Blog #10: Look Up For All Things Red

6:40 pm

As I write out here in my backyard, I immediately notice several new things.  Sunshine, a rarity in Pittsburgh, finally makes its way out to my humble abode, and I can sense the beginnings of spring.  Our fountain, which I can finally see because it is no longer covered in snow, is filled with soggy leaves and twigs. I hear several bird calls, which I can't identify.

I look up into the trees, hoping to see the crest of a red cardinal, but to no avail.  When I direct my eyes downward again, two birds that look like turtle doves fly up from the fountain, startling me, as I had not even been aware of their presence before.   Of course, as I am hopeless at identifying most birds, they were in all likelihood not turtle doves at all. I'm not even sure what a real turtle dove looks like, or whether they are native to this area.  (Though I do know most of the lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas!")  As I can hardly even tell the difference between a hawk and an eagle, this should come as no surprise, but my terrible memory is certainly inconvenient for the purposes of writing a nature blog.

The birds I do know, however, I am quite partial to.  I can identify precisely four kinds: a blue jay, a hummingbird, a cardinal, and a red-winged blackbird.  (Apparently, I am only impressed by bright, immediately recognizable colors when it comes to our feathered friends.)  On occasion, I will note the obnoxious squawk of the blue jay before I spot him, but more often than not it is the cardinal that will stop me in my tracks without even a visual confirmation of his red crest and black eyeliner.  On my way to class, I will drop my rucksack on the ground, halting wherever I happen to be--whether perched at the bus stop, strolling along the sidewalk, or speed-walking down the lane toward class--and crane my neck upward, staring intently at treetops for as long as it takes to find the source of the music.

This stillness and focus is an impulse that is difficult for me to control.  Surely, if Big Brother made a law against stopping suddenly on a path to seek out one particular bird or another, I would have a bad time of it.  I am sure I would accrue many, many fines.

In my backyard at this moment, a blaring car alarm coexists with the bird calls.  The cacophany disappoints me, making it hard to focus.  The sound is as repetitive and loud as a blue jay's fighting words aimed at his brothers, and yet it is more offensive, somehow.  I curse the car under my breath, then recall that this mixture of noises is a reminder of the close proximity nature and humankind share.  Right on top of one another in my senses, they seem to be duking it out for my attention:  Bird call. Alarm.  Bird call. Alarm.  And so forth.  Of course, the soundtrack of humankind always seems a little more demanding than the other, and this irritates me to no end. 

           
                                                                  *

I used to be big on totems.  Proof of this: Once, when I spotted a snake on the sidewalk in Kansas--a rare occurrence for me--I ran immediately to the bookstore to see what Ted Andrews, animal symbologist and author of Animal Speak, had to say about it.  The man researches this stuff for a living, after all. 

One day, several years back, I saw at least a hundred ladybugs on the steps of the Budig computer lab at KU (my alma mater).  I was speaking with my mother on the phone shortly after I spotted them, and told her that they reminded me of her mother, who had passed away when I was six.  I did not tell her that this reminder was due to a personal recollection of having watched a ladybug die, slowly, on the edge of Gramma's bathtub once when I was a child, though my grandmother was not even in the room when this happened.  I did not tell her that this experience came back to me while witnessing a massive group of ladybugs, twenty years later, crawling around the steps of KU.  Yet, my mother shared my ladybug run-in with my sister, who started noticing ladybugs everywhere, too, and claiming that her ladybugs were also a sign, a hello, from our Gramma.  (Apparently, I was not the only one who was big on totems.)  How was this possible, I wondered, since I was the one who'd had the original experience with these insects?  Could this whole totem thing be contagious, somehow?Could one person "catch" another's faith in ancestor worship, in some kind of higher power?

Instead of feeling supported in my obsession with ladybug symbolism, I felt as though my spiritual vision had been co-opted.  I wanted my own connection with the spirits of the earth and sky--a symbol that I would always know belonged to me alone.  But nature doesn't work this way.  It is there for all to share, and any feeling that we are the only ones who can take pleasure in it at any given moment is a mere illusion.   
     
