Thoughts for the New Year

Hello, Reader. What are you doing today?

Here in the Peninsula Town, we are cleaning the good ship Rack 'Em and Stack 'Em. Husband is swabbing the decks. I'm tending to the galley (although, obviously, I've just snuck off to write this post), and the cabin boys and girl have been ordered to tidy their quarters. Aye, aye, sir!

The close intersection of our big cleaning day and the turn of the year reminds me of something Jane Hirshfield spoke of at the reading I attended earlier this fall. She told the audience that each year at New Year's she cleans, or attempts to clean, every surface and object in her house. As she explained it, this is an annual ritual observed by Buddhists. She said that, although she has been doing this for many years, each year she always finds something that she has never cleaned before.

I find this idea fascinating: just to touch each and every surface and object that form the space one calls home... and to find places, spaces, things, that one has never touched... and then, to touch them for the first time.

I imagine that within the context of a healthy dose of Buddhist detachment, this ritual cleaning is very life-giving. However, trust me: here at the good ship Rack 'Em and Stack 'Em, under the overhang of Catholic guilt, we are attempting no such feat.

Still, I have ritual on the mind. Ritual, perhaps from the Proto-Indo-European re(i), "to count, number" via the Latin for rite, "religious observance or ceremony, custom, usage."

The holidays are rife with ritual. Even now the masses are going through the ritual contemplation of New Year's resolutions, no? Well, not me. I'm not much one for resolutions this year -- probably because of the way all my best-laid plans and goals for 2011 were cleansed away by Moving to California. This year, I'm thinking: I might exercise more, or I might not. I might eat more veggies, or I might not. I might put a chapbook together, or I might not (I pause here to offer extra credit for anyone who can tell me where this phrase comes from: "Might go to Yale. Might not.") As for New Year's rituals, we don't have any hard and fast ones around here. Sometimes we cook a nice dinner, then the kids complain about it and hardly eat, then we all go to bed. Sometimes not.

As I look to 2012, I'm thinking only

persist

natural bridge at Santa Cruz

shape and be shaped

pacific beach

stay on your path, the one you were made for

Skyline hike

keep things in perspective

redwoods

And, although I don't have a photo of it, the sign I caught sight of at a coffeeshop I drove by yesterday (and although I just had to get up from my desk, go into my bedroom, and lock the door to get it, and although someone has been hanging on that locked door crying "Mommeeeeee! Mommeeee! Mommeeeee!" for the last 10 minutes),


relax, you have plenty of time


Happy 2012, Reader.

(P.S. etymology info here)

Merry Christmas!

once a Michigander, always a Michigander

Wordless Wednesday: In Which a Lot Can Happen in a Year

then

now

Wordless Wednesday: In the Foothills

On Sabbatical

sabbatical  n.  a break or change from a normal routine (as of employment); from the Hebrew shabath "he rested"

A little voice inside, known in these parts as intuition, has been whispering sabbatical to me. My right brain -- librarian that she is -- has scoffed at the voice: "Absolutely not! You must keep writing poems!" My left brain -- creative wild child -- is giving the voice a double thumbs-up and saying "Groovy, man." I'm going with my left brain, and with intuition.

In the Catholic church, and in many other religious traditions, we are amidst a time of joyful waiting called Advent. I love Advent, except for the reality that most years it's more a time of stressful hurrying -- not joyful waiting -- as I attempt to cram a bazillion extra tasks into days and weeks that are already full. As I've learned over and over again in this life, if something isn't working well there's usually something one can do to change it. Enter: the little voice.

So I've decided (or intuited) to take a wee sabbatical from drafting poems for the rest of this month. I plan to keep reading and learning from good poetry, submitting at least once a week, and revising the Mail Order Bride series. I'll still be here blogging. But I'm giving myself a break on generating new work.

That breezy, rushing sound you hear is me exhaling. Until I came to the idea of a sabbatical, I didn't realize how much pressure the Librarian puts on the Wild Child to produce!produce!produce! I'm a little nervous that I'll lose my momentum, and the Librarian would like me to believe that if I take a break now I'll never get back into a good drafting groove again. She's a little hyperbolic.

Dear Librarian, I appreciate your role in my life, but I want to make cookies with my children, make my house fair as I am able, trim the hearth, and set the table. I want to take walks in the morning, sit down in the afternoon to put my feet up, and click a few things off my holiday to-do list every day. I want to avoid another Speechless Wednesday.

Let the joyful waiting begin... 

Rollin' With It

One thing that's fun and kind of freeing about moving across the country is that you no longer know what to expect, so you don't necessarily expect anything (well, it's kind of freeing unless the thing you didn't know to expect was a big something-or-another at school that you missed. But I digress.). The last two mornings we've climbed out of bed into a sea of fog, or cloud, or ocean mist, or whatever it is. The whole world was a ghost, and light came late to the morning. When it was time to walk to school, the fog or cloud or ocean mist or whatever it is clung to our fleeces and hair. A brand new weather experience, and we don't know if it's usual for this time of year or not.

Leaves are turning and falling now that it's almost December. The color is striking against the blue-green backdrop of the foothills, which seem softer in the late autumn light -- gentler shadows under a gentler sun. But wait -- is it late autumn? Or, Reader, do you think it's winter here yet? I don't know, but I'm rollin' with it.

