Tag: life

Snow, sleet, ice

Good morning, good snow, sleet, ice laden morning here in Massachusetts. And, from what I understand, also the case, increasingly rare, in New York City, in fact more of these elements there this morning than here in northern Massachusetts abutting the New Hampshire border.

dog headed north, human headed south; unseen, outside the picture to the left, a canal coursing the downtown

I am a person who goes to church on Sunday morning. I go to an early service (9:00am) and to church in a town 15 miles from where I live, so, especially in the winter, I need to drive if I want to get there reasonably timely. I also go to get there an hour ahead, because I treat myself to coffee and a chocolate cookie each Sunday morning. (Most other mornings it is coffee, always coffee, and oatmeal with yogurt, raisins, and blueberries, prepared and consumed at home.)

I am also a person who, as you may already know, would rather not to have to drive to reach a destination. Walking or bicycling is preferred. Public transit is a third option, which I enjoy taking in part because it is the mode motorized mode I am most familiar with since childhood. In part I can enjoy it even more now than when I was working, because generally I do not have to worry about office hours…

So, this morning in the dim early light, quiet early Sunday hush, I stepped carefully outside and small-stepped in my gripless “dress” boots (knee high, remarkably warm, but with smooth leather bottoms) to my car, and brushed off the fraction of an inch of snow that had so far accumulated. I got in, started, and cautiously drove the small streets leading to the highway. I notice the city has begun laying out the night before that liquid whatever other local municipalities have been using to keep the snow from sticking to the road surface. Is it ecologically non-damaging? I am guessing it is at least less damaging than the chemicals that populate so many of the options on sale for keeping one’s sidewalks and roadways unslippery. I’ll research that later.

I drove up the access ramp to the highway. Nicely empty on Sunday anyway, especially so on this morning of not so good driving conditions. I drove a couple of miles and began to not like the condition of the precipitation. It seemed to be shifting from snow to sleet and ice. I said to myself, turn around. I passed one exit. I said, get off at the next, but myself said no, I’ll tough it out. I passed that next exit, and then the empty road was suddenly not, and the many cars ahead of me and the growing number behind and beside me were finding they had to come to a slowdown and stay at snail’s pace. Nope, I said to myself, I will get off at the next exit, this is too slow, and just what is happening over that rise that we are at this accumulation of vehicles crawling? So, reader, I did! I got off, I did not reverse on the highway, rather, drove easterly a bit and drove back home via local roads in the two towns I had to traverse by this point to get back to my city of dwelling.

So, you probably think something dramatic is in the offing, why else would I describe a snowy drive so minutely? There is nothing to report. I got home and, perhaps this is the drama, I made myself a bowl of oatmeal to be accompanied by coffee instead of treating myself to a chocolate chip cookie and coffee. I, because one can these days (and have been readily able to for, what five or six years now?), “live-streamed” the sermon–it was good, very good; it was a Christmas season sermon and was about expectations and what shapes one’s expectations. It took the very human, at the time very young, soon to be mother of Jesus as its central point-making protagonist, and it made a message to ponder (germ of it is in Luke 1). I am glad I watched it. Because in my self-talk all the way back home I included consideration of maybe I just won’t watch, maybe I’ll just read, or sit and watch the snow cap the crests of cardinals and blue jays, and crown the brilliant red of the red-bellied woodpecker who has lately been living in my backyard, and the downy woodpeckers, and the juncos, and the nuthatch, the chickadees, the doves, the many, many sparrows.

As it turned out, I did all of the above, because it is quite possible in my house to eat breakfast, drink coffee, livestream the sermon, and watch the alternately squabbling, alternately sharing songbirds at one and the same time.

What is this all about? Perhaps about the continuity of life, however it sings, or groans, or hurts, hinders, or walks, struts, dances. Perhaps about the persistence of hope even in the face of my own mistakes, my own erroneous decisions, my own consistent failure to trust the hope. Do I distrust the object of the hope or the source of the hope? In other words, do I distrust because I do not have faith that my hope has sufficient grounding? sufficient reason for being? sufficient trust in the object, or sufficient trust in my urge to hope that?

What, in other other words, am I expecting? Or, in other, other words, who? In who am I hoping?

Back to walking vs. driving. Do it! Do it whenever you can. I advise this, yet as I do, I know there are many, including among you who finding walking difficult, or for whom it has become, actually, impossible. Walk in your mind. Slowly, eyes open, senses alert, hope at the ready. It is like breathing.

From Emily Dickinson–It sifts from Leaden sieves

It sifts from Leaden Sieves –
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool –
The Wrinkles of the Road –

It makes an even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain –

November 10th

Is the birthday of my friend. My lifelong friend. She has a prodigious memory, and so nothing she and I have experienced, talked about, learned goes unremarked–at the time and years, decades later. She is the mirror I otherwise might not peer in. Even when she is not talking about something common between us or important to each/both of us, I find myself recalling such at times opportune and inopportune. I also find myself recalling my failures within our friendship, and rueing them all over again. But to rue can be healing, when I remember to not repeat that break that has been healed, when I remember that forgiveness outlasts animus.

