What We Need Is Here

The study of silence

The study of silence has long engrossed me. The matrix of a poet's work consists not only of what is there to be absorbed and worked on, but also of what is missing, desaparecido, rendered unspeakable, thus unthinkable. It is through these invisible holes in reality that poetry makes it way - certainly for women and other other marginalized subjets and for disemowered and colonized peoples generally, but ultimately for all who practice any art at its deeper levels. The impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem ins the breaking of an existing silence, and the first quesion we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?

And yet I need to say here that silence is not always or necessarily oppressive, it is not always or necessarily a denial or extinguishing of some reality. It can be ferilizing, it can bathe the imagination, it can, as in great open spaces - I think of those plains stretching far below the Hopi mesas in Arizona - be the nimbus of a way of life, a condition of vision. Such living silences are more and  more endangered throughout the world, by commerce and appropriation. Even in conversation, here in North America, we who so eagerly unpack our most private concerns before strangers dread the imaginative space that silence might open between two people or within a group. Television, obviously, abhors such silence. 

- Adrienne Rich, in Arts of the Possible, 1997

{image: John on Alligator Lake trails in Columbia County}

City birds

Although our little house is nearly at ground zero of downtown Gainesville asphalt and noise (near Main and University), the humble trees we have are often full of birds.  We hung a very simple feeder, hand-made by one of the boys when they were in scouting,  and a bowl of water in the crepe myrtle in our tiny front garden. It's so pleasant to sit on the front steps in this gorgeous weather and wait for what comes.Today I was surprised by three unusual vistors. I recognized two of them, but the third I'm not so sure...

This one is pretty much a textbook version of the Carolina Chickadee. It was on its own. 

 

Although I didn't get a shot of its tuft, I'm quite sure these are tufted titmouses. The one on the left would go to the feeder and bring back a seed for two others who looked to be about the same size. Adolescent children maybe? 

But this last couple confused me even more. I have rarely seen these, and never at our feeder. At first I thought they might be summer tanagers, but the mail wasn't red enough, and the female wasn't the least bit green. Google images implied that they might be molting, or adolescents, but it was the Oracle of Facebook that gave me the answer: house finches. 

They are native west of the rockies but were imported as pets back in the 1930s. When selling wild songbirds became illegal in the 40s, a number were released in Long Island, New York. By the 50s they were established there, and they made it down to north Florida during the ten years. Thank you, Facebook and, specifically Katherine Vickers Edison, a fb friend who also happens to be a local wildlife specialist.

I appreciated the beauty and song of all these little visitors, and it's fun to learn their names and something about the life and history of the creatures we share our neck of the woods with.  

It has begun: Squash Season

The vegetable donations from local farms has been ramping up these last few weeks, and right now we are experiencing that sliver of time when we have the end of cool-weather veggies along with the beginning of those that thrive in the heat. So this week brought us both the last of the winter greens  in the form of chard, and the beginning of squash. Good old squash - it seems like yesterday you were lining the shelves of the fridge and appearing in every other dish we made. And here you are again. .  . 

Fortunately we also got a lovely bouquet of young purple basil, which goes so nicely with squash, and I had a bunch of onions waiting in the fridge. And then my friendly underground goat cheese provider called offering a cooler full of cheese and- voilá! A recipe is born. When the chard, dandelion greens, and other green cool-weather leafy veg are gone, you can add garden chives, or mix up zucchini with the yellow squash, to keep the colors interesting. 

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil or butter
• 1/2 cup chopped onions
• 6 cups tender young squash, cubed (later in the season, when the skins are tougher, you may need to peel them)
• 6 cups of chard, chopped and rinsed
• 1/2 cup fresh goat cheese
• A handful or so of basil leaves
• Salt and pepper to taste (lots of black pepper is very nice in this dish)

Sauté the onions in butter or oil till tender and transluscent. Add squash and stir until it becomes somewhat tender (3-4 minutes). Add chopped and rinsed chard with the water still on the leaves. Stir for a moment, then cover, lower heat, and let steam till tender. Check to make sure there is enough water from the chard and add a little more if necessary. Check after about 5 minutes to see if things are tender. When they are, salt and pepper to taste and pour mixture into serving dish. Sprinkle with fresh basil leaves, then distribrute small glops of goat cheese evenly on top. Gently mix it together and serve with additional salt and pepper at the table. 

