Cherries, Fairies, and Summer Reading

CHERRY TIME by Robert Graves from Fairies and Fusiliers (A. A. Knopf)
Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
Under the moon.
And you’ll be fairies soon.

In the cherry pluckt at night,
With the dew of summer swelling,
There’s a juice of pure delight,
Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
In the moonlight.
And you’ll be fairies quite.

When I sound the fairy call,
Gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall,
Cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter.
For the eater
When the dews fall.
And you’ll be fairies all.


In one sense, this past weekend ushered in the beginning of summer in the U.S.  True, it isn't meteorological summer quite yet nor astronomical summer, which I always mean to celebrate, but don't, with a frolicking mid-summer fete.  Nevertheless, Memorial Day weekend brings long lines of traffic at Kent Narrows as hoardes migrate to the beaches, the sound of Rolling Thunder coming to town, and the ability to wear white linen pants without fearing grandmothers everywhere are turning over in their graves-- all harbingers of summer for many folks in the DC area.

For me however, the first tell tale sign of summer arrived on Monday in the form of an e-mail from the orchard where I go fruit picking every year:  Cherries will be ripe the end of this week.  As the message pointed out, this is three weeks early.  I usually coordinate my cherry picking with my blueberry picking, and while the berries on the bushes in the backyard do have a tinge of blue to them now, they still need another few weeks before I have to fight the birds for their limited bounty. 

Cherry picking has become something of a ritual for me.  I don't remember every picking cherries when I was young-- maybe because it was easy-- no squatting in rows of muddy straw like for strawberries, no digging deep in bushes full of prickers like blackberries or raspberries.   My parents seemed to prefer taking us to pick fruit that had an element of discomfort to it. 

Several years ago, when I first picked sour cherries (my favorite) with a friend at the orchard in question,  I was amazed at not only how fast I could fill my bag, but at the way the fruit itself looked on the tree-- the ruby red globes glistening in the sun against the backdrop of the dark green leaves.  I probably spent as much time admiring the cherries as picking them.  But pick them I did and ever since then, my start of summer has been marked by an afternoon spent sprawled on a blanket in the backyard with a bowl of cherries, a glass of iced tea, and a good book.

To that end, I'm glad that during my cleaning frenzy over the holiday weekend I rearranged my bookshelves in order to devote one shelf to summer reading.  Just as there are seasonal fruits, I believe there is seasonal reading.  Tolstoy is best read in winter curled up with a cup of tea under a warm blanket and Virginia Woolf is best read under a tree in the languid, steamy days of late summer.  I don't know why this is, it just is. 

My earliest memory of assigning a season to an author goes back to when my mother introduced me to the Mary Poppins books.  I still re-read these classics by P.L Travers each summer, often with a dish of raspberry sherbet as the two just seem to fit so nicely together.  In later years when we'd holiday in the Outer Banks during late spring, I'd visit a little shop on Okrakoke Island and buy whatever Andrew Lang book they had in stock that I didn't already own.  The ensuing weeks were spent indulging in a fairy tale or two at bedtime.  As I was in graduate school at this point in my life, reading anything other than theology tomes was an indulgence.

This year there are 19 books on my wooden bookshelf and 7 on my virtual one that I hope to read this summer.  I'll be posting my progress and short reviews in a Carpe Libris post each month but as I figure it, that means I need to read about a book and a half per week.  Now I just need to go pick some cherries so I can begin . . .

THE ANT by Odgen Nash
The ant has made herself illustrious
By constant industry industrious.
So what?  Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?

 

A few weeks ago as I was sitting at my desk attempting to get some work done (but really fretting about all the obligations I had that would keep me from getting my work done) I noticed a tiny ant crawling around on the wall.  This morning it’s back again. 

Famous Ant Not on My Wall #1 - Atom Ant

At least I think it’s the same ant.  From what I can recall, it’s the same size as my previous ant, its antennae are about the same length, and it’s scurrying along the same path, over and over again, not really going anywhere in its peripatetic ramblings, just like before.