And I am grateful for that.

I am grateful, too, that I can forgive another as well. I have that choice. I have that freedom. It is within my power.

This picture of the Pawtucket Falls at a time of very high waters flowing the Merrimack River, is apropos of nothing, except perhaps how full I feel

As is repentance, recognizing how I screwed up, rueing it, asking forgiveness, promising to not repeat this mis- (mis-whatever, statement, act, thought, reaction, ….) and living the promise. Each step is hard, and each step is impossible to not do to be complete.

Gingko, which precede history in their origins. Before. Despite. Amidst. Still.

I am grateful for this friendship, for a friendship such as this. And I believe I have been given these gifts, and I honor each one. And at times I fail, maybe only in my mind, my thoughts, my nearly spoken words. But they are failures too, and I am sad at myself, and I berate myself, and ask, maybe only in my head, because a thought unspoken or unenacted, I don’t think, needs to be exposed, if its raising, its exposure only causes confusion. It’s wiser, it’s more honorable to can it, and not repeat, and not act on the almost act, the twitch in my expression that comes from a flawed foundation, do not twitch, no, instead understand you (I) are not that person and do not know all within that person, and you (I) are certainly not superior such that to judge is yours.

There is another recipient of my wrongs I often need to beg forgiveness, and turn around and not repeat the wrong–that is this earth on which I live. All the time, all the time I possess more than I need, and I store, and I ignore or trample, and I toss; repeat….. There is always another way I can use less, trod less, care more.

Whose woods these are
I think I know,
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
(Robert Frost, from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)

And this:

Next Time by Mary Oliver

Next time what I’d do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I’d stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.

When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I’d watch the face, how the mouth
has to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.

And for all, I’d know more — the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light.

Plum and weeping birch

That Autumn Air That Just Talks Back

I just filled the bird feeders. My goodness those sparrows can squabble. Mostly male I might add.

You may or may not notice two sparrows flapping around the left hand feeder about to shove in, claiming their turns–the four on the perches have had enough time. Two more are on the sunflower feeder on the right. Also, somewhere in this picture, in motion thus a blur, is a nuthatch fearlessly approaching the sparrows crowd
Nuthatch has landed, all sparrows are amiable for the moment.

It must, the sparrow dynamic din, have something to do with the verbose air, the chattering light, the clatter of drying and dried leaves. Not in these pictures, because I cropped it out is the dogwood tree. Oh, here, below:

I wish you could see how deep-dark the red of the leaves really is. iphone 12 mini doesn’t really offer the means (or maybe it’s the photographer)

You know, it’s funny, bright color, clear red, yellow, green, also seems loud, very distinctly present–they correlate, light and sound, and, for that matter, clarity and sound. Light is just plain louder. Clarity is just plain loud. Is it so? Is it something in my body, in my mind that makes it so? Is it so without me present? Is a bell louder than a gong? Or just to me?

Ah questions. They run my life.

I’ll be back. I have to take the clothes out of the dryer.

Lovely, all done. I’m back and watching a young bicyclist pedaling up and down the street in front of my house. It’s also funny, this street, after one block length then jogs _/- and continues along for three or four blocks until it dead ends in front of a middle school. Well, this street can get quite busy during certain hours associated with schoolday start and finish, and it can also be suddenly busy for no known reason. Most of the time, I guess, if you clock it for 24 hours, it is quite unbusy. Anyway, the jog which is one house west of me, busy or not, is a challenge, in particular when a driver comes east on the street at a speed worthy of an urban arterial. Yet, kids bicycle it centerline, little kids play on it maneuvering and running behind their remotely operated small vehicles, and the local driving school has brand new learners pull to the curb, back up, initiate a U-turn or K-turn, generally in front of my across the street neighbor’s and my house (have you ever seen a brand new learning driver execute this turn, it usually takes long enough to hardboil an egg with much of that span of time spanning the width of the street!) I’m just saying…

So, this is turning out to be a bit of a rant on — on what? things that I notice that are unpeaceful.

However! They are small, they are manageable, they have caught my attention this moment, and will now be forgotten, until the next time they capture me, which could be five minutes from now or weeks. Anyway, there you are, I have groused into your life for a few minutes.

Think Robert Frost again, good fences make good neighbors–or not. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. (same poem, opening line).

Mending Walls

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Robert Frost

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine

Rain

Rain refreshes. Rain immobilizes. Rain revives. Rain soddens. Rain delights. Rain depresses. Rain greens. Rain grays. Rain is a gift. Usually gifts are welcomed. Sometimes not.

I have never endured a rain induced damaging flood. I have never endured any kind of significant flood. In this, thus, I am lucky. Probably most of us are. Flooding is localized in the global scheme of things. As is its opposite, sere, usually burning or scalding, aridity. Yet for the endurers of these extremes, localized is their world during its prevalence.

For the endurers of anything not-good, it is a trial anyone else will not understand.

In fact, most of whatever each of us experiences in our consistently occurring 24 hour spans after 24 hour spans after 24 hour spans, is what anyone else will not, and so, we being highly self-referential, will not understand.

