Blue Moon

Oh, and then I stepped outside--mid-laundry--and saw the second full moon for August.
What a shimmer of blonde and silver, what cheek to show up twice?
(It's just nature, right?)
And then la femme dans la lune gave me a wink.
Not just for me, but for you, too. Come,

look.

Summer, Still

I do. I take umbrage at James Taylor's vapid lyric "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time." It seems important to disagree with it. There are many secrets to life, no doubt--both wise bons mots and jovial slogans (that ever-ready cliche among them: "Don't-sweat-the-small-stuff-It's-all-small-stuff." I think not).

But enjoying the passage of time seems wrong-headed to me. My high school boyfriend, that Carlos-Castenada-reading, mushroom-eating, percussionist jazzbo, used to tell me to 'be in the moment.' He was angling for sex, of course. Even then, though, I knew that in the larger scheme of things he was right. You've got to be in the moment because the moment--well, it passes. It passes really fast.

This is why when I was nineteen and discovered the famous Dylan Thomas poem, "Fern Hill," I got really depressed. "Fern Hill" is a florid recollection of Thomas' early years spent at a farm in Wales. It is here that he experiences the sense of being green and carefree, famous among the barns/About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home....

But by the third stanza he's singing another tune. Or better yet to say he's read the writing on the wall and it's all about mortality. His own and by extension, everybody's. At night, Time, (personified with even less charm than Max von Sydow as Death in "The Seventh Seal") is bearing the farm--and youth and life--away, never a nanno-second to be returned to him or to be re-lived again. By the poem's end we get the sad lament:

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

This made me seriously sad when I was nineteen. I think it still does. Mostly I try not to think of "Fern Hill." Nor of Dylan Thomas' own early and drunken demise.

But there are moments, as there was one today, walking back from teaching a class, that the haunting lines came back to me:

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades,that Time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Summer's ending, I reminded myself. Fall term has begun. The miserable epiphany of "Fern Hill" has me in its cross hairs once again.

And I haven't worn my bathing suit all summer.
I have not eaten enough sweet corn.
I have not spent enough time with those I love.

And there is only one antidote.

The story is told of the Buddha after his enlightenment. He is returning to the city and encounters a man who is astonished by his radiance.

The man stopped and asked, “My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?”
"No," said the Buddha
"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"
Again the Buddha answered, "No."
"Are you a man?"
"No."
"Well, friend, what then are you?"

The Buddha replied, “I am awake.”

Pesto: A Sonnet

Takes longer to write a sonnet than it does to make the great, green elixir......and longer still to savor a plate of it on fettucine.....

The basil—green, fresh-washed and dried,

The oil virgin to the core,

Garlic and cheese, both well-applied

Are all you need and nothing more.

 

That is, unless you want it more enriching

with toasted and chopped-fine pignoli.

Add butter, softened—so bewitching--

Cracked pepper makes the pesto holy.

 

You whir the leaves in your machine,

Then pour the fragrant, golden oil

Into a maelstrom basil-green--

Et voila! Here's pesto, rich and royal!

Now all give thanks for summer’s splendor!

(And cook your pasta just till tender.)

The Water Cure

Just having bought this new/old house--what I've come to think of as a piece of history--a real vacation was out of the question. But being a fan of what I've heard is an essentially French take on travel, micro-tourism, as well as living so close to Sharon Springs, NY, I knew that even a twenty-four hour getaway would feel both like time-travel as well as real-time travel.

Of course, it did. Sharon Springs has no rival in sheer demographic perplexity,  quirky history, bad-smelling water and amazing hospitality. Its history as a gentry-spa in the middle of the nineteenth-century is tame compared to the profile of its twentieth-century clientele. Increasingly it was Eastern European Jews seeking the waters (and there are waters) who came to Sharon Springs.

After that there were the World War II survivors financed by German war reparations funds, followed by the Hassidim and now--I should say, today--I saw a Russian-speaking trio. They doffed their tee-shirts to expose ample chests and quivering bellies, unleashed their pit bull (kindly re-leashing him as I strolled hesitantly toward the sulphur spring) and partook.

Understand, I like funky water. A bottle of Badoit is a real treasure to me. Bring on the Hepar and Gerolsteiner. But this is funky, funky water. The sulphur stuff in the first spring hurt the fillings in my teeth. I strolled toward the magnesium spring. Less tooth pain. Probably good for what ails you, as my mother always said of prune juice.

