whereIwonder&why

This very morning, dank as it was, I was all set to go be part of a group standing in a field watching the winter solstice sunrise at 7:12am EST. This very morning, dank as it was, I didn’t wake up in time. I am not one who oversleeps! I am not one who sleeps beyond, latest (and rarely this late) 6:45am. You can rely me to be up by 6:10am just about any day of the week, of the year, of the decade. So I do not set an alarm.

Ah me. Only MAria’s persistent nudge, paw to my right hand, driven by her own internal clock that says “6:00am–breakfast, breakfast! I have been on the windowsill with occasional forays to the bed, then back, keeping watch on you, Kate. I have watched each breath you breathe and noted the disrupted ones, the ones that tell me that you, Kate, are beginning your ascent from sleep. And Kate, you are quite good at meeting my daily vigil in a timely manner. But today, Kate, you are late!! I am not only pawing you now, I am miaowing. You are late!!!” She prevailed, I awoke, I asked for another minute, but she miaowed rather insistently, so I sat up and saw, across the room, the clock. 7:00am!

So I did not see the sky lighten, nor the possible glimmer of orange-gold through a quite thick cloud cover from a hill overlooking the Merrimack River at 7:12am. I did not hear the chorus of birds–carolina wrens, chickadees, song sparrows, house sparrows, mourning doves, robins–who had awakened a bit before the sun rise. I did not catch glimpses of scuttling skunks, meadow voles, or rabbits. I was in my kitchen scooping Fancy Feast and medicine into Maria’s and Stella’s bowls at 7:12am.

And then oatmeal into my bowl. And an orange. And coffee.

And then I finished reading the novel I was halfway through. And then I vacuumed my house. And then I had a cheese sandwich.

After this, my, when I see it in print, monotonous morning and just-post-noon, I went out, exactly when the predicted, and cloud-density-proven-to-be-snow began to fall, and it is falling in earnest. Little tiny flakes, like white rain rather than marvelously, uniquely shaped cutout worthy, sit on your tongue large flakes. I think someone once told me that this is because it is very cold. Many things are very cold these days. And many are too hot.

I went out and took a stroll to and through “my” utility cut pathway.

I annoyed a maple tree bristling with robins. The lot of them flew in pairs and triplets to another maple about 100 feet northwest behind my peering self. I broke through a couple of thinly ice-coated pools. I stood and stared up at an immensely rotund redtail hawk until she could stand me no more, and she flew about 200 feet behind me, in a slightly more northeasterly direction than the community of robins. So busy was I with my binoculars, that I got no phone-photos to share. And, perhaps I spared a robin from become a redtail hawk capture, or put the other way, deprived a redtail hawk her food.

When winter comes, barring climate creep, barring weather anomalies, barring utility cost assessment games.. what do you think of, what do you anticipate, what do you rediscover?

One that I do, living in a climate that includes snow, is silence. The snow covers reverberations, echoes, yelling, stomping, revving. Outside in it, everything is less, I don’t even need to hear me. Inside seeing it, remembering it from times before, knowing it always offers this, I feel the breath of my lungs and the lips of my mouth loosen and broaden.

___________________________

Peace Love Joy

Tomorrow, or so, the earth will begin to tilt its north half closer sunwards.

Well, I had every intent to write a second October blog post. In fact each night that midway through I awoke and felt I was not going to succeed in falling back to sleep, I said in my head, I will get up and write the post. And then suddenly it was four or five hours later, a reasonable awakening time (generally 6:00 am for me), and I got up and went on with my day, unposted. This morning at 4:03 was no exception. And then it was 6:05. So here we are, more than 8 hours into November 2024, and now I will write and post a blog.

Such an unappealing word: blog. I just looked it up. “a truncation of ” weblog “”. Huh. ship’s log stardate 4304, or some such far future date as logged in Captain James Kirk’s audible book somewhere out there among the hugely colorful ephemera–particles and gases that comprise out there, as well as right here. If only James Kirk et al had had James Webb’s telescope to peer out into his spaceship’s surroundings, God knows how many light years away.

