Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Meditation Aid

There is a small dog bed on the floor next to my meditation cushion, and every morning when I fold myself into a half lotus my gray cat, Telemann, jumps into the bed and regresses to earliest kittenhood. Not that there is anything kittenish about Telemann. He is in his prime, an avid (indoor) hunter, agile and well-muscled, with a tom’s wide skull and thick neck. 

The dog bed where he stages his regressions is covered in fuzzy fabric, and its back and sides are stuffed to form a softly convex wall. Telemann hops in, spreads his ten white fingers as wide as they will go, and begins to push rhythmically, first the right hand and then the left, against the side of the bed. His scimitar claws make a popping sound as they dig into and out of the cloth. His purring grows louder; the kneading speeds up; his eyes closed in ecstasy, he presses his nose and lips into the fabric. I can’t tell whether he’s actually sucking on the fuzz or whether it’s the accumulated moisture from his breath that makes his favorite spot damp and frayed. Either way, Telemann pretends he’s nursing. 

By the time the twenty minutes of observing-but-not-judging my monkey mind are up, the purring and kneading have stopped, and Telemann is fast asleep, one white paw still pressed against the curved side of the bed. Perhaps this pretend nursing is a way of making up for his deprived infancy, when his mother was so undernourished that when the family was rescued the kittens had to be bottle fed. Or perhaps the nursing is a way to soothe his anxieties, if he has any anxieties, which is doubtful. 

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem to embarrass this otherwise dignified cat to be seen indulging in baby behavior, and I envy Telemann his nonchalance, which we humans are taught to overcome at an early age. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, waking up in the dark of a winter night, gasping with virus- and Trump-induced  angst, one could take comfort in a well-sucked thumb? 

Telemann doesn’t think about what I think of him. Oddly enough, when he’s settled in my arms I often stop thinking myself. He looks into my eyes, I look into his eyes, our breathing slows, our eyelids droop, and I subside into a blissful no-mind state that I hardly ever achieve on my meditation cushion.

You could tear out my fingernails one by one and you wouldn’t get me to say that I love Telemann more than my little dog, Bisou. But Bisou doesn’t induce that serene blankness in me the way he does. It may be that her face is too expressive—dogs have a special set of muscles around their eyes that gives them an almost-human repertoire of expressions—and when she looks at me I react by thinking: does she want food? Does she need to go out? Is she bored? Is she worried? 

Cats do not have those cunning little muscles around the eyes, so their faces appear somewhat mask-like to us. Looking at Telemann’s face when he’s relaxed is like gazing into a still lake, its surface broken only by his slow periodic blinks. There is no thought there, no demand, no hurry, no worry--only presence. And in response my mind slows way down, and I get a blessed respite from being human, and a fleeting taste of what it’s like to be a cat.



Wednesday, December 23, 2020

The Mule, the Plow, and the Pen

In the menagerie that usually crowds my dreams—lions and tigers starving in the basement, neglected goats and chickens multiplying in filthy outbuildings, a German Shepherd whom no one’s remembered to feed—mules had never appeared. But the other night, as the first serious snow of the year fell outside my window, there she was, my first dream mule. 

I spent my childhood summers around mules. In the Catalan countryside, before the arrival of tractors, people worked the land with horses, mules, and plows that were almost identical to the ones introduced by the Romans two millennia ago. Since my grandfather was a vet, mules were often brought to him for injections and minor surgeries, which I was allowed to watch from the safety of the dining room window. Mules were popular with the local peasants, who found them to be sturdier than horses, less flighty, and better able to navigate difficult terrain. According to my grandmother, in past centuries the pope himself rode around Vatican City on a white mule—the first pope-mobile.

But I didn’t much like mules. I preferred the little gray donkeys, with their velvety faces and enormous eyes, that trotted daintily on the dusty roads, carrying a load of grass for the rabbits and, often, a black-clad peasant grandmother as well. And even the humblest cart horse was more elegantly proportioned than a mule, whose skinny tail and long ears seemed all wrong for its big, sleek body. 

Not having thought about mules for years, I was surprised when one showed up in my dream. She was brought to me by an old Vermonter who announced that he was going to plow the lawn in front of my cottage so I could make a vegetable garden. The plow to which he had hitched the mule was like the ones I remembered from my childhood. It had wooden handles, and the share—the part that digs into the earth—had a sharp metal point and flaring sides. 

I could barely contain my glee. Not only was I going to have a garden again, but one made by a mule! I didn’t care that she was a dull brown, run-of-the-mill mule. I found her charming, and the archaic plow she dragged connected me to the generations of peasants lurking in my DNA. I was going to grow kale and chard and garlic and those slender Japanese eggplants, and cook and eat them the way God intended. And who knew--once I had a garden, could chickens and goats be far behind? 

That was obviously the wish-fulfillment aspect of the dream, in which I got to have my old close-to-the-earth life back. But if, according to Jung, both the old Vermonter and the mule represent parts of me, the meaning becomes less clear. I can easily see myself as an old Vermonter wanting to make a garden, but as a mule? Mules are neither dashing nor adorable. They are strong, hard-working, reliable and mostly boring. 

The dream mule, however, had come not only on a delightful mission, but a subversive one: tearing up the sterile expanse of grass in front of my cottage and replacing it with something nourishing and meaningful. In real life, of course, this would not be allowed in the retirement community in which I live, even if it is a Vermont retirement community. But the dream mule and the old Vermonter clearly believed that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. (That is totally not the waking me, who tends to get permission and then ask forgiveness just in case.) 

If I am both the old Vermonter and the mule, though, am I also the lawn? I ask because the mule’s job is to plow under all that boring conventional grass and make possible the growth of vitamin-rich, life-enhancing veggies. Did I mention that the Roman plow has a sharp point and flaring sides, not unlike the nib of a pen? Not that I actually write with a pen….


 

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Why I Read Biographies

 “I don’t read biographies of musical geniuses,” my father used to say. “The music may be sublime, but the composer usually isn’t.” He was probably thinking of Beethoven, who was notoriously difficult, Schumann, who went insane, or Mozart, who never really grew up (remember Amadeus?). Even the celestial J.S. Bach whined disappointingly about money in his letters—although with twenty children and a wife to support that may be understandable.

Unlike my father, I do sometimes read bios, mostly of writers. I read them in search of inspiration, consolation, and for entertainment not unmixed with  Schadenfreude. Clicking the page-turn on my Kindle, I remind myself that what I’m reading is just one fallible human being’s opinion of another fallible human being, that memory is unreliable, that language obscures rather than reveals the truth, and so on. 

Still, reading about the lives of writers shines a beam, however faint, on that nebulous interface between character and creativity. And one thing stands out in all these bios: no matter how diverse the writers, their temperaments, and their circumstances, they all worked astoundingly hard at their writing, which they found arduous, draining, frustrating, and only occasionally exhilarating. 

