Your place in the family of things

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver (posted on First Fig)

Ode: Intimations on Immortality

This Memorial Day has me thinking about a lot of my not-too-distant ancestors. On this day, my gradmother would take lilacs and place them on the graves of her loved ones, and two years ago, Kevin's grandpa, who was like a grandpa to me, departed from us. The memory of those who passed on is with me on this beautiful day.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.


And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquish'd one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

-William Wordsworth

Transience and Evanescence

Can I tell you how beautiful my yard smells? The air carries lilac on it from our five bushes. This is my dwarf lilac bush, about 12 inches high and wide by our back door.

Last night I had a great conversation with friends on philosophy and social power. One of the main themes was how transient beauty is - that it is often noticed as the moment passes. That by the time beauty is noticed, the moment is on the way out. There's something tragic about that impermanence, but that is what makes the moment striking.

While the Tao talks more of defining something in how it's not, this for some reason speaks to my understanding of beauty, which resonates at a more core level with me:

What cannot be seen is called evanescent
What cannot be heard is called rarefied
What cannot be touched is called minute
These three cannot be fathomed
And so they are confused and looked upon as one.

Its upper part is not dazzling
Its lower part is not obscure.

Dimly visible, it cannot be named
And returns to that which is without substance.

This is called the shape that has no shape
The image that is without substance.

This is called indistinct and shadowy.

The ability to know the beginning of antiquity
Is called the thread running through the way.

12 cents

Yup. That was my natural gas bill for April. Sometimes putting a stamp on something and sending if off just seems excessive.

Rocky Mountain High

A lot of my out-of-state students tell me how ugly Utah is. Sometimes I see what they mean. You know, the freeways. I'm always surprised when I drive somewhere and there's not a bunch of tumbleweed growing in the median. In some states, flowers grow there instead!

I encourage these students to look up at our mountains. They are impressive. They are gorgeous. And you can't beet the sunsets over the Great Salt Lake.

Lately I have been almost giddy with being outside. I broke my body weeding my gardens over the weekend, but I guess the strenuous nature of the work paid off, as I'm now jogging my route like I'm gliding through the evening air. Being outside in the freshness of spring, looking at the sunset burning toward the east mountains, I am amazed at the beauty of my Utah home.

Then I enter my yard, full of native and other wild-ish plants that I love. Shunning annuals, Kevin and I focused on water-wise perennials that bloom or are known for an attractive aroma (mint - tons of different mint - oregano, sages, thyme, lavender, lamb's ear, and rosemary). It's so encouraging to see things come back 2, 3, or 4 times bigger than they were a year ago.

Now it's dark. Touching back to reality. On to grading papers.

On weather

Photo credit: Theoriss

Dad: When I was a kid growing up, we could always tell what the weather was by looking at the Walker tower. Blue means it's clear, flashing blue was cloudy, red was rain, and flashing red meant it was snowing.

Me: Gee, when I was a kid, we'd just look at the sky.

After discussing new Spock's eyebrows

Dad: I've been noticing eyebrows lately. Like in that movie, what's it called? Getting Mad about Stuck-up Guy.

Me: There's a moving called that?

Dad: Yeah, that snooty guy in old European times with all the daughters.

Me: Captain von Trapp?

Dad: No, you know, they're all getting married. Well anyway, they go through the door with the time warp...

Me: What time warp?

Dad: And the girl, she's upside down. And she's got weird eyebrows. And then Darcy turns into Leopold.

Movie Review: Elizabeth Gaskell

What do you do when you run out of new Jane Austen movies? When you own all the good Jane Austen films and have watched them over and over? Well, I explore other BBC drama and move on to film adaptations of another author. I have been delighted to view three Elizabeth Gaskell movies recently: North and South; Cranford; and Wives and Daughters.

I embarrassingly embrace at least one popular genre besides animated sitcoms: I can't get over a good 19th-century romance. There's something about the focus on conversation, social subtleties, unstable political and economic environment, and the mesh of reason and romance (sense and sensibility, anyone?) that wins my curiosity. And it doesn't hurt that there are often gorgeous, intellectual men with quiet strength who bear their suffering in such a manly way, and are great dressers to boot.

(Image from Amazon.com)

Move over, Mr. Darcy, there's a new passionate, brooding man on the scene. In North and South, John Thorton is first seen by the heroine, Margaret, when he's beating the tar out of a factory worker who was caught smoking inside the cotton mill. Thorton is a self-made man, a survivor of poverty, and the man on whom all of the hopes of his mother hang (sense some meddling?).

