3.20.13 O Sweet Spontaneous Earth.... Spring Equinox

'O sweet spontaneous earth ...thou answerest them only with spring'  e.e.cummings

Oh Robin Redbreast, I hear your song, a flock of you outdoors this evening as I leave my office behind, all of you singing and talking, gathered together in these old Maples, convening upon one small grassy spot, the only area bare of recent snow for miles and miles. Deep red breasts resonating with the bright light of sunset on  this Spring Equinox, as we slowly come out of darkness and gradually move into light, the earth continuing its turns and we make our illimitable way round our sun. 

As the river streams noisily by, and all else is blanketed with late March snows, this glorious flock persists here, and I do wonder if truly the worms are awake and crawling to the surface for your evening meal.

As the same adolescent Red Tail Hawk perched back at home in my Aspen for days, each afternoon, late winter  hunger, awaits the earliest clumsy dove making for my birdseed  Squalls of Starlings come by, but who cares about seed when the whole group is not at ease together? Ah, all the rules borne of experience for each and every species, each and every avian group's wisdom. No crow eats alone here, but the lone small coyote comes nightly to the compost, their sibling either no longer with us, or well fed with more skills. New types of birds arrive in the yard daily, as the Geese leave by the thousands from the Umass fields, golden bellies blazing in the morning light, young and old, taking to the skies, to the northward path. In the evening, awaiting  my beloved outside his office, I watch as the old dog relishes the last of the snows, tasting, smelling, tromping through them with great delight, while three young crows far up in a nearby Pine harass a Hawk from the tree, darting in with assertive attacks, until it flies out, and goes for them, angered, and the three take off, chastened for the day.

As two big dogs came by  for appointments earlier this day, for knees and hips and joints, and when I finish my day, there are their delighted tracks perusing the land by the river.

And here, Spring approaches, as it has for millions of years, with or without human presence, no matter the species or living things present, still the earth does turn and moves round the sun, as this solar system and the billions of others turns and spins and moves through its cycles and times, endless, as one of my clients, a Physicist, would remind me. Not infinite, but endless, he stresses the difference. Saying ,this is pivotal for human awareness, reminding me  with his wisdom.

 And so I contemplate endlessness of the cosmos. Of  possibility. Of, in my neck of the woods, healing. Healing of limbs and walking and blood pressure and brain injury and digestion and anxiety and so much more...so much healing is possible that I watch daily in my practice, and in this, and all things, my beloved's breath in the early morning darkness, the laugh of my offspring on the phone, the banter of the six year old playing next door, the cry of the client with so much pain or sadness- so very much is possible. In all things,  I hear the song of endlessness...of possibility. In the age old Equinox, the time that binds us to so many others who have come before. Who will follow, no matter the circumstance. For the cosmos is a grand , endless thing. And we but a small precious moment in its expanse.

3.18.13 Bloggery

A few months ago I was having such a nice time going to a weekly night time writing group, hanging with people who write and everyone reads and listens and talks. It was led by Dori Ostermiller, of Writers in Progress in Florence, MA, and was luscious and informative.      

             But I wasn't well enough and had to stop. Oh well. I write all the time anyways, things knocking at the door, murmuring to me, waiting in a queue for their turn, meaningful or meaningless, all sweet and muttering and waiting a turn to come out.                                                

Comes from a childhood of silence, I sometimes think, all this streaming outward...                                                   

          Then I remembered I had a few years ago posted one small photo and piece of meandering on a free blog thing. I forgot where it was. I searched by my name, and there it was, sitting there, quietly, all alone, funny little thing.   

           I thought, well, I can pull back the curtain and let the stream of chiming packages get unpacked and stretch out and sing a little and then sit someplace where possibly i won't forget them so easily again. So I did.                                                   

           I began putting some of the new little crop-ups of song and dance on it and some old ones that called to be included and slowly got accustomed to placing some of whomever comes tumbling out...some of them...in this place, a place called...a blog.                                                                                    

  Oh, i used to wonder why on earth anyone had one of those. All those photos of your self flossing your teeth and describing your minute aspects of your day the way I imagine Twitting (I stubbornly call it Twitting) might....but since that first deposit of words and pictures, I had begun to discover some of the joys of ...blogs.                                       

I mean, there are so many different types. Paintings and poems and creative

ideas and silly funny ideas and gardens and history and the enormous variety of work and effort and theory.                                                                           

      Plus, when I have the energy, I am irretrievably curious and caring about lives. Your life. Your spider's life. So many lives.                                                 .                                                                                                     

I often think that if I could, I would be the person on Forrest Gump's bench, only I would sit there and listen and carefully look through your box of  photos of your life,  then ask you questions.