                                                                     *

The arrival of ladybugs heralds the start of spring, as they are some of the first insects to return to their warm-weather routines. In the autumn, they will seek shelter indoors, and when temperatures become warmer following a spurt of cool weather, they may converge on sun-warmed buildings, which may be why I encountered them on the steps that day. At the time, their presence seemed magical to me, an unexpected encounter with a strange kind of power and intensity that reminded me of things past. Perhaps it would have disappointed me, then, to know these tiny creatures were just doing what ladybugs do. Today, as I research their species and their habits, I am okay with this. I am disappointed only to learn that as a species they may aggravate my asthma.

In a garden, ladybugs are considered among the most useful of creatures, as they voraciously consume aphids, a common garden pest.  Among humans, therefore, they are well-liked. The most beautiful ladybugs, in my opinion, are those of the darkest shades of red--the darker color indicates that they are older (and perhaps wiser in the ways of the ladybug world) than their lighter-shelled counterparts.  

Lady bugs, interestingly, are also known as "ladybirds" in the U.K. and elsewhere (so perhaps I can now say that I know how to recognize five kinds of birds, and not four).  They share this nickname with Lady Bird Johnson, wife of Lyndon B. Johnson and First Lady in the U.S. in the 1960's, who famously worked to beautify numerous trails and parks, as well as cities and roads.  The name "ladybird" itself comes from the term "Our Lady's Bird," a reference to Jesus' mother Mary, who wore a red garment in early artistic renderings, and whose seven woes and joys are said to be represented by the most common European verison of this insect, the seven spot ladybird.  (Fun fact: In German, she is called a Marybeetle.)

I think about the worldwide influence of ladybugs, in learning that they have moonlighted as the logo for a London publishing company, a line of children's clothing, a ski resort in the Pyrenees, and the Swedish People's Party of Finland, not to mention standing in as a Dutch symbol for peace in the face of senseless violence and as a major character in British author Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach--one of the first books my sister read to me when I was a child.  In Turkey, ladybugs are known as good luck bugs, and Irish, Polish, and Romanian people refer to them as "God's...cow."  There is even a German version of a popular ladybird-themed nursery rhyme, titled "Marienwürmchen," set to music by the incomparable Robert Schumann (Opus 79, No. 14).  I listen to the beautiful singer's voice on You Tube; if we take her words and translate them back into English, we would hear:

Ladybird, sit on my hand -
I will do you no harm.
No harm shall come to you;
I only wish to see your colorful wings:
your colorful wings are my joy. 

I see my own thoughts echoed in these words and in the beliefs of many cultures regarding ladybugs.  There are so many variations of ladybug lore across the centuries; how could I ever have thought these delicate insects belonged to me alone?  And yet...

And yet, I needed a new totem.

                                                                       *

When winter drags on interminably, as it has of late, I seem to forget the the call of the redbird.  Though there are many birds I might like to see, his is the only song I miss.  I have read that his singing is a territorial thing, that he carves out his space with song; his voice is the most recognizable, and therefore the most beautiful to me.  I don't mind his motives in the slightest, as long as I can listen to him. 

They say that he is a bird who stays around all year, but he never seems to visit my home in the winter months.  When I do forget his voice, I try to hear it in every bird's song, try to compare their notes with my memory of his tones.  My heart lightens for a moment or two whenever I think it is him calling to me, only to be dashed when I realize it is an imposter I hear--until one spring day, I think to myself decisively, "There it is!" and I scold myself for ever forgetting his melody.

Two mornings ago, the sudden movement of a redbird startled me.  She was mostly brown, as the females are, offering only a slight flash of red as she flew from a low lying tree nearby into a much higher canopy.  I did a quick double-take, thinking I may have imagined that flash of red, in a bout of wishful thinking.  I had not yet seen a cardinal this year, though I had been looking.  Had I only imagined that bit of scarlet?  Lo and behold, a second bird sprung up a  moment later, the same telltale flash of red rising up from the low tree.  If I had any lingering doubt that the first was a cardinal--the very bird named for the scarlet garments of the other Cardinal, the religious kind--the partnership of these two seemed to confirm it.  One redbird was good luck.  But two!  Two redbirds meant, in my mind at least, that the tides of the natural world were changing with the arrival of a new season.  That something in me was changing, too. 

