Yesterday was an emotional day. We attended my son’s dissertation defense via Zoom, sad that we could not be there in person for his graduation. I was also bursting with pride, of course, and simultaneously raging that the current circumstances prevent travel so I could not hold my son in my arms. I was frustrated that I did not understand a word of what he talked about in his presentation, just as I never did when I had occasion to hear my father giving a talk – both passionate chemists. It was bittersweet to think that his grandson chose the same path, never to be seen by him, or his other grandfather, unless there are little viewing slots between this dimension and the one for the departed. Shutters that open for special occasion….
Shutters made me think of windows, windows made me think of how people decorate them, or simply use them to display, well, almost anything, from signs to art to whole collections of stuff. So much stuff. Spilling out.
I have attached a small sample of what caught my attention over the last decade, most of it from Europe, but a couple of them from the U.S.
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For me it was simply curiosity, while more professional photographers approach window displays with strategy. To lovely results in the case below, I might add. Larger images can be found on the links.)
Jean-Luc Feixa has a new book out that really captures much what is familiar to me from Northern Europe (in his case he photographed in Belgium.) Although I am keen to introduce mostly young women photographers, given the gender imbalance regarding recognition in this as in so many fields, I really liked Feixa’s work when I first saw his landscapes some years ago. They were photographed at the Franco-Spanish border with its contradictory landscape of misty mountains and barren desert. And how can you not covet an artist statement like this:
False American decor – perfect! Now what do we call all that decor in the windows? Open to suggestions!
And here is poetic wisdom that points to the trouble with clinging to the past, the urge to display, and holding on to things…..
The Three Oddest Words
By Wislawa Szymborska Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing, I make something no non-being can hold.
And here is César Franck‘s quintet, wistful (in honor of the Belgian windows,) and intricately constructed (in honor of my son’s synthetic molecule.) Mazel Tov, Solomon!
I’ll end this week with images depicting the state of our nation: things in flux,
despite being trampled down,
Black and White in sharp contrast,
in fragile states,
with darkness trying to suppress light,
with anonymity seeking impunity,
and yet: there are glimpses of bright horizons.
I think that has always been the power of Langston Hughes’ poetry for me: he never gave up the belief that we can initiate change towards a better future. With our very own hands – particularly if we link them to others.
I look at the world From awakening eyes in a black face— And this is what I see: This fenced-off narrow space Assigned to me.
I look then at the silly walls Through dark eyes in a dark face— And this is what I know: That all these walls oppression builds Will have to go!
I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind— And I see that my own hands can make The world that’s in my mind. Then let us hurry, comrades, The road to find.
Langston Hughes, “I look at the world” from (New Haven: Beinecke Library, Yale University, )
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There might be a path forward, after all.
And here is how it’s done, young Wynta-Amor showing us the way. Fierceness and belief.
Music today is from an 2014 album that celebrates Hughes’ poetry: Vari-Colored Songs by Leyla McCalla. The song was originally from a KurtWeill/Langston Hughes production Street Scenes.
And here is another of her timely songs, one he would surely have approved of.
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Today would have been Breanna Taylor‘s 27th birthday – another victim of police shootings, in bed, in her own department, with no cause.
May they celebrate you on whatever shore you’ve arrived!
Los argonautas se albergaron en la oscuridad de mis zapatos y un dragón azul acudió a encenderme la estufa. El cielo limpio se escondió en las gavetas del armario, lo que explica el silencio de los pájaros y el exceso de neblina en la ropa que me puse. Hoy la soledad es un vaivén de fantasías. Mejor así. Ayer el día desató un huracán de anzuelos que dejó al mar vacío y al sol humedecido como ojo de ballena herida.
Marooned
The argonauts took shelter in the darkness of my shoes and a blue dragon arrived to light the stove for me. The clear sky hid in my dresser drawers which explains the silence of the birds and the excess of mist in the clothes I put on. Today solitude is an ebbing and flowing of fantasy. Better this way. Yesterday set off a hurricane of fish hooks that left the sea empty and the sun slick like the eye of an injured whale.