The sulphur spring; magnesium and derelict bath-houses not shown

Of course, both the elaborate bathhouses and inhalation rooms surrounding these two springs are all in ruins. As is a phenomenal Moorish-styled 200-room hotel, long-derelict, just across the street. Built in the 1920's to cater to the needs of Orthodox Jews, it is currently owned by Korean investors who are apparently unaware of how many people have paid visits to the strange and ghostly rooms lining the hotel corridors, though the interior tells a story of vagrancy and off-the-beaten-track tourism which off-site landlords have not been able to quell.

Not too far from town, down a bunch of backroads I seem able to remember though I've only been there a few times, is a spring with water as sweet as baby's breath. Okay, much sweeter. I pulled up today and a truck edged in behind me. And parked. I gamely took my bottles to the spring, hoping not to be mugged, raped or forced into unwilling Amish-ness. On the way back from the spring, bottles filled, I approached the truck.

"Does the spring have a name?" I asked.

"No. But a friend of mine owns the property," he said. What he really said was: But a freynd of meyne owns the prop-perty in a thick Australian accent.

"It's great-tasting water," I said, trying to not let on that I was equally as stunned as relieved to discover an Australian as opposed to a kidnapper at the out-of-the-way and nameless spring. An Australian? Here?

I guess we got auerselves a great blassing here with this spring, he finished.

And I had to agree. Sharon Springs is a great blassing indeed.

The Tell-tale Shelves

Beate Hildebrant, acrylic, 2007

At a used bookstore on New York's lower east side I was amused to see that the shelf labelled 'Erotica' was just one above the shelf labelled 'Fairy Tales.' I pointed this out to my friend who remarked, drolly, 'They're the same thing.'


In a way, maybe so. After all, both kinds of writing involve an exciting mise-en-scene and the hope of a happy ending, though in my experience fairy tales contain far more surprises. And not always good surprises. For example, consider this from the Grimm Brothers' "The Three Snake Leaves:"

The king had a daughter who was very beautiful, but she was also very strange. She had made a vow to take no one as her lord and husband who did not promise to let himself be buried alive with her if she died first. If he loves me with all his heart, said she, of what use will life be to him afterwards. On her side she would do the same, and if he died first, would go down to the grave with him. This strange oath had up to this time frightened away all wooers... 

No kidding.

But as I got looking at the Erotica/Fairy Tales juxtaposition, it made me wonder about how it is we decide to arrange things. Do you keep the coffee maker near the shelf of mugs? (I do.) Your jars of herbs near the stove? (You shouldn't.) I credit my Scandinavian/German ancestry for a having been imbued with a 'blessed rage for order' to quote Wallace Stevens out of context--and who gets that poem, anyway?

The result of this rage for order is that I spent an inordinate amount of time arranging my own bookshelves when I unpacked from my recent move. The 'Fairy Tales/Children's Books' section of my library is near my shelves of biographies. I keep my British Authors, American Authors and French Authors in separate areas and my books by other international writers are all shelved together like some kind of United Nations summit meeting.

I play favorites: I keep Edith Wharton, Wallace Stegner, Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Sayers and D.H. Lawrence on their own special shelves, as I do my collection of ghost stories.I have a few shelves loaded down with books on France that are somehow joined by books on Scotland, just as if the Channel and England did not separate them.

What makes us put things where we do? Quirks, proclivities (my theology books are in the attic), tendencies, I guess. In the library of our brains, maybe there are no unshelved ideas.

Rooming with Emily (an untrue story)

Emily as we know her

She is understandably misinterpreted, an eccentric who likes her cocktails. This means she’s always at Maggie’s, the little bar we all go to after the readings.

Maggie’s is small enough you can mill about the place the way you would in someone’s house. There are always those, too—house parties. Jonas, the summer program’s director, wants his teaching staff well-cared for, especially since we all are garrisoned in the college dorms—‘suites’ the college calls them: two bedrooms, a bath and a common room the size of a postage stamp. But they’re air-conditioned, which is a blessing.

To compensate for the spartan housing, Jonas and his wife, Anna, hold dinners to which all the visiting faculty writers are invited. Another member of the English department, a medievalist named Heloise, also hosts a dinner from time to time. So most nights we all eat together like some kind of quirky family. After dinner, on weeknights, one of us gives a reading.

It won’t surprise you that Emily is a picky eater. She’ll nibble on a single shrimp or leave the dinner table, her plate untouched. Little wonder, then, that she’s rail-thin. And the severe way she wears her hair makes her look drawn and plain.

  

But it is not true that she always wears white. She is, in fact, a provocative dresser considering that she is no longer an ingénue. Somehow, she pulls it off. Maybe it’s her air of innocence—estranged from beauty none can be/for beauty is infinity. She’s always saying that kind of thing.

A further stereotype-busting fact is that each summer Emily has a fling with someone. I’ve been her room-mate for nine years, so trust me, I know. However pale her brow, her blood runs red. And if you read her poetry closely, that should come as no surprise.

Sunflowers on my Desk

The sunflowers wave their heads around like girls and boys
with unkempt hair and short attention spans.
'look, here! look, there!' they say,
as if anyone is listening.
They are unattended, like children
at a Grown-ups party, left to themselves, and unruly.

The Grown-ups are off discussing the serious work
of Politicians and the new Book Someone has written.
Someone is important and has won some prizes
and also is serving on a Panel which is also part of a Colloquy
on dystopian urban fiction. It is Grim business.

The sunflowers do not care. They say
'the wind is in the trees and the tree branches are waving
their arms. they're waving their arms at us.'
Next they see a bird, a splash of red like a patch off a cotton jacket.
Then a squirrel chases another squirrel in a mad tarentella.


The Grown-ups do not even notice. They are pouring
Wine and muttering about the Economy, both of which are bad--
the Wine because the host has little knowledge and less taste,
but it is better than nothing. The Economy is bad
for all the obvious reasons.

The sunflowers turn golden-fringed faces upward now
where geese form their drum-and-bugle V
and clouds scud across the blue like surrealist tramcars.
'it is all so beautiful!' they say, 'the whole show!'
But they are left unattended, with their unkempt hair
and short attention spans and no one hears them.

Dinner Music

Friends over for dinner last night--first official dinner party in the house, I suppose. It was a happy nod to A Pig in Provence and my memories of similarly market-fresh meals I made on our too-short stays in the south of France. Salade nicoise with Italian tuna in olive oil, farmer's market fingerling potatoes and local eggs, haricots verts from the new Trader Joe's, a favorite Zinfandel and a poppy seed cake made from a recipe card I'd copied out in college. (It's a satisfying cake to make--you soak the poppy seeds in milk which turns a purplish hue, you thinly slice the lemon zest and make the egg whites stand up tall like ghostly paperdolls.)


Delicious dinner. Then talk turned to whether or not grumpy--or worse!--people can make good art. And obviously they can. Edgar Allen Poe was surely no prince. Years ago I taught in a school where the history teacher's mother had known Robert Frost and had had nothing good to say about his parenting skills. Pound was just a little more than problematic. Yeats ended up proposing to Maud Gonne's daughter after Maud herself had turned him down time and time again. There are many, many more contemporary bad boys and girls best left uncited.  So why do I turn a blind eye on writers' noxious behaviors, but hold composers to a higher standard? Could it have anything to do with the fact that I'm a writer and not a musician? I'm sure not...


But ever since I found out that Debussy tried to kill his wife, then, thinking she was already dead, tried to rob her (since she wasn't things just went from bad to worse), I just don't hear "Afternoon of a Faun" with a sympathetic ear. I adore "Les Nuits d'Ete," those evocative songs of Berlioz' about longing, love and desire. But once I learned about his totally whacked-out obsession with Harriet Smithson, I confess I hear them differently. And Carlo Gesualdo murdering his first cousin/wife and her lover? Well, my dinner guest friends, both musicians, are trying to convince me to listen to his Good Friday Responsories with a more open mind.

They can keep working on me. But I may hold on to my double standard (at least I admit it's one). I can always claim that I think musicians are called to a higher expression of art and so therefore ought to be better people for it. I'm sure I don't really mean that. I may just be making excuses for writers. And hoping that musicians, in our stead, toe my randomly-determined moral line!

Where Some of the Wild Things Are

I suffer from a predictable francophilia. It's true. I'm a sucker for the language. Not only does it sound good, it feels good to speak. I'm a Tour de France junkie, even though I really don't understand the way it works. I know the geography of the country almost the way I know my home state. And if someone offered me the chance tomorrow to  jump on a plane and head to the Dordogne or back to Provence or Languedoc, I'd say mais oui, pack my bag, pop a Xanax (mais oui, I have a fear of flying) and go.

But it's also easy to romanticize a place. When I was in Provence in 2006 I rented a house, La Colle, that was twenty minutes down a 'white road' (which translates from the English into 'narrow, rock-studded, rain-gutted wildlife-infested track not suitable for a rental car'). This was accessed after climbing into the mountains on successively smaller roads and making a right turn at the petrol pump. A petrol pump. Not a gas station.

