Cyganeria

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 14

2012-02-10T11:08:00.000-05:00

What do you think is the most important personality trait for a spouse?

I’m going to skip right over honesty, because I think most people would insist on it, and go for humor, or a sense of fun. Life would be awful if it couldn’t be amusing, especially on hard days. The ability to laugh well and with love, not derision is essential.

Cyganeria ~ in pictures

2012-02-09T12:53:00.000-05:00

Fiction with an Agenda

2012-02-08T18:21:00.000-05:00

Last week we started drawing out what aspects of the writer come out in the writing. How much of ourselves to we reveal. Jenna reminded us that though the artist will not be able to keep from revealing any passionately held beliefs, agendas should be avoided; that is, if the author is aware of himself. Mr. Pond encourages us to remember that the author is not always aware of what he is doing in many aspects of his writing. But what of agenda? What of the writer who knowingly whores his talent for a cause?What are we to think of him?

"art is wholly concerned with the good of that which is made; it has no utilitarian end. If you do manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you made it art first..."
~Flannery O' Connor

There is a goodness in writing wrapped up in an idea, in the story concieved within a theme. But the good writer takes the theme and submits it to beauty, to the living art he creates. The idea can move freely, be seen and unseen as it flitters throught the pages. It is not tied down, not forced to be still and stagnant. It belongs to the story, the story doesn't belong to it.

I've been reading a it of Michael O' Brien's book against most modern fairy stories (A Landscape with Dragons). It's a hard book to read, and reading it, he seems a hard person to like. The book assumes all authors have hidden motives, either to lead the reader to Christ, or to Satan. That all fiction is propoganda, either for good or evil. I reject the idea entirely, but as Jenna writes in her previous post, "it can perhaps be hard to tell the difference" especially if a writer who generally writes with an agenda, as Mr. O'Brien's books seem to indicate, reads one who writes with no agenda at all, but with a vision that is "organically grown from the author's own devotion." (Jenna).

“Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.”
~Flannery O Connor

Perhaps this is the real trouble with so much of Christian fiction, music, and painting. It fails to be art because the maker put his beliefs so completely in his line of vision that he cannot see by the light they give.

Mr. Pond tells us that the writer must understand "the potential of the art, not merely the words on the page" if he is to create at all. But the writer of propaganda sees only the obvious. He uses for utilitarian ends what ought to be art, and in the process, what should be beautiful withers and dies.

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 13

2012-02-02T12:21:00.000-05:00

What pet would best fit your life? Why? If you have one, is it the best fit?

We have a dog, Luba. I do think a dog best fits our life. Luba has 36 acres to run about in, she has chickens to smell, a baby to paw at, owners who let her curl up with them in bed, and a warm couch to sleep all night on. Luba though, is in her ungrateful teenage years. She sighs, rolls her eyes, destroys the order I try to keep, and punctuates her day with moody fits of despair. But she, and her roller-coaster of emotions do fit our life best right now, she adds her own spark of imbalance to the day; teaching me again and again that order is not always essential.

2012-02-01T20:27:00.000-05:00

"There's nothing to writing...all you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed."
~Ernest Hemingway

There is a good deal of trust and and good deal of courage in our little circle of writers. Faced with the dark emptiness of last week, Mr. Pond and Jenna rose up in confidence, Mr. Pond with an encouraging reminder “not to be too afraid in the dark, moonless nights, to learn to welcome winters, and doubts and questioning. To find and love the hidden lights of winter, the darkest nights of stillness and starlight.” Which beautifully echoes Rilke’s advice to “live the questions now” without needing answers until you are able grow into them. Jenna’s response, embracing (to an extent) and uniting the three ideas with a need for the creative process “to stave off destructive sorrow” on occasion, and a deep relationship to the written word gave me my topic this week. How much of our flesh goes in the inkpot, and how much comes back out again?

Jenna writes that her "inkpot adamantly refuses to give forth its contents unless a bit of my own flesh goes in", goes in - but what comes out? Tolstoy is lived closely in Anna Karinina's Levin, but we can see pieces of him in War and Peace as well, lived out in Pierre and Prince Andrei; Robert Heinlein pontificates through Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land. Many characters have a good deal of the writer in them somewhere, but some have none at all, and some have too much.

"A character is never the author that created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously."
~Albert Camus

No matter how much of ourselves we write in, the character can never be fully ours. A change or too, an idealization, a missed flaw or virtue, can take the created one away from his creator, the character becomes his own person. But, if I am a good enough writer, each of my people is one I've known on the inside, one I've lived with a while. I'm often wary of stories with a main character who seems to be an idealized version of the author, Dan Brown's books come to mind, in part because it comes across as an ego trip, and in part because it's boring. Levin isn't boring because he isn't idealized, and despite being almost Tolstoy, he isn't.

"A writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a charicature."
~Ernest Hemingway

Amen. When I write, my attempt is to take people from life, alter to emphasis certain aspects, and from there they grow into their own selves. In a way, writing people is a pursuit of understanding, an attempt to really know the people around us, to understand their motives. To love them simply for being.

Daily Things

2012-01-30T10:26:00.000-05:00

I’m staying in a lot more these days. We’ve been keeping to one car, and my days are almost fully on the land and in the yurt, with Petka and Luba and the many things that fill my time. This winter has been mild so far. With little snow and bursts of warm, spring weather in the midst of it all. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop for all of January, but now, at the end, I’m feeling that lovely bubbling hope. Perhaps spring will come on schedule, perhaps this summer will be long and bright.

At home I have the radio on almost constantly. Recently it’s been the classical station replacing the uncharged ipod, which has been stuck on Yarrow’s mix - songs she loves from Bruce Springsteen to Beyonce. Yarrow has eclectic tastes.

Thanks to my enforced stability, we are developing quite a little ritual to our days. One that involves an abundance of coffee, nursing, reading, and cleaning. In the spring I will have to re-evaluate. More coffee, less reading, at least during the day, to fit in all the outdoor work. But with snow all around, I’m forced to pursue ideas and dreams instead of planting and hoeing.

One of the trials of yurting, especially in the winter, is the near constant battle against mess. Often I feel as though I’ve just put the house in order when my husband will bring in a load of wood and leave scatterings of dirt and sticks throughout. Or Luba will knock the rugs into a pile and perch herself on top, looking proud. There is always something, and I am continually at war. With no closets to aid me in putting the “we should keep it out of the snow” chainsaw out of sight. Closets are a blessing I long for often. 

In the evening I am working on poems, with a purpose. I haven’t had this much direction in years, it’s unfortunate it doesn’t happen to come with an equal amount of inspiration, but I’m hoping that will come, if I rest my head in my hands enough, doze beside the fire enough, and stare at the writer’s fork on my right hand for long enough. Otherwise, I may have to do something drastic.

50 Days of Self-Reflection: Day 12

2012-01-28T10:33:00.000-05:00

What is your favorite quotation? Why? What do you think this says about you?

Favorite..that’s really hard. I love quotations. I guess my favorite for simplicity and meaning is “Beauty will save the world” by Dostoyevsky. I love it because it is a simple summation of what I believe, because it inspires me, and because it looks fantastic written on my wrist in Polish.

What does it say about me..that I prefer quotations that are easy to attach to my body, and hard to live out. That I like things to be reasonably straightforward, and that I have a deep attachment to Russian writers.

Household Gods

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

“You often-comers, sleepers in things,

Who arise brightly,…

Once more be it your morning, gods.”

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Practically all houses are haunted in one way or another. The very old are haunted by relics of the past, ghosts, impressions, or emotions that can’t fade away, the very new are haunted by the possibilities that come flooding in. Most houses live somewhere in between. They are haunted by past, present, and future; by the good and evil their owners do, by hopes, desires, and memories. “Desires are memories from our future” says Rilke, but too often we forget and let the desires of today take over, let them become the demanding little gods that fill up the corners of our homes until there is no room for the others, the domovoi, the helpful friends who tend the stove at night and clear away the cobwebs.

In our home we have an abundance of both. We have the desires that gather behind the stove, whispering their impatience at night, collecting dust and blowing it upward to coat the rafters. We have the three relics who walk in the birches, guiding the frightened at night, keeping the darkness away. In the early morning, when I’ve lit the altar candle and crawled back into bed, they chant their prayers to the rising dawn, reminding me that each day is a new beginning.

Dreamlessness

2012-01-25T13:02:00.002-05:00

“This place of which you say ‘It is a waste’…

There shall be heard again the voice

Of mirth and the voice of gladness.”
~Jeremiah 33:10-11

I'm amused that both Jenna & Mr. Pond doubt their charity, which is visible and inspiring to me. Charity aside, last week's discussion highlighted our similarities, with each of us insisting our literary favorites were, as Mr. Pond put it, "more true..than the capricious, flattening, factual world." I loved the differing understanding of the effects of moonlight and the coming dawn. Moonlight is dangerous, but beautiful, essential for artistic dreamings, which is why, this week, in the darkness of the moon, I'm bringing the discussion over to the lack of dreams. What happens when the artist looses sight of the moon and flounders for awhile?

On nights of a heavy moon, I'm always up late. Shadows dance without candles and the coyotes yip and howl all around us. On those nights I can write late, sleep little and not feel tired. But the dark nights are Lenten - a time to die down to the roots, to gather strength for the coming light. The artistic life, like the natural world, and like the Christian life, is one of rhythms: fast, feast, fast again. The feasting times feed us well enough to last through the long, dry times when nothing is brought forth. The fasts are difficult. It’s hard to remember that they don’t last forever. In the artistic life, it’s tempting to use them as a time to lower standards - to make anything for the sake of having words on a page or pots on a shelf. I would agree, if the thought of a shelf of misshapen pots destined for the slop bucket, or pages tossed in the woodstove didn’t so depress me. Deliberately making disappointments is not the a path I can take out of the darkness.

It seems most writers are divided as to how they cope with the artistic dryness that comes to everyone, at some time or another. Some must "stay drunk on writing so that reality cannot destroy you" (Ray Bradbury), others insist that "One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot" (Lev Tolstoy). I can't say I fall into either camp. Unfortunately, I've too many things to do each day to stay drunk on anything - writing, or vodka, or wine, and I would never get anything written if my flesh had to be included in it all - I haven't anywhere near Tolstoy's intensity (for which my husband is eternally grateful). My dry times are dealt with as Rilke (whose writing continually inspires) recommends:

"to be an artist meant: not to reckon and count, to ripen like the tree which does not force it's sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without fear least no summer might come after."

In the dark nights, I wait, words ripening within, for the moon to light a new path. Not forcing words or faking inspiration. But I'm a part-time writer at best, with no deadlines to follow, and I have the luxury of time.

50 Days...(you know)

2012-01-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

If you could chose a living person to share a meal and conversation with, who would it be, what would you discuss, and why would you chose him or her?

Benedict XVI would be fantastic, Pink and her husband would be fun..the conversation with one would be one of spiritual direction, I adore Benedict, and would love his direction; the conversation with Pink would probably be about her music, and babies, because I really admire her as an artist, and love her attitude toward motherhood (from what I know of it).

What about you?

50 days of Self Reflection: Day 10

2012-01-21T12:50:00.001-05:00

If you were choosing your last meal - anything you wanted - what would it be and how would it be served? Why?

This would completely depend on my mood at the time, but generally, I think I would pick a huge picnic basket of fresh berries in cream, peaches, crusty bread, this one type of very soft cheese whose name I can never remember, cold kielbasa, hard boiled eggs, honey, and cold white wine. There would be clean napkins in bright red or blue, and white, a big cloth to spread it all out on, outside under beech and birch trees in the fall.

I love picnic food, and eating outdoors. I love the sense of freshness and life it gives to the whole day.

Money Jesus

2012-01-20T12:50:00.000-05:00

I have a statue of the Infant of Prague watching over our finances. He belonged to my mother when she was small, and at some point in his history a quater was taped to his back, under the robes - to attract wealth, or at least stability.

We've kept the quarter where it is, and beside his little candle I give baby Jesus my coins to look over, in the hope one of his multiplication miracles will be repeated over them.

The Art of Other Worlds

2012-01-18T20:58:00.000-05:00

The discussion with Jenna & Mr. Pond

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
~Vladimir Nabokov

Last week we discussed darkness, magic, and fairy in fiction. I'm grateful to both Jenna and Mr. Pond for their thoughts, which rested on a sense of love and compassion for the dark ones. A search for the light within. Mr. Pond encourages politeness, and the respect that ought always be shown when strangers meet. Jenna gives respect to the dark, even as she walks quickly through it. I admire them both for seeing things as they are. For refusing the tempting gifts of fairy, for embracing light in a world of shadows, and for judging the darkness kindly.

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
~Oscar Wilde

Part of the reason I began with darkness is that I tend to listen too often to Catholic Radio. There is a lot of good there, but also a trend against mystery that disturbs me. Mystery in fiction is often accused of being darkness, pagan dreams put out to tempt the young. But, as Jenna writes, "most Western fantasists would have to work a lot harder than they do to escape utilizing basic Christian concepts" in part because paganism itself is rich with Christian concepts. Even unintentionally a writer can fill his work with them. Mystery and magic go hand in hand with the Christian worldview, and running from them we run from Christ. Magic itself doesn't make a work dark, and too many in the Christian world, as well as the writng world, forget this.

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day."
~Vincent Van Gogh

Good writing, "a masterpiece of fiction" can take us into the soul of the author, the "original world" created, and peopled by the writer's own dreams - dark or light. And it is a blessed artist who can show the world a dawn only he has seen, darkness fading to light, mystery infusing the everyday. Jenna, Mr. Pond, and I are in agreement on the beauty of mystery in the stories we love, if not always the stories themselves. In part because I probably tend to read with less charity and more criticism. When the worlds painted aren't as alive and richly colored as mine I grow dissatisfied. There are flaws I can't forgive, and generally they are flaws of attitude. I can revel in darkness with only the smallest flicker of light, but if an author gives the indication he doesn't recognize a character's personhood I'm gone. Stock characters are all well and good, so long as I can feel their humanity. I can embrace a world unlike my own, so long as it doesn't offend it.

Jenna, Mr. Pond, your charity impresses me, but do you draw a line where quality is concerned?

(I hope this is as clear as I meant it to be, I'm working quickly, on a new computer, as our old one was lost to the slush-puddles of Portland, and I've only just replaced it!)

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 9

2012-01-18T19:36:00.000-05:00

If you were a saint, what would you be the patron of?Why?