Thinking about time. I know I have struggled with this concept before on this medium, and, be assured, off this medium as well. How can there be time when there is so much outside of the planet earth that exists with us but not within our solar revolution, and axis rotation? How can we ascertain, how can we suggest that we even know what is the reality of all that light, dark, mass, energy that we cannot even see when blinded by our meager solar center in day, and still cannot see much of when we turn our earthly back on the sun?

And yet, we age–initially we get bigger, and more able, and more aware, and then we begin to shrink–physically, agilely, mentally… It is progressive. But it is progressive to us, but a blink, not even, compared with the enormity of that, that up above this paragraph which the telescope was able to see.

There are patterns, seen, measured, felt, repeated (naturally, after all, patterns….). These patterns are predictable based on experience and defined based on visual and auditory and sensory clues, and “proved” based on numbers. But they define only this place, here. And experience anomalies and are reconfigured and are constantly being studied, because, because they are not ours. We are aspects of them. And not a single one of us, even identical twins I dare say, are exactly alike. Yet all are from a source, an energy? a particle? a motion? a thought?

It’s now November. Chances are, likelihood is here northerly in the northern hemisphere it will grow colder (despite the past two anomalous hot days), all color will drain away, snow will fall, furnaces will kick on more often, etc etc etc. But guaranteed? Who decides?

Kate’s weblog, signing off. Earth date November 1, 2024 9:50am.

How do ponderous clouds roll overhead and leave only a few dribbles of rain? Or none? Are they saving what they carry for 20 miles east northeast? How does the sun pour a yellow fountain of light through a gap in these rolling monsters? Do they choose to take a long stride and in its wake, pull this light pour through?

How does a grey squirrel scurry painlessly atop a stockade fence’s honed points? How does this squirrel know he can leap five feet from one skinny dogwood branch end to a nearly as scrawny mulberry tree limb and not lose hold?

How do the leaves of a white oak, turning beautiful rust-red and then falling to the ground, not detach from their twig, rather, as a community of 3 or 5 tug it out of its socket and bring it groundward with them? How do leaves of red oak, black oak, scarlet oak, not?

How is one man able to sell you a pair of your own used socks, and another able to infuriate you just by his voice?

How do robins choose which dogwood berry to grab? How do sparrows know where the first one to lift off is headed next and follow without time lapses or wrong turns? How do chickadees pluck shell-on sunflower seeds without dropping them, flit away from the feeder with the shell-on sunflower seed intact, and wedge said shell-on sunflower seed under the skin of an arborvitae?

How do bees, for that matter, disgorge pollen from sunflowers with dislodging the seeds?

How does one person minutely disassemble a swiss-movement timepiece and not be able to reassemble it, and how does another receive said parts, unsorted, and recreate said timepiece?

How does shouting make a point more important?

How does whispering give import to a story?

How does a crow know there is a coin jammed in the vending machine outside the grocery store?

How do cats know it is 4:23pm (their designated dinner hour)?

How does a calla lily, how does an amaryllis, grow new shoots in a basement?

How does a person not forget motor skills left unused for years, decades?

How does trust happen?

How does a forgiveness happen?

How did music come to be?

How does a person choose to like a color and dislike a color?

How do skunk cabbages impale ice and rise?

How do trees recover from rough weather?

How do fragile tulips shove through dirt?

How does peace get made?

These two sentences by which I have entitled this posting, make me happy in their coincidence. May they always coincide.

However, my dogwood is already becoming colorful with its red/yellow/green/blue-gray leaves and some of the berries, a few, are tinting toward red. I think this is too early. And the birches out front have graced the walk and the grass with a deep and wide swath of yellow triangular leaves, which I raked yesterday into the flower and shrub beds to be mulch. They, those birch leaves, break down very quickly and feed and fill the dirt that waits for this emendation. I am glad to comply. I am glad the trees share the leaves to enable compliance. Soon, the plum on the other side of the front of my house will begin letting its leaves turn to deep red and flutter to the ground to be gathered and left to roost in the flower beds, the shrub beds, some on the grass.

Recently I was at my friends’ house in the Berkshire mountains area of Massachusetts. Ah, it is a space of space, that Berkshire area. One would have thought that I would have taken lots of photographs of the silence, the wide openness, and the coincident large closeness of woods that ring the fields (or do the fields ring large swaths of forest?). But I did not. I, instead, stood and watched. Sat and saw. Walked and wondered. It brought peace. Except here, one photograph, from in a wood.