I looked it up, given that my Spanish vocabulary consists of approximately five words. Was marooned really the English word for Vaivén de fantasias? Particularly when that phrase, in the body of the poem posted above, was translated into ebbing and flowing of fantasy?
The official translation of Vaivén was sway, or seesaw, the latter a playful term much more in sync with the rest of the poem’s vivid imagery (and its reference to the fate of the argonauts, in their continual push/pull adventures.) What was the translator thinking? That we needed a hint? Is that kosher?
The poet is Carlos Parada Ayala, a recipient of the Larry Neal Poetry Award from the DC Commission on the Arts, a member of the Late Night Hour poetry collective, and a founding member of ParaEsoLaPalabra, a multi-genre arts collective in DC. Parada Ayala is included in podcast series “The Poet and The Poem at the Library of Congress.” The poem comes from his first published collection in 2013, La luz de la tormenta / The Light of the Storm, which focused on solitary experience way before the current lock-down ensued.
It so happens, though, that the English as well as the Spanish title and my resolve to end this week’s display of photographed fauna rather than flora with a cache of artificial creatures collected across my travels, provided a perfect match. I am marooned, thus living out my longing for travel by going back to the archives. I have bunches of images of fantastical fauna that could have been encountered any day by the argonauts on their mythical voyage, swaying reality for just a moment in our realm of solitude. All that’s missing is the blue dragon that I could ride out of here….maybe I’ll take the unicorn instead.
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Hm, argonauts hiding in the obscurity of a shoe – whatever happened to Jason and his buddies? Lost interest in the golden fleece? Lost interest in Medea, his fratricidal lover/spouse? Decided to give up the fight for the throne usurped by his uncle in view of all the giants and dragons and gods they had to challenge? Too exhausted for adventure, with physically or psychologically injured beings wherever we look?
And isn’t marooned the wrong analogy when next he turns to fishhooks – pointing to events on the ship delaying their pursuers so they could escape? Medea not only killed her brother to protect her lover, but cut Absyrtus into myriad pieces and threw them overboard, so his family was obliged to pick every one of them out of the sea for proper burial, an exceedingly important ritual? Sure slowed them down. Sure horror movies are not a thing of the recent past. Sure solitude is the last thing you find on a ship carrying a band of heroes. Oh, all so confusing.
Not just solitude ebbing and flowing here – interpretation as well. Your take on all of this is as good as mine – I’m easily swayed, with no Argo in sight to pick me up and carry me away!
Music today is from Latin America, where Parada Ayala was born.
I had to laugh out loud when I read that sentence embedded in an erudite prose poem on snails. They are hell on salad, indeed – and bring up a fond memory of a long ago trip with my then 13 year-old to France. There we were, having lunch in an outdoor café, when what I thought to be a black olive began to move…. the waiter, resenting that I called him over, just shrugged, did not even take the plate away, much less took it off the bill or compensated with a free dessert. “What did you assume,” a bystander at the next table declared, “after all, it’s Marseille.” My son’s aversion to French waiters, who regularly scolded him for not finishing the food on his plate, a move long given up by his mother, went up a notch.
Here is another passage from the poem (it is too long to print here, therefor the link above,) revealing Francis Ponge‘s artistry with words as much as observations:
“There is more to be said about snails. First of all their immaculate clamminess. Their sangfroid. Their stretchiness.“
One might add: their pace…..
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Ponge (1899-1988) was an interesting character and marvelous wordsmith. He was keen on creating a “visual equivalence” between language and subject matter by emphasizing word associations and by manipulating the sound, rhythm, and typography of the words to mimic the essential characteristics of the object described.” Seems more like an auditory equivalence to me, but what do I know.