I have found their guidance to be relevant in my life.  A single flash of red as I walked home through the woods in Kansas after volunteering on KU's campus was enough to inspire me for the rest of the day, enough to make me thoughtful.  Ever since that time, the call of the redbird has never let me go. 

I still recall the books I used to consult several years back on the subject of animal totems, shortly after I adopted the redbird as my new totem.  How useful are they, as guides? According to the musings of animal symbologist Ted Andrews, redbirds remind us about "responsibility and the recognition of the importance of the task at hand."  Check.  They tell us, Andrews says, "that we should be listening to the inner voice... more closely for our own health and well-being," that when we spot a redbird, the occasion "reflects a need to assert the feminine aspects of creativity and intuition" in our lives.  Check.  Perhaps these will remain powerful lessons in my life, whether or not a comrade adopts my totem of choice, once again.  (Though I suppose I will keep a deer or a turtle or something in mind, just in case.)

Even if totemic thinking can sometimes offer us the illusion of specialness through giving us a distinctive connection with the animal world, it surely possesses some meditative value as well.  The redbird might say, if only we could translate his song as we do the lyrics of the German ladybird:
"Add color to your life, and remember that everything you do is of importance."


      
See these pages more more information on ladybugs, ladybug lyrics, Lady Bird Johnson, and the naming of cardinals, their symbology, and their habits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccinellidae
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070405155814AAMXEm0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_(bird)
http://www.birdclan.org/cardinal.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cardinal

Big Thoughts and Tiny Creatures: Blog #9 (Week 11)

7:05 pm
                                                   I. Big Thoughts and Tiny Creatures

It’s evening, but it is still light out, and I just can’t get used to the recent time change.  I’ve been out of sorts all week. With more daylight, it seems, comes more responsibility—I feel as though I should be getting more done in my day, somehow.  As though the 24-hour day has actually been expanded to include an extra hour.  So I am a little out of sorts, having trouble focusing these past few days on the micro-level of my life.  Big, philosophical thoughts keep interfering and overshadowing the minutiae.  The sirens parading around my backyard don’t help any; if anything, they reinforce the sense of urgency I’ve been feeling, an urgency to accomplish something, to speed up, to stop reflecting so much.  It is, I suspect, that moment when winter is trying desperately to turn into spring in the air and in the trees, and my brain is trying to catch up with nature.    

My recent unease seems also to have sprung from a recent extra-long phone conversation with a friend.In rehashing my recent adventures, I had to recap my difficult December, in which I lost one relative and discovered that two more were facing serious health issues (which, thankfully, have since been resolved with the necessary biopsies, treatments, and surgeries). With January and February long gone now, I’m finally settling into 2013 in a way I’ve not had a chance to do before, but even so, all of these recent events have left a trace of anxiety with me that I suppose I have not fully shaken off. 

I spot some wildlife tonight while I’m out here, an occurrence that has been a rarity in these winter months—a squirrel and a bird.  The bird flies up in a jolt of speed, too fast for me to catch any identifying marks or colors, but the squirrel lingers a bit, working on a particularly tough nut with his tiny feet and mouth.  He does his squirrel-thing for a while, and then my attention is distracted by a vine climbing in a curvy snake-line up the side of a tree just beyond our backyard fence.  I am intrigued by its presence, which I have never noticed before, and can’t seem to avert my gaze.  When I awake from my mini-trance, Mr. Squirrel has gone.  I am reminded of past encounters, and although I relish the aloneness I feel in this moment, part of me wishes he'd stuck around, come closer, that we'd had some kind of take-away encounter like this one I experienced  last year in Westchester, NY:

                                          just passing by

                                                     Beady eyes glowing

                                                     Emerald green in sunlight's glare

                                                     Squirrel stares me down, wins.

                                                                   
                                                                        *
 

Just as learning of a loved one’s health scare (or several) will change one’s perspective for a while, thinking about the world specifically from the framework of being a woman always gets me thinking of the bigger picture.  Lately, I have been following the disturbing events of the Ohio rape case.  Also, I have had a few run-ins with misogynist characters this past month, including a haughty man at the coffee shop that insulted collectively the intelligence of all women in the Chatham community, clearly (and wrongly) thinking that berating my fellow women would make him look superior and appealing.  Stunned and no longer a very argumentative person in general (or trying hard not to be one), I spoke my piece to the man briefly and didn’t elaborate much, cutting off our conversation as soon as possible. 

