Ozarks 27.9.03: Beggars' Lice and Crisp White Wine

Aster vying with goldenrod to be the prettiest flower of the glads; hickory nuts falling with huge whomps on the tin roof; squirrels scampering after such nuts; evening light making sumac a red hardly to be believed; daddy long-legs capering in advance of the cold snap; beggars' lice hitching rides on any inch of clothing they can grab; wind chime slowly singing in the west wind; mushrooms gold, red, brown, some spotted with green and one a yellow filament affair like a sponge or an American form of shiitake.  

As the day goes on, more of the front comes through, making the late-afternoon air and sunlight that wine air and sun of autumn.  And we're toasting it with glasses of white wine, crisp and gold in the afternoon sun.  Why white when it's green gold embodied?  And to think that the grapes that yield this glass of sunlight caught grew along the Mosel in Germany and their wine's being drunk in the Ozarks in Arkansas.

I eschew time, here.  It could be 4.  It could be 5.  Who cares?  If I tip my head down to watch Brassie, her nose just off the porch as she surveys the creek, I catch the sun beneath the porch roof, just in eyes and face.  Not the sun of summer--a friend, not foe.  I can feel in my bones how welcome its warmth and light will be come winter.

And just now, I see its angle will catch the northern slopes before it dips any lower, bring evening to our tiny valley long before day ends on higher ground.  The north side of the creek is suddenly in shade, one triangular rock on the south side of the waterfall pool gloriously illuminated, every pock in its face cast in brightness and chiaroscuro, its lichen like something intricately carved by a master craftsman.

Brassie, unusually self-assertive, is at the pool drinking and dabbling, now rolling luxuriously ion her back.  I hope the thick grass and cool ground heal the itch that seems these days to trouble her.

Thoreau, Walden:

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.  I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else I knew as well.  Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.  Moreover, I on my side require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

Rafferty's The Ozarks says that summer nights are notable for the cool air that streams down hillsides an hour or so before sunset.   I've seen this just now.  Looking up, I could see the few wispy clouds motionless, but the trees atop the south hill began to sway noticeably in a wind I began to feel on my face, as I watched the setting sun illuminate that hillside.  Fall yes, but late summer still, judging by the wind.

Ozarks 13.9.03: Pilgrim Mothers and Dryasdust Shells of Reality

Mary Oliver, Winter Hours (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999):

This is called happiness.  This is called: stay away from me with your inches, and your savings accounts, and your plums in a jar.  Your definitive anything.  And if life is so various, so shifting, what could we possibly say of death, that black leaf, that has in it any believable finality? (p. 78).

When I read Mary Oliver, I want to stop writing.  How can any word of mine say it so precisely, so gracefully?  Or, better yet, stop writing and reading, and simply look.  But with her eyes--and there's the trick: not just eyes, but heart.

There's that New England tradition of the passionate engaged hermit, the one who will go her own obdurate way, and see what others don't--Dickinson, Thoreau.  It's an inherited refractory mystical strain, the Pilgrim mothers straining on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of New Jerusalem on the rocky coast of these new shores.  Emerson--sweetest Emerson, Oliver calls him--has it, too.

It's a Platonism woven into the fabric of Anglicanism, a spiritual path of seeing what's inside it all--to change senses, of sucking sweet nectar from the dryasdust shell of reality.  And that requires--that passionate eremitical enterprise--a social commitment, oddly enough. A political commitment: the willingness to live at peace with obdurate others as unwervingly set as seeing it their way as one is oneself.

The two arms of Anglicanism at its best, perplexing to many outsiders: passionate mystical engagement with life in its ordinariness; and passionate sociopolitical engagement founded on an instinct for welcoming (or at least bearing with) the other.  Thoreau exemplifies it, and is thus the Enigma to many interpreters.

We in the South have no such tradition.  I am not sure why.  I read Mary Oliver (and Thoreau, and Dickinson) to catch a glimpse of a way to cranny my own neck towards Jerusalem.  But how to do that effectively, short of selling all and heading to nethermost Maine?

