Recently in solstice Category

#21 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 21, 2011 9:49 PM | 2 Comments
One of my techniques for dealing with short days and excessive indoor time is setting bonfires. I had hoped to do one tonight to celebrate the turning point from shorter days to longer ones. Tonight is wet, but fortunately Zoe and I spontaneously decided to light the fire last night when it was warm and still. I was the last one sitting by the fire, musing and studying the subtle shift from the flat, dark tree line to the color tinged darkness of the night sky while listening to the geese landing on the pond.

21 clementine bowl.jpg"If we didn't remember winter in spring, it wouldn't be as lovely; if we didn't think of spring in winter, or search winter to find some new emotion of its own to make up for the absent ones, half of the keyboard of life would be missing. We would be playing life with no flats or sharps, on a piano with no black keys."
--Adam Gopnick, from Winter: Five Windows on the Season, p. 179.

#20 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 20, 2011 8:23 PM | 2 Comments
I remember walking the shore on Heron Island, Maine in silence early in the morning. It was the day after we spread my mother's ashes in the mouth of the Damariscotta River. I was in search of a daylily, hoping that one of the flowers we spread in the water might have washed ashore in the high tide. I wanted physical evidence of her, however the blossoms were missing,  just like my mother was no longer with the living.

After the Heron Island house burnt down two years ago most of my pots that were used in the kitchen broke in the fire. The shelves in the kitchen collapsed in the intense heat and objects fell from the attic and crushed the plates, cups and bowls. Zoë and I collected the shards and carried them to the rocky shore and tossed them in the ocean, hoping again that one day we would find them reincarnated as round-edged sea glass tossed by the tides. This summer I spent many fruitless, silent mornings walking the rocks in search of a shard as evidence of change.

At the end of August after I gave up looking for a shard Zoë found one dark glazed bit of plate. After I gave up looking for flowers in the high tide I found the blossoms in the garden again. Some days working in the studio is similar; I keep after an idea of a shape and when I let go and turn the idea on its head the solution appears as if it had always been there.

20-vase.jpgAnd there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house--
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.
--From Silence by Billy Collins

#19 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 19, 2011 11:17 PM | No Comments
19 axe vase.jpg"And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid."
--Pablo Neruda from I like for you to be still

#18 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 18, 2011 8:02 PM | No Comments
18 bolws.jpgA year ago today we left to visit our daughter in Florence Italy. Due to snow we got stuck in Paris for 24 hours. I made endless drawings of luggage, weary travelers, morning coffee and evening espresso. A year later I am happy to walk my same old circles at dusk, racing to get out before it is completely dark, content to return for warm bowls of leek and potato soup.

travel journal.jpg


#17 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 17, 2011 5:38 PM | No Comments
The gray day slid away quickly.  Before I knew it I caught a glimpse of the red sun slipping behind another cloud band. In the fading light I shuffled with Warren and the dog around the pond in the fading light. Shifting shadows, hundreds of diving ducks, and a biting wind trailed alongside.

17-stancills-bowl-7755.jpgThe Day Is Gray and the Lake

shifts, mercurial,
like modeling clay,

the million thumbs
of wind at work upon it,

the artist unable to come
to a single conclusion.

Just what shape should
this cold lake take

this morning?
And the trees surrounding?

The maker can't
make up his mind, always

fussing. He shuffles
the shoreline shadows

like a paint-chip deck.
The reeds.

The nervous birds.
The toads, forever lost

on mud's malleable maps.
Everything's a mess

and genius all at once,
a school for unruliness.

Even the stones second
guess themselves, eroding.

And there: a wash of sunshine,
and some people, boating.
 
--Todd Boss in Yellowrocket

#16 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 16, 2011 6:28 PM | No Comments
A dusk walk threaded through pond edge and field lightens the dark edges of memories of returning home as a student.  I remember my mother making welcome signs on paper plates. I remember sleeping on buses or being copilot in a friend's car as headlights led the way. The exhaustion of late hours finishing projects coupled with fragile hopes of comfort and happiness stand in the doorway of my childhood home.

16 espresso.jpg"And what we see is our life moving like that,
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
Looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me."

--Mary Oliver from Coming Home

#15 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 15, 2011 10:29 PM | 2 Comments
Last night driving home from the north end of the county I watched the waning gibbous moon rise through horizontal bands of clouds.  The clouds reminded me of horizontal vines and acted like roots of darkness.

15-stancills-plate.jpg"Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,
now you are uncurled and cover our eyes
with the edge of winter sky
leaning over us in icy stars.
Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,
come with your seasons, your fullness, your end."

--Winter Solstice Chant  by Annie Finch in Calendars (Tupelo Press)


#14 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 14, 2011 10:19 PM | 2 Comments
Being sensitive to the short days, they become more evident when it's a gray day. There were a few lit moments when the sun slid low in the sky and light streamed in long angles. A little brilliance does wonders for my outlook.

14 xmas cactus.jpg"the day was sliding
toward its provincial graveyard
and between the bread and the
shadow
I remember
myself
in the window"

--Pablo Neruda, from To  Sadness, translated by Stephen Mitchell in Selected Poems

#13 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 13, 2011 7:12 PM | No Comments
This evening, while handing a cup to a friend, she asked, "how do you make this work?" I said I like working within tight boundaries so when I wake up most days I don't have to question which direction to go to feel fruitful once I'm in the studio. I step into my field of clay as if words were shapes waiting to be made. The goal is that they look as if they descended from nowhere, effortless and timeless.

13 cup gesture.jpg"But this morning, a kind day has descended, from nowhere,

and making coffee in the usual way, measuring grounds
with the wooden spoon, I remembered,

this is how things happen, cup by cup, familiar gesture
after gesture, what else can we know of safety

or of fruitfulness?"

--Marie Howe, from From Nowhere in The Good Thief

#12 winter solstice 2011

By Catherine White on December 12, 2011 9:32 PM | No Comments
Once fluttering above, the leaves are now underfoot.

12-leaf-sail-7709.jpgAbove me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off the Aspen
tree a month too soon. No use,
wind, all you succeed in doing
is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.

--Bill Holm in The Music of Failure (p. 58)

12b-leaf-boat-7711.jpg

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