Blog Post #5: The Stillness of Day / In the Company of Cats

Sunday, February 17, 2013   1:29 pm

Part I: The Stillness of a Day

Snow. No gloves. No hat (but I do have a hood on my ski jacket).  Deciding to brave the elements.  These are the things in my mind, as I try to adjust to the chilled weather.  My hands won't last long out here, without gloves, and when they start to numb as I write, I will know it is time to go back inside.

Snow is falling, heavy and swirling all around me.  It brings movement, and yet for some reason I can't figure out, everything feels more still, quiet, when I am surrounded by these falling crystals.  The wind that accompanies them swings our backyard gate, which is not latched, inward toward me.  The noise of the heavy door set loose by the elements startles me, making me think for a moment that someone is intruding on my quiet time--but when I look, I see only a door moving seemingly on its own, with no one there behind it.  Just me, the snow, the backyard.

My roommate is out of town for the weekend, and I can feel the contrast of an empty house with last weekend's Mardi Gras festivities and post-party cleaning spree.  Usually, this silence and alone time would comfort me, but for the past day or so, I've been feeling out of sorts.   I have so far managed to avoid all of the social plans--a book club, an art tour--that I made weeks ago, as I cannot seem to move into action today, and yet, I still feel the sting of solitude, even though I've chosen it for myself.  This weekend, instead of a house filled with people and music drifting out to me from the open windows, I sit alone in my green chair, absorbing snow flakes on my coat and scarf.  The sun from last weekend's blog entry has disappeared, too, and the chill feels worse than usual, for that memory of my sunstreaked arms and cheeks. 

The sun suddenly peeks out, reaching my notebook paper and white furry boots.  Though I cannot feel its warmth on my skin this time, the sight of it is comforting nonethless.  Sometimes, living in Pittsburgh, I seem to forget all about the sun for days at a time.  I am glad to remember it, now. 

The snow unexpectedly slows to a near halt, in the course of mere seconds.  It has been doing this all day, as though it cannot make up its mind whether it wants to let itself rest upon the ground.  As though it is anxious to stop moving long enough to rest, just like me, and so changes its mind every hour or so.  I always feel a kind of sadness when the snow ceases to fall, when the comforting motion of the world halts and my mind is forced to refocus on the rest of the physical world and the confusion of my to-do list.  Falling snow feels to me like riding in the backseat of a car, like the luxury of not paying attention to where one is going, like the gift of forgetting oneself for a few moments.  I never mind the cold so much, as long as there is beauty distracting my senses, and a sense of wonder when I look up at the sky and am greeted by a faceful of wet flakes.

I can hear the rustle of the trees as the wind picks up.  A neighbor's wind chimes as they sing through the air.  The sound of a shovel scraping against cement and gravel, the creak of the swinging door.  For the first time since I've been blogging, I want to be a participant and not an observor of this space. I get up from my green wooden chair, the only bright splotch of color in the yard, and traipse around my backyard, leaving a set of tracks like the ones I have expected to see for weeks, but which have been missing due to the bitter cold and the hesitation of animals to leave their warm hidey-holes.  When I make it back to the chair, I survey my progress.  The tracks proceed in an oval, approaching the snow-buried fountain and then leaving it again, leading back to the flash of green that I have dragged out here with me from my dining room.  It's just me, the chair, the chimes, the shovel and its invisible shoveler, the swinging door.  

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Part 2: In The Company of Cats

When I come back inside the house, my cat Dennis is ecstatic to see me. You'd think I'd left him alone in there for hours, not mere minutes by the show of affection he's giving me.  He cries, then climbs up the side of my body with his long legs, claws and all, to beg for some attention.  His paws reach up to my waist when he does this, and it never ceases to surprise me how long his body can extend.  I give him what he desires,petting his face and paws as a reward for his patience, though I halfheartedly scold him for distracting me as I write.  I am standing up in my kitchen and leaning against the counter for support.  I don't want to sit--it would take too long and distract me from the thoughts I want to capture.  All the while, Dennis circles me, attacking me from different angles.  Thankfully, my backside is protected by my puffy ski jacket, which I am still wearing as I warm up from the cold-- though sometimes, I have to ease his claws out of my jeans slowly, so as not to impale myself on them.  The sight of him acting this way reminds me of another beloved cat I once had, who would do a forward roll at my feet whenever he was delighted about something.  Quite the gymnast, that cat.

While these cats are both domestic, I haven't had any true wildlife for company in a while because of the weather, so my observations and memories of them will have to do, for now.  I am intrigued by the ways that cats--and humans--seek attention, seek distraction, seek to have the burden of solitude removed from us.  Even when we choose to give ourselves the day, we sometimes do it half-heartedly, realizing that it is good for us or that we have work to do that is best left uninterrupted but less than thrilled about the prospect of being alone for an afternoon.  As Dennis climbs up the front of the oven to reach my hand, I think of that other cat from long ago, who did a tumbling act out of mere joy.  Wasn't he was lucky to be able to express himself so easily?  I think of the complications of language and human emotion and expression, and wonder how often we humans resort to verbal and emotional gymnastics ("verbal judo," as I think I've heard writer Lori Jakiela call it) just to get what we need and want from one another--whether that means a deeper sense or affection, or more space and time for reflection in our own backyards, or even just for another person to consider our words, to really hear what we are saying.

With my midterm deadlines approaching, I find myself buried in papers and a growing stack of books.  I have had to say no to some parties and events, as well as a vacation to my former home in New Orleans.  But the thought of missing that trip to a former home (one without a backyard, admittedly), was too much for me--and I found myself online at 3:30 am last night, booking a solitary trip for a few weeks later, after my semester is finished.  I feel relieved, having debated this trip for a while (years, really), and I wonder, "Why now?"  Is it only because I couldn't bear the thought of not being there, while others I know are exploring this place I once knew so intimately?  At any rate, I am consumed with thoughts of "home" these days--and whether "home" means the place where I dwell now, or the many other dwelling places I have connected with in the past, doesn't seem to matter.  I carry so many places with me, these days, in my mind.  And every now and again, when I am not in my own backyard looking at snow and listening for the creak of a telltale door, I find I can revisit them, even without a train or bus to carry me across the long miles.

Blog #4: Danger in Familiar Places

Sunday, February 10, 2013        12:25 pm

My backyard is a hazardous place to be, right now. 

Suddenly warm weather yields chunks of ice slipping away from one another and tumbling from the patio roof under which I am sitting.  I imagine what it would feel like to get clocked in the head by a large chunk of ice, and scoot my chair back on the deck just a bit to steer clear of any hazardous natural substances.

My roommate is mopping the floors in the dining and living rooms of our two-story house, which need a good cleaning after the Mardi Gras party we threw last night.  (There goes another chunk of ice off the roof, as I am writing, by the way.)  The chemicals in the cleaning solution irritate my asthma quite a bit, so I am hiding out here in my backyard, thinking about how the outdoors always seem to provide me with the solace I need, right when I need it most--as long as I make the time for it to enter my life.

I'm a little worse for wear today after last night's festivities, but the quiet of my backyard on a Sunday really seems to slow down mind and body.  This is just what I need, right now.

Lately, it seems that the people in my life have been adding lots of things to my "to do" list.  This week alone, I needed to attend three extra work trainings in addition to my classes, my teaching on campus, and my regular work hours off-campus.  One of these trainings was excellent, but it was held all day Saturday--my usual day of resting or liberating adventures in and around Pittsburgh.  Saturdays are my "mental health" day, most often--but not this week.  So I am making up for it now, I guess--this excursion to the silence of my backyard (interruption here--pop! crack! goes the ice off the roof) is especially soul-soothing at this moment in time.

I close my eyes, and feel the sun heating my arms and face, as I haven't been able to do in a while.  Temperatures in the teens and 20's have mandated that I bundle myself like an Eskimo, just to make it back and forth to the bus stop.  My array of scarves, hats, and gloves is vast nowadays.  But today it feels as though the temperatures are in the 60's, and my pajamas and a thick pair of socks are cover enough.

"Summertime" plays in the house behind me while my roommate cleans the floor.  There is something powerful, it seems to me, in feeling the sun directly on one's skin, or even  through a single layer of everyday clothing--a kind of osmosis happens, in which one absorbs the clean, pure energy of this source of light and life into one's pores. If nature herself has a hard time making it through the coats and scarves and hoods into which we thrust our chilled parts each winter's day, then that first warm day in weeks feels all the more nourishing for this recent lack.  The comforts of the best sunny days from childhood and adolescence come rushing back to mind the way a bear, awakening from a long winter nap, stretches, looks around, and recalls suddenly the pangs of hunger in all their ferocity.  It remembers its own body, as do we, when sunshine makes contact with our skin after a long absence. And like the bear, we recall our own strange liberty, reclaiming our power to live as we wish after a long absence--the void of doing only what we must.  We once again find in our world the joy and freedom of unrestricted movement.   

We always require music to clean by, my roommate and I, to help us stay motivated the day after a party's mess has exploded in our home.  I can still hear the muted sounds of nearby traffic, and the strains of Ella and Louis singing from my kitchen .  A bird's sharp cry punctuates the stillness of the non-human world around me.  As the sun fades a bit, and a chill starts to take hold of me, I feel especially lucky that this space is always here to hold me apart--for just a while--from my anxieties and discomforts.

Blog #3:The Sound of a Snowflake

Saturday, 2/2/13    12:05 pm

Finally, I get to experience my backyard in the daylight (for the purposes of this blog, anyway).  The first thing I notice: The sounds!  Yes, there are actual sounds this week other than traffic noises, since I am not sitting outside in the dark fiddling with my broken porch light.  Specifically speaking, there are real, live actual birds.  They are calling to each other, though I cannot yet spot them in their branches high above my head and to the left, way off in a neighbors' yard.  My inability to spot them may be due to my corrected vision, or to my inability to "see" the little things in nature just yet, as this is my first blog-related foray in the daylight hours. 

I think I will want to work on making my eyes sharper in the coming weeks. It feels strange, as though I have spent an eternity in the dark, and my eyes are only just adjusting to the light.

The second thing I notice is that it's snowing. Still. ( It feels like it hasn't stopped for long here in Pittsburgh for at least a week.)  There's something about a harshly cold landscape that is made more bearable by the falling snow.  I've always thought so, always been a little more willing to put up with the inconveniences of winter temperatures when they are accompanied by such a magical thing as the downy flakes that sprinkle themselves across my eyelashes and cheeks.  I've loved the way the snow quiets everything, too.  Sometimes in the morning before I am fully awake, I can tell it's snowing without getting out of bed, without even opening my eyes, because the sounds of the physical world outside my window are so hushed.  On those mornings, it feels like I've been given a reprieve from everyday life, with its chaotic cacophany of traffic, ambulances, and delivery trucks that parade around my area.

Now, in this backyard, I hear something else, too--at first, I think it is merely snow, plunging in large clumps from a nearby tree's branches.  But then my eyes follow the sound, and eventually I see the tip of my neighbors' shovel, tossing snow over the fence between our properties onto the hillside where the tallest trees sit, dusted with powder.

I do not know why he is doing this, or what surface he is clearing with his shovel.  I wonder what he might think of me if I were to be spotted out here, sitting on a green wooden chair one a deck in the middle of a light snowstorm on a freezing day.  He might be just as curious about me.  But it doesn't much matter why he is doing what he's doing, I suppose.  To me, the snow is a thing to be enjoyed, engaged with, taken in.  A thing to revel in, even.  A bit of magic in a world often seemingly lacking in magic.  To my neighbor, it is a nuisance, something to be moved about, to be carted away from an inconvenient location to a more convenient one.

I am reminded that we are all captured, enraptured by different images and textures in this world.  For some of us, a dusting of snow will do the trick.  For others, a snow-cleared highway or sidewalk.  And how depending on the day, and on our responsibilities in the world at any given time, it could be a bit of both.

Another Blog in the Dark (Blog Post #2)

Friday 1/25/13, 9 pm

Today, I fully noticed (though not for the first time) the way the snow here in Pittsburgh glitters as it falls. Some of it falls into drifts, while other flakes lay gently on top of the rest, sunlight or moonlight shimmering against their delicate edges.  Each one of these glittering forms appears star-like in shape and in its sheen. 

 Is this Pittsburgh thing?

These tiny points of natural light showed themselves in the most man-made of places (the bus stop at the Waterfront, an outdoor shopping center, which is located adjacent to the Loews multiplex).  I spent at least 30 minutes, perhaps closer to an hour, outside waiting today, and plucked a handful of snow off the top portion of a fire hydrant, to see whether this shimmering effect was merely my imagination, a beautiful mirage on a snowy day.  It wasn’t.  On my dark blue glove, the flakes shone and sparkled, and I marveled.  Then I swept off the remaining snow and boarded the bus, which had come at last.

I am thinking of this now, while observing my backyard, because although the snow has stopped finally, I want to see whether this everyday space has captured the same magical quality.  First, I observe it in the darkness with no help from any streetlights—nothing but moonlight and a few lit windows in the neighbors’ yards.  (I know, I know, I promised to deliver a blog about my yard in the sunlight—maybe next week!)  To be honest, I don’t notice anything magical, just a quiet yard with little to no movement.

Eventually, I move inside, to observe it from our picture window and also to turn on the light. (You may recall from my previous blog entry our faulty backyard light, which likes to shut off all by itself, after only a brief time.)  This strategic move indoors is due mainly to the way the cold has turned my toes red (I am convinced I might have Raynaud’s disease, or a case of the “red, white, and blue” as a friend with a similar discomfort with the cold likes to call it.)  But it is also due to the fact that I want to observe whether this place looks any different through the window in our dining room.  Without the cold to distract my frozen limbs, and the light shining down in fits and starts, the yard seems more still than before, without the effect of my own tiny movements (an adjustment of a scarf, a motion of a finger in a too-tight glove, for example).

 I notice that indeed, there is a shimmering quality to the snow that appears under the glare of this man-made light, and I marvel at how sometimes it takes something “unnatural” to reveal the most astounding beauty in our physical world.   The snow falls away between the wooden slats of our deck, a void appearing in each spot between these snow-covered boards that could extend an inch to the ground, or down into the center of the earth, for all I can see, as the ground a few inches below is obscured by the snow.  The white I see here is freshly fallen, and has an entirely different quality than the stuff I’ve been trudging through all day—that stuff on sidewalks and walkways was trampled-on, gray or darkened by pedestrians’ boots, slushy and slick, a nuisance.  It had been transformed by a series of feet into something to be avoided, or watched carefully.

But here, the snow lies in the crevices between the bricks of our terrace, forms itself against the trunks of our trees, reaching upward toward the sky with the branches it inhabits and painting them with a white stripe (and here’s where I start singing a little Jack White to myself).  It lays across the tops of bushes, it fades away into red on the portion of our deck that’s covered by an awning.  A dusting of frost rests atop our grill, finds a home on the roof above my head, fills in the fountain and the tops of all the rocks there.  It frosts the tips of the fence posts along one edge of the yard like a stylish woman’s French manicure. 

I have to keep flipping the light switch, and during these intervals I am reminded of my constant interaction with nature from day to day.  Though I rarely make too much of this, life is filled with these little moments.  Today alone, as I spent time waiting in a public place out of doors, I took in the feel of snow in my eyes, in my hair, atop the handles of the bag I’d brought with my writing tools and papers in it.  Now that the snow has stopped falling on me, or forcing itself into my consciousness, am I interacting any less with it?  Maybe it is just easier to ignore nature, when it is not literally “in my face.”  But if I can ignore this world so readily, what does this mean for my life?

 Can I be happy, without engaging with it on a conscious level?  If I rarely connect with my surroundings, instead waiting impatiently for a bus to arrive so that I can step aboard and leave it all “out there,” what will I be missing without realizing it?  If I remain disconnected, forgetting to notice the shining stars scattered on the path before me, what is at stake for me?  Who else will point them out to me, if I am walking alone?  It seems I have a responsibility to myself, to think about these questions.  I don’t have answers just yet, but it feels important to ask them, regardless. 

Blog 1: A distinctive lack of wildlife (A Night Blog)

This is Brigette, signing on.  Readers, meet my backyard.  Backyard, meet my readers. I live in a neighborhood just outside border of the Pittsburgh city limits, a quiet and friendly sort of place.  But you will learn all that, I suppose, if you keep reading, so I'll get right to the observations I made a few nights ago, as I sat out there for 35 minutes or so on a chilly January evening:   

Maybe writing this blog in the dark was not the best idea.  I must admit, my roommate and I have a most temperamental porch light in our backyard.  It stays on for about twenty seconds, then shuts itself back off without my commanding it to do so. Also, we have no idea how to fix this glitch.

