Imagine yourself on a mountain ridge between two deep canyons. The city is spread out at your feet, the mountains behind you.
You are surrounded by olive, palm, eucalyptus and pine trees, with an occasional sycamore thrown in.
The vegetation is dry to the bone ,
and when you marvel at the fiery sunrise in the mornings your heart goes out to all those affected by wildfires, enraged by the thought that soon we will have a president and his minions who will make disaster help contingent on political lockstep, as announced by them.
Worse, they will do away with environmental protection and pollute as long and as hard as they can, climate change be damned, its science ridiculed or overruled by the demands for profit.
You feel privileged, up there on that beautiful ridge, to be able to look at the changing sky,
to hike down the small private trail to the city, along the waterline, sandy, steep, surrounded by dead yuccas and a landscape filled with luminous rusty colors. The only official access is a one-lane dirt road crossing the canyon with a small bridge, your car soon anticipating the worst potholes and getting the hang of serpentine curves.
Imagine yourself waking up in the middle of the night to the acrid smell of fire, loud crackling and popping noises, flames already sky high. You don’t know what is burning in your vicinity, one of the other structures, and how far away it is. You grab your meds, your purse, your computer and the car keys, and race down that hill fully aware that once a firetruck comes up you are stuck on the ridge.
This happened to me Tuesday night. I am still processing, rattled to the core.
The first fire-police jeeps came within a minute after I had exited the lane onto the street, where I had stopped the car, shaking too much to drive safely. The firetrucks, later, could not cross the bridge. The fire was extinguished with hoses on site and helicopters dumping their load, onto the vicinity as well, to prevent the spread of fire into the wilderness. One person hospitalized, some non-human life lost.
I went back the next day, still in my nightshirt, to pack up my unharmed stuff, my house completely unscathed as all the others in the neighborhood but that one structure and parked truck that burnt to the ground. I can no longer envision myself up there without fear, forever hyperalert to the smells and sounds. And I cannot help myself but thinking of the symbolism mirroring our current situation, ever aware of potential catastrophes and then, in a flash, they have arrived. Yes, it could have been far worse here, but in many instances it HAS been and WILL be far worse, with so many people affected, around the world for lack of appropriate leadership.
I lost nothing other than a cherished place to spend my time in SoCal, and even that loss is entirely psychologically grounded in my own fear to return to the place. I don’t want to think about how it must feel for people who lost loved ones, or their entire material existence, or a community that will never again cohere, thrown into the winds, and still floating many years later. In fact, I don’t want to think about it much at all, since I still get these waves of flash-backs of that drive down the mountain, the overpowering noises still in my ears.
I had meant to visit the World Forestry Center’s current Exhibition Following Fire once back in Portland. Can’t see myself doing that, either. Subtitled A Resilient Forest/An Uncertain Future it is a photography project by photographer David Paul Bayles and disturbance ecologist Frederick Swanson, documenting the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire that burned 173,000 acres along the forested McKenzie River canyon in the Cascade Range of Oregon. You should, though, if only to get motivated to help protect our world against the dark forces.
Onwards. With the appropriate musical accompaniment.
“We do not know what will happen. But we can know who we can commit to be in the face of what happens. That is a strong beginning.” – Rebecca Solnit
So who do we want to commit to be in view of being surrounded by voters willing to tolerate or invite fascism, voters manipulated into ignorance about the consequences of their actions, or non-voters indifferent enough to fail to prevent it? (I think it is important to remember how many people did not vote at all.) Who do we want to commit to be in anticipation of the catastrophes brought to our neighborhoods (and the world) by agents of hate, retribution and lust for power?
In my own case, I want to commit to nourish community, in my real as well as my digital life, as expressed here on the blog. I will stand on principle and not make compromises halfway between the truth and lies, as appeasers in the media would like to have us. I will continue to use the tools I have, to stimulate thinking about politics and history, to use my background as a scientist to educate about the domains of psychology, health and climate change. I will also add a new feature once a week, Does this makes sense?, linking to one or two long-form pieces of writing that were particularly thought-provoking in my perusal of the week’s publications (and not necessarily something I agree with), perhaps prompting a community discussion in the comments. I will post reading recommendations from people who are smarter and more organized than I am, geared towards the issues at hand. You’ll find some at the end of today’s blog. Solnit’s encouragements are a good way to start. Mind you, I completely understand if reading is too much now, or ever; it’s just my frantic default option….
