Night Noises

    Last night I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed listening to the family’s sleep sounds: my husband’s calm breathing, Yarrow’s nightime chatter, and Luba’s neurotic sighs. Outside, I could hear the pig’s snoring, and occasional soft clucking from the chicken coop. Farther away, I heard voices speaking in the woods. The forest carries sound well. I can hear chainsaws worked a long way off, hear the neighbor’s cows about a mile off, and day or night, I can hear the trucks go by down on the main road. But the night-voices are new to me, and I’d rather they weren’t out there. I think it’s someone’s television, maybe our lonely neighbor has been staying up late these days, or maybe the trucker’s wife is watching the long nights go by alone. But sometimes the sound seems to be coming from the deep part of the woods, where we have no neighbors. I imagine a collection of tramps tenting out there, with their little dog and a small cook-fire. They become so real to me that I begin to worry about them facing the winter out among the trees and wonder if they have enough blankets; but then the sound changes, the channel’s been switched and I can hear new voices and music. It’s a television, I abandon my tramps to the wilds of Maine and let my mind drift back to comfortable old worries.

   When I had finally settled in, I heard a bird die. A small bird, right behind the house. I feel asleep dreaming of hunters, grateful I was not alone.

 

 

Daily Life and Other Distractions

My parents are up on another visit. I ends today. I’m hoping to fall back into a routine when they go. I can feel the summer slipping away. The nights are chilly, we still have the windows open, but we bury ourselves in blankets and drink our coffee in bed. Oatmeal is once again an attractive thought. I have so many fantastic recipes for jams and jellies to make and store away for winter-time teas. I haven’t made them, but when I’m back in my routine I will. If I ever get back in my routine.

 

Luba has been feeling even more neglected than usual. She’s been destroying everything when we’re gone, and now spends all our time away locked up. I think she feels safer in her cage, certain to do the right thing, with no other options. Yarrow’s been giving her reassuring pats and little hugs of love whenever she can.

I have a bunch of new fabrics to use in making pillowcases, sheets, and a cover for our old, ugly feather-bed. The feather-bed was gift from a lovely aunt of mine, but after a few years of use camping and yurting, the thing looks awful. I found some green and white fabric to cover it with, so we can put it on our bed this winter without shame.

It’s a misty morning, I spent the early hours drinking coffee with milk and stealing an hour of peace before the rest of the house awoke. It’s amazing that my Saturdays are now spent waking early and cherishing my lonely hours. I used to love sleeping late and doing nothing Saturdays, before marriage, and before moving into a home that welcomes in the early morning light.

 

Long Evening - Early Dawn

The sun rises early now. These past few nights, while Yarrow fusses through the witching time, I wait for the first hints of gray to tell me she’ll doze off soon. Dawn is slipping in by four, and I feel as though there’s no hope for my rest if she continues her wakefulness. Today the early clouds made the dawn a bit later, and when Yarrow finally fell into a light sleep, I was grateful that her neediness gave me a ready excuse to stay in bed. When we finally woke and went outside, I found the pigs still snoring. It was a late morning for all of us, save my poor neglected husband, who had to make his own breakfast and run out into the mist. It’s on these days especially that I’m grateful for the chance to stay home. Sure there’s work to do, animals to feed, and sure I can hardly write this morning ‘cause Yarrow wants my pen, but I had a late morning pot of coffee, and I managed to eat at least some of the eggs before Yarrow got to them, and now I get an hour in town with Matka, while he’s at work, with a helpless coworker, and a long commute. Thankfully the long evening is waiting for him, his rototiller and our unfinished scrabble game stand ready.

Dreamlessness

“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.

unexpected art

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.