My first thought upon noticing the ant again today was a worry that we might have an infestation, but I haven’t seen any others.  I then started to wonder what it was doing here, why leave the green lush yard full of wildflowers and fallen mulberries to scurry back and forth aimlessly across an expanse of white semi-gloss painted wall? 

Famous Ant #2 - Adam Ant

I thought about picking up the ant on a piece of paper and putting it outside, helping it get back to its normal routine, its real life in the great outdoors, but something stopped me.  Is that what the ant needs or what I need?  Am I projecting on to the ant my desire for someone to come in and rescue me, liberate me from the current situation that has me running about in circles and plop me into a setting where I can do the work I was created to do?  Or, like the ant, is a foray off the path a necessary part of the journey?  Do I need to wander through this wasteland for a while in order to better appreciate the path when I can get back on it?

And for the Brits #3 - Ant of Ant & Dec

Since I started writing this, the ant has now wandered into the stack of poetry books that sit on my desk.  These past several weeks poetry is the one thing that has kept me feeling connected, tethered.  The hour or so each morning I read a few poems and choose which to post and write about is the only time I feel whole.  Maybe I’ll let the ant stay for a while longer . . .

Rainy Days and Mondays

THE RAINY DAY
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Ballads and Other Poems (William D. Ticknor & Co.)

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Poor Longfellow.  He missed a great opportunity.  Rainy days for writers, at least for this writer, are something to look forward to, and rainy Mondays even more so than any other damp day of the week.  There's something about waking up at the start of the week to the shimmering sound of raindrops falling through the leaves and the gray light that edges in sideways through the cracks in the blinds that makes me want to cuddle up to my desk and work. 

Maybe it's a throwback to childhood where rainy days were often spent alone, playing in my bedroom or basement, making up stories in my head until I learned to commit them to paper.  Sometimes these were adventures to be acted out by my paper dolls or Barbies, while at other times they were imagining the life I would lead when I was grown up. 

A couple years ago I kept stumbling across books and articles that recommended creating your perfect ordinary day.  I guess the point is that by envisioning what you'd like to be doing with your life and committing that vision to paper, you've taken the first step to achieving your dream.   When I finally sat down to do it, I discovered my vision was pretty simple-- wake up, meditate, breakfast, write, lunch, walk, write/read, dinner, read, bed.  Putting it on paper I thought, "Easy peasy!  I can do this."  But some two years later, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have actually lived that perfect ordinary day since I first wrote it down. 

After today, though,  I hope I need another finger on which to count those days.  I've eaten breakfast, have a pot of tea made (Smokey Earl Gray, the perfect rainy day blend) and am looking forward to fleshing out the notes I made last week for a project I'm working on.  I may exchange my afternoon walk for a nap but either way, this rainy day has me feeling inspired.

Evidently rainy days have inspired a lot of painters as well.  My gift to you this Monday is a trip to my virtual art gallery for a retrospective on rainy day paintings.  You won't even need an umbrella to get there.  Enjoy!

Paris Street Rainy Weather - Gustave Caillebotte

Montmartre Spring Rain - Camille Pissaro

Jockeys in the Rain - Edgar Degas

Rainy Day on Fifth Avenue - Childe Hassam

Morning on the Seine in the Rain - Claude Monet

Umbrellas - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Wheat Field in Rain - Vincent Van Gogh

I

Sea and Rain - James Abbot McNeill Whistler

Rain, Steam and Speed - William Turner

Carpe Libris - The May Version



It's time once again for Carpe Libris.   Here's what's on the top of the stacks of books by my bed and on my Kindle this month . . .