Or is this my Maine, these 80 acres?  A breeze nudges my neck from downstream as I ask this, the soft wet wind from south and east, furry like a cat's tongue cleaning my earlobes.  I spent much of my young life looking for such a refuge, and now I have it, gratis (due to the grace of) Kat.  Kat was, in her own way, a mystic-hermit with a heart passionately engaged in the lives of those around her.

I keep asking about vocation--my vocation--expecting the bolt of lightning to strike.  But perhaps it did many years ago, and now I'm in the midst of it, where there are no more flashes, just dogged fidelity.  Perhaps this hermitage comes just as I need it.

And I can never be here--watch here; write here--without thinking of my great-grandfather's uncle Wilson Bachelor and ow he, too, watched and wrote.  He manged to carry on that looking for Jerusalem tradition on the western frontier of Arkansas.

This place immerses you in it, because it's a bowl through which a stream roars after rain such as we had yesterday.  The roar of the water drowns hearing.  And as I age, I'm less and less able to smell.  I'd better use what sight I still have, while I have it.

Ozarks 27.7.04: Water-Reflected Light, Paths of Mist in Pines

Sunrise at the cabin, compared to sunset: sunset ushers in a cool evening; sunrise touches the cool damp depths of the valley with fingers of warmth. Sunset catches to fire the leaves of the elm beside the mere. As beams of setting sun sparkle on the rippling surface of the water, the leaves and trunk of the tree dance with light, as if the entire tree is illumined by some artificial power source. With the diamond gleam of the green leaves in the setting sun and the play of water-reflected light, day ends in symphony sublime.

Morning sun traces paths of mist down through the pines, onto the cabin’s chimney. I sit now in the first beam of light as the sun rises over the eastern hilltop, though the far western lip of the mere has been lit up for some time now. And as I watch, drops of water fall through the light, evidently from leaves laden with moisture, as a breeze troubles the still air. Like sunset, a sight almost too beautiful for human eyes to see.

+ + + + +

Thoreau, A Walk on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers: “Alas, the poet too, is, in one sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter quarters of deep and serene thought, insensible to surrounding circumstances; his words are the relation of his oldest and finest memory, as wisdom drawn from the remotest experience. Other men lead a starved existence, meanwhile, like hawks, that would fain keep on the wing, and trust to pick up a sparrow now and then.”

Which reminds me: the other day, as we drove, we passed a blind man standing very still and silent on the street. It was as if he were intently listening, concentrating on some inner reality to the exclusion of all outer concern . . . .

I see the sun set, rise, as a blind man does.

+ + + + +

Mary Oliver, Long Life: “Surely he was looking for something that would abide beyond the Tuesday or the Saturday.” This vis-à-vis Emerson.

And then this astonishing passage—astonishing because it encapsulates so precisely what I just wrote: “The lofty fun of it is that his ‘appearances’ were all merely material and temporal—brick walls, garden walls, ripening pears—while his facts were all of a shifty vapor and an unauthored good-will—the luminosity of the pears, the music of birds and the wind, the affirmative staring-out light of the night stars.”

+ + + + +

Thoreau, Civil Disobedience: “Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”

Ozarks 26-27.6.04: Christianity and Candles

26.6.04

Kats Rest again—the boys, Luke, Colin, and Pat with us. And I have done research and confirmed I’m wrong about Walpurgisnacht. It’s actually May Day eve, I think, so April. So it competes with the Marian cult, the crowning of the Virgin, which sacralizes all those old pagan May customs.

Today would have been Simpson’s 53rd birthday. R.I.P.

Thoreau, Walden, “Solitude”: “I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.”

27.6.04

“I believe that the more one loves, the more one will act; for that love is only a feeling I would never recognize as love . . .” (van Gogh to Theo, May 1883).

Sun just now in the pines atop the hill on the eastern horizon. Cool and clear—amazing for late June. A west wind came yesterday and swept the storms away—or at least the external ones.

There seems always one inside me. I awake at various times, pain and numbness hither and yon . . . .

I seemed at dawn to hear a howling in the woods—wolf? Aren’t they all gone from here (but can they migrate back)? Coyote? Brassie seemed to hear and be disturbed by it.