I would be the patron of superstitious folks, to be invoked against superstition, by the burning of an undyed beeswax candle with my medal pressed into it, and a black ribbon wrapped around it's base, on the eve of my feast day, while reciting my special prayer. The medal would then be coated in the wax and worn in a red pouch around the person's neck, to ward off superstitious thoughts..because I can never escape my little superstitions.

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 8

2012-01-16T14:23:00.000-05:00

What are three characteristics you consider ideal, masculine characteristics, and why? (meaning primarily masculine characteristics, not necessarily exclusively masculine).

I discussed this one with my husband before responding, and we came up with a list together:

1. Physical Strength. Not that women can't be strong, but I would say, in the ideal, men are strong, and able to use their strength for the good.

2. Leadership. We came at this one from the good men in the Old Testament. The ability to inspire others to follow, to look up to him, is especially well represented among the fore-runners of Christ in the Old Testament.

3. Sacrifice. As someone who watches her husband get up before dawn each day to drive an hour, and work outdoors in the cold or heat so that we can live as we choose, I can't help but idealize the sacrificial aspect in men..especially on the snowy days I love to send with books and tea in bed!

What do you all think?

50 Days of Self Reflection

2012-01-13T09:49:00.000-05:00

Are you a morning person, or a night person? Which would you rather be, and why?

I think I'm usually both, it's the evenings I have trouble with. If i had to choose, I guess morning, because I can, and really like to get up early. But I love late nights as well, as long as the day in between isn't too demanding! I rather be one of those people who only needs about 4 hours of sleep a night - who can stay up past midnight and still be up bfore the sun. Sometimes I think I'm almost there, and then I feel an overwhelming need for sleep..It's a constant struggle.

Sacramental magic: Baptism

2012-01-13T09:42:00.000-05:00

My husband and I stood as godparents for the second son of our good friends on the eve of the new year. It was a lovely bright red and blue church, with saints surrounding Christ on the altar and the lingering scent of incense over everything. The little boy slept through the ceremony while we spoke in his name, renouncing Satan, reaching out to heaven. Traditionally, he ought to have cried, just a little at the exorcism. Babies who don’t still have the devil in them, the sacrament didn’t ‘take’. I’m comforted though, to know that in this family, it’s more likely the devil had so light a hold that the child didn’t notice him slipping away, a painless separation - all the easier for Christ to come and dwell.

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 6

2012-01-10T21:04:00.000-05:00

What song best defined your life at 18? You life today? What song do you hope will define your life ten years from today?

At 18 I was pretty restless, immature, and searching. I think Counting Crows "Hanging Around" was the song I related to most, and it probably fit me. I was bored and trying too hard and determined to get out of town.
Today..really hard. I kind of think January Wedding by the Avett Brothers. I know, I'm already married, and not in January, but I feel like it fits. I'm living a simple, love-filled life, and I know the names of the trees, if not the birds performing in them.
In ten years, I hope to still be living as I do, but better, with all the rich memories of the years that have been. I'm kind of leaning towards Kate Wolf's The Trumpet Vine, because it evokes the sense of a history between two people, and the bright colors of life, but I think I could do her "Early Morning Melody" too, if I'm remembering it right, because guitars and coffeepots are always going to be a happy staple of life in our house.

This one is really hard, I thought, but don't give up!!

Dark Beginnings

2012-01-10T20:51:00.000-05:00

shifts again in the discussion with Jenna St. Hilaire and Mr. Pond

"When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
on the table: it attracts the dead."
   ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Jenna's generously given me an opportunity to write the opening posts for a while, and we've decided to delve into the thoughts of others for our inspiration, at least for a while. In Advent we discussed silence, solitude, and ritual, three things I find essential for life in general, and for art especially; before Advent, we were discussing mythology, and it seems, enjoying very much the comfort of many shared thoughts and feelings on the subject. Next week, I have longer quotations, specifically on art and writing to begin trotting out, but this week I'll keep it low-key, somewhat.

I love Rilke and his dark, Catholic imagination, I love the thought of the dead surrounding my table, opening their mouths wide to catch the slightest flavor of life-as-it-was. But these are the things I avoid doing in reality, because waking up under a full moon to walk on crunching snow towards a dark outhouse makes thoughts of open-mouthed dead too real for comfort. Especially when I think I see them flittering between the birches. The sacramental imagination is full of these dark hauntings, it is part of what makes life rich and full and real, contrasting so completely with the good which lives under the sun. I've heard again and again on the radio, in conversations over coffee after Liturgy, and at parties the problem with myth and magic in fiction is the darkness, the spirits, and the sense of evil lurking that they feel in the background. I know a few families that avoid fairy-tales altogether, thinking it safer in the straight and narrow world of facts. They make up reading lists for children that studiously avoid the haunting things, they stock their shelves with morality tales. I think we are afraid of the mysteries, afraid to grasp hold of the dark aspects of beauty and study them in the flicker of one small candle.

“Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.”

   ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

What do Jenna and Mr. Pond think? We've touched a bit on darkness before, is there a line that shouldn't be crossed? When does myth and magic become occult? When do fairies become demons?

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

   ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't know that I've ever found a story so dark that I didn't see the flickering light, a well-written book will always give a glimpse of redemption, because it is the nature of man to reach for the light. Even the ugly and terrifying will give way into beauty, given a chance by writer and reader.

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Thoughts?

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 5

2012-01-09T08:56:00.000-05:00

If you were an alcoholic drink, what would it be?

This question was originally just "an alcohol", but I changed it to includemixed drinks, because I'd probably be a mimosa(orange juice & champagne). I'd like to be a "Death in the afternoon"(Absinthe & champagne) but I'm just not that funky, or high-maintenence. A mimosa is classier than Bud-light, and more fun than champagne alone..maybe I'd have 1/2 a shot absinthe in me, or a shot of lime vodka, just to up my cool factor.

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 4

2012-01-07T23:29:00.002-05:00

Do you like your name? Does it fit you well? If you could chose your name, what would it be?

I do like my name, I didn't for a while - just like I didn't really like my hair-color (I used to long for black hair, and a long name with lots of consonants and a few more vowels). But my name has definitely grown on me, it fits me, it fits my life, but if I had to change it, I'd be..hmm, maybe I wouldn't be able to change it, I guess I'd just be me.

long days, short nights, and bad music

2012-01-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I get the feeling a lot of people don’t really like music so much as they like being the sort of person who's into music, just as I often think there are a lot of people who don’t like books so much as being “a reader”. Jenna’s first after-Christmas discussion post reminded me of all those people. I don’t listen to Christian music. After a traumatic week working laundry at Holiday Inn under a woman who refused to listen to anything but, I’ve tried to put my memories of that 30 minute cd - set on repeat and played for 8 hours straight, Monday through Friday - far behind me. Most people I've heard who make Christian music seem to fall into the catagory of “people who don’t really like music” because if they did, they'd care more about the quality of music they're putting out.
Modern church music, says Jenna, is “some of the worst shlock ever caught posing as music.” I think one of my favorites is a song in one of our hymnals in which we praise God with “swirling test-tubes.” (Test-tube joins chemotherapy, coagulating, and spiritistic in the ever-expanding list of words that don’t fit into good songs). I’m not saying that there aren’t some really good, modern hymns out there, but for some reason, those hymns aren’t being sung. A big part of the problem is advertising. Ours really is an age of advertising and publicity. The songs sung most often are common because they’ve been marketed as comfy, all-purpose, and unoffensive hymns. It’s similar to the attitude that creates popular pop-music, pop-fiction, and many hit movies - they’re marketed as popular, so they become popular, and we just absorb them.

I'm a bit out the loop right now, though. We attend Mass in the extrodinary form, before that, I belonged to a Ukrainian Catholic parish with a cantor who chanted nothing in English, who promoted traditional Ukrainian customs, and wanted to marry me for my pierogies. When I do attend the novus ordo, I'm generally to wrapped up in keeping my mind on the liturgy, I don't notice the music, until my husband points out that "they sang the test-tube song!" or "wow, they changed the words to Amazing Grace! Why?" But Jenna's right, when you see God as a cozy friend, a shrink, a quick-fix emotional high, your music reflects that, and you stop writing anything deep.

I wonder if part of the problem is that we are too comfortable with popular Christian music, and so we start wanting our church-music to sound the same. We stop trying to pursue beauty, to form ourselves in imitation of beauty, and follow the easy path that leads to badness and banality. But I'm still unrecovered from my vacation. My mind is fuzzy and my nights are always too short. If I sound like more of a hater than Jenna, it's probably because I am. Mr. Pond, what do you think? Do you reject bad music and embrace the good, or is that a leading question?

Blessed new year.

50 days of self reflection: Day 3

2012-01-05T08:51:00.001-05:00

What color best represents your outlook on life?

My favorite color to wear is black. But it definitely doesn't "represent my outlook on life," I think I lean towards amber.. and not just because I really love the stone. Amber is a happy color, like yellow, but grounded, not as flakey as yellow, but not as grounded as brown, it has imagination.

50 days of self reflection: Day 2

2012-01-03T08:53:00.000-05:00

What do you notice first about yourself in a mirror? Is this a good or bad feature? What do you usually fail to notice?

I always notice my eyes first, because if my eyes look good, the rest of my face usually follows. My favorite is when I've really done up my eyes the night before and gone to bed with my make-up on. The kind of messy black liner look has always made me feel completely ready to take on the day, and it always reminds me to have an extra cup of coffee!

I usually barely pay attention to my lips, which is why I never really got into lipstick (I should add that to the year's goals: notice my lips, care for them.) Since my husband really likes to see me in lipstick, it would be a nice habit to adopt.

50 days of self reflection: Day 1

2012-01-01T06:37:00.001-05:00

What are three of your goals for the new year, and why?

1. Lose the remaining baby-weight and re-tone...for obvious reasons (who doesn't want to look good?)

2. Finish (and begin) editing the poems I'm hoping to use in the little compilation my husband & I are hoping to put together. I would love to have them ready for him before spring gives us too much to do outside, so that is a goal too!

3. Organize the house so that is actually stays neat for longer than a day after cleaning, and so that I can find the above-mentioned poems after I've worked on them!

So..who else has new year's goals?

2011-12-23T19:28:00.000-05:00

Vilija is what we call our dinner Christmas Eve. This year it’s a small affair, just the three of us, Luba, and Christ. I will have fought the good fight to keep the house clean, boiled and fried the pierogies, made kutia and fish on the stove. We will watch for the first star to rise, a second or two later than the night before. Vilija can be opulent or simple, this year we revel in the simplicity, the smallness, turning our eyes inward, toward the silence that welcomes the tiny Christ to nestle his head.

Blessed Nativity to all!

Discussion: Ritual Silence

2011-12-21T18:42:00.001-05:00

..with Jenna & Mr. Pond

Daily Ritual*

4am: Lamplight, coffee, writing
5:30am: Breakfast, coffee, nursing
6am: Angelus
7:30am: Housekeeping, check for eggs
Late morning: Attempt a nap, hope to write, coffee
Noon: Angelus, attempted lunch
Afternoon: Randomness, attempt a nap, sunlight fades, lamps are lit, soups and sauces simmer
Evening & Night: Tea, dinner, music, candles, baby to bed, vodka, writing

*days ritual is attempted: 5; days ritual is lived fully: 0

Like Jenna, a good day for me requires looking good, unlike Jenna, it doesn't usually include a shower. It does include make-up, clothing I like, and some coffee or tea. On draining days, very little in my rite is successful, on thrilling days, most is. Often the fault is mine. I love the rhythm of well lived days, I love refreshing myself with ritual time, but I have trouble with commitment. Too often I attempt a complete overhaul of my time, I spend a whole day at the cafe, I lounge in bed late into the morning, I let the coffee cool and the papers pile up. Ritual that doesn't arise naturally is a hinderance, I tell myself, and wait lazily for inspiration to strike.

But even with my daily failure to fully live the ideal, the ritual of the day my natural rhythm, given discipline, encouragement, and a good deal of patience. That is the necessity, I think, remembering to view time with a sense of humor, to remember that attempting to shape the day into beauty is a slow work of love.

Reflections on Motherhood II: Solitude

2011-12-19T13:06:00.000-05:00

“ I am too alone in the world
But not alone enough
To make each hour holy.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Solitude is enriching. My life here is rich in solitude, rich in the pursuit and nourishment of beauty, but when our daughter arrive this past summer, I realized that the time of aloneness I enjoyed while my husband worked would never be mine again, the silence of the trees is interrupted now by the happy chatter, and not-so-happy wailing of Petka, who eats up attention as quickly as she can get it, always hungry for more. With her around, I need to hunt for a purer solitude, finding it in late nights or early mornings, while she and my husband sleep, or days when I can disappear for a few hours. I find myself more appreciative of the time I do manage to carve out for silence and reflection, and I find myself loving the imperfect solitude, the inner silence in the face of the daily sounds.

I thought recently of the many desert fathers who, longing for a life alone with Christ, retreated to the wilderness only to find they’d been followed by scores of enthusiastic young monks in need of a spiritual father. No vocation is entirely as we imagine it to be. This morning I’m up at four, listening to the rain pounding and to the wind. It’s December, and I’m grateful that we still have rain instead of snow. I like to spend these early mornings letting the solitude wash over me, watching the gold on the icons flicker in the lamp-light, preparing to do something great with the coming day. Today, it will be dishes and shoring up the road if the rain lets up.

With Petka, there is still a partial solitude to the days. She’s here, present and demanding, but she isn’t an adult, her demands are different. She and I live the day together. I write, while she grabs at my pen. I sweep while she grips the broom handle, determined to help. We walk the land together, laughing at Luba’s antics, at the birds in the sky, at the wind in the trees. She reminds me to really see the world around me, as she sees everything for the first time - studying it all with her upper lip stuck out and her eyes wide. My times of true solitude are richer for it. My daughter, the student of life.

Christmas Magic III

2011-12-16T12:58:00.000-05:00

Christmas Eve is the night to remember dreams. Rosemary under your head and you will certainly dream of coming love, basil and you will see the path to take in the new year. But even herbless, the dreams of Christmas Eve foretell the year’s blessings and sorrows.

We live too far to walk to mass, but if you can walk any bit of the way to midnight mass, and are still waiting for love, listen for bells. Wherever they sound, bells foretell love to come, the closer they are the sooner your love will arrive. Faraway ringing could have you waiting another year or more. New clothes to Christmas Liturgy encourages prosperity, but take care your clothes aren't too nicely made, too perfect and well arranged, least you tempt death to take you before the new year starts.

Of all the days in the year, Christmas Eve tells the most of the year to come. Most of the signs are for unmarried girls, who can cut apples in half to count the seeds - five mean you will wait a bit longer, four and the wedding will come soon, but we all walk softly this day, to guiding the year as we would have it go and hoping God goes with us.

