Tag: nature

Light On Here

From our little house on a hill, the relentless, howling winds of the hurricane were terrifying. I dug out the heavy winter drapes to protect from possible storm shrapnel breaking through the wobbly windows. I left one curtain open just enough to keep an eye on the trees – the fine old trees on our little plot of land. They held up brilliantly as did this creaky old house. Damage was limited to only a few branches, the only casualty: the chimney guard to keep critters from crawling in. Our chimney is overdue for a cleaning anyway so this will force me to call the sweep.

We lost power for about 12 hours – the milk did not even have a chance to go sour.  In fact, I welcomed the reprieve from watching television news coverage of Sandy, the monster storm that just hammered us here on the East Coast. But now the lights are on again and I continue watching. Like a train wreck, I cannot take my eyes off the heartbreaking scenes. Amazing how much the footage resembles images from war zones. Blown transformers look like exploding mortars, images of residents returning like refugees to find their homes decimated in all too-often battered Queens neighborhood. Maps show huge swathes of color indicating areas across the Northeast without electricity. Pictures of stores show empty shelves. Lines, darkness, people filling plastic jugs from fire hydrants. These images bring back so many memories of Sarajevo.

But the endless press conferences with mayors and governors pledging government remind me we are not at war. Cooperation is the order of the day.

Switching the channel, news of Syria, the violence of man-against-man howling through the lives of the innocent every day with not a promise to be heard.

Look What Happened!

Not so long ago, the age I am now seemed impossibly old. But I don’t feel old. I refuse to join the AARP – not yet. Still, I have to face it – I am aging – and mostly, it’s okay.

My gray hair doesn’t bother me much and is easy to camouflage; a bout of vanity hits every six months or so and I get highlights. Although the occasional joint gets achey, especially my hips, and sometimes my back threatens to act up, but I blame that on too much sitting at work. Immediately reviving my erratic yoga practice gets me back to normal. I’m pretty fit and my weight is good. I’ve cut way back on how many glasses of wine I imbibe and I mostly get enough sleep. But look what I discovered last week —

This is my mouth in repose. Okay, the jowly bits are an unfortunate family trait, but I’ve already had a few decades to get used to them.  The pinched look of my lips isn’t the worst of it, although it is as if my flesh is drawing inwards to better secure my teeth (getting long) in my mouth. The general slackness of my skin is also not very attractive, but still, that’s not what disturbs me.

What upsets me is that when I am in thought, just going about my day, walking down the street, driving my car, RIGHT NOW, my mouth settles into a doleful expression. Look! In a few more years, mine will look like a marionette’s mouth, with lines creeping down along either side of my chin.  How did this happen? In spite of quite a few years of incredible stress and sadness, I am a happy person. And yet, there it is: when I am in an unselfconscious state, mine is a sad face.

I suspect the state of my mouth disturbs me more because it reminds me of my mother’s. From a way-too-early age, my mother internalized and defined herself by unhappiness. She certainly had her own, but she also glommed onto other’s losses and betrayals, almost taking pleasure in co-opting their tragedies as her own to grieve, to tell. My mother died at 64. That’s only 10 year more years for me. I am determined to keep smiling through whatever I have left.

So if you see me with a foolish grin on my face, I may be thinking of something funny or I might just be doing mouth calisthenics. I want my face to reflect my joy and damn gravity!

Hope, Despair, the Seasons

It seems counter-intuitive to plant and transplant when the leaves are falling and winter is headed our way, but experts say, autumn is the best time to do this. I find this  inspiring. Just when plants are fading, turning black and collapsing into the earth, we hopefully settle our transplants into a new patch scratched in to the soon-to-be-frozen earth. How do they make it through the winter?

Yesterday I moved a little pine tree that had gotten lost under the bullying boughs of the neighbors’ forsythia. It was easy to dig up – pines have shallow roots, that’s why so many succumb to storms. This is the only survivor of a pair Bosnian Pines I planted about 2 years ago. There was something so Charlie Brown’s Christmas-tree-like about them, I couldn’t resist. And the fact that they are Bosnian.

Can’t you imagine the wind relentlessly blowing through the needles, pulling the branches so that even in stillness, you can feel the mountain gusts?

