangle of hiding and recognition: nothing but trope,
nothing but something forming itself into figures then refiguring,
sheer ectoplasm recognizable only as the stuff of metaphor. What can words do
but link what we know to what we don’t, and so form a shape?
Which shrinks or swells, configures or collapses, blooms even as it is described
into some unlikely marine chiffon: a gown for Isadora?
Nothing but style. What binds one shape to another
also sets them apart — but what’s lovelier than the shapeshifting
transparence of like and as: clear, undulant words? We look at alien grace,
unfettered by any determined form, and we say: balloon, flower,
heart, condom, opera, lampshade, parasol, ballet. Hear how the mouth,
so full of longing for the world, changes its shape?
Housekeeping first: I am taking part of next week off from the blog, need to spend some time photographing, something that has gotten short shrift over all the writing.
***
I had to laugh at this headline found yesterday in an article in VOX:
“Especially the “if true” part” – UFOs, dead alien pilots, reverse engineering, secret government programs… the rumor mill is at it again, this time through a whistle blower, a former government official named David Grusch, who has worked in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, who gave public testimony before a House of Representatives committee Wednesday.
No evidence provided, just more talk of hear-say. But what I find interesting is this eternal preoccupation with a world “out there,” instead of saving the one we’re currently wrecking, or at least loving it for what it is. I have written about the psychological function of alien narratives previously. Today I will just turn to the tried and true, a poet with whose views I agree more often than not, and whose remarkable ways of getting a point across with seeming ease belying masterful construction always puts me in awe.
She is content enough with our sleepy backwater…
The Ball
As long as nothing can be known for sure (no signals have been picked up yet), as long as Earth is still unlike the nearer and more distant planets,
as long as there’s neither hide nor hair of other grasses graced by other winds, of other treetops bearing other crowns, other animals as well-grounded as our own,
as long as only the local echo has been known to speak in syllables,
as long as we still haven’t heard word of better or worse mozarts, platos, edisons somewhere,
as long as our inhuman crimes are still committed only between humans,
as long as our kindness is still incomparable, peerless even in its imperfection,
as long as our heads packed with illusions still pass for the only heads so packed,
as long as the roofs of our mouths alone still raise voices to high heavens —
let’s act like very special guests of honor at the district-firemen’s ball dance to the beat of the local oompah band, and pretend that it’s the ball to end all balls.
I can’t speak for others — for me this is misery and happiness enough:
just this sleepy backwater where even the stars have time to burn while winking at us unintentionally.
Photographs today are of some of the more alien looking flora I’ve come across this year in this sleepy backwater. Wish it would stay sleepy and not burn up….
Here is a track – Of Beauty – from Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (THE SONG OF THE EARTH). Beautiful music about a beautiful world.
A Bird, came down the Walk – He did not know I saw – He bit an Angle Worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw,
And then, he drank a Dew From a convenient Grass – And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass –
He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad – They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head. –
Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer Home –
Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.
***
I’ve been hanging out in the garden far too much, not able to brave the heat for more adventurous excursions. But I shouldn’t complain, given the number of visitors happily parading in front of the camera, as long as the plants provide sustenance or I bring out the bird seeds….
Quite a few youngsters,
and one of the butterflies makes my heart beat faster, since he comes every day, a relentless survivor given that someone ate half of his wings.
Squirrels now letting me come so close I could practically give them a manicure, or is that a pedicure?
Bees, in contrast to last year, are leaving me alone, too busy in the lavender.
An occasional newt
Summer. An oasis. Not even a slug to fight with. I feel blessed.
Then again there is always a mouse that needs transport far away from my basement….lest it comes back the next day.
Music matches the mood – maybe Mother Goose comes down the walk next. In the meantime, the chickadees get fed.
Layli Long Soldier’s (Oglala Lakota) first full-length collection Whereas (2017) won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poem above was published in 2018, in one of the most interesting anthologies around: The New Poets of Native Nations.21 authors write about their thoughts and experiences of being indigenous people in America, with work published after the year 2000, the heirs to Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie.
“New Poets of Native Nations gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry. … Collected here are poems of great breadth — long narratives, political outcries, experimental works, and traditional lyrics — and the result is an essential anthology of some of the best poets writing now.”
