We Can Do Hard Things, Tuesday 3/17/20

Good morning from locked-down Los Angeles.

Roses

Everyone now and again wonders about
those questions that have no ready
answers: first cause, God's existence,
what happens when the curtain goes
down and nothing stops it, not kissing,
not going to the mall, not the Super
Bowl.

"Wild roses," I said to them one morning.
"Do you have the answers? And if you do,
would you tell me?"

The roses laughed softly. "Forgive us,"
they said. "But as you can see, we are
just now entirely busy being roses."

Mary Oliver

World Ocean Day

Beach in Izu by Hiroshiga

I think it's World Ocean Day.  I intend to bring Sophie to the ocean more this summer, especially given the fact that the LAUSD has overdone its usual clusterf*^kery and failed to assign her aide for summer school. I'm so incensed by it that I've decided to not send her to summer school after all.  I say incensed but I'm more of a slow burn. Let's face it. Fighting for this is fighting for mediocrity. My capitulation is borne of weariness and resignation but it's got a spark of I don't give a f*^k, too. Sorry for the profanity, but a well-placed IDGAF is healing.  I don't know if it's the benign vertigo, the twenty two years or the dragon's tail that I drag behind me, but I'm not up for the fight. I'm not up for any fights these days which is probably a good thing. Oh, I'm up for fighting for our oceans and expressing gratitude for their great blue expanse. The other day someone posted a Mary Oliver poem about the ocean that I'd never read. Who says that poetry is boring? Here it is, all sexy and dreamy:

From House of Light, Beacon Press, © 1990. photos - l: angela russo / r: marisa chrystene

From House of Light,
Beacon Press, © 1990.
photos - l: angela russo / r: marisa chrystene

How We Do It: Part XXXVII of a Series: Fragment

I took Sophie to the osteopath this morning, and she placed her gentle hands on Sophie and worked to move and heal her. In her silent room with a view of the gray Pacific, doves cooing on the sill, the doctor spoke softly and I lay my head on Sophie's stomach and closed my eyes and breathed in calming myself, breathing out smile. We spoke of Dr. Viola Frymann, the great and now very old osteopath who saw Sophie regularly when she was a baby and whose influence on me is immeasurable. I heard the gurgling of Sophie's stomach beneath my head, felt the infinitesimal jerks of her body, let tears slide out of my eyes, the memory of Sophie as a baby, the hopes for her, the compromises and acceptance, the despair and love and acceptance again, even of death. When I drove home, the cars ahead and around me glinting in a too-hot Los Angeles morning, I thought of the angry voices of the internet from that morning, those who call other mothers irresponsible for what they do and don't do for their children, the endless and interminable vaccination argument, black and white and how clicking them off, shutting those voices, xing them out, angry and stupid, doesn't still or instill anything. Sit with me, here, I think, lay your head, here, next to mine. Listen. Lower your voice. Abide.



Of course! The path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, --


The Swan

Across the wide waters
     something comes
          floating—a slim
             and delicate

ship, filled
     with white flowers—
          and it moves
             on its miraculous muscles

as though time didn't exist,
     as though bringing such gifts
          to the dry shore
             was a happiness

almost beyond bearing.
     And now it turns its dark eyes,
          it rearranges
             the clouds of its wings,

it trails
     an elaborate webbed foot,
          the color of charcoal.
             Soon it will be here.

Oh, what shall I do
     when that poppy-colored beak
          rests in my hand?
             Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

I miss my husband's company—
     he is so often
          in paradise.
             Of course! the path to heaven

doesn't lie down in flat miles.
     It's in the imagination
          with which you perceive
             this world,

and the gestures
     with which you honor it.
          Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those
             white wings
           touch the shore?

Mary Oliver

Two Winter Poems

The Snowshoe Hare

The fox

is so quiet --

he moves like a red rain --

even when his 

shoulders tense and then

snuggle down for an instant

against the ground

and the perfect

gate of his teeth

slams shut

there is nothing

you can hear

but the cold creek moving

over the dark pebbles

and across the field

and into the rest of the world --

and even when you find

in the morning

the feathery

scuffs of fur

of the vanished

snowshoe hare

tangled

on the pale spires

of the lost summer -

fluttering a little

but only

like the lapping

threads

of the wind itself -

there is still

nothing that you can hear

but the cold creek moving

over the old pebbles

and across the field and into

another year.

Mary Oliver, 1992

via The Writer's Almanac

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens, 1954

Peonies 10:00 AM - Day 5 - Overblown

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities —
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

-- Mary Oliver

Grand Prize Winner - Epilepsy Therapy Project Poetry Contest

The Epilepsy Therapy Project is a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit corporation dedicated to a singular focus: overcoming the funding gaps and roadblocks that slow the progress of new therapies from the lab to the patient. Epilepsy Therapy Project seeks to improve incentives and encourage commercial investment in new therapies. Acting as both a catalyst and clearing house for innovative research and the early commercialization of new therapies, the Epilepsy Therapy Project brings together financial resources, scientific insights and business expertise from leading academic and commercial industry participants.

Blustery Day

It's blustery today, here in Los Angeles. The kids went to bed last night hoping that perhaps there would be snow when they woke up. I'm not kidding you -- there were rumors that San Francisco would get some and perhaps even a few flakes would fall on the Hollywood Sign.

No snow. A lot of bluster. (and they've spelled Winnie the Pooh wrong here, but for some reason I've been singing this all day) -- god knows why as I'm so not a cutesy video poster type.




Oliver played basketball today as passionately as he plays every sport -- that means a lot of aggression, some tears, some gritting of the teeth, a couple of baskets -- a lot of bluster.

And the world's least crafty mother cooked up the idea that we could spraypaint the boys' bedroom door with chalkboard paint and that it would look really good.

That was a lot of bluster on my part, too.

Spring

With just a little bit of rain, this is what happens in the desert southwest. A different kind of spring.

And here's a poem by Mary Oliver:

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones, just
pay attention, then patch


a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway


into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.