Just so you see the rest of my week’s ambling, here are photographs of yesterday’s walk at the Sandy River Delta, a half hour’s drive from Portland.
Not a cloud in the sky, thin, cool air, the mountain visible and the dog happy. The human too. Color palette went from red to gold to blue, reflecting sun off the water. Hard, clear November light.
I am pairing this with a poem by Thomas Hood (1799–1845) titled No! or alternatively November about this month. Unless you think he saw into a future where global warming has brought dystopia on all of us, here is a hint.
Hood wrote from London, a city heated by coal during the first cold waves of November. The sulphuric smog, paired with fog rolling in, obscured everything, made it hard to breathe, and blocked out traffic, including movement of needed goods.
November
No shade throwing on my part – just a reminder, sensed during every minute of that walk, that we still inhabit a beautiful world an need to fight hard to keep it.
Music today is about the last of the falling leaves.
So ok, I was muttering. Venting, really. Blabbering. One of those days when everything that could irritate did irritate. R e a l l y irritate.
No, I was muttering: like unintelligible speech, multitudinous murmurs, mysterious tongues – a living, walking Longfellow oak in human form…. might as well go for a walk and join my brethren.
Eliot’s Oak
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud With sounds of unintelligible speech, Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach, Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd; With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed, Thou speakest a different dialect to each; To me a language that no man can teach, Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud. For underneath thy shade, in days remote, Seated like Abraham at eventide Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote His Bible in a language that hath died And is forgotten, save by thee alone.
Photographs, then, of today’s oak trees in Tualatin, where I didn’t care that I have no clue who the Eliot is in this poem that I dimly remembered.
I stopped muttering, when the birds took over with their various honking, trilling, whistling, or whatever bird sounds come out of sparrows, flickers, waxwings, shrub jays, bald eagles and geese. Let’s just all agree on mysterious tongues….
Well, and then, of course, I went home and had to look it up. Who was this Eliot?
“Plant explorer Ernest Henry Wilson (1876-1930) also photographed many famous North American oaks, such as the Eliot Oak. The Eliot Oak stands “a few rods east of the Unitarian Church in S. Natick [Massachusetts].” It is a very old white oak that possibly dates to at least the 1650s, and according to one legend that gives rise to its name, the Reverend John Eliot (1603-1690) preached to Indians beneath its canopy. Professor Stowe, in an address on the 200th anniversary of the town of Natick, described Eliot as “a man of great versatility, and very superior intellectual power. Doubtless he had his equals, but never a superior in Christian zeal and goodness.”
The famous poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) personified and commemorated this oak in his “Sonnet on Eliot’s Oak” (1877). These verses emphasize the human traits of the oak, as its leaves murmur loudly with “sounds of unintelligible speech,” that nonetheless communicate the word of God and the wonders of his natural world just as the preacher Eliot presumably did. Also, the final lines acknowledge Eliot’s authorship of the Algonquin Bible, the first Bible printed in America and written in the Algonquin language.” (Source: arboretum/Harvard/edu)
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,– While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Written September 19, 1819; first published in 1820. This poem is in the public domain.
And here is, in addition to the bounty, to the wistfulness of October…..
My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird – equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.
This is the first poem in Mary Oliver‘s collection Thirst, titled, “The Messenger.
I encountered it at a writing workshop for houseless vendors at StreetRoots this week. Mary Oliver had been previously introduced to me by the workshop leader who continually excels in expanding my horizons and I took to this poem in no time. Hey, gratitude for nature! Up my alley. Loving the world? A familiar task. Mouth shouting joy – my readers are my witness!
And then a participant pointed out, with anguish bordering on rage, that it was not their job to love the world. A world that mistreated them, rejected them, punished them, tortured them, deprived them and excluded them. A world where safety was non-existent, food unreliable, pain untreated. Where admiration of nature was not exactly high on the list when you could but fear the elements. Where the very idea of living forever is blacked out by the worry about living for another day.