The diamond structure of the poem allows the reader to find their own path – combinations of diverse actions taken or ignored, for past, present or future. At the core, inevitably presented and crossed, is grief. But at the beginning and the end is an “us,” the reason why this poem stirs me. The words “as we” and “our faces” acknowledge, in my mind, that grief is shared, and action as well as consequences can be communal. The harmful ones, but the empowering ones as well.
By the way, all the words in this poem also appear in a Native American Apology Resolution, signed by then President Obama. Never heard of it? I hadn’t either – it wasn’t a direct apology from the government, but rather apologizing “on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.” The resolution included an important disclaimer as well: Nothing in it authorizes or supports any legal claims against the United States, and the resolution does not settle any claims. Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center, pointed to the “overwhelming silence” regarding the resolution. “There were no public announcements, there were no press conferences, there was no national attention, much less international.” No wonder we didn’t know.
***
In a month that has seen the highest Court in the land generally rescind rights that were granted to the vulnerable or those with less power in our social, historical and political landscape, it is important to remember that we can and must build coalitions.
In another ruling, 303 LLC Creative vs Elenis, discriminatory behavior was given the green light for a business offering customized expressive services, allowing it to violate state laws prohibiting such businesses from discrimination in sales (as it turns out, the facts presented for this case were based on lies, but the Court seemed to be not caring or oblivious.) The revival of the ugly spirit of Plessy vs Ferguson is going full speed ahead.
And a 6-3 majority on the Court dismantled affirmative action in college admission policies, a process originally granted due to an acknowledgment of structural racism. Note, it did so for elite educational institutions (and likely to extend to businesses and institutions of all kinds focused on diversity, equity and inclusion), but leaving the practice standing for military academies. I am paraphrasing someone who said this first: minorities can die in the bunker, but not share the boardrooms…) which struck me as particularly apt.
Here is a summary by lawyer and court observer Dahlia Lithwick on the outcome of this term – I am quoting her verbatim because she is succinct and hits the nail on the head.
To see why this term was not some kind of triumph for moderation, consider the decisions that commentators have deemed huge victories for the left. Moore v. Harper simply rejected the independent-state-legislature doctrine, a fringe theory that was rendered toxic by its central role in Donald Trump’s failed coup; at the same time, the court awarded itself ongoing authorityto rein in any state courts that it deems to have gone “too far” in protecting democracy, codifying a minority viewpoint into law. United States v. Texas merely put a new limit on the outrageous collusion between red states and a clutch of rogue Trump judges eager to seize control over immigration enforcement. Haaland v. Brackeen followed precedents reaching back two centuries in upholding Congress’ power to protect Native people; even then, it left the door open to future legal attacks on Indigenous rights. Allen v. Milligan affirmed an interpretation of the Voting Rights Act that has stood for nearly four decades and imposes moderate limits on racial gerrymanders. It was arguably the one clear-cut “liberal” victory of the term, and that’s only because the protection of voting rights has now become coded as an exclusively liberal concern. Even that “win” came only after the court left an illegal gerrymander in place for the 2022 midterms, and after years of attacks on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that left it much weaker than it used to be.
Now consider this term’s victories for the right. Biden v. Nebraska abolished a program that would’ve forgiven $430 billion in student debt for 43 million borrowers by concocting a self-contradictory theory of standing then relying on a “major questions doctrine” that isn’t a real doctrine. 303 Creative v. Elenis gave for-profit companies a First Amendment right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people for the first time ever. Students for Fair Admissions put an end to race-based affirmative action in higher education as we know it. Jones v. Hendrix condemned innocent people to languish in prison under illegal sentences through no fault of their own. Sackett v. EPA revoked federal protection over millions of acres of wetlands in a grievous blow to the Clean Water Act that will devastate sensitive ecosystems, endangered species, flood control, and drinking water. These decisions were interspersed with smaller conservative rulings that promoted key tenets of the conservative legal project, including one that offered an existential threat to unions’ right to strike and yet another favor to corporations that seek to dodge lawsuits.
The grief – The grief – The grief – The grief.
Yet, there are also words full of fire, thoughtfulness and resistance. Do read the dissent in the Affirmative Action case penned by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (starting on page 72 of this link) – I’d give my right arm to write with such clarity, persuasiveness and power. Converting grief to light across our faces, summoning communal resolve to serve justice. Let’s choose the right action – and the right team.
Here are the words of a man who knew:
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
Photographs from New Mexico, where the poet Long Soldier resides.
