Rough Ideas

At this time of year I feel like time tightens around my chest. But this year it’s more intense than most not because we are busy but because of the extended hunkering down. I feel like I have been hoarding ideas of light, loading up on extra candles and firewood to stave off the longer winter and the cold to come.

I think back to my childhood in the city. It was fun to be out walking after five o’clock when Christmas lights were bright and street lights lit the way. My father was often the one to get us outside no matter what the weather. I have fond memories when we lived uptown of walking in Central Park late at night when there was snow on the ground and the city sparkled around us. I learned to ski in Central Park. My parents got cross country skis way before they bought us kids skis, so we trudged behind them in our downhill equipment. I can see my dad now, laughing as he says it was all a ploy to tire us out.

At dinner time after an outdoors day or really everyday, my mother was all about lighting candles to make the moment bright. My mother still appears in my dreams irritated that we have let go of their apartment loft because she can no longer find her candles. Tonight on what I hoped would be a snow day–but which has become a freezing rain day–it’s still a chance to be here by lighting the candles and a fire.

Here,
I’m here—
the snow falling.

— Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

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I try to get outside before dark. At 4:00 today I headed to town to drop off a box for UPS and then take a walk on a different path. This is a mostly blacktop loop with a nice view of hill and sky with a few more humans than my normal walk. For my puppy I aim to provide some different experiences. When we encountered a running group of high school boys we stepped off the path into the tall grass. While she sat they ran by.

Then there was an older man with a weaving walk wearing a red puffy jacket with an orange bucket and a long tool. I finally realized he was picking up trash. So with an excitable puppy and my hard to discard urban awareness I thought we should avoid him. When we got close I realized he was on his phone. As we passed him he hooped, yelled and lurched towards me. I pulled the puppy up close on her leash and stepped back. He said, “I just had to tell someone my granddaughter just got into NYU!” It was so out of place and unexpected I was speechless.

stark ridgeline leaden
in winter grey, hawk out of
place without blue sky

— Greg Sellers, haiku journal entry, December 15, 2020
[link to Greg’s tumblr]

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I woke to thirty eight degrees and pouring rain — my least favorite weather. I slipped on my muck boots, down vest, wool hat and new long tangerine colored raincoat. I bought this raincoat after I discovered my old black one was no longer waterproof. A bright color for dog walks on the margins of the daylight seemed like a great idea.

As much as I hate this weather I felt like Momo a character from a favorite children’s book called The Umbrella by Taro Yashima. The main character Momo was given red boots and  an umbrella for her third birthday. But she has to wait days before she can use them. The illustrations are soft colored pencil drawings of city views and the coming and going, to and from school. Momo, which means peach in Japanese, tries to convince her Mom she needs the umbrella to keep the sun off but is told she has to wait for the rain. The story is a subtle lesson in the narrative of patience.

This morning my new raincoat felt like that umbrella. It was bright, waterproof and fit perfectly. It made my sopping wet route like a dance. The story reminds me of the beauty in bringing active attention to my repetitive everyday walks. The illustrations remind me of the view from our NYC Ninty-Fifth Street apartment. The yellow chair Momo sits in while putting on her boots feels like something I sat on. The raindrops bouncing on pavement are a micro moment from long ago bringing back the rhymes and rhythms of an urban childhood.

This well-thumbed novel
Was the tale she loved best,–
Fields of autumn rain.

— Richard Wright, from Haiku: This Other World, eds. Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert L. Tener, Arcade Publishing, 1998

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I remember one day when Zoë was a young teenager she and I went shopping at Target. When we were in the housewares department she told me that she couldn’t wait until she had her own apartment. When I asked her why she gleefully told me “because then I can buy cool, colorful plastic dishes.” I can happily report that when the time came setting up her first apartment she asked for some of our pottery for her kitchen. After a couple of moves she now has different sized bowls for oatmeal and ice cream.

Zen Boy

Why do you have
only one bowl?
I asked our son
helping him arrange
new kitchen cabinets
three plates
three mugs
three glasses
one bowl
a red oatmeal-
sized bowl
He smiled
I like
having only one bowl

— Naomi Shihab Nye, in Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Greenwillow Books, 2018

I often tell people that growing up in a family full of artists I felt like the only space left for me was the table. In our New York City apartment my dad used one bedroom for his studio, my mother had a drawing table at the end of the living room for her work, my older brothers were making model airplanes and super eight films in their bedroom and my younger brother and I were sharing the other room. The rest of the apartment was filled with surf boards, bicycles, sculptures and prints. My parents slept in what might have been called the maid’s room in another era.

The theater of our home happened mostly at the dining room table. My father often read aloud family round-robin letters from his father and relatives. My brothers spun shaggy dog stories or concocted outrageous puns. I sat pondering the milk pitcher and mentally redesigned my misshapen first attempts at a sugar bowl.

During 2020 I have completely embraced our home in Virginia. I am happy to make small circles around our property as well as back and forth to and from the studio. But there are those moments when I miss the big cities of Washington, DC or New York where museums, galleries, restaurants and stages hold the promise of imaginative answers to our current situation. As I photograph for this series I have been struck by how I create a little theater of backdrops, objects and pots to express how hope is the opposite of desperation and how it is not as comfortable as certainty.