A couple of days before that I was bicycling along the rail trail and spotted a stripling of a tulip poplar! I am always happy when I see these. Left to its own devices it can live hundreds of years and grow to be hundreds of feet tall. Generally, here, where ones own devices are never left to, regardless what being one is, the tulip poplar will still grow to about 100 feet, and shower us with its lovely yellow-orange flowers, as well as shade us with its tulip shaped leaves.

I was just thinking about the description of some of the properties of mayapples: “fruit is poisonous until it is ripe. When it is ripe, it is yellow and edible.” Why? Perhaps, when ripe and edible, it also carries a pleasing scent–I admit, I did not put the mayapples in the photograph to my nose–and likely a passing mammal or ground visiting avian will take a bite, maybe just one, like the mockingbirds, baltimore orioles, robins did of the plums on my tree out front, leaving the remaining globe of fruit for another to also taste, or to drop and root another plum tree, and that passing or visiting being will at some present or future point and spot, leave a seed from deep within that ripe, delicious mayapple, and thereby another mayapple may grow. Okay, but why poisonous until then? Maybe because the unripe fruit’s seeds cannot reproduce. Why? I don’t know. But that is a beauty of all that is on this earth. The mystery, even as it lives, it mystifies. Every single thing.

What did you do so far today?

Here it is beautiful. Especially since yesterday was a trick day, sun bright and kind, but humidity in place (until late afternoon) and unkind. Yesterday and Friday air felt like not a boa, not a scarf, not even a wool coat, it was not just heavy, but unwieldy, like carrying a full size futon mattress up a staircase.

Today I was not only able, but willing to pedal up hills nearly as readily as on flat plains (planes?).

This morning I went to church. I do on Sundays. I wore a skirt. I often do, or a dress. It’s almost my only chance to do so. Every summer I think, I should get a few more skirts and wear them, loose ones, flowy ones. But then I remember the chain on my bicycle, and I do not consider getting more skirts this summer. When I worked, in the winter when I would bicycle to the train station I would have on my winter coat, and it is almost to my ankles; I would steer with one hand and hold the coat hem aloft with the other, hoping no car would cut me off requiring braking and/or veering left or right. I had a couple of skirts, too, that sought to catch in the bicycle chain, succeeding once or twice. Mostly I managed. I remember the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Katherine Ross rode side saddle — on the bicycle? as well as on a horse? What would side saddle feel like, besides, not stable?

I love horses. Rode them a few times in Kissena Park in Queens, NYC. It was an astonishing (still is) swath of green space surrounded by city–highways, local urban streets, apartment buildings, houses, shopping areas, rumbling trucks, belching buses, honking cars. Yet in the park then, a long time ago now, and to some extent I think still, you lost that din, for just awhile and felt the rolling muscles of the horse you rode, slowly–these were trail rides established for we urban, inexperienced, nearly incapable riders, on nearly retired Palominos, Appaloosas, Quarter Horses, Arabians, maybe a Morgan? All large, and all patient. I have ridden a horse now and again in more rural settings in New Hampshire and in Massachusetts, maybe once in Pennsylvania. Never loosely and as someone knowing what I am doing. Because astride a horse’s back I do not. Alas.

You probably have read at some point in your life that horses are an introduced mammal species to the continent comprising North, Central, and South America. You probably also have read of the not good uses to which the horses were put. You probably also read these days about the overrunning by wild mustangs in the western plains. Would someone could save them all, love them all. You may have read about or even seen the horses that are beloved, feral, and are a tourist draw on Assateague Island in Virginia.

Appaloosas, of which I am particularly enamored, are said to be mustangs that the Spanish conquerers brought to the Americas. Nez Pierce tribes caught some. They bred them.

The Nez Perce (/ˌnɛzˈpɜːrs, ˌnɛs-/; autonym in Nez Perce language: nimíipuu, meaning “we, the people”)^[2] are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who still live on a fraction of the lands on the southeastern Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest. This region has been occupied for at least 11,500 years.

Members of the Sahaptin language group,^[4] the Nimíipuu were the dominant people of the Columbia Plateau for much of that time,^[5] especially after acquiring the horses that led them to breed the Appaloosa horse in the 18th century.