Trained as a lawyer and philosopher, he was loosely connected to the Surrealist movement in the 1920s, and affiliated with the French Communist Party in 1937, and was active during the war in organizing the Resistance movement among journalists. He left the Party in 1947 decrying its embrace of Stalinism. In 1952 he became a professor at the Alliance Française and started to concentrate on writing. His politics remained progressive, though, and his choice of subjects – the everyday, common use, down-to-earth objects of the material world around us in some way echo his commitment to make the world a better place. Being mindful about the things around us and respectful of nature were frequent themes in his work. He was made Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1959 and received the French Academy’s grand prize for poetry in 1972 and the National Poetry Prize in 1981.
His early work had a focus on small things. Soap, shells, cigarettes, plants, – and, of course, snails. There is something to be learned from looking at the minute, then extrapolating from it to the larger world around us. I find myself doing that as a photographer as well and maybe his astute observations crafted into detailed descriptions of the visual qualities of things explains why I am drawn to his early writings.
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And so it was some days ago, when the rains had once again made the woods into a muddy, moist, verdant, dripping landscape where fungi unfolded in full curves and snails and slugs slimed their way across the glistening surfaces.
My camera depicted, as did Ponge’s poetic words, but stuck to the observable, in contrast to his musings. For one so interested in a materialistic aesthetic it is surely weird to anthropomorphize the feelings of snails.
“It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it. How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders. It must be worth it.
They are a little vain about this convenient ability: “Look at me, a vulnerable and sensitive being, who is nevertheless protected from unwanted guests, and so always in possession of happiness and peace of mind!” It’s not surprising the snail holds his head so high.
“At the same time I am glued to the earth, always touching it, always progressing, though slowly, and always capable of pulling loose from the soil into myself. Après moi le déluge, I don’t care, the slightest kick may roll me anywhere. I can always get up again onto my single foot and reglue myself to the dirt where fate has planted me, and that’s my pantry: the earth, the most common of foods.”
Oh well, to each their own. I certainly appreciate that there are people other than me who indulge in the beauty of these creatures, even though I regularly smite them when they decide to eat my garden. Hell on salad and hell on hostas, too. Aesthetic appreciation only goes so far.
Here is a strange snail ballet from 2019, part of Cryptic’s Sonica Festival.
From the announcement: “176 snails will travel to Kings Place to take centre stage in a live sonic installation like no other. French artists Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes and Cyril Leclerc conduct an immersive sensorial experiment as they harness each snail with a small diode. Slow Pixel highlights Kings Place’s theme of ‘time’ and invites the audience to slow down as the snails draw their individual trajectories through this sensory environment.”
If Leclerc’s music is too jarring (certainly for my Monday brain), here is something classical, lilting albeit at a snail’s pace, the Adagio from Mahler’s 9th.
And here is a shorter prose poem about the substance that makes snails (presumably) happy, particularly on this rainy Monday morning:
The rain, in the backyard where I watch it fall, comes down at different rates. In the center a fine discontinuous curtain — or network — falls implacably and yet gently in drops that are probably quite light; a strengthless sempiternal precipitation, an intense fraction of the atmosphere at its purest. A little distance from the walls to the right and left plunk heavier drops, one by one. Here they seem about the size of grains of wheat, the size of a pea, while elsewhere they are big as marbles. Along gutters and window frames the rain runs horizontally, while depending from the same obstacles it hangs like individually wrapped candies. Along the entire surface of a little zinc roof under my eyes it trickles in a very thin sheet, a moiré pattern formed by the varying currents created by the imperceptible bumps and undulations of the surface. From the gutter it flows with the restraint of a shallow creek until it tumbles out into a perfectly vertical net, rather imperfectly braided, all the way to the ground where it breaks and sparkles into brilliant needles.
Each of its forms has its particular allure and corresponds to a particular patter. Together they share the intensity of a complex mechanism as precise as it is dangerous, like a steam-powered clock whose spring is wound by the force of the precipitation.
The ringing on the ground of the vertical trickles, the glug-glug of the gutters, the miniscule strikes of the gong multiply and resonate all at once in a concert without monotony, and not without a certain delicacy.
