No Place to Hide

I don’t like big houses at night, or on dark days, or even on bright sunny days. There are too many rooms and too many corners. There are stairs to walk up, with your back to the dark room below, and stairs to walk down, into emptiness. There are noises - creaks and shiftings that only get louder the longer they go on. I’m grateful for the roundness of our little home, the room with no corners, where the Icons can watch everywhere and the moon can shine in on clear nights. I like knowing that there is nothing walking upstairs, no small space where blessings have yet to be flung. Our household devils have nowhere to hide, they’ve been forced out among the beeches and pines to shiver in the cold night air. True, it can make for a frightening walk to the outhouse, but I know my saints are resting in the birches, watching to keep away harm. It’s an interesting balance, and my dreams at night are full of people on both sides, perhaps Petka’s are as well. She wasn’t sleeping for a while, her naps were brief and hard fought, her nights restless. I started to wonder if her dreams were frightening her, and so St. Anna, protector of little girls was invoked, her oil dripped on Yarrow’s head, and blessed salt sprinkled in her cradle. I was impressed with how completely it worked. That night she slept with a little smile, long and well, woke happy and the restfulness of sleep is back. I don’t know what she dreams, but I imagine happy ones, full of warm milk, Luba, and laughing times with the wind in her face.

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 18

What are three things you hope to accomplish this year, and why, and how?

I have such a long list of things to do. I have to remind myself to take the year as it comes and not let myself get wrapped up in projects that belong to the future. I’ll try to keep it realistic here.

1. Create the poetry-photo compilation my husband and I have been planning for a while. I’m really excited about the project, I love my husband’s photography and I think they would make a fantastic pairing. It just takes time, which I’m generally short on, and discipline, which I’ve never had much of.

2. Get goats. I want regular access to good, raw milk. I want to make goat cheese. Besides, goats a a nice, easy way to ease further into a full-fledged homestead, and I have fantastic names all ready for them! I’m hoping to start with two or three and build from there to a little herd of five or six over the next few years. What will I do with all the extra milk? “Drink what I feel like and throw the rest to hell,” as E.B. White’s neighbor did, living alone with two milk cows all to himself, or share it with friends, or make yogurt and cheese and then share that with friends, I suppose.

3. Have truly successful gardens this summer. Big ones. Enough to can the abundance and eat enthusiastically each day in season. Cleaning out the chicken coop this week,I realized I’ve got a decent amount of our own manure aging in the snow-covered garden right now, and with some work, some pest (read that - Luba and the chickens) control, and the hopeful early start I’m looking for this year, I have high hopes our gardens this year will give way more than I could ever hope to use!

The Reader

..With Jenna & Mr. Pond

“Why are we reading if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?…Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness..?”

~Annie Dillard

Why are we reading? What readers do we write for? And why, and how? Annie Dillard is an interesting writer. I don’t always like her and I don’t always agree with her, but she is interesting. I sometimes think she takes her art too seriously though. I have a taste for bad fiction, like a taste for sugar it intrudes on my good intentions and leads me down the candy aisle of bookstores, towards the books I love to hate. When I read them, it isn’t with any hope that beauty will be laid bare, or that life’s mysteries will be probed, I’m just looking for a good time. I’m not always the junk-food reader, in fact, I’m usually not, but I have to take that time into account when I look at why I read. It isn’t just in hopes the writer will magnify my days and inspire me with wisdom, sometimes books take the place of television for me, and I look for the literary version of reality t.v., sometimes reading takes the place of sleep and I want to recreate my dreams - mysterious and surreal, sometimes I really am looking for illuminating, life-lifting beauty and meaningfulness. Am I too fickle a reader or am I indicative of the norm?

“The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others.”

~Annie Dillard

If this is true, then the reader is attempting to absorb a bit of the body of literature, to allow it to fill and form him. The reader reads to bring the body into himself. But I don’t know. The ability to create art is inside some people and outside others, but “the body of literature” - the stories that some people can shape into art, are within everyone. They’re the shared experiences of humanity, in some people they live forever within, unable to be formed into literature, and in others they burst out, unable to resist becoming literature, but they belong to each person because of our shared humanity. Maybe I read to experience another person’s vision of life, good or bad, literature or trash, it’s interests me because of the person behind the words.

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 17

What would you hope to be remembered for by those you love?

I have an image in my mind of my grandmother, my mother’s mother. In my mind, she is the giver of things, warm, loving, generous. The maker of good food, the matriarch of her family. I don’t care so much about being a matriarch, but I would like to be remembered for love, joy, generosity, and really good food. My grandmother - bushia - haunts my imagination, whispering recipes as I cook and helping me grow into the woman I want to be remembered as.