Nez Percé is an exonym given by French Canadian fur traders who visited the area regularly in the late 18th century, meaning literally “pierced nose”. English-speaking traders and settlers adopted the name in turn. Since the late 20th century, the Nez Perce identify most often as Niimíipuu in Sahaptin

When the Niimiipuu first bred Appaloosas, they were called Palouse horses after the Palouse river on their land in Washington and Idaho.

I was about to shift subjects and grouse about news and information media. But why bother.

Instead I will offer this poem by Alberto Alvaro Rios

Dawn Callers

The dawn callers and morning bringers,
I hear them as they intend themselves to be heard.

Quick sonic sparks in the morning dark,
Hard at the first work of building the great fire.

The soloist rooster in the distance,
The cheeping wrens, the stirring, gargling pigeons

Getting ready for the work of a difficult lifetime,
The first screet of the peahen in the far field.

All of it a great tag-of-sounds game engaging even the owls
The owls with their turned heads and everything else that is animal.

Then, too, the distant thunder of the garbage truck,
That lumbering urban whale.

Through it all, the mourning doves say
There, there–which is to say, everything is all right.

I believe them. They have said this to me ever since childhood.
I hear them, I hear them and I get up.

Alberto Álvaro Ríos A National Book Award finalist, Ríos is Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate. He is a recent chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and has taught at Arizona State University since 1982. The poem above is from his book: Not Go Away is My Name (Copper Canyon Press, 2020)

Thanks for reading! May the remainder of this day delight you.

For the past few weeks I keep waking up and thinking about sounds. Usually, listening for birds trying, without looking at the clock, to gauge the time, a song comes into my head, or was already sounding and I become aware of it. I hear the song and if it is a popular or once popular song that appeals to me, I notice that part of that appeal is hearing it in the voice of the singer I have heard it in when it first took hold of me. If it is a hymn I hear a chorus of voices singing it, as for me hymns are best heard chorally.

Then I go and try to sing the song or the hymn, or I hum a few lines of a classical instrumental that I particularly like (sometimes I remember who composed it, and sometimes, to my disappointment, I don’t).

When I sing or hum, I wreck it. I do not like to hear my voice. My outloud voice does not do the music justice to my ears. So I stop and try to revive the professionally or chorally performed piece in my head.

Then I wish it to lull me back to sleep before my thoughts crush in and make so much noise and keep me awake way too long.

As I was typing the paragraph above I asked my memory to touch on a song the singing of which reached me. This is what came up. Dusty Springfield had a voice and a way of using her voice that you had to stop for and just listen. If you have not ever heard it, please do.

This predawn thinking of songs in my head, thus of sound, I moved on to “what is”. I won’t go far in this but have a couple of questions or observations that filtered through me. At first blush, sound is perceived through a “sense”–hearing. There are also the senses of seeing, touching, smelling, and tasting. These five senses express our physicality. They need to impact some facet of our body to be known. And yet, they can be experienced time and time again in our mind.

The very same physicality that I see, hear, touch, smell, taste, someone else can simultaneously, but not identically. And thus, that someone else’s experience is stored in that person’s mind differently than mine is in mine. In the case of Dusty Springfield singing The Look of Love–presumably her voice coming from her mouth, lungs, diaphragm, had the same timbre, pitch, audibility regardless of the listener. Why do we, each of us listening, not hear it the same at the moment of listening? And, in my mind’s memory and the other person’s mind’s memory, is her voice as I/you heard it, or is it as she sang it regardless of how our physical mechanisms’ hearing capacity stores it?

And the person, Dusty Springfield (who, sadly, died in 1999), were I or you ever once in her presence or simply saw a photograph–I only ever saw her on television or on album covers or in print, I would still have a visual of her. And I do. As, possibly, did you and now, once you look below, do you. Is the visual in my mind’s eye the same as yours? How will we ever know?