One faint trickle of sunlight on my journal now. I think of Wilson Bachelor’s eulogy for his sister Sarah, who had been blind and deaf many years, how he says she’d walk into the sun she couldn’t see and say, “Oh, the blessed sunlight!”

Sun now a radiant necklace, jewels of rarest glory, across the neck of the pines. The sky cloudless and cerulean blue except for a trail of airplane smoke streaking down the eastern sky, now illumined by the sun.

Again, the way I sit here and see first one tiny spot, one tree, one tuft of upthrust plants catch fire, makes me feel as if I’m in an inverted bowl. This green glade is the world. The sky’s its bottom.

+ + + + +

“There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men?” (Thoreau, Walden, “Solitude”).

+ + + + +

Ah. Blessed sun, now shining directly on my face. Must be about 8:45.

I dreamt somehow of work, the transition, dreams both foreboding and soothing, which I cannot recapture. . . . Of how some of the operators there would go so far as to erase the hard drives of their computers. Thought also of Andrews and his emailing Pelt to call me a perverted little weasel, and to speak of R.’s drinking. And of M.B. Ross and K. Mitchell and L. Chapman when we were in Salt Lake and news of the downsizing broke. What unadmirable human beings.

Thinking also of that catechism for Catholic voters which speaks of abortion as a “non-negotiable,” and Hoefling’s praise of Jugis, who protected Littleton right up to the audits—effectively lying. She also supports Solari in his lies.

Where is the center of moral gravity in such a church? For my money, the bishops’ willingness to lie is much more damaging to the church and morally reprehensible than those who support gay marriage.

This ecclesiology that seeks to turn the R.C. church into a Republican country club, with behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, and strategic lies: it’s utterly despicable. And yet these same folks claim they’re defending tradition.

Ozarks 20.6.04: Odd-Fellow Society and Summer Solstice

“But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society” (Thoreau, Walden, “The Village”).

+ + + + +

Brassie almost stepped over the porch edge into the stream bed this a.m. With her cobby, compact build and age, it surely would have been the end of her.

It reminded me of the time Arabella tipped over a cliff’s edge in Allsopp Park. Far below was the creek, which she could see and evidently thought she’d amble to as she headed off the trail . . .

little realizing that the trail was atop a cliff overhanging the water. So she found herself instantly in mid-air, as we, screaming with anxiety, saw a very surprised-looking dog seemingly hang for a moment in the air, ears flapping at right angles to her body. Arabella was a big girl: with a whomp and a whoosh, down she fell into the stream, legs splayed apart in a last-ditch attempt to have some purchase on anything other than air.

Fortunately, she was not hurt, though her ego may have been a bit bruised. She came up the hill with a chastened grin on her muzzle, having proven, once again, how this particular golden retriever had no difficulty at all in being the dumb blonde of the canine family. All she needed were a pair of big sunglasses, a floppy straw hat, and a piña colada with a straw connected to her mouth, to complete the illusion.

+ + + + +

Do writers write their way through and out of misery? Or is it that the writing diverts a writer from facing the misery evenly and directly?

Ah! Sun and blue sky atop the mountain to the southeast, the first today. It’s like a crown. Some bird with a rake-like trill in a treetop on this north bank is ratcheting up its song as the sun seeks to break through the clouds. Sun means everything to birds, as it rises and sets.

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, St. John’s eve. Am I correct in remembering it’s also Walpurgisnacht? No, I don’t think so. Those fires—do they go back to the Celts? Is this day somehow connected to Lughnasa? I remember we were in the Oberpfalz one summer as the evening neared, and could see the wood stacked for the fire.

It was eerie to see, and I was glad to be shot of it as the day itself neared. Shades of Shirley Jackson’s “Lottery”: we, the two Ausländer, the tight-knit little village with its Denkmal marking the spot where a sizable group of Hussites—men, women, and children—were slaughtered during the Hussite period.

There is that need of human communities to target someone: the thirst of the dirty institutions and desperate odd-fellow society to assure conformity, often by picking a hapless victim to demonstrate what will happen if one refuses to belong. That need makes one anxious when the tight-knit community with a history of slaughter celebrates rituals of belonging.