The house itself was an old barn with a stone vault where the animals had been kept and though it had been skillfully re-habbed, there was nothing to be done about the scorpions and wolf spiders, wasps and mice, frequent thunderstorms and power outages and general shortage of water. I confess I didn't last the week there. In fact, I made an exquisite ratatouille with produce picked up at the market in Forcalquier, the last outpost of civilization, spend two unquiet nights at La Colle, then drove back to Arles, thankfully never having had to use the epi-pen on a scorpion bite.

I thought of La Colle when I re-read A Pig in Provence over the weekend. Georgeanne Brennan's thoughtful memoir describes the years she and her first husband (and children) spent in Provence in the 1970's (in other words, way before the Peter Mayle-ing of Provence. They came to make goat cheese, having no previous experience of know-how and though they lieved in the Alpes-Maritime and La Colle is in the Luberon, both places, at the time Brennan lived there, were thoroughly rural and rugged.

Her affection for the land and nostalgia for the fascinating experiment--she and her husband did succeed as cheesemakers, but circumstances forced them back to California after a few years and she has not lived there full-time since--make compelling reading. The first time I read it, I had fantasies of doing something similar in a similarly-outback part of Provence or Languedoc. But as with Carol Drinkwater's captivating memoir, The Olive Farm, the harsh realities of living off the land, as well as the sheer work and expense involved can never be fully obscured nor fully captured by the prose.

Reading A Pig in Provence this time, with its detailed descriptions of a sheep's breech, the annual pig slaughter and the rugged transhumance in which large herds of sheep and goats are shepherded from lower Provence into the mountains of Haute Provence, remind me that I never made it through a week at La Colle and that it takes a person of resilience, devotion and a writerly's eye to pen such a memoir.

Don't Eff with the Ineffable

If there is anything missing in the vitriolic debates about the relative worth/worthlessness of religion, it’s the question of the ineffable.

Thomas Aquinas, after a life in spent crafting his Summa Theologica in which he aimed to answer the question of God’s purpose for creation and in what ways we are to exist in it, died having declared his philosophical works useless compared to a beatific vision he had later in his short life.

Kierkegaard, that melancholy Dane, spilled more ink than tears as he tried to explain why the ultimate is inexpressible and that the meaning of life is to surrender to that which cannot be described with words.

Schopenhauer, too, devoted roughly 500,000 words to describe the Will, this thing that no words can capture. But he further claimed the sacred writing of the Upanishads to have been the solace in his life as well as in his death.

There is a lot of ink spilled trying to describe the ineffable.

Writer, philosopher and composer Roger Scruton describes the experience of reading a book Music and the Ineffable by Vladimir Jankélévitch. It’s a book he describes as ‘mercifully short.’ But not short enough, actually:

[Jankelevitch’s] “argument is stated on the first page  — namely, that since music works through melodies, rhythms and harmonies and not through concepts, it contains no messages that can be translated into words. There follows 50,000 words devoted to the messages of music — often suggestive, poetic and atmospheric words, but words nevertheless, devoted to a subject that no words can capture.”

Music does seem to be a chrysalis for disclosing the ineffable.  Driving home the other night I heard the Kronos Quartet’s version of “The Fly-Freer,” a haunting tone poem written by Sigur Rose for an Icelandic avant-garde rock group, arranged for strings by Stephen Prutsman.

Driving through the darkness, hearing the strings swirl and spiral, and shriek and whisper—and of course, they weren’t doing any such things; there were no shapes to see, no voices to hear—I had one of those moments. You know those moments. Something is being told to you. You don’t know what it is. You don’t know the teller. You don’t need to know either.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, the experience is all.

Bats Amore

Okay, not.

Six weeks into this lovely, historic house and there have been bats. Five bats in three weeks, in fact. This troubled me so much that yesterday my therapist and I told bat stories to each other which I take as evidence that I now longer need therapy; but I do need a Bat Guy (whom I actually have because in my last house there were eight bats in four years--still better than five in three weeks so I guess I used to be lucky in that department).

This morning's visitor clung tenaciously to the stucco ceiling in the dining room as if begging for an invite to a dinner party. Fat chance, creeper. I went out to do errands and generally avoid all contact. But I ended up buying a black blouse with white buttons and it wasn't until later that I thought maybe I was emulating my wildlife nemesis, getting in touch with that inner feral mammal who is able to do more than keen into the cell phone for back-up help to get the dreaded chauve-souris (yep, that's 'bat' in French, folks) out of the house.