{the image is from this myrecipes.com, which I found after I googled "yellow squash, basil, goat cheese). It's got leeks instead of onions, no chard, and some different proportions, but it looks a lot like ours did yesterday, before we quickly ate it}

Alligator Lake

We hiked seven miles around Alligator Lake in Lake City for Mothers Day.  Lake City is my homeland, birthplace of five generations of my forebears, so there are lots of memories there in addition to the wild, southern beauty. In the years since I visited my grandparents there, Alligator Lake has been transformed into a recreation area with a boat launch, picnic pavilliions, playgrounds and some nicely cared-for trails. 

A few of the trails were underwater, and a short section was poorly marked, but most of it was an easy hike and full of beautiful sights: mossy cypress, live oaks, and reclaimed pasture reverted back to grassland as well as rabbits, turtles, coots, blue herons, cattlebirds, and - of course - alligators. The trail began and ended at the shoreline park. I think this would be a wonderful place to hike a little with children and then enjoy a picnic. 

As a little girl, I played along Alligator Lake with the children that lived down the road from one set of grandparents. I was growing up in south Florida at the time in the suburbs of Ft. Lauderdale with manicured lawns and sidewalks and backyard swimming pools. I will always remember one particular summer visit when I was in middle school. We swung from a high branch of a live oak on a "sack swing" made from a burlap sack stuffed with moss, took turns riding an old pony, and lauched a little boat onto the alligator-infested lake. I was sweaty and filthy every one of those days and remember thinking how wonderful and wild it was. I'm glad this area has been made so accessible while still preserving some old Florida wildness.  There were beautiful wildflowers along the road between Alachua and Columbia county. These are on Racetrack Road off 441, on the way to the lake. 

 

Monday wondering

WONDER: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

Mr. Money Moustache - not for everyone, but he's got a point: "The latte is just the foamy figurehead of an entire spectrum of sloppy “I deserve it” luxury spending that consumes most of our gross domestic product these days. Among my favorite targets: commuting to an office job in an F-150 pickup truck, anything involving a drive-through, paying $100 per month for the privilege of wasting four hours a night watching cable TV and the whole yoga industry. There are better, and free, ways to meet these needs, but everyone always chooses the expensive ones and then complains that life is hard these days."

Ten Best Marriage Vows You Never Hear - "it's a little tougher to promise "in fatness and in emaciation, even if my mother hates you" than it is to promise "in joy and in sorrow, forsaking all others." But which is really braver, and what promise more meaningful?"

Dads are the Original Hipsters - find your dad (or your husband)! 

7 Things You Can Make Instead of Buy - if you decide to take Mr. Money Moustache seriously. 

It's My Life What Ever I Wanna Do - The sincerity of this guy, the expression on the back-up singers' face, the enthusiasm of those recording it. 

{image: from Dads are the Original Hipsters Tumblr}

Some note on lying

The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.

To lie habitually, as a way of life, is to lose contact with the unconscious. It is like taking sleeping pills, which confer sleep but blot out dreaming. The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.

In speaking of lies, we come inevitably to the subject of truth. There is nothing simple or easy about this idea. There is no “the truth,” “a truth”-- truth is not one thin, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. The pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet.

This is why the effort to speak honestly is so important. Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler – for the liar – than it really is, or ought to be.

In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even with our own lives.

The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams comes from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry comes from the same struggle.

_______

Truthfulness, honor, is not something that springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people.

This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in very large part on their understanding of honor.

Much of what is narrowly termed “politics” seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis that, once given, need not be re-examined. Such is the dead-endedness – for women – of Marxism in our time.

Truthfulness anywhere means a heightened complexity. But it is a movement into evolution. Women are only beginning to uncover our own truths; many of us would be grateful for some rest in that struggle, would be glad just to lie down with the shards we have painfully unearthed, and be satisfied with those. Often I feel this like an exhaustion in my own body.

The politics worth having, the relationships worth having, demand that we delve still deeper. 

-- Adrienne Rich, from “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying” in Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations

[image: from wikimedia commons. Strange how the spiders web, representing "the tangled web we weave..." represents lying. It seems to better represent the complexity and interwoven nature of truth.]

Monday wondering

 

WONDER: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

The inspiration and cost of opting out vs. leaning in. I hope this is not going to be a new version of the "mommy wars" that were raging when I was a young mother. 