Still, this conversation bothered me for weeks.  Why would someone think it is okay to dismiss an entire community of women, based on no proof or experience with those women whatsoever, short of “living near the campus”?  And why would someone think it is okay to transport an unconscious woman from party to party, treating her like a doll and showing no respect toward her, violating her body and her privacy? There are moments when I have to stop reading, listening, even reflecting on such events, or I know full well that one of two things will happen--either my old anger will come bubbling back up, and an old deep sadness will come instead.  Both have something to do with being a woman in this world, and both I've worked hard to keep at bay over the years, with some moderate success.

Attending a Women’s Studies class this winter and spring has reminded me of an earlier version of myself—a prouder and more argumentative version of me, to be sure, but also a more steadfast one than I can claim to be at the moment.  A version of me that marched around Washington during the Bush years  with a swollen thumb, wearing a black and white tee that read "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" (if you're wondering about the thumb, this was after after a twenty-or more hour bus ride during which I was stung by a wasp on the bus, which had no first aid kit available, but march on, I did).  I walked confidently then, despite the thumb, and heard inspirational women speak that day in the Mall on Washington, and I was more certain then--as teenagers and young twenty-somethings tend to be--that I knew everything I needed to know.  Aging tends to undo this cockiness in some of us, it seems, as we see just how big the world is and begin to sense all that we don’t know, all that we’ll never be able to know.  We have to be content to live with seeing only part of the Big Picture during our time here on earth. 
 

                                         II. A Brief Tour of Swissvale/Pittsburgh Herstory

It seems only natural, as I sit in my backyard considering what I know and whether or not I am still a feminist, that I now live in a borough named for the farmstead of Jane Swisshelm (1815-1884, according to Wikipedia).  She was a super-progressive lady—an abolitionist, journalist and publisher—whose family owned land in Swissvale/Edgewood and who obtained a divorce from her husband and moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota to run a series of newspapers.  She stayed politically active, writing scathing articles directed at politicians she felt were not nearly progressive enough, and later lived in D.C.  She supported Lincoln, becoming a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln's, and even became a nurse in the Civil War, saving many lives with little to no help during some battles.  She died in Swissvale and is buried in Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville.

One can find her resting place not too far from the grave of Henry Kendall Thaw (1871-1947)—a mentally ill, sociopathic playboy, born in Pittsburgh (he attended Pitt before transferring), who murdered architect Stanford White atop Madison Square Garden in 1906 in a dispute over his own wife, Evelyn Nesbit.  (His “Trial of the Century” is a pretty fascinating story in its own right!)  Nesbit, a chorus girl and model raised in and near Pittsburgh, was encouraged as a girl by her father to read books and was treated by him with respect and a distinct lack of sexism.  Later in her life, however, she was mistreated and beaten by her husband Thaw, who was intent on ruining White's life due to his jealousy and dislike of the man’s success as well as the previous liaison Evelyn had had with him.  She had to testify in two of his trials, and it is said that his family bribed her to speak of him in a way that would award him the least punishment possible by the courts.

Though I had not heard of Jane Swisshelm before moving to Swissvale, I have long been intrigued by Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit, since learning their story from the Broadway adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime and living in Mount Vernon, NY, where I am told White designed some of the nicest homes.  Thinking of these fascinating historical characters who possessed such strong (and sometimes bizarre, or even criminal) personalities makes me feel out of place in my own time, somehow.

While these are folks who may have stood out as unusual and who did not necessarily “fit” with the norms of their own era, I will admit that I’ve long been obsessed with this era—with the political and social issues of women’s rights and prohibition from that long-ago time, with the culture of speakeasies and jazz music, with the sense that there was so much at stake in the activism and involvement in politics of that time period.  I find myself fascinated with Doctorow’s vision of women and their personal and political struggles in this era, as presented in Ragtime.  (I'm a total Broadway geek--I know the score of the musical bersion of Ragtime by heart, and hearing Doctorow read from his work in Philly several years ago was pretty much the highlight of my year.)  I’m already planning a trip to the Allegheny Cemetery, to see if I can conjure up any ghosts from the past as I wander about.