Daily Things

      I love to hear the wind beating around the yurt at night. Spring is on it’s way, I can feel it in the warm days, and even the cold days smell different - fresher, as thought the whole world is just being born. Lenten penitence is difficult on the warm days. I want fresh cream in my coffee and a croissant with a poached egg for breakfast. Or crepes with cream cheese and blackberries. The blackberries won’t be ripe for months though, and crepes are off the menu until Easter. I have black coffee, or red tea, oatmeal or eggs. We couldn’t give up eggs, not with at least a half-dozen being laid each day.

I caught a tiny spider lurking near the mugs this morning and brushed him off onto the floor. It won’t be my fault if Luba finds him and licks him up, if I step on him, or if he gets swept up and thrown in the fire with the rest of the burnables. If he survives, all the best to him, if not, at least my luck is undamaged. I’ve been bitten too many times recently to have much fondness for spiders in my house.

This week I’m reading Exile and the Kingdom when I have the time to read, and envisioning my land free of snow and full of growing things. Wander through the leafless trees, it is easy to see the open-spaces in the woods that are often hidden in summer. I’ve found so many places for fairies to hide, reminding me of when Petka seemed so much like a changeling - small and secretive and elfish. We are wandering to collect wood for kindling, and for boiling sap into syrup. My husband does most of the firewood - felling trees, cutting, splitting, and stacking - Yarrow and I do the small collecting, finding kindling and supplemental wood on our walks.

It’s Monday. We are allowed no oil on Mondays. I’m making lentils and na’an for dinner, with red tea in my blue pot with the broken handle. When spring truly comes, I will make myself a new teapot and bake croissants in my new oven.

Discussion Delayed

"The three of us began with some diverging ideas which I believe we still hold, but we go on growing in our own thought and in understanding and respect for each other. None of us, I think, holds any hard feelings, and in this world of bloodshed, that's reason enough for gladness."
~Jenna

I want to continue the discussion of discussion for one more week, primarily because I really want to give Mr. Pond a chance to add his thoughts, but also because my parents are coming into town tomorrow, and I'm busy.

Jenna's response reminds me of the differences that inspired our dialogue to begin with. We do have some serious ones - ones which might have, given different treatment, divided rather than united us. As it is, I think our discussions have given me a fuller sense of the people behind the ideas, and people are much harder to reject. I like the distinction she makes between changing minds and developing ones.

It's easier to notice dehumanizing language when you know someone on the other side of any argument, whether relatively light, or very serious. I'm learning this all the time, and I'm realizing that one of the most refreshing things about this discussion is it's freedom from artistic evangelism and the inspiration our discussions give me to try new things. We will probably never agree on Harry Potter, Twilight, or mediocrity, but, to paraphrase Mr. Pond, I like and respect my blogging friends. That tells me there is something worth considering, a reason to keep the conversation going.

But that isn't the only way to avoid falling into the "us vs. them" trap of argumentation. It's the easiest way, another way is to see the world with eyes of love and assume the same of others. After all, even if some of the critics are right, and Twilight was written under the inspiration of demons, it's not likely the author conjured them up intentionally, to seduce young readers. Common understanding, a beautiful thing to build.

Don't be disappointed, next week I'll be back with a different topic, until then, Mr. Pond, I'm looking forward to your response, and Jenna's if she has anything else to add.

Housekeeping

      Maple syruping has begun, and this year we’re determined to keep up on it. I think we’re planning to limit ourselves to six trees. We have six buckets and nine spouts, and last year we used all nine with old milk-jugs to collect the sap, but we ended up with more sap than we had time to boil down. This year, I think will start slow. Though since we won’t be headed to Vegas for a weekend in the middle of the season, we’ll hopefully be able to keep up with out supply. I’m planning a visit to the tattoo-artist this month, I’ve finally settled on a design, and perhaps a theme for all future ink, and I’m ready to commit. It’s exciting, I think Yarrow will like him a lot and enjoy examining my new art as much as she enjoys the old ones. I feel like a living picture book for her.

I’m alway cleaning. Right now I’m It’s-Almost-Spring cleaning, the woodstove creates a lot of dust, so the majority of it is dusting, cleaning out drawers and fighting off the mice that are attempting to make the outhouse their own. Thankfully, Yarrow is much better about being deposited on a blanket while I run around the house. She crawls around after things she shouldn’t have and practices her words: “Luba,” “dada,” “hi” and “Jesus” - though the “J” is more of a mumbled “d” right now, and is reserved for the Infant of Prague in the outhouse, who she loves.

Besides cleaning, and the as yet unsuccessfully pursuit of a way to convince Yarrow that sleep is in fact not over-rated, what do I fill the days with?  Writing, a bit, resenting the new snow-fall generally making life good.

If you haven’t heard Florence and The Machine yet, you should. She reminds me of Kate Bush, but generally better, I think.