We had a serious frost the other night, shutting down what was left of my relatively sad garden season. I retrieved the few green tomatoes and packed them away in a brown bag with the hope they might ripen. The basil and dahlias turned black. Good thing I retrieved this lovely beforehand.

As I was saying about inspiration — although this year was rough in the vegetable patch — with voracious furry and slimy creatures gobbling up the good stuff and tomato plants that grew huge and bushy but yielded few tomatoes — transplanting the little pine and a sage, I imagine next year. I notice the blueberry bushes – mostly just sticks these past seasons – have grown and filled out to be fine bushes. Next year, maybe I’ll get more than a berry or two.

See? My despondency about my garden losses is fading and I’m already starting to feel hopeful again about the future. Nurturing my Bosnian pine, keeping an eye that the needles don’t begin to crumble, can remind me that it is possible for hope to win over despair. Then, soberly, I realize this a luxury of my peaceful life.

I recall my short stint with the UN in Bosnia during the war, the winters of despair. Comparisons have been made to Syria — the world watching civilians get bombarded in their homes. Children maimed and killed. I will not pretend to have a solution — but I have a sense, a remembrance of the spirit crippling despondency of isolation, the sense that no one cares. A memory of biting cold winter that seems impossible to survive.  I will watch my transplanted tree carefully, remember and hope.

Walking Home in a Car-World

I love where I live except that I need a car. Public transportation stinks. There are buses but everything is spread out and they run too infrequently to be practical. While this is technically a ‘city’, like most places outside of a major metropolis in the United States, the culture is suburban-car-centric. Public transportation is given short shrift.

I confess, I have never boarded a bus here in Norwalk. I don’t know the routes or the cost. Neither does my 17 year old daughter – which is really crazy to me because growing up in NYC, I was taking 2 city buses to school by the time I was 8 years old.  Molly expects rides and dismisses walking as a way to get someplace.

When I walk now, I do so with intent. I take my dog out or go with my friend for exercise. I don’t walk like I did when I lived in what I still call ‘the city’ – New York – to get where I’m going. When I lived on the upper West Side I avoided buses and subways – eschewing crowds and the expense, but mostly because walking is a pleasure and the city is so walk-able.

I walk when I travel. Behind the wheel of a car, or even as a passenger, it is impossible to really see the world.  Everything is fleeting, without smells, without a sense of the air, the up-close color of  leaves, the bark on a tree, the color of a house, the flowers, the smell of cooking … the poetry and essence of a place.

This morning, I dropped my car off to be serviced and then walked the 2 miles or so home. I walked where I always drive and saw only 2 other pedestrians in my jaunt. Actually, they were not walking — they were waiting for a bus. There are no shelters on this stretch of the Post Road. Bus riders must stand by the road in the now-grassy but soon-to-be icy patch, breathing passing fumes and at the ready to wave down a bus hurtling by at breakneck speeds.

On my walk I passed little jewelry shops, variety stores, delis, Indian restaurants, I never noticed before. They are sustained by the spirit that keeps Norwalk special: long-time loyalties of old neighborhoods, friendships and families. And judging by the shabbiness of some of these little strip malls, I imagine, reasonable rent.

Jogging across the street to get out of the way of the cars not used to or particularly respectful of pedestrians, I stepped across a grate in the tarmac, so clogged with dirt that grass grows between the metal slats. I’ll remember that next time the road floods. I passed the cows and chickens fenced in outside of Stew Leonard’s crazy ‘Dairy Store’ where I popped inside for a good cup of coffee to drink while I walked. Then I criss-crossed the parking lot to a side street that leads home.  No sidewalk, so I hugged the shoulder while admiring houses and gardens up-close. I turned my face up to the sun and later, flinched away from the bloody sight of squirrel-road-kill. A dog I’d never met leaped off his patch of lawn to bark at me. I noticed two houses that looked empty -desolate windows and peeling paint. Making my way home in the morning sun, I paid attention and really saw my neighborhood.

To Sit, To Breathe

Look what I found at a tag sale yesterday:

I’ve been thinking about meditation recently so this little zabuton is the perfect inspiration to get my ass positioned for a ‘sit’.  Reasons to do so are plentiful: relieves stress, inspires creativity and general well being.