And with St. John’s eve competing with ancient memories like Walpurgisnacht and Lughnasa, Christianity with paganism, how can the fires not recall the Inquisition? We need our witches—someone to pin the blame on. We cannot permit midnight revels of scantily clad women. Allow that, as the sun shines at midnight and nature appears to have turned itself inside out, and anything might follow.

Catholicism has barely begun to reflect on these mechanisms, and the sin they so seductively enfold, because it has only begun to discover the social sciences. The great liberal theologians of the 20th century—Rahner, Tracy, Longergan, even Metz—all presume a model innocent of such social-anthropological insights.

As a result, their doctrine of sin is attenuated. Yes, celebrate God’s redemptive, sacramental presence everywhere in the world. But do so with an awareness of what original sin really means—of what it is we need to be redeemed from: not merely the sin that turns humans individually from the mark, but the sweet, sickening carrion whiff of corruption that inhabits all human associations, including the church. All are born in sin. Every human society is built, somewhere, on bones, on blood.

Salzburg, 13.7.03: Alpine Lakes and Borage

I suddenly realize the mountain is reflected in the lake, something I haven’t noticed before. This is the earliest we’ve been here, so that may be a trick of the morning light which vanishes as the day goes on. In any case, it’s beautiful. By afternoon, you see only green lake. Now, there’s a mirror with mountain and blue sky, white clouds tinged with pink floating in it.

Two brave swans have detached themselves from the others and are floating with seeming effortlessness and majestic dignity to the east across the middle of the lake. As if in parody or Napoleonesque competition two ducks are doing the same, but east to west. Thoreau had it right with Walden: small lake or pond is an entire world. I can’t stop watching and writing.

Just interrupted by a very nice man, Indian, who teaches economics at a small college 45 miles south of Roanoke—Fairham, if I heard correctly. He seemed to have a peaceful and sweet spirit, told me he’s a photographer and fascinated by the mountains. As he approached, a bevy of ducks arrived, expecting a handout. Alas, we’re breadless. But oh! Not so! Steve put half a loaf of bread in my bag. But things are so tightly controlled here, I don’t dare feed the ducks. There may be an Ordnung, as there is for everything. Die erste Bürgerpflicht ist Ordnung—an earnest and pompous German saying the Czechs love to ridicule.

With the wind rising and more clouds, the clear reflection of the mountain has been dispelled. It’s now just a shadow hovering in the lake.

So it is with thought: clear one moment, troubled and fragmented the next. The mind is an amazing thing, the way it moves from point to point along a chain of associations very hidden from us. It’s fascinating.

Yesterday, I saw growing in the swampy area that’s a nature reserve of some sort near here a flower whose name I can never recall. I have more and more difficulty in this regard. I know the name, and know that I know it. But I can’t grab the elusive silver fish that I can just see, now and again, flashing through the deepest pools of my mind.

What helps, I find, is to let associations—no matter how far-fetched—lead me there. I did that the other day as I wrote about something blue as a borage flower. Maddeningly, couldn’t identify the plant, couldn’t call its name.

I could see it in my mind’s eye, taste it, feel its fuzz on the tongue, appreciate the cool cucumbery aroma it gives to a glass of lemonade. My mind began with cucumber, and then moved along a path of herbs starting with c—coriander, cardamom, chervil.

But that didn’t do it. I had to let the process lie fallow, or, better, go underground. And that’s where it becomes mysterious. How is it that, when we seem not to be thinking about something we want to retrieve inside our minds, but we nevertheless are thinking, we eventually reach the end of the chain and find the link we’re seeking?

I don’t know. I know only that I eventually emerged with the word borage. But I did so by pretending not to seek it, even as I knew that some part of my mind was madly whirring away to sort vast stores of information and retrieve the word.

It’s something like not looking at a cat. If you watch their eyes and stare rudely, they’ll snub you. They divulge the mystery of their being on their own terms, if at all.

The name I sought today was astilbe, by the way. And for some reason it came much more easily. I don’t know why this is a name I block, but I do, almost always. And yet it’s a flower I love. If it’s native to Alpine bogs, then it’s no wonder that it’s so hard to grow in the American South, whose hot, humid climate must put any Alpine plant to the test.