Year-end thoughts like hesitant lemmings on a cliff, jostling and murmuring as they decide which will be the first off the edge. The waters of the old year have ebbed. The waters of the new are surging up onto the rocks. Peace is ephemeral. Roar and hiss are constant. The desk top is slowly revealed as the clutter is cleared. Here in this room, this house, the walls are painted with the lilac-blue of winter sundown. A shaggy terrier paces in another room. His nails click the hardwood. A cat, with colors suggestive of a creamsicle, perches on the windowsill peering into the gloaming with eyes of green and gold. I ask it what it thinks of New Years' Eve. It stares at me with tail a-twitch. There is no answer.
This all happens as I sip tea from a brand new porcelain mug. It is a gift. Creamy white surface adorned with four figures of cats rendered in deep cobalt. It is a small wonder, this mug. It combines three things of which I am quite fond: cats, tea, and the color blue. It is a calming object. Warmth. Smooth porcelain. Shaded color into which I sometimes yearn to dive. The mug and the person from whom I received it have kept me back from the edge of the cliff as I face down myriad regrets and anxieties in the run-up to midnight. It is cause for thanks.
If pride of place belonged strictly to the loudest of the voices in my head, this page would be filled with a red-hot rant of personal truths and angry upbraids of the universe, for allowing things to decay and for bad things to happen to far too many who did not deserve it. Volume too often means weight. Weight too often is mistaken for rightness. Rightness sometimes hides to escape the shouting.
I consider the voices. Tea slips down the throat. Warmth radiates from my core, on a tide of pleasant bitterness accompanied by the faint floral notes of roses and jasmine. The tea has stayed my hand. It has muzzled the loudest cries for attention. In that silence it is possible to hear the soft ones trying to capture my attention. Loudness is not king. Anger and bitterness are no true foundations upon which to continue building a house. Take comfort in ones' persistence, the pride of surviving the storms. Most importantly, in the undiscovered ocean of the coming year, do not forget to love.
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
31 December 2019
04 February 2019
28 January 2019
Ponce De Leon's PB & J
Memories falling from the sky when the rain comes down a certain way. Maybe it is the light filtering through the drops in a particular fashion. It serves up reminders of a day years ago, having lunch by the harbor, sitting next to the linchpin of my heart. An overcast sky casts pearly light through the window. It illuminates my daughter like a cherub. Her laughter makes my heartbeat skip. She is being silly, making faces and sticking at her tongue, with cheeks smudged with peanut butter from the sandwich she is not so much eating as she is molding into a makeshift toy. She knows she is being messy. She knows I know she is being messy. In response I stick out my tongue. We both crack up, grinning wide and laughing. This is pure joy.
We are complicit in each others’ breach of etiquette. She is unfamiliar with that word, etiquette, but someday she will know what it means. In the clarity of the moment it is unimportant, these rules that bind our lives as adults. They are unknown except to the extent that those much older often enjoin her to stop or be quiet when she engages in so-called uncouth behavior. Most of the time I do not exempt myself from those ranks. Yet that day, in that moment, I withheld admonishment in favor of playfulness. How could I not? Youth was the teacher, and experience can always learn something new. Our day would be better served by levity rather than solemnity. We laughed together, watching the gulls wheel about over the harbor.
Wind played the same trick on me years later. Winter breeze, to be exact. Whispering down the street bearing understated pungency of a wood smoke key that unlocked another room in the memory palace. I was crossing a side street that hunched cat-like in late afternoon winter sun. It was not the city of my birth but stepping out and breathing that scent of burning firewood transported me to a day most similar, sprung from a solitary adolescent interlude as I walked home. I recall walking through the door, into the warm hug of the kitchen. I made myself a toasted peanut butter sandwich. No memory of whether it included jelly, but it must have been good for me to recall after so many years.
Something else happened above and beyond the recall. Crossing the street I stepped over a boundary in time and space. Both of them wrinkled, folded, bringing two disparate points together to touch however briefly and remind me that as I once was, so was my daughter. Through the miracle of memory, we can be so young and free once again.
We are complicit in each others’ breach of etiquette. She is unfamiliar with that word, etiquette, but someday she will know what it means. In the clarity of the moment it is unimportant, these rules that bind our lives as adults. They are unknown except to the extent that those much older often enjoin her to stop or be quiet when she engages in so-called uncouth behavior. Most of the time I do not exempt myself from those ranks. Yet that day, in that moment, I withheld admonishment in favor of playfulness. How could I not? Youth was the teacher, and experience can always learn something new. Our day would be better served by levity rather than solemnity. We laughed together, watching the gulls wheel about over the harbor.
Wind played the same trick on me years later. Winter breeze, to be exact. Whispering down the street bearing understated pungency of a wood smoke key that unlocked another room in the memory palace. I was crossing a side street that hunched cat-like in late afternoon winter sun. It was not the city of my birth but stepping out and breathing that scent of burning firewood transported me to a day most similar, sprung from a solitary adolescent interlude as I walked home. I recall walking through the door, into the warm hug of the kitchen. I made myself a toasted peanut butter sandwich. No memory of whether it included jelly, but it must have been good for me to recall after so many years.
Something else happened above and beyond the recall. Crossing the street I stepped over a boundary in time and space. Both of them wrinkled, folded, bringing two disparate points together to touch however briefly and remind me that as I once was, so was my daughter. Through the miracle of memory, we can be so young and free once again.
21 January 2019
Sipping Tea
News breaks the windows while living in a water world. Glaciers made of tears melt in the heat of hatred and violence, spewing runoff into a sea growing increasingly bitter. Walls rattled by wind still manage to keep out the chill that clings to the air. But they are working hard, groaning with the strain. The walls will hold. It is in their nature.
Keeping the windows clear is not imperative, simply desirable. A worthy expenditure of energy in a season possessed of insatiable hunger for it. In this manner weary eyes can monitor the swell and breakers. Heavy seas pound the shore but rogue waves will not take the cottage by surprise. The iron green water roils and tumbles, polishing the stones mingled with the sand. In this there is comfort. The stones murmur in concert with the water. Listening carefully cheers the soul, in spite of light being hard to hear.
The hearth smolders, crouching cat-like at the end of the room. Eyes of embers and paws of flickering yellow. Hot breath caresses the kettle. It howls in response. The body, mind, and heart know what to do. Pour the water, steep the tea. Meditate while the ancient magic coils its way into the mug. The outside scratches and claws at the door, but cannot break the hold of hands on the mug. Sip. Watch the sea and sky. Peace will find a way into the heart.
Keeping the windows clear is not imperative, simply desirable. A worthy expenditure of energy in a season possessed of insatiable hunger for it. In this manner weary eyes can monitor the swell and breakers. Heavy seas pound the shore but rogue waves will not take the cottage by surprise. The iron green water roils and tumbles, polishing the stones mingled with the sand. In this there is comfort. The stones murmur in concert with the water. Listening carefully cheers the soul, in spite of light being hard to hear.
The hearth smolders, crouching cat-like at the end of the room. Eyes of embers and paws of flickering yellow. Hot breath caresses the kettle. It howls in response. The body, mind, and heart know what to do. Pour the water, steep the tea. Meditate while the ancient magic coils its way into the mug. The outside scratches and claws at the door, but cannot break the hold of hands on the mug. Sip. Watch the sea and sky. Peace will find a way into the heart.