You know that feeling when heat creeps up your neck, into your cheeks, the blushing that interferes with breathing? That was me: caught in my bubble of middle-class existence, originally not even tangentially aware how gratitude of the kind the poet references is linked to privilege. The privilege to have time to notice, room to appreciate, means to express and capacity to love nature within my safe surroundings.
I am not saying that homelessness precludes gratitude. On the contrary, I am often floored when seeing the generosity of spirit expressed by the folks I’ve gotten to know. I am more concerned with the demand characteristic or the taking for granted in my own head that the world is to be loved.
Mary Oliver’s work might have been to love the world. (She died this January – a remembrance from the New Yorker is in the link.) My work right now is to become more aware of how automatically we apply standards that seem self-evident to us – gratitude for nature! – but which are wholly inappropriate for those whose very existence is under attack. And then my work is to fight the causes for the differences in standard. Actually: the work of all of us. 38.000 houseless people in our city deserve that.
Photographs today are from another habitable building making room for another luxury hotel in downtown Portland.
Music today is from an interesting cross-over album Now and Then Music from the Great Depression(s) 2010/1929 ( to which we might add 2020, I gather.)
The National Center for PTSD estimates that 28 percent of people who have witnessed a mass shooting develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and about a third develop acute stress disorder.
Research also suggests that mass shooting survivors may be at greater risk for mental health difficulties compared with people who experience other types of trauma, such as natural disasters.
The American Psychological Association summarized data and suggested treatment approaches last year here. The focus is not just on disorders following trauma. Psychologists are also eager to study other questions about survivor well-being, including how such experiences—particularly at a young age—shape one’s sense of safety and self-efficacy. We have, in other words, no clue yet about the long-term effects of massacres in our schools, churches, synagogues, night clubs, shopping malls and Garlic Festivals. And we have not even begun to look at the long term consequences for those who are not immediate, but related victims, the families, the clergy, the teachers and friends of those killed or maimed.
I found the poem below just as striking, if not more so, than reading the statistics and all they imply.
at the movies my eye on the Exit sign on the aisles the doorways the space between the seat in front of me and my legs how far could I crawl before I die?
wednesday after it happened I went to a work event at a gay bar I stood near the exit when I could when I couldn’t I stood near a window I made sure I could open and fit through made sure I could jump out and land on the roof of the building next door just in case after the event my coworker was leaving thought about hugging him but I don’t I waived asked myself is this the last time I’m going to see him?
two weeks after the massacre my partner is getting ready to attend Pride I am staying home
I watch him pick out his outfit I sit quietly on the couch when he is dressed he holds me I hold him a little longer ask myself is this the last time I’m going to see him? he leaves I feel as if I should go with him just in case
has I love you always meant I would die holding you for people like us? has I love you always tasted like two boys scared to form the word amor with their lips terrified to say things like belleza te quiero libertad would you die holding me?
when it happens if it happens do we run towards the fucker together? do we die in each other’s arms?
I will be your shield will you be mine?
I’ve never used my body as a shield is this what true love is? is this what queer love is?
if our genes our DNA truly hold onto memory then we remember our ancestor’s gay love remember our ancestor’s queer communion the ceremony of maricones before us their trauma their struggle and if that is in us then so is their survival!
to all the fuckers out there ready to shoot us down we will survive you we have survived fires we have survived camps we have survived plagues and
we will survive you
I’m sitting at work everyone has moved on to the next tragedy Nice Quetta Baghdad Istanbul
my eyes focus on the exit sign then the door the front lobby then back to the exit sign the door
Hope comes from the strength demonstrated by individual survivors: just look at how the young people of the Parkland murders are present in public debate and refuse to be cowed in face of personal attacks and the relentless re-triggering of the trauma with each new attack. Then there are the parents of Joaquin Oliver, one of the Parkland victims, being in El Paso to unveil a memorial at the day of the terrorist act. Manuel Oliver has worked on almost 20 public murals – walls of demand – since the shooting, trying to raise consciousness. I stand in awe.