Sacred Circle

2011-12-14T12:57:00.000-05:00

A discussion with Jenna and Mr. Pond

Jenna's post from this Monday could almost have been my own. Like her, my sacred space is my home, the little round hut in the woods where I spend my days sweeping and re sweeping the dirt that never stays outdoors. My home is a place without dark corners for little devils to hide; a place where the sun makes bright circles on the floor, where the rain drowns out all other sounds.

There are other sacred spaces, places memory or magic have hallowed - there is the cafe in Michigan where I spent hours watching people walk by, writing in little notebooks and dreaming of the future. There is the parish in Pennsylvania where I found my spiritual home and the parish in Detroit where I married my husband. There is the house with the dogwood I remember from childhood, there is the stream I bathe in on hot summer days, and the hidden paths that lead to secret glades. But my home is primary, because I work to make it so. I fight disorder daily.

I try to make our home a sacred space, a retreat, a little domestic sanctuary where we can thrive despite the world around us. And where we can gather strength to improve the world around us - to touch it with the beauty we nurture here, which is the duty of any sacred space - to reach beyond itself and alter, improve. To place a fingerprint or two of love on the wider world.

Christmas Magic II

2011-12-09T15:25:00.000-05:00

At midnight on Christmas Eve, while many are at Mass, greeting the first hours of Christ's new birth, the animals open their mouths to praise the Lord. I have a hard time picturing Luba speaking any words that aren't sarcastic and condesending, she spends most of her days acting like a spoiled teenager, but on Christmas Eve, when she is given the gift of speech, if we are far away, I know she will spend the time speaking blessings.

It's easier to imagine dogs and horses singing the praises of Christ than it is to picture chickens raising their little thoughts from food and petty fights to the nativity. But legend says the animals speak on Christmas Eve at midnight - that for a few moments, the whole earth blesses the new Child.

Silence and the Wilderness

2011-12-07T15:24:00.000-05:00

A discussion with Jenna and Mr. Pond

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

~Henry David Thoreau

Silence is hard to find. Even in the woods I will often turn around and find my silence gone. Without television and neighbors nearby, I often discover that the greatest enemy to my silence is myself. I can blame my husband, my daughter, my dog, or the demands of our social calendar, but I know the truth. There is time enough for the silence I need, too often I fill that time with the noise I don't need, the noise that drives out all peace and reflection.

I went to the woods to live deliberately, but the determination to live deliberately, to cultivate the sacred, often struggles against the temptation to "rest" in distraction for a while. Our world offers so many distractions, so many little noises that can break the internal silence and bury the individual in a crowded mass.

But, as Jenna says, this is the road I have taken to silence, it isn't everyone's road. It isn't even the road most can or should take. We are all individuals, the silence that soothes me, might fall short for another. The woods is not a home for everyone. Silence is necessary, but silence can be found internally, even in the city.

Reflections on Motherhood I: Becoming

2011-12-05T11:16:00.010-05:00

“The downward push of blood and bone…

Mud and new grass
Pushing up…

Beginning the long good-bye.”
~Kathleen Norris

I'm am thinking now of the quickly passing months of pregnancy, when my daughter grew like a poem within me, wiggling, forming, and finally bursting into dawn; while the clouds cleared and the summer sun rose before her. Pregnancy was the time to meet her, to know and love her before seeing her face and feeling her tiny hands grasp.

For the three of us, my husband, my daughter, myself, labor was not an isolated experience so much as it was the expansion of a relationship: prior to her birth, Yarrow was the quiet, hidden one - the child within, growing, loving, and learning in secret ways. After, we could see her wide eyes taking in, we wanted to wrap her up in love in a new, richer way; a way that can grow and expand as she grows, a way that can continually see her.

Labor, I felt as a shared experience. I felt my husband’s presence so completely in labor that I have trouble seeing it as solely a feminine experience - it felt so completely ours. I forgot he was not feeling and doing everything I was. In pregnancy and in labor, my husband belonged so naturally. With him beside me I could loose myself completely in the experience, I could let the physicality of birth overwhelm my mind, and greet my daughter with strength and confidence, knowing my body would bring forth her small one with all the grace of a storming summer night.

I loved the immersion. I love the warm water all around me, loved the full caul covering my daughter’s face as she met the world. Loved the rainy night and the bright new day that followed. I remember most the sense of roundness: the roundness of my full womb in the water, the roundness of her head leaving me, the roundness of life cycling. I remember the joy of loving, and the triumph of the new day.

Christmas Magic

2011-12-02T11:15:00.000-05:00

Everything depends on Christmas Eve. I like to wake early that morning especially to make sure my house is clean. If the yurt is clean on Christmas Eve, cleaning will be easier all year long, dirt won't stick and dust won't take over in the hidden places. Last year, my house was only superficially clean, and it has remained so all year, despite my efforts. This year will be different - I say it every year, and mean it every year, but living it is difficult.

I clean deeply the days leading up to the Eve, and work hard all day to make sure that the cleanliness stays. I think dirt works harder to creep in on Christmas Eve, so to have a home all year. Discord is the same. I work to avoid even minor unpleasantness, to keep it from our lives in the months to come. Christmas Eve is a day to live as we would like the year to go, full of love and freshness.

I have all of Advent now to prepare for the magic of Christmas Eve, make it a day of goodness, to banish laziness and delay. I've begun with the Altar, where all the Saints give encouragement, and with luck will move along the walls, making my home ready for Christmas to work it's magic.

Quotidian Mystic: Sacred Time

2011-11-30T09:27:00.001-05:00

continuing the discussion with Jenna and Mr. Pond

"Abba Poeman said concerning Abba Pior that everyday he made a new beginning."
~monastic saying

Early mornings are my favorite. When I’ve slept well, I like to be up before the sun, before my husband, before my daughter. I like to put the water on for coffee and the oatmeal on the stove, light a lamp, and write. In the daylight, writing is hard. I see the work around me - floors to sweep, dishes to wash and I am pulled away into the tasks of the day; predawn I see nothing but my work, and Our Lady under her glittering scarf, watching her candle while her Child prepares to suffer. These dark morning times of silence give the hours that follow a sacred taste. Surrounding myself with true silence in the early hours, I am better able to carry with me an interior cloister in the busyness of the day - a reminder that all these mundane tasks - repeated again and again - weave around me the sacredness of time given in love.

When the silent morning is lost for some reason - when I can’t wake up or when Yashynka wakes with me full of need, I have to push to create the inner cloister, to walk in the quotidian with reverence. To see my sacred time in the ritual of cleaning, cooking, keeping the fire, and loving. Perhaps the afternoon will bring me my silence, and my ritual can live in hot tea and shortbread while Yarrow naps and clouds gather above. Perhaps, though, I will have to wait until the night comes, and write while my husband reads or sleeps, with a cup of vodka and the coyotes making my silence shudder from time to time. Perhaps there will be no outer silence and my sacred time will be simply the joy of a basket of eggs, a new-made bed, or my husband’s guitar in the soft-lit night.

As Jenna writes, sacred time for artists, for housewives, for each of us, involves an attempt to make each hour holy, and like her, my hours often fall short. I'm continually reminding myself that the sacred is often found in the mistakes and imperfections that make the hours our own. And, like Kathleen Norris, I often forget when faced with dirty dishes or muddy floors that "God is inviting me to play" with my time. This Advent our discussions explore sacred time: solemn and playful; as we count the days till the Nativity.

St. Andrew's Eve

2011-11-25T12:39:00.000-05:00

The feast of St. Andrew on the 30th usually marks the end of the Catholic year, and Andrzejki, or St. Andrew's Eve, is the night to peer forward into that new year, discovering what will be. On Andrzejki, unmarried girls can drip hot wax into a bowl of water and interpret the shapes to discover who they'll marry. Any sort of divination, especially using water, are supposed to be more accurate on this night. I like to imagine St. Andrew sighing with resignation and maybe playing around a bit, to confuse the results and remind the eager fortune-tellers that life is not so easily plotted and planned.

Amulets and Talismans

2011-11-18T12:01:00.002-05:00

Last November I began to wrap myself in blessing whenever I stepped outside, keeping the evil eye away from my tiny daughter. I had never worried before, never thought much about the piercing power of evil intentions, but her hidden little body, her tiny helpless fists and blind little eyes brought to my mind the many ways for hurt to touch her.

Many people forget the evil-eye, ignore it, or assume for comforts-sake that it's merely an invention of older days - times when men feared the thunder and burned hunger in effigy. But the evil-eye - a glance of malevolence; a cursing glance - is just as common among a culture full of frustrated and isolated individuals, people who forget that the thoughts and wishes within them do affect the outer-world. Aware of the danger, I kept Christ close to me in the months before I met my daughter. Red on the wrist to distract the eye, peacock earrings to stare it down, and a small, hidden agnus dei as a final barrier. The agnus dei is an almost forgotten blessing: a lamb formed from blessed wax and wrapped in foil. A physical prayer, working it's magic slowly, and with love.

Is it superstition, my god-magic, or is it living faith: seeing the dangers and asking to be spared? I think a bit of both. We can rarely walk the line perfectly, often I fall on the superstitious side instead of the secular one, unwilling to ignore the shadows of life, for fear they'll thrive on neglect.

2011-11-13T16:36:00.003-05:00

Christmas is coming...

....$2,200.00 at Anthropologie.

Rain God

2011-11-11T10:00:00.001-05:00

It's raining again tonight. The pattering against the roof has become too familiar - still soothing, but not pleasantly, more like a drug, making my mind dull and unresponsive. I would love for the next week to be bright and clear, and I'm tempted to fight for it. Our house is full of blessed palms from the Triumphal Entry, collecting dust behind the icons, or woven into the lattice walls. I just need a few for the fire to drive away the storms; light a palm let it burn like incense up to heaven, to St. Elijah, whose firey chariot rides across the the sky, driving in the weather, and chasing it away.

When I light one, I will smell the dust burning, worn out prayers from the years gone by; the smoke curls, filling the with hope, while I listen to the falling rain. Tomorrow, I know, will be a bright new day.

Mythos: The Discussion

2011-11-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

Mr Pond is right in calling me out for a tendency to absorb a variety of myths, blending them to create my own, personal mythos. I do this on a regular basis, we all do. Part of the nature of living myth is a certain fluidity, an ability to stretch and absorb similar surrounding myths. Does this mean we can make belief into a sample-platter of accepted and rejected beliefs? Not at all, mythology is still, as Mr. Pond so nicely put it, something which "grabs us round the throat and tells us the way the world is." Mythology's ability to alter, absorb, grow, and change is precisely why it can survive in a world that has, for the most part, turned it's back on the mysteries of daily life. Modern mythology may not feel as exciting, as fascinatingly other to us as the mythologies of old, but it does live and grow strong in our modern imaginations, woven in with the myths of old that have lasting power. All this blending is not the result of conscious picking and choosing on the part of the individual, but the of the individual being grabbed again and again by myths which meet each other, blend, and create a complete, living mythos.

This week, Jenna continues our slow, spiraling discussion, bringing our definitions gradually into sharper focus. Mythos is like mythology, only more so. She refers to it primarily as "the overarching story or stories that define and shape a culture." I like this definition - it defines, but with breathing room. Here and now we are not a unified culture, and the stories that define and shape us vary wildly. What stories define and shape our cultures? What stories unify? I know that when I meet someone who knows my stories: the dangers lurking in the dark, the mysteries we play with, the reasons we bless our home, leave some vegetables in the garden, and keep at least one apple on the tree, I greet him as a long-lost friend - we share the same stories, dream the same dreams.

Jenna is right, our mythoi give us depth, they give meaning even to the lattes and long workdays, they give hope for the future and a sense of belonging in the present, without which we would all drown in the shallow things.

Thoughts and Plans

2011-11-07T21:11:00.000-05:00

My posting has been a bit sporadic recently. Yashynka has been much more interactive at the cafes, and has discovered the mouse, which makes everything difficult. But I'm working around it by typing at home and then just transferring posts when I'm online, which should free up more time for actual editing, something I'm never good at, even in the best circumstances. Looking forward, I'm planning a discussion post on mythos for Wednesday. Jenna has given a lovely, well-thought out response to Mr. Pond's reminder that mythology is not something to play with and sample, but something to fall into - something that demands from us a wholehearted response. On Friday I'm looking forward to delving into sacramental "magic", or the folk practices, superstitions, and daily magic that are attached to common sacramentals. I love these little mysteries, the practices that continually remind me that "with God all things are possible".

Also coming soon, I'm editing and re-editing my reflections on Motherhood, in the hopes of posting as a three-part series thoughts on birth, solitude, and boundaries.

Blessings to all & thanks for your patience,
Masha

Tea Cakes and Russian Reflections

2011-11-03T12:58:00.000-04:00

Autumn is quickly fading into winter and my thoughts are primarily wrapped up in making the homestead a cozy, warm little retreat amid the snow, though the trials of the Karamazov clan can drive out all practical thoughts for hours on end, even now that my rereading of the book is over. The cold nights, little mounds of snow against the yurt, and the scent of burning logs all encourage my distraction. I want to sit bundled in my rocking chair with hot Russian tea, Dostoevsky, and a little blue and white plate of three tea-cakes set in a triangle, while Yarrow sleeps in her cradle and the night breathes all around.

I learned to make tea-cakes from my mother, and her recipe book, which was not at all Russian, but the cakes truly are: tiny, crumbly, rounded, and so easy to display - they go so well with the strong "Peter the Great" tea I found at Bagusha's - half it's lettering in Cyrillic, with my pretty dishes, and with the immoderate heroes who run wild in all of Dostoevsky's writing. He makes me think about the cult of moderation, which cuts both ways, stealing away the passion that makes great saints as well as great sinners. We don't like to think of moderation as a stumbling block to sanctity, but it very often is. What would Magdalene be with out her immoderate love, or Mary of Egypt, or Paul with only moderate zeal, or Francis who was unable to avoid extremes in any case. Dostoevsky's Russians are forever reminding me that God longs to be taken to the extreme, and that moderation is at best a lukewarm virtue, based more on fear than love.

Collecting Dreams

2011-10-26T10:49:00.000-04:00

"God said to Abraham 'kill me a son.'
Abe said 'man you must be puttin me on.'
God said 'no.' Abe said 'what?'
God said 'you can do what you want Abe but
next time you see me coming you better run.'"
~Bob Dylan

Continuing the discussion with Jenna St. Hilaire and Mr. Pond

Myths can be difficult to collect and to study. But to understand them we must collect, we must study, and we must immerse ourselves in the ever changing relationship between myth and culture. Because when a myth is living, it is in constant flux, and even within a culture, the relationship to the mythology is varied - Jenna rightly describes our own culture as "an enormous sampler platter both for use and study, not only of belief systems but of exaggerated tales" in which we search for things to believe in, and for fresh ways to experience what we do believe in.

