Rough Ideas: solstice Archives

#21 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 21, 2009 3:32 PM | 3 Comments | No TrackBacks

Today is the shortest day of the year. The sun sets early and I'm posting this message before the light merges with night. I have numbered the short days with captured images to share new stories of the year.

"As black days came unnumbered, merging with night, the pulaar--visits between villagers---started up again. They told new stories about animal and human doings, about the demise of their traditional lifeways and melting ice caps, and waited in their cold heaven, for the coming of light."

--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 356.

#20 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 20, 2009 5:13 PM | 3 Comments | No TrackBacks

The tiniest remains of the orange sunset linger and ignite the contrast of hill and sky. The indigo blue of the night snow is like a river of reflective surface. A week ago my friend Willi offered me a huge pomegranate for my photo and I told him I was trying to use objects from my or nearby gardens. Now that the ground is buried in snow drifts, I reach for the clementines on the counter to flavor my palette of images. I break my own rules, relying on an intuitive direction for this year's solstice series.

"Darkness reconciles all time and disparity. It is a kind of rapture in which life is no longer lived brokenly. In it we are seers with no eyes. The polar night is one-flavored, without past or future. It is the smooth medium of present time, of time beyond time, a river that flows between dreaming and waking."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 47.

#19 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 19, 2009 7:35 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Snow day! Eighteen inches and counting. As the light faded I went out in my long, red down coat, boots and waterproof pants as well as two ski poles. My steps were slow and deliberate, searching for firm footing before shifting weight. My dog bounded and hopped like some cartoon character sniffing with her nose buried in the snow. The piled powder shifted and exaggerated the shapes of buried pots and plants. The jar on the porch had a new interpretation of shoulder and neck. The transformation simplifies and elaborates the landscape. As daylight drained, the snow swirled in its own light.

"An hour after midday the light was gone and we drove on through the white darkness of the Polar night. The details of the landscape melted strangely one into the other like frozen fog, and little ice-covered hills looked like mountains."
--Rasmussen in 1921 quoted by Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 46

#18 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 18, 2009 9:29 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

We got our Xmas tree, our daughter is home and we don't have to go anywhere. Arriving home after dark we had a dinner of story telling and time on the couch. Can't ask for much more.

"Greenlanders say that only the Quanallit-- the white people--are afraid of the dark, while Eskimos like nothing better than long winter days of story telling and talking to spirits."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p 38.

#17 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 17, 2009 8:42 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

"We met up with an old man, named Uutaaq, who invited us to his home. His father had gone to the North Pole with Robert Perry and he wanted to tell me the story....His wife lit the traditional candles on the coffee table before the stories began, as if their wavering light would summon the thread of the past into the room."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, pp. 235-236

#16 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 16, 2009 7:53 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Endings faced me as my intro to wheel class met for the last time today at the Corcoran in Washington, DC. On the way home the day faded with a violet sunset over the far blue-ridge mountains, making elegant blue purple lines in the distance. It was earlier than my usual pattern when I pulled off the highway, but It felt like the middle of the night.

"No matter what you did in winter, how deep you dove, there was still no daylight and no comprehension that came with light. Endings were everywhere, visible within the invisible, and the timeless days and nights ticked by."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 36

#15 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 15, 2009 5:55 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

Heading down to the studio in the dark I reached for a headlamp flashlight as my guide. When I stepped out onto the gravel and snapped it on I realized the battery was dying. The fading ray seemed like it would barely illuminate the path. But the further I got from the lights of the house the headlamp was just enough to decipher grass from gravel and the difference of wet and dry. Every year as the days get short I have to re-learn the art of walking in the dark, a seasonal lesson about moving forward only once the eyes have adjusted to a new type of vision--just as a twist to normal sight is sometimes required to resurrect creative momentum.

"Tonight the darkness jolts me. I walk around the room trying to lift the dark cover of night with a flashlight in my hand, as if its fading beam were a shovel. I am trying to understand how one proceeds from blindness to seeing, from seeing to vision."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 38

#14 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 14, 2009 7:14 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

This morning the world looked as if it was a black and white photo. Fog, ice and general dampness shimmered in the air. I slowly walked to the pond on my way to the studio, studying the great blue heron slowly flapping past, gliding above the frozen ice, wondering how it feels to be that long winged long legged bird.

On my way to an appointment, I heard an interview with the great great grandaughter of Charles Darwin, Ruth Padel. She has recently written his biography in verse. As she spoke of her family and Darwin she conveyed their deep love of nature imbued with a sense of sheer wonder. She quoted Darwin as saying, "if I'd have my life to live over again, I would make it a rule to read a poem a day."

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Ted Kooser
Published in "Flying at Night"

#13 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 13, 2009 5:55 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

Friday night after Thanksgiving we had a simple dinner at my father's loft. We began to exchange stories about his father's youngest sister. Dad and I traded stories back and forth till Warren reminded us there was a profile written about her stashed with my mother's books. I went to the shelf and found the slim booklet. Zoe began to read about the time that Frannie had slipped in the bathtub. Zoe soon looked up laughing and told us that Dad and I each had told a different half of the same story. That evening, bathed in candlelight, with stories, laughter and the last of the pumpkin pie, was the highlight of my visit home.

"We sit side by side on the porch swing, waiting to see what tale will be told next. We are learning the way in which stories end, how they drift into near silence, yet leave an after-ringing, like a bell."
--Ted Kooser, "Lights on a Ground of Darkness"

#12 winter solstice 2009

By Catherine White on December 12, 2009 11:48 AM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

After yoga I had coffee with my fellow yogi Tom Davenport. I am always a sucker for his stories of what Delaplane, Marshal and The Plains were like when he was a kid. We often talk about movies because among other things, he is a story teller, filmmaker and founder of Folkstreams where he posts films and short videos. For instance, his stories and films document and connect musicians, craftspeople and the history of the Delaplane church or street festivals in Brooklyn with specific images and sounds to ignite imagination. In the back of Tom's Subaru were a few turnips rolling around, complete with frozen greens and dirt from his garden that have resurfaced in today's image.

To keep people all alive a little longer, it just takes honesty to write a few pages in handwriting. That person will lift up into the light a little bit.
--Ted Kooser talking about writing his new book Lights on a Ground of Darkness [from my notes listening to a radio interview].

Recently in solstice Category

#21 winter solstice 2009

#20 winter solstice 2009

#19 winter solstice 2009

#18 winter solstice 2009

#17 winter solstice 2009

#16 winter solstice 2009

#15 winter solstice 2009

#14 winter solstice 2009

#13 winter solstice 2009

#12 winter solstice 2009

solstice: Monthly Archives

Categories

Monthly Archives

Pages

Search

About this Archive