You all know, being on a computer at this moment or a phone, you all are familiar with this, all the information and blogging and tweeting and websites and all.                           

And so came a time when I thought, Okay, I get this. Some blogs are not for my consumption and some are delicious, and it's that way for everyone. Got it.                                     

 So as I rambled along, listening to when something wanted to slip by and stream out and be plucked up and placed there, I began to realize there were all these buttons in the blog place when you have a blog.                                                        

I mean, it is a shock. Don't laugh. There is actually a 'Stat page'. I said to myself, man, that has to mean statistics. Wow. What the heck. So clicked on it, and wow is right.             

 It told you how many people, people you really don't KNOW, somehow wandered their way onto your little spot of earth, of internet, with your little tiny sploggletss that called to be let out, like impatient tumbling puppies, so you did..with a bit of forethought, like, don't post your beloved getting into the shower or your kids because that wouldn't be good or blab their names or such....but there I am, anyways, and you can push a button for 'ever since you started this blog' and it tells you that thousands of people have looked at it. Hmm. Wow.

Then you push another button, and it tells you all the countries. I had to mull that over for a week or so. Right? Like, if you are sitting in one country, and you suddenly discover that thousands of people you don't know have been perusing your little small words and pictures and they are from the U.S. and Britain and Hong Kong and Germany and Russia and and Japan and Canada and Italy and Venezuela and Australia and Saudi Arabia??? Right? 

Then you say, hey, wow. Here I am, a 60 year old person, kids grown, with four cats, a sweet old dog and a beloved, living in the country, going to work and coming home and taking care of myself and writing and taking photos and wandering the hills, there are thousands of people from all these countries looking at this stuff.. its kind of mind blowing.   

 Not that it doesn't happen all over the Internet, which is partly why the Internet is so incredible. The best and the worst, right? So many options.                                             

Then I see another little button that says NOW and it tells you how many people are looking at what little biddy things you wrote ...right now.                                                        

Then I sit there going, well. Okay. What a trip. Oh, and you all probably know all this stuff already...but it tells you something called 'pageviews by browsers' and then 'pageviews by operating systems'. Which kind of seems almost as invasive as when you have your iphone on the internet-thing as someone drives you down the road, and on the screen comes all your neighbor's tags for their internet connections...popping up on your screen. But that's life, isn't it? All this stuff.                                                                

       So , anyway, I have slowly become used to this idea. That when I have a delicious time enjoying some amazing historical or cultural or political or artistic blog, I now am part of their statistics.....similar to when you look at photos and begin to remember that the people in the photo are responding ....to the person taking the photo. That look on their faces...is for that person with the camera.

Same with me looking at your blog. Same as you looking at mine.             

I'm slowly starting to adjust to this brave new world of bloggery, of mine and yours and things called 'stats' and all that stuff.                                                                             

And in my Acupressure/Herbal practice for the past 25 years, which is all over the internet anyway, clients have forever wanted to have photos and little worded snippets on the waiting room walls...of some cool place I went, etc... curiously curious, they always have been. I realized over the years that as I confidentially listen to them, week after year, to their dreams and wishes and pain and health improvement and tears, so they wait for my photos and descriptions of places and times and events also.                                                                               

The last thing that confused me about having a blog...was that thing where when you post something...and suddenly your 'stats' go flying up. I finally said to my husband, ‘Oh, so people 'subscribe' and when I plunk something there, it goes flying off to them right away and shows up as bunch of people suddenly looking. Right?'                                             

And he laughs, smiles, and says "Yeah, that's how it would work!!!' And I laugh too, awash with the wonder of modern life.

3.18.13 Luminous

See this flock of Beech leaves?

Heed the rustling chorale

It’s way past mid March

yet they’re resolute, held

Casually shimmering

neath Maple Blossom Moon

illuminating such a cluster of   

darkness-spun woods

What wanton wind

shall finally release them-

Fagus grandifolia - to flash into night?

Listen- as this year's 

eager buds do swell

Oh, my diaphanous

forest queen – comes our

child song of smooth branch;

refrain of Luminous mother tree

3.15.13 The Ides of March in One Small New England Town

Fall Over Friday it is today, workweek ended and time for replenishment. And too, The Ides of March today, cool and crisp here, the wind worthy of any New England springtime characterization.

The sun is just cresting The Mount Holyoke Range, vast light suddenly spilling across the aged conservation land by our side.