Jenna writes that she loves fantasy fiction because it allows her to "take a night off" from the polarizing aspect of living mythology, from religious, social, and political conflicts and immerse herself in a comforting mythology, one that lives, but that may not be so polarizing. Right now, as the discussions around me because increasingly full of conflict, it is refreshing to take refuge in soothing mythologies, both real and fictitious. I'm fortunate that my home is full of both - it's easy to feel healed in the mythology of living when surrounded by candle-light, reading about Long Meg and Her Daughters, standing stones which no man man can count, while coyotes howl in the night. My own collection of myths is full of tales of Christ coming hidden in the night, of saints who hide among the birches to keep the evil out, of feasts, and fasts, and reasons to avoid mirrors at night. Like Jenna's retreat into fiction, my mythology strengthens me, allowing me to resurface calmer, stronger, and kinder than I could be alone.

Understanding mythology is like collecting dreams, something is always left out, forgotten or misplaced. The essence of myth is not something that can be studied, it can only be experienced. The stories and characters can be written down, studied, and known, but the essence is elusive, like a half-remembered dream.

Mythmaking: Beauty and the Boss

2011-10-19T09:01:00.000-04:00

A discussion with Jenna and Mr. Pond

"Remember the morning we dug up your gun
the worms in the barrel, the hangin' sun"
~Bruce Springsteen

Every time and place needs it's own mythology, it's own prophets and poets and myth-makers, the "necessary other" as Kathleen Norris calls them. They create myth by being so much a part of the world they live in that they understand in an interior sense what drives their people. Myth-makers pull moments out of time to make them mean more than the moment could on it's own, and as Jenna reminds us in her post, "Myth is not made alone," it belongs to the whole culture. The myth-maker weaves the dreams of his society into realities that hover just out of sight, dreams that are sometimes joyful and sometimes nightmares.

When I think of our myth-makers, I think first of the Boss, whose lyrics make myth out of the mysteries of American life, out of factory work, long drives at night, out of trampled dreams and broken love. Like the character's Jenna so loves in her writing, it's "frightening..how dear these people are" - unreal, imaginary, but "more true than if it had really happened" (Hemingway), the people of myth populate our souls, forcing us to grow into a muturity they can never reach. Myth-makers are artists, shaping the souls of those who fall into the myth, they offer each of us a chance to believe in beauty, to remember who we are, and to step out again into life, strengthened and renewed.

Grounded

2011-10-16T18:04:00.000-04:00

In Icons of the Christ-child, his little feet are shown to remind us of his humanity - that he walked on the earth, with dirt between his toes and perhaps blisters where the sandal-strap rubbed. The feet in Icons are a constant reminder of God-made-man, his physicality and his life in the world.

It's amazing to see the newness of baby feet, with none of the signs of use they'll pick up soon enough. They remind us of Christ, who makes all things new - baby feet and spring blossoms - all in the proper time and place, all with the joy of freshness and love - just to watch them grow old and rich and full of stories.

Autumn Cleaning

2011-10-14T09:42:00.003-04:00

"The materiality of the writer's life cannot be exaggerated."

After college I pared down to what could fit between the doors of my green Focus with the racing tires and opinionated bumper. I had my little kiln, my wheel, and 100 pounds of clay. The spaces between were crammed with books, silks, scarves, pots I loved, and a Rubber Tree Plant that grew in my grandparent's house on Telegraph sitting shot-gun beside me as I took off down the road.

Now, cleaning for three, things cannot be abandoned with such ease. My house is full: skirts, boots, diapers; Saints and feathers, books and herbs. I've set down roots and my life is spreading. Now the road is a pathway, not a destination. I'm a housewife with chickens to feed, a baby, a dog, and a to-do list that goes on until eternity. It's a comfort, direction is something I'd hoped to find driving mapless across the East. This year I scrub my floors and wash my walls under the gold of my maples and know where I'm headed.

Feminism

2011-10-12T05:23:00.002-04:00

I'm thrilled with the responses I've gotten to my post on the words that define us: masculine, feminine, feminist, etc, and thrilled that the responses are so polite and so different. The most interesting part of the discussion for me is how varied the reactions to the word "feminist" are. In one of my discussions, a woman defined herself as a feminist because she expects her husband to work so that she can stay home with their children, do heavy work for her, and support her as she does "womanly things" which led me to post some thoughts on a woman's role "in the home" on Piekno. In the same discussion, another woman defined feminism as the desire for equality in work, wages, and education, and in our blog discussion, Laura, defined feminism as simply, "people are people, don't be a jerk" while both Jenna and an anonymous commenter considered feminism in a harsher light, as women who don't seem to like men and masculinity much.

When I think of feminism, I think of Kathleen Norris, and because of her I also think of the Virgin Martyrs of early Christianity. I think of my sister and her husband - who makes every family gathering more peaceful and pleasant, of my grandmother, my great uncle, and of many good friends from school. I don't think of man-haters, in part because of the men I know who are non-self-loathing feminists. I also don't think of myself. I can't get past the impression the word gives, of being in favor of one sex over another. Though the feminists I've known don't hold to that understanding, the basic definition is hard to ignore. In practice, unfortunately, I see more man-bashing in non-feminist circles, which saddens me. I also noticed that the sort of feminist I generally encounter is incredibly supportive of my life at home, I've never felt in any way dismissed by them for being "just a stay-at-home wife/mother/potter/writer" with no career goals whatsoever, though they are typically viewed as extremely against women in the home. I think though, feminists are primarily against women staying home because they believe it is the only way to be a good wife and mother. As I watch women I know work, raise children, and hold their homes together, I wonder how they do it (I can't even manage to finish my road) but when I see their children happy, healthy and well-loved, when I see their husbands supported and supportive, I can't fault them for adding a career to the mix and living at a faster pace than I choose to.

So what am I? A woman who stays home with her daughter and dog, lifting heavy things when life demands it, scrubbing floors, tending the fire, and drinking too much tea while pots dry. Staying far away from labels that can't quite fit.

Dreams for Night and Day

2011-10-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

I've been looking for ways to make each day holy. Primarily by reducing the things that clutter, organizing what remains, and returning to some semblance of order. It's difficult to build a schedule for myself when my life lacks any formal organization, but because I'm attracted to order, in moderation, I continually pursue it.

Yarrow's tiny feet and hands are so clear, just a few little lines, and so long. She reminds me of an elf, or a little fairy child. We call her a changeling, when she sits in judgement on the people around her. So aware.

Autumn nights are my favorite. Chilly and bright, but not the frigid, snowy nights of winter. I like the smell of falling leaves and woodsmoke and the bright starry skies. I love the crunch of frost under my feet in the early morning, and the late pink dawns.

Our priest is a dual-rite Byzantine, hoping to start a small Eastern community up here. I'm hoping he will, I miss my Liturgy. The Latin Mass is lovely, but I would love to have a Byzantine parish again. October brings to mind all manner of night-time traditions with candles and prayers and Icons. It feels magic, with the wind in the leaves and the living skies, a month when anything can happen.

Imaginative Reality

2011-10-06T11:44:00.000-04:00

Jenna and Mr. Pond are very patient with me. Yesterday I really should have gotten into town and written my post, but Matka is still up, the sun was out for a few hours, and Yarrow has been driving more than she'd like. Life is altogether a little more social than I'm used to and it takes it's toll on my writing, my mood, and apparently, my health - today I'm down with a wretched cold, and feel a bit guilty sitting in a corner of my least favorite cafe in town. Sorry for the delay!

“Scattering a thousand graces,

He passed through these groves in haste,
and looking upon them as He went,
left them, by His grace alone,
clothed in beauty.”
~St. John of the Cross

I highly recommend Jenna's post from Monday, which gives not only my favorite definition of myth, but a few of her thoughts about it, which are interesting and insightful. This week we're writing on myth in general, and since I can't add anything really to Jenna's defintion, I'll just add my own thoughts. Myth is too often assumed to be just classical mythology, primitive stories, and pagan beliefs. But the definition: "a traditional story, ..typically involving supernatural beings or events" is broad and includes many stories that we take for granted today. Christ is a mythological figure, as is St. Francis, and my daughter's patron, Paraskeva, who comes to stick the negectful mother with knitting needles, or spin the wool of the overburndened housewife. They are traditional stories, and the events fall within the realm of the supernatural, but the people themselves are real and living, and the stories continue to have meaning to those who know them, as do the smaller myths: the apple-tree man who keeps the last of the season's harvest for himself, the fern-flower that blooms among the faires once a year, and the belief that the surprise guest on Christmas Eve is Christ in disguise. Little myths, big Myth, weave in with reality as we know it to make the rich tapestry of reality, full of half-hidden truths and beautiful mistakes.

Magic Beauty

2011-09-28T10:54:00.000-04:00

This week's discussion, on Beauty in fairy stories, is to kick of a new direction of discussion, from beauty to myth. I'm excited for the change. I suggested today's topic, as Jenna reminded me in her post, and the topic is an important one to me, but I'm having trouble writing on it. I'm interested in reading Mr. Pond's response, because this is apparently his passion. Write away Mr. Pond!

Fairy stories, folk tales, myths, and superstitions all meld together in my mind. The all belong essentially to a life that is more connected to the land and to the people around us; a life that sees the spiritual aspect of living things. The beauty in fairy tales is this worldview, the realization that anything is possible. It is a beauty that is thrilling, frightening, and joyful. Tales of changelings, of dark creatures that make nights in the woods dangerous, of river haunts who drown the unwary and unbaptized make the forests come alive in imagination, as do the joyful tales, of Eden returning at midnight Christmas Eve - when animals speak, flowers bloom, and lights fill the trees, of the apple-tree-man guarding the orchard, the domovoi guarding the home and sweeping up at night.

Fairy stories demand beauty from us as well - the domovoi will guard the house against it's owners if they offend his aesthetic. He will beat the lazy homeowner, pinch the inhospitable housewife, even dry up the cows if an ill-favored animal is brought it. The fairy world loathes the unbeautiful - the brutal, frightening, and dangerous they have in abundance, but the unbeautiful they reject; which is one reason I love them, they remind us that failing in beauty has it's consequences.

2011-09-21T19:22:00.000-04:00

"If you like metaphysics throw pots."
~Annie Dillard

I like metaphysics, as a hobby. Throwing pots is more serious, more a part of life; but I like metaphysics, and so I throw pots. Recently, my husband moved my wheel from the shed to the not-quite complete kitchen where it'll live for a while.

I've missed throwing. For the past year I haven't had the space set up to throw, though I bought a kick wheel before we moved. My etsy shop has languished and all the my pots have stayed in my mind.

Annie Dillard says it i s the material that matters to the writer, the many things of life. I like the material things as well, and I see what she means - throwing they are a distraction - writing, they inspire.

Daily Life

2011-09-21T10:58:00.001-04:00

continuing the discussion with Jenna and Mr. Pond.

The art we see everyday is my passion. The ability to make each day sacred with beauty is an ability I attempt to cultivate by creating a domestic church, a place of beauty to rest in, to refresh in, and to grow in. A place that can both comfort and challenge.

Daily beauty can be simple and pure. The easy images of loveliness that give us joy,like butterflies, flowers, smiling babies, and sunsets.

They can be very human..

or spiritual. And like all beauty, they raise us up, even the easiest beauty is always whispering, "remember your death." Because all our daily beauty is just a preliminary, and that's one reason I love it: daily beauty only lasts the day.

unexpected art

2011-09-15T11:15:00.000-04:00

On a overnight greyhound leaving New York just before dawn I sat across the aisle from a man determined to convince me he'd been taken by aliens. I didn't argue, but I think he could sense my resistence to the idea, he kept taking, arguing against points I'd never made, citing proof after proof: his hair color had changed, he dreamt of them. I began to accept that I had hours of aliens ahead of me, hoping he would get off before Boston, or in Boston at the latests, when my seatmate broke in at last, offering me his headphones and a home-made cd. Garage-band jazz is not my favorite, but this was good, it fit the industrial dawn breaking all around us. It fit the abducted man across the aisle, and the mother and child three steats ahead. It fit me. The early morning music made me love my bus-mates, feeling as though we were all together searching for some deeper joy.

Masculine and Feminine

2011-09-12T10:51:00.000-04:00

Thanks to a Friday night conversation, my mind has been on these words all weekend. I'd really like to get a discussion going, but to being I'd just like to know how you all define these words and what images or attributes they bring to mind:

Masculine, Feminine, Womanhood, Manhood, Feminist, and "Gender roles".

You can respond either in the "comments" section, or by sending me an e-mail at cyganeria.milika@gmail.com

Thanks!

10 Things about me..

2011-09-12T10:46:00.000-04:00

Thank you Jenna for giving me another opportunity to indulge narcissistic tendencies!

1. I have an unhealthy attachment to black clothing. I love it, my husband is working on introducing other clothes into my wardrobe, but black is still my favorite.

2. I love jewelry. I like to wear lots of it, all piled on. Silver and wood and amber and brightly colored stones all go together so well.

3. I wish I had a battery-powered blender, to make smoothies at home. I also would like a battery-powered hair-straightener. Apart from that, I don't really miss electricity.

4. Cosmo radio on the satillite is my guilty pleasure. I'm not sure why I like it, they talk about clothes I'd never wear, and their lives are nothing I would want..I guess that's why it is a guilty pleasure.

5. I can't donate blood. Every time I try they can't find my veins. I end up bruised, pricked, and still as full of blood as ever.

6. Eyeliner is all it really takes to make me feel all pretty and put together. I have at least a dozen, in varying shades of black and dark brown.

7. I used to dislike St. Therese, she seemed boring and too sweet, until she helped me with a problematic nose-ring, now I pray to her for all my piercing needs.

8. I tape notes behind my icons, requsting specific favors, they've never let me down. The notes serve as a continual reminder, because certain Saints tend to be forgetful.

9. I've been called a snob a lot recently, because beauty is a major priority in my life. Baby clothes are no exception.

10. I love taking surveys. Other peoples thoughts and ideas fascinate and inspire me.

I think I'm supposed to "tag" other people, but I don't really know how to do that, so if you read this, and you have time, list off some things about you in the comments!

