Lifescapes

A little craftiness

I've never tried stenciling before, and had some serious reservations. But when I finished this project (all around my New Mexico kitchen ceiling), I was ready to start on the bedroom. Not exactly easy for somebody as impatient as I am, but fun and satisfying. I love the way it looks--good Southwestern colors, perfect with the log rafters and pine ceiling. For a log house (notoriously dark inside), this one has plenty of strong western light, especially in the afternoon. Sometimes too strong, which is why I invested in wooden blinds for all the windows. Turned out to be the right choice.

I promised to tell you about my new writing project: a journal of my sixty-ninth year (just begun), titled An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days. It won't be like this blog, but I'm sure that some of the themes will overlap. I have long been an admirer of May Sarton's journals, and those of Anais Nin and Ann Morrow Lindbergh--so I'm eager to try my hand at the form. I've been making entries for January, thinking of topics I want to explore, all of that pre-book kind of stuff, which I dearly love. It's sort of like cleaning off your desk and stacking all the papers in order before you tackle something new. I'll be working on this project alongside the two others lined up for the year: another Beatrix (The Tale of Applebeck Orchard, which I hope to finish by the end of summer) and China #18 (not titled yet). It feels good to be working on another personal writing project.

Got some challenging news a couple of days ago. Zach, our 14-year-old Lab, has Cushing's disease. More tests next week to determine the cause/treatment, and in the meantime, he needs to go out to pee every couple of hours, nights included. When this first began (in NM, right after Christmas), I was first annoyed at the bed-wetting. Now that I understand, it's easier to overlook the minor damage and inconvenience. Still, it's a challenge. This morning at two a.m. it was 24 degrees. A lesson in patience.

Reading note. Any idea, person, or object can be a mirror.--Hyemeyohsts Storm

Daffodils and Home Places

                                                                        

The first daffs are blooming along the edge of the woods, bright as buckets of spilled sunshine among the leaf litter that covers the ground. Spring is here, with a sweep of warm Gulf wind that has pulled the metal roofing loose from the barn. Bill is out there now, fastening it down. Another sign of spring: six cormorants, heading to our lake this morning, coasting along on a brisk tailwind. I hope they plan to hang around here for a while before they venture much farther north. Looks like it's COLD up there.

I'm re-reading Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place in preparation for working with it at LifeLines next month. A very good book that brings up all kinds of issues about the places we call "home." In an interview titled "The Politics of Place," Williams talks about the importance of staying home--or at least, staying in one place long enough to learn its seasons, its inhabitants, the names of things. Here's a paragraph (the longer interview is definitely worth reading)

I believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among... The notion that we can extend our sense of community, our idea of community, to include all life forms — plants, animals, rocks, rivers and human beings — then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home. Otherwise, who is there to chart the changes? If we are not home, if we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put ... if we don't know the names of things, if don't know pronghorn antelope, if we don't know blacktail jackrabbit, if we don't know sage, pinyon, juniper, then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation.

Staying at home, learning a place well enough so that we can chart the changes--that's a significant, meaningful commitment. Among all the other things we must do to protect this earth and the places we love, that's right at the top.

And on a very happy note: Congratulations to Al Gore and the team that produced An Inconvenient Truth. It ought to be required viewing for every American (at least!).

Reading note: Knowledge in depth about one's home region will not strip away the gleaming surface that has been spread over the continent by mass culture and mass production, but such knowledge may reveal to us how thin that surface is, thin enough to see through, as thin as ice on a spring pond.--Scott Russell Sanders, Writing From the Center