A Conductor Filled With Rain

Spring                                                                             Planting Moon

As I pushed leek plants into the soil this morning, I saw my dream night in a different way. Each spring the dead earth, the decayed plants and animal carcasses join together, strike up a symphony for life that waits only the warmth of the audience hall and a conductor filled with rain.

Then, that terrible moment of late fall or early winter when everything becomes dormant, goes chthonic, or dies, gives witness to its eventual purpose.   A work of music so vital, so alive that it will fuel a whole growing season, bringing movement after movement after movement until the applause dies down in late October.

(Persephone_Opens_Likon_Mystikon–a mystic winnowing fan.)

That icy hand of death in whose grasp I felt my soul earlier can be seen, perhaps ought to be seen, as the hand that turns the compost barrel, keeping the fertile loam of humanity rich and ready for the next season.  A season in which I can rise again, vital and alive, a movement, another movement, in another season.

These times between the seasons have abundant mythological content, gathered in by poet harvesters and folklore gleaners, just so we will not forget what is so obvious.  That death is not an end, not an end no more than birth is a beginning.  They are, rather, rests in the music of the spheres.

The Other Side

Spring                                                              Planting Moon

The rest of the night went well.  I dreamt of Gods and movement among the gods, adventures on strange landscapes.  There was, too, a series of dreams that saw fruit as the clear solution to most problems.  Sounds hokey I know, but it was more a healthful living trumps disease sort of thing.  And last a way to attain enough resources to always be ready.  For anything.

(Edward Robert Hughes, On the Wings of Morning)

As I write this list, I can see that my mind moved from the pit to the heavens, from the thin dressing of soil over the chthonic to life on the plains of this earth, our place, our true heaven, not far away and out there, but here among the fruits and resources and gods we already have.

It’s not, you see, that those first dreams had it wrong.  Death is a trapdoor that opens beneath each one of us, dropping us either out of existence altogether or into the next realm.  And the unknowable aspect of death bares the teeth of an unseen beast, whether friendly or not, we do not know.

It is not death itself that is the source of the fear, though it seems so.  Rather, it is the fear of what death brings in its wake.  And that fear is ours.  Not essential.  And since it is ours we can head into it, face it, embrace it and be lifted up.  If we dare.

Night Terrors

Spring                                                                                  Planting Moon

Night terrors.  Slivers of dreams with metaphors like the trapdoor of life being opened as I fell through it.  Others, not so specific, but the same existential dread.  The mind trying to come to grips with the ungrippable, because it is the moment of letting go, not holding on.

That dread, the one that lurks beneath many, if not all of our fears, reveals us as the special animals we are.  Not only do we know their is an end, we know that it comes for us, waits around the bend of lives, just out of sight.  Until it isn’t.

(Arnold Bocklin, the Tomb)

As the New Testament says, we know not the day nor the hour.  And goes on to urge getting right with God.  Here on the plains of earth where God is still the one who invented death in the Garden, getting right is no surcease of sorrow, brings no balm to the wounded soul.

What can?  I’m inclined to go with the Tibetan Buddhists on this one, Yamatanka shows us the way.  We imagine our death, see it, embrace it, accept it.  Only in this way can the dread become knowing, become a doorway rather than a wall of fear.  How to do this?  A very good question.

One I’ve obviously not answered yet.  I’ve been thinking about visiting the Tibetan monastery here, the one supported by my friend Gyatsho Tshering.  See if I can learn more.

Right now I only know that death reached out its icy hand and squeezed my soul tonight.  And it scared me.

 

The Movies

Spring                                                                         Planting Moon

Last night, Water for Elephants.  Tonight, Mildred Pierce.  Wisely held back from the Walker last night, resting my still aching back.  While doing that we watched Water for Elephants.  Loved the 1930’s circus, the cinematography.  Rosie the elephant.  Christoph Walz as the Benzini Circuses’ cruel dictator/savior chewed up crew and spat out hatred.

Reese Witherspoon and vampire Robert Pattison were to rise above it all with the purity of true love.  Except their relationship wasn’t believable.  Pattison had no depth, no fire.  Witherspoon, better, still didn’t fill this role as ably as she has so many others I’ve seen.