(Image from Amazon.com)

Margaret, on the other hand, is a vicar's daughter from the country and is appalled by the brutishness she sees in city factory life. In essence, this film is about the move from country to city (a huge shift in 19-century England), but it is also about feminine (the country) and masculine (the industrialized city). While I think I will always prefer a Regency ballroom to the Victorian child-labor factory, the romance and intrigue is just fun to watch with these two main characters.

(Image from pbs.org)

Based on only the image above, Kevin began referring to Cranford as my "old biddy movie." And I guess it really is, but this is my favorite of the three. Merged from three stories from Mrs. Gaskell, this series of TV episodes is about a small town on the verge of the arriving railway. It focuses on female characters and their unique moral code. Simon Woods, of P&P fame, plays the new town doctor and love interest for, well, practically the whole town.

Dame Judy Dench was fabulous in this, and the movie is centered in her character's middle class home and follows her friends and acquaintances through the course of a year. I think what I loved about it was enjoying the fleeting moments of a town on the verge of upheaval. We don't see too much of the enormous disruption coming, but we get to see the great intimacy between the town folk that is about to be changed forever.

(Image from pbs.org)

Wives and Daughters was the longest of the three - five hours. Now, I'm the first one to defend the five-hour Pride and Prejudice, but that was Pride and Prejudice. While this story is intriguing, it sometimes gets a tad painful. Especially because the main actress sometimes fell apart in her role.

As the daughter of a widower doctor, Molly Gibson moves more freely through society, socializing with the humble as well as the great lords and ladies. Like Anne Elliot in Persuasion, she bears much with her duty, her integrity, and the seemingly unattainability of the object of her eye.

(Image from pbs.org)

But this man, Richard, redeems the show. He's the misunderstood second son (read: poor son) of a squire. He's a geographer and a naturalist. He's sensitive, calm, and forgiving. He also walks around for a good time with his shirt off and gets dirty while remaining pleasant to look at.

Still Hiding

Apparetnly she thinks we can't see anything above her eyes.

"Sing"

At work, people were posting a list of their first favorite songs, and as someone posted this one by the Carpenters, a gush of memories came over me. My parents love the Carpenters, and Karen's voice was one of the first outside my family that could make me jump when I heard her.

Yes, the song is camp in the over exaggeration sense of the word. But as I look to the lyrics, I think of those, like my Dad, who have lived their life to sing, simplify, and make everything last for as long for as their life does. And what a celebration of life this song is.

Sing, sing a song

Sing out loud

Sing out strong

Sing of good things not bad

Sing of happy not sad



Sing, sing a song

Make it simple to last

Your whole life long

Don’t worry that it’s not

Good enough for anyone

Else to hear

Just sing, sing a song

"Sing" is a song from my childhood that's accompanied me these near 30 years - in a way it's become a mantra for my life. My mom used to sing this to me and my sister when she tucked us in at night, and I'm sure the song's messages sunk deep into my unconscious mind.

I loved seeing this some of my first TV friends, Bob, Luis, and Susan, on this video, where I first learned to love this song.

Can you believe how far Sesame Street has come? I doubt nowadays they'd allow the kid in the center of the shot to pick his nose (:44), or come belting in on Luis' solo. And to pull it all off with a tire swing, Luis' guitar, some distracted kids, and no muppets. It's simple. It's great.

You're in my soul

So Dale Carnegie, in How to Win Friends and Influence People, said that a man's name is his sweetest sound. I guess we're all narcisists then.

With that fact established, I suppose it won't make me look too out of line to say I love the song "Alisa" by Ariel Pink?

Thanks to Bob, who found this for me.

Transience

Does a fleeting, dying moment make beauty? Is it something that only happens if you happen to catch it on the way out, and therefore it becomes precious? If it could last forever, would it truly be beautiful? Or is it that it is something that points our attention to the present moment and its transience that makes us sense the fragile, careful qualities of the passing nanoseconds?

Here are raindrops on my favorite tulips, new this spring, taken today in such a moment.

The Holy Ghost over the bent world broods

Spring has officially arrived at our house. Hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips abound in every garden. My crab apple tree is in full bloom, and our neighborhood is full of tulips at every house and alive with spring.