14 January 2019
31 December 2018
Setting Stones
The singular coldness of basalt, agleam with the residue of maritime fog, seeps into fingers stiff from work and winter air. The greyness itself seems to transfer to the flesh as if the rock itself is exacting a toll for having been quarried for use by the hands that dared disturb the earth. Fair exchange, perhaps. There is no escaping that in the material world creation incurs disruption, if not outright destruction. We do well to acknowledge that condition through respect for the resources consumed and environments affected. Our destiny is to sleep in the beds we make, and our descendants should not look upon our legacies with disappointment and disdain. They should know we laid the stones with respect for the past and for stewardship of the future.
The head and the heart began collecting stones long before the hands. This last day of the year I sit on a small boulder, chin resting on palms, meditating on coming days of slow and steady work. Even through scuffed leather the skin of the fingers has picked up a faint aroma of iodine and minerals. That scent itself a legacy of the sea just yards away, exhaling its spirit over the beach grass and stones. The cottage itself has been banked with samphire and laver around the base. An old tradition that still has its use even if only to comfort the mind with thoughts of stopping the wind. The waves whisper up the strand. Reaching out, I pick a stone and kneel to the new foundation.
This is what happens when the mind is given pause by deep shadows and short days. Human perception and language creates this border, this separation, this arbitrary terminus est at which the old gives way to the new. Things turn with the year. The hands grip stones, the weights of which inform the heart of desires and directions to feed and nurture through the passage of winter. Our foundations start here, setting stones on the last day of the year.
The head and the heart began collecting stones long before the hands. This last day of the year I sit on a small boulder, chin resting on palms, meditating on coming days of slow and steady work. Even through scuffed leather the skin of the fingers has picked up a faint aroma of iodine and minerals. That scent itself a legacy of the sea just yards away, exhaling its spirit over the beach grass and stones. The cottage itself has been banked with samphire and laver around the base. An old tradition that still has its use even if only to comfort the mind with thoughts of stopping the wind. The waves whisper up the strand. Reaching out, I pick a stone and kneel to the new foundation.
This is what happens when the mind is given pause by deep shadows and short days. Human perception and language creates this border, this separation, this arbitrary terminus est at which the old gives way to the new. Things turn with the year. The hands grip stones, the weights of which inform the heart of desires and directions to feed and nurture through the passage of winter. Our foundations start here, setting stones on the last day of the year.
25 February 2018
Old Man in the Rear View Mirror
Field notes, 25 Feb 18: a torn page found in a corner. The lantern had burned out. We think he was sleeping when it happened.
Reinvention was the drink of choice. No boundaries, open roads, go west, young man, any man (any person, mind you), just fucking get on the horse, climb onto the train, take the damn plane. Soon we could all be somewhere new and be someone new. But no more.
Edges. I, we, us. Up against the edges. Hitting the transparent walls that knocked the stuffing out of me. It’s the water’s edge, steep drop off into blue-black the sound of which hitting the shore sure as shit lets me know there is nowhere left to run. The world morphs into digital strictures, bandwidths become bindings that draw tight around the head and the heart. The pressure is non-stop. The claws squeeze so hard I don’t know what it means to be a man anymore. Or human, you hear me?
It gets cold out on the edge. Lonely, more so than being on the road. That’s because edges bring you up short. Yank on the leash, as it were.
That’s what I feel, you see. The leash. And empty confusion.
(Sip.Breathe.Growl.)
Getting hungry sitting in the chair in front of the hearth. My belly cleaving to ropa vieja and my mind rolling with Son House. Jesus H. Christ, slide guitar and shredded beef ‘bout set any man to rights. It made sense, perfect sense. If I could play and if I could cook, I reckon I could do some good in this world.
My name says Irish. My appetites say all mixed up and curious.
What’s that? What are you asking, am I speaking in metaphors? Analogies? Of course I am, goddamn it. How in hell you think I survived in my head this long? Weren’t for metaphor I’da been dead years ago. Walking, sure, but dead all the same.
14 January 2018
Highwire Over the Black
8:13 PM. Notes from the cell. A mid-winter night's nightmare. I tell you now this is not a "feel good" essay.
On one side of this chasm lies a carnivale of connection and affection which I crave. On the other lies a fortress, built of the stones of bitterness, into which my heart wishes to retreat. All the while, my feet shuffle gingerly over the wire. The wind of desperation tests my balance.
Move forward, move back, it matters not. Any choice involves a fall. The blackness of mistrust threatens to swallow me whole should I slip. It threatens to swallow me should I stand still. Paralyzed, cold, frantic. Mistrust seeps into every feeling, every thought. This is no way to have a life.
Paradoxically it also feels like being backed into a corner. Two walls, floor, a low ceiling all closing in. There is no wind, only a thickening atmosphere. Left with nothing but desperation to figure out who to trust, as there is none towards others or myself. The unofficial motto for the Disunited States of Me: “In Pain We Trust”.
Snow is falling as I write this. I see the fat flakes hurtling to the ground. On the radio, The Jayhawks croon “You shouldn’t hide your colors” to which a bitter chuckle escapes my lips. Shouldn’t hide my colors? Noble, it might seem. Courageous, perhaps. I let my colors fly because I believed those things to be true. My reward was to watch while the heart to which mine had pledged allegiance cut down my mast and set the flag ablaze. Glory ending in ashes and rubble.
My soul is neither coroner nor archaeologist, but it finds itself sifting through the blackened debris that surrounds it. Fragments of a life. Bits and pieces tattooed with words barely visible through traces of smoke and charred edges. It is painful, this performing of forensics on the shattered remains of one's own heart.
Move forward, move back, it matters not. Any choice involves a fall. The blackness of mistrust threatens to swallow me whole should I slip. It threatens to swallow me should I stand still. Paralyzed, cold, frantic. Mistrust seeps into every feeling, every thought. This is no way to have a life.
Paradoxically it also feels like being backed into a corner. Two walls, floor, a low ceiling all closing in. There is no wind, only a thickening atmosphere. Left with nothing but desperation to figure out who to trust, as there is none towards others or myself. The unofficial motto for the Disunited States of Me: “In Pain We Trust”.
Snow is falling as I write this. I see the fat flakes hurtling to the ground. On the radio, The Jayhawks croon “You shouldn’t hide your colors” to which a bitter chuckle escapes my lips. Shouldn’t hide my colors? Noble, it might seem. Courageous, perhaps. I let my colors fly because I believed those things to be true. My reward was to watch while the heart to which mine had pledged allegiance cut down my mast and set the flag ablaze. Glory ending in ashes and rubble.
My soul is neither coroner nor archaeologist, but it finds itself sifting through the blackened debris that surrounds it. Fragments of a life. Bits and pieces tattooed with words barely visible through traces of smoke and charred edges. It is painful, this performing of forensics on the shattered remains of one's own heart.
Out on the wire, nothing stays still. Thoughts, feelings. The pulse in the veins even contributes its own instability, a constant challenge to the act of standing still. Staring into the tea mug I watch the trembles of my hands translate into ripples over the mahogany liquid. Closing my eyes, I dive in, surfacing on the wire again. The sun is peeking through the clouds. But I am still there suspended over the void. Connection seems so close, if only I could believe.
The fortress may be cold and dark but it has thick walls. Walls that deflect pain and rejection, behind which sleep might be possible. The carnival is bright and warm but in the past I have paid dearly for the cost of a ticket. A ticket which did nothing to prevent the despair of rejection. So it is I am paralyzed on the wire. My colors are mute and hidden. It is only a matter of time before I fall. The question is, which way?