I move on. I am sitting in a quiet house, in a quiet room, with windows closed, so a largely perceptually quiet outside, although I just heard a minor unidentified sound and, looking outside, saw a kid– 8 or 9 years old–bicycling down the street, unrain-geared, but likely, so would I have been at 8 or 9, defiantly so. Especially if urged to don the jacket, the hood, take the umbrella, to not take the bicycle out in this…. From a young age we assert our individuality.

And each of is one, an individual. And each of us need to never forget that, about ourselves, and about every other being we cross paths with, hear about, see, talk to, listen to, consider. Simultaneously, each of needs to remember that each of impacts what and who we see, talk to, listen to, write to or about, even, what and who we, ourself, think about. Very rarely do our thoughts not translate into actions (be they physical, verbal, or emotional), which impact.

I move on some more.

How many different modes of transport in these pictures? My oh my, our options seem limitless

From rain to transit, where shall we go now?

Lodged

The rain to the wind said,
‘You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged–though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

– Robert Frost

It is Quiet. Somewhere

In fact, it is quiet in my house. And I am glad of it.

Noise is very crowded, and sometimes I am not ready for it, indeed not even, at times, up to it. You?

Solitude–of me behind the camera, of the seat in the place, of the place. This is not today here in Massachusetts, however, based on predictions this past Friday for northern New Hampshire, it could be a place there, now. Except that, while in New Hampshire on Friday, I heard from a lot of people that they were headed north to ski for the weekend. And I won’t even guess the odds of how many more like the people I heard, had the same plan–manymanymany. Probably no silence nor solitude in much of north of Latitude: 42o 56′ 47.29″

It is almost the last of March. I have raked the oak leaves off most of the bulbs and rhisomatic (?) shoots, so to enable them to emerge undistorted — oak leaves sometimes grip an emerging shoot within one or two of the oak leaf’s sinuses, and if I don’t come to the rescue first, the shoot’s leaves grow into full size with a crimp or two or three in their height, so they look more like a drill shaft than a screwdriver shaft, this is assuming they escape the grip of the oak leaf! I have not raked the oak leaves out of the vegetable beds yet, and it’s just as well, because we here remain in the 30s, despite a day in the 50s a week or two ago. Yesterday, Saturday, March 29th we here were at 35oF while in NYC it was 65oF. I report this because it is unusual For those of you not residing in the Northeast of this country, I report this because it is unusual. Usually we are in relative tandem, maybe 5 or 10 degrees colder up here compared to NYC, and usually with bitterer winds. So while New Yorkers were traipsing about in shorts and brunching at sidewalk cafes, we in mid and northern New England had redonned our winter jackets and leggings.

Clouds and, on most days for the next 10 days, cold-coldish air is predicted for this region. So you may find a second blogpost from me within the next 7-10 days. My bicycle is shivering in the shed; my gloves are still lying on the kitchen radiator warming up; the urge for hot chocolate still prevails. And what better accompaniment to hot chocolate than blogposting (other than reading, my truly favorite indoor timespent)?

All this being said, I also report that the robins, chickadees, cardinals, titmice and carolina wrens, especially are singing their spring love songs. The downy woodpeckers, who have been about all winter, now are enduring competition from a red-bellied woodpecker couple. The tenacious nuthatches care not the season, they “ank ank ank” frequently, day after day. The audacious blue jays seem to have given up in this neighborhood, and the mockingbirds are nosing their inimical (read the almost word in the middle of that word, i.e., mimic, my goodness, a particularly talented mimicking mockingbird around here has fooled the neighboring imitatees, as well as my phone’s Merlin birdsong/birdcall identifier app), way in–to the absolute disgust of the robins!

Each morning, the earliest robin song gets a little earlier. Well, I think so, I can’t really hear through the closed windows, but a couple of the mornings in the past several weeks I was up early, early and peeking out the back door caught a robin at an hour that a month ago would have been a silent one. Aha, I am back to the topic of silence. Just like that the circle has closed.

There are times when silence pervades so thoroughly, you cast about, no, thrash about, just to make sound. Noise, sounds–like robins at 5:00 then 4:00 then 3:00 AM– can delight, as readily as they can not.

It is the dilemma of too much.

U.S. Navy F/A-18 approaching the speed of sound. The white halo is formed by condensed water droplets thought to result from a drop in air pressure around the aircraft

So, a drop in air pressure around the aircraft because it escaped the speed of sound, to quiet just before the sound can be. Here is something to think about, getting ahead of sound–sound/air pressure. Bigger air pressure, pushes down, or back, and the space it permits is now smaller, and anything in that smaller space is — what? — is LOUDER. Too much in too small a space. (Bill Y, please check my conceptualization, and let me know how widely I err).

Too much in too small a space…..

I look around me and wonder. I wonder, why?

I wo wo wo wo wonderrrr, why? my little runaway. {some of the lyrics from a Del Shannon song from, oh I don’t know, 1961?} A run run run run runaway. {“””}