Wednesday, November 30, 2016

salty women and women who crave salt



from the sea (5) - Old birds ludes by freda karpf

  We have to talk about our hopes and dreams with our friends and listen to bird songs as they were meant to be heard, a part of everything, including our hopes and dreams. They are not backdrop or incidental. They are a part of everything.  Borges is right, “All writing is dreaming.”  All dreaming is becoming part of the song.
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     All the world over, all through the centuries, and that’s a lot of days, women have craved salt. Somehow, being in the here and now with Mrs. Scattergood the sort of bantering she had with her, in and out of her head, sometimes an emotional staccato, satisfied her need for salt.   At one time the moon was part of the earth. When it was lifted up from the ocean bed and cast into space it never went too far.  It orbited the earth.  Never too far and in cycle with its home in the ocean it rules the waves along with the winds. Friends fill our orbits with the moons we lack. An elemental need is met in these relationships.  Our friends bring out the truth in us.  It might seem like we're skimming the surface here but we're not. The truth is simple.  Baubo has heard others say this.  And she witnessed it herself. Though it generates rings of emotion and touches everything that is vulnerable and salty in all of us, the truth is simple.
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     The blessed memory works in many directions.  As long as someone is remembered they live on. The virtue of our words, the energy of our thoughts bring life. These words, like the bird’s songs, are companions to our soul. Baubo remembers Rachel Carson. She can call her Rachel now. The freedom that we have from the leaving. When she thinks of old birds, she remembers Rachel, always Rachel. Human as she was, she gave birth to our big birds. Osprey, eagles, the birds of prey are all Rachel’s grandchildren.  Her words in Silent Spring left us the wings of the mighty to bless the winds, push down on the currents and to rise with the rising thermals.
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     Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.  Now all of us can write Rachel affectionate letters. She cannot demure.  Her bones more bird than human.  Without gravity she might fly off into the sky, not knowing when to land or, for that matter, where to fly. How do you thank someone that has changed everything so that everything isn’t changed? 
~
     It was with an uncommon kind of gratitude that Baubo felt toward the old birds. It felt like a privilege just being in the same place with them.  They took wing, they crossed bodies of water, and they protected their nests in storms. Is there anything more amazing then to see a bird, any bird, large or small sail through the star dust, the pollen, the clouds, tree lines and reflections all mirrored in their eyes.  It’s an uncommon kind of gratitude because you don’t often think to express this sense of love that is a recognition of grace and beauty, which makes the way through the days sweet, even magical. Birds move through space the way we do in our dreams. We try to hold onto that feeling.  We push down against the ground and they push down against stardust, pollen, clouds, and reflections.     

Sunday, November 27, 2016

everything becomes a canvas for memory



from the sea (5) - Old birds ludes by freda karpf

  We slip between modes of comfort and discomfort.  The time between is growth.  We grow in random and chaotic stages for the rest of our lives once our knees stop hurting from the push of youth and marrow.  The random stages of growth carry into the finer less material phases of a person’s existence.  They extend into the mental and elemental.  They slide up your spine like the Kundalini and tickle your neocortex to remember a finer state of grace where the physical realities seem dense and burdened, where the sweet sensations of the souls’ mercurial unfolding breach the gap between the formal Russian Ballet and Twyla Tharp.
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      You know that everything becomes a canvas for memory. So much so that when the criss-crosses of life come to you you’re already painting before you realize. If you don’t stop applying paint you might miss what’s happening in front of your own eyes. 
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     Green herons will complain loudly. They’re not just telling you that you’ve bothered them, they’re letting the entire area know it.  Baubo felt she was always the one to surprise a green heron. Not the osprey flying to a dead wood perch, not the mute swans making a racket as they take off from the river, but her, as she tried to move quietly along the reeds. The tops of the cord grass became a doily bordering her view to the river across the way. So it is that what is foreshortened becomes backdrop and what is near becomes border. 
~
     Dendritic lace.  It is like ice forming last winter at the edges of the river. This cold is alive and grows as the hours move.  Spring will move the ice back and have the pattern melt into the mud.  Patterns grow in our memories and recede with warmth because the living becomes more engaging. But they remain and we remember the cold.  We remember the warmth with less efficiency.
~
     Mrs. Scattergood’s dreaming had become her living.  Baubo noticed. Noticed too that she had sandwiched the mundane with her work and her grief. That’s some sandwich.  Well that is life, is it not?  The practical, the soul.  They meet in a multitude of combinations.  You can see, as Baubo did, when a person’s life feels empty.  It’s always the eyes that show it but you can hear it too.  If you are not hearing pain you are hearing someone that has let life leave them. They will feel empty, without spirit. But the person going through this might not know that they are dry as a husk. How dry is that? Dry, really dry.  No grits, no maize, no amazing.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