Their personal lives are often awe-inspiring in their disarray. The fifty-year-old Colette seduced her seventeen-year-old stepson. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, two of the most exalted philosophical minds of the last century, were emotional dunces, and nasty ones at that, when it came to managing their mutual love affair as well as their entanglements with the many “contingent” others. (See Tête- à-Tête, the lives and loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, by Hazel Rowley.) 

For the last week I’ve been knee-deep in Margot Peters’ biography of May Sarton. The feminist and lesbian icon comes off as a sometimes dangerous lunatic, careening from one disastrous love affair to another, alternately drowning in tears and alcohol, and never able to reconcile her thirst for solitude with the need to surround herself with admirers. 

What emerges for me out of this welter of dramas, disappointments, insecurities, envies, and betrayals? For one, I learn again what my father discovered in the composer bios: that one can be both a creative genius and emotionally challenged. As a writer, I find consolation in confronting how hard the craft is and how much discipline it demands of even the greatest. If Colette found it necessary to turn her desk to the wall to avoid being distracted by the view of the Mediterranean, shouldn’t I save my internet surfing for after I’m done writing? 

Another useful reminder: once the poem/novel/essay is finished, even gargantuan talent and effort don’t guarantee success. André Gide said non to Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Madeleine L’Engle had to submit A Wrinkle in Time to twenty-seven publishers before one accepted it. The stories of rejected masterpieces could fill a book. 

Reading about May Sarton’s lifelong failure to balance solitude and society, I am more inclined to forgive myself for my own minor version of the dilemma. If she, with her talent, ambition, and dedication couldn’t figure it out, then maybe I shouldn’t beat myself up for longing to be with people and longing to get away from them, sometimes both at the same time. 

Alas, none of the writers I've read about, from the merely talented to the great geniuses, was particularly happy. In fact, many of them were mostly miserable. Critics scoffed; lovers betrayed or were betrayed; money was scarce; the Muse absconded; self-doubt persisted despite public acclaim. 

Yet it wasn’t all darkness and gnashing of teeth. Even the least happy of these geniuses experienced flashes of, if not unclouded joy, at least temporary ease—that blessed moment when, having toiled and agonized (Flaubert: “Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.”) one lays down the pen or turns off the computer and enjoys the inexpressible relief of having written. 

In this respect, I’m there with the best—nothing smooths my brow or makes me feel more at peace than having written. The feeling reminds me of the endorphin rush that used to engulf me after a five-mile run. Of course, the lovely sensation doesn’t last, and tomorrow I’ll have to do the equivalent of one of those runs again. But what is life if not an endless run around the same old track?

For those us who write, paint, sculpt, or make music amid the tragedies and absurdities of human existence, the guarantee of solace that comes from having written, painted, sculpted, or composed is not a trivial blessing. It is an echo of the Creator’s cosmic sigh of relief (“and He saw that it was good”) at the end of each day’s work.



Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Masked in Winter

 As in early childhood, after a certain age the differences between the sexes become less pronounced. Seen from the back, men and women in their golden years are often indistinguishable. Baggy jeans and oversized t-shirts minimize differences in body proportions. Once-glorious heads of red, blond, and black hair have thinned and disappeared beneath a flood of white, and most women, weary of decades of blow-drying, have embraced the convenience of short hair. 

In the retirement community where I live this homogeneity has sometimes caused me embarrassment, such as the day when I caroled “Hi Dave!” to a fellow resident, only to realize too late that I was addressing a woman—and one I knew well, at that. 

The problem of figuring out who is who worsens in winter, when no one steps out the door without wearing a quilted, hooded coat, snow-worthy boots, mittens, a scarf, a hat (yes, under the hood), and sunglasses to protect from the glare. Add to this the blurring effect of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, and you can see why the merest stroll becomes a social challenge. Luckily the voice remains a fairly reliable gender give-away, so you can always shout “Hellooo!” into the gale, and listen for the answer. 

Now, in this pandemic winter, the mask and distancing mandates have made recognizing passers-by, let alone chatting with them, almost impossible. Even if something, such as a pink hat, hints at the gender of the person I am approaching, I still have no idea whether she is a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. So like most others I have adopted the non-committal but enthusiastic wave, which signals friendliness without presuming friendship. 

Often, however, the wavee feels obliged to respond with a remark of some sort. This, due to the combined effects of distance, mask, and wind, usually comes out something like “mwah-hee?” to which I, assuming that it is an allusion to the weather, usually answer “yes, isn’t it!” If she interprets this as meaning, “good to see you!” no harm done. 

If she has a dog, on the other hand, things go more smoothly. I am acquainted with almost all the dogs in the community, and although some have developed white muzzles, unlike humans they have retained their distinctive coat colors. I may not be sure of the name of the masked figure before me—Susan? Mary? Nancy?—but I know without a shadow of a doubt that her tiny terrier is Trixie.

So when I, out walking Bisou, meet Susan/Mary/Nancy with Trixie, we stop and, standing leash-distance apart while the dogs wag their tails and sniff each other, we too have a conversation of sorts, through our masks. “Waaa hm-hm!” she exclaims, arching her eyebrows behind her glasses. “Um woo!!” I respond, nodding emphatically. 

When the dogs have finished chatting, we wave good-bye and turn towards home—two dogs and their humans, each warmed by the chance to commune with a member of their species on this dark, lonely winter day.




Thursday, December 3, 2020

Chickadees in Stick Season

Between leaf season and snow season comes what Vermonters call stick season, when the landscape is reduced to endless vistas of bare trunks and branches, all in shades of gray. The skies are mostly gray, too, as are the squirrels and the rabbits. The chipmunks in their little orange coats would add some color, but they disappeared weeks ago into their hygge holes. 

The birds that, like me, scorn to flee Vermont winters for places like Florida, also wear basic gray, enhanced with bits of white, black, and slate blue. The only spot of bright color outside my window is the red dot on the back of the head of the hairy woodpecker, and on his smaller cousin, the downy. 

I’ve been watching chickadees feed, and worrying about how they keep body and soul together. They swoop to the feeder, pick up a single sunflower seed, and dash off to a tree that, in chickadee terms, is the equivalent of a hundred miles away. There, clamping the seed onto the branch with their claws, they attack it with the force of a miniature jackhammer. When they are done with that seed, they shoot back to the feeder, get another seed, zoom to a distant perch, and repeat the process. 

How many calories are in a single sunflower seed--two? And how many calories does a chickadee use in those mad dashes to and from the feeder, plus all that hammering to break the shell? If I had to travel as far and work as hard for every morsel of food I would be a living skeleton—or more likely a dead one. 

(Nuthatches, I’m told, can’t grasp a seed with their feet, so instead they jam it into a crevice in the tree bark to hold it steady while they go at it with their beak.) 