When I think of Jane Swisshelm herself, I can’t help but be impressed by all that she accomplished in her life.  Jane certainly knew how to get it all done in a day's work.  She wrote while living in Pittsburgh and passionately supported women’s rights, which gives us something in common already.  But beyond these basic commonalities that draw me to her legacy, it seems nearly impossible to me that a woman in her time could achieve as much as she did in so many different fields.  She is certainly a woman, and a human being, to be admired—an example for us to follow, a kind of bright star whose influence has not yet burned out completely.

 

**See the Wikipedia pages for Jane Swisshelm, Evelyn Nesbit, and Henry Kendall Thaw, for more about Swissvale, PA and the Trial of the Century.

Blog 8: The Necessity of Being Outdoors

Wednesday, 8:10 pm

I am sitting out here, enjoying the barely-there base of the moon to my right, which disappears off and on into a salmon-pink and baby-blue cloud cover reminiscent of those mixed bags of cotton candy one purchases at a fair.  Even though it is my week off from "official" blogging, and my spring break, I can't stand the thought of taking an actual week off. 

I've just gotten home from AWP, one of the largest publishing conferences in the world, and from a few days with family in New York--both of which (while a bit chaotic) went exceedingly well.  My mind is still reeling, though.

I wonder, in thinking about AWP, whether a person can have "too much of a good thing."  Three entire days (consecutive days!) of nonstop panels, socializing, and readings is quite a bit for a natural-born introvert to take in.  In terms of contact with actual nature, mine was almost nil.  While I did step outside and walk a few blocks to the nearest T stop each morning and evening, I enjoyed much of the marvelous 2-day snowfall from the spectacular panoramic windows on the second floor of the convention center.  At the time, I was very glad to be indoors, enjoying the view form a nice, heated building...but I must admit, to be so sheltered from the weather sometimes gives me a strange feeling of guilt, as though I am the Lady of Shalott up in her tower, watching the goings-on of life below, but never experiencing it for herself.

On my last day in Boston, I did manage to squeeze in a brief walk around Boston Gardens, which did my heart some good.   Lovely and cold as it was out there, I lost myself in my thoughts for a solid minute and "awoke" to find myself at the edge of Boston Commons, near a stoplight.  I had to return to my hotel at this point, but the simple luxury of having a few unplanned moments to myself made me feel alive and free.

In New York, I recovered from all this wonderful turmoil by transforming myself into a blob on my parents' couch, eating Thin Mints and compressing an entire season of The Bachelor into a magnificent two-day viewing spree, courtesy of my mother's DVR. (Judge me if you like, but this is the one trashy show I can't get enough of!  And at any rate, Bachelor Sean made a choice I approve of wholeheartedly.)

                                                                    *

So yet again, following this TV binge, I felt the passing of several days devoid of the natural, physical world.  It felt as though I hadn't been outside in a week (really, I pretty much hadn't, at this point, what with all the overnight bus journeys between Boston and New York and Pittsburgh).  So my time out here in the backyard has awoken something primal in me.  This time feels even more precious than it did before my trip.  I think of the meditations that Marc, a fellow blogger from class, has recommended.  I wonder just how much of that kind of thing I will need to rely on in order to keep my sanity in graduate school, once my official days of nature blogging are over! 

Or will they ever really be over? I have given some thought to continuing the blog after its official expiration date (the day my Nature Writing course is completed).  For one thing, it is the only source of news my parents have about me other than long-distance phone calls and the occasional text message.  They have read my work before, in the form of essayistic drafts and my completed thesis project a few years back, but there is something different in writing a post today and knowing they might read it tomorrow or next week, at their leisure.  There is a kind of community in blogging, a level of knowing that I suspect they have not experienced before with regard to my meditative life and far-away experiences.  It seems a valuable thing, somehow, their ability to see into my world in ways I cannot explain directly to them in conversation. 