I will commit to balancing the reports on the frightening with all that we can still be grateful for, the beauty around us, nature that models resiliency, indigenous wisdom that guides us, art that encourages resistance, poetry that fortifies us. Today’s choice, written during the horrors of the Civil War, describes adaptation as a form of resilience, not defeatism. Let that be the manner in which we tackle our current universe!
We grow accustomed to the Dark-
We grow accustomed to the Dark – When light is put away – As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Goodbye –
A Moment – We uncertain step For newness of the night – Then – fit our Vision to the Dark – And meet the Road – erect –
And so of larger – Darknesses – Those Evenings of the Brain – When not a Moon disclose a sign – Or Star – come out – within –
The Bravest – grope a little – And sometimes hit a Tree Directly in the Forehead – But as they learn to see –
Either the Darkness alters – Or something in the sight Adjusts itself to Midnight – And Life steps almost straight.
I am currently in Southern California, surrounded by nature in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The noisiest birds that visit me are the California acorn woodpeckers. I wrote at length about this fascinating species here two years ago. They are perfect models for what we have to learn: to live in “bushels” of community, tending to our broods and granaries as a cohesive group, rather than fixating on individual success. They are a prime example of the evolutionary benefits of cooperation, across many generations, both with regard to breeding patterns, raising the young and creating, using and restoring granaries for acorns, riddling oak trees with custom-sized holes which provide storage for food during winter. Cannot think of a better symbol for the road ahead.
Trump’s victory is a grim day for the United States and for democracies around the world. You have every right to be appalled, saddened, shocked, and frightened. Soon, however, you should dust yourself off, square your shoulders, and take a deep breath. Americans who care about democracy have work to do. ” Tom Nichols in Nov 6, 2024 The Atlantic
My night was disrupted by constant despondent messages from my European friends and readers – not that I could sleep anyhow. I found myself embracing conspiracy theories rather than acknowledging the real horror of this election outcome: the majority of American voters are happy to act on racist, misogynistic, patriarchal and christian nationalistic impulses. The spectacle of cruelty and power, of ignorant belief in empty promises and a desire for traditional hierarchies restored, attracted millions of voters, White women and men predominantly among them. Embracing the fact that they are empowering a convicted felon and his coterie of oligarchs and supplicants. Equality, as enshrined in the Constitution, but an empty term.
Who would not rather believe that voting machines were manipulated, by oligarchic shenanigans or foreign powers, that bomb threats and voter suppression disrupted the process, that votes were systematically not counted, than to admit in what company of landsmen we exist?
The grief I feel today is compounded by the fact that German history is so closely associated with my life as German-born, as a Jew, as a scientist, who sees the writing on the wall, whether it will be show trials for opponents of a malignant narcissist, withholding of disaster aid to blue states, willful ignorance of scientific data ranging from vaccination denial health care decisions (welcome back, polio and diphtheria, measles and pandemics,) to climate change in what short window of time we still have. The damage will be irrevocable.
Millions around the world will pay the price for this nation’s election, starting with the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples who will have fought in vain against genocidal aggression. The grief is compounded by knowing that so many of my younger friends or children’s generation worked so hard for a better future, throwing themselves into canvassing and other organizing work, because they realized that their own future is so much more endangered than that of my generation that soon will be gone.
I know that autocrats’ goals are to instill fear in us, and exhaustion, isolation, disorientation. George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian before the election:
Never underestimate the vengeful nihilism at the heart of this movement. The glitter-eyed fanatics behind Project 2025 and other such programmes will smash whatever is most precious to you, partly at the behest of commercial interests – but also to enjoy watching the pain it inflicts. They will crush beauty, joy, community and hope precisely because other people value them.
Well, they will try. There will be a time to resist that, to move and organize and understand that those of us who are privileged as white middle class people are called on supporting the multitudes of more vulnerable fellows. But today I grieve. I withdraw. I have nothing else in me. I had gotten my hopes up, unable to fathom the depth of racism that drives this country and the lust for hate, and fell all the more. Allow yourself to grieve, too, if you share these fears. Then we’ll figure out what comes next. Together.