I put a heater in the bird bath to keep it from freezing, and, after two years of ignoring it, the birds have fallen in love with it.  But again, as with feeding, drinking looks like more trouble than it’s worth. A chickadee lands on the edge of the bath, looks up for hawks and owls, looks down for snakes and cats, fluffs its feathers, peers right, then left. Takes a sip. Looks down, looks up, fluffs feathers, etc. Takes sip, then whooshes off. Again, how much water can that teensy beak hold? Three molecules? 

With the exception of certain squirrels, all the small critters outside my window seem to live with endless panic in their breasties. Like Robert Burns, who empathized so tenderly with the plight of a field mouse, I worry about what it must be like to live in a constant state of fear. Do the field mice and the titmice ever feel safe enough to relax? Or are they under constant stress, wondering when, if ever, it’s o.k. to venture out of their homes? 

Maybe the reason that I’m thinking so much about the stress levels of these tiny folk is that I, along with most of humanity, am also feeling endangered this autumn. Like the chickadees and their fellows, I think twice before leaving my place of safety, save my outings for food shopping, and don’t congregate in flocks. Peering nervously through my mask-fogged glasses as I push my cart down the aisle, I keep to myself, alert to invisible dangers. I do not linger at the checkout counter, but dash back to the house with my little bag of sustenance, there to eat in safety. 

I remember from Catholic school that reassuring phrase about God (Goddess/Ground of Being/The Universe) being somehow aware, and caring, about every sparrow (chickadee/nuthatch/titmouse) that falls. My hope in this bleak season is that She or He is mindful of those little birds, and of me and mine as well.


 

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Little Murders

 This is the season in Vermont when the wildlife assaults the barricades. The wolf spiders scuttle in from the garage and drink out of the dog water dish. The field mice squeeze through the tiny crack where the heating pipe enters the wall, hoping for a spot by the fire and a regular supply of crumbs. And it’s the season when, every evening, the gray cat Telemann goes on the hunt. 

In the morning I find the shrunken remains of a spider or two, its legs curled inward like fingers in a fist. I shudder as I walk by, thinking, if it’s the size of a penny in its contracted state, how appallingly huge it must have been while it was alive. And I am grateful to my hunter for keeping us spider free. 

But the field mice are a different story. If spiders rank at the bottom of the adorableness scale, field mice are at the top, with their furry little bodies, tiny paws, big ears, and shiny black eyes. Beatrix Potter used to keep them as pets, and so would I if I could litter train them. And if I didn’t have Telemann. 

Telemann doesn’t care about the adorableness of field mice. He views them not only as food, but as superior entertainment. If watching squirrels through the window is tantamount to watching tennis on TV, catching a live mouse must feel like playing an actual match. 

I don’t begrudge Telemann his mice. We really cannot have them in the house, and he saves us the distressing job of trapping them. It’s what happens between the catching and the eating that I cannot bear--the seemingly frivolous, sadistic batting and stalking and pawing for what looks like the sheer pleasure of prolonging the little creature’s agony. 

Or at least that’s what I thought until two minutes ago, when I googled “why do cats play with their prey.” And it turns out that they’re not playing at all! They are trying to exhaust their prey, before delivering the killing bite to the back of the neck, in order to protect themselves from being bitten or, if the victim is a bird, pecked. Cats have a short muzzle, and big vulnerable eyes, and a rodent in desperate straits can inflict serious damage. So the batting and pawing have a purpose, and Telemann, after all, is not a sadist. Whew! 

Not only that, he is a thrifty, respectful hunter. He eats every speck of his mice, leaving not so much as a tuft of velvety fur for me to find. For all I know, he bows and gives thanks to the Mouse God before settling down to his meal. 

When he’s done, he licks his perfect white teeth with his perfect pink tongue and, tail high, strides victorious and immaculate to where I’m reclining with my book. He jumps on my chest, right between the book and my face, butts my nose with his forehead (why?), turns around three times, and settles purring and blinking on my sternum to digest his mouse.


 

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Rilke To The Rescue

Some days the most exciting thing that happens around here is that a chickadee takes a bath. A bathing chickadee is a cheerful sight. After checking carefully for owls and hawks, he wades into the birdbath and does a kind of shimmy, dipping his head, fluffing his feathers, slapping his wings, and sending up sprays of shiny droplets. 

Other than that, there’s not much going on, so it’s not surprising that many of us are treating this period of seclusion as a time set apart—a pause, a break during which the clock stops ticking. A time in detention, or in suspended animation, or in hibernation. A chunk of life held between parentheses that will melt away when things get better and we go back to normal.

 I remember my two pregnancies, when my entire being was focused on the resolution of that exceptional state, and daily events seemed not to matter as, like an accomplished meditator, I turned my focus over and over to the coming baby. But those two nine-month waits were joyous times, unlike the last nine months, during which I’ve often felt that, like Rosemary, the season was pregnant with the devil.

 Yet every day spent in this waiting is subtracted from the number of days that remain in my one and only passage through this world. I am like the bird that flies out of the darkness of nonbeing into a great lighted hall, and heads straight towards the window that is open to the darkness on the other side. My wings are beating faster; the window into the waiting night is getting closer; and the goings-on inside the hall grow more perilous by the moment. Will everything explode before I’ve gone?

 I’ve been waiting for the explosion since 2016. Surely, I’ve been saying along with millions of others, this cannot go on. It will not last. Things will go back to the imperfect but tolerable way they used to be. So let’s hold our breath and take a nap and think of something else. Something positive. Let us smile though our heart is breaking, because surely the sun will come out again, tomorrow.

 And then the universe, or the Goddess, or the Holy Spirit flung this at me, from Rilke:

 …How we squander our hours of pain.

How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration

to see if they have an end. Though they are really

seasons of us,

our winter-enduring foliage, ponds, meadows, our inborn landscape,

where birds and reed-dwelling creatures are at home.* 

Winter is coming, in more ways than one, and it would be a waste to spend it hankering for spring.  Instead, let us find refuge in our inborn landscape, and feel at home.

 *The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1982).


 

Friday, October 2, 2020

My Brain, My Gut, and Sister Mary Ruth

My brain, my gut, and Sister Mary Ruth--my high school English teacher--reacted to the news of Trump's Covid infection:

Gut: Gasps, adrenaline surge, animal excitement. 

Brain: This could be the equivalent of the Clinton emails! 

Gut: But what if Trump gets really sick/dies and the Proud Boys decide that it’s the Democrats’ fault?! (Fight/flight response sets in). 

Brain: Serves Trump right that he got sick. 

Sister Mary Ruth: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

Brain: This could be the road to the first woman president!

Gut: Torrents of adrenaline flood system. Heart rate up. Feeling as if could—no, must—run a mile. Not an unpleasant sensation. 

Sister Mary Ruth, warningly: Ahem! 

Brain: Whiff of shame followed by twinge of conscience. 

Gut: Pulse rate down. Desire to run mile vanishes. 

Brain: But he KNEW that Hope Hicks had the virus and he STILL attended the fund raiser. He deserves what’s coming to him! 

Sister Mary Ruth, wags finger: That’s enough, now. 

Gut: Slight feelings of fatigue, or maybe indigestion. Also strange wired sensation, despite no additional coffee. 

Brain: Would be wise to close laptop. Maybe take nap? 

Gut: Must check updates. Trump cancels call with governors! Pence says Trump “just fine”! Should sic Sister Mary Ruth on VP, for telling fibs. 

Mind: Speaking of which, what if whole thing is another one of Trump's lies? 

Gut: Heart rate up again. Throat constricted. Nap? As if. 

Sister Mary Ruth , quoting Saint Teresa: “Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you…all things are passing…God alone is sufficient.” 



Monday, September 28, 2020

The Four O'Clock Stare

Here is Bisou, giving me the four o'clock stare, which often begins at 3:45 and continues unabated until 4:23, when I can't stand it any longer and give in and feed her (her official dinner time is 5:00).


As parents, my spouse and I believed that consistency was important, and that giving in to unjustified demands that contradicted standing rules was misguided. We applied this same principle to our many dogs in the course of fifty years, with excellent results. Until Bisou came along.

With all my dogs before her, mostly Shepherds and Setters, I had to work hard on eye contact. It became almost a reflex, before letting a dog out the door, or feeding it, or inviting it into the car, to stop and ask for a sit, and eye contact. The sit came easily enough, but the eye contact often took years to achieve. So I was charmed and amazed when Bisou, at nine weeks, came to us with perfect built-in eye contact.

I must have showered her with praise--it's always good to praise a puppy, right?--because she kept up the eye contact, and eventually honed it into a fearsome weapon that none of us can resist. Here is an example. My spouse is a benevolent but mostly uninvolved dog owner. The dogs have always been my delight and my responsibility, but he is glad to help out when I ask. Recently, getting ready to leave for the afternoon, I prepared Bisou's dinner, stowed it in the microwave, and asked my husband to feed her around 4:30. But my plans were cut short and I got home at 2:00--and found Bisou's empty bowl on the kitchen floor.

I ran into the living room, brandishing the bowl. "What is this?" I asked my husband. "You didn't feed her already, did you?"

"Well," he answered, "she stared at me and stared at me, and I figured that you must have made a mistake when you said not to feed her until 4:30."

That lesson, among others, was not lost on Bisou, who is now in her eleventh year of polishing the power of the stare. Did I mention that she's also going a bit deaf? This means that if she's busy sniffing outside and I call and she doesn't come right away, I can't get mad at her because, poor thing, she may not have heard me. So I call again, and again (exactly what I'm NOT supposed to do) until she looks up, all innocence, and says "Oh, it's you!" and trots over and fixes me with her lustrous carnelian orbs. And I praise her for finally coming, and for making eye contact...and she stores it all in her excellent dog memory for future use.

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Rara Avis

A male cardinal came to the yard yesterday, and I gasped. That plumage! That crest! That bossy look! Yet I didn’t always find cardinals gasp-worthy. At our feeder in Maryland, as many as a dozen would show up together. Here in Vermont, aside from the occasional bluebird, our birds excel more by their song than by their plumage. Thrushes and warblers dress in drab brown and beige, so as not to distract from their music. 

But now that our winters are warmer, a cardinal will sometimes decide to stick around, and the locals take photos of the flatlander bird, and post them on Facebook. If things keep going as they are, we’ll soon wake up in the mornings to the cacophony of visiting macaws. And no doubt, the first glimpse of that outrageous blue-and-gold, or red-blue-and-yellow plumage will stop us in our tracks, and cause us to reach frantically for our phones. But if the macaws choose to stay, soon their level on the exoticism scale will plunge to that of the blue jay (which you must admit is a pretty sensational-looking bird, when you see it for the first time).

I was squirrel-deprived as a child, and couldn’t get over, when I first met a gray squirrel, its twitching treble-clef tail, the bold look in its eyes, and the almost human way it used its hands. Now of course I hardly give squirrels a glance--unless there is a black one, in which case my sense of wonder returns unabated. 

But back to birds. Woodpeckers—downy, hairy, and red-bellied—love my feeders, but other than buying them suet cakes by the case, I barely notice them. Yet despite my tendency to wilt in the heat, I would trudge through the wilds of Arkansas if I had a real hope of seeing that holy grail of birders, the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Instead, why can’t I marvel each morning when the downies and the hairies and especially the red-bellieds (whose belly is barely pink, but whose head is a spectacular orangey-red) come to demolish the suet, flinging off bits of it that adhere greasily to my window? Why can’t I rejoice in their dailiness, their reliability, their familiarity? Like the rest of my species I harbor an unfortunate  prejudice in favor of the rare and extraordinary—the black swan, the white stag, and Elizabeth Taylor’s violet eyes. 

This preference for the exceptional is so ingrained in us that it must have survival value. The sight of a ruby-red strawberry in a field of boring green, and the subsequent burst of sweetness in the mouth of some Australopithecus grandmother must have cemented in her this taste for the unusual, which she then passed on to her descendants. 

So maybe there is survival value in preferring what is rare—physical survival at least. But what about the survival of sanity? We have evolved to be like magpies, disdaining the pebble in favor of the diamond. We have lost the ability to honor the everyday, and require ever sharper stimuli in order to attend—more color, more sound, more apps. Wouldn’t we be more at peace if, in this season of enforced seclusion, we put aside our binoculars and collector’s nets, and learned to truly see the acorn, the sparrow, and the moth? 



Thursday, September 17, 2020

Writing Prompt

 One listless afternoon last week , I sat in the sun room thinking that I would never have anything else to write about. The Covid claustration had lasted almost as long as a pregnancy, and as happens with pregnancy my focus had turned progressively inward, until the external world had all but ceased to exist. Of course the external world is still around, but it is either off limits because of the virus risks, or so alarming and depressing (fires, floods, shootings, politics), that I simply shut it out. 

No, there really was nothing to write about, and probably would never be. This was it: the well had run dry; I had sung my swan song. I was deep into a fantasy of life as a non-writer when my dog Bisou burst into the outraged bark that she reserves for the fox: “out of my yard, you weird-looking dog!” I had been missing the fox’s visits, which had grown rarer now that the spring’s young were on their own, so I got up to take a look. 

There, just a couple of feet from the house and facing away from me was an odd-looking creature, larger than a squirrel but smaller than a fox. The back of its big ears was white rimmed with black. Its fur was tawny, its belly plump, its legs short, its tail stumpy. It was clearly an infant. But whose? 

OMG, I should be taking  photos! My phone was in the room somewhere, but like the apostles on Mount Tabor, I couldn’t bear to take my eyes off the apparition.  I whispered to my spouse to come look. What could it be?

Then the little animal turned to face us and its white cheek tufts gave it away. As did its ultra-fierce, non-cuddly demeanor, its look that said, come near me and I’ll bite off your arm…or maybe your fingertip. And having delivered this threat, it toddled off into the undergrowth. 