Wales:  Epic Views of a Small Country  and
A Writer's House in Wales by Jan Morris
If you are an arm chair traveler and haven't yet discovered the writing of Jan Morris, you're in for a treat.  I first discovered her work when I returned from Venice, head over heels in love with the city and determined to read every scrap of writing I could find about it.  Just as she helped fan the flames of my passion for La Serenissima, Jan Morris has helped me continue to fall in love with Wales, albeit a very different type of love.  I want to settle down and grow old with Wales, and A Writer's House in Wales gave me hope that may some day happen.  It's hard to describe the book-- part history, part house tour, part memoir, it's a glimpse into a cozy corner of not only a writer's life but also the Welsh landscape.  I've now moved onto Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country, and am finding the prose just as resonant as it often echoes the rolling hills and sweeping seascapes of the country itself.

                                                      As Seen On TV:  Provocations by Lucy Grealy
Although I'd read about Lucy Grealy, I'd never read anything by her until I purchased this book of essays.  What lured me to them was the teaser that they mainly written, "simply for the pleasure of the act." There's something appealing about reading a piece that an author has written for no other reason than it's a joy to write.  And although cliches could be used to describe the sixteen pieces of writing that make up this book . . . at times heartbreakingly touching, at times scathingly funny . . . Lucy's voice is so strong and honest throughout that I feel like I'm listening to the voice of a friend, albeit the smartest, funniest, most talented albeit vulnerable and broken friend I could ever hope to have all rolled up into one.

Love's Urgent Longings:  Wrestling with Belief in Today's Church             by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson
A friend just gave me this book, by the former Roman Catholic bishop of Sydney.  Although I'm not Catholic, the papers I have read by Bishop Robinson on the child abuse crisis in the Catholic church and on the need for the church to change its understanding and teaching on human sexuality, have greatly impressed me with their clarity and compassion.  Those same qualities he demonstrates in his theological writings are evident in this refreshingly honest little book where he writes of his personal struggles with deconstructing the belief system he inherited from the church, and what ended up taking its place . . . at least for now.

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss
There are so many books lining shelves in my bedroom and basement, stacked on the floor, lingering in cyberspace on my Kindle, and yet I still find myself drawn to the public library where I come across titles that I may never see otherwise . . . like this book by David Liss.  I must admit I am one of those people who do often judge books by their covers so the Austen-esque figure on the front holding a piece of paper with magical symbols was what initially caught my eye.  And a story that weaves together the English Luddite rebellion of the early nineteenth century, Lord Byron, magic, and a spunky heroine who knows her own heart and learns to know her own power all make for the perfect early summer reading.  I finished this book in two evenings and am off to the library later this afternoon to look for more books by David Liss . . . and any others with covers that capture my attention.

So what are you reading??????


Mary Oliver Monday - One or Two Things

ONE OR TWO THINGS
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One (Beacon Press)

       1

Don't bother me.

I've just

A butterfly fuzzling--my new favorite word.

been born.

       2

The butterfly's loping flight

carries it through the country of the leaves

delicately, and well enough to get it

where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping

here and there to fuzzle the damp throats

of flowers and the black mud; up

and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly

lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk

of some ordinary flower.

       3

The god of dirt came up to me many times and said

so many wise and delectable things, I lay

on the grass listening

to his dog voice,

crow voice,

frog voice; now,

he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

       4

which has nevertheless always been,

like a sharp iron hoof,

at the center of my mind.

       5

One or two things are all you need

to travel over the blue pond, over the deep

roughage of the trees and through the stiff

flowers of lightning-- some deep

memory of pleasure, some cutting

knowledge of pain.

       6

But to lift the hoof!

For that you need an idea.

       7

For years and years I struggled

just to love my life.  And then

the butterfly

rose, weightless, in the wind.

"Don't love your life

too much," it said,

and vanished into the world.

As often as I have leafed through Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems, this particular verse has never really resonated with me, until today that is.  Certainly, the theme of maintaining the tension between learning to love this life and this word, while not becoming too attached to it, echoes the thoughts that have been tumbling through my mind these past few weeks as friends I know and love are dealing with loss and grief and new ways of being in this world.  And the wisdom proffered to focus on now not forever (or even tomorrow or yesterday for that matter) is always a good reminder

Pot Smash satisfaction guaranteed!