Music was written and performed during a time of hope and glimpses of change. Why should we not also hope that we can win back what is so systematically destroyed right now? There must be a path.
this website had crashed and it took more than a week to get it fixed. Sorry for the unannounced interruption.
Save the date: for those readers living in the PNW, I would love to see you at our photographic art exhibition, opening Saturday, September 16th, 2023. Details about The Gorge Beckons: Change and Continuity will come closer to the actual date.
Today I want to introduce poems by two women who experienced war, prompted by yet another unsettling death. One, Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska, 1909 – 1984) survived WW II as a member of the Resistance in Warsaw during the German occupation. During that time she escaped execution by the skin of her teeth, and saw death and destruction on a daily basis as a war nurse. She wrote about her experiences in a poetry volume first published in Poland in 1974, Building the Barricades. I picked the poem below because it honors those risking death to serve a just mission, defending their country against imperial aggression. But I am also linking here to one of her longer poems that I cherish for its emphasis on the possibility of survival and resurrection, even during the darkest times. It appeared in the collection Talking to my Body, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan. Milosz tried hard to introduce Swir’s work to folks beyond Europe, not entirely successfully.
Air-raid sirens across the country It feels like everyone is brought out For execution But only one person gets targeted Usually the one at the edge
This time not you; all clear
by Victoria Amelina
Translated from the Ukrainian by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
First published in the anthology entitled “Invasion: Ukrainian Poems about the War”, SurVision Books, Dublin, Ireland, 2022
Last week, she was the one. Amelina (1986-2023) was killed in Ukraine by a Russian missile while meeting with writers and political activist at a restaurant in Kramatorsk (together with many others, it turns out, children included. Despite being rushed to a hospital, her injuries were too traumatic for survival). The 37-year old mother of a young son had left her flourishing career as a novelist behind (her work has been translated into Polish, Czech, German, Dutch, English and Spanish and won multiple literary prizes) to join the Human Rights organization Truth Hounds when the Russians invaded Ukraine. She relentlessly traveled to discover and document war crimes, working on her first non-fiction book, War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, which was due to be published. Now posthumously. Here she is on June 6th, less than a month ago.
.
Several poems appeared during this last year of her life, engaging with other victims of the war, interviewing women who lived through Russian occupation. Here is one that emphasizes the importance of remembering. I must say the official rallying cry of “We must never forget” has taken on a sour taste for me, given that the implication – if we remember we won’t repeat – is currently severely challenged. But Amelina wants us to remember the name of the victims, disallowing a complete victory of wiping out a culture and its representatives, human beings who could have contributed so much across a life time, herself included. May her memory be a blessing.
Poem about a Crow
In a barren springtime field
Stands a woman dressed in black
Crying her sisters’ names
Like a bird in the empty sky
She’ll cry them all out of herself
The one that flew away too soon
The one that had begged to die
The one that couldn’t stop death
The one that has not stopped waiting
The one that has not stopped believing
The one that still grieves in silence
She’ll cry them all into the ground
As though sowing the field with pain
And from pain and the names of women
Her new sisters will grow from the earth
And again will sing joyfully of life
But what about her, the crow?
She will stay in this field forever
Because only this cry of hers
Holds all those swallows in the air
Do you hear how she calls
Each one by her name?
by Victoria Amelina
Translated by Uilleam Blacker.
Music today is about the town of Lviv, Amelina’s birthplace. The town is a gateway for over 3 million Ukrainian refugees who have left eastern and northern parts of their country to flee Russian bombs and seek refuge in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. They all transit via Lviv, by train, cars, buses. From the late 18th to the early 20th century, Lviv was also part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today symbolizes for many the prevailing Ukrainian hopes to once again be part of Europe.
…Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
Meadows filled with daisies.
Walk with me while we can figure out the remainder of the (loooong)William Wordsworth poem Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. Just as his title points to a familiarity with a specific place, so you should recognize one of my perennial go-to places: the meadows along the Tualatin River. (Do read the poem, it is bitter-sweet and remarkably un-sentimental reminiscing.)
The meadows were in bloom, covered with daisies, sprinkled with lupines, mallow, morning glory, dog roses, clover and whatever else coloring the world in loose, saturated carpets.
The birds were about, as were the musk rats, chasing annoyed ducks.
Killdeer
Robin with lunc
Red winged black birds and kestrel.