2011-09-08T09:57:00.000-04:00

"The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through."
~Edna St. Vincent Millay

This week I feel as though splitting the sky would allow not only the face of God, but bright sunlight and beautiful blue. Our sky has been grey since Monday, with a heaviness of air and more rain than I'd like throughout the days. I have jeans on the line being rinsed again and again.

On these rainy days I get thoughtful. I try to plan things, be responsible in some way. I've drafted posts to keep me blogging for at least another month. They will all be edited at some point, and either posted or lost. The typewriter is best for drafting. Seeing the posts typed out gives me a push to view them as more than just journal entries.

We lit the stove last night, to drive away the damp chill. I'd forgotten the coziness of being inside at night, with wood burning in the stove and the lamps flickering on books and papers. We listened to the rain patter on the roof, read aloud from borrowed books, and laughed at Petka and Luba as they vied for attention. It was a good night, if only sunny days would follow such nights.

Delayed technique

2011-09-08T07:59:00.000-04:00

I have to apologize for not posting my discussion post on the appropriate day. I'd like to blame Yarrow, babies are good excuses, but it wasn't at all her fault. The day was too rainy yesterday, the yurt too cozy, and I was much to set on my continuing fall cleaning project to make it out to a cafe. Instead, we nestled in at home, much to Luba's delight, and I told myself I'd go out to the all-night internet spot while my husband and Yarrow slept. I didn't. By then, a chilly autumn rain outside, and a warm fire in the stove convinced me to sleep as well.

My motivation wasn't helped by the word. I have no emotional reaction to the word technique. When I think of it, I see just the word itself. With a bit of effort, I can give it a fancy script - like a typewriter, but with more curliness in the q and the h. I know that different techniques can give different impressions. I know that learning technique is important, particularly in dance and music, but the word is not one to inspire my imagination or my memory. I've never been particularly dedicated to anything requiring me to perfect a technique.

Craft: Witch and Otherwise

2011-08-31T08:33:00.001-04:00

Jenna has set us the word Craft today. I like the word, it feels artsy and imaginative in my mind. When I close my eyes, I see craft preceded by the word witch, in a way it is rarely, if ever preceded in life. I see beautiful women, with darkly painted eyes and lond skirts cutting herbs to dry and cure. They look like my own idealized image of myself - when I'm being especially charitable. They wear amulets and medals, they watch the sky and understand what they're seeing.

I see, idealized again, the various potters I've know at the wheel, especially my friend with the fantastic handles. I see her shaping them again and again. I remember all the work I have yet to do with my own pots before can place them beside hers. I see the small green booties knited brightly by Matka, who knits many things, and is dissatisfied by them. I see my husband with his hammer and saw, his grid paper and his sketch pad.

Craft is a word that crunches in my mind when I think of it. It has substance, and it offers so many images. I like the word and the way it feels. "..he crafted it out of the raw earth." Like God, but with something to work from.

2011-08-29T20:45:00.002-04:00

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."

~ Oscar Wilde

I asked a priest, before my first tattoo, whether to get one would be an appropriate thing to do. My priest reminded me that the body is a temple and encouraged me only to tattoo art that reflected the sacredness of the body. I've always attempted to follow his advice. Recently, as I'm in the process of designing my newest, and most public tattoo, I've heard a good deal of negativity about them: they indicate an immoral lifestyle, they indicate self-loathing, or lack of education. Women seem to get the brunt of the negative press. According to one radio host, tattoos on "the female" advertise a lack of faith, promiscuity, and and attempt to be unfeminine. I'm a little disturbed by the generalizations more than the negativity. I'm sure there are people who are tattooed for these reasons, maybe..it is possible. I've never met such people, but I haven't met everyone, perhaps these sad people are out there.

I can really only speak for myself. I love my tattoos, I love making the temple of my body as opulent as any cathedral. I love designing art that follows the lines of my body, that brings to light my passions, that creates a sense of the overall person I'm becoming, just as clothing, jewelry, make-up, and other additions do, only more permanently. Thanks to my art, I am unable to hide my faith, my passions, my attachments. I'm unable to become a chameleon, I'm forced to walk through that world as myself. Like the move to the land, my tattoos insist I live intensely, and fully. It is a lovely way to live, and an added benefit to the enjoyment of decking myself out in all the beauty I can hold.

A word I never liked

2011-08-24T08:53:00.000-04:00

"I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."
~Oscar Wilde

I don't really like the word talent. In her post, Jenna, uses a scene from Little Women to illustrate the word, which works well to explain part of my reaction to the word. Talent isn't genius, it isn't even brilliance. Talent is a certain level of skill, lacking either the desire, sensitivity, or some secret understanding to make it brilliant. Talent is generally disappointing. I often feel that "talented" is just another way to classify without any meaning behind it. Saying "she's talented" generally just means she tries hard enough to do well, but without any special aptitude, or else doesn't try at all and has enough natural ability to carry through her indifference. Either is disappointing.

Talent is a word I don't generally use, it's not that I would prevent the 'merely talented' from continuing to pursue their activities, it's just that there are other words, words I like better to describe them. Words that may describe the situation better: Louisa May Alcott is a sweet writer; I am an enthusiastic potter. Using the word talent seems to leave behind description, and thoughtlessly place the subject on some upper level of mediocrity - far below brilliance, but not bad enough to be unskilled. It's a place to get lost in - too easy to go through life saying "I'm a talented artist" and never attempting more.

2011-08-19T10:28:00.001-04:00

"I was just a little girl
when your hand brushed by my hand
and I will be an old woman
happy to have spent my whole life with one man."

~Lori Mckenna

I'm looking forward to the weekend. We have no plans. Last weekend we spent our time resting; refreshing our lives together. There is something wonderfully refreshing about time alone with my husband, it is as nice, though different, as time alone. Rilke writes that love "protects the solitude" of the other, and my husband does that well. He is a soothing, quiet presence in these weekend retreats - doing his work, helping with mine, watching the sky darken together with coffee and a clove, napping with Petka and Luba while I enjoy my little gardens. My whole soul feels brighter around him.

I'm grateful for my good fortune in finding a man who understands and appreciates the life I strive for. Who encourages my pursuit of beauty in life, and puts up with my impracticality, forgetfulness, and distractions - the times when real life is forgotten because of an absorbtion in some writer, idea, or activity. Last weekend, splitting firewood while I washed diapers, reading Bulfinches' stories aloud while the moon rose, he reminded me again of the peaceful joy I live.

The artist of my imagination

2011-08-17T11:37:00.000-04:00

"Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?"
~ W.C. Williams

In her opening post to this weeks discussion, Jenna gives a interesting and very revealing discription of growing up in pursuit of art, giving us an impression of a family that encouraged creative growth in all its members. It's a happy and attractive impression.

Mr. Pond in his post on beauty last week, gave another image of the artistic life "Clenched shoulders and strained eyes and running headache and stacks and heaps and piles of books and laundry and dishes." And I have to admit I like this image as much as the image of a earnest young girl, curled up with her mother's guitar in a room full of light and lovely paintings. They are both images of art. The first is the image I associate with cafes and students, with the 'intellectual artist' attempting her dissertation. I remember my time living with an actress friend, working 12 hour days at a farm and spending nights absorbed in living, pursuing, and discussing art. I associate it with coffee and vodka, with cloves and with take-out chinese in tiny paper cartons. And I associate it with my current life, as family demands both distract and inspire me.

Jenna's images make me think of Liturgy, of the rich art that comes from the happy soul. It reminds me of nights in college with good tea, guitars, and my good friend's hand-thrown mugs, with handles that still put mine to shame. It makes me think of my bedroom in high-school - bright green and soaked with incense - where I read all through the night. I feel the pile of smooth silk yarn as matka makes my wedding veil, and I smell my husband making coffee on Saturday morning, setting it out on a try with poached eggs and thin slices of avocado - the art of living well.

2011-08-15T09:04:00.000-04:00

I've been listening to a lot of music recently:

This is a fantastic video, the album is amazing. Perfect with hot hazy days, dark rainy days, and any night.

I've also been working in designing my new "celebrating Yarrow" tattoo. This is the general idea:

2011-08-10T18:30:00.002-04:00

Today is my birthday. I'm 28. In celebration I thought I'd look back on the year, and look forward to see what my newest year of life might have in store:

The Best of 27:
   1. Yarrow, obviously, who is watching me with reserved judgement. I'm still not completely convinced she's not a changeling. But I'm incredibly grateful for her appearance in my life
   2. Exploring and improving our land with my amazing husband. He gives me so much joy.
The Worst of 27:
   ..I don't really have worsts. Thanks to an awful memory, they quickly go into oblivion..I do remember being uncomfortable when the stove broke in winter. Oh, and not throwing all year, that was pretty upsetting.
Hoping for in 28:
   1. A kitchen, front yard with an herb garden, and goats.
   2. I'm going to be greedy and hope for another baby.
   3. An off-the-grid kiln of my own.

Overall, life is good. May everyone else's be as lovely!

Piekno Zbawi Swiat

2011-08-10T11:50:00.002-04:00

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."

     ~Albert Camus

Jenna gave our discussion an excellent start on Monday in her post on her impressions of Beauty:

     I've spent a fair portion of the past twenty-four hours thinking about what to say. I've thought of it
    while listening to Beethoven's Piano Trio #2 with the sun streaming golden through the sheer
    drapes. I've thought about it at Mass, going through the reading of Scripture and the recitation of
    creed and the prayers of the Eucharist. I've thought about it while reading Dante's Paradiso aloud,
    with Lou, by candlelight.

I loved it. I loved feeling the connection, the similarities in our images of beauty. I imagined Jenna's home as a great, glowing place of art and loveliness. And it started my mind sifting through images for those that stand out to me in their beauty. Moments of beauty make me hungry, I want to have them all in me and around me, I want to spread them all over the world. I can never be satisfied in the pursuit, that is why I'm forever rearranging my home, tattooing my body, and wandering my land in silk and linen - damaging my clothes in the process. I would rather catch my silk skirt on blackberry thorns than damage the activity by doing it in yoga pants. For the most part, I try to live what many people consider a life of impractical priorities. And I love my life. When I picture beauty, I see hot coffee in hand-made mugs, my husbands hands on the guitar, I smell incense and cloves, or fresh rain and tall grass, I walk the aisles of my favorite church and gaze at icons while the cantors sings. I stand in my woods and watch the full moon rise. Like Jenna, my beauty is never stagnate, it lives and grows and is shared, and no matter how much there is, I'm always reaching for more.

Words, words, words

2011-08-03T17:17:00.000-04:00

"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works."

~Oscar Wilde

This week, Jenna was good enough to respond to my questions with kindness and clarity. I was thrilled. There is so much in her response I want to discuss, but I'm attempting not to get hung up on the details. I've realized, especially in this time full of family visitors, that when I respond to people, I have a tendency to try to explain all the minutia - circling around and around until, long after I've begun, the point is acutally reached. So I'm trying to lay off the small things and focus on the broader ideas behind her answers. Mr. Pond will have to forgive me for leaving his post behind at the moment. I want to address the idea that being and non-being are the same, but I really don't have any idea how to incorporate that into my response. I wonder if we can divide up some of this issues again to allow for fuller discussion, I think we might be at that place again, though "being and non-being" might be a little outside our theme.

I'm begining to understand our differences. It seems that when I write: "This book is entertainment, that book is art." Jenna has been reading " This book is merely entertainment - it has no power to effect the lives of its readers. It is banal, unimportant." But there are high and low forms of entertainment, and some are both Art and entertainment. High forms are not only capable of producing a respose, they insist on and pull forth from the audience a response. I would put in this catagory some t.v. - like the Firefly series, many of Bruce Springsteen's songs (some of which can cross over into "Art".), and other creative works that aren't art, and aren't trying to be art, but still influence the lives and thoughts of their audience in an active way. Low entertainment: bad sitcoms, reality tv, professional wrestling, and bad romance novels do fit with Jenna's understanding, and I can understand why, with that interpretation she would reject the idea that a book she found meaningful, like Little Women would be called "entertainment" - it would be like she finds "Jersey Shore" meaningful. Which is not at all my intent.

In response to my question on substance, Jenna writes:

I suspect here that we're defining outward and substance differently. When I say outward, I mean the prose, the surface beauty that makes Hemingway an objectively better writer than Alcott. When I say substance, I'm referring to the vision coming through the text, the outlook on life and death and what it means to be human. Substantially, I put Alcott higher than Hemingway. Alcott infuses faith and hope and charity into her work, letting them walk with the reader through every curve of life and up to the deathbed. Hemingway was a brilliant man who lived a tragic life; he brushes up against Alcott's virtues only by accident, if at all.

We are actually defining outward and substance the same. Substantially, Hemingway is superior despite his failiure to live well, because his writing is continually in pursuit of those virtues. In Hemingway we see man in all his flaws, stumbling toward redemption. Alcott preaches her virtues, they are displayed well, but predictably. Hemingway - probably in part because of his tragic life - portrays them as they often appear in reality, half hidden behind the flaws of fallen man. I can see why you prefer Alcott, but its Hemingway's substantial superiority - the depth and richness within the writing, as well as the ability to express himself well and beautifully that make him an artist. He isn't so much brushing against them accidentally, but discovering in art what he fails to find in life. This might seem like minutia but what applies to Hemingway applies to all artists, both with and without tragic lives. The substance is as important as how the substance is presented, beauty is never "only skin deep"- it always goes deeper.

Regarding critical acclaim. I do understand Jenna's frustration with the response of critics.

"Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism; they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstanding." (Rainer Maria Rilke).

Critics tend to misunderstand, misread, or misrepresent in response to their own interests or desires for the work. There are trends in criticism that dismiss quality work due to prejudices, but equally problematic is the dismissal of acclaimed works out of a sense that the Literary elite are only interested in despair and post-modern rejection of joy. Being driven only by the feelings that a work produces is flawed way choosing reading, like any choice based only on feeling, it stagnates the reader and damages the reader's ability to grow through what is read. I'm not accusing Jenna of using reading to produce an emotional high, but her pursuit of "moving, encouraging, pleasant" books could lead to avoiding "otherwise beneficial" books that are not so moving or pleasant. I'm not arguing here for darkness and despair, which I know Jenna doesn't need or want, but books of substance that don't seem so pleasant at first.

But Jenna, I know is continually pursuing goodness and beauty in all its forms. She longs to be uplifted, and strengthened, as we all do. I'm thrilled to share and discuss with her - to learn from her and (hopefully) encourage her as we both attempt beauty in our lives and work.