Same goes for the writing life lately. Holiday and virus-related schedule interruptions threaten at every turn. I'm rollin' with it. Teeny tiny fever? Tummyache? No problem, I'll write some other day. I'm fitting in a few submissions every week while I kill time waiting for the library to open (sidebar: if I were in charge of the world the library would open at 8 a.m. Vote for me!) -- not as much as I'd like, but some every week is better than none. I've been revising the six Mail Order Bride poems, and this time, rather than just tinkering, I'm doing some re-vision, trying a few different versions of each poem. It'll be fun to see what happens behind door number 1, 2 and 3 inside the room of each poem.

And I've been reading a collection of poems that has me rollin' with it, too: Blue Hour by Carolyn Forche (that e has a little thing-y (technical term) above it but I don't know how to insert it here). I've had to work hard to stay with the book, not because it's not good -- it's full of beautiful and scathing and inventive images; war and peace; death and life; present and past (and maybe even future?); certainty and memory. But the poems have very little narrative and connective tissue holding the images together, so I'm never 100% sure what's going on in the poem or the collection, except to sense that, in this book, the world is both disturbing and beautiful, unknowable and yet deeply known, full of suffering that can blunt or hone us, or both. Seems about right to me. So I've been rollin' with the feeling-ness (technical term) of the poems, resting in the white space, and persisting.

Whatever's coming your way these days, I hope you're rollin' with it, too. Happy winter (maybe).

Wordless Wednesday: Finally Fall

Wordless Wednesday: First Cloudy Day (Does this mean it's Fall?)

Sunday Words: Two Autumns

"I go / you stay / two autumns"

--Basho

Nine O'Clock Missive, Sunday Night

Dear Reader,

This is just to say: I am still here.

I am reading your blogs, you who have blogs, but saying little.

I am jotting short phrases in my notebook, like: "furta sacra -- the theft of sacred things"

I am reading the smallest of poems: haiku by Basho, Buson and Issa.

I am pondering permanence and transience.

I am paddling a canoe full of kids across a wide river. We are wearing life preservers and mostly smiling.

The fire is banked. The embers promise to glow and burn again when they meet with the breath of time and space.

Thanks for reading and for waiting. In peace,

Molly

Wordless Wednesday: In Which I *Don't* Complain About the Weather

Wordless Wednesday: Hope

Wordless Wednesday: First Sign of Spring: Baseball Recovered From Melting Snowbank

Wordless Wednesday: In Which More Snow Falls and I Understand Anew Why There Is a Subgenre of Literature Devoted to Prairie Women Losing Their Sanity

Wordless Wednesday: 40 Degrees

Wordless Wednesday: A Message About Winter From the Basketball Court at the Local Park: Adapt.

Wordless Wednesday: Blessed Sunshine!

Confession Saturday: The You Had Me At 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife' Edition

"The Gentleman offered his services,
took her up in his arms,
and carried her down the hill."

I confess, January gets me down.

I confess, the first stanza of In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti is playing on 'loop' in my mind.

I confess, I feel I ought to be more forbearing about winter considering where I live.  However, instead of pulling myself up by my bootstraps, I cope through escapism.

I confess, last night when Husband asked what I was reading all I said was, "Guess."  "Mr. Darcy?" he said, laughing.

I confess, it's true.  January always sends me straight to Jane Austen and also to Masterpiece Classic.  Also to hot tea and lots of dark chocolate.

I confess, I want to be the young maiden sitting in a window seat with a prospect of the gah-den, opening the wax seal of a hand-written letter, calling to the servant for tea.  (However, I always remind myself, they didn't have central heat or flush toilets back then.  There is that.)

I confess, I was glad to see on Facebook yesterday that another friend is escaping with Jane Austen, too.  It's nice to know I'm not alone.

I confess, I have an "I heart Mr. Darcy" bumper sticker on my mini-van.  It's true.

I confess, Reader, on the next four Sunday evenings you will find me glued to the TV watching Downton Abbey (which is set much later than Austen's novels, but alas, Masterpiece has no Austen on the schedule this year from what I can tell).  At night, I will be in bed early reading Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense & Sensibility, and Persuasion.  Next I will move on the Bronte Sisters.  Next maybe A Room With a View.  After that perhaps I will stoop to Austen fan lit.  I confess, I'm not above it.  By then it will be, I hope, March, and I might imagine that winter will end after all.

I confess, I'd love to know if you have favorite books/movies that you escape into during the bleak midwinter.


P.S. Image above is public domain via Liam's Pictures From Old Books.  I'm quite sure the scene is from Sense & Sensibility, when Marianne falls on the downs and Willoughby finds her and carries her to safety, sparking their romance (oh, the drama!).  And my long and rambling title comes from the first line of Pride and Prejudice.

Wordless Wednesday: Not To Be Dramatic, But, 'Bleak Mid-winter' Anyone?

A Poem For New Year's Day: 'Christmas Oratorio'

One of my college friends posted a link to this W. H. Auden poem on Facebook.  I think it's just the poem for New Year's Day, and I especially love the last ten lines, beginning with "In the meantime... ."  Read it here.