Gone to seed

Wednesday is my catch-up day. I don’t teach on campus on Wednesdays, so I can sleep in and take a long, leisurely dog-walk before getting started with grading, online teaching, and other teaching tasks. Wednesday is when I run errands, do laundry, and catch up with housework. My Wednesdays always feature a full to-do list, “catching up” being a never-ending task. But because I don’t typically have to be anywhere at any particular time on Wednesdays, I can take my time chipping away at my midweek to-dos. Wednesdays are always busy, but they are busy in a relaxing way.

Now that November is over and I’m no longer committed to posting every day, I feel like my blog-mind has started to go to seed. This morning when I walked Reggie on the rail-trail where we often walk on Wednesdays, I couldn’t help taking lots of pictures of plants that have gone to seed, their tidy blooms replaced by fuzzy fluff, wizened fruit, or scraggly bracts. Last week or the week before, I would have stockpiled these Wednesday pictures to use throughout the week, but this morning I wasn’t pushing to feed the blog. Instead, I let Reggie off his leash, and we each walked at our own pace, stopping to sniff or photograph whatever caught our fancy. Instead of clinging to the blooms of seasons past, we allowed things to ripen into untidy seediness.

I think my fondness for flowers that have gone to seed is related to my fondness for weeds. Gone-to-seed flowers, like weeds, are scraggly, scrappy, and untidy. Gone-to-seed flowers, like weeds, have no place in a proper garden, as respectable gardeners diligently deadhead those blossoms that are past their prime. It should come as no surprise that for all my fondness for wildflowers and weeds, I’m no gardener, content to let my landlord keep my yard from falling into unbridled fecundity. If it were up to me, plants as well as dogs would be free to run off-leash, enjoying the leisure of commitment-free days to flower, fade, and fruit in their own time, not mine.

 

’tis (already) the season

Usually, I have an attitude of “bah humbug” when stores debut their Christmas displays before Thanksgiving. In my mind, displaying too much Christmas too early simply pushes the hand of time, and that’s never a good thing. Instead of pushing consumers to think about Christmas months before the first snowflake falls, I personally believe businesses and their customers alike should follow “a predictable and leisurely seasonal succession, with September bringing fall foliage, October bringing pumpkins, November bringing turkeys, and December bringing Santa.” No need to rush into a season that will arrive on its own eventually.

All that being said, I make a blanket exception for the Christmas shop windows at Creative Encounters, an art-supply and frame shop on Main Street in downtown Keene. Over the years and in various seasons, I’ve taken lots of pictures of their window displays. The windows at Creative Encounters aren’t large, but they are always colorful, interesting, and attractive. Just as the mannequins at Miranda’s Verandah always catch my eye, I always find myself admiring whatever is on display at Creative Encounters.

The Christmas windows at Creative Encounters debuted last week, more than a week before Thanksgiving, and I for once am not complaining. On these dark and increasingly gray days, I’m grateful for the spot of color and sparkle these well-designed windows offer. This year’s display at Creative Encounters features a three-sided kiosk that rotates before a wall with several framed mