Winter webbery

One of the things I like about January: the absence of bright blossoms, leafy canopies, and an abundance of grasses forces me to look for small things, inconsequential things, tiny miracles. Like the intricate lace wrapping this bare sumac in a weather-proof web, the work of some small, industrious spider, weather-proof herself. The past few nights have been below freezing, and the days blustery, so the web is recent. How does she keep warm? What does she eat? Not many bugs out and about in such chilly weather, I wouldn't think. But she's doing her best, laying her traps, setting her snares. Or maybe this is just practice for spring, or something to do, an artful web-doodling while she's waiting for the weather to warm. Or a trick of snagging the sunlight on a winter morning in order to seduce this passerby, walking through the field with her dogs. The world has many wonderful ways to surprise us.

Zach's tests are back and yes, it's Cushings. We're seeing the vet next week about treatment options next week. Meanwhile, we're on the night shift, doing duty at midnight, 2 and 4 a.m. It's easy during the day, because we're home. But what do people do when they have to work and the weather is too cold to put the dog outdoors? Thanks for your emails. It helps to know that other people and their animal companions have weathered this particular storm.

This week: the Story Circle conference (there's a link in the sidebar). I'm doing two workshops and a panel--fun for me, and I'm looking forward to it. More goody: my daughter is coming from Colorado Springs and will be rooming with me. But this means that I need to cram the week's work into a few days. Peggy and I spent yesterday setting up web page and eletters--she's busy too, since she's managing the conference. Hard work all the way around, but worth it.

Reading note: more from Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings: Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. . .  I have supposed, but never found out, that this is the case with all readers--to read as listeners--and with all writers, to write as listeners. It may be part of the desire to write. The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth, for me.

Comments

[theresa]

good luck with Zach, these little furry ones are so important in our lives but they stay for such a short time, never long enough, I hope you can enjoy your Zach with his challenges for a great while yet.

[Robert]

I like the picture. Winter offers many opportunities for seeing things that spring and summer tend to hide.

The reading note caught my attention. It surprised me, but as I thought about it, the prose and poetry I remember well is that which I read as a listener. Just as a score written on a piece of paper is not music so good poetry and prose must be read as a listener.

I think it is in the very structure of our DNA. My mother read Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter to me and my brother more than 60 years ago, and remember the story. Words printed on a page only begin to have power when we hear them in whatever voice speaks to us.

I particularly like the last sentence in the reading note- The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth, for me. With all of my good stories, I have found that I need to tell the story aloud several times before I begin to write it down.

It occurs to me that as we truly read and write as listeners that we are lifting the static words off the page and giving back life. I often say about my storytelling that my stories are like my spaghetti sauce they never come out exactly the same way twice. When a story is written as a listener, then the reader who is a listener can truly participate in the story.

Thanks always for sharing,

Robert

[kamdou]

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And to participate in the multilingual forum Panorama

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Best continuation!
Sincerrely Yours! Kamdou