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Wednesday, January 5, 2005 |
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Monday gave us a day of light, anyway. For two days now we have gray, and a high fog that crystallizes to make a kind of snow dust that falls continually and almost imperceptibly. Last night there was insomnia again, and strange 4 a.m. email epistles to acquaintances, and morning blankets again, and writing until afternoon. Yesterday in Alturas I bought long jacket file folders to put my works-in-progress in. One is called "Bullroarer" for the poem about the huge unheard boom our galaxy makes as it swings around on its tether. Another is called "Roads." Another, "Rattlesnake." A folder labeled "Scraps" holds lines, words, ideas I don't want to lose track of but can't think what to do with yet.
My friend Melissa said on the phone to me Monday, "Hey, it's notsnowing! And it's supposed to notsnow for four whole days!" My spirit is notsmiling. And it has been notsmiling for two whole months. And it has nothing to do with weather. And I almost can't remember all my whole life before when, regardless of whether my face grinned or scowled or raged, my spirit smiled and smiled. So strange that it can notsmile when my face is smiling. Who could conceive of this? It must be time to dance again, before I get too old to. That's what notsmiling does. Makes you old. |
Although there are now far too many people for nature to digest, we are all going to go down together, I believe. We are part and parcel of it, and as it sickens so will we. In the meantime, joy is joy: the blue and yellow stripes of a perfect day, with green effusive trees and the dramatic shapes of the streaming clouds. Our moods can be altered simply by sunlight.... As in music, where beauty lodges not in one note but in combining many, your pleasure surges from the counterpoint of saplings and windthrow, or the moon and snow. Both are pale and cold, yet mysteriously scrimshawed--the moon by craters, mountains, and lava flows, the snow by swaying withes or maybe a buck's feet and antler tine. Although like snow, the moon will disappear predictably and reappear when it's supposed to, moonlight can be an elixir with mystical reverberations that we can pine and yet grin over, even when "empty-armed." It's off-the-loop, a private swatch of time, unaccountable to anybody else if we have paused to gaze upward, and not burdened with the responsibility of naming birdcalls, identifying flowers, or the other complications of the hobby of nature study. One just admires a sickle moon, half-moon, full moon that, weightless and yet punctual, rises, hovering. Sometimes it may seem almost as if underwater, the way its dimensions and yellow-ruddy coloring appear to change--butter, or russet, or polar. The Hungry Moon, Harvest Moon, Hunter Moon, are each emotional, and expertise about their candlepower or mileage from the earth a bit extraneous. Although our own cycles are no longer tied to whether they are waning or gibbous, we feel a vestigial tropism. This is our moon. It's full, we'll murmur. Or It's a crescent, or like a cradle lying partly tipped. And a new moon is no moon. ...The stunning galaxies have been diminished to blackboard equations that physicists compute, and our dulled eyes, when we glance up, instead of seeing cryptic patterns and metaphors, settle rather cursorily for the moon. [Edward Hoagland, "Small Silences: Listening for the Lessons of Nature," Harper's Magazine, July 2004. Photo from homepage1.nifty.com/ t-wata/img2_htm/moon-snow.htm]
I disagree with his first paragraph, having boundless faith in the resilience of the planet and of its resident creatures. Hopelessness does us all in. "Joy is joy," and therein lies our salvation. |