Where, I hope, the mother bobcat found it, gave it a good scolding (“you are NOT old enough to hunt squirrels, you hear?”) and took it home. 

I haven’t seen any more bobcats, big or little, since that day, though a near neighbor tells me she has seen what I hope is the mother. But that infant on the prowl has been constantly on my mind. Sometimes I think I’ve dreamed him (or her). And a dozen times every day I look out the sun room windows, just in case he's come back (as if). 

I feel grateful to Nature for sending me this writing prompt just in the nick of time, and for reminding me that the writer’s most important tool is neither intelligence nor inspiration, but the ability to pay attention. Colette wrote that her mother's greatest gift to her, what made her the writer she became, was the single word, "Regarde!" Everything starts with that.



Wednesday, September 9, 2020

New Shoes

Good-looking shoes--the kind that add height and subtract weight, taper the line from hip to toe, and sound the final chord to an outfit--were the last plank I clung to from the shipwreck of my youth. Until this week, my only concession to a painful, soon-to-be-replaced hip was to wear ballet-like flats with petal-thin soles. Before that, I wore shoes with heels a couple of inches high. And before that, stilettos. 

I come by my shoe fixation honestly. In her 90s, my diminutive paternal grandmother toddled on the cobbled streets of Barcelona in high heeled shoes with a strap across the instep. I, on the other hand, diagnosed with flat feet, clumped around in lace-up boots while my classmates gloried in their patent leather Mary Janes. “When the child is old enough to wear high heels,” the doctor assured my mother, “the arches will improve.” So when I turned sixteen my mother, who forbade make-up of any kind, tolerated kitten heels, which I wore daily as my sole badge of grown-up femininity. 

In the barefoot 1960s I wore wedge-heeled espadrilles, which were succeeded in the 70s by history’s weirdest footwear, wavy-soled Famolares (“walk better in waves” was the company's  motto).  In the 1980s, when career women walked to work in shoulder-padded suits and tennis shoes, I stuck to heels. I would trudge up College Hill in what my daughters called the shoes of death, lugging a briefcase full of books and corrected exams. The trip from home to office and back was close to four miles, and I walked it proudly and even briskly, every day. As the years passed I resigned myself to slightly lower, thicker heels. But except for swimming, I always wore heels. Even my bedroom slippers had little heels. 

All this came crashing down last week when my physical therapist looked down at my ballet flats, suppressed a giggle, and wrote a prescription for athletic shoes that she promised would lessen the pain. I have sacrificed much to vanity in my life, but faced with a disintegrating hip I decided to take the therapist’s advice and get some reasonable shoes. 

And now here they are, at the end of my legs, the proper shoes for my age and circumstance, a blight on the landscape. If my spike-heeled shoes were the footwear equivalent, in looks and sexiness if not in speed, of a sports car, my flats were modest sedans. My new athletic shoes--a size larger and wider than I normally wear, shock-absorbent, padded, cuffed, their soles inflated like snow tires --are the equivalent of a pair of SUVs. 

Ugh! 

Also, they pose wardrobe dilemmas. I can’t wear them with skirts, leggings, narrow pants, or even jeans because they drag down the look. Ballooning below my ankles, for all their lighter-than-air technology they make me look like a duck, an elephant, a whale. 

The only thing I can possibly wear them with is sweats. 

Looking on the bright side, however, since I’m supposed to wear these locomotion enablers 24/7, and I only own a single pair of sweats, I’ll have an excuse to go shopping. Online, of course. But that will not be a problem, since fit is not a factor with sweats. 

And I have to admit that, when I go for a walk, the SUVs on my feet make me feel less like the Little Mermaid than those lissome ballet flats did. Possibly, even, the relaxed look on my face somewhat compensates for the clunkiness of my footwear. 

Did I mention that I also have a cane?



Monday, August 24, 2020

Waorani

In 1956, when my parents and I were living in Quito, a group of Waorani warriors attacked five American Evangelical missionaries. They speared the men to death, threw their bodies and belongings into the Curaray river, and vanished into the forest. 

The Waorani, a Stone Age tribe living in the Amazon forest, were a far cry from Rousseau’s “noble savage.” They were extraordinarily violent—not only did they kill every outsider that came into their territory, but they slaughtered each other as well. One study found that, over five generations, 42% of Waorani deaths--women and children as well as warriors--were caused by revenge raids carried out by Waorani from neighboring groups.

In other respects, however, the Waorani showed traits that we consider exemplary. They lived in complete harmony with Nature, trusting that the forest would provide for all their needs. With their blowguns and curare-tipped arrows they hunted only the animals they needed for survival. They had little notion of past and future, and drew no difference between the physical and the spiritual realms. 

Our house backed onto the grounds of HCJB, The Voice of the Andes, a radio station manned by American Protestant missionaries who lived in a neat little American-style suburb surrounding the station. My parents became friendly with some of the families, and one of the men, who took music lessons from my father, was instrumental in our eventual move to the U.S. At age twelve, although I envied their manicured lawns and pristine houses, I resented the missionaries’ frequent allusions to Jesus and their endless Bible quotations, and I kept warning my parents that their supposed friendliness was a ploy to convert us to Evangelism. Secure in their Catholicism, my parents would laugh and urge me to be more tolerant. 

The deaths of the five young missionaries, who left behind their wives and half a dozen tow-headed infants and toddlers, devastated the HCJB community. What had begun as an exciting adventure to bring Jesus to a previously uncontacted tribe ended in a tragedy made all the more wrenching by the unexposed film found in the dead men’s pockets, which documented their final hours. 

The men’s first attempts to contact the Waorani consisted of flying over their settlements in a yellow single-engine plane and dropping gifts of pots, buttons, ribbons, and machetes. In return, the Waorani sent up a parrot, with a piece of banana to sustain him during the journey, in a sturdy cage made of woven reeds. 

After several fly-overs and gift-drops, the missionaries landed on a strip of sand by the Curaray river. Soon, three Waorani emerged from the forest: a young man, a girl who looked about fifteen, and an older woman, all wearing only a g-string. With many smiles and welcoming gestures, the Americans bestowed more gifts, including a model airplane. Then they put a shirt on the man, whose name was Nankiwi, and, without further preliminaries, put him on the plane and took him for a ride. 

Reading the Americans’ journal half a century later, I am astounded that they give no hint of any doubts about the wisdom and ethics of their project. Rather, the journals reveal nothing but exuberant confidence, optimism, and the conviction that this is the Lord’s work, which will result in the happiness and salvation of their intended converts. 

Nankiwi shouted with excitement during the entire plane ride, and by the time they returned to the beach, the Americans had decided to call him “George.” The girl they nicknamed “Delilah.” Whether they gave the older woman a name the journal does not say. 

I remember at the time looking at the photos of this naked girl, just a few years older than I, and wondering about her new American name. I knew about the Biblical Delilah, the voluptuous seductress who betrayed Samson. I found it weird and disquieting that they would name the girl after her. Surely the missionaries were aware of the original Delilah. Were they trying to be funny, or what? 