I know that witness’ statements can never be 100% accurate, because we are, essentially, plunk, standing in our own way–how we experience is always influenced by our own presence, the composition of our molecules, as well as our angle of perspective, health and well being at the moment, mood, past experiences,” etc. etc. etc”. (to quote Yule Brynner in “Anna and the King of Siam”). But the thing in my head that I have stored, that I can recall almost at will, simply by naming (another topic I have been thinking a lot about lately–naming!!)–is it also unique to me, or are your and my mental recall the same? I am pretty sure they are not the same. So, what is the reality of physicality?

And when I come upon someone face to face, do I only sensually perceive that person, or is my mind reshaping who I see even as I am present with that person, or being, or item. Does my physical experience define my perception of a moment? Well, we would probably say that mind influences physical perception, but how does mind maintain the being of that perception? Why does mind recall it when it does, often “out of the blue”? Why does it then slip away, usually unnoticed in its absence? Where does it go? Why can it sometimes be called back and sometimes not?

I believe I have made myself dizzy. I will now sit back and recall Dusty Springfield singing another of her songs–“Stay Awhile”. As a note, she sings sad songs with a voice that is not. You have to listen to the lyrics to know the song is sad. But even still, her voice brings me to a smile of delight.

Ah, it’s on.

______________________

Just as a respite from my crowded questions:

The sun is already shortening its days with us. Its heat, not so much, sometimes. These days, 2024, Earth, each day seems a season on its own. The days’ weather seems increasingly unpredictable from longer than 8 hours in advance, maybe only 4 hours in advance. Of course, that may vary by a few hours hear and there depending on which of the myriad weather predictors one references. One day recently as I stood outside beside the back yard, it began to rain, as I was on my way away, I had my phone in my pocket. I took it out and looked at the well-worn weather app. It said cloudy, and made no rain mention, now nor soon. To be fair, the rain only lasted three minutes. And, then the steam rose.

I do not complain, I note. I do not complain because here in New England, we have not endured the excruciating heat Hajj pilgrims in the Middle East are currently finding many among their number dying from, nor the rain soaking the ground so prolongedly that in parts of Europe crops have not been able to be sown (never mind reaped!), because the ground cannot hold them, nor the flooding in the north central portion of this country, and so on. Here, I can flick on a ceiling fan if need be; I can change clothes to suit the temperature; I can pour myself a glass of water.

I can watch a pair of robins guard the nest they built atop one of my porch columns.

I can also watch, as I did this morning, a robin and a chipmunk spar over an insect? A worm? A berry? The chipmunk prevailed, the robin squawked and flew up away, landing 20 feet further along the ground, finding her own sustenance.

I can see, and be amazed, and try, not too effectively, to photograph a three or four level spider web attaching my porch railings to a coleus I am trying to make well, a branch of the azalea bush behind the railings, a small table and a chair I have placed, and until this morning, have used (not to worry, I have other chairs set up, and table, which I populate and use)

Excuse me. I was away for awhile. I wondered at the genus of a spider. Oh what web I wove!! (sorry, couldn’t pass up the pun) I will give you a list that begins to define this particular spider, but actually stops so far short:

domain–Eukaryota (all eukaryota have cell nuclei)
kingdom–animalia
phylum–chordata (chordata have five distinct characteristics such as a hollow tube spine, ….)
[subphylum–chelicerata–chittin exoskeleton]
class–arachaida
order–araneae
[suborder–araneumorphae–web weaver]
family–araneidae
genus–there are 184 genera within the araneidae family that this spider could be, I did not dig in
species–there are 3,097 species within the 184 genera within the araneidae family that this spider could be, I did not dig in.

Someone(s) identified this deep, so far. How much more life threading through every tangible, breathable/breathing, potentially visible, potentially audible… particle is there. SomeONE made life (life sits above domain in the scientifically defined hierarchical list I provided above, it is the basis/source of all else that tumbles down the list, that tumbles down and climbs back up, that interacts with all the other species, genera, families, orders, classes, phyla, domains categorized somewhere on that hierarchical list). Imagine that.

Psalm 139: 1, 7, 17-18

I wonder as I wander what we are doing with this life. Why?