Eugene O’Neill looked for and found a seemingly peaceful enclave for writing his all but peaceful plays in the San Ramon Valley. For 6 years he and his wife lived in a gated house built with the money from his NobelPrize for literature, overlooking Mt. Diablo, grateful for the seclusion in the valley, the writer struggling with progressive tremors from Parkinson disease.
He felt he could only create with pen put to paper, an increasing hardship. His oldest son’s suicide, the estrangement from with his other 2 children, actively pursued by him after his daughter Oona married Charlie Chaplin, threw long shadows over a landscape filled with light. Eventually the couple moved back to the East coast.
“Peaceful” was in the eye of the beholder, anyhow. The original peoples of the region were violently uprooted by the 1772 arrival of the Spanish who established missions, killed those who objected in direct warfare and spread diseases that decimated the Tatcan, Seunen and Saclan tribes in horrifying numbers. When the missions were closed in 1863, fewer than a score of Indian descendants in the region were alive.
Of course, it didn’t end there. The Mexican government granted two Ranchos in the valley. The grazing cattle and sheep destroyed the herb and bulb meadows carefully nurtured by the tribes to provide traditional foods when hunting or fishing was precarious.
Then came the miners. The Gold Rush invaded more Indian lands and when California joined the Union in 1850 they immediately passed a law that allowed Indians to be enslaved by any White man, cynically called the “Act for the Protection of the Indians” (repealed in 1863, well into the Civil War period.)
I learned all this from a visit to a tiny history museum located in an old train station in Danville, attendant struggling to figure out that admission was $3, since they usually deal with school classes. A single room filled to the brim with dusty exhibits, lovingly collected across decades.
Displays ranged from stuffed animals to tribal artifacts, to walls of photographs celebrating noted personalities of Indian descent. Prints of works by famous photographer Edward S. Curtis and drawings by Michael Harney were isolated highlights among a lot of idiosyncratic exhibits.
Walking in the valley early in the morning provided welcome access to species alive rather than embalmed by eager taxidermists.
It is beautiful out here, even after the hottest, driest summer on record. The rains are supposed to return today.
Dried out creek.
Instead of music here are links to “Beyond the horizon,” a play filmed on the grounds of the O’Neill Tao House and in the landscape I currently walk in.
I was not alone on my way South. Surrounded by innumerable drivers, we were all stuck on I 5 behind a garbage truck that managed to blow up and burn out on the middle of a bridge over the Willamette river, with no room to move it aside for people to pass. Firetrucks, police, all on site, with us patiently sitting and waiting for eternity in turned-off cars.
Fire seems to have been a theme of the drive. When I arrived at my motel for the first overnight stop, all fire alarms were blaring, fire police frantically trying to find the source of the alarms. 45 minute wait later, they decided it was just a false signal from a corrupted sprinkler system. I fell into bed, fried.
Surrounded by innumerable water fowl, I saw smoke of a small fire billowing on the horizon. By the time I had left the wildlife preserve, smoke clouds covered the landscape and wafted over the highway, the fire had clearly exploded.
What was really fascinating, though, was the constant change in light in this California landscape, close to Sacramento. All the variations you see in the photographs below were taken during a 45 minute stay amongst my migrating pals.
Rain coming down hard
Some 10.000 white fronted geese and about 2000 snow geese hung out, if we can trust the species lists provided by birders for the day I came through.
Snow Geese
White fronted Geese
I did not focus on many of the other birds,
a large flock of turkey vultures, however, focused on me. One came so close overhead that I thought he’d dive….
There is something interesting about people naming collections of these birds, depending on the activity they can be found in. Mostly they are called a flock or a kettle, but when they rest they are called a committee and when they feed on carrion they are called a wake. Sometimes they are called a venue or a congregation Is that true for other raptors as well? In any case, do migrate as well, sometimes in kettles of up to 10.000 birds. I had no idea that was the case. I sure was surrounded.
I am now near San Francisco, hoping to see gardens new to me. Stay tuned.
“The performers of this work by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (b. 1933) imagined that the central figure of Wild Bird (1998) is a vulture, who finding his prey on the ground, tears it to pieces and eats it, before flying off again. The work is full of extreme dynamics, changing tempos and meters, and sharp dissonances. Clearly this is not your cute little song bird. In “Wild Bird” from 1997, the violin embodies the startled fluttering spirit, while the harp creates an echo chamber for it. The exhausting tour ends in audible fatigue.