After more gifts and pleasantries, the man and the girl returned to the jungle, and the woman followed sometime later. Euphoric with the success of this first contact, the missionaries prayed and sang hymns, and settled down on the beach to await their next visitors. 

When they finally came, armed with spears and the gift machetes, they massacred the Americans in  minutes. 

I was enthralled by the mystery and violence of this story, and a part of my childish self admired the Waorani. Good for them, I thought, for not wanting to be converted, wear clothes, and sing hymns! Good for them, for defending their exciting life deep in the dark and unknown jungle. The lack of apparent justification for the massacre added to its fascination. Why had the Waorani seemed so friendly at first, and then suddenly changed their minds? 

Two years after the killings, Elisabeth Elliott, the widow of one of the slain missionaries, picked up a Bible, put her toddler on her back Indian style, and walked into Waorani territory. Unlike her husband and his friends, she was accepted. Other missionaries soon joined her, and the Waorani converted to Evangelism. 

Eventually, the new converts explained what had caused the massacre. It seems that Nankiwi and the girl were romantically involved, but her family and especially her brother were against the relationship. When the pair went to meet the missionaries, the older woman accompanied them as chaperone. But when the girl’s brother saw the couple returning unescorted from the beach he became enraged and turned on Nankiwi who, to distract attention from himself, said that the missionaries had attacked them. This prompted the warriors to organize the revenge raid. 

Today the majority of Waorani live in villages, go to school, and enjoy internet access. They have mostly stopped killing each other. They wear clothes, and have forsworn polygamy, their chants and dances, and their ayahuasca rituals. Some still hunt, but many depend on the ecotourism industry for economic survival. Despite the protection afforded by the Ecuadorean government, their lands are under constant threat by the oil companies. 

But a couple of Waorani groups, the fiercest, refusing to be Westernized, have retreated to the few remaining deep jungle pockets, from which they continue to repel invaders with their spears, and possibly a machete or two. 

Delilah, photographed by one of the missionaries


Friday, August 14, 2020

Needlepoint

 

Prompted by the inexorably shortening days, I have, like the chipmunks in my yard, been gathering provisions for the coming winter. My main provision so far is an enormous needlepoint kit that, if I ever finish it, will be big enough for a dog bed or a baby mattress. 

The design is a bouquet of blowsy rococo roses garlanded in blue. In needlepoint, I confine myself to botanicals because--unlike geometric forms, or, worse still, animal faces—they are utterly forgiving. Nobody cares if a leaf is slightly crooked, or a millimeter too long or short. But mostly I chose this particular design because the border and background are a cheerful yellow, and I expect I’ll need to have a lot of yellow around in the months to come. 

A good needlepoint kit relieves you of the need to make decisions. It is a lot like painting by numbers, only slower. You can sit there in a kind of trance, lulled by the pop of the needle coming through the canvas, by the swish of the thread in its wake, and think of nothing, letting your hands do the work while your eyes rejoice in the color of the yarn. 

You can’t be completely oblivious, of course, but compared to writing, needlepoint is like floating on your back in a warm pool versus doing the butterfly stroke in the North Atlantic. So I am a bit worried that I’ll find the embroidery frame (did I tell you that I have a magnificent free-standing embroidery frame?) more enticing than the laptop. 

When the French writer Colette was in her sixties, she developed severe arthritis of the hip. Orthopedics in the mid-twentieth century being in a primitive state, Colette was eventually confined to bed in her apartment overlooking the courtyard of the Palais Royal. 

Refusing even the relief of aspirin, which she said clouded her thinking, she continued to write until she died at eighty-one. But she didn’t only write—she also did needlepoint, and covered the seats of her dining room chairs with tapestry flowers and fruits. All through the German occupation of Paris, she wrote and embroidered, embroidered and wrote, referring to her pen and her needle as the paired horses that pulled her through her days. 

At the moment, I too am suffering from hip troubles. Unlike Colette, however, I know that if only I can get on some surgeon’s schedule (they’re all backlogged due to the pandemic), I will get speedy relief. Like Colette and her fellow Parisians during World War II, Americans right now are having to contend with an enemy that, albeit silent and invisible, is as ruthless as the Nazi invaders. But unlike Colette I can protect myself with a mere scrap of fabric across my face, and I don’t have to fear the sound of boots on cobbles in the night. 

My plan to prevent embroidery from taking over my writing is to save it as a reward for pages filled, although if past experience is any indication, the sheer relief of having written—and not having to write again until tomorrow—will be all the reward I need.


Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Dame Julian and I


Across the seven centuries that separate us, I hear her voice whispering to me. The anchoress Dame Julian of Norwich and I have so much in common these days that we are practically twins. Like me, she lived in a time of plague. Like me, she isolated herself in a small space, though her cell, or anchor hold, which was attached to the church of Saint Julian, was a lot smaller than my cottage in the retirement community where I reside.

Her cell, I am told, had three windows. One gave into the church, so she could follow the Mass and take communion. Another opened into the street, and through it she would speak to the people who came to her for advice. The third window was the one through which her followers would hand her food and take away her wastes.

I too have windows in my cottage. Seven centuries have seen major improvements in sanitation, so waste disposal is not an issue. But my food is delivered at my door every evening at 5:30, and although people don’t come to me for advice, friends do come and sit on my porch, where we mumble at each other through our masks. My cottage is not attached to a church, but its back windows look out into a cathedral of trees, which change their vestments with the season, and where choirs of birds sing their own versions of Gregorian chant.

Like me, Dame J was a writer. She was the first woman to write a book in English, Revelations of Divine Love. I am not even the first woman to write a blog, but I nevertheless feel a strong sense of kinship with her, and as I sit tapping at my laptop I can practically hear the scritch scratch of her goose quill on parchment.


Also, like me, she had a cat! (Unlike me she didn’t have a husband or a dog in her anchor hold, but I’m focusing on similarities here.) When the spirit moves him, Telemann jumps onto my keyboard and edits my writing. I wonder if Dame Julian’s cat ever stepped on her work before the ink was dry, and left little flower-shaped prints all over her manuscript?

Julian tells us that in one of her visions God showed her a hazelnut. “What may this be?” she asked. And He answered, “It is all that is made.” I don’t quite know what this means, but she tells us what it meant to her: “In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”
 

Julian is so reassuring! (She’s also the originator of that COVID-era mantra, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”) I would like to find a hazelnut to meditate on, but the closest I can get to one around here would be an acorn, and right now the chipmunks and squirrels have eaten every last one. But as soon as the oaks drop their next crop in September, I will fill a little bowl with acorns to keep on my writing table, next to my laptop and my cat.