07 January 2018
Moment Stretches On Forever
Nothing lasts forever. Everything is transient. So says popular wisdom and some religions. If so, does that mean time is elastic? Heartache drawn out in front of a second hand that never seems to move. Despair squeezed my heart with a cold hand, the shock of which galvanized me into twitchy wakefulness.
Awake to a sky burnished pearly and streaked with dull orange. The cottage cold as the fire burned low. Sitting up on the edge of the bed I felt the dream receding like the waves sliding up and down under the ice along the shoreline. Head heavy and sluggish, the ocean looking the same and eerily gelatinous. The ocean, I thought, is transient in appearance but not in existence. It is there. Always.
Apparently like the pain I felt this morning. Still feel, that is. The notion of transient and "this too shall pass" seeming an insult in the face of the broken heart lodged in my chest. It too shall pass?
"When?" I muttered to the icy air. "Time is stretching out before me, and the end point of this seems nowhere in sight!"
Oyster colored clouds parted out over the waves. A thin beam of sunlight slowly made its way into the cottage, limning the interior with a glow that had little warmth. Outside the waves continued their slow caress of the beach along the headland. Faint tinkling reached my ears as the ice clotted along the tideline shifted.
The blood seemed thicker in my veins. I could smell the salt water but it did not stir me in the usual manner. It was cold. I needed heat. I needed light. Time to stoke the fire. I shuffled over to the hearth, picking up the ice cold iron poker to prod the embers. Driftwood was low. I would need to do a beach walk.
I threw a few pieces of salty wood into the fireplace. More would go into the small potbelly stove, for tea and breakfast. The flames winked into existence, slowly growing in intensity. The minerals in the wood flared faint blue and green as they burned off. The heat seeped into my grateful bones.
I turned to look out the windows facing the sea. The water was jade flecked with orange and gold from the sun. It was beautiful. The horizon stretched from side to side, infinite, relentless. It became my moment, delineator of pain, stretching on for what seemed like forever. To my lips came the prayer that soon the clock would tick, and this moment of pain would pass. The waves break, the ice cracks and groans. I wait.
Awake to a sky burnished pearly and streaked with dull orange. The cottage cold as the fire burned low. Sitting up on the edge of the bed I felt the dream receding like the waves sliding up and down under the ice along the shoreline. Head heavy and sluggish, the ocean looking the same and eerily gelatinous. The ocean, I thought, is transient in appearance but not in existence. It is there. Always.
Apparently like the pain I felt this morning. Still feel, that is. The notion of transient and "this too shall pass" seeming an insult in the face of the broken heart lodged in my chest. It too shall pass?
"When?" I muttered to the icy air. "Time is stretching out before me, and the end point of this seems nowhere in sight!"
Oyster colored clouds parted out over the waves. A thin beam of sunlight slowly made its way into the cottage, limning the interior with a glow that had little warmth. Outside the waves continued their slow caress of the beach along the headland. Faint tinkling reached my ears as the ice clotted along the tideline shifted.
The blood seemed thicker in my veins. I could smell the salt water but it did not stir me in the usual manner. It was cold. I needed heat. I needed light. Time to stoke the fire. I shuffled over to the hearth, picking up the ice cold iron poker to prod the embers. Driftwood was low. I would need to do a beach walk.
I threw a few pieces of salty wood into the fireplace. More would go into the small potbelly stove, for tea and breakfast. The flames winked into existence, slowly growing in intensity. The minerals in the wood flared faint blue and green as they burned off. The heat seeped into my grateful bones.
I turned to look out the windows facing the sea. The water was jade flecked with orange and gold from the sun. It was beautiful. The horizon stretched from side to side, infinite, relentless. It became my moment, delineator of pain, stretching on for what seemed like forever. To my lips came the prayer that soon the clock would tick, and this moment of pain would pass. The waves break, the ice cracks and groans. I wait.
31 December 2017
This Is The Line That Divides
At the end of the year
television screeds exhort
Spend for the car now
Buy my happiness now
Claim your life back now
through concentrated application
of money not possessed
but manifested through plastic
and a life of electronic servitude
Time elongates, heart spasms,
mind melts with thoughts
of nothing left to lose here
at the end of the world
television screeds exhort
Spend for the car now
Buy my happiness now
Claim your life back now
through concentrated application
of money not possessed
but manifested through plastic
and a life of electronic servitude
Time elongates, heart spasms,
mind melts with thoughts
of nothing left to lose here
at the end of the world
17 December 2017
Cup Runneth Dry: A Biji for December
A soul withered and dessicated. The wind a blade dragging across the heart deep in its winter of discontent. There is much to be said if little breath in the lungs with which to say it. To pour out the contents of the soul is Sisyphean in execution. There is no receiver, no longer motivation to do it, when the soil is barren and infertile.
What if, amongst those 99 Problems, one of them turned out to be a bitch?
Another occurrence of the dream. You know the one, coming to in a dim corridor, baseball bat in hand, surrounded by shelf after shelf of pottery and ceramics. Plates. Bowls. Cups. Especially cups. As far as the eye can see in the red-tinged glow suffusing the air. The cups inspire anger, blind hatred, blackening the vision with the need to destroy everything within the arc of the bat. It is not enough to merely knock the cups off the shelves, they must be destroyed. Ground into dust, if possible. But the bat will have to do. Dead run into the red fulgency, bat whirring like a helicopter rotor, the cups explode off the shelves in a tintinnabulation of porcelain destruction. Swinging, swinging, an animal roaring bursting from the chest as cup after cup falls to the murderous ministrations of ash and anger. Exhaustion sets in. Rest seems a distant memory. The corridor seems infinite, dissolving only in the alarm-induced cold sweat of another day to be endured. On the bedside stand lies a single shard of pottery, warm, stained with blood.
There arrives a point in the sidereal journey when the heart collapses under the weight of grief. This point is a singularity of lost love, fear, despair that grows like weeds where nothing else will. Wasteland of the soul made barren by giving all, giving everything, until the day it realized the giving was for naught.
We’ve all heard of the “Parable of the Boiled Frog” in which a frog is immersed in a pot of water so gradually heated that it dies before it realizes it is being boiled. Why don’t we ever hear of a “Frozen Frog”, which perhaps could be the opposite parable? And if parable can become metaphor, the heart is a frog, its temperature raised or lowered by the capricious ministrations of another’s cruelty and deceit. The end result is walking death, without the humor of a zombie apocalypse.
Nothing like a little patch of black ice to wake you up. Black ice is a harsh teacher, but you learn lessons real quick. It has the virtue of efficiency.
The red wolf. Canis rufus. One of the most endangered mammals in North America. Somewhere between 50 to 200 alive today. Climate change appears to be implicated in their decline, along with the usual human fuckery involving animals. No word available on whether red wolves taste like chicken.
It loads the dishes into the washer.
It dries its hands on a damp towel.
It pours itself a glass of tea.
It feels good to have done its chores.
It weeps to endure the solitary evening.
An unexpected occurrence of grace. The cat greets you at the door, meowing and purring. When you pick it up, it snuggles against your chin. Gentle head boops and vigorous rubbing of chin to chin, as the cat revels in the scratchiness of a warm beard. If only all pleasures in life were so simple and spontaneous.
Have you ever listened to sleet falling into still water? An ethereal hissing, precious and restorative. You must sit still.
"Trying not to walk crooked while this anchor's dropped.
What if, amongst those 99 Problems, one of them turned out to be a bitch?