2011-08-01T15:18:00.000-04:00

"Now it seems the truest words I ever heard from you
Were said at kitchen tables we have known
'Cause somehow in that warm room with coffee on the stove
Our hearts were really most at home."
~Kate Wolf

One of my greatest pleasures is a weekend morning with my husband: waking late with sunshine from the dome on the bed; a french-press of fresh coffee with lovely cups; fruit; and time to spend together while he plays his guitar or we talk about all manner of things. When I picture these times, I am always wearing my painted silk kimono, earrings, and last-night's eyeliner (the smudginess of day-old make-up is a favorite 'look' of mine), the house is always clean-but-disorganized, with abandoned wine-glasses scattered artfully, and incense buring beneath the icons. Reality is generally somewhat different, with the addition of a sneaky dog, dust, and sometimes a desperate seach for food to go with the morning's coffee, but the experience is as lovely, and better still for being a real, rich moment in life, one that I can rest in when the busy days distract me from the simple joys of living.

Art and Entertainment

2011-07-27T04:00:00.001-04:00

I'm reading Tolstoy and feeling at peace with the world. Tolstoy makes me want to pour coffee into lovely cups, set out an ashtray and enter into live discussion with my fellow bloggers. The internet has its limits - there is no space for "..and then..this too!" There are no expressions to read. I feel the limitations especially now, and they frustrate me.

Jenna has trouble with the distinction between art and entertainment, and despite her explination, I'm still at a loss as to why. I like distinctions, they give clarity, and they give an opportunity for excellence that one large grouping cannot allow - a children's abridged production of the Tempest can be very entertaining, but it can't help but fail when compared artistically to a well-prepared, nuanced, professional production. That doesn't make it a bad production, in it's own sphere, it could be excellent, but only if we don't force it to compare itself to something its not.

So I'm not really going to respond, so much as question: (Jenna, I hope this doesn't put you too much on the spot.)
     I would like to know why a distinction between art assumes passivity on the part of the audience; why it
     seems to place importance on the outward instead of the substance (I would have thought the opposite).

     I would like to know what it is about acclaimed works that make you feel they are offering very little.

    And I would like to encourage you to delve into the despairing works, which so often offer more than   they seem to. I remember reading and rejecting some books that seemed to strip me down, only to realize that it is only by "dying down to the roots" that I can regrow again in strength and certainty.

I hope this doesn't look like an indifferent response, in our commitment to mutual understanding, which I enjoy a lot, I want to be certain I'm not taking things the wrong way and responding in misunderstanding. I want to know and understand. I think that coffee and conversation would help a good deal, and I wish I could pour both you and Mr. Pond a cup.

2011-07-25T10:25:00.000-04:00

"Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them."
~Lev Tolstoy

I've been reading Tolstoy again. Tolstoy, since college, has been linked in my mind with lazy, hot summers, alcohol, and a restless desire for change. This summer he is making me dissatisfied with the arrangement of my home. I want to pull out everything, pile it all in the center of the house, purge and re-order. I'm not doing it because my kitchen is unfinished, and I have no place to put the kitchen things except where they are, until it is done.

I have a huge desire to store all the unattractive things away somewhere - avaliable, but unnoticed, and replace them with loveliness. We don't have a lot of unattractive things, but those that we have are essentials, I can't donate them or throw them away. They peek out from beneath the bed or beside the screen.

I want desperately to be helpful in accomplishing our summer tasks, but Tolstoy's infectious restlessness makes it hard to stick to a task. I'm distracted by the number of projects that await me, by the hugeness of my goals, so instead I nurse my baby slowly, moving from the tales in Divine and Human, to Anna, to Pierre and Natasha. I plan a good deal, drink vodka with limes and anticipate the changes I will make someday soon. Life is good.

2011-07-21T13:25:00.001-04:00

"This life I lead, setting pictures straight, squaring rugs up with the room - it suggests an ultimate symmetry toward which I strive and strain. Yet I doubt that I am any nearer my goal than I was last year, or ten years ago, even granted that this untidy world is ready for such orderliness."
~E.B. White

I like to re-evaluate. I love looking around my little house and altering it in my mind - adding, subtracting, and adjusting in a continual pursuit of domestic beauty. I like standing before the Icons in the early morning and re-evaluating my spiritual state. I like to make grand plans and form dreams of perfection. I like them most for being unattainable - for being dreams I can and will discard at a moment's notice for new and better dreams and aspirations. I like them because they shape my life without dominating it, they help me strive for a living beauty, one that belongs in everyday life, with all it's dirt, dusty shelves, and spiderwebs I haven't the heart to take down.

I do dust my shelves, and sweep my floor, but the life we live is one that doesn't allow for perfection. We track in dirt, we're visited by spiders, and some choose to stay. I don't like houses that are too clean though, they make me worry I might damage something. So I dust my shelves and sweep my floor, but my flowers sit too long in their little vases and I let the spiders that are not too big live up among the herbs on the ceiling. But I'm always in pursuit of my own version of perfection: domestic beauty that lives, thrives, and changes with the seasons.

Beauty is Not..

2011-07-20T13:05:00.001-04:00

"Beauty is not caused. It is."
~Emily Dickenson

I'm not writing in negatives again to be difficult. Jenna has called us to discuss "what beauty is not," so here I go. Jenna writes that beauty is not evil, and I agree whole-heartedly. She's right that evil sometimes tries to hide in beauty, or to make itself appear beautiful, but it's like the grocery-store peaches that look fantastic on the outside but already smell slightly of rotting when you hold them to your nose - something gives it away if you're aware enough to look for it.

Beauty is never evil, and never banal. But it can be small, and it can be simple. It can be grand and it can be dark and terrifying. It is often unsettling in some way, like the angels who greet us with "Fear not" - it overwhelms us.

St. Paraskeva

2011-07-19T13:05:00.000-04:00

I know next to nothing about the personal history of St. Paraskeva - who she was in life and how she came to be counted amoung the saints, I only know the folk stories, and the meaning her name gives her. Paraskeva is the woman's saint: the saint of the home, of domesticity, and of the fields and gardens. Her feast in October was originally in the midst of the time of year when women were preparing for winter: spinning, weaving, marrying, and cleaning. She is a patroness of all these activities, as well as of the times of anticipation. Paraskeva is associated with Friday, and so she waits with us during those times of anticipation, the Fridays in our lives when we are awaiting the Resurrection. There used to be a practice of devoting certain Fridays of the year to Paraskeva by fasting, or abstaining from household tasks, I try to follow this custom on the Fridays of Lent, though I think October's Fridays would be appropriate as well. Especially this year, in thanksgiving for the blessing of our own little Paraskeva.

2011-07-17T14:15:00.000-04:00

"I am too alone in the world
yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy."
~Rainer Maria Rilke

The heat this July has been full and rich and heavy. I comes in the mid-morning and fills the day with the damp, sweaty scent of summer. We've been keeping out of it as best we can, and lounging with Japanese fans in the shade of the trees when we can't go anywhere else. I would like to say that I've been resting in solitude with my husband and our baby, but we've seen so much of others, it would be a lie. The visits have been wonderful: my family, our good friends, Yarrow's baptism and the party that followed - I wouldn't have passed them up, but I'm ready to retreat now; ready to curl myself away from others and refresh.

I'm not unsocial, I love people. I love visiting and talking - especially with tea or cold lemonade around a lovely table. I love seeing again the people I love who live far away. But I am refreshed and revived in solitude - either alone, or with my own tiny family. It's only there that I really feel I have the space to think, my mind quiets down and can begin to reflect.

The need for solitude is something I aways worry will be misunderstood. I think sometimes it comes across as a rejection when really it is a retreat: an chance to make myself into a person who is better able to greet each person in love and hospitality, because I have the richness of solitude within to sustain me.

The Beauty We See

2011-07-13T13:00:00.001-04:00

"..out of all paintings
the angels follow me."
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Jenna gave us an easy start this week, out of respect for the busy real lives all three of us are enjoying at the moment. Life is ever-changing and we are all touching different aspects of that change. I am amazed at where the year has taken me, and I hope it will be equally generous to them as it continues. A year ago I would not have expected to be holding my daughter this summer, having enjoyed a long lesson in patience that made me better able, I hope, to appreciate the blessings I have been given, and the blessings still to come.

In her post, Jenna mentions the places she finds beauty, because we do share a search for beauty. I like this topic, I like to think of those places and see them again. I find beauty in the imagery of Rilke, and the colors of Cezanne. I find it in oceans at night and at my stream on any afternoon. I find it most often at home, in the Icons and the tacky faux Van Gogh, in the scent of bread and in my many superstitions. I find it in the rituals I fill my life with. But I find it in these things because they touch something beyond themselves, and I love them for it.

Yarrow Paraskeva

2011-07-11T17:51:00.000-04:00

Our long-awaited baby girl was born Saturday morning. In a quick, happy labor while light rain came down all around us and lightning flashed in the sky. The day that followed was full of sunshine, blue skies, and beautiful new-baby moments. We're happy, enjoying getting to know the little worm whose been squirming around within for the past nine months.

Towards Understanding

2011-07-06T15:32:00.000-04:00

"Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Our blog discussion has been hitting some road blocks recently. I realized in looking over it that a good deal of them may come from it being merely an online discussion, without an opportunity to delve into the people behind the ideas, the "whys" and "hows" that form our thoughts. So we are reflecting, at least for this week, and perhaps for a few more. Already I'm feeling more on my feet in the discussion, more aware of the people this discussion has put me in relationship with, and that is decidedly helpful.

Jenna begins with an explination of striving, in which she says that she doesn't "know what it is not to strive" and that explains a good deal to me. She describes herself as a perfectionist, I am anything but. The resignation I fight against is primarily my own. I pursue beauty, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, but I also live in a world of tomorrows, and I have to remind myself daily that life is meant to be lived at each moment. My natural tendency is toward anticipation, not action, and if I'm not careful I'm sure to "pass life, and [myself] by" (Rilke).

Perhaps this is part of the reason we have so many disagreements, we see ourselves and respond to our own tendencies: she is ever-needing to remind herself to accept and I am ever-needed to encourage myself to attempt. Where does Mr. Pond fall on this spectrum, I wonder.

But Jenna is right, for both of us, the healing aspect is grace - which takes me from undirected wanderings to the ability to create, from being "an endless seeker/ with no past at my back" (Emerson) to someone rooted in life and following a course that begins and ends in Joy. Grace is that without which no beauty is possible, and I am blessed to recognize it abundantly in my life.

2011-07-05T12:04:00.000-04:00

"..hope
and desire like crushed herbs in his heart..
dense and maddening fumes
passes away above"
~James Joyce

A priest friend of ours saves his church candle stubs for us. They're generally taller than votives, but too short for him to use. We're always grateful, they burn brightly, and they're blessed. We scatter them around - in front of Icons and on shelves; we tuck them into pieces of broken pottery sot he wax won't spill and at night the house is lit up with little blessings.

The candle scent is fantastic, it fills the house. We notice it more now that the woodstove is off and there isn't the continual scent of woodsmoke and simmering soup in the air. Our nights smell of beeswax and the green outside now, incense and coffee. It's lovely and it's summer.

2011-07-02T16:47:00.000-04:00

The seedlings are in, and growing. The gardens look better than I'd

expected them to, and since moja Matka has come, we've been picking strawberries,

canning jam, and widening the road into the property. I check the garden daily - loving it,

and anticipating food.

We had some under, and over ripe strawberries which went

to the chickens, who loved them almost as much as they love hiding

underneath the truck. It's not a good habit for chickens to pick up - the hiding,

and it makes Luba nervous, she likes to be able to watch them all the time.

This weekend my husband made a salve for the baby, Calendula blossoms soaked

in olive oil, and thickened with beeswax. It feels lovely, smells fantastic,

and ought to soothe soft skin well enough.

Luba has been chasing the sunlight all afternoon - both

inside and out. The yurt's dome makes a circle of light that

moves across the floor asthe day goes by, and Luba loves the spotlight.

She finds it, poses for the camera

and then moves on.

Mediocrity: meanness and indifference

2011-06-29T11:44:00.000-04:00

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"But because thou art Lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth."
~Revelation 3:16

After reading Jenna's post in this round of our discussion, I am certain we are working from different understandings with regard to mediocrity. I checked to be certain that my definition is a legitimate one, not merely my own reactions and responses to Kierkegaard and Christ in their united disgust with the mediocre, and my little dictionary confirmed me when it provided synonyms such as "indifferent," "mean," and "non-person." I"m comforted. Especially as this post is written quickly, sandwhiched between a late-morning nap and strawberry canning with moja Matka, who is up anticipating the birth of her first grandchild.

Mediocrity in my understanding is the failiure of the person to be a person, to be an active participant in his own life. It is the pursuit of the "good enough" and not the Good - attempting Purgatory, not Heaven, and in doing so, failing to reach either. Mediocrity fails to create Art because it is indifferent to Beauty, and uninterested in effort - it lacks not only talent but desire. Rilke describes the mediocre life, when he writes that being alive and being awake are acts not states, and it is necessary to do them, not simply fall into them. The state of not being dead, but not acting as a person alive is the state of the mediocre. He refuses to chose, to become either hot or cold, and in the end is "spit out," having been "neither one of the living nor one of the dead." (Rilke). Because of this, because mediocrity is alway comfortable in it's indifference, it is like Acedia, the noonday demon that Kathleen Norris describes so well. It sucks the life and the passion from man and sinks him into despair and inhumanity, and "mediocrity is always guilty" (Kierkegaard) of forming a sort of self-deception in the person, keeping him from seeing anything higher than himself.

Mediocrity is a temptation at various times, for the artist, and for the person. In life, mediocrity tempts us to fulfill the law without love, to rest in the feeling that we are better than some, and worse than others - just an ordinary, everyday person, with no need to pursue perfection. In art, it produces similar results: I'm good enough, I paint nice flowers, people like them, why work for more? It is an attitude, not a measure of skill.

If I have time this week, I may come back to this. Read and think and write again - because I am spending so much time right now looking at my clock and knowing I need to rush off again.

2011-06-28T08:08:00.001-04:00

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
~Oscar Wilde

I have been meaning to make my vodkas this month. Ideally, I will do it before the baptism, as vodka is such a celebratory drink, and I would like to be able to celebrate properly. I don't distill vodka - that would take too much time, and too much skill - I merely infuse it with flavor: lime, orange, and black tea are easy favorites. I may try pepper at some point, though it would seem to fit better with cold weather. Given a month, I can make Krupnik - a honey, spice vodka especially popular at Easter. I don't have a month though.

We have silver vodka cups that need polishing, and a good number of shot glasses that show the colors well. I'm looking forward to pulling them out again and passing them around in joy.

