… Is Beauty Disguised.

This week, I launched here the inclusion of more and different writers in my blog.

I desire to propel myself into a different place with my writing, and to create a wider community of conversation around experiential writing online. “Beautiful writing” — on blogs, in books, and in print media– seems to be pushed into hidden margins as a genre mafia takes over.

You know what I mean: it’s a shuffle and two-step of compartmentalization created by an intense need to label writing and file it away onto shelves. This same kind of thing happens with blogs, only more so. In order to succeed, a blog must be as niche as possible — a shaving of a topic, narrowed in order to satisfy preconceived desires of outcomes fractured into page views and “unique visitors” (such as they are).

The writing in these places, to me, often feels so empty. It never-ended bullet-pointing solutions to our problems, and to me it just feels deeply unsatisfying. Like eating ice cream to solve the emotional eating craving, because you were all out of the Doritos.  Numbers drive the content, and what is lost is the way writing makes us more.

More human. More awake. More prepared to be a part of our moment.

My friend, Tricia, writes to me that her own production has become spotty, with energetic bursts paired with long bouts of silence. Her writing, when it happens, she says comes out as “drivel” — a word that means both “twaddle” and “saliva flowing from the mouth.” Either way, it is a beautiful and melancholy image, accidental language in the middle of an everyday email that shows her ability to sculpt metaphor into human experience. Even as she drives through a puddle of her own sadness.

We take a walk (uphill, both ways, without shoes, in the snow) into the forest of words, and we ask us ourselves to examine our choices and our beliefs: it is emotionally packed, filled with heartbreak and humor.

My writer friends, who will be visiting here from time to time, are all writers who have shown me that they are capable of this beauty. I hope we can all encourage them to write into that space of fear, frustration and mania– where the human experience and the art of writing combine to make us more .

Shopping at Target for school supplies takes us into the arms of  August, summer’s last great hump.

I smell the Ticonderoga pencil shavings already and summer’s great keening begins.

The season is nowhere over, yet it is aging. Surrounded by the lemon-yellow-forest-green-cornflower-burnt-sienna colors swirling around me in the all-new-all-same-mass Crayola aisle. Even as I buy what is required, I disappear into my own summer place.

In the waning days, we are gathering our harvest buckets, our pickling salts, and inner-tube patches. We are ready for something to die again.

The summers of yesterday– whether we are 20 or 80– wait in our memories like still life. Perfect hard confectionary, twisted inside a cellophane wrapper. A permanent lost anticipation.

They’ve lost the bright heat of concrete noontime. And the sangria reds of the lake sunsets. They are behind us, in the albums of already. They bleach and blanch entirely, monochrome, with twinkles of silver in the edges of our memory.

Now, where the morning light touches the water, the memory flashes in brightest white. Where the canoe glides into the shade of a tree’s arch, it disappears into the blackness.

Summer belongs to the juicy, hand-picked moments of immediacy, and then, to the permanent archive of memory.

Other Summers in Black and White… here.

I’ve been reading the article “All Joy and No Fun” from the New York Times Magazine with interest.

I’m in a position to speak about the “joys” (or otherwise) of parenthood now that I’ve been in the thick of it for 16 months.

Anyone who knows me can attest that I haven’t always been a happy girl. I inherited mild chronic depression from my dad’s side of the family. I’m also somewhat of a complainer, like him.

The flip side of that is I acquired my artful mind from him, and the ability to look back with rose-colored glasses. The deep, sweet places that my mind travels are intricately woven with the threads of loneliness and occasional discontent that cling to me like a stray dog.

I worried about these qualities in the lead up to our choice to foster kids. Would I spiral down, and take them with me?

From the article: “When you pause to think what children mean to you, of course they make you feel good,” says Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. “The problem is, 95 percent of the time, you’re not thinking about what they mean to you. You’re thinking that you have to take them to piano lessons. So you have to think about which kind of happiness you’ll be consuming most often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience almost all the time”—moment-to-moment happiness—“or the one you experience rarely?”