Meditation is one of those things that I’m never sure I’m doing right. (Kind of how I often feel about writing…) Rationally, I know that this is nonsense-thinking, but still I doubt myself and I think I should really learn how do to this from a teacher. And then I remember Taniguchi-san.

In Kyoto in the 1980s, I met a Buddhist monk on a bus and we became friends. I initiated a conversation with the kind looking elderly man beside me (he was not in his robes so I had no idea he was a monk) because I was intrigued by the book he was looking at of these amazing little stone sculptures.

While in Kyoto, I fancied myself a sculptor and was so excited by these expressive, wacky looking little figures all lined up in endless rows that I said, “Summimasen, doko deska?” while pointing to his book.  Turns out, these nembustu were at a temple in Arashiyama not so far away. He introduced himself  as a monk who lived at a another beautiful temple and offered to take me to this place. Of course, I gleefully accepted his generous invitation.

A week later I met Taniguchi-san at his temple, Myoshinji .

We mounted bicycles and I pedaled furiously behind this 70+ year old gem, marveling for the millionth time at the wonderfulness of Kyoto. I’d been living there for over 3 years and had recently decided to move on.  Before I left, my new friend Taniguchi-san gave me a crash-course in meditating.

I met him on a beautiful spring day at Miyoshinji temple again and this time, I followed him inside to his quarters past simple gardens, silent but for the crunch of gravel beneath our feet, bees as we passed the cherry blossoms, buzzing in what seemed a chant. In a simple tatami mat room, Taniguchi-san talked about breath and paying attention.  Mind you, my Japanese was not great and he spoke only a smattering of English.  I searched my journals this morning to see if I’d made notes and found nothing. But I do have this:

As a parting gift, Taniguchi-san gave me this lovely stone – explaining I might, with eyes just ever-so-slightly open, focus on this rock. He knew I’d been inspired to come to Japan because of the rock gardens. For over 20 years this precious piece has graced my bureau.  I blew the dust off  setting off ripples of recollection as if this old stone had been tossed into the depths of my mind.  A cushion, a rock, a lesson remembered.  A return to breath.

“Seek Shelter Now”

j.halman credit

This alert was emailed out by on of the local newspapers: Seek shelter now. Surreally alarming, don’t you think?  Tornado warnings are unusual in these parts and I’d wager that not many of us in the northeast know where we should shelter. Even after years of living in Kentucky where tornados are more common, I am not sure. (or the answer to the question – windows open or closed?)

But this headline resonated with me for other reasons, triggering memories. Seek shelter now! Is my home shelter? That question surfaced in my life more than once in the past, and not inspired by the weather. There were harrowing days when I needed escape from living with an addict.

I am reminded of the times when, as a traveler, I sometimes wearied of seeking shelter and longed for a home of my own as I peered out the train window at landscapes in Europe, in Asia.

I remember my first experience of war – shelling within days of my arrival to Knin in June 1992.  I had just checked in to a bleak Communist-era hotel, ready to start my job with the peacekeeping mission UNPROFOR when the building shook and my ears popped from a mortar shell landing just over the mountain. I went down to the lobby where the hotel staff answered my question of what to do? where to go? with blank looks. Marco, the interpreter from Belgrade I’d met earlier in the day, showed up to rescue me. His calm demeanor a comfort, he smiled and said, “There’s nothing we can do, so let’s go eat and drink wine”. That’s what we did, at first flinching, then, warmed by the good local wine, ignoring the thunder of shelling. A few years later in Sarajevo with my soon to be husband, shelter at the Holiday Inn meant sleeping under flak jackets but mostly feeling protected by the flush of new love.

The tornados did not land in our Connecticut city this time, but we were warned and I am reminded, grateful for safety today.

Paying Attention for What’s Next

What next? I’ve been batting this question around quite a bit, especially inspired by seasonal changes. Back-to-school activity, Monarchs frenetically flying around in migration prep, evening and morning temperature drops, these shifts into autumn prompt my own search for another gear.