I am leaving town a bit earlier than anticipated, so am jumbling to get everything squared for a month-long trip. Yes, I owe you a book review, no worries, it will come. So will travel reports and of course Art on the Road, given how much is currently on offer in Southern California. Just not on a regular schedule.
In the meantime, walk with me one last time in the fall woods of Oregon, along the river. It was an easier choice than that of the peace dove from this fabulous photograph that my sister sent. Clearly her options are overwhelming, a sad testimony to the current state of the world, but the set-up was, I thought, ingenious. (The lowest sign adds: and all other countries not mentioned here…)
I was encouraged by the fact that there is this public reminder expressing our hope for peace. I was also propped up by a recent article by Anne Applebaum making a case against pessimism. (Gift link, should allow you access.) And I want to remind you that excursions into nature are by far the easiest and most effective remedy for momentary despair, if only to remind you what’s a stake to fight for, rather than give up.
Need not be a monumental hike. Can be sitting on a park bench, for all I care, or counting the daisies in a strip of lawn, or, as in the case below, walking around a wildlife preserve on easy paths.
Falls has arrived, luminously so.
Herons, ibis and cormorants hanging out, ready for lunch.
Some finding morsels more easily than others.
Next to the yellows, and isolated reds, there was a sense of the lushest of green, almost mirroring early spring in one last Hurrah before the cold nights set in.
As always, there were surprises: yesterday some form of land art, I suppose, although it made me think of all these sneakers slung across the street wires…
Familiar trees, ever changing. Through seasons, through wildlife activity, through human interference. A reminder that change is inevitable, at times beautiful, and we might as well go with it. Says this aging blogger, about to drive my car to L.A. for a change in scenery.
I’ll listen to Piazzola’s seasons on the way South, but here is Fall.
Soooooo – I was going to write about a book I thought I would have finished reading by now, but life and a knitting project intervened. Sneak preview for all you Richard Powers fans out there: he scored again. Get on the library wait list for “Playground.” Very much worth it. I will report more anon. What to do for a placeholder in the meantime?
As it turned out, Greg Olear published a W.B.Yeats poem yesterday in his newsletterPrevail. I could not think of a more prescient description of our very own situation here before November 5th. I had to look up Helicon – a mountain in Greece, praised for two springs that sustained the muses in Greek mythology – and calumny – malicious false accusation or slander. Yeats’ ire was likely directed at the religious factions in Ireland, our’s is most certainly applied to whom the descriptions below match best: those averse to learning, open to slander, masters of fantastic falsehoods and opposed to anything that diverges from white supremacist norms….
The Leaders Of The Crowd
THEY must to keep their certainty accuse All that are different of a base intent; Pull down established honour; hawk for news Whatever their loose fantasy invent And murmur it with bated breath, as though The abounding gutter had been Helicon Or calumny a song. How can they know Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no Solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
But before we start this week with dismay, let’s look at those beautiful owls that simply sat next to my path in the woods, looking at me while I was looking at them. Bliss.
Now I must go back to the novel, dying to know how it ends…
Music is a reference to W.B.Yeats as well…a bit strange, and quite enticing.
Walk with me along the Promenade, along the Willamette river under an ever changing sky (all photographs from yesterday morning). Friendly taggers on the Steel Bridge reminding us of the important things in life…
…which made me think of voting. Election ballots are on their way to us who vote by mail in Oregon. In addition to the nail biter on the national scene, we have some major changes to the political landscape in Portland. I figured for today’s blog, I’ll make some information accessible that you are likely to dig out for yourselves otherwise, saving you some time. There is, of course, always the Oregon Voter Pamphlet, which provides more information, including the slate of endorsers that might have your trust for having done the relevant research into candidates. (You can access it digitally from the link above, with info specific for your county.)
Bridges in full display, drying out after early showers in a warm October sun.
For those of us in PDX: Two years ago, we voted to change the city’s charter and shift from a commissioner-run government to a collection of four districts, each represented by a group of three council members. A new mayor and an appointed city manager will oversee the 12 city councilors. There are 19 candidates for mayor, and 98 candidates for 12 city councillor positions, all up for rank choice voting, which is also newly introduced.
For starters: if you don’t know which district you live and vote in (given that they have been newly configured) go here https://www.portlandmaps.com and enter your address. A pop-up window will deliver information, including your district number. I live in district # 4, so some of the examples below will relate to that district.