Once the spring unwinds itself certain wheels go on turning for a while, more and more slowly, until the whole mechanism comes to a stop. It all vanishes with the sun: when it finally reappears, the brilliant apparatus evaporates. It has rained. Translated from the French
That’s what H.E.Bates called hawthorn. Hmmm. Must have known only the white ones, so prevalent in english hedgerows and pastures. They do come in red and pink as well, although admittedly less often.
Lots of lore attached to the bush which, once it grows into a tree, can become 400 years old. Or so they say. It held significant place in Greek mythology, as a symbol of love and marriage, believed to be able to ward off dark spirits, and rumored to have provided the crown of thorns for Christ.
Lore also has it that it is a portent of disaster if you bring the hawthorne blossoms inside. There might be some scientific explanation for that: the early blossoming tree is essential for bees and other pollinating insects – if they are deprived and starving, they will not be available for later necessary crops.
Hawthorn was the badge of the house of Tudor, because Henry VII lost his crown and it was found in a thorn bush. Maybe it is indeed a plant that brings misfortune…
Hawthorns belong to the rose family of plants and are in the genus Crataegus, a large group widely distributed throughout the north temperate zone and in the tablelands of Mexico and the Andes. The small, red berries covering the tree in autumn are called “haws”; they contain bioflavinoids, cardiotonic amines, polyphenols, vitamin C, the B vitamins and other nutrients. Squirrels and birds love them.
The scent of flowers includes trimethylamine, also released during sex and by dead bodies. Just what you needed to know, right? But, taken together with the symbolism of the ancient Greek goddess Hymen, protector of love and marriage, who carried a torch made out of Hawthorne, we might have immediate clues helping to understand the poem below. It is said to be among Willa Cather’s favorites, even though she was unhappy about how the poetry volume, April Twilights, in which it first appeared, was received.
THE HAWTHORN TREE
by Willa Cather
ACROSS the shimmering meadows– Ah, when he came to me! In the spring-time, In the night-time, In the starlight, Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Up from the misty marsh-land– Ah, when he climbed to me! To my white bower, To my sweet rest, To my warm breast, Beneath the hawthorn tree.
Ask of me what the birds sang, High in the hawthorn tree; What the breeze tells, What the rose smells, What the stars shine– Not what he said to me!
Risen cream, shimmering meadows, rose smells, secretive murmurs of lovers – all points to May arriving soon! With our warm spring, the hawthorns got a head start. Photographed yesterday. Music is an ode to the English Country side by Finzi Eclogue in F major.
And that brought to mind another Eclogue, only to be enjoyed by adventurous readers, who appreciate naked bodies in a sunlit dale, approached by cows…. it’s actually quite an astounding piece by May Swenson.
Lots of birds on yesterday’s walk, searching for and bringing back nesting materials, some birds in their bright mating colors already.
I was reminded of a Robert Frost poem, The Exposed Nest, that provides for me at its core a sense of unease around unresolved moral issues.
The poet sees his young companion, perhaps his child, trying to build a shelter out of grass and ferns. It’s not just play but the desire to protect a ground-nest full of fledglings that was accidentally disturbed by someone mowing the meadow. The innocent birds are left defenseless – you do want to protect them from “too much world” (and all the danger that implies,) but the very act of building a shelter might frighten the parent bird away, leading them to abandon their brood.
“We saw the risk we took in doing good, but dared not spare to do the best we could though harm should come of it…” – all this to prove we cared. ”
There is this sense of moral obligation, but also of having to make a choice between errors of omission and error of commission. Damned if you do and damned of you don’t.
Prove that we care – to whom? To nature? The young child who needs a model? Some higher power that set moral standards? The self that has an internalized vision of what it means to be a good person?
In the poem they decide to fashion a shelter. Then all is left hanging in the air, an irritatingly incomplete gesture. The narrator doesn’t go back to check on the fledglings’ survival, he turns to other things or conveniently claims to have forgotten if they did or did not return. Clearly there is a defensiveness against accepting the outcome of one’s action, should one have made the wrong choice. We fed our pretense or our hope to be “good,” but that’s enough. Let’s not dwell on potentially dead, abandoned birds…. since we suspect that’ll be the outcome in a world that is cruel to the innocent. (The poem was written in the middle of WW I, after all.)