‘What next?’ has recently been a question I particularly ponder about my writing. I’m ready to let go and get my memoir out into the world. While there are certainly still rewrites ahead on that, the question is, what to write about? I needed to write about my husband, our time in Bosnia, my daughter’s premature birth in Italy, struggling with his addiction, navigating Molly and myself out of the shadow of his suicide. The compulsion to tell that story got me up on the coldest of mornings, 7 days a week.

And the discipline stuck. For the past few years I religiously rose before dawn, before setting off to my day-job, rewrote, rewrote, rewrote. Now, it’s time to move on. I need to find a new story-itch and I think if I pay attention to the clamoring voices inside of me, I will. Perhaps that’s one of my best insights from years of living with insanity. Paying attention leads me to a feeling of serenity. Focused, present in a thoughtful way – that’s the state I aspire to be in as much as possible.

Writing helps me get there, especially if I do so with the expectation/hope of being read. So in a kind of letting-go exercise, I’m setting myself the challenge to come to this space each day rather than revisit old pages. If even briefly, to write — as a kind of meditation, or perchance to find my next story. It’s a start.

The Moon’s Tribute to Neil Armstong

It was veritable party of flashing cameras last night at the beach, all of us hoping to capture some spectacular image of the well-publicized ‘Blue Moon’.  This is the best I could do…

Blue Moon

“It’s when there are 2 full moons in one month…” said one wizened fellow to another as they sat sentinel-like on the stone wall overlooking marsh grass and feeding gulls. I overheard them as I passed below, picking my away across the low-tide stretch, leaping over piles of dubious looking Long Island Sound flotsam and jetsam.

And I came across this weird tide pattern – like a quiet echo of the planet now rising on the horizon.  The evening, with this rare second-showing of luna and this strange, perfect circle in the marsh flats, felt like a sweet nod to the recent death of the first man to step and prance across that very distant rock-scape.

Mystical Tide Mark

Magic of a Morning

Here’s what I love about my day-off early mornings: The light. The light.

The light. The gentle slants of sun stretching across the grass, easing in through the wavy-glass of our old-house windows, magically illuminating floating dust.

And I love my cup of tea.

And another and maybe, another again.

Through the open window, there is an almost-silence. (crickets and cicadas gently buzz)  Birds swoop by to assess the feeders and quickly spin off annoyed, I imagine, by the empty grates.

I try not to think about the rest of the day – not yet. I avoid making the mental lists of to-do: filling the empty feeder or following that fairy-dust as it creates yet another layer to be cleaned on the many neglected surfaces in my house. I push away thoughts of laundry piles or what groceries to buy, menus for the week. Not yet.

This morning, almost-autumn cool, I sit a little longer to marvel at the Monarchs hovering around the butterfly bush. I notice how the green of the hedge seems brightened by yesterday’s rain. There has been a seasonal shift and now, it’s cool enough for a sweatshirt. A sense of a fleeting inspires me to savor these moments — just as the solitude of these early mornings is sweeter for the thought of my still-sleeping loved ones.

Summer Torpor Respite

Steamy-hot days seem to wilt everything but the weeds. What’s left of my vegetable garden is being swallowed by renegade grasses and the border of browning hostas and now-skeletal daylillies is barely visible behind pigweed and chokecherry.  The unruly mess of my garden taunts me as I search out a shady spot and a breeze to read the paper. I should weed-wack, mow, clip… but just can’t. Yesterday, it was almost 3 by the time we rallied enough out of our torpor to take the kayak out. We agreed we’d only loll about near a sandbar — no paddling out to the islands. So that’s what we did.

A patch of bliss.

We have a favorite spot not even 10 minutes from our launch — a teeny island that disappears with high tide. Yesterday, the timing was right and our sweet patch was there to welcome us. As planned, we lolled about: floating in the salty shallows, stepping across sandy boulders.

Breezes sent an occasional wave of chatter through the sea grass, a pair of terns swooped through with flirty calls, punctuated by plaintive screeches of the odd gulls. As we stood on the still-wet rocks and watched the Sound move out and the sun go down, the rocky stretch exploded with mini-geysers. Clams! Alas, faster than we could dig with our hands through the rocky muck, they disappeared. Next time, we’ll bring a spade.

The grittier view that reminds us where we live.
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