Given the fact that I, like presumably many of you, do not know all of these candidates or their history, I base my choices on what they have to say about the three things that require most action (and changed approaches) in my opinion. These are the housing crisis, transportation alternatives and tackling climate change. (The latter two obviously related.) You might have different targets, of course.
How do I know where the candidates stand? Several local and national news organizations have published interviews (with those who responded) and offer them in the context of their own endorsements.
Here are some of the links from Portland Mercury, Willamette Week and the Oregonian. I have left them assigned to district, when offered, so you don’t have to read all of them, just the one that pertains to you.
With regard to the mayoral choice I do know exactly who I do NOT want, and need to be convinced who to vote for as plausible candidates. It is important not to rank the candidate you abhor, so they do not gather points in the ranked choice. Pick the three you think work out, leave the rest options blank.
I am not making recommendations for candidates, but I will certainly be voting NO on one particular measure that is fraught with unintended negative consequences: Measure 118.
It proposes to give every single Oregonian (regardless of age or income) an estimated $1,600 per year that would be funded by a new corporate tax on really big businesses. One can debate whether it makes sense to give money to all, regardless of income level or need, wasting sparse resources. But the real problem with the measure derives from tax laws. Oregon state law says that corporations only have to pay the higher of two taxes—the tax on their profits, or the corporate minimum tax. Measure 118 would skyrocket the cost of the corporate minimum tax, so big business would have no choice but to pay that one in order to fund all those $1,600 rebates. That would leave significantly less money paid by corporations into Oregon’s general fund, which provides fundamental services like K-12 public education, health care, child care, and public safety, all of which are already gravely underfunded. The state’s analysis predicts Oregon will lose out on well over $1 billion in future budget cycles that could have funded social needs. It will shaft the ones who need support most.
Below is a detailed review of the measure’s potential impact – note that opposition comes from the left as well as the right, in some rare display of shared rejection.
October, time for my annual sharing of the recent beauty I found in the woods.
I’m clearly not the only one preoccupied with mushrooms at this time of year. This coming Saturday, October 19th, Stevenson, WA offers its inaugural Mushroom Festival. In their words: “Whether you’re a seasoned mycologists, blossoming enthusiast or simply fungi-curious, don’t miss this unforgettable weekend in Stevenson, Washington.”
Loved that. Call me Fungi-curious!
There will be culinary attractions, lots of vendors for all things mycological, and workshops and demonstrations, including plenty of kid activities. Details here.
With perfect timing, the Columbia Gorge Museum opens its doors to the community once again with particularly interesting offers. Currently on exhibit is artist Julie Beeler, with works directly and indirectly driven by her passion for mycology. Symbiosis features, according to the exhibition announcement, “immersive ‘tree totems’ showcasing the vibrant hues derived from regional fungi, alongside textile pieces, mono prints, and photographs that illustrate their connection to the environment.”
Photo Credit Columbia Gorge Museum
Beeler derives dyes from mushrooms, forty varieties of fungi to create 825 vibrant natural pigments, dyes, and paints by some count, and creates sometimes wondrous textile configuration that capture the essence of the PNW landscape colors and configuration.
In addition, she conveys all that knowledge in a recent published book, illustrated by Yuli Gates, The Mushroom Color Atlas. The interactive feature on the link allows you to pick any specific color and then learn which mushroom provides that kind of dye. The book, overall, teaches us about the mycological world, drawing people into exploration of our natural environment.
The artist will be giving a hands-on pigments, paints and inks demonstration at the museum on Saturday. Columbia Gorge Museum | 990 SW Rock Creek Drive | 1pm – 2pm.
It will be followed, at 3:30 pm by Mycophilia In This Now, a presentation by mycology educator and facilitator Jordan Weiss. The educator will feature spectacular mushroom photography and explore the emerging use of technology for fungi as well as information about psilocybin. Weiss has been sharing his knowledge of fungi for decades, working with groups such as the Oregon State University Extension Master Gardener program and Telluride Mushroom Festival as well as mushroom clubs in Salem, Estacada and Bend.
If you can’t make it out to the Columbia Gorge Museum (it is a 50 minutes, beautiful drive, with easy parking, but I get it…) there is another opportunity to dive into the world of mushrooms. The Oregon Mycological Society offers its annual Mushroom Show at the World Forestry Center in PDX on October 27th, from 12 – 5 pm.