Also, I can't bear the thought of not having these backyard moments to myself.  Whatever navelgazing I do out here feels formative somehow, both in the sitting outside with my fingers frozen numb part, and in the actual focused-attention, writing part.  I wonder if any of my fellow bloggers feel the same way, are considering extending the lives of their own blogs as I have thought of doing.

My twenty minutes are almost up, and already I feel more settled than I have in a week.  The backyard gate squeaks on its hinges yet again, and the familiar kitchen light behind me again does nothing to illuminate the letters on my page.  The backyard light occasionally flickers on and off as it is wont to do, and my neighbors all stay very quiet behind windows both darkened and lit.  These things are all beginning to seem like old friends, now. I continue to write in the dark, with frozen hands.I am alone in the world for a moment, just me and the bitter wind.  But I myself am not bitter, but... Awake.  Alive.  In peace, despite my growing list of responsibilities.  To even consider the notion of attacking this massive to-do list later in my week, it felt entirely necessary and appropriate to come out here, gloves and fuzzy-lined boots secured tightly in place, and sit in a green wooden chair doing nothing much. 

It seems strange that this all should feel so natural, so normal to me, now.  As though without my time out here, I couldn't think straight in the moments that punctuate the rest of my life.  I realize that I need these twenty minutes desperately, the way a thirsty man needs the water of an oasis on a desert-hot day.  What does this say about my life? About my connection to the natural world?  Is it strange to feel this way, so attached to these moments out-of-doors, to the discomfort that comes when one is no longer ensconced behind the safe glass panes of the convention center windows? 

Sometimes, when I abandon this world for days in a row, I no longer feel like myself.  To me, this is a curious thing.  How many of us feel this attachment, are in need of the outdoors as a great salve for our fears and worries?  How many of us forget regularly to attune ourselves to it?  And what is the price we pay, when we enact this forgetting?

 Each time we forget, does it take a little longer to recall, and a little longer again the next time?  Until one day, we find we have gone so long without it that we awaken as strangers in our own skins, as foreigners who can never return to the homeland that bore us...

Blog #7: A Little Bit of Sunshine

Monday, March 4, 2013    6:45 pm

For once, I feel like I can just sit out here in my backyard, in a near-meditative state.  (In other words, this evening feels like the antidote to my last blog post.)  I throw my head back over the top edge of my green wooden chair, and stare up at the sky.  A single bright star looks down at me.  Of course, this reminds me of Keats' poem, "Bright Star," although I can't remember any of the verse, not having read it since freshman year of college.  It is probably the North Star I am looking at, but I am not sure which one Keats was looking at, or if he was speaking about a woman and not an actual star.

Through the branches, a second , dimmer star peeks out suddenly.  The blinking lights from two fast-moving aircraft catch my eye as they make their way across the sky, and topmost plane seems to go right past the brighter of the two stars.  It is like an optical illusion, this movement, as it makes the star and the plane look very near to one another, though there are light years in between the two objects. 

A third star appears off ot the south, directly above my neighbor's chimney.  And then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and a seventh.  I am watching the sky come alive, the premier witness to the twilight as each star decides the precise moment it wants to turn on.

*                                                 *                                                    *

All of the snow out here, and the ice that lined the slats of our red deck, has melted in the heat of daylight. 

Today, I was thinking of sunshine.  I was noticing sunshine for the first time in a long time in the midst of a Pittsburgh winter.  I even forgot for a moment to watch for my bus at the stop, so entraned was I by the wide swath of light that reached out to me across an open field nearby, at CMU.  The rays hit me, warming my left leg immediately despite the chill in the air, and it suddenly seemed I had no other choice but to turn my whole body toward that warmth.  I felt lopsided being only half warm, and not whole, somehow. 

Today was starting to feel like a charmed kind of day--first, a university-sponsored lunch (a Pittsburgh salad, sans fries, for me) and free massages for commuter students, of which I am one, as you might have guessed from my frequent bus-taking.  And now this--actual sunlight!  It may sound overrated, but Pittsburghers will know what I am talking about, cloaked as they are in seemingly perpetual cloud cover.