2011-06-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day."
~Vincent Van Gogh

Tomorrow is the feast of St. John the Baptist. Tonight is noc Kupaly, and if you go out at midnight to wander in the woods, it's possible to see the fern flower which opens the eyes of the finder to the hidden world of magic and fairy.

The fern flower blooms only at midnight on St. John's Eve, and only rarely then. If a wanderer is lucky enough to see it, she must never let her attention be turned. All the evil beings of the forest gather around her, gibbering and whining, to catch her notice, frighten her, and cause the flower to wither before it blooms: cursing the viewer, and leaving her defenseless against the demons that surround her.

If she can wait with the flower as it opens - glowing in it's own red light - the finder will be blessed by it with all the good things the fairy-world can give: wealth, luck, discernment, and protection against witches, demons, and danger. The finder is also granted the ability to see the future in the fires that burn on noc Kupaly. She can ask her questions and watch as the flames dance out the story of the years ahead.

I won't be hunting for the flower this year, though I can imagine finding it, blooming beneath our birches, where our three ghosts stay. But I don't know if it could keep my attention from the darkness all around. I'm afraid I would look at the evil ones, and right now, feeling the burden of my baby's weight, I worry about cursing the child before birth. Besides, I can see my future already - stretching out before me like a great lake of joy. I have no questions for the Kupaly fire this year.

The Artist as Other

2011-06-22T09:40:00.000-04:00

"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth it's riches; for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place."

~Rainer Maria Rilke

In her most recent post, Jenna mentions that "You can have meaning without beauty..but beauty always speaks. It haunts and comforts.." It is a point I like, and one I can agree with. Beauty does speak, it triumphs, and this is the "ancient, communal role" (Kathleen Norris) of the artist - to delve deep into the experiences of his world and birth beauty, to "call forth" the riches of everyday.

In so many ways, the role of the artist is similar to the role of the prophet, a "necessary other" existing and creating, not in "untrammeled freedom" but in an "exacting form of discipline" (Kathleen Norris) that submits the Artist to the demands of his vocation and demands from him not only talent, but devotion and commitment as well. It is a communal role, a social role - creating the "lie that tells the truth" (Picasso) and presenting the world as it really is, in all it's intimacy, passion, failure, and ultimate, glorious beauty. That is why, when the artist fails to call forth the riches of his world, when he calls his world poor, empty, and uninspiring, he fails to create art. I agree completely with Jenna that beauty can be found in the simple and humble aspects of everyday life, but it is the artist's ability to become intimate with these things, to nurture them into fruition that creates art - the process of "seeing, knowing again, and being welcomed" (Rilke).

2011-06-21T12:02:00.000-04:00

"the Icons are whispering to you

they're just old men, like on the benches in the park
except their balding spots are
glistening with gold."

~Regina Spektor

In an attempt to answer a side question of Mr. Pond's without derailing the week's topic, I thought I'd attempt to explain Art in relation to Icons. Icons are not Art. When we treat our Icons as art, we diminish their role in our lives. Icons are a presence, the opportunity for the Saint to enter our lives in a fuller way than a statue or "religious image". That is why we greet our Icons, kiss them, and leave them uncovered to watch with us in the sorrows of Holy Week. Art is "a lie that tells the truth." as Picasso and many others have said, which is why men and Icons, no matter how beautiful, are never "Art" though they may be "artistic" and are certianly beautiful.

It is sometimes hard to develope a taste for the beauty of Icons: the living eyes that follow us throughout the day, the colors and gestures that mean more than they appear to, Icons are something more than religious art and it is by coming to know them, as we know our friends - being intimate with them as we are intimate with each other, that we can develope a true understand of who and what they really are.

2011-06-20T12:47:00.001-04:00

I have more gardening to do. I never really thought about
the effort required to carve a garden from a forest floor.
It involves a good deal more work than I would like.

But progress has been made, and in this late season,
we aren't the last to put in our seedlings and watch them grow.

The baby loves my husband's music almost as much as I do. Luba

is the only one who would rather nudge his hand away and sniff

at the strings than listen. She has no ear for music, obviously.

Reflecting

2011-06-15T12:10:00.000-04:00

"Once you label me, you negate me."
~Soren Kierkegaard

It's nice, actually, to be taking a break this week from the discussion that's been going on between Jenna St. Hilaire, Mr. Pond, and myself. I'm glad to have this week to simply be, and to reflect on the discussion that's happened so far. She left for the week asking "What is beauty?" and that is something, perhaps that we ought to have settled on at first, it might have clarified our earlier discussions, it might have removed some of the uncertainly that led to disagreement.

What is Beauty? Simply speaking, Beauty is the visible form of the Good.

Mr. Pond, who seems to be under some illusions about my philosophical ideals will be somewhat surprised to learn that this definition is not essentially Platonic, but Catholic (in both senses of the word). While there are aspects of Plato in Catholic thought, Plato is not the essential, he is absorbed or dismissed according to his ability to fall in with what is understood to be True. Plato has lovely ideas, but he's been eclipsed. The tendency to say, this is Platonic thought, and respond to it as such makes true discussion impossible, it is a response to an impression from the writing, not what is actually written.

I am impressed so far in this discussion with the continual search for agreement in both Jenna and Mr. Pond. They obviously enjoy the discovery of common ground, and the building up of that common ground until it becomes a beautiful place, a haven against disagreement. Agreements are lovely, and in this past discussion, Mr. Pond has gone to great lengths to attempt a reconciliation between Jenna and my definitions of art. He's decided that it is entirely a semantics disagreement, due in part to my Platonism I'm sure. But not being a Platonist, and not longing for agreement at the expense of my own ideals, I have to reject his efforts. If art is merely communication, if every bit of banality and ugliness is on some level, art, then art itself has no inherent value, no meaning, and no purpose. It does nothing to raise up man, it is a non-definition. Jenna's inclusive concept of art is in complete opposition to my own, and, by being too inclusive, fails to give non-art communications an opportunity to shine in their own sphere. Defining a Taylor Swift song, or a "penny-dreadful" book as art instantly relegates it to the level of "bad art," while allowing it to be itself: a fun pop-song, or badly-written but enjoyable commercial fiction, gives it the opportunity to succeed on it's own level.

Jenna and Mr. Pond will have to forgive me for being less than determined to agree than they. I've never been particularly uncomfortable with disagreement - especially written out disagreements, that can be edited, read, reread, and continually developed. I am not disagreeing for the sake of disagreement, but in some sense, out of a sense of self-preservation: If I agree with Jenna's terminology, I am agreeing that my artistic vocation is meaningless and non-existent, for if everything anyone ever says, writes, or does falls under the umbrella of art, then the term "artist" is as meaningless and empty as the term "art." I can't accept that, and in an attempt to form an agreement, I doubt either of them want me to agree with that idea, though it comes naturally out of Jenna's definition.

It's nice having a break in the discussion, a chance to look back and re-collect my ideas, to bring out some background thoughts that have been collecting in my mind these past few weeks. I'm looking forward to picking up the discussion again next week, with mediocrity and the abundance of Kierkegaard quotes that go with that issue. No one discusses mediocrity like Kierkegaard, except maybe Christ. Maybe.

2011-06-13T09:19:00.000-04:00

One of my dearest friends was married this past weekend. I wasn't able to be in her wedding: our baby is due within the month; but her marriage made my thoughts return again and again to my own wedding and the overwhelmingly joyful marriage we've been blessed with ever since.

This past weekend I read through my husband's letters from our dating days, when we lived a full day's drive from each other and rarely used the phone. Neither of us enjoys calling people, so our conversations took place, more often than not, on paper, or in person. I'm grateful for that. In person, conversations are easier to remember than over the phone, and letters last. I have them all now, wrapped in twine and tucked away in my desk. In our case, letters encouraged a deeper level of communication than phone conversation could have, which allowed us to enter marriage really knowing each other. My friend's relationship has been much different - every relationship is - but I look forward to seeing it lived out as joyfully, and as full of love.

2011-06-10T09:07:00.000-04:00

"Simplicity is completely absorbed in

listening to what it hears."

~Thomas Merton

Recently my days have been absorbed in listening, and somehow, there is always a good deal of coffee involved in really listening to people. I'm trying to keep the listening going, while keeping the coffee to a minimum. I wonder how often, when we think we're listening, we're really only waiting for key words that can serve as an opening for our own thoughts. I've noticed this only the radio a lot recently. We have call in shows, and so often the caller has barely finished his question when the response comes - ready made, to a question that was never asked.

I know I do this, marriage is helping me change, my husband doesn't let my deafness pass unnoticed, and country-living has helped, there is so much to really listen to! In our apartment, there were sounds to block out, the neighbors arguing, the sirens rushing by daily, the cars, and the collective noise of the place. Out on the land there are birds to hear, peeping frogs, and rustling beeches. I don't hear too much, and watching Luba, I'm learning to enjoy listening. She loves all the sounds: chickens, owls, thunder, wind - they all make her little ears go up and bring the wrinkles out on her face. It looks like an overwhelming desire to know. It makes me happy to see it, and happy to join her in deep listening.

Art: a response in the discussion with Jenna St. Hilaire and Mr. Pond

2011-06-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

"Oh tell us, Poet, what do you do? ~ I Praise.

But the dark, the deadly, the desperate ways,

How do you endure them ~ how bear them? ~

I Praise."

~Rainer Maria Rilke

We are discussing Art. What is art, what is non-art. Can there be a created thing that fails to be art? Can there be a thing that has so completely lost it's beauty, it's truth, it's goodness that it is in no way Art, that it crumbles and will not endure? As I understand her, Jenna is saying that there is no such thing - all our communications, banal to beautiful, blessings to curses - all are art. I can't agree.

I'd like to be mistaken, I'd like her to mean that all of life has the potential to call forth Art, that for the artist, the smallest thing has riches that can brought to light. I would agree. It is the way in which we fling ourselves into experience, into the light and darkness of life that makes the experience artistic, the ability to "say them more intensely than the Things themselves ever dreamed of existing" that turns the Thing to art: absorbing, nourishing, growing, and then making the experience anew - so that it touches beauty and endures- which makes Art.

It is only for God that every communication is Art, and that is because, for Him, all of eternity is "a great recognizing, seeing-again, and being welcomed." All of life is one great intimacy, and in all His works runs the beauty of the Divine imagination. Some of His art fails, because it is living art, with a will of it's own, and runs from it's beauty, but the Artist has not failed to make art. For us it is different, our communications fail, we fail. We are not intimate enough, with ourselves and with our world to call forth it's beauty. When we are able to take an experience and make it intense, alive, and enduring, then we make art; but not all of our words are living, and none are the Word: none are Beauty incarnate, we have no certainty that what we produce is Art.

John Paul II reminds us that "not all are called to be artists," though all are called to craft their lives in imitation of Christ, there is a distinction. The artist is not only called to, but also given the gift of an ability to "respond to the demands of art, and faithfully to accept art's dictates." (Letter to Artists). That art makes demands which must be accepted by the artist, enforces the fact that art is more than a passive thing - nothing more than communication, demanding nothing: not talent, not discipline, not devotion from the artist. Communication is an essential aspect of Art, but not the only aspect. Objective beauty is also an essential aspect of art, and if beauty, the "visible form of the good" cannot be found, the work is not art, for "beauty is the vocation bestowed on [the artist] by the Creator" (LtA).

In so many ways, art is like faith, "a path to the inmost reality of man and of the world" (LtA); it opens the door to faith. Through beauty it reveals truth, and without both truth and beauty, art cannot exist. It would be wrong to assume that all communications, even those lacking both beauty and truth could be art in anyway, it does a disservice to truth, and to the human soul, which longs to be nourished on a beauty that "will save the world" (Dostoevsky). It inserts relativism into the understanding of art, a relativism which, by refusing to distinguish between art and non-art, steals away all the value and meaning of art, by making it passive, a simple act of existence - people must communicate - instead of what it is "a battle for Life" (Rilke).

2011-06-06T08:27:00.004-04:00

"Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always."
~Rainer Maria Rilke
After the Ascension I am with the apostles, watching the sky, and waiting. Trying to avoid living in anticipation, trying to make each day new. Christ has borrowed my beads, I'll take them back again when the Spirit comes, on Pentecost and my table has a fresh image, the Trinity Icon; or when the baby comes, and I give all my saints flowers.

Cleaning house is not really anticipation, so much as an attempt to make each day beautiful. I can't stop the dirt from creeping in, or the spiders I won't kill from making webs on the rafters. I brush down the webs and wash away the dirt, only to see them gather back again. Only the dishes are a battle, the rest is joy.

Last night I thought over all the things we're lacking still: undone cradle, unplanted tomatoes, packed away diapers and I worried. But my husband was sleeping easily, and calm is contagious. I wrapped myself in his and dreamt of happy things, waking only twice in the night to listen to coyotes and check the path of the stars.

When we have friends out again, my wheel is coming out from the shed. I can't help move it, but my husband and a friend could carry it down the road and set it on level ground. I can still throw, and I look forward to throwing again, in the sunlight. I look forward to making things grow beneath my hands.

Our back garden is a joy to see, we're eating baby spinach and radish greens. We're watching beet greens grown, and helping the peas cling to their gate. Our herbs are small and flavorful, our beans are climbing. It feels sustaining, in a small way, to have a garden growing.

Beyond Boys and Girls: continuing the discussion with Jenna St. Hilaire and Mr. Pond

2011-06-01T07:39:00.003-04:00

"I find myself in a world where everybody has his compartment, puts you in yours, shuts the door and departs."
~Flannery O' Connor

I had a different post prepared originally, but Jenna's thoughts on male and female views in writing gave me a good deal to think about and respond to, so I'm going to run my mouth a bit instead. She makes three points which particularly require a closer look: The first, that men are uncomfortable discussing the bodily experiences of women, such as menstruation, barrenness, and childbirth; the second, that men are more likely to reject a book for flaw which women will gloss over in the pursuit of something to love in the story; and finally, that men deal with broader themes, while women deal in the intimate and personal.

I do actually agree with her on some level in the first point. Men are often uncomfortable discussing women's experiences in the bodily sense. But as Jenna points out from her own experience, so are many women. This is less of a gender issue than an issue we have as a culture with our own physicality. The world is so clean, so sanitized - our bodies and their less-than-attractive elements are kept out of sight and out of mind. We are so distant from our own bodies that it's no wonder we don't know anymore how to discuss our own bodies without discomfort. Men and women both struggle with discussing bodily experiences, there is a tendency to become either too clinical or too "silly" - hiding embarrassment behind jokes or technicalities. If women are too uncomfortable to be open about their experiences, men can't write with any understanding of those experiences - nor can women, because they've lost a communal understanding of what women experience, they are too wrapped up in a singular experience, with no way of knowing if it's in any way a shared experience.