Photocredit: OMS website
Yours truly will seek the pleasure of the solitary (photographic) mushroom hunt instead. Blissfully ignorant about their classification, usage, or poison power, just attracted to their spectacular visual beauty, iPhone in hand, composing the next photo montage in my head.
Music today is the latest installment of DJ Farina’sMushroom Jazz, compilations started many years ago. One more delightful than the next.
I was walking on a dike towards the Columbia river, water levels so low that the geese rested on sand banks in the middle of the sidearm.
Drought had emptied the ponds of all water, colored the landscape with muted browns.
(The brown center is usually a lake)
Leaves of the cottonwoods all silvery in the bright light, mustard yellow on the ground once shed, echoing the lichen.
A few familiars, a harrier hawk, herons and deer, a fearless kestrel advertising the location, an egret flying in search of water. It was hot and it was still, only some isolated chants of geese formations carrying across the meadows, stark light, air shimmering.
If you can’t walk with me through a strangely out-of-season October landscape, find a comfortable spot to sit and read a very long poem. It contains worlds. Cyclic worlds of destruction, worlds of renewal, worlds of despair and ultimately resilience.
It also contains lines that describe perfectly what I experienced yesterday, “summer after summer has ended, … the low hills shine, ochre and fire, even the fields shine… a sun that could be the August sun … a day like a day in summer, exceptionally still.”
I have not been exactly a fan of poet Louise Glück who won the Nobel Prize in 2020, and died this week a year ago. For me, her biting wit too often veered into cruelty. Yet I do see why the Nobel committee awarded Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” She describes the core of coping with trauma regardless of what it was or whom it affected: a person, a people, a planet. There is indeed a universality to the processes she describes, understands and accepts, with a few recommendations toward action or acceptance thrown in.
Having written last week about Kintsugi as a ceramic art form addressing trauma, I thought we might be challenged by looking at poetry that shares some of that approach. Laying bare the scars, acknowledging the irreversibility to a prior state of being, but finding beauty in acknowledgment – there with gold dust as a means of emphasis, here with determined words that claim an untouchable core.
The poem I chose for that purpose is called October. It was written in 2002 as a response to the World Trade Center bombing, and published in Averno in 2006. Lago d’Averno is the name of a deep crater lake near Naples, Italy, thought to be the gateway to the underworld by the Romans. The volume contains several poems describing the myth of Persephone and her cyclical return to earth, with imagery alternating between the destructive world of Hades where she has to reside, and the fruitful world of earth where she is permitted to return to her mother, Demeter, and makes things grow, for periods of time.
22 years later, the poem fits with a world gone mad, whether with personal loss, or the ravages of war, the lure of fascism, or the fears brought on by nature shedding all reserve – through pandemics, or catastrophic changes in climate that lead to the disasters we are now experiencing. It alludes to fear, memory distortion, experienced harm and a refusal to give in to despair, even when we have to acknowledge that we cannot turn to the earth and the planets to rescue us.
Here is my spontaneous take (and you might want to read the poem below first, so I make at least a semblance of sense…):
The first section describes disorientation, a shifting and uncertainty of where the narrator is in time, a loss of a sense of hearing or the ability to decipher meaning. It alludes to pointlessness in trying to anchor herself, no more grasp on reality. It mentions a better, more fertile past where we believed in growing things, in good outcomes. It is a jumble of confusion. Wasn’t life supposed to have a happy ending?
The second section has the narrator reemerge with a strong mind, one that is tested and wary, observing, able to discern that the violence of trauma changed her, harmed a body in ways that cannot be reversed, but a mind now clearly assessing the world that is. Nature is still around, like a bit player, observed but not able to intervene.
Section 3 is given to memory. Remnants of beauty, succor in nature, a world beckoning you to be part of it. Reminiscence makes way to acknowledgment that life can bring pain worse than death. An inkling of defiance, not a submissive nod to saying good bye. So many amazing things to list.
Section 4 starts – for me – to deliver the goods. The poet acknowledges how horrid things have become, how fall (after trauma) contains so much more loss than spring, but she starts to add up what still exists: ideals still burn in us, like a fever or a second heart, music remains, though changed, perceptions are sharpened.
“How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.”
Majestic. Painful. A core of us remains intact, despite the horrors, indestructible.