So the distinct ability to look at the kids for what they represent — beauty, truth, innocence, family — allows us as parents to have the “joy” of parenting and achieve happiness. But a large portion of the time we are living in the function of parenting: the logistics of making life-with-kids happen, from laundry to school to birds and bees.

The curious notions put forth in this long article (please read it because it is very interesting) is that American parents are less happy because we want MORE for our kids. The more details of our kids’ lives we have to worry about, the less our kids make us happy.

What I Mean
Yesterday, I was sitting in a lawn chair watching the kids jump around in the kiddie pool. I had a book on my lap that I wasn’t really reading. The kids weren’t paying any attention to me. I was just sitting there, hanging out.

For a moment, I heard myself worrying: “I should have invited some other kids over. I should have organized a playdate. They are always playing by themselves at home. They aren’t socializing.”

Then I caught myself. My train of thought was interrupted by two things: the ever-pragmatic voice of my mom in my head repeating over and over: KIDS ARE HAPPIEST AT HOME. That, and the tumbling peals of their laughter in the pool.

They were happy. But where are Mom and Dad happiest?

One of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson, wrote the book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a funny memoir of his childhood in Iowa in the 50s. Actually it is funny, but it’s also quite bitter. Bryson clings desperately to his memories, and bemoans the loss of the simpler life that children had “back then.” Reading it, I felt an uncontrollable regret. I grew up with a similar childhood in the 70s, riding my bike to the library, walking to school, unencumbered by playdates. But every parent today seems to cling to the notion that we are NOT safe anymore. That children must be sheltered, protected, coddled. The parents lose their own time (they have LESS free time now than they did back in the 70s) and the children learn to cling, to be afraid.

What Memories May Come
My mom, who raised 6 kids before she went back to work teaching, doesn’t commemorate my childhood the same way. She was GLAD when Dad got home so she could thrust a baby in his arms. They argued the same way Colin and I do about who carried the biggest burden of “work.”

Yet, in the same way, my mom oozes with joy over her family. She tells me she would “never trade it, not a day of it.” Her sister, Mary Ann, recently deceased, had 13 children. Mom always said Mary Ann would have had more if she could.

For me, the year past has been the happiest of my life: but also the most complex and wearying. Every morning, we go through boring/grueling routines of reminders, repetition, and a great deal of talking about pee. But I see living examples of what we achieve as we have stuck to our beliefs, values and goals.

They smile at us, say thank you, and give us the very best hugs.

From our organic garden… Well at least the basil is. The recipe is “Classic Basil Pesto” from a great new cookbook called “Put ‘Em Up” by Sherri Brooks Vinton.

Makes me really admire the makers of all organic foods … Timing of foods, storage and transport is not easy!

There is a lot of wasted life, and so much of our time is used beating back the natural cycles.

Shouldn’t we just leave the rabbits be? Let them mate and mate in our back yard, eat all of our hardwork, hard-earned?

Shouldn’t we look at them and see the best of them? The softness of their fur and all their finest qualities?

Shouldn’t we make excuses for them, and say “Well they are hungry too?”

Even bunnies make mistakes, and end up dead in the road, under apathetic car tires.

The old fairy tale likes to paint Peter Rabbit as the prodigal son. He’s punished by losing his dinner, sent to bed with no blackberries.

In the winter, though, what will the farmer’s wife eat, if Peter Rabbit is too selfish?

You’ve got to dig down deep, buried the fence where they can’t see. You’ve got to work around their gnawing manipulations. If you want to best the rabbits in your perfect garden.

Some rabbits are not rabbits at all.

Please leave the ship.

My kids reallyreally like bananas and I am reallyreally glad about that.

As some of you know, we are greeny-greensters, so we grow our own veggie garden, make compost, and buy organic and local.

Well, sometimes.

If we started to apply the “locally-grown” condition to our food (250-mile radius), what would be have to give up that we really like?

Let’s see…

• Bananas
• Coffee
• Tea
• Pineapples
• Citrus (scurvy alert!)
• “Fresh” fruits and veggies during most of the year.

