Rough Ideas

A friend of mine took a photo of a bowl of clover. It was evidence of the day with her daughter who was making a meal for fairies. The image made me wistful for the days of fairies with my daughter. Days when we filled bowls with acorns, rocks, and memories. I know Covid-19 has been hard for families with children at home as well as difficult for those friends with parents in nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

I may ache to be with my daughter. I have fond memories of times in New York City, easy habits of riding the subway to Brooklyn, of drinking in the street life culture, of experiencing art in the museums, and of meals at new and old favorite restaurants. My daughter and I have tried to keep notes on the things we notice, feel, read, and cook during the pandemic. I draw the accumulations of things in bowls. One week it might be potatoes or peonies while for the next cycle it is strawberries.

Today I noticed Catalpa flowers strewn in the grass while I was out picking up sticks. I thought those would make a nice collection but they were past their prime. The pristine ones remaining were high on the trees way out of reach. I am wistful for cooking meals with friends and picking out bowls to serve from. But I also stop to ask when this is over and we look back at this time what will I be nostalgic for? The bowl of peas or the quiet dinners on the porch? Imaging things like this won’t make the loss of loved ones any easier, but it will help me fill my bowl.

THE BOWL

If meat is put into the bowl, meat is eaten.

If rice is put into the bowl, it may be cooked.

If a shoe is put into the bowl,
the leather is chewed and chewed over,
a sentence that cannot be taken in or forgotten.

A day, if a day could feel, must feel like a bowl.
Wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness,
it eats them.

Then the next day comes, spotless and hungry.

The bowl cannot be thrown away.
It cannot be broken.

It is calm, uneclipsable, rindless,
and, big though it seems, fits exactly in two human hands.

Hands with ten fingers,
fifty-four bones,
capacities strange to us almost past measure.
Scented—as the curve of the bowl is—
with cardamom, star anise, long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop.

–Jane Hirshfield, in Ledger, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

Each Thursday Warren and I turn to each other and ask how did time run out of the week. I try not to listen to the news because I run out of tears. While the dish towel may run out of the ability to dry another plate, I stop to ask where did the idea of a plate come from? Was the first plate a hand, a rock or a leaf? As potters these are the questions that keep us going back to find answers that don’t exhaust the questions.

A WELL RUNS OUT OF THIRST

A well runs out of thirst
the way time runs out of a week,
the way a country runs out of its alphabet
or a tree runs out of its height.
The way a brown pelican
runs out of anchovy-glitter at darkfall.

A strange collusion,
the way a year runs out of its days
but turns into another,
the way a cotton towel’s compact
with pot and plate seems to run out of dryness
but in a few minutes finds more.

A person comes into the kitchen
to dry the hands, the face,
to stand on the lip of a question.

Around the face, the hands,
behind the shoulders,
yeasts, mountains, mosses multiply answers.

There are questions that never run out of questions,
answers that don’t exhaust answer.

Take this question the person stands asking:
a gate rusting open.
Yes stands on its left, no on its right,
two big planets of unpainted silence.

–Jane Hirshfield, from The Beauty, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015

This morning when I could do nothing else I took a photo of my morning coffee against a protest photo from the Washington Post. The sign in the foreground read “no justice no peace;” in the background loomed the Capital building. This evening as I lingered on the porch, the best seat in the house for breezes bringing some cooler air, I saw my first fireflies of the season. I wanted to ask them, how is your life?

TODAY, WHEN I COULD DO NOTHING

Today, when I could do nothing,
I saved an ant.

It must have come in with the morning paper,
still being delivered
to those who shelter in place.

A morning paper is still an essential service.

I am not an essential service.

I have coffee and books,
time,
a garden,
silence enough to fill cisterns.

It must have first walked
the morning paper, as if loosened ink
taking the shape of an ant.

Then across the laptop computer — warm —
then onto the back of a cushion.

Small black ant, alone,
crossing a navy cushion,
moving steadily because that is what it could do.

Set outside in the sun,
it could not have found again its nest.
What then did I save?

It did not move as if it was frightened,
even while walking my hand,
which moved it through swiftness and air.

Ant, alone, without companions,
whose ant-heart I could not fathom—
how is your life, I wanted to ask.

I lifted it, took it outside.

This first day when I could do nothing,
contribute nothing
beyond staying distant from my own kind,
I did this.

–Jane Hirshfield, published March 23, 2020 in the San Francisco Chronicle

My mother painted and wrote through all of her adventures which included traveling and raising children. As her only daughter I am embarrassed to admit how critical I was of her. I wanted my Mom to promote herself more. I wanted her to speak up to my father differently. I wanted her to work bigger and to overflow her notebooks. But as I look through her work and her words I realize that as much as I was disparaging of her — she is so much of the impetus for what I do and how I try to go forward. I see some faults and want to do better. Yet it has finally occurred to me that maybe that is the sign of a great teacher, letting her child/student feel empowered to do better in the world.

‘I am your own way of looking at things,’ she said. ‘When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.’ And I took her hand.

–William Stafford, from “When I Met My Muse,” You Must Revise Your Life (University of Michigan Press, 1991)

I recently unearthed the poem Continue by Maya Angelou from my yoga file (a folded group of papers at the bottom of my yoga bag). These poems accumulate from those read each Wednesday when one of my yoga groups meets. In the studio today I worked from the poem’s words for a series of asemic poem plates. Drawing through an even layer of white clay dust I write parts of the poem over and over. When I transfer the dust words to the clay they are printed backwards and mostly illegibly. I continued to work on this idea of simple materials fired in a simple kiln. I repeat and write these words as if they were a chant to get past the cruelty in our society. An eloquent chant to remind myself and others that there is good in the world. A means to plant an abstract kiss of concern on the cheek of those who are sick or grieving. I remember my mother who frequently picked small bouquets of roadside flowers, balancing them in glasses or dixie cups. I am once again reminded to take a moment for beauty.