The fifth section reminds us that there is still work to do, work that can be done, and that we are not alone in all of this, whether in collective grief or through collective action.
And lastly, section six seems to sink into the depth of defeat, acknowledging the destruction of a barren earth, no longer nurturing, no longer an option to act as a rescuer. But then the moon appears, with the last lines referring to beauty and friendship. There is no illusion that the moon will do what the earth can no longer, but the concepts of beauty and friendship counteract hopelessness, suggesting there are still forms of connection.
Like in real trauma work, the alternations of drowning and lift-up, of cycling between hope and despair, of past and future orientation, allow us to spiral upwards on our own path towards healing.
“How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love.”
Maybe it’s privilege. Maybe it’s grace. Maybe it’s simple grit, refusing to give up.
I’ll cling as long as I want to, trauma be damned. I’m not forfeiting hope either, let me tell you. There is still too much work to do. (And I hope I’m not eating my words after the election. Then again, remember what Persephone and Demeter, central figures in the Eleusinian Mysteries, promised true believers: a happy afterlife. Looks like we have one final shot…)
October
1. Is it winter again, is it cold again, didn’t Frank just slip on the ice, didn’t he heal, weren’t the spring seeds planted didn’t the night end, didn’t the melting ice flood the narrow gutters wasn’t my body rescued, wasn’t it safe didn’t the scar form, invisible above the injury terror and cold, didn’t they just end, wasn’t the back garden harrowed and planted— I remember how the earth felt, red and dense, in stiff rows, weren’t the seeds planted, didn’t vines climb the south wall I can’t hear your voice for the wind’s cries, whistling over the bare ground I no longer care what sound it makes when was I silenced, when did it first seem pointless to describe that sound what it sounds like can’t change what it is— didn’t the night end, wasn’t the earth safe when it was planted didn’t we plant the seeds, weren’t we necessary to the earth, the vines, were they harvested?
2. Summer after summer has ended, balm after violence: it does me no good to be good to me now; violence has changed me. Daybreak. The low hills shine ochre and fire, even the fields shine. I know what I see; sun that could be the August sun, returning everything that was taken away— You hear this voice? This is my mind’s voice; you can’t touch my body now. It has changed once, it has hardened, don’t ask it to respond again. A day like a day in summer. Exceptionally still. The long shadows of the maples nearly mauve on the gravel paths. And in the evening, warmth. Night like a night in summer. It does me no good; violence has changed me. My body has grown cold like the stripped fields; now there is only my mind, cautious and wary, with the sense it is being tested. Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer; bounty, balm after violence. Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields have been harvested and turned. Tell me this is the future, I won’t believe you. Tell me I’m living, I won’t believe you.
3. Snow had fallen. I remember music from an open window. Come to me, said the world. This is not to say it spoke in exact sentences but that I perceived beauty in this manner. Sunrise. A film of moisture on each living thing. Pools of cold light formed in the gutters. I stood at the doorway, ridiculous as it now seems. What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature. Very simple. But there was no voice there. Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing. Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher— death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life.
4. The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared. The songs have changed; the unspeakable has entered them. This is the light of autumn, not the light that says I am reborn. Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered. This is the present, an allegory of waste. So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate: the ideal burns in you like a fever. Or not like a fever, like a second heart. The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful. They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind. They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish. And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly in anticipation of silence. The ear gets used to them. The eye gets used to disappearances. You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared. A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.
5. It is true there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use. I am at work, though I am silent. The bland misery of the world bounds us on either side, an alley lined with trees; we are companions here, not speaking, each with his own thoughts; behind the trees, iron gates of the private houses, the shuttered rooms somehow deserted, abandoned, as though it were the artist’s duty to create hope, but out of what? what? the word itself false, a device to refute perception— At the intersection, ornamental lights of the season. I was young here. Riding the subway with my small book as though to defend myself against the same world: you are not alone, the poem said, in the dark tunnel.
6. The brightness of the day becomes the brightness of the night; the fire becomes the mirror. My friend the earth is bitter; I think sunlight has failed her. Bitter or weary, it is hard to say. Between herself and the sun, something has ended. She wants, now, to be left alone; I think we must give up turning to her for affirmation. Above the fields, above the roofs of the village houses, the brilliance that made all life possible becomes the cold stars. Lie still and watch: they give nothing but ask nothing. From within the earth’s bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?