Uneasy parallels to our current situation as well where we have a chance to alter some that ails the world beyond pandemic: we need to make risky choices, unable to predict the outcome. In contrast to the narrator, we do have to face the results, though, unable to turn to other things since our decisions affect us all, not just some creatures we can keep out of our sight. Our choices are not just some gestures, demanded by our need to appear moral – if they are immoral choices, we will all be exposed to the harm that comes from them. And (feigned) ignorance after a bit of initial commitment stands in the way of finding solutions. If we don’t know what needs to be handled and how to fight for it, we are doomed to suffer the consequences. Mull that while trying to photograph a Northern Harrier…
You were forever finding some new play. So when I saw you down on hands and knees In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, Trying, I thought, to set it up on end, I went to show you how to make it stay, If that was your idea, against the breeze, And, if you asked me, even help pretend To make it root again and grow afresh. But ’twas no make-believe with you to-day, Nor was the grass itself your real concern, Though I found your hand full of wilted fern, Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover. ‘Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground The cutter-bar had just gone champing over (Miraculously without tasting flesh) And left defenseless to the heat and light. You wanted to restore them to their right Of something interposed between their sight And too much world at once—could means be found. The way the nest-full every time we stirred Stood up to us as to a mother-bird Whose coming home has been too long deferred, Made me ask would the mother-bird return And care for them in such a change of scene And might our meddling make her more afraid. That was a thing we could not wait to learn. We saw the risk we took in doing good, But dared not spare to do the best we could Though harm should come of it; so built the screen You had begun, and gave them back their shade. All this to prove we cared. Why is there then No more to tell? We turned to other things. I haven’t any memory—have you?— Of ever coming to the place again To see if the birds lived the first night through, And so at last to learn to use their wings.
Luckily the walk provided sights that led to more hopeful thoughts as well.
Birds that have pretty safe nests:
Fearless hares
And optimistic taggers
Here is a beautiful Sonata by Delius, composed in the same year as the poem was written. The cellist is outstanding.
So here I am wrecking my head over what I could possible offer this week to cheer us all up and distract us from all things virus-related for a measly five days. Not going to mention Corona once, at least not directly. Wish me luck.
(And if the options below have you rolling your eyes, at least admit that the photographs are pretty nifty given that they were taken while I was writing, through the window onto my balcony – the doves make regular appearances these days, drinking from the dish in the middle of rain…)
So, what shall we discuss? The Guardian offers antidotes, as a daily regimen, but honestly, do they excite you?
Looks like I am reduced to posting an animal video, good grief.
However, it perfectly captures my current vocalizing….
Maybe I’ll find something slightly more sensible, as always, with music.
And here it is: Schubert’s Die Taubenpost (Carrier Pigeon). It was the last song he wrote in his life, part of Schwanengesang D 957, a collection of songs published posthumously. Hah, got the education in, anyhow! Here is the text, check out the very last stanza: Longing…. the messenger of constancy. THAT is the concept to think about today!
“Dancing is generally believed to be a normal part of motor development …. and thwarts aggression, relieves tension, and strengthens the pair bond.”
Yup. Oh, to dance again. Turns out, that sentence included two words I replaced with dots, namely the words: for cranes.
I learned about the use of cranes’ dancing at the website of the International Crane Foundation, the only place in the world where all 15 species of cranes can be observed. In Baraboo, southern Wisconsin, no less. Hard for me to imagine to see these birds in exhibits in a refuge, though, rather than in the wild, where they represent such freedom.
I have written about them before, with a few scientific details. Today I want you to see them through the lens of a poet. Linda Hogan is currently the Chickasaw Nation’s Writer in Residence and lives in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.
I have introduced her work here before, a poem about herons, I believe, since her concern for ecological matters, cultural heritage and dispossession of Native Americans is, as my regular readers know, something I share (as part of my documentary film focus for Necessity – Oil, Water and Climate Resistance – there will be an on-line screening for Earth Day – check the link.)
