Author: Catherine White

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

On the margins of my walk small birds excite my dog. It’s like she just now registered their existence. Her exuberance at their presence seems lodged as a half-formed instinctual memory. Today she found a dead mouse–tossed it, rolled on it, and ran from me holding it gently in her mouth. The garden had been generous in ways she had never imagined. Nearby the milkweed stood tall, a weedy sentry to our antics.

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

— Mary Oliver, from On Winter’s Margin

These December days as I walk my circles with a six month old puppy I notice the gaps–the blue sky between the grey clouds on a blustery evening, the spaces between the bare trees as much as the trees in the morning blush of sunrise. It reminds me of Morandi’s still lives. How he painted space as much as objects. He captured the void, the warp, the curve, the table, and the wall.

“ I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late – there’s that rich possibility of noticing more in the meantime . . . poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”

— Naomi Shihab Nye

I do my decembrance project each year as a way to stave off my seasonal depression. In my fear of the darkening days I focus on the light. For years as I anticipate the shifting cycle of light I have been trying to find change in how I express myself. I aim to find new things to photograph. I make new backgrounds and alter how I approach my dread of the long nights.

This year I have accepted that there are things I revisit like the Osage-orange or the cardoon, the magnolia leaf and the oak. This is my harvest. This is when I count the seeds, notice the cold and find ways to enjoy it. By writing and photographing I have learned that I no longer need to huddle on a cold November rock. I can count down the days until the shortest day of the year. It comes fast and then I can breath a little easier because I know we are building up day-by-day again. And through all this I have found that what I most love are the months when day and night are even.

Everything tends towards its own circumference, it seems — the world, This life, and no doubt the next,
dependence and dear dread,
Even the universe in its spare parts.
As for me,
I’m ringed like a tree, stealthily, year by year, moving outward.

— Charles Wright, from Buffalo Yoga in Oblivion Banjo, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019; originally in China Trace, 1977

I rustled in slow circles this afternoon looking for just the right leaf. The huge curling litter of our Chinese magnolia is a marker of December for me. The leaves fall like yellow sails in November and then they dry, curl and blow in the wind. There was the year my father was visiting and in his failing eyesight he told me our newspapers had littered the field. Another year while stacking the wood kiln, my two helper friends took a break to gather armfuls of leaves. Their enjoyment of the amassed sculptural abundance drew me out of my funk of doubt.

Leaves beginning to rustle now
in the dark tree of the self.

–Charles Wright, from “Cicada,” in Chickamauga (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995)

Welcome to December and the first in a series of 21 images, some memories and a poem or a quote. As is often the case the beginning of December takes me by surprise.

Over the last few years of this project I often get a running start making a few images in advance so I can focus on ideas. This year I shifted an upstairs studio table to a new position so I can photograph with north light. The rest of the room is in disarray but I made a start.

I found boxes of old postcards, piles of letters, boxes of photographs, files from exhibitions, proposals, and notes for teaching jobs. I threw out paper samples and old unused tools. I vacuumed up dust and mouse nests, stink bugs and weird seeds collected for forgotten reasons. I found postage stamps, scissors, labels, brushes and rubber stamps.

I went through the accumulations of things that I used to throw out when I moved every couple of years. I went through memories and wish lists. I found attempts at articles and dreams of books, inspirational clippings and class evaluations, beginnings of paintings and sketches for projects that have been long since completed. There were cool things that could be used for new concoctions but have passed their expiration date. Some remnants of a few projects I got lost in that did not hold up to the test of time. Today was a good day to move on.

heron at twilight

stillness of dark lake séance

old spirit rises

— Greg Sellers, Haiku journal entry, 1 December 2020

Culturally today is the summer solstice and the summit of my series. We finished our firing this afternoon around 4:30. The firing is the summit of another series in my life. Today is the longest day of the year and as much as I love the summer, now I become a little sad to know the daylight hours get shorter from here. We have had hotter firings in terms of air temperature–it was hot firing in the kiln. We have had harder firings in how we had to fight for every degree of heat rise. We are thankful for the friends who are willing to forego some sleep and to wear long sleeve shirts and pants on these hot days. I learned of two deaths today and I am touched by the way both of these people brought meaning to my life. Their voices remind me that lighting a fire or swallowing ice are actions that weave threads of connection and meaning into our lives.

Basho wrote that the life of poetry means lighting a fire in summer, swallowing ice cubes in winter.

The moon is a waning crescent. The skies have been overcast the last couple of nights. Now the fog is floating in, so there are few stars. The kiln is hot and we have been tending, feeding, listening. It is almost as if firing a kiln was like eating stars, hot and peppery, full of patience and anticipation. We stoke, chat, eat, sleep, drink lots of water, and talk about what we get to eat next. More stars, cake? We watch the flame move through the space of the kiln. We look at the ceramic cones (that indicate temperature) and record the pyrometer temperature. At night the flame reaches out of the chimney like a bright mist or tongue.

ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

–Rebecca Elson