Another occurrence of the dream. You know the one, coming to in a dim corridor, baseball bat in hand, surrounded by shelf after shelf of pottery and ceramics. Plates. Bowls. Cups. Especially cups. As far as the eye can see in the red-tinged glow suffusing the air. The cups inspire anger, blind hatred, blackening the vision with the need to destroy everything within the arc of the bat. It is not enough to merely knock the cups off the shelves, they must be destroyed. Ground into dust, if possible. But the bat will have to do. Dead run into the red fulgency, bat whirring like a helicopter rotor, the cups explode off the shelves in a tintinnabulation of porcelain destruction. Swinging, swinging, an animal roaring bursting from the chest as cup after cup falls to the murderous ministrations of ash and anger. Exhaustion sets in. Rest seems a distant memory. The corridor seems infinite, dissolving only in the alarm-induced cold sweat of another day to be endured. On the bedside stand lies a single shard of pottery, warm, stained with blood.
There arrives a point in the sidereal journey when the heart collapses under the weight of grief. This point is a singularity of lost love, fear, despair that grows like weeds where nothing else will. Wasteland of the soul made barren by giving all, giving everything, until the day it realized the giving was for naught.
We’ve all heard of the “Parable of the Boiled Frog” in which a frog is immersed in a pot of water so gradually heated that it dies before it realizes it is being boiled. Why don’t we ever hear of a “Frozen Frog”, which perhaps could be the opposite parable? And if parable can become metaphor, the heart is a frog, its temperature raised or lowered by the capricious ministrations of another’s cruelty and deceit. The end result is walking death, without the humor of a zombie apocalypse.
Nothing like a little patch of black ice to wake you up. Black ice is a harsh teacher, but you learn lessons real quick. It has the virtue of efficiency.
The red wolf. Canis rufus. One of the most endangered mammals in North America. Somewhere between 50 to 200 alive today. Climate change appears to be implicated in their decline, along with the usual human fuckery involving animals. No word available on whether red wolves taste like chicken.
It loads the dishes into the washer.
It dries its hands on a damp towel.
It pours itself a glass of tea.
It feels good to have done its chores.
It weeps to endure the solitary evening.
An unexpected occurrence of grace. The cat greets you at the door, meowing and purring. When you pick it up, it snuggles against your chin. Gentle head boops and vigorous rubbing of chin to chin, as the cat revels in the scratchiness of a warm beard. If only all pleasures in life were so simple and spontaneous.
Have you ever listened to sleet falling into still water? An ethereal hissing, precious and restorative. You must sit still.
"Trying not to walk crooked while this anchor's dropped.
But I been out on them choppy waves and it's hard to say where this land begins and that water stops,
I got sea legs
I got sea legs
I got sea legs."
(From "Sea Legs" by Run the Jewels).
Yeah, that's it. I got sea legs.
05 January 2017
Jaguar in Winter
Blood slows after the solstice but does not stop. Sunlight is a precious metal mined from the space between the shadows of the leaves and branches. The dappled chest breathes deep while drawing in the scents of a forest teetering on the dull edge of a chasm called sleep. The price of a full belly rises in proportion to its increased rarity, and occupies a greater volume of the mind behind green-gold eyes on the lookout for any opportunity for satiety. The jaguar, el tigre, knows this as blood-red filigree upon its fangs.
Breath acquires new edges in the blue-tinged light of the turning of the year. It flows against the lips and throat like ice slurry in a freezing river. This is a very different thing that the cottony dampness of summertime air, gravid with the weight of humidity and magnified odors. But those odors are there, if muted. The coding still exists, the minute signals of direction, time, and taste that orient the jaguar in the universe. It knows by dint of experience what will be worth the effort and what will not. Energy is a resource to be nurtured not squandered when the earth is being stingy with its offerings.
Flesh hangs upon bones soaked in magic, enrobed in a glory of rosettes evoking the interweaving of el tigre with the soil and rock upon which it sits. The pads of its paws register the chill seeping up through the earth. The cold itself is another marker, a facet of the medium which delivers the message signified by two hundred pounds of deadly miracle. The jaguar does not think much about the cold. It is acceptance of a rhythm composed eons before the jaguar manifested in this particular set of temporospatial circumstances. It knows that outrunning the cold is foolish and wasteful. It will not bother trying.
Bones hold the flesh in place. Bones are its bulwark against the capriciousness of seasons and the weather. It is perhaps bones more so than belly that have a deeper regard for hunger and the changing of seasons. The belly yawps and whines when it goes unfilled. The bones repose stolidly in the memory of what it means to be truly hollow. The belly may be satisfied with the sucking of an egg, but it takes blood on the fangs to calm the bones. This is wisdom to the jaguar. It will breathe patiently in the wan light of winter, moving carefully, keeping in mind the gift of flesh and blood, and all the glorious power contained within.
Breath acquires new edges in the blue-tinged light of the turning of the year. It flows against the lips and throat like ice slurry in a freezing river. This is a very different thing that the cottony dampness of summertime air, gravid with the weight of humidity and magnified odors. But those odors are there, if muted. The coding still exists, the minute signals of direction, time, and taste that orient the jaguar in the universe. It knows by dint of experience what will be worth the effort and what will not. Energy is a resource to be nurtured not squandered when the earth is being stingy with its offerings.
Flesh hangs upon bones soaked in magic, enrobed in a glory of rosettes evoking the interweaving of el tigre with the soil and rock upon which it sits. The pads of its paws register the chill seeping up through the earth. The cold itself is another marker, a facet of the medium which delivers the message signified by two hundred pounds of deadly miracle. The jaguar does not think much about the cold. It is acceptance of a rhythm composed eons before the jaguar manifested in this particular set of temporospatial circumstances. It knows that outrunning the cold is foolish and wasteful. It will not bother trying.
Bones hold the flesh in place. Bones are its bulwark against the capriciousness of seasons and the weather. It is perhaps bones more so than belly that have a deeper regard for hunger and the changing of seasons. The belly yawps and whines when it goes unfilled. The bones repose stolidly in the memory of what it means to be truly hollow. The belly may be satisfied with the sucking of an egg, but it takes blood on the fangs to calm the bones. This is wisdom to the jaguar. It will breathe patiently in the wan light of winter, moving carefully, keeping in mind the gift of flesh and blood, and all the glorious power contained within.
31 December 2016
Broken Compass
Sunrise on the headland and on the last day of the year. The storm of the last few days had broken up, rosy beams of light chasing off a few straggling clouds. Breakfast and a wee dram had not quite chased off the clouds in my head. The comfort I had drawn from my overnight scribblings had evaporated when the first rays spilled through the windows to illuminate the evidence left behind, in the the form of the salt-stained, slightly ragged notebook atop the desk under the sill. The words pulsate as I sit contemplating what I had done.
The carving resembled to my eyes a person, man or woman I could not discern. The figure was worn down but enough detail remained to see eyes, a nubbin of nose, and a mouth. Its hands were holding its its cheeks. The mouth, gaping and distorted, could have been open in a scream or shout. The bulging eyes seemed to reinforce the idea of great stress or terror.
The day of discovery I sat on the beach and studied the figure for what seemed hours. I wondered whose hands had carved it. I wondered what they felt, and how intense it must have been to move them to create this amulet or token. They must have felt something, that much was clear from the expression on the face carved into the stone. What they felt was not so clear. Hope or despair? Heartbreak or love? Happiness or anguish? There was no true telling.
My eyes chased the gulls skimming over the waves. The fire on the hearth burned down slow. On this last day of the year I ponder the words before me to wonder if I can ever truly know what drives me to put them on the page. There is no easy answer, only time.