I think of three years ago, when the hill was plowed for the first time in years, and I looked out one morning to discover people wandering about, poking at the earth, and seeking relics. Curious, I went out to speak to an older man who had crossed the field the entire day, looking through the furrowed soil. In reply, he extended his hand to reveal an arrowhead made of a rock found only in New York. We then both stood, quiet, imagining someone, most probably in the 1500s,traveling on foot or horse to New York and back, had lived in this field in a Native American encampment, and one day dropped this arrowhead, to be found hundreds of years later, at this moment.

Daily there are hordes of returning birds from migration , a grand and endless reunion, moving through or moving in, Redwing Blackbirds scouting for territories, the Blue Bird families back once again, to hopefully locate the new birdhouse we’ve put out for their brood.

The neighborhood streams are swollen and rushing, cleansing the fall and winter’s debris, clearing the way for freshwater consumption by all the wildlife surrounding.

The conservation field next door is now naked of snow, making it once more inaccessible, due to tick population. That is as it is,  and so ,as any wise person does these days, we venture into grasses only when covered fully by snow, and spend the warm months admiring them from afar, never forgetting that the ticks are all SICK because humans shifted the balance and health of the environment and made this so.

The daffodils by the house are approaching their bloom, the gardens and trees awakening, the Maple sap run slowing to a halt as intermittent warmer days catch every living thing off guard.

In the mornings, Shiva Louisa Latrine, 15, for the most part sightless and hearingless, is popped out on her rope. She stands, surveying her domain with more sensory tools than in youth- relishing the feel of wind in her thick fur, lifting her nose to the scents barreling by.

 Last fall when an enormous adolescent bear stood in front of the living room window and gazed in, their beautiful eyes two feet from mine, innocent, broad furred back, long elegant snout, short stocky young legs, Shiva smelled and howled in objection.

Now,  I unclasp her, rendering her happily leashless. I am her shepherd, as she meanders across the yard, snow all but gone, her elated spring inventory done with great and slow delight- the snuffling, the periodic pulling of earth with old claws, the cocking of the sweet furred head.

We go on adventures in the car, she approaching the door to be lifted, back end now, into her place. Standing between the seats on a console with glued materials to keep dog claws from the erroneous slip, she catches the scent of a dog adventure by noticing that the pattern of roads taken differs than the customary driving my beloved to work, or driving us to food shop, or the predicable road to the library, all simplified greatly since offspring are grown and living elsewhere.

With anticipation begins a quiet muh muh muhhhing by my side as I bring the car to rest at some delectable-to-old-dog place, and lift her out. Shaking off a week’s worth of lying about all day long, she sets up a good pace worthy of any exploration, aware that, as her official shepherd, I will foresee any obstacles and alert her to alternate pathways. One touch of my leg on her side, one slide of my hand on her back, with the smallest pressure, and akin to the communication while riding a horse, she shifts her choice of direction, always trusting I am there to guard while she delightedly makes her way in a curious new place.

When on leash, there is a small tug prior to a curb, and another to signal a step down, so with this signal she lowers her lovely whitened nose and finds the places, with care, where the terrain does change.

She stands in the wind and raises her face with such sensorial delight. She turns to detect what she may as the wind blows by and brings her news from places I can only dream of. She wanders at will, snuffling and investigating, until finally I call it quits, releashing her loveliness, to head back to the car.

She makes a great and imperious show of resisting, pulling on her collar with reticence, until I laugh, embracing her, and then insist and get her in the car.

Shiva has the gift of a lovely mini-Husky body, born years ago in Mississippi, until one of my kids found her and two siblings, at 4 weeks, of age,  next to a dumpster. People are often alarmed at this, the young age, the fur a thick crust filled with living insects, but I tell them I am imagining someone that was not having an easy time of it, that  lacked resources, certainly adequate dog food, money to neuter, and did the best they could, at least bringing three small beings somewhere that gave them a passing chance. Which, it turns out, it did.

Locating homes for two, my offspring brought home the big surprise of a red mini-Husky, scarcely bigger than two hands, certain she was part Timber Wolf. But then, youth necessitates these convictions. Timber Wolf she was not; Mini-Husk she was, born with one and a half bright blue eyes, a black mask that has wandered down her back with age. And so, she has been one with us.

Younger, with sight, she lunged at pant legs and babies. With less sight, she is tempered, and enjoys all young people. With gratification, she walks through Dave’s Soda and Pet Food, stiffly meeting, then walking past the toughest Pitty boy dogs, who, sensing even a very old, blind alpha, go belly up, to the shocked frustration of their big boy people. She struts after such an encounter, a bounce to her old step, satisfied in her offhand, royal manner, as we finish up our field trip and make our way back home.

One more luscious day on the foothills of one of earths’ age-old ranges.