Every green room of the forest planted: Trillium and quince, alder and salmonberry, … —Robert Sund
You could go on, I know— green room to green room, names scrolling off your tongue like bark from madrona trunks. Snowberry and salal, Douglas fir and elderberry. Have I told you cedars are my favorites?
I see more rust-colored cedar boughs; “flagging,” a mutual friend explains. For me a new meaning. Things are changing, but this flagging— natural, this time of year. Nothing to worry about. Have I told you I’m feeling my age, am more prone to cliché? Natural, this time of life. Weakness and pain in my right arm is new to me. Go on. I’ll sit here and rest, with the old meaning— in this warming up, drying out rust-colored room.
I’m sorry for harm I’ve caused. Why do you think I started walking, breathing in the ragged poison bouquet of particulates and exhaust? Here, spiderwebs are mostly intact and blackberries flourish. At the tip of my old hiking boot, holey, a beetle evades my attention, strolls under a leaf from a trailing blackberry vine, hides. For me a new beetle; no name scrolls from my tongue.
I lift the leaf, only to say, Hi. I haven’t seen you before. You’re safe. I’m uninterested in causing further harm. Should I buy new hiking boots? It depends. Have I told you our time together has been holy, a benediction? Go on. There is nothing to fear. Don’t worry. Know I loved you. Go on.
Yesterday I was early for a meeting with a friend. Decided to walk around the block when a building caught my eye that had huge photographs of seniors mounted against its facade. Mind you, I have walked down that street many times, since I often go to Fleur de Lis, the cafe where I was expected. It’s strange how attention waxes and wanes.
Turns out it was the Hollywood SeniorCenter that I consciously perceived for the first time. A window display spoke of a project that paired middle schoolers with seniors for photography, one, as I was told when I entered the halls to inquire, that had happened years back.
The friendly manager, apparently not bothered by my curiosity disrupting her work, told me of something more current which I thought I’d share.
This Friday, June 28, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm – 1820 NE 40th Ave, Portland, OR 97212 – they have an event that introduces a topic even richer than the mouthful of a title: The Grandma Reporter Intimacy Issue Magazine Launch Party.
It might be late(r) in life but the issue of intimacy remains a focus, particularly in a world preoccupied with body image and visions of eternal youth. The Grandma Reporter seems out to crack stereotypes, provide pragmatic advice and encourage fun. How can you not adore a Manifesto like this?
The Grandma Reporter (TGR) is a publication committed to the subculture of senior females and their rich worlds existing across the earth, where elderly women have lived forever. TGR aspires to be accessible to young and old but especially to elderly women. We hope to energetically connect our readers, contributors and interviewees in a senior female culture movement. We believe in: proudly declaring your age and keeping it a mystery; dressing up, down and from the heart; talking about death and thinking about past and future lives; walking sticks, wheelchairs and flying in your dreams; wrinkles, bulges, spider veins and bunions; ‘old’, ‘elderly’, ‘senior’, ‘nag’, ‘ageless’, ‘prune’, ‘sage’; discussing disease, incontinence and great television shows; sharing stories of crime, adventure and nonconforming genders; considering the struggles of growing old in a young, technology-focused world; food, genes and other things passed through generations; uncovering long loves, heartbreaks and sex that evolves with age; swimming as a magical way to keep fit in spite of on-land mobility challenges.
– TGR editor, Xi Jie Ng
Ok, those of us personally familiar with a variety of concepts mentioned above, surely will.
I could not tell if “growing up is” optimal or optional. Not sure which one I prefer, either.
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It was time to visit with Judith Arcana, so back to the café I went. We met during the making of a documentary where I photographed her, and have had many thought-provoking conversations since. The poet, writer and activist just published a new edition of her book Grace Paley’s Life Stories, an unusual literary biography based on countless interviews with Paley during the 80’s. From feminist consciousness to political activism of Paley, Arcana’s perceptive narrative triggered a spontaneous “It takes one to know one…” in me. Folks around here can pick up the book at: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, 523 SE Morrison. Other wise you can order it here.