The second point Jenna brings up is amusing to me, as a woman who violates this rule so completely in my own reading. I'm amused because while I, and most women I know would fall in as readers with the men in her assertion, a decent number of men would fall in with the women, reading and forgiving everything for the sake of a "fun" read or an attractive heroine. I suspect it's a completely personal trait, but I'm a little disturbed at the ease with which she assigns it to women. Are we really such slaves to our emotions that we can't read a book without needing to feel good about it in some way? Are we really so incapable of clear judgement? I don't think so, and I think the tendency to apply this idea to women encourages a market already full of badly written books, and designed to make women read casually, respond emotionally, and cultivate an unhealthy attitude towards reading - requiring it to produce a certain feeling in order to have value to her as an activity.

It's her third point I want to spend the most time on. She's right in some ways, in that many people do have an impression of men caring "more about the big, overarching matters of the world," while women care more about the intimate, personal details of life. There is sometimes belief that men are really writing about big issues, when they're dealing in the intimate, and women are being too personal even when addressing larger issues, but this is more an issue of projection. Because we assume women write about personal details, we can't see the bigger picture, and because we assume men are dealing with wider issues, we miss the intimacy and emotion. In good writing, as in any other art, the intimate and the universal come together, just as the masculine and feminine elements of the writer come together. A woman who writes primarily "as a woman" fails in that she puts her gender ahead of her humanity. While it's true she writes out of her experiences as a woman, they are experiences in the world, with men and women, and unless she can enter into the mind of the men in her experience, she can never create fully. In this area, I can't help but think of two short-stories by Hemingway - often considered one of the most decidedly male authors - in which he enters into the mind of his female characters in an intimate way: "Hills like White Elephants" and "Cat in the Rain" are short, intense explorations of experiences of women he interacted with, and they indicate that, for the artist, the point is to experience everything, not merely as a man or a woman, but as an artist - to move beyond limitations and become "like the seraphim, all eye."

2011-05-27T11:26:00.000-04:00

2011-05-27T11:00:00.002-04:00

"All who go in beauty..
will resurrect in Beauty."
~Emerson

My husband made me peacock-and-amber earring for Mother's Day. If I don't completely reject all jewelry, I will wear them during labor to keep the evil-eye away. Peacocks are an Easter bird as it was thought once their flesh would never decay. They symbolize the resurrection and eternal life even today, just by the grandness of their display.

I like to think of God, laughing in anticipation as he created them, rejoicing in the many-eyed splendor of their tails and the luck he poured into every feather. He must have known the feathers would be used to guard the fragile from curses - hung on cradles and clutched in bridal bouquets. I think He can't have minded - so much beauty should not be wasted.

We have feathers tucked behind our Icons, watching along with the Virgin and her Son all that happens in our home. The feathers turn my thoughts to Christ - opening His tomb to greet the day.

The Effect of Objective Criticism on Taste

2011-05-25T11:26:00.003-04:00

In response to Jenna St. Hilaire's: The Effects of Taste on Objective Criticism

"In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and is always valid. Each time you reread you see or learn something new."
~Hemingway

Literature, by which I mean writing as an Art, must be objectively beautiful. To be beautiful, it must contain both Truth and Goodness. The standards for beauty, despite common misconceptions, are objective, and the study of beauty - Aesthetics - is somehing that can be undertaken by anyone, and is necessary for any serious writer to have at least a working knowledge of. In Literary criticism, an objective understanding of beauty is often what stands in the way of a purely subjective response to the work.

Aesthetic standards tell us what to look for in any work of art, whether written, sculpted, painted, or lived. When these essentials are missing, the work is artistically flawed. Unlike the laws of grammer, which can be broken to create a necessary effect without damaging the literary merit of the writing, the standards of beauty cannot be broken and still produce beauty.

I am not a critic, when I read, I read as an artist, and when I judge the works I read, it is as they measure up to beauty. Critics can be concerned with grammer, sytax, and cultural significance, these are all aspects of Objective criticism, I'm concerned only with the objective criticism of artistry. In many ways, despite the objective Aesthetic standards, which tell us what is no art, the understanding of what is art can remain murky. The nature of beauty is like the nature of God: it is much easier to say what it isn't than to define exactly what it is. Like God, beauty is a mystery that "continues and is always valid." To be art, writing must fulfill the Aesthetic standards and continue onward into the "mystery in all great writing." It is writing in pursuit of the Divine, whether the author herself recognizes it as such, and we need to be able to recognize its value, even if we can't love the form it takes.

Which brings me to Taste. Taste is like any other appetite. It varies from person to person and time to time. Some tastes, formed in a habit of laziness, need to be purged or pruned, or redirected entirely. Other tastes - a taste for the good, ought to be continually nourished. Jenna is right when she writes that "trends in education and philosophy [can] reflect elite blinders and even instill prejudices" in regard to taste, and sometimes this prevents us from seeing the beauty in a work that is not quite our style. This is where objective criticism comes in to train the tastes again and again in pursuit of the Good. The nature of Art is to last, to be eternally valid, whether its form is in fashion or not. But weakness in education and philosophy have helped to produce a population that, while considering itself educated has never taken an educated look at its tastes. A person may say "I know Hemingway is superior to Dan Brown, I just like Brown better." without ever going on to ask why he prefers bad writing to good, weak ideas to strong ones, and banality to beauty. Developing within himself a strong sense of the standards of Objective criticism makes it possible for him to understand the flaws and weaknesses in his own tastes and develope a stronger attraction to Beauty.

Taste is fluid, changeable, and flawed in all of us, like all attractions. It needs to be developed carefully and lovingly to avoid allowing it to overwhelm our better judgement and lead us ever downward into stagnation.

2011-05-23T11:22:00.002-04:00

"Whoever does not affirm at some time the definite..terribleness of life, never takes possession of the unutterable powers of our existence; he merely walks at the edge; and when the decision is made eventually, he will have been neither one of the living nor one of the dead."
~Rilke

I know many Catholics who reject modern Literature almost out of hand. Why is that? What is it about modern writers that offends us? There is pretension enough throughout literary history, there is despair and darkness in writers of all eras, Godlessness and hedonism abound in some of our most treasured classics, so why do we reject the moderns specifically? Why do Joyce, Hemingway, Camus, and their many proteges offend us. Among many Catholics, the favorite authors are either decidedly pre-modern or else some of the few 20th century writers who wrote in pursuit of a premodern world.

I get the impression that it feels safer in another time, we escape our own era into a world that can be easily romanticized: boxed away to be revisited in the safety of imagination. In this world, Beauty is always pretty, like a Bouguereau painting - bland perfection of form with non of realities wrinkles or scars. It becomes harder and harder to see beauty in the darker aspects of life - in old mills decaying along the river, in old men alone in discontent, in blood and death and crucifixion.

I think of St. Catherine of Sienna, to whom Christ gave his circumcised foreskin as a wedding ring, or of the tales of Hosts turning to bloody meat in the mouths of saints - allowing them to taste the intimacy of devouring the Man, Christ. The pretty images of 19th century holy cards and Bouguereau Madonnas can't begin to touch this beauty, but many of the moderns, for all their restless despair, have a feel for the darker side of beauty; rejecting them, we reject the opportunity to let that beauty raise us up.

Sometimes stagnation seems attractive, comfortable. Going back again and again to the pretty things that give pretty feelings is easy and enjoyable, but there is beauty in the modern world that has been called out and studied by our modern writers. Its true that it is often a dark beauty, one that reflects our own move away from nature. It can be a frightening read, but it is our world, if it has "terrors they are our terrors; .. are dangers at hand, we must try to love them." (Rilke)

2011-05-20T23:02:00.002-04:00

"Thats what dries a writer up..not listening. Thats where it all comes from. Seeing, listening. You see well enough. But you stop listening."
~Hemingway

I'm grateful for my husband. Not every life is blessed with love that understands. My husband can defend my thoughts better than I myself can - and calls me to live them better than my own self-discipline ever will. I've been discussing Literature on many fronts recently, Literature and the value of art. In these discussions my husband has been my greatest support in clarifying and directing my thoughts, as well as curbing my tendency toward tactlessness, especially in conversation.

I owe him a lot in the development of my understanding of Literature, he's helped me immensely to move beyond a narrower definition fo Literature, and encouraged me to recognize the artistic qualities in all genres. He also helps me to be honest in my assessments and avoid rejecting true art simply because it doesn't coincide with my personal tastes. The ability to recognize and appreciate beauty should not be limited by the fact that some beauties are more attractive to me than others. I certainly haven't perfected any of this, but I'm grateful for his support and encouragement.

In my recent literary discussions, the writing of GK Chesterton has come up often. I'm not surprised, as many discussions are with fellow graduates of my own university, where Chesterton is very popular. When I first discovered him, I enjoyed Chesterton's writing immensly. I read The Man who was Thursday and adored the imagery, the symbolism, and the living writing. The male characters are interesting, the lone female, iconic, and the mythic tone of the tale allows this without flaw. As I followed his writing though, I became more and more dissatisfied. The Flying Inn was a disaster of prejudice and undeveloped characters: evil arabs, weak-women, and self-satisfied heroes who swoop in to expel the immigrants and rescue life-as-it-always-has-been from alteration. I loathed it. His non-fiction frustrates as much as the Inn, with the overall impression I came away with being that "Whats wrong with the world" is nothing more than women wanting to vote, work, and otherwise exist in reality, the discussion of ideas not his own, and art that can represent both modern and premodern mindsets. His writing seems primarily focused on ensuring that life as he knew it would never change, that there would be no development of thought. I'm not saying that his writing isn't impressive. Thursday is beautiful, artistic, and interesting. The Inn could have been, if he hadn't chosen to make it propaganda. His talent is obvious, but he seems to be working against it - as he writes against most art - in an attempt to hold his world in suspension.

My youngest brother, I'm sure, will disagree with my entire assesment. I hope he responds, and anyone else who really appreciates Chesterton. I'd like to hear his defense. I feel as though, because I know so many people who enjoy him, I must be missing something when I read him. What do you think of GK Chesterton, am I unjust?

2011-05-14T23:26:00.002-04:00

"These soft nights hold me like themselves aloft
and I lie without a lover."
~Rainer Maria Rilke

My husband and I don't spend many days or nights apart. I haven't spent so long away from him since our wedding, and it's a lonely experience. The nights especially, not only am I lying alone in a strange bed, I'm alone without my familiar nights. Away from the yurt, I miss the moon and the stars, the frogs peeping down by the stream and the wind in the trees. I miss my husband's warm, rich voice and his presence, with fills the night with comfort.

I think my restless days are ending. Travel has less appeal - I never thought it would, but I'm more and more attached to the bit of land we've made our own. As we continue to put down roots - planting, adding animals, buildings, and the baby, wandering becomes less likely, and less of a need in me. I have my woods to wander through, my stream to discover anew each day, and the ever-changing seasons to alter my scenery. I think I've become content - something I never expected to be. Happiness and joy have been mine almost continually in life, but contentment and restfulness, I never expected.

That's not to say I'm not enjoying my visit. My family is always a joy to spend time with, and I find myself appreciating them more and more. I'm glad I came out to cheer my youngest brother's graduation, and celebrate my baby with those who knew me as a baby, but I will be glad to come home to my husband, our home, and the life we're shaping together.

2011-05-10T14:13:00.003-04:00

"Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning."
~John Steinbeck

There's something about the weather today that makes me want to be away from home. Not out in the weather, but out somewhere in the day. I want to be moving from place to place. I wan to be alone, and I want not to be alone. I brought Luba with me in the car and let her play with the winshield wipers, she likes to snap at them as they brush by and then watch eagerly for the repeat. She likes to sit shotgun and press her nose against the windshield when it rains.

It smells of autumn today, of things passing away. If it weren't for the buds and flowers on trees, I would say it's September. I still have flowers to plant along the road, a garden to form, and the coming summer to welcome in with bonfires and beautification; but today I'm in reflective, roaming mode. It's a mood to be in off and on, so long as it doesn't take over. Nothing is accomplished, but so much is nurtured.

2011-05-07T18:09:00.002-04:00

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible."
~ Vladimir Nabakov

I do have a post drafted, about good reading and bad reading, good art and bad art, but I haven't posted it yet, partially because I'm still a little unhappy about the tone of the blog, it sounds a little too harsh, and partially because my keyboard is in rebellion. Three of my letter keys are on strike, and typing an entire post with the "On Screen Keyboard" is a little beyond my abilities. Hopefully, the keyboard trouble will clear up just as my post is postable.

2011-05-03T08:17:00.003-04:00

I'm glad to have done the "7 interesting things" post recently. As I said then, I do love writing about myself - that may be why I have two blogs devoted to my life - but apart from myself, I do love sharing interesting facts because it gives me an opportunity to ask for interesting facts about others. I love to discover what facts people chose to share about themselves: important enough to make the list, not too private to post online, and not too well-known to be uninteresting.

I know this blog is not heavy on the comments, but I'd love to read 1 extremely interesting thing about any reader who shares my love of self-revelation. You all do have something interesting, you know, everybody does. That is the blessing of long plane rides, bus trips, and blogs, we get a chance to hear the stories that people chose to share. So please, do share.

2011-05-02T09:59:00.002-04:00

"I have been one aquainted with the night
I have walked out in the rain and back in the rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light."
~Robert Frost

I have certainly outwalked the city lights in life. My home at night is deep in darkness - planted like a tiny seed in the black sky. I can watch, as we did last night, every drop of light fade slowly in the evening, until we were left with just the sky and stars. I could imagine the stars as tiny, far off yurts, glowing welcome to us through huge expanses of space, until there were too many and they became themselves again: the individual stars and the collections that make Orion, the bears, the lion, and those I still don't know.

The night is friendlier in the darkness of the woods. Friendlier outside the lights of the city. In our apartment I felt need to keep the night out, to fill our rooms with lights and sound, but out here, there are nights we use no lights at all - the darkness is softer, and we can wrap ourselves in it, and belong there, with the calling birds, the coyotes, and the peeping frogs who chorus up from the stream.

I have become so much aquainted with the night - watching the moon wax and wane above the yurt, watching the stars switch places on the sky. But the aquaintance doesn't keep away all fear - walking alone down the road in cloudy darkness is a lonely path and the rustling of last year's beech leaves, dead on the branch, becomes an unfriendly sound. Strange the difference stars make when walking out at night.