It was about half a movie.

Mildred Pierce on the other hand.  Wow.  1945.  Manages to cram a self-reliant mother rising above a gray marriage to start a successful restaurant business into dramatic bed with a daughter who represents the conniving, manipulating greedy woman who only takes.  Throw in three male supporting cast.  A first husband stuck in the 40’s male role of bread winner with no job.  Wally, the blowsy real estate salesman who wants a relationship with Mildred and the playboy, Monte, who ends up two-timing Mildred with her daughter, Veda.

Eva Gardner, of Our Miss Brooks, plays a tough, funny dame who works with Mildred (Joan Crawford) as she builds her business.  The adult women are tough and hard-working. Successful.

Monte, the playboy, and the husband, Bert, are caricatures of the weak male and the wealthy lay-about.  Wally, the hick who seems corny, “I am corny.” is the only one of the three who acts honorably with Mildred.

A murder mystery wrapped in a war time story of female self-empowerment with a side dish of ungrateful daughter.  If you haven’t already seen this classic, pick it up.

75!

Spring                                                                              Planting Moon

 

75.  The temperature outside is 75.  Flick back to Monday and Tuesday.  Snow, blowing snow and hazardous driving conditions.  Minnesota has these occasions, these, oh let’s change seasons for good today moments.  Not my favorite part of Minnesota’s climate, but not a bad one either.

Seasonal whiplash.

The back has gotten better, ouching not quite so much, the trajectory seeming to have tilted in a favorable direction at last.  I miss exercising.

Still feeling a bit submerged since last Sunday when Kona had to go to the emergency vet, as if I’ve not swum quite all the way back to the top.   I can the green filtered light, shafts of yellow reaching me on my way up.

Soon now.  Soon.

 

Grounded. At last.

Spring                                                                       Planting Moon

Yes!  Planted under the planting moon even if I couldn’t get the bloodroot up for the bloodroot moon.

We have Wally and Big Daddy onions in, 100 sets each.  Three rows of beets:  Bull’s Blood, Early Blood and Golden.  Pickling cucumbers and Dwarf Gray Sugar Snap Peas.  Of course there was bed prep, too.

With Kate and I wandering around holding this limb and that a bit tenderly I kept getting the image of a dinner bell, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, perhaps someone playing a little Stephen Foster on the grand piano.

Of all the gardening chores, planting is the most magical to me.  That tiny seed.  A beet, a cucumber, a pea.  Those small plants, a fat onion, or a thick leek.  Couldn’t plant the leeks today because the ground is still frozen at about 3 inches down.  How about that?  April 27th.

Had to cancel the Chicago trip due to Kona’s vet bills.  Keeping dogs is a choice and keeping 4 is the same choice 4 times over in terms of food and care.  Choices I have made and make cheerfully.

Pioneers

Spring                                                                        Planting Moon

Finally, my activities and the turning of the Great Wheel will synch up.  Gonna plant cold weather crops today.  The soil’s still cold though the air will warm this week, only to cool down again next.  It’s important to remember that our average last frost date is the beginning of the second week of May and we haven’t gotten there yet.  No transplants outside yet.

Except.  The leek and onion I got in the mail Thursday and Friday.

Kate and I will be a pair out there today, trying to figure out which of us should do what to lessen the likelihood of pain.

As the planting has approached, I’ve pondered, as I have often, the fate of pioneers* who wrenched a back, had disc problems, sprained an ankle, broke an arm at the wrong time of year.  Not that there’s a right time of year, but some times are worse than others.  Planting and harvesting would be terrible times to have a significant physical impairment.  Can you imagine?  Your life and perhaps your family’s depends on planting this year’s crop.

What is today a nuisance, a bother, something to wait out, could have been literally fatal, and not just for one.  I’m sure everybody pitched in, did what they could, but sexual dimorphism and physical development from child to adult would often mean some work simply couldn’t be done.

A bleak prospect.

I can load up on Ultram, lace up the backbrace and then, if necessary, go to the grocery store and buy my vegetables.  The options are better today.