I am currently reading a book called “Little Heathens” by author Millie Armstrong Kalish, a Garrison, Iowa native who details exhaustively farm life during the Great Depression.

When I saw “exhaustively” I mean it. Literally 99 percent everything this family consumed fulfilled the 250-radius guideline (excepting occasional citrus fruits). This was in part because of frugality– they had to make/bake/grow/cook it themselves in order to afford it. But it was also because that was the way rural life proceeded.

Grow corn. Eat the corn. Save some kernels for next year’s crop. Dry the cobs.  Use the cobs for either a) fuel, b) feed for animals, or c) toilet paper.

Reading this book is wonderful, but makes you realize without complete certainty why the generation after the war — especially the homemakers– not only embraced all the modern conveniences (from cars and refrigerators to pre-packaged meals, and canned corn), they probably wanted to make love to them. Making-growing-herding-hunting-sewing is two to three full time jobs– days overflowing with never- ending work and no chance for a 2-week vacation in Branson.

This is not to diss the locally-grown movement. In fact, it is an argument FOR it. Learning from our “heritage experts” helps us to reconnect to the reality of food. As Millie Kalish points out in her chapter on “Farm Food”:

“I do feel the knowledge of how to fry potatoes, make a pie crust, and dress a chicken encourages self-sufficiency and creates a sense of confidence in one’s ability  to cope with life. Indeed I want my own family to be aware of the foods, the ingenuity, the knowledge, the skills, and above all, the everlasting work that was required to survive when resources and supplies were limited.”

So much of what we consume today (and here I’ll just limit to what we put in our mouths) we do mindlessly, without a thought of the work it takes to grow, make or — in the case of bananas — to move it.

So I would argue that “local” is weird for most of us. It stops us from eating mindlessly, the way we have for years. It forces us think about who we are, to look at what we are made of, and to ask this question: what do I intend to invest in this ONLY thing I have control over– my body?

Millie Kalish, 88 years old and writing books, still splits and stacks her own firewood. In this era of techno-growth and obsolescence,  where kids are likely to live SHORTER lives than us, what does that tell you about the local food movement, the need to reject convenience and to feel a part of home life again?

Bananas, hold on.  Apples want to reclaim their place in the sun.

We accidentally have perennial potatoes in our garden.

These potatoes are unstoppable. We “planted” these them two seasons ago, on a whim.

“Whim” = they had actually started growing from a few rotten potatoes we’d thrown out into the compost pile. Colin said “Hey, look. Potatoes are growing!” and dug ‘em out and put them in the garden.

I suppose with the help of the beneficial nematodes, they survived that first season. But they have now ALSO survived the second: the “Season of Being Ignored” (last summer), when our garden became a weed patch while we kept tabs of many new beings flailing about in the yard.

And then we had the hard winter, again, and yet and again. And this month as we were prepping the soil  for this year’s season, we found enough recovered wonderful new potato plants to fill a row.

Our sage, thyme, and chives (all courtesy of Sarah Houghton as a home-warming gift) have all over-wintered as well. Third season! Do you have any idea how much thyme costs at the grocery store??

In case you don’t, you really should plant something (seed, starter, potato!) that turns into food into a patch of warm, sunny dirt. It’s very cool.

… and the reason I’m not is not at all simple.

Despite the fact that I drive the heck out of our zippy five-speed manual transmission Mazda, and the fact that I drive our minivan like I need to get the kids to the raceway poddy–NOW! — despite both of THOSE facts, I feel complete terrified when I am sitting on our riding mower.

It’s irrational, I know. It’s unlikely that I will launch myself out of the seat and land in front of the mower with my body suddenly trapped underneath a thick vine, and then slowly watch the mower bear down on me, its blade screaming with laughter until I am slowly sliced to bits on a perfectly lovely, sunny day.

It’s irrational, I know, to feel certain that I am suddenly going to lose all control and go careening into the pointy-est of all bushes, where the pointy-est of all branches will be perfectly face-level. AHHH! … Thus, forever ruining my chances in Cycle 15 of America’s Next Top Model (the big cycle for MILFs with ALL sorts o’ junk).