Gosling wherever you looked, with very attentive mothers.
And two herons chasing each other, until one gave up and the other landed right in from of my nose and camera. Yours truly, perhaps not a sufficiently moral being, but at that moment a very happy one.
Farmers tilled the dusty soil, reminding us once again what is at stake in an increasingly heated world (it was 73 degrees yesterday during this walk, first day of June, in Oregon, need I say more?.)
Yes I need to say more: how on earth did Manchin get his dirty pipeline deal expedited into the debt ceiling bill? What was it that made President Biden cooperate on this demand? So much for the administration’s promises to support clean energy rather than fossil fuels, along with allowing cuts or restrictions to food programs and other assistance for vulnerable Americans.
I will not spell out what I hope Manchins’ and his ilk’s destiny will be, but here are the Norns weaving a thrilling hope for destiny…. (from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung)
In the parched path I have seen the good lizard (one drop of crocodile) meditating. With his green frock-coat of an abbot of the devil, his correct bearing and his stiff collar, he has the sad air of an old professor. Those faded eyes of a broken artist, how they watch the afternoon in dismay!
Is this, my friend, your twilight constitutional? Please use your cane, you are very old, Mr. Lizard, and the children of the village may startle you. What are you seeking in the path, my near-sighted philosopher, if the wavering phantasm of the parched afternoon has broken the horizon?
Are you seeking the blue alms of the moribund heaven? A penny of a star? Or perhaps you’ve been reading a volume of Lamartine, and you relish the plateresque trills of the birds?
(You watch the setting sun, and your eyes shine, oh, dragon of the frogs, with a human radiance. Ideas, gondolas without oars, cross the shadowy waters of your burnt-out eyes.)
Have you come looking for that lovely lady lizard, green as the wheatfields of May, as the long locks of sleeping pools, who scorned you, and then left you in your field? Oh, sweet idyll, broken among the sweet sedges! But, live! What the devil! I like you. The motto “I oppose the serpent” triumphs in that grand double chin of a Christian archbishop.
Now the sun has dissolved in the cup of the mountains, and the flocks cloud the roadway. It is the hour to depart: leave the dry path and your meditations. You will have time to look at the stars when the worms are eating you at their leisure.
Go home to your house by the village, of the crickets! Good night, my friend Mr. Lizard!
Now the field is empty, the mountains dim, the roadway deserted. Only, now and again, a cuckoo sings in the darkness of the poplar trees.
by Federico García Lorca
The heat this week made me lounge like a lizard,
occasionally getting up to seek a place further in the shade
too lazy to do much else,
just hanging and watching the insects fly by,
until it was time for dinner.
Every single one of these strangely hot days in May…. refusing to move.
Here is Pink Martini with a tune about the black lizard, leading us hopefully into a cool(er) weekend.
I was primed for color, after watching Yimou Zhang’s recent film Shadow. It is a visual and a psychological master piece from the maker of so many famous martial arts movies, and drew me in, although the levels of violence were at peak. According to the director, the visual scheme is based on the brush techniques of Chinese painting and calligraphy, a world of black and white (and grey) were it not for the flesh tones of the actors’ faces and bodies, and the voluptuous dark blood that splatters the screen whenever swords, knives, arrows, and crossbow bolts start to fly. The cinematography, particularly of group scenes, is stunning, and the psychological dilemmas around court intrigue, peace or war, and the impossibility of love freely given and received keep you drawn in, with a complexity of evil and good that matches the multitudes of grey shades in a bleak black and white landscape where it perpetually rains.
So, I was ready for color, real color, and the universe complied. The Huntington’s Chinese Garden, Liu Fang Yuan 流芳園, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, was filled with color, both natural and man made. Established in 2008, the 15 acres garden is one of the largest and most authentic classical-style gardens outside of China, according to the website. The link above will allow you to learn more in detail – I will just share the beautiful sights, particularly of the Bonsai collection which was breathtaking.
Here is the Library building:
Pathways lead to a large pond with happy turtle families.
Eventually you climb up to the area displaying the bonsai. I could have stayed there the whole day…
But so much else clamored for attention. There were the touchstones, warm where the sun hit, but completely insulated on all other sides, rubbed blank by exposure to the elements and peoples – invited – hands.
And there was the bamboo forest in all its green glory, its swishing sounds in the breeze and its surprise inside.