But more than that, I think it's the fragmented structure of the poem that is echoing my mental state and physical energy at this point.  Mondays I usually look forward to the clean slate of a new week, the chance to once again set an intention to focus on one task at a time.  I do have a rather big project  that needs to be finished today, but instead of working on that, I've done one or two or five other things already-- laundry, grocery shopping, running errands for my parents, writing this blog post, and, I confess, playing a game or two of the immensely addictive Pot Smash on my Android tablet.  

The book I started over the weekend and my bed are also luring me with the siren song of a respite and possible nap on this rainy Monday-- the desire, like the butterfly to succumb to a lazy moment in the midst of activity.  But just maybe it's these moments of rest, however they manifest, that allow us hold our center and rise weightless in the wind and sail off into the world.





Adjective or verb. . .what is my comfort zone?

There are lots of words in the English language-- 616,500 according to the second edition of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary published back in 1989, which means it likely leaves out many newly minted words such as blogging and Brangelina.   If you were to say one word every second, it would take you just over a week to go through the entire inventory of the English language.  However, linguist David Crystal estimates the vocabulary of the average native English speaker consists of some 60,000 - 75,00 words including both active (those we use) and passive (those we understand) words, so a day would suffice for most people to exhaust their storehouse of vocabulary.

The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists provides a ranking of the most commonly used words in English.  Numbers 1-25 make up about 1/3 of all the printed material and the first 100 make up about half the written words in English. 

The First Hundred
the of and a to in is you that it he was for on are as with his they I	at be this have from or one had by word but not what all were we when your can said	there use an each which she do how their if will up other about out many then them these so	some her would make like him into time has look two more write go see number no way could people	my than first water been call who oil its now find long down day did get come made may part

Given those statistics, it's surprising that Sunday was the first time I noticed an odd synchronicity.  As I was spending a somewhat lazy morning lying in bed listening to NPR's Morning Edition and catching up on blog reading, at exactly the same moment I was reading the words "comfort zone" on the screen, the words were being said on the radio.  Granted, neither the word comfort nor zone appear in the top 1000 much less 100 commonly used words, which is probably one reason I noticed the occurrence-- because it isn't an everyday phrase.  But more than just the coincidence of reading and hearing the exact same phrase at the exact same moment, what made me really sit up and take notice was the juxtaposition of the contexts. 

The phrase I heard was in a story about the response of members and clergy in historically African-American churches to the upcoming vote in North Carolina surrounding gay marriage. A pastor used the parable of the Good Samaritan as a lesson in inclusion, saying, "Jesus is always calling us away from our comfort zones." 

The phrase I read was on a Danish fashion and lifestyle blog I follow. It described a look book full of romantic, embellished clothes that the author said inspired her but, as a Scandinavian women used to "edgy" and "minimalist" fashion, moved her out of her comfort zone. 

Radical acceptance, respect and compassion for "an other" on the one hand; wearing lacy skirts and pink fuzzy sweaters on the other:  Two  very different ways of moving beyond a comfort zone.  I don't want to imply that one of these examples is more noble than the other.  I've watched enough episodes of "What Not to Wear" to realize that for many women, fashion comfort zones are tied to deeper issues than just a personal preference for style-- body image, gender issues, power, sexuality.  And as for Jesus, well as one of my professors in seminary said, "What Jesus asks us to do is not usually difficult but it is frequently inconvenient."

Comfort by Edvard Munch

But this did make me think about my own comfort zones-- those I am willing to break out of or perhaps just stretch a bit, and those I want to stay hunkered down in for the long haul.  There have been situations in my life lately where I've had to move out of my comfort zone, not by choice but in order to be present with and for others.  And maybe that's the key to knowing when I should move beyond my comfort zone . . . when it involves the transition from comfortable to comfort, from adjective to verb.

