March one year ago
This April
2010- While I was away the goldfinches turned completely yellow. They love the feeder and it’s like having them for pets when they crowd around-without any of the responsibility. J’s offer of the two kittens is very tempting; I felt proprietary about them the second I saw them under the steps. But…It’s more than that; it is just not a good time to take on that kind of commitment, with possibly having to move this summer. I feel a call to continue that paring away of ‘things’ that started when I moved out of the house and into the studio. Renting out the house has been a good way to loosen my ties to the place and I feel like I could sell it. But only to buy somewhere else--I can’t see having no home at all. Yet.
Across the meadow
Dandelions fly away.
This gold finch a clue.
2011-Except for a rare couple of mostly sunny warm hours, like last evening’s sunset, the weather has been warm, pouring rain alternating with many cold grey days at a stretch. Everywhere you go people are complaining.
I saw a sight out the front door so beautiful and evocative it put me in mind of my old dilemma-what do you do with beauty? Eat it, paint it, describe it? (Somehow stop time in order to hold on to it?) The olive of the door in the pale yellow of the porch walls famed the picture. At the far back of the scene, the olive of the studio with its pale yellow trim repeated those colors but not exactly as they were changed by the outdoor light into warmer versions of themselves. In front of that, the dark wet wood of the fence set off the bright clear green of the new lilac leaves. Over all that was laid, in exquisite tracery, the yellow and ochre and citron lacework of the maple’s new leaves and flowers which seemed to hang at greater length than I ever remember before. The dark wet boughs provided structure underneath the cascade.. It struck me as very Japanese or Arts and Crafts style. I did not think the camera would capture the effect of the depth of it-the layering-and later in the afternoon when the sun came out and shone from the back of the house, the whole picture was strangely flat and washed out. Gone.
2012-
The dying oak tree,
Pushed sideways by last fall’s storm,
Leafs out one last spring.
2013-Sadly, at least for me because I won't get to see the whole nesting process, the nest the robins were working on fell out of the tree and I found it on the ground. I guess they’ve had to choose a new site somewhere else. I saw a rabbit playing in the rain, bounding across the grass, chasing birds. I just fell in love; it had the happy goofy energy we usually associate with puppies and kittens. But, at the same time-and bear with me now-, I saw it as food-as meat. And, as I somehow entertained these two thoughts at the same time, a view of the world opened up from a perspective larger than I have encompassed before. Perhaps as important as what we eat is how we eat it…with full connection to the whole, at least as far as we can grasp it, and with love and reverence.
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