I wanted to close the arc back to early, though. Here is one of Arcana’s poems that struck me for both (familiar) content and (unfamiliar) form.
Eight
Awake and asleep or both or between I traveled in my bed, voyaging grey waves and storm foam under black skies ripped by fierce winds, or
The bed bobbed and eddied in slow breaking circles of sunlight on flat green water; or rocked on smooth blue pools, riding slow swells easily.
And every time, great sharks swam round my bed: I saw their strict fins, saw they were not orcas marked like magpies, mimes and clowns. Not dolphins.
I would lie rigid under the sheet: to stay alive I must not move, not stand up against the headboard, brace muscles for action,
Raise the sheet into a sail; I must not sit up when they swim alongside, toothed skin raking the mattress, gill slashes red above the water line.
From the smallest corners of my eyes I’d see them thrust their thick torpedo snouts from the water; they rose with gaping gullets, baring mythic teeth.
But the bed did not grow sodden, capsize, slip below the surface and slide me paralyzed under water to the circling sharks’ open throats.
In the darkened theater of childhood, I turned away from the screen, from the shadow of danger. Closing my eyes, I learned nothing of death, only of fear.
You may choose today between a poem by a man who prefers to be a mystery and a man whose wife descended into madness. How is that for an offer on a dull Wednesday morning? My way out, of course, given that I am busy with a larger writing project and so need to borrow others’ words.
Both poems made me think (one of them I liked), and each offered an opportunity to be paired with some of the pictures I recently took at a barbershop window and a market stand (Grindstone – Knife and Tool Sharpening), respectively.
When I saw the knife sharpener he was too busy to talk to me.
His partner did instead, revealing that that trade had been handed down for several generations. Her grandfather’s picture – he was an immigrant from Italy – was among the display in front of her.
She expressed deep reverence for tradition.
I expressed awe at these two:
Here is the poem by Kotaro Takamura ( 1883-1956 / Japan) who documented his wife’s descent in much agonizing poetry.
A Man Sharpening A Knife
In silence a knife is being sharpened. Though the sun is already sinking, it is still being sharpened. The back and the front tightly placed, the whetting water changed, it is being sharpened again. What on earth is intended to be made? As though without knowing even that, concentrating the mood of the moment in his brow, behind green leaves, the man sharpens the knife. Bit by bit this man’s sleeve tears. The mustache of this man becomes white. Resentment? Necessity? A vacant mind? This man is simply endless. Is he pursuing the nth degree?
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Well as you know I am interested, to the nth degree, in linking topics together, and since in my mind a barbershop needs knife sharpeners to deal with dull shears, scissors, razor knives etc. I found the connection. In truth I REALLY wanted to get the photos out from this window, which held strong visual interest for me.
On offer, then, is this by Larry Bradley, who is something of an enigma, with only three poems online and a bio that stresses achievement and is silent on anything else.
Today’s blog serves as a Thank You note to a dear friend who invited us to a splendid dinner on Saturday. I chose a poem from Ben Jonson (1572-1637) because he, like our host, was a purveyor of literary criticism and known as someone who put an emphasis on critical learning.
All cook books
For one like me who hates to cook and loves to eat, these occasions are blissful. Cold fennel soup, rack of lamb with asparagus and potatoes, and a divine Pavlova with raspberries were to the the belly what the table talk was to my mind: stimulating, satisfying, and ultimately providing sustenance extending beyond the evening.
Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I Do equally desire your company; Not that we think us worthy such a guest, But that your worth will dignify our feast With those that come, whose grace may make that seem Something, which else could hope for no esteem. It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates The entertainment perfect, not the cates. Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate, An olive, capers, or some better salad Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen, If we can get her, full of eggs, and then Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony Is not to be despaired of, for our money; And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks, The sky not falling, think we may have larks. I’ll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come: Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some May yet be there, and godwit, if we can; Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe’er, my man Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book to us, Of which we’ll speak our minds, amidst our meat; And I’ll profess no verses to repeat.