There comes a time in a man's life where it finally penetrates his skull that he has to straighten up and fly right. For Evan Whittaker, now was not that time. Not yet.
The cold had barely time to seep through Evan's coat before the snow began its slow descent into the corn stubble in which he lay. A sparse 'V' of geese, late in their travels, parsed the icy air overhead. Evan breathed out watching the birds waver and shimmer in the plume of mist. Fat flakes, pale and gravid, dotted the sky. He blinked, a torpid lizard gaze blotted by tiny crystal knives. Nearly numb cheeks registered their stings as the flakes landed upon his face.
Evan's eyes twitched and tracked a thousand frozen messengers bearing voices on the wind. Hand in coat pocket, he clutched the bottle tighter, whispering to the snow.
"Which ones are you, darlings? Which ones are you?"
Being in the center of things, center of the "goddamn greatest country in the world!" as Uncle Leo used to say after a few shots of rye, had done little for Evan. He had struggled with what to make of it for so long the conflict seemed an extension of his body. The discomfort of such a tight skin had led him to seek solace in the spirit world, but it wasn't ghosts that made it numb.
He needed to put some daylight between his belly and the bottle. He needed to sleep for a century. Drowsiness fueled by liquor was kicking in. Turning his head to get more comfortable, he did not notice when the barrel of the shotgun he had carried began to freeze to his cheek.Sitting back and staring at the ocean does not bring its usual clarity. The waves were calming down, but evidence of yesterday's turmoil was still there in the sporadic violence of the breakers on the strand. I could divine no prophecy in the spray, nothing in the light upon the curls, that illuminated wisdom into what I had written. Such melancholic thoughts put me in mind of a carving I had found weeks ago, washed up after a night of heavy surf.
The carving resembled to my eyes a person, man or woman I could not discern. The figure was worn down but enough detail remained to see eyes, a nubbin of nose, and a mouth. Its hands were holding its its cheeks. The mouth, gaping and distorted, could have been open in a scream or shout. The bulging eyes seemed to reinforce the idea of great stress or terror.
The day of discovery I sat on the beach and studied the figure for what seemed hours. I wondered whose hands had carved it. I wondered what they felt, and how intense it must have been to move them to create this amulet or token. They must have felt something, that much was clear from the expression on the face carved into the stone. What they felt was not so clear. Hope or despair? Heartbreak or love? Happiness or anguish? There was no true telling.
My eyes chased the gulls skimming over the waves. The fire on the hearth burned down slow. On this last day of the year I ponder the words before me to wonder if I can ever truly know what drives me to put them on the page. There is no easy answer, only time.
27 February 2015
Ruins of the Temple
February is the honest month. The ego laid bare like the trees, all leaves finally gone through the insensate malevolence of icy wind and sheer cold. Winter is not through with us, not yet. February brings us to our knees where we implore it for mercy.
Even the sun meddles in the affairs of the heart, its white-gold rays teasing this troubled organ with warmth that never quite reaches the bones. We persist in our fantasies of life. The groundhog becomes Delphic. We do not believe in its prognostications, yet groan when the shadow lays upon the frozen earth.
On a Sunday of no particular note, it is my freezing shoes that trouble the snow and dirt. I stand alone with my thoughts before the stones of memory. The wind skirls amongst branches scratching at the sky. A sky so blue as to break the heart, empty, cold. It is the blue I imagine would have been the color of my children's eyes, had I been so lucky as to seen them open.
I meditate upon the idea that in deep winter we become the trees outside our walls. Frozen, sluggish, bereft of the leaves that allow the sun to nourish our starved and hollow bodies. Hard funeral ground grants me no succor. The cold of it seeps through the soles of my shoes while the granular snow crackles and squeaks as I shift my footing. My roots are paralyzed, asleep. There will be no growth until spring.
Even the sun meddles in the affairs of the heart, its white-gold rays teasing this troubled organ with warmth that never quite reaches the bones. We persist in our fantasies of life. The groundhog becomes Delphic. We do not believe in its prognostications, yet groan when the shadow lays upon the frozen earth.
On a Sunday of no particular note, it is my freezing shoes that trouble the snow and dirt. I stand alone with my thoughts before the stones of memory. The wind skirls amongst branches scratching at the sky. A sky so blue as to break the heart, empty, cold. It is the blue I imagine would have been the color of my children's eyes, had I been so lucky as to seen them open.
I meditate upon the idea that in deep winter we become the trees outside our walls. Frozen, sluggish, bereft of the leaves that allow the sun to nourish our starved and hollow bodies. Hard funeral ground grants me no succor. The cold of it seeps through the soles of my shoes while the granular snow crackles and squeaks as I shift my footing. My roots are paralyzed, asleep. There will be no growth until spring.
Crows caw out raucously from the trees scattered around the cemetery. Their metallic rasps and croaks is not laughter, I think, but perhaps conversation regarding the stranger in their midst. I find strange comfort in their company, the chatter reminds me it is the children I came to visit. Snow was dimpled softly over the memorials. Twelve years of memory overlaying scant inches of white blurring what I used to know, used to see. A brief debate ensued in my head as to the necessity of brushing their graves free of snow. I say debate, but it was foregone that I would do such a thing.
My heart needed to see. These children of mine deserve the sunlight. I reached down to begin, snow shockingly cold sending a brief lancet of pain arcing into stiffening knuckles. The metal beneath the snow was colder than lost love. Their names became exposed in a winter light, shiny like the melancholy of an arctic midnight. It is a stark beauty that I cherish. My fingers trace the letters and through the numbness I feel a warmth, an electricity cutting through and lighting up the pathways to my heart. I marvel at the strength of the foundations as I kneel in the ruins of the temple.
My heart needed to see. These children of mine deserve the sunlight. I reached down to begin, snow shockingly cold sending a brief lancet of pain arcing into stiffening knuckles. The metal beneath the snow was colder than lost love. Their names became exposed in a winter light, shiny like the melancholy of an arctic midnight. It is a stark beauty that I cherish. My fingers trace the letters and through the numbness I feel a warmth, an electricity cutting through and lighting up the pathways to my heart. I marvel at the strength of the foundations as I kneel in the ruins of the temple.
21 January 2015
Swan in Winter
A dozen spans or thereabouts she stood offshore, this wistful cygnet with my eyes and her mother's hair. Her shadow lay lightly on the ice. Ice which I studied closely for the first signs of cracks. My belly tightened at the thought of her in the freezing green-black water of the pond. My anxiety served as reinforcement for its frozen surface. She sensed my discomfort, I think, looking up at me with grin as antidote to fear. I smiled in return. Sunshine like white gold broke through a mottled pewter sky to illuminate us, a living page from our own Book of Hours.
The sky returned to a sullen indifference. The slow clouds of midwinter marbled like bruises over a snippets of bright blue. A hush was over the pond, disturbed now and then by the barking of dogs, children frolicking or ragged chevrons of Canadian geese knifing through the cold air above. Water oozed through the grass from soil still reeling from a few hard freezes. My thoughts drifted briefly to permafrost, and what happens when it thaws. I needed to know if similar processes affected the heart in the same manner. I must know, as something seemed to be cracking in my chest.
"Daddy, what's that?"
Her question a soft whipcrack snapping me out of arctic ruminations. She was standing on a dark patch shaped like a lumpy oval. My first thought was it was weak ice, but she stood firm. The shape crystallized in my mind.
"It looks like a tree stump, sweet pea." I hoped that it was. Weird that it was a level cut stump only a fraction of an inch below the ice line.