OK, so those are the reasons. Hey, I’m NOT psychotic. Like everyone, I just have irrational fears– goaded on by an elaborate imagination.

SOOooo, the upshot of all this is that I have VOWED to myself (and now aloud to all six of you) to learn to confidently mow our entire lawn by the end of the summer.

And when I say “confidently,” that means:

• steering around all the obstacles without slicing them down (sandbox, newly-planted lilac shrubs, largish house, Tati (and any other siblings), and an assortment of half-inflated balls;
• mowing the smaller front yard, which includes going around the dastardly pavers that I drove over the LAST (meaning “final”) time I drove the mower. In which I dessicated the blade and caused our grass to grow above window-level while waiting for Colin to get a replacement blade;
• being able to get the mower in and out of the shed, which of course, is up a half-rotted, termite nibbled ramp and through a door– a door which is smaller than the mower.

So, what are the bets? Anyone want to wager? Thoughts?

I found that my iPhone’s App Store “What’s Hot” as Green Apps featured today, as part of Earth Day celebration and I am thrilled.

Earth Day is 40 years old today, and now it is almost ubiquitous. Everywhere there are thousands of events, so many that it is impossible to even get to all of them, or to even choose.

But that doesn’t mean the Earth has won! Heck no! There’s still more to achieve.

The next step (like women and blacks) is to get Mother Earth her own Month, one that gets celebrated at school and allows more time for learning and celebration. Some universities are already onto this craze!

After that we need to think about giving Earth her own holiday. It is observed around the world but nowhere recognized as an official national holiday. Why not?? Of course there are lots of holidays already that sort of honor her (Arbor Day, May Day, Easter –in the pagan tradition), but I am talking about a full-on bank holiday, where people take off work and agree to NOT drive or fly anywhere. Just stay at home, play in the yard, walk to the shop for an ice cream, and enjoy whatever the weather may bring.

And of course, once we get a day off, then we need to push for MORE days off–meaning that Americans need to revise our two-week vacation time culture in business. How does this relate to Earth Day? Well, right now, the MINUTE we get anytime off from work, we leap in the nearest form of transportation, burn fuel to go somewhere.

With more leisure time, perhaps we can have more stay-cations (Yes, I used that awful word!), the chance to be at home, dig around in the garden, update our insulation, or build that compost bin we always meant to get to. Slow it down. Pay attention. Give attention to what we have. Have time to be less disposable. More time to heal ourselves.

Of course, after that, we need to–
Well, actually, I’ll keep that one to myself for now. You may not be ready for it yet.

(… Things Which Did Not Know They Were Missing)

An old friend found his way back to me tonight. I’ve sent him a note to say hello in the old fashioned way. I’ve emailed him.

I wish I could have said that I used something a bit more archaically romantic– postcard or handwritten letter, but I haven’t got time to wait for a reply.

In the old days, when we were friends before, I always sent him long, dreadful letters in the mail. Those were the days when I knew better to expect a reply, and wouldn’t have wanted one anyway. We lost our friendship for a long time– the way people do when there is no way for resolution except time and the long bridge across it.

I’ve noticed that the distance isn’t as far as I have expected over these years. We are old friends from those sharp, tangy years…my memories of then are cut into glass. Not like the malleable teabag memories of now.

The dog went out for a long walk into the forest. She was sniffing the mushrooms and all the scents left behind by the luscious animals that live here and there. It was all so new! She forgot to remember the scent of me and she forgot to realize she was hungry. Pretty soon, she was far from me, and she was far from her dog bowl, and even though she remembered, she couldn’t think of how to make her way back. Not without help.

A stranger came along and said “Sit down, little girl. You look tired.” So she did. He carried the dog home in his truck, took her off the highway. And his wife used the internet to find me, posting virtual signs for her. Pretty soon, she was home again with me, from her long walkabout.

I am not sure why we come home– what makes our signals beep more urgently toward certain places, certain people. I only know the sound when I hear it. I know the feeling of walking in the woods and looking up, wondering, where am I now? And where is my old friend who helped me find my way?