“Hope is the opposite of desperation—it’s not as comfortable as certainty, and it’s much more certain than longing. It is always accompanied by the imagination, the will to see what our physical environment seems to deem impossible. Only the creative mind can make use of hope. Only a creative people can wield it.”

— Jericho Brown, excerpt from One Whole Voice which in turn is comprised of extracts from “A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith,” edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler, Tupelo Press, 2012. [In Poetry Magazine on Poetry Foundation website]

In wintertime I often dream about Maine. There are parts
of Heron Island that only exist in my dream world, boats that could never really be seaworthy but somehow carry crazy loads of belongings. Even in December the tides of Maine enter my imagination and carry me far beyond the shelter of our Virginia home. When my mother was alive there was a boat we called The Veggie Boat that visited the island on Friday mornings. Many residents of the twenty-four island houses would arrive to buy the most beautiful and over-priced tomatoes, raspberries, oysters, cookies and bouquets of flowers. We all complained about how expensive it was but loved every perfect salad and pie that we ate. When my mother died the owner of the boat gave me buckets of flowers in her honor with tears flowing down his face. I can still see him, eyes full of water and appreciation for a woman who loved any bouquet of flowers with a beam of light running through it.

blessing the boats

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back     may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

— Lucille Clifton, “blessing the boats” from Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. © 2000 by Lucille Clifton

My parents collaborated on some handmade children’s books in the 50s. This morning I pulled out Mr. Crow’s Christmas written in 1957. These books are a great balance between the two of them. There’s a lyrical drawn story line by my mother and the ingenuity and inventive mechanics of my father. She drew and wrote. He carved woodcuts, printed each page and bound it all with a red burlap cover. Even though I wasn’t born yet, in one of the last images there are three children coming down a set of stairs. There are two boys and a girl and the drawing of the girl looks like the images my mother made of me as a young child. I am glad these books exist. I love the drawings, the story and assemblage. Thanks to my mother for the story of the crow and for her love of candles.

Thanks
Thank you for drawing the crow
outside my window.
Thank you for drawing the wrinkled bittersweet berries
brightening the blighted ash.
Thank you for drawing the stump, the mound
and the dog with a broken hip.
Thank you for drawing the horizon like that.
Thank you for drawing the woman standing.
She isn’t saying anything. I like that.
Thank you for drawing the dry lightning.
Thank you for drawing the grass
crawling out from under the iron ball.
Thank you for drawing the open skies.
Thank you for adding color
in the form of a tangerine drift of birds
moving away toward the sound of a harp
that embodies a heaven I can only imagine.
I love this picture.
I look at it every day.
Thank you for not making a film instead.
— Mary Ruefle, poet laureate of Vermont

I have been revisiting plant material I have used in prior decembrances, reusing old background panels but adding new pot combinations. It’s like the archive is alive and well and part of the palette. Each December I start over with the idea to post twenty-one missives. I create images of pots with stems or fruits or nuts and ponder the decreasing light. Every year I re-learn the same lesson–by focusing I can swim through the waves of December.  I carefully look at the last leaves dangling off the branches. I bundle up against the wind. I admire the geese floating on the pond or the diving ducks or the great blue heron who unfolds its wings and flies with slow grace.

“Repetition is not failure. Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind. There is no expected pace for inner learning. What we need to learn comes when we need it, no matter how old or young, no matter how many times we have to start over, no matter how many times we have to learn the same lesson. We fall down as many times as we need to, to learn how to fall and get up.”

–Mark Neppo, October 1 entry in The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have, Conari Press

I have been paying attention to the early signs of December but this week the cold winds have blown in and with early sunsets there is no question of the season. It is such a gift to have my white orchid blooming. Bent over my notebook I may search for the words to describe the wind but there is no need as the echos of the syllables creek through the swaying trees. Tonight in the last light of a circular dog walk up a steep slope I was lost in thought admiring the line of hillside against the sky in fading pink when a honk jolted me awake and to my surprise two swans flew overhead singing like jazz trumpeters.

Utterance

Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence

— W.S. Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees, 1988

In this world of social media, especially the pottery community on Instagram, the hashtag MugShotMonday is often portrayed by a hand holding a mug with an out-of-focus background. I however find structure in the idea of revisiting mugs each week. Mugs have been a touchstone in my work, an important small object of use that holds not only a hot beverage but also expression. Mondays I photograph a cup or perhaps a week’s drawings of the cups I have used. Drawing especially during the pandemic feels like tilling the earth. The sketches and photographs are part of being an art farmer. At its best the hash tag provides a structure, a reminder to share and dig into my archives. By looking more deeply I don’t always reach for the handy cup but perhaps the stubborn, heavy one or the precarious one that forces me to pay closer attention to my hot drink.

A Lonely Cup of Coffee

Far preferable to a sociable cup
which tastes more
of talk
the lonely cup
redolent
rich
ripe
round
blesses
the quiet mouth

–Naomi Shihab Nye, in Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Greenwillow Books, 2018