"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
~Albert Camus

On the eve of the Immaculate Conception I can't help but be distracted by Mary's Otherness. To be born sinless in a world where man is united by sin and death, to be always on the outside - looking in on the about-to-be-redeemed. It has the unshakeable feel of Solitude.

For many years, I felt as though Mary was too Other for me. Too much a saint, no sinner at all to attract me with past misdeeds. I had trouble with her western images, sweet-faced and sappy, no hard edges at all. Only the Perpetual Help icon seemed alive to me, and she was frightening because her eyes seemed to see too deeply. It is the Icon Mary I have grown to love now, her deep-seeing eyes that follow me, her wise sorrow that knows too much of the loss of mankind. I surround myself with her: Perpetual Help, Burning Bush, Theotokos. It is her Otherness that draws me now as much as anything, her creative solitude which allowed her to produce Christ, and I rejoice in the images that show her clothed in quiet power.

Tomorrow, on her feast, I would like to make of our little nest a great rejoicing. I would like flowers, baked brie, and bright candles to make the Immaculate laugh and enter more deeply into our blessed home.

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
~T.S. Eliot

We went back to my hometown for Thanksgiving. My siblings and I took to discussing writing at our favorite coffee house - not our own writing, but writing in general, and the process of writing well. Our youngest brother is planning his senior thesis and the rest of us gave abundant advice. It's a conversation we repeat yearly, whenever we are all together, with a few variations: writing, advice, encouragement, and enthusiasm, but the conversation is always fresh. There is always some new bit of information to be examined, encouraged, or rejected.

Because I have been especially focused on the question of what does make writing, or a writer Good, I took special interest in a recommendation of my sisters: to put together a Poetics, an examination of my thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the things I read, the things I write, and my relationship to writing itself. The exercise is amazing. I've only just begun but I feel in it the ability to grasp my own purpose in writing in a deep and personal way. A way that not only enables growth, but insists on it.

Blessed Advent to all, enjoy the richness of new beginnings.

"To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, they that edit it and read it are old women over their tea."
~Henry David Thoreau

News is brutal. It clamors against my head, seeking entrance. I close my eyes and feel it pressing agianst my eyelids, in and out, in and out as it tumbles down around me. To turn off the radio would do little good at this point - the news is still there, waiting, lurking; it will rise up out of memory when the moon is bright, to be turned over in my mind until the stars have crossed the sky.

The news itself - individual stories - are largely unimportant, it is News altogether that continues on: an unending procession of wonder, worry, and inanity. Today I am told of Archbishop Dolan, of the President - who gives many speeches, of healthcare and international implications. I'm lost in news as I boil eggs for my salad and watch evening change the light.

"No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place."
~Edna St. Vincent Millay

The wind has been bitter these past nights. It waits for the darkness to begin, then gathers it's power and pounds against the door. The wind brings to mind dreams from the summer, of ghosts who haunt our land, gathering under the birches and watching us as we set down roots.

Birches are haunting trees. In the daylight they dance like happy ghosts, or naked spirits, cold in the wind, but laughing. I like to put my hand on their white bodies and feel a piece of the joy. But they are too pale, to cold to be anything but specters in the night - white hands reaching out to touch, dancing terribly under the moon. I imagine my dream-ghosts wandering the birch paths at night, some with malice, others with kindness.

We've been missing the moon for over a week now. The days are dark and grey, the nights are darker, with no moon to light the sky, and no stars to smile at. I am hoping that todays clear sky will stretch into tomorrow, and through the weekend. We need time to dry out, and I would love a night of peaceful sleep, without the howl of wind and the pounding, icy rain on the roof.

I have nothing written, but I thought I'd share some photos, taken by my husband. I hope you enjoy them.

Our tacky Kitchen Madonna, in an old crate we found.

The lovely woodstove and the sticks we're currently using, while we chop
more appropriately sized firewood.

My earrings. They are actually in my ears, though you can't really see

anything of me.

Soon I will have something written to post. Until then, enjoy the lovely autumn weather!

"The man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way."

~Henry David Thoreau

I walked down this moring, to the post box to leave my letters and retrieve what had been left. The sun was rising above the trees - not quite clearing the tall pines - the clouds were small, scattered pink strips of cotton, the red and yellow leaves glowed with life. My boots sounded so loud on the road. It was a glorious walk.

I like walking in the early morning. I like seeing the moon in its last moments above the horizen, I like the clean air scent, and the early chill. I like the feeling of being alone and yet not alone as I walk down the road.

These past few nights I've been waking up often at night, to build up the fire, to watch the stars, to feel the cold night air on my skin. If this keeps up, I may add night prayer to my routine, I might as well, being awake already. We begin the day with the Angelus now, and it's such a joyful way to greet the dawn, perhaps I should join the stars as well, they are such lovely companions at night. I feel so lost without them, there is nothing like looking up to see Orion hovering above the pine, or the Big Dipper scooping up the darkness.

Moja siostra asked a while ago if I would describe a certain popular author as a non-artist or a bad artist. It took me a bit of thought, but I would describe him as a non-artist. I would put him in this catagory because I think that to be a "bad artist," one must first be an artist, with the potential to be a good artist. A "bad artist" has corrupted his gifts, but a non-artists has no gifts to corrupt. In this case the author seems to fully believe that he is an artist, and tries desperately to pass off his writing as clever literature. The fact that some people have fallen into his mistake is a sad testimony to the current state of Art.

Bad art falls under a similar definition. Bad art must first be art - it is art that falls short in some essential way, of goodness and Truth. A very few of Picasso's works fit this discription, as do some of Joyce's stories. Picasso and Joyce are artists: they make beauty, occassionally they fall short, especially when they abandon art in favour of a message: "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).

"these dark nights hold me..
and I lie without a lover"
~Rilke

The rain last night was steady, it kept up for hours a soft drumming on the roof. The sort of rain that is comforting to watch and smell and feel. I sat up listening late into the night, curled next to the woodstove, reading, drinking tea and letting the rainfall make a soft, cottony pillow round my mind.

Outside, the darkness was absolute, there were no stars, no moon, none of the comforting lights I've grown accustomed to. I will never fully accept these starless nights, part of me is always looking for light. The darkness is too full, too alive, too easy to lose myself in. Outside in the rain, I half-hopefully looked for Orion, there was only the blackness, like velvet, with no holes.