Thursday, July 30, 2020

An Herb For Our Time


Three years ago, on Mother’s Day, I received a terracotta planter filled with annuals in bloom. In the fall, after the first frost, I ripped out the dead plants and stowed the pot in the garage. One January morning, as I got into the car, I noticed a few green shoots peeking out of the pot, stretching with all their might towards the pallid light that seeped through the narrow window of the automatic door. I sympathized with them but didn’t think they had much hope—surely the next cold snap, let alone two more months of darkness, would do them in.

But the little sprouts persevered. Their leggy stems got longer, and a few more leaves appeared, still reaching desperately towards the window. In the spring, when I put it outside, the plant breathed a sigh of relief, plumed its feathers, and filled the pot with new shoots. It celebrated the solstice by bursting into sprays of lavender-colored blooms. The bees and the butterflies found it, and were well pleased.

When a friend told me that the plant was hyssop, I was astonished. Until then, the only mention of hyssop I’d come across was in church, during Mass. “Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor” the priest would intone, which the translation in my missal rendered as “Sprinkle me with hyssop, Lord, and I shall be cleansed.” Now the herb used by the Jews for millennia and later adopted by Christianity was growing in my pot, its leaves pungent and anise-scented, its flowers a bonanza to flying things.

My hyssop has survived two winters in the garage. This summer I am treating it with special reverence, watching out for its needs and wants. I have offered it an extra helping of potting soil, and I am alert to the slightest droop of its arrow-shaped leaves, which tend to sag in the heat. But the plant is as grateful as it is demanding. It may look in extremis in the afternoon, but it reacts to my evening drenching with an optimistic, upward thrust of its entire being. It is as resilient as I would like to be.

It's still high summer but, to my apprehensive eye, the days are noticeably shorter. The killing frost is a mere couple of months away.  When that comes, I will stow away the porch chairs and drag the big pot, with its cropped head of hyssop, back into the shadows of the garage--and I will retreat indoors, to the cat, the afghan, and the fireplace.

From all indications the coming winter will be long and dark. Unlike in past years, when I mostly ignored the hibernating hyssop, this time I will keep an anxious eye on it, to see if it is still putting out green shoots, and still stretching towards the light.



Wednesday, July 22, 2020

The Mystery of the Unborn Calf


I was a backward child, wandering dreamily in a world filled with mysteries and miracles. At ten, even as my breasts were starting to develop, my mother had to sit me down and inform me that it was  parents who gave their children gifts on the feast of the Epiphany--not the Magi following the star on their camels. Prior to her revelation, I had felt no need to question the story. I had been taught that my guardian angel hovered over my right shoulder as I went about my day, and the Virgin Mary personally kept vigil over my bed at night, so why not flying camels and wandering stars? 

One day a couple of years later, informed by the maid who made my bed that overnight I had transitioned from niña to mujer, my mother called me into her room and handed me a box of sanitary napkins and a belt.

“What’s all this?” I asked, oblivious to the events of the night.

She explained the basics. Thinking that menstruation was an annoying but temporary manifestation of adolescence, like acne, I asked her when it would stop. My mother smiled. “Not until you are very old,” she said.

Along with the supplies, she handed me a Spanish translation of a booklet published by Modess. It had line drawings of cool-looking American girls in circle skirts and saddle shoes, and, less interesting, sketches of the organs that menstrual blood came from. The booklet did not explain what the bleeding was for, and it never occurred to me that it had anything to do with babies, much less with men. I did notice that some pages seemed to have been cut out of the booklet, but I didn’t ask.

Now that I would have to carry those bulky pads around with me, my mother decided that I needed a purse. We were living in Quito at the time, and you couldn’t simply walk into a store and buy one. Like furniture and clothing, purses had to be made to order. She took me to the man who made things out of leather, and they had a conversation about the design of the purse while I stood on one foot and then the other, daydreaming. They decided on one in the shape of a flattened flower pot.

As they discussed the kind of leather--cow, pig, alligator?-- to be used, the man said something that startled me out of my trance. “I have something that would be perfect for the child,” he said, spreading a skin on the counter. It was covered in short, fine, honey-colored fur. He ran his fingers over it and smiled at my mother. “It is unborn calf. Feel how soft…”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “That is impossible. How can you make a purse out of a calf that is not born, that doesn’t exist?”

“Hush!” my mother said.

"No, really," I persisted. "It's absurd!"

My mother gave the man a deposit for the purse and hustled me out of the store. At home she explained that before birth calves grew for several months inside mother cows, just as human babies grew inside their mothers. Again, she made no mention of bulls or men, and again I didn’t ask. After all, hadn’t Our Lord been "conceived of the Holy Spirit"? But that was not the main issue on my mind.

“It must hurt a lot when the baby comes out!” 

“Yes, of course,” my mother said. “Maybe that is why mothers love their children so much.”

I remember feeling skeptical about this. Why would one love something because it hurt? But of course many other painful things were supposed to be good or even holy--fasting before communion, giving one’s allowance to the poor, not to mention Our Lord’s death on the cross—so the pain of childbirth fit right in with my worldview.

Although I am sorry that I embarrassed my mother and the leather man that day, I nevertheless recall my preadolescent self with tolerance. My lack of curiosity about sex was not evidence of an impoverished mind. On the contrary, my mind was already so full of unfathomable things that there was no room for thinking about mundane stuff like where babies came from. Figuring out what  impelled Saint Eulalia at age thirteen to confront the Roman governor of Barcelona, an avid persecutor of Christians, who then proceeded to torture and kill her, was more engrossing than wondering how that calf got into the cow in the first place.

I wore the calf-skin purse for a long time, until the zipper broke. Another thing that I neglected to wonder about during those years is what had to happen to the cow in order for her unborn calf to be made into a purse. I regret that I came late to an awareness of the suffering of animals, but I am making up for it now.



Sunday, July 19, 2020

Raccoon


This morning in the woods, Bisou treed a raccoon. He was almost her size, and cursing loudly, and it took me a while to get her away from him. Who knew that in her genteel DNA there lurked some coonhound genes?


Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Hermits


The hermit thrush alone is a good reason to live in Vermont.  All by himself, this little brown bird with the speckled breast makes up for the cold, dark winters, the messy mud seasons, and the spotty wi-fi coverage.

He comes by his name honestly. He declines to visit feeders, but stays hidden in the woods where, during the nesting season, he decants a pure, cool, silvery rill of sound. I live too much in my head to notice a lot of what Nature, like a street vendor setting out her wares, puts out for my delight. I can pass a lilac in full splendor with barely a glance, but the song of the hermit thrush stops me in my tracks. When he sings, I have to stand and hear him to the end, or I would feel like I was walking out in the middle of a recital.

Although he shies from applause, there is nothing timid or self deprecating about his performance: he sings with the aplomb of a seasoned performer. I wonder what a young hermit’s first song is like--is the timing off, are there false notes, or does it emerge from him as faultless and elegant as that of his father in his prime? As I have never heard a thrush miss a note, I suspect that they are all born musical prodigies.