 

*And, yes, I recognize the irony between the pioneers and the Native Americans, the latter  having developed their styles of living off the land in accordance with the way the land provided, at least for the most part.  The pioneers, most of them anyhow, were usually poor folks hunting for a place to live and raise a family.  This phenomenon of the poor spreading out to the places of least convenience continues in our day.

I no longer know how to easily understand the right and wrong of it all.  Yes, the Indian Wars were wrong.  Of course.  And the associated Indian schools and all of it.  Wrong.

The pioneers, though?  They don’t seem wrong to me, perhaps not right in a larger, probably undiscernible sense (for them), but not wrong.  At least not most.  Most were Okies.  Cox’s army.  Peasant class folks hungering for a chance.  For them, I have a lot of empathy.

The question today is not how to go back and redo the past. Rather, it is how to discern the lines that will allow us all to walk into the future together, as friends and allies.

Ruts and Graves

Spring                                                                            Planting Moon

 

The only difference between a grave and rut are the dimensions.  Oh?  At least when you’re in a rut you can still breathe.  Breathing means hope.  Nothing definite, for sure, but hope.

This cliche points at a perceived truth, that being stuck in sameness is a living death.  And you can certainly how that might be true.  Work at a convenience store, come home, warm up a tv dinner, grab a beer, fall asleep in the recliner.  Get up and do it again.

Or drive into the city, park the expensive car in the expensive parking slot ride the elevator up to a posh office, direct, command, leave and drive the expensive car home to the expensive house.  Get up and do it again.

Sure.  That can mean a restricted, narrowed way of greeting this vast opportunity called life.  But.  People like me find certain routines soothing, they pave the way for creative activity, for hard concentration.  Routines allow the needs to be taken care of.  That way the non-routine acts of writing, scholarship, thinking, close looking and reading can happen on their own rhythms.

I like the bowl of fruit, some cottage cheese and a tomato in the morning, reading the paper, having some tea, then heading downstairs to start work.  I suppose you could call that a rut, the food boring, the repetition bland, I find it nourishing and centering.  You say cereal, I have tomato.

My opinion?  Pick your routines and habits carefully, make sure they support the things you do that matter the most, not the other around.  Then reinforce them as much as you can.  If you’re like me, that is.

quotes

“Language is a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes to make the bears dance, when what we long for is to move the stars to pity.”

G. Flaubert

 

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

Carl Gustav Jung

Jazz Noir

Spring                                                                        Planting Moon

“Creativity is the social act of the solitary person.”  William Butler Yeats

Reading the book about introverts, Quiet, will help you see why.  Even if you’re not an introvert, reading this book is a good introduction to the world of those of us who prefer alone time, find crowds and parties taxing, would like time to mull over decisions.

Part of what was so stressful for me with the Kona situation and the back pain was that I had to go to the vet with her three days in a row, meaning I increased my regular interaction with outsiders by multiples.  That tires me out.  Even on a good day.

Right now Kate’s upstairs doing the cross-word and watching the dogs, the back pain is much better this morning, probably the result of the prednisone and I’m down here in the study getting ready to get back to work.

 

We have a jazz weekend planned with Craig Taborn at the Walker tonight and Jazz Noir at the Artist’s Quarter on Sunday night.  Taborn is a Golden Valley kid who has made a big name for himself as a jazz pianist and an ensemble player flavored by Miles Davis in his Bitches Brew phase.   Jazz Noir is a radio play being broadcast live at the 8 pm hour over KBEM.

“For those who long for “the grand old days” of radio, Jazz88 has answered the call. Jazz Noir is a new original radio series complete with live radio actors and jazz ensemble in front of a studio audience, just like in the days of radio’s infancy.

(Avon–Latisha White)

Jazz88’s first episode is an original drama, Charles & Avon, that will be performed, recorded and broadcast in front of a live audience from the Artists’ Quarter in downtown Saint Paul on Sunday, April 28, with shows at 5 and 8 p.m. The 8 p.m. performance will be broadcast live on 88.5 FM.”