Monday or How Billy Collins taught me it was okay to look out my window . . .

MONDAY by Billy Collins from The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (Random House)

Jane Austen may not have been a poet but she did
write at this table by the window every morning,
and probably spent some time looking outside.

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.   

My favorite window is the one by my bed that looks out onto the back yard.  I tend to wake up the first time as the milky light of morning pours into dawn, so I get up and look to see what birds are breakfasting there.  The robins of early spring have now been joined by common place birds I think I know the names of but am not quite sure-- are they wrens or are they sparrows?  I recognized the mourning dove when I saw her yesterday.  And the grackles last week.  Occasionally an odd bird turns up that sends me leafing through my Audubon guide.  I'm still awaiting the return of last year's sap sucker who never managed to venture into a tree to be true to his name, but preferred to forage in the grass.   

A view of the wildflower garden from my window

Later in the morning, after a cup of tea and before I move to my desk, I survey the wildflower garden to see what's in bloom.  Again, I'm not a very well informed naturalist.  I don't know the names of all the plants but I can identify the columbines in an array of purples and blues.  They lord over the salvia and foxglove, and I can almost hear them bragging about their abundant blossoms as they sway and swagger in the breeze.  In a few weeks they'll be quieted by the wild echinacea that takes over the garden and then I'll start looking for the goldfinches who land on the stalks, pluck the petals off the flowers and feast on the seeds.

As I pass the window throughout the day I'll look outside some more.  Is that a rabbit or a clump of brown leaves under the forsythia bush on the hill?  Is it going to rain soon or can I sneak outside for a quick walk?  What is that squirrel up to, hunkered down in the hollow of the maple tree?

Before I rearranged my work space, the small table cum desk that barely held my lap top was in front of a big window that looks out into my side yard and my neighbor's back yard.  I used to find myself endlessly sitting and staring out the window when I "should" have been working.  I used to think of this wool gathering as a manifestation of one or more of my character flaws . . . procrastination, laziness, acedia . . . I could go on but I won't.  

Then I read the Billy Collins poem above and realized that looking out of the window is not an avoidance of work, rather it is part of my work as a writer. The practice of seeing, noticing, observing comes before the work of sharpening the pencils or turning on the computer.  Just as a chef has to chop the vegetables for the mis en place, I have to gather the elements I need to create.  The images, colors, sounds, textures that I see out my window may go into what I cook up on the page on any given day, but most importantly the task of looking out the window provides me with the most  important ingredient I feel I can include in my writing:  gratitude.


BTW - How great is that line, "in every section of the tangerine earth"-- perfection!

The Trees - A Poem for Beltane

THE TREES
by Philip Larkin from High Windows          (Faber and Faber, Ltd.)

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.


On the Celtic calendar, today is the celebration of Beltane, the first day of summer.  In the pastoral world of the Celtic peoples of long ago, the first day of May (or thereabouts) marked the transition from budding spring to blossoming summer.  The rituals surrounding Beltane--dancing around May poles, courting rituals, honoring the blossoming of flowers and greening of trees-- symbolize the energy of new growth and fertility evident in the natural world during this season.


Beltane is also a time of transition and purification.  Households would douse their individual fires and relight them from a common bonfire, lit on the evening of the celebration.  Livestock were often driven through a path between two bonfires in order to ensure fruitful breeding seasons.   Sometimes oatcakes or bags of flour were shared around the communal fire to ensure a good harvest. 

While most of us no longer dance around be-ribboned poles or sit around bonfires on May 1, Beltane does offer us an opportunity to reflect on where we are in the cycle of life so eloquently captured in Larkin's poem.  The ideas of new growth, fertility, transition and purification are present in three simple verses. 

A great reminder, this May day and every day, that there is always the opportunity to begin afresh, afresh, afresh . . .