This has been a good summer for hermits. The thrushes sing late into the morning, take a short break, and resume well before the sun goes down. The virus-imposed stillness in my life has made it easier for me to pay attention. At sunrise and sunset I come out of my own hermitage and listen to the invisible singer pour out his melody from the shelter of the woods.

Whenever I hear the thrush, my grasping, non-Zen self immediately pleads “don’t stop. Keep going. Encore!” And I waste the last clear perfect notes thinking that  the solstice is already behind us, and all too soon he will head south, and the woods will return to silence. But isn’t the very fact that he’s not around all year, that he shuns my feeders, that he stays hidden in his woodland cloister what makes him so precious? If I heard him in all seasons, would I still listen?

From all indications, the coming winter will be an especially dark one. Like the chipmunks, I will retreat from porch and yard and go to earth in my cottage, to sleep and snack and endure as best I can. I will be grateful for every cheeping titmouse and chickadee that visits my feeder while I await the little brown singer’s return. I will think of him scratching for insects in the leaf litter of some southern wood, but saving his song for the love season in Vermont, and for his fellow hermit, me.



Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Guys on Monuments


Walk through almost any public park, and you’ll find yourself staring up at the hooves of rearing stone or bronze horses, mounted by guys brandishing swords or guns.  Sometimes, instead of on horses, the guys sit on thrones, holding scepters, or on chairs, grasping rolled-up parchments. Sometimes they stand looking up at the heavens, with their feet well apart and their chest stuck out, like a rooster about to crow.

Some monuments do feature women, but most often as allegorical figures, blindfolded and holding up scales, winged to celebrate a victory, or lighting the way to freedom. And, whereas the men are dressed in regular clothes, or at least in togas that fall in dignified folds, the female statues usually sport clinging draperies.

There are, of course, some monuments to real women, mostly queens--Isabella, Victoria, Catherine the Great--but they are few and far between. You can also find statues of women in Catholic churches. They are honored for their patience, obedience or, in the case of the virgin martyrs—Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, Eulalia et al.--for having died horrific deaths for their faith.

But back to the guys on monuments. Whether monarchs, generals, writers, or philosophers, how many of them believed that women were full human beings, their equals in every respect? How many observed the same standards of sexual behavior that they expected of their women? How many spared their wives the ordeal of too-frequent childbearing? How many gave their daughters the same education as their sons, and paid their housemaids the same salary as their footmen?

Yes, I know. They were “men of their times,” and it’s unfair to expect a nineteenth-century general to be a feminist. But lately, being “of their times” with regard to people of color has not kept Columbus, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee on their plinths.

So I’m thinking, what would happen to the planet’s parks, plazas, piazzas, agoras, and government buildings if women decided that it was time to take down the statues of men who believed themselves the superior sex? There would be a lot of empty columns and pedestals. And when the rubble was cleared away, what would go in their place?

Perhaps we could put up some statues of actual women--the writers, artists, thinkers, and social reformers that history has ignored. I would keep those heart-breaking monuments to the unknown soldier--the innocent, likely unwilling cannon fodder of past wars. But alongside them I would like to see monuments to the anonymous women who have died in childbirth, the flotsam and jetsam of our species’ drive for survival.

Still, I’m not fond of following in the old pattern of statuary that exalts the one above the many. I would like to see those newly cleared spaces made into gardens, and not just decorative parterres and flower beds, but fruit orchards, berry patches, and vegetable plots. Tended by the citizenry for the citizenry, these would celebrate community and honor humanity far better than a marble statue of a guy on a horse.

But I am not a total iconoclast. The most beautiful or historically relevant of the old statues could be housed in museums to be visited by school children who, in the utopian future I am envisaging, would stare at them wide-eyed, and ask their teachers to explain why they were all statues of men.



Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The Soul of a Chipmunk


There is a bird bath by our back door, and in the evening the wildlife come to drink. It’s like a Serengeti waterhole, with finches, a squirrel or two, and the chipmunks in lieu of ostriches, wildebeest, and gazelles. There is even a lion-equivalent, albeit behind the glass: the cat Telemann, who creeps and skulks and lashes his tail and then hurls himself against the glass, sure that this time he’ll get lucky.

The squirrels long ago figured out the nature and role of glass doors, and they pass this knowledge down to their children, who ignore the gray beast and continue with their drinking. The chipmunks are more skittish, but they’re slowly learning to ignore Telemann’s attacks.

Chipmunks, even full-grown ones, exude baby charm, with their big heads, tiny noses, and widely spaced eyes. Elegant stripes of black, cream, and gray run the length of their bodies, as if they had been carved from some richly veined wood. From my COVID cloister, I spend a lot of time watching chipmunks, and as anyone knows who has looked closely, in order to draw it, at a leaf or a sleeping cat, the attentive gaze sooner or later ensnares the heart.

The Franciscan Richard Rohr says that “we must love something deeply to know its soul.” So if looking leads to loving, and loving leads to knowledge of another’s soul, I should, with luck, before autumn come to know something of the chipmunk‘s soul. But what can a chipmunk’s soul, its essence, possibly be like? How can I, a lumbering giantess by comparison, understand the quicksilver brevity of a chipmunk?

Wittgenstein said that if a lion could speak we wouldn’t understand him. But he was talking about understanding as an intellectual process. I’m talking about knowledge and understanding as an action of the heart, prompted by love--the kind of knowledge that Saint Francis had of the birds and of the wolf of Gubbio. The kind of understanding that Robert Burns had of the mouse whose nest he accidentally broke up with his plow. The kind of knowledge of our brother primates that rewarded Jane Goodall’s patient gaze.

As the summer unspools, I attend to the chipmunks, and wait to see what arises. The trouble is, they’re so quick that they’re usually just a blur, so to supplement my practice I looked at a couple of chipmunk videos on YouTube.

One of them showed a mother chipmunk who had made her nest inside what looked like the hollow leg of a horizontal aluminum ladder. The end was covered by a piece of metal with a hole in the middle. Her thumb-sized baby was old enough to crawl out of that hole, but, in her opinion, not old enough to spend the night outside.

She opened her mouth wide, picked him up around the middle, and tried to stuff him sideways into the hole, but he was too big. She put him down and picked him up by the hip, but he still didn’t fit. He needed to go in nose-first, the way he had come out, but she couldn’t manage it.

It was getting dark, and she was frantic to get him back inside and put him to bed.  He would have none of it. With the foolish invulnerability of the young, whenever she loosened her grip he would move away, twitching his tail and staring out at the wide, green, new world. She tried showing him by example. She went into the hole and then stuck out her head saying, see how it’s done? But he would ignore her and she would jump out and pick him up again.

I watched the four minute video in an agony of maternal empathy. Here before my eyes the eternal drama of the generations was being played out: the young struggling to get out and get away, and the old pleading, Wait! It’s not safe! You’re not ready yet!

The chipmunks outside my window move too quickly for me to grasp their soul. But that mother chipmunk was speaking my language, and her words echoed in my heart.



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