BY LINDA HOGAN The language of cranes we once were told is the wind. The wind is their method, their current, the translated story of life they write across the sky. Millions of years they have blown here on ancestral longing, their wings of wide arrival, necks long, legs stretched out above strands of earth where they arrive with the shine of water, stories, interminable language of exchanges descended from the sky and then they stand, earth made only of crane from bank to bank of the river as far as you can see the ancient story made new.
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This concludes a week where meadows, fields, flowers, birds and sky were all still to be seen on walks, and brought to you as tokens of nature that exist independent of our human worries. Reminders, too, that there are still many pleasures to be had.
First they were confined to slavery in Egypt, then to wandering in the desert.
Now Jews around the world celebrate Passover Seders on Zoom or Skype, confined to their dwellings. I have not decided whether it is helpful to draw the parallels to prior suffering – and the fact that it was overcome – as is custom during the service around the Seder table. Or if it is just reminding us that history repeats itself, and the sense of prevailing danger and unstoppable evil never ends.
Luckily we can distract ourselves with poetry.
Bracha Meschaninov, a South African Jew who moved with her family to New York state, published a poetry collection, Tender Skin,over 20 years ago that focusses on daily Jewish life. The simplicity of her poems hides the depth of the ideas, almost cunningly, as if she is not allowed to reveal her true intellectual strength.
This in turn, brought to mind two films I can recommend, (diametrically opposed to the life that today’s poet embraces.) Unorthodoxis a Netflix production loosely based on an autobiography by Deborah Feldman, describing a young Hasidic woman’s escape from her marriage and the confines of the communal system she lived in. One of Us , also on Netflix, is a documentary following several young people who made the same decision and paid extreme prices for trying to find their own way. It is a remarkable film, without the glitz that the Netflix series managed to add – although the main actress’s performance is stellar and worth alone to watch Unorthodox. If you have bandwidth only for one for this topic, choose One of Us.
Back to Pesach – here is something that feels probably quite familiar to several of us:
Pesach
House cleaned more or less kitchen surfaces covered more or less food ready more or less an experience of redemption more or less
The Seder
We chewed the hand-made bread of redemption and wine specially made children primed for performance… performed and wonderful guests came and prayed yet his eyes were sad and her skin showed strain
We left Mitzraim but in pain we stayed.
And here is the fitting musical accompaniment sent by a friend.
Chag Sameach!
And here are the traditional songs with explanation.
A timely poem to end the week. The poet is Franny Choi, author of the poetry collections Soft Science (Alice James, 2019) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). She is a Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow at Williams College, a member of the multidisciplinary artists of color collective Dark Noise, and a cohost of the Poetry Foundation’s podcast, VS. Links to more of her writing can be found here.
Friderike Heuer Connection (2017)
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
By Franny Choi
Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats: boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses bloom like algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of the bombed mosque. There was the apocalypse of the taxi driver warped by flame. There was the apocalypse of the leaving, and the having left— of my mother unsticking herself from her mother’s grave as the plane barreled down the runway. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of planes. There was the apocalypse of pipelines legislating their way through sacred water, and the apocalypse of the dogs. Before which was the apocalypse of the dogs and the hoses. Before which, the apocalypse of dogs and slave catchers whose faces glowed by lantern-light. Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of buses. Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in the textbooks’ selective silences. There was the apocalypse of the settlement and the soda machine; the apocalypse of the settlement and the jars of scalps; there was the bedlam of the cannery; the radioactive rain; the chairless martyr demanding a name. I was born from an apocalypse and have come to tell you what I know—which is that the apocalypse began when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees, drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled, the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.
Notes:“Bedlam of the cannery” is borrowed from Martín Espada.
Friderike Heuer Isolation (2017)
Here she is on a PBS NewsHour reciting and discussing another one of her poems filled with courage not drowned out by anger.
Friderike Heuer Looking for Jobs (2017)
Photographs are from my 2017 photomontage series The Refugees’ Dreams.