The reason I am worrying about a light in my backyard at the start of a nature blog is that I've selected my own backyard in Swissvale, PA as the site where all of the blogging magic will happen for the next several months.  I am hoping to make this neighborhood feel more like home, and to learn to pay close attention to the little things around me that I usually miss out on.  If blogging fulfills any of these goals, I'll be in business!

As for the yard itself, it is dark right now,, so mostly I am experiencing where I am through my auditory senses.  Meaning, traffic noises, and plenty of them, from the nearby parkway.  But can I hear anything beneath these man-made noises?  I keep straining to hear something else beneath it all, but my ears are of no use at the moment in this quest.  And so it is the distinct lack of "natural" noises that is bothering me at the moment--usually, I require some peace and quiet, maybe a little breeze through the trees or some rustling from nearby squirrels to reach a state of meditation, but there is none of that tonight.  I am beginning to realize that my choice of neighborhoods to live in--and from which to blog--come with built-in challenges, meaning I will possibly have to become more comfortable with the mixture of "urban" and "wild" during the next few months, instead of insisting upon complete silence from humanity in order to appreciate the rest of what is around me.

Perhaps the wildness around me is quiet tonight because it is cold outside, or because they sense me here.  Or maybe it's because the ground here is still partly covered by a sheen of sparkled snow from last night's storm.  This might be enough to keep the animals tucked away in their hidey-holes.  It is a still night, a calm night, as though the world out here is still recovering from the storm--not even a single branch from one of the many trees is swaying nearby.

A few words about the trees in my yard: Or tree, I should say, as there is precisely one, located at the far back edge of the yard, sitting adjacent to the stump of another tree, which rotted and had to be cut down a few years back.  My neighbors' trees, however, rise tall around me. Most of them are rooted high above me, on the hill that adjoins their property to mine.  A fence separates me from the excitement of whatever is going on in the backyards on either side of my house and behind it, effectively shielding their trees' roots from me, but I can see clearly several thick masses of branches rising above, seeming to crowd in towards me in the dark.  Behind them loom a row of tall houses on a hill, and behind those and all around, a darkened, cloudy sky.  The whole thing is reminiscent of a Halloween scene, if not for the snow on the ground.  If only we had a full moon, with the silhouette of a witch on a broomstick flying past, the scene would be complete!

And so I sit, with the intermittent light flickering on and off, on and off; the bell around my cat's neck ringing from time to time in the kitchen located behind my back.  I try to tune it all out, ignoring too the barbecue grill and patio furniture to my left, and focus on the small piece of the world that lies in front of me.  The colors, I notice, are green and brown and white.  (Grass and leaves and snow.)  The gray of the flagstone path cuts right through the middle of the yard, leading to a stone fountain that I've yet to see running, though I've lived here since August.  The fountain in turn leads up into what actual architects (my roommate happens to be one, herself) call a terrace.  It is made up of three tiers of brick-like blocks, paved with dirt on top of each, where my roommate keeps her garden.  At the highest point, perched just above the fountain made of stones and the garden (which I cannot yet see, in the dark, but have only been told about) is the single tree.  Its trunk splits in two at the top, and one of these trunks itself splits into two dead-end branches, while the other is three-headed like a smaller version of a Hydra.  Each of these heads spawns its own smaller branches.  And here behind it comes the moon, poking out from the clouds at last, a barely visible sheen in an otherwise clouded sky. 

Set against this backdrop of garden, fountain, moon, and clouds, the tree commands my attention suddenly.  On either side of the fountain are a series of bushes spanning from one edge of the yard to the other, these only serve to highlight even more the central position of the tree.  I cannot tell what kind of tree it is, though now that I am noticing for the first time its relationship to the fountain, and to the yard as a whole, and to me at this moment, it reminds me of the figure of Jesus on the cross that one sees the moment she steps into a church--central, commanding, towering above you, hard to ignore.  Slightly imposing, yet somehow mysterious, too.  I've hardly noticed this tree before--in fact, I've noticed only the much taller, broader trees that are a part of the neighbors' property.  But when I narrow my focus to just this space, to just this yard, I am surprised to find that I missed out of the rugged authority of this tree until now, seeming to stand alone even while in such close proximity to its brothers. 

Next time, I will peek in on this scene in the daylight of January, eager to see what else might be seen and heard in the daylight!