"I wonder if that's it," she said. She bent down to pick up one of the many small rocks littering the ice. The impacts of the stones a webbed chiaroscuro crazing the frozen pond. Kneeling, my daughter began to dig at the ice over the stump. It cracked a little but did not move. She knitted her brow, lips scrunched in vexation. I could not help but smile to know that by such gestures she was indeed of my blood. Sometimes she is driven by a compulsion to know that which is beneath the surface, to firmly possess certainty. In the space of a few fluttery heartbeats, I prayed that she would not be as destructive in pursuit of that certainty as I had sometimes been in the past. The past when I was young and needed to know everything, but knew nothing.
Her mittened hands rested briefly on the ice. She studied the shape, cocking her head. Her gaze and posture reminded me so much of a heron stalking a frog I nearly burst out laughing. She must have decided that it was not important enough to continue, as she levered herself up to stand on the stump. I heard the clicking of pebbles and ice as she nudged the fragments with the toe of her right boot. She moved as if skating for a few more minutes. I stifled my urge to tell her again she was far enough out on the ice. With an avian hop, she came back to shore.
"Walk some more, kiddo?" I asked with a raspy warble in my voice making me cough. She turned her face to me, cheeks rosy in the cool breeze.
"Sure, Daddy." Hop. Skip. Away she fluttered ahead of me, down the trail that ran along the river. Clouds mimed a slow semaphore shining on her performance while she gleefully leaped into a pile of slush on the trail side.
She grows, this nascent swan of my heart. Taller, more winsome, as months and years fall like leaves. Winter has its hold on my brittle heart, enrobed in a thin glaze of frost that I begin to feel melt in the innocent warmth of her presence. The old man of my soul knows this is the progress of life. He knows that growth is inevitable, as is love and the thaw. We watch her amble and cavort under a nave of trees, wondering when she will break the ice. Hoping that we witness the glorious transformation when the swan makes it back to shore, to fly into spring.
03 January 2015
Belly Without Name
Field notes, 6:07 PM. Dinner in a Greek restaurant that shall remain nameless.
It is cold this night. A prediction of rain, sleet, freezing rain and most likely snow. I am perched on a high seat at a two-person table alongside a wall of windows looking out upon a nondescript four-way intersection. As I tuck into a gyro plate and green salad I realize how fitting it is that the root for the word 'anonymous' is Greek in origin. The word is anonumous, 'nameless'. That is the word for which my belly was searching, and with which it fills.
I eat at this establishment on a semi-regular basis. Not because the food, which is Greek in origin and concept, is necessarily the best exemplar to be had around these parts. There are other restaurants that do certain items better, so much better that their relative lack of atmosphere (dive-ishness, even) is offset by the deliciousness of the food. The food is good enough. On the days I eat here, it gives me what I want: comfort without identity.
It is this shade of anonymity that I discovered is part of the appeal for me. Lately when I dine here, I dine alone. Usually at the end of work day when circumstance has decreed that I will not have a companion for dinner. I make the decision as I am driving out of the parking lot at work, when hunger, fatigue and proximity act as the trade winds which blow my vessel a few blocks down the street. I set that course because it involves no mystery and few decisions.
When I walk through the storefront doors, there is no "where everybody knows your name" kind of moment. No nodding of heads, no shouted greetings, only a (usually) short line which I join and quickly scan the menu. Since I am still a relative newcomer in this area, there is no one who knows me. No one I recognize. Perhaps the counter people have a vague recollection that I have been in before. Something along the lines of "It's that bearded fellow who always orders the same thing".
I place my order, they give me my number, I sip tea while waiting. The place is quickly filling up with diners and take-away customers. I see a lot of kids and senior citizens, families, couples, one guy like me. All sitting and waiting for our number to be called.
When it is, I take my tray and grab a seat on the edge of the dining room. Always the edge. I have never liked being in the middle of rooms or crowds, from school to restaurants to concerts. The edges make it easier for me to relax and observe. Plus, lower probability of social interaction, which is something I am less than graceful at even when I am not tired and hungry.
I sit. I slowly begin to eat. The hubbub of voices surrounds me, but does not overwhelm. A stream of voices that blend into a rhythmic drone, out which pops the occasional recognizable word or even phrase. In the corners of the room, two large televisions are playing a repeating loop of travel videography from the Greek isles. In the occasional lull of conversation, you can hear snippets of bouzoukis playing. In conjunction with the lack of captions or subtitles on the video, the sounds are an odd blend amplifying the 'namelessness' of this dining experience.
I find it oddly soothing. I feel this way almost every time I come here. This does not bother me, because it is what I want, maybe need. Neither myself nor my fellow diners have an imperative to make this place an extension of their living room or front yard or residential community. The primary imperative for all of us is our bellies, and the need to fill them.
I finish up. With nowhere to be and nothing obligating me to move, I sit quietly. Ruminating on the meal, I am at ease for at least a few minutes. The dining room hums along oblivious to my presence, and that suits me just fine. For a few precious moments my belly and I have nowhere to be, no one to satisfy, no obligations to fulfill. Myself, my belly, we are nameless. We are content.
It is cold this night. A prediction of rain, sleet, freezing rain and most likely snow. I am perched on a high seat at a two-person table alongside a wall of windows looking out upon a nondescript four-way intersection. As I tuck into a gyro plate and green salad I realize how fitting it is that the root for the word 'anonymous' is Greek in origin. The word is anonumous, 'nameless'. That is the word for which my belly was searching, and with which it fills.
I eat at this establishment on a semi-regular basis. Not because the food, which is Greek in origin and concept, is necessarily the best exemplar to be had around these parts. There are other restaurants that do certain items better, so much better that their relative lack of atmosphere (dive-ishness, even) is offset by the deliciousness of the food. The food is good enough. On the days I eat here, it gives me what I want: comfort without identity.
It is this shade of anonymity that I discovered is part of the appeal for me. Lately when I dine here, I dine alone. Usually at the end of work day when circumstance has decreed that I will not have a companion for dinner. I make the decision as I am driving out of the parking lot at work, when hunger, fatigue and proximity act as the trade winds which blow my vessel a few blocks down the street. I set that course because it involves no mystery and few decisions.
When I walk through the storefront doors, there is no "where everybody knows your name" kind of moment. No nodding of heads, no shouted greetings, only a (usually) short line which I join and quickly scan the menu. Since I am still a relative newcomer in this area, there is no one who knows me. No one I recognize. Perhaps the counter people have a vague recollection that I have been in before. Something along the lines of "It's that bearded fellow who always orders the same thing".
I place my order, they give me my number, I sip tea while waiting. The place is quickly filling up with diners and take-away customers. I see a lot of kids and senior citizens, families, couples, one guy like me. All sitting and waiting for our number to be called.
When it is, I take my tray and grab a seat on the edge of the dining room. Always the edge. I have never liked being in the middle of rooms or crowds, from school to restaurants to concerts. The edges make it easier for me to relax and observe. Plus, lower probability of social interaction, which is something I am less than graceful at even when I am not tired and hungry.
I sit. I slowly begin to eat. The hubbub of voices surrounds me, but does not overwhelm. A stream of voices that blend into a rhythmic drone, out which pops the occasional recognizable word or even phrase. In the corners of the room, two large televisions are playing a repeating loop of travel videography from the Greek isles. In the occasional lull of conversation, you can hear snippets of bouzoukis playing. In conjunction with the lack of captions or subtitles on the video, the sounds are an odd blend amplifying the 'namelessness' of this dining experience.
