Take Joy!

Which Side Are You On?

For Labor Day . . .

 

 

 

 

I am back . . .

though circumstances have changed somewhat: I now live with my daughter in Fairview (outside Asheville)—I had Covid last year, spent some time in the hospital and more time recuperating in a nursing home (and a more boring and unstimulating time I cannot remember). I decided I should no longer drive (mostly memory issues), therefore couldn't live alone, so here I am.

 

A short explanation for a vast upheaval.

 

Most of my possessions are still stored; I am going through them gradually, sorting and re-storing or discarding. I have two rooms to myself—my bedroom with a private bathroom and a room for sewing and whatnot, so things could definitely be worse. But . . . I waited my entire life to be able to live alone, and I'll never be able to again.

 

Damn.

 

However, I still have cats. Brian took some of my eight, but I have The Doot, Ysabeau, and did have Darla, who died in her sleep a few months ago; she was, I think, 16. Karolyn has cats also—Krishna has gone to live with Eliza, my granddaughter, because she is horribly territorial and did not adjust well to three new residents—but we still have Rexie (I always wanted an orange tabby, and now I have one!) and the new kittens, Rosie and Lily. Kittens! Cute as all get-out, fast as greased lightning, and total airheads. Though they are outgrowing that: now when I say NO! they don't necessarily stop what they're doing, but they do look
at me . . .

 

 

The Players

 

 

 

 Top to bottom: Rosie and Lily, Ysabeau, The Doot (highly unimpressed by his chance at fame and fortune).

 

 

“When they ask to see your gods

your book of prayers

show them lines

drawn delicately with veins

on the underside of a bird’s wing

tell them you believe

in giant sycamores mottled

and stark against a winter sky

and in nights so frozen

stars crack open spilling

streams of molten ice to earth

and tell them how you drink

a holy wine of honeysuckle

on a warm spring day

and of the softness

of your mother who never taught you

death was life’s reward

but who believed in the earth

and the sun

and a million, million light years

of being”

~J.L. Stanley

(Stolen, with thanks, from Hecatedemeter—go read her blog at https://hecatedemeter.wordpress.com/)

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.

Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring’s green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
All earth’s dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Praise the Rain

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

 

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we’re led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

 

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

 

—Joy Harjo

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love-
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

 

—Lynn Unger

I probably won't find anything I want . . .

I went to Barnes & Noble this afternoon; after declaring that I 'probably won't find anything I want,' I left with:

•Current issue of The Progressive; Ilhan Omar on cover

•Latest issue of Enchanted Living: the Hygge Issue (I'm always seduced by their gorgeous photography)

•Current issue of Cook's Country (tempted by recipe for Pork Stroganoff, as I am always sorry when I eat beef lately)

•Best of Taste of Home, to share with my daughter

•Current issue of A Needle Pulling Thread, a Canadian magazine covering "quilt sew knit crochet cross stitch embroider hook rugs"

•Issue #193 of Simply Knitting, which came with a small booklet of accessory patterns and one of vintage Christmas decorations

•Copy of Charlie Macksey's "The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse", which has been on my library hold list for a month or so

 

•An expensive (but worth it) organic dark chocolate/fluer de sel bar, which I heroically Did Not Devour as soon as I got home (even though I wanted to)

 

So much for not finding anything and not spending any money . . . I should know better.

(It's a good thing I no longer live in Asheville; it's a lot of trouble to go to the mall, where B&N is located, so I only go every few months.)

The Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

—T.S. Eliot

Blessed Solstice!

 

(The reading is from the first Revels Christmas CD—for me, the quintessential Christmas album—and is spoken by Robert J. Lurtsema. The well-known poem "The Shortest Day" was written by Susan Cooper especially for The Christmas Revels. The lovely song "Sol Invictus" is by Thea Gilmore.)

The Shortest Day

~ Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen,

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing, behind us — listen!

All the long echoes sing the same delight

This shortest day

As promise wakens in the sleeping land.

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year, and every year.

Welcome Yule!

Tonight, I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of the stars in the sky, watching the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and the immensity above them.

Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating....It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World

(Photo John the year before he died, walking at Charley Owen)