the criss-crosses



from the sea (5) - Old birds ludes by freda karpf

Two women together in Baubo’s thoughts.  She had wanted to reach out to one she had known from a long time ago. Some people that inspire you, bolster you up when you’re down, come like seeds in the wind.  Hardly directed but purposeful.  Baubo felt a need to reach out to Kim McDodge.  But she let that urge evaporate.  It had been many years since she had an email. She wanted to reach out to her.  Shy, and hesitant even about sending an email.  Her spirit won out and she sent an email.  Two days later, as you might predict, she learned that Kim had passed.  And so it was also with Anne La Bastille.  Out of the blue she had a strong pull to search and reach out to them.  Strong as the tide.  Both had died within days of her desire to find them. Kim’s loss felt personal because she had exchanged emails. Both losses felt like the tide receding.
~
     How do we keep our mothers in our everyday when they are gone?  How do we hold our connection to the sacred? And is there a cord we all can follow or is that just some myth for Minotaurs and men?  When a feather falls from the sky and you see it floating down it’s entirely possible that the bird is still flying overhead. I have seen some birds with naked heads. Blue jays and even a sparrow. Molting. Every day the world presents itself, at various times of the day, so you’ll notice it, without the ones you love. How is that possible? To be here and not be here. But the connection to our mothers and to the sacred is held sometimes in the strangest ways.  Mrs. Scattergood’s secret, well, only one of them, but key, was that she kept her holy and only near and dear through passwords and sign-ons.  Access. How else, these days, can you keep your mother near in the everyday?  Questions are like crocheted blankets. There’s another row of them coming. The scarf is long because the pleasure of connection is too dear to stop. Leaving the last knot unfinished because nobody should be bold enough to address the perfect is a deliberate sacred mistake.  We only lean into the realm of beauty. It is too much for us really.  But old birds fly on, charting courses based upon the seasons, the quality and angles of the lights. Baubo knows that some of those if not all those old birds from this world, especially the big ones with nests in the penthouse are like the best tea closer to the ceiling of the sky.  Every day the sacred openings and entrances bring Mrs. Scattergood close to her mother. Fledglings fly down before they fly up to the nest again.
~
     Sure enough birds on the highway capping the lights like finials are usually red tailed hawks. Where you are sure enough to see one if you just look, is our gift from Grandmother Rachel. Sure enough birds, Rachel’s granchildren.  When they take wing they’re taking her legacy along for the ride, their sure strokes, pushing down on the air.  Some would still vilify Rachel for her work in the world. There’s money to be made and her legacy still burns a hole in some pockets. But without her, the silence in spring would be deadening. 
~
      Did we lose our connection to the land and water as we grew up?  Or did older generations just not pass that connection on to us?  Too in love with the new?  Who keeps that intimate contact with what we all love in this world?  So much is wrapped in packages and bought in stores.  But can we really forget that somewhere behind the curtain there's soil?  How Darwin loved his earth worms.  Building small cairns between the blades of grass on groomed lawns. The secret kingdoms stipple the land and provide the necessary elements to give us soil for gardening.  Loam, peat moss and bogs, wetlands that breathe and swell with the water table, wading birds, voles caught in an owl's talons.  Everything is connected. These are the criss-crosses of life.