CONTINUE

On the day of your birth
The Creator filled countless storehouses and
stockings
With rich ointments
Luscious tapestries
And antique coins of incredible value
Jewels worthy of a queen’s dowry
They were set aside for your use
Alone
Armed with faith and hope
And without knowing of the wealth which awaited
You broke through dense walls
of poverty
And loosed the chains of ignorance which
threatened to cripple you so that you
could walk
A Free Woman
Into a world which needed you
My wish for you
Is that you continue

Continue

To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness

Continue

To allow humor to lighten the burden
of your tender heart

Continue

In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter

Continue

To let your eloquence
Elevate the people to heights
They had only imagined

Continue

To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you

–Maya Angelou, excerpt of poem written for Oprah Winfrey

Every day as I start to write I hesitate for fear of saying the tone deaf thing. So I turn away from my pen and read what others have to say about the protests and the actions we can take or what Claudia Rankine wrote five years ago on the precariousness of being black in America. As an artist I am reminded that we can’t help but notice the personal lives and the heartfelt choices that have been made. I turn to weeding and drawing and processing clay as tangible acts that help me while I think. These thoughts create empathy for the crisis so many people are experiencing; thoughts that search for appropriate actions.

TODAY ANOTHER UNIVERSE

The arborist has determined:
senescence          beetles          canker
quickened by drought
                                          but in any case
not prunable       not treatable       not to be propped.

And so.

The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries.

The trunk where the ant.

The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground.

The bark     cambium     pine-sap     cluster of needles.

The Japanese patterns          the ink-net.

The dapple on certain fish.

Today, for some, a universe will vanish.
First noisily,
then just another silence.

The silence of after, once the theater has emptied.

Of bewilderment after the glacier,
the species, the star.

Something else, in the scale of quickening things,
will replace it,

this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.

–Jane Hirshfield, in Ledger, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

During Covid 19 and our sheltering at home I have harnessed my energy through routines. I have always had a love/hate relationship with schedules but I have kept just enough of one to know what day it is and to keep my memory grounded in daily efforts. Without the habit of a pandemic journal–which includes a quote, a list of activities, and four quick drawings–I would have lost track of the way the spring unfolded or how we leaned into the ritual of an evening dog walk without the dog.

HARNESS

Little soul,
you and I will become

the memory
of a memory of a memory.

A horse
released of the traces
forgets the weight of the wagon.

–Jane Hirshfield, in Ledger, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

The newspaper’s and journalist’s job is to bear witness to what is happening in the world. I try to take it all in and then digest. I read about the history of racism, the protests, and the way individuals are taking action. My medium is clay and paint and paper. These images are snapshots of how I put it together. I attempt understanding through the things I make and the ways they can be used. I am trembling, thinking, questioning, cooking, sitting at the table, talking and listening, and finally writing.

LET THEM NOT SAY

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something:

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned,

—Jane Hirshfield, in Ledger, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

Most days I stretch and touch my toes. My friends I know from yoga may think this comes easily to me but I am not naturally flexible. I have practiced on being flexible since I was a teenager. I am working to stretch my understanding of racial inequality and how our nation has gotten to where we are. Every day I will stretch, read, make lists, take photographs, form pots, make drawings, take what other action I can as my way to greater flexibility and understanding.

PRACTICE

I touch my toes.

When I was a child,
this was difficult.
Now I touch my toes daily.

In 2012, in Sanford, Florida,
someone nearby was touching her toes before bed.

Three weeks ago,
in the Philippines or Myanmar, someone was stretching.

Tomorrow, someone elsewhere will bend
first to one side, then the other.

I also do ten push-ups, morning and evening.

Women’s push-ups,
from the knees.
They resemble certain forms of religious bowing.

In place of one, two, four, seven,
I count the names of incomprehension: Sanford, Ferguson,
Charleston,
Aleppo, Sarajevo, Nagasaki.

I never reach: Troy, Ur.

I have done this for years now.
Bystander. Listener. One of the lucky.
I do not seem to grow stronger.

—Jane Hirshfield, from Ledger, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

Lately I have found it hard to concentrate. What book should I choose to read? Do I skim or linger? How much of the newspaper can I survive?  How many minutes can I spend on social media? A colleague asked today when will Instagram go back to flower images? That question pushed me to ask what do flowers symbolize, say, or do? Could they be a weapon, a conversation, an answer, a question?  Could flowers be a moment of pause, clarity, or memory?

My Poems

my poems are fed up & getting violent.

i whisper to them tender tender bridge bridge but they say bitch ain’t no time, make me a weapon!

i hold a poem to a judge’s neck until he’s not a judge anymore.

i tuck a poem next to my dick, sneak it on the plane.

a poem goes off in the capitol, i raise a glass in unison.

i mail a poem to 3/4ths of the senate, they choke off the scent.

my mentor said once a poem can be whatever you want it to be.

so i bury the poem in the river & the body in the fire.

i poem a nazi i went to college with in the jaw until his face hangs a bone tambourine.

i poem ten police a day.

i poem the mayor with my bare hands.

i poem the hands off the men who did what they know they did.

i poem a racist woman into a whistle & feel only a little bad.

i poem the president on live TV, his head raised above my head, i say Baldwin said.

i call my loves & ask for their lists.

i poem them all. i poem them all with a grin, bitch.

poemed in the chair, handless, volts ready to run me, when they ask me what i regret

i poem multitudes multitudes multitudes.

Danez Smith (2019)