I find it oddly soothing. I feel this way almost every time I come here. This does not bother me, because it is what I want, maybe need. Neither myself nor my fellow diners have an imperative to make this place an extension of their living room or front yard or residential community. The primary imperative for all of us is our bellies, and the need to fill them.
I finish up. With nowhere to be and nothing obligating me to move, I sit quietly. Ruminating on the meal, I am at ease for at least a few minutes. The dining room hums along oblivious to my presence, and that suits me just fine. For a few precious moments my belly and I have nowhere to be, no one to satisfy, no obligations to fulfill. Myself, my belly, we are nameless. We are content.
31 December 2014
To Feast Upon the Wisdom Fish
I awoke on the last morning of the year to a cloak of tepid December air and the hope that today I might find wisdom. The high breezes of the night before had scampered off, leaving the headland in quiet broken only by effervescent mutterings of the surf. I could hear them curling though the open window next to my bed. A gentle puff of air caressed my face. With it came the saline tang of seawater, undergirded by iodine and fish.
The hearth was barely warm. A fire of modest proportions I had lit the prior evening. Not much required between the unusually warm weather and the two fingers of single malt I had allotted myself for the night. Warmth, indeed.
My pens and notebook lay upon the table where I left them. In the white gold sunlight, silent and patient. Sitting up enabled me to see the scratchings on the pages, redactive testament to the autumnal fallowness of my mind. Sighing, scratching my head, I rolled out of bed before inertia could drag me back down. I closed the notebook as I made my way to the toilet.
I realized I should be hungry. Winter light has a vampiric beauty at times. Days leading to the solstice draining the very iron from the blood in my veins. This last day of the year, my belly is neither hot nor cold. It just is. Melancholy grips me at the memory of hunger, the lost clarity of ravenousness. In such a state of mind, eating had an air of penance about it.
But eat I would. I reminded myself that a full belly is not the sole arbiter of happiness, but goes a long way towards comfort. Three rashers of bacon and the last egg in the larder gave me a breakfast of Cartesian precision. Swallowing the last morsel made certain I would be heading to town soon, a journey of mixed emotions. I needed food, not company.
Not today. Not this morning. Standing on the porch sipping the last of the cold tea and fidgeting with the lighter in my pocket, the waves convinced me a long walk was in order. I struck off southward along the strand.
Under a cerulean sky thready with horse mane clouds I walked for what seemed miles. The sea lay subdued, languid iron-green breakers diffusing themselves along the olive-tinged strand. Odd, this hushed tone on the day. Manannán himself perhaps felt the tendrils of winter, muffling his voice here by the sea.
The quiet filled me with wonder and unease. The sea out here by the headland was normally restless, quite vocal. I think it, like me, awoke at the end of the year holding its breath, husbanding its energy. Was Manannán there? I paused to look out past a line of rocks. There was motion, I thought. Not sea gods but seals. Or selkies.
I drew a deep breath and started on. The sun rose in its slow degrees. A few minutes of arc later and I arrived at the mouth of a stream. It slithered over peat and rock to diffuse itself into tide pools before the sea. The tide was ebbing. The rocks a few yards away beckoned. Festooned with seaweed and samphire, encrusted with salt above the tide line, I often used the rocks as an impromptu seiza, my meditation bench on those days when I fancied myself a Buddhist monk. Climbing up, I sat. Sun inched its way up the bowl of the sky. I absent-mindedly pulled the lighter from my jacket pocket, flicking it open and shut with unconscious rhythm. I dissolved into the sea.
The waves. Unctuous flow of gelid green water. I float on my back underwater looking up at a quavering spot of light that I took to be the sun. Kelp wrapped my limbs in buttery bands. I did not feel I was drowning. I slept under the gaze of fishes and a pair of stern looking eyes watching me from a distance. Their refulgent opalescence lit me with a nimbus of pale green.
Minutes? Hours? When I awoke no idea what had passed, although the sun had moved little, it seemed. Thirst and hunger gnawed my belly. It may have been the ache in my legs what woke me up. I stretched and yawned. Manannán faded from my head. I stood up to return home. Stepping off the rocks, I splashed my way through a shallow pool. The pool breathed.
I stopped, not wanting to tread further. Water heaved and swirled at my feet. The billowing water resolved itself into a large fish which I took to be a salmon if my amateur ichthyological skills were of any value. It was trapped in the pool. I was agape. I considered carrying the hapless fish back to the sea. My belly made its hunger known again.
The last day of the year, and I stared down at the fish, wondering what to do. The wind had picked up. In it, my ears heard what may have been the hiss of sand. But my heart heard the ghost of Fionn Mac Cumhal, urging me to take the salmon, and eat. I gave in to the imperative, wrapping the fish in fronds of kelp. It struggled briefly but clearly was not much longer for the world. I started towards home.
The wisdom Fionn gained from his Salmon of Knowledge may not be mine to have in the coming days of the new year, but I sure hoped it so. It is the last day of this one, and if I would not be wise at least I would not be hungry. So said the sea.
The hearth was barely warm. A fire of modest proportions I had lit the prior evening. Not much required between the unusually warm weather and the two fingers of single malt I had allotted myself for the night. Warmth, indeed.
My pens and notebook lay upon the table where I left them. In the white gold sunlight, silent and patient. Sitting up enabled me to see the scratchings on the pages, redactive testament to the autumnal fallowness of my mind. Sighing, scratching my head, I rolled out of bed before inertia could drag me back down. I closed the notebook as I made my way to the toilet.
I realized I should be hungry. Winter light has a vampiric beauty at times. Days leading to the solstice draining the very iron from the blood in my veins. This last day of the year, my belly is neither hot nor cold. It just is. Melancholy grips me at the memory of hunger, the lost clarity of ravenousness. In such a state of mind, eating had an air of penance about it.
But eat I would. I reminded myself that a full belly is not the sole arbiter of happiness, but goes a long way towards comfort. Three rashers of bacon and the last egg in the larder gave me a breakfast of Cartesian precision. Swallowing the last morsel made certain I would be heading to town soon, a journey of mixed emotions. I needed food, not company.
Not today. Not this morning. Standing on the porch sipping the last of the cold tea and fidgeting with the lighter in my pocket, the waves convinced me a long walk was in order. I struck off southward along the strand.
Under a cerulean sky thready with horse mane clouds I walked for what seemed miles. The sea lay subdued, languid iron-green breakers diffusing themselves along the olive-tinged strand. Odd, this hushed tone on the day. Manannán himself perhaps felt the tendrils of winter, muffling his voice here by the sea.
The quiet filled me with wonder and unease. The sea out here by the headland was normally restless, quite vocal. I think it, like me, awoke at the end of the year holding its breath, husbanding its energy. Was Manannán there? I paused to look out past a line of rocks. There was motion, I thought. Not sea gods but seals. Or selkies.
I drew a deep breath and started on. The sun rose in its slow degrees. A few minutes of arc later and I arrived at the mouth of a stream. It slithered over peat and rock to diffuse itself into tide pools before the sea. The tide was ebbing. The rocks a few yards away beckoned. Festooned with seaweed and samphire, encrusted with salt above the tide line, I often used the rocks as an impromptu seiza, my meditation bench on those days when I fancied myself a Buddhist monk. Climbing up, I sat. Sun inched its way up the bowl of the sky. I absent-mindedly pulled the lighter from my jacket pocket, flicking it open and shut with unconscious rhythm. I dissolved into the sea.