Is when I begin this piece. It would appear that I am not to sleep tonight. I woke up about two hours ago. I got up about an hour ago. The birds, the robins, specifically, began their predawn song about 15 minutes ago back behind me through the kitchen window. I am at my desk in the front of my house. My house is not so big that I can’t hear from any room what is going on in or outside of any other room (the outside part assumes that I have windows open, which I do, as it is not winter). If I were in bed, I could hear the robins better, and perhaps, by now the sparrows have chimed in. Also, I will hear the robins better as the hour passes, because approximately every ten minutes the robin song moves closer to my house. I don’t get why they seem to start in the northwest and continue towards southeast, but this is how it goes, each morning rise. As you may have guessed, I have been awakening pretty early of late. Usually, however, I fall back to sleep. Not this morning!

If you’re in New England at least, you have enjoyed the profusion of blossoms have been this spring. And now this almost summer they continue, along with a lot of butterflies (probably moths, these are something I know very little about and have read not much about, except the increasing challenge to the number of monarchs, and, presumably, others, as this challenge in numbers beleaguers just about all species, except, human.), or perhaps moths, of sizes and colors I have not seen before. I have seen thumb size versions of monarchs. I have seen translucent white ones also no larger than my thumb, and not, I am sure, the cabbage moths that chew on my brassicaceae (sp?) efforts in the vegetable patch. I have seen perfectly outlined gray and black ones including this one clutching the screen of one of my living room windows.

Have you noticed the excessive size of my shrub? I have four too large shrubs out front. They keep me a secret year round. I do wish I had known, probably 10 years ago that I was supposed to trim them at a certain time each year. When I finally learned it, I also realized that the supposed best time is also the time when early birds begin to build nests. So I didn’t trim. But, in the past couple year or so, I have been informed that there are two good windows for trimming shrubs. Perhaps I will remember in October to do a trim. The question is, will I do a reasonable one, or will I give them a dramatic cutback, and then cry in the spring when I realize I overdid it? A question to be answered next year. Perhaps next April I will remember that I subjected you to this dilemmic discussion and let you know the outcome. Do not feel the need to sit on tenterhooks until then!!

I’ve been enjoying my arugula in salads (along with violet leaves and dandelion leaves and mint, as I have probably said before, no pesticide has touched this backyard of mine for going on 17 years, so I feel pretty confident in it) for several weeks yet, and I happily discovered that the radishes grew abundantly this year. So much less stinging to the taste buds than those bought in the produce market. Funny.

Two lima bean plant shoots are striking out and up. I can only hope. Two or three cilantro shoots are emerging. Two shoots of something, I don’t remember what, that I planted in a pot on the back porch are beginning to take their stand. But the pickling cucumber shoots did not emerge. And I have gone to three garden centers so far and not found a pickling cucumber plant. Ah me. Did buy and plant four types of tomatoes, one serrano pepper plant (why not?), one rosemary plant, and one basil plant, and one sage plant. I read that the sage plant, even in New England, is perennial. Not sure I believe that. And, tapping the back of my mind is a thought that at another time I may have read that they come back every other year (although, that may have been brussels sprouts! Oh, that I were a more thorough researcher.)

As a final note, since it is still spring, and since it will next be summer, here is some very important information for you:

OK, here we go, we got a real pressure cooker going here
Two down, nobody on, no score, bottom of the ninth

There’s the windup, and there it is, a line shot up the middle
Look at him go. This boy can really fly!

He’s rounding first and really turning it on now
He’s not letting up at all, he’s gonna try for Second

The ball is bobbled out in center, and here comes the throw

And what a throw! He’s gonna slide in head first
Here he comes, he’s out! No, wait, safe – safe at second base

This kid really makes things happen out there
Batter steps up to the plate, here’s the pitch-he’s going

And what a jump he’s got. He’s trying for third, here’s the throw
It’s in the dirt-safe at third! Holy cow, stolen base!

He’s taking a pretty big lead out there
Almost daring him to try and pick him off

The pitcher glances over, winds up, and it’s bunted
Bunted down the third base line, the suicide squeeze is on!
Here he comes, squeeze play, it’s gonna be close, here’s the throw, here’s the play at the plate

Holy cow, I think he’s gonna make it!

A cut from a Phil Rizzuto baseball play by play, pasted into the song Paradise by the Dashboard Light; sung by Meatloaf; written by Jim Steinman. (1977- from a long-playing (LP) record album by Meatloaf that I played over and over until the grooves ran smooth)