To this, if ought appear which I not know of, That will the pastry, not my paper, show of. Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be; But that which most doth take my Muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine; Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as so their lines, till now had lasted. Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring, Are all but Luther’s beer to this I sing. Of this we will sup free, but moderately, And we will have no Pooley, or Parrot by, Nor shall our cups make any guilty men;
But, at our parting we will be as when We innocently met. No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight.
Source: Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1974)
Since the decor of French posters was catching my eye, we shall have some French music that celebrates the senses: it’s actually a sweet little film
Today you get a simple (could not echo the rhyming) translation of a poem that appeared in a German newspaper yesterday. Written by Cornelius Oettle and titled My Homeland, it captures for me something essentially true for us here in the US as well, including the current debate of labeling camps as what they are – but also other developments. The tenor about willful blindness and subsequent surprise applies to this discussion as well, as was so perfectly demonstrated yesterday by Ta-Nehisi Coats.
Photographs were taken at Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp that was not officially an extermination camp.
Where Nazis teach school, Where Nazis complain on the internet, Where Nazis appear on nightly TV, Where Nazis buy Facebook friends, Where Nazis use tricks to cheat on taxes, Where Nazis trend on Twitter, Where Nazis are not blocked, Where Nazis fly to Mallorca, Where Nazis are contributors to Focus (weekly German magazine,) Where Nazis remain in the police force, Where Nazis serve as soldiers in the military, Where Nazis dine with reporters, Where Nazis invite Reinhold Beckman, Where Nazis don’t threaten anyone’s reputation, Where Nazis blog for Springer (rightwing mainstream publishing house,) Where Nazis vigilantly jog through Chemniz, Where Nazis run soccer clubs, Where Nazis wave fan club banners, Where Nazis walk alongside of Hoecke (AfD), Where Nazis don’t see any Nazis, Where Nazis prepare for war games, Where Nazi rap runs high in the music charts, Where Nazis bring rock to Themar, Where Nazis sing a song for you, Where Nazis means number of clicks, Where Nazis ring bells for Hitler, Where Nazis appear in throngs on the talk shows, Where Nazis interrupt book expos, Where Nazis demand upper limits, Where Nazis order true fruit smoothies, Where Nazis support Victor Orban, Where Nazis protect the constitution, Where Nazis listen to Rainer Wendt (a former German policeman and since 2007 Federal Chairman of the German Police Union (DPolG), Where Nazis disrupt the rescue of drowning refugees, Where Nazis shred the files of Nazis, Where Nazis destroy memorials, Where Nazis grieve for a dog, Where Nazis regret the comment of birdshit (inhalation to the Holocaust,) Where Nazis found Nazi villages, Where Nazis like to burn down refugee homes, Where Nazis form alliances, Where Nazis shoot foreigners, Where Nazis annually whistle to Wagner, Where Nazis kill members of the CDU (a prominent government director was shot to death on the terrace of his own house by a neonazi last week – the first assassination of a politician since the Weimar republic) – there everyone is wondering right now, where do all these Nazis come from?
The Reuters photo below was attached to the publication.
Plastic garden dwarves with their arms outstretched in the stiff-armed Hitler salute are pictured in the Zeise cinema to promote the movie premier “Little Germans” in Hamburg, Germany May 9, 2019. The garden dwarves with their arms outstretched have been part of the 2008 installation “Dance with the Devil” by German artist Ottmar Hoerl in Germany, and first time with 700 dwarves in Ghent, Belgium, with the title “Poisoned”. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer
Music is from an album by the Grenzgaenger who collected songs from the anti-fascist resistance, many derived from interviews with camp survivors who recalled what was sung.