The waves. Unctuous flow of gelid green water. I float on my back underwater looking up at a quavering spot of light that I took to be the sun. Kelp wrapped my limbs in buttery bands. I did not feel I was drowning. I slept under the gaze of fishes and a pair of stern looking eyes watching me from a distance. Their refulgent opalescence lit me with a nimbus of pale green.
Minutes? Hours? When I awoke no idea what had passed, although the sun had moved little, it seemed. Thirst and hunger gnawed my belly. It may have been the ache in my legs what woke me up. I stretched and yawned. Manannán faded from my head. I stood up to return home. Stepping off the rocks, I splashed my way through a shallow pool. The pool breathed.
I stopped, not wanting to tread further. Water heaved and swirled at my feet. The billowing water resolved itself into a large fish which I took to be a salmon if my amateur ichthyological skills were of any value. It was trapped in the pool. I was agape. I considered carrying the hapless fish back to the sea. My belly made its hunger known again.
The last day of the year, and I stared down at the fish, wondering what to do. The wind had picked up. In it, my ears heard what may have been the hiss of sand. But my heart heard the ghost of Fionn Mac Cumhal, urging me to take the salmon, and eat. I gave in to the imperative, wrapping the fish in fronds of kelp. It struggled briefly but clearly was not much longer for the world. I started towards home.
The wisdom Fionn gained from his Salmon of Knowledge may not be mine to have in the coming days of the new year, but I sure hoped it so. It is the last day of this one, and if I would not be wise at least I would not be hungry. So said the sea.
29 November 2014
Winter Totem
Tadhg sank to his knees atop the tor. Wind, icy and iron-like, skirled off the sea, summoning a doleful rattle from the bone necklace dangling down the matted furs that served as his coat. A weak cough scratched his throat. A short distance away, down in a glen that opened up into a cove along the beach, he could see a a stone cottage. At one end was hat looked to be a wood door. At the other was a lichen-bedecked chimney, from which a gauzy stream of smoke spiraled away into the air. "Good," muttered the traveler, "it won't be long now, will it, Fiachna?"
Tadhg smiled, wincing as his leathery lips split again. He reached a sun-burned hand up to caress the little skull attached to the end of the necklace. Tadhg reckoned his companion now gone would have liked the cottage and its promise of warmth and food.
The sun above offered the traveler little of the former and none of the latter. His belly not having been troubled by the presence of proper food for several days, he barely had energy to shiver. The sight of the cottage gave him some strength, and he struggled upright to hobble down the faint dirt track that led into the cove. As Tadhg set off, he saw the door open, and into the light stepped an old man wearing a wool cloak. It looked like kelp.
Tadhg limped up to the door. The old man was leaning on a stout driftwood walking stick, watching him, soundlessly and with eyes like those of a skua. The traveler staggered to a halt, swaying a bit. Neither man spoke. The wind offered whispery counsel with faint soughing about the stones of the cottage. After twenty or so heartbeats, the old man spoke.
"I see you've brought your talisman, my son."
"Blessed Father, I have."
"What was his birth name?"
"Fiachna, Father."
"Ah, a proper name for such strong bones. How long ago did the soul depart this shore?"
"Many months, Father. I've barely slept since. My dreams offer no succor, and his eyes haunt me no matter how heavy the dark."
" I can see it writ upon your visage, man. And your belly is meeting your backbone."
"Aye, Father, aye…" Tadhg's voice trailed off into the tail end of a gust. Tears wove tracks in the grime upon his face, staring helplessly at the priest.
The old man said nothing while stroking his beard. A resounding whoomp shook the ground as it traveled up from the beach. Tadhg started a bit, that seventh wave taking him by surprise. The old man moved not at all. He was staring into the emerald distance over Tadhg's shoulder. A clutch of seagulls wheeled overhead with thin metallic cries. The old man looked up at the birds. He sighed and spoke.
"Come inside, lad. There is fire, there is bread and meat. Feed the belly first, then rest your bones by the hearth. The tide turns soon, and we shall bless the bones of Fiachna that you and he shall sleep untroubled."
The old man turned and entered the cottage. Tadhg started forward, head down, but warm relief beginning to flood his frame. The oak door creaked shut, wind filtering into the cracks in its face with the faint sound of scratching. Down below, the waves roared onto the shingle, spray hissing and purring among the rocks.
04 March 2014
Sleet
Home notes, March 1st, 2014. 11:50 pm. Sleet falls amongst the snow.
Ticktickyticketyticktick
...is the sound of late night loneliness. Icy beads pecking on the panes, little metallic fingernails tapping the glass. Laying in bed with only sleet and house murmurs as companions. With no one around as distraction, a restless mind wonders if something is trying to enter, or beckoning it to come out and play.
The sound of sleet falling onto silence feels too loud to bear. Mournful bellow of a train, a mechanical buffalo separated from the herd, comes as relief.
Slowly sinking into the genteel coffin of the bed, listening to myself breathe. I'm hoping I do not become entombed in ice. Experience has taught me that this too shall pass. My heart remains hopeful. Experience has also taught me that the sounds of winter are to the soul what famine is to the belly: they engender gratitude for the feast.
Ticktickyticketyticktick
...is the sound of late night loneliness. Icy beads pecking on the panes, little metallic fingernails tapping the glass. Laying in bed with only sleet and house murmurs as companions. With no one around as distraction, a restless mind wonders if something is trying to enter, or beckoning it to come out and play.
The sound of sleet falling onto silence feels too loud to bear. Mournful bellow of a train, a mechanical buffalo separated from the herd, comes as relief.
Slowly sinking into the genteel coffin of the bed, listening to myself breathe. I'm hoping I do not become entombed in ice. Experience has taught me that this too shall pass. My heart remains hopeful. Experience has also taught me that the sounds of winter are to the soul what famine is to the belly: they engender gratitude for the feast.
02 March 2014
Genius of Winter (Sunday Meditation #34)
Nothing is so sharp as the voice of love sliding its razor edge into the muscle of the heart. It can be confused with the crystal cold air sucked into lungs gasping in shock, stepping through the thermocline of the doorway into winter light like old lead. The walls do not keep out the voice. They cannot. The voice is love.
Acoustics are strange out there along the edge of winter and spring, between dark and light that speckles the caves of the heart. Echoes last long. One may come to believe that the voice has died out, faded away, is mute. Then it comes back loud and clear, in the guise of sleet stinging the face or cold biting the hands. The voice demands, and gets, your attention.
Distance seems not to matter. The laugh of a child can be heard in the skitter of snow dancing across the wind-scoured pavement. Confusing, yes, as the scene is otherwise dreary. But there is no denying the laughter. Sleet drips out of the nacreous cotton of the sky to freeze on the skin. The sharpness of pain brings focus, tripping a switch as doors open wide in the heart and head.
There are visions, brief, and luminescent like lightning striking on top of the head.
The faces of love, radiant and welcoming. Their voices ignoring time and distance to remind the heart of its home. To see in the swirl of the sky eyes that look like one's own is a miracle, plain and true, no matter how small it seems to the exterior world.
What matters is that those eyes can be seen. If they can be seen, they cannot be forgotten. There are unbreakable threads spun of blood and love stitched into the soul, yes, it is true. But one has to hold onto them, no matter that a gap of a thousand miles lies between ends in the physical world.
Ice, snow, grey light all dull the senses. It is easy to slip into numbness, to suffer amnesia of the heart. A freezing breath lancing the lungs or numb fingers sticking to the door handle serve up reminders to be present in the world. To be present in love. This is the genius of winter.
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