My body feels spoiled today as it hasn't in a long while.  And these few feel-good treats have been enough to rejuvenate my spirit, too.  I realize just how much I have deprived myself of feeling good in my own skin for the last several months.  I know, too, that the way the body feels is the basis for everything good in life.  I know this because whenever I am sick or weary, I do not feel as much generosity in my heart for others as I want to.  I do not, when nursing myself back from a bout of poor health, feel nourished or calm or able to focus on anything outside of myself.

As I prep to leave my house for Boston this week, this seems a good time to think about the state of my body.  Little things like sunshine and massage therapy, a day of watching funny or intriguing movies or just letting myself be for a few minutes are like preventative medicine for body and soul.  How a person be unhappy if she feels so good?   For a few moments, at least, it seems nearly impossible to be miserable during those first few moments the sun shines after a long bout of darkness.  And if she lets herself forget all else for just a few minutes, it might start to seem that everything she's been seeking resides right here, in her own skin. 

A kind of wholeness emerges slowly, from within.

Blog #6: In the Chill of the Night

Saturday, 8:38 p.m.

The icy slats of the red deck are glittering in the reflection of our flickering backyard light.  When I run the tip of my boot over them, there is a gummy sensation beneath my foot, not as seamless a motion as a boot running across black ice and tripping up the owner of said boot.  The light flickers on with my every little movement, and then shuts back off immediately after.  I know I will have to give in to the darkness soon; as it is, I am holding my notebook up to the light cast by the open door to the kitchen behind me.  I write slowly, almost illegibly, because I do not want to risk the numbness in my fingertips that comes when my heavy gloves come off.

The snow is falling again, but just barely.  When the light is off, I can't even see the flakes, but when the it flashes back on suddenly, I can see them shining in the glow, and then all goes dark again.  I find myself wondering if the indecisive backyard light bothers my neighbors as much as it bothers me. 

I've been out here in the cold almost ten minutes, with the door propped open behind me for a more consistent form of light.  I'm glad my house is empty right now.  I need this peace and quiet; something in me craves the stillness tonight.  With the chaos of February over with now, and the chaos of March and the AWP conference about to begin, I feel crunched between two extremes.  I am recovering from an action-packed visit from my parents last weekend, which involved riding on several buses back and forth between Swissvale and my parents' downtown hotel, as well as an audio-tour of the first-floor nationality rooms at the Cathedral of Learning.  I also had a midterm project due 3 days after they left.  The day after I turned it in, I felt free as a lark, practically whistling to myself all day long (if I knew how to whistle, anyway, I would have been tempted). 

But my freedom was short lived, as I awoke this morning newly aware of the need to finish my assignments early, due to my upcoming, internet-less trip to Boston.  After this trip, I will spend a few days with family in New York, then return to more midterm papers and final projects just around the corner.  Today alone, I spent five hours in the computer lab, which just got bigger and brighter screens than I am accustomed to, and by the end of my study session, I was left with the start of a migraine and a knot in my chest.

So sitting here with a bit of chilled quietude tonight feels like a luxury.  A single tree branch sways , the only movement in the dark.  I breathe in crisp air and wonder when I will get another moment like this, in my yard, and whether I can put aside the stresses of the week before and the one ahead--a moment to appreciate this silence. 

The tree branch has stopped moving, now, and my fingers are the only motion, as they record my hieroglyphics on a legal pad in the dark.  My pen is faulty, and I have to push my finger hard into the page to make the letters come through, so that I can read them later.  What a strange sensation, writing words you cannot see, writing in the snow (though just a dusting), writing forcefully on a legal pad as though your life depends upon the words being legible, writing in a flickering light, writing with a bag of laundry waiting in the house behind you, writing when there are so many other things to do, all awaiting your attention.  But then, that is precisely why some of us need to write--not want, but need.  Most people, non-writers and perhaps even some writers, do not think of writing as a bodily endeavor, but I do, sitting here with one frozen hand, ungloved, and cramped from the cold and from pressing pen to page with the rage of self-expression.  My frozen toes inside my fuzzy boots tell me that writing is indeed a physical thing, and the slowly loosening knot of shame and worry in my chest--an anxiety no doubt bred long ago by some worrisome ancestor who had more to think about than midterm papers and cold weather--tells me the same.