Kevin is very proud of these white daffodils. So to celebrate, here's a little official Gerard Manley Hopkins:

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

"God's Grandeur"

We all can love Earth Day

although this poet said that the writing pen was
a man's persuit of the virgin page
never dreaming of instruments suggesting
strokes, clicks, taps, and rolls
his words draw me out for celebration
because he said GLORY be to God for dappled things
and Ah! bright wings

Ancestral Picture

I dreamt last night of
the home of my childhood friend
whose mother told me she learned of my father and
illness
a pained, remorseful face
not quite connecting in the eyes

today: two dings, two clicks
two messages
how sorry she was to learn of
illness
from her mother

another friend, backpacking
withstood rain, cliffs, wind,
a waist too small to support her pack
gave birth - fourth child, first boy
while I was moving backward
to the place we had slept after that storm

elegant portrait from the past
face of my father, but soft
face I never knew that gave birth to
another face I never knew
from which he sprang
a realization of what grows
out of such eyes and cheekbones
a face my children may know

Favorite Places

This is one of my favorite places, where I had the pleasure of hiking this weekend with my dad and my husband, two of my favorite men.

This is from Devil's Garden, which I have decided is my most favorite hike anywhere. The three of us hiked out to my family's old backcountry camping spots, our secret arch, and the breakfast rock that we used to salute the rising sun when living out of our backpacks.

And, if you're craving more detail, sense, and emotion about this place, you can read my personal essay on it here.

7:45

It's 7:45 p.m., and the snow and rain have ceased enough that I am able to take inventory of my spring garden before twilight completes its magic.

And to my amazement: peach blossoms!

As I look at these blossoms on my peach tree, I reflect on my thoughts of canning and cobbler while we planted this tree last autumn. As I look at these tenderly blooming buds, I realize these blossoms will bear fruit in early autumn.

Each turn of the day, each moment of the seasons mean so much more to me now, knowing that our time here with loved ones is limited. But I hope there will always be time for peaches.

As the light within the lantern

It's been a hard day, but I am comforted by the beauty I saw on my walk around Temple Square. I picked another leaf of lamb's ear, noticed the cherry blossoms, and saw a bird's nest. These are some Temple Square tulips. And as I walked the gardens in the rain, I listened to this:

As the ruby in the setting,
As the honey in the comb,
As the light within the lantern,
As the father in the home,
As the eagle in the mountain,
As the sparrow in the nest,
So, Lord, art Thou to me.

- Johannes Tauler (1300-1361)

This is one of my dad's favorite hymns, and it has been memorable to sing this in church with my family. The line comparing God to "the father in the home" has always resonated with me. There's a special feeling when my dad is in the same room as I am, and I love his conversation, insights, and yes, corny jokes.

My dad recently got some serious health news. I want to preserve his privacy and not get too detailed, but I thought I'd let you know so you can send all your warm thoughts and good energy his way. I remember so many of you pulled together for him 4.5 years ago when he first got sick and helped make miracles happen. I also know the power of community.

At a chicken's pace

Last night I went on a short jog to celebrate two days of sunshine in a row. The weather has been so beautiful and fresh after days of rain and snow. I’m hoping to post some pictures of my garden tulips soon – if they would only show themselves.

I jogged past a bird-themed restaurant. To my amusement, there was a person in a bird suit outside the restaurant waving at cars. Now, I always think that wearing a costume on the street would be a humiliating job. It reminds me of the Pepsi commercial with the girl in the hot dog suit. How degrading.

Photo credit: slopjop

The bird waved at me, and I waved at the bird. As I jogged past, the bird walked in the opposite direction behind me. Then all of the sudden, I noticed the bird was right next to me, jogging in sync. It’s hard to be out of breath and laughing so hard at the same time. It also made me realize how slow I am, that someone in a bird suit can keep pace!

And if you want more chicken suit fun, check out the subservient chicken from Burger King. (Yes, I know it's old. But how long has it been since you visited?)

It is capable of being the mother of the world

For five years, I have kept this book at my work desk, always intending to open it for some meditation, but rarely remembering. Today, the Tao makes my soul sing.

There is a thing confusedly formed,
Born before heaven and earth.

Silent and void
It stands alone and does not change,
Goes round and does not weary.

It is capable of being the mother of the world.

I know not its name
So I style it "the way."

I give it the makeshift name of "the great."

Being great, it is further described as receding,
Receding, it is described as far away,
Being far away, it is described as turning back.

Hence the way is great, heaven is great, earth is great, and we are also great.
Within the realm there are four things that are great, and we count as one.

We model ourselves on earth,
Earth on heaven,
Heaven on the way,
And the way on that which is naturally so.