The life of Bill Clinton - a historical perspective on a contemporary president. So interesting to see his complicated self congealing as a historical figure. 

Snap judgment - a podcast I just discovered, "story-telling with a beat." I loved "The Other Side." 

Earth Teach Me - wonderful local blog with amazing photos and stories of wild things thriving in North Central Florida. It's great for identifying and naming some of the wildlife you share your space with. 

Forage - Local farm and center for educating and inspiring people to value healthy food, land, and community. 

{image: Melissa and Anna of Forage Farm}

On vocation - and love

And if we ourselves have a vocation, if we have not betrayed it, if over the years we have continued to love it, to serve it passionately, we are able to keep all sense of ownership out of our love for our children. But if on the other hand we do not have a vocation, or if we have abandoned it or betrayed it out of cynicism or a fear of life, or because of mistaken parental love, or because of some little virtue that exists within us, then we cling to our children as a shipwrecked mariner clings to a tree trunk; we eagerly demand that they give us back everything we have given them, that they be absolutely and inescapably what we wish them to be, that they get out of life everything we have missed; we end up asking them for all the things which can only be given to us by our own vocation; we want them to be entirely our creation, as if having once created them we could continue to create them throughout their whole lives. We want them to be entirely our creation, as if we were not dealing with human beings but with products of the spirit. But if we have a vocation, if we have not denied or betrayed it, then we can let them develop quietly and away from us, surrounded by the shadows and space that the development of a vocation, the development of an existence needs. This is perhaps the one real chance we have of giving them some kind of help in their search for a vocation – to have a vocation ourselves, to know it, to love and serve it passionately; because love of life begets a love of life. 

- Natalia Ginzburg, in The Little Virtues*

*I cannot recommend this little book enough. It was a breath of fresh air, breathed a couple generations ago, not so long ago at all. 

{Image: My dad, who loved his life - Elephant Butte, Truth or Consequences, NM, c. 1955}

Are backyard chickens pets?

I knew this question was going to come up eventually. Last week one of our four-year old chickens became obviously ill. Henrietta had been the head of our flock of four. Aloof and bossy, she regularly chased the other three away from the feeder when she was eating and would even go after Rudy the Corgi if he ventured too close. A personality change was the first sign something was up; she suddenly became nicer and quieter, letting us pet her, leaving the other chickens alone. And then she needed help climbing into her nesting box at night, and didn't come out on her own in the morning. At that point - around day 5 - we were pretty sure she was sick, and we had to ask ourselves, "Is Henrietta livestock? or a pet?" 

If she were livestock, it might be time to "cull." We decided she was a pet. And then the big Pet Question raised its head: "What are we willing to pay for treatment by a vet?  We came up with a random figure and John hauled Henrietta to a local veterinarian who specializes in birds. He came back with liquid feed, a tube, a syringe and antibiotics. Her belly was distended indicating possible egg-binding and/or infection. Since the cost of x-rays to see if she was egg-bound was prohibitive, we treated her for infection only. After three "feedings," it was clear she was not getting better and was - sorry for this - now puking up the food a few hours after we pumped it in. She didn't seem in distress, so we put her in a box lined with soft cotton rags and brought her inside where it was cooler and bug-free. She died that night.

The sweet vet offered us a free necropsy and we found it was egg yolk peritonitis - egg yolk lodged in the ovaduct, causing a bacterial infection. If we had caught it earlier, we could have started the antibiotics sooner, but it may not have helped. Egg yolk pertonitis is often fatal. I am still not sure whether we did the right thing by Henrietta, but that is always the burden on those of us who "own" animals. 

Rest in peace, Henrietta. You were a mean girl, but we liked you a lot - kind of like a pet.  

Rudy the Corgi meets his nemesis - baby Henrietta

Monday wondering

WONDER: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

The next time you see someone in a Ferrari, think "this is someone who is incredibly vulnerable and in need of love"- Alain de Botton's "Kinder, gentler philosophy of success."

 Walking as a creative device. "If you are ever bored, or blue, stand on a street corner for half an hour"-

Here you go: Literary Jukebox - A daily quote from a favorite book, thematically matched with a song. Another thing to thank Maria Popova for. 

I dread the upcoming heat and humidity of North Central Florida, but the idea of reverse graffiti on mildewed walls and sidewalks is buoying me a little. 

Silver: A State of Mind. These lovely gray-haired women make the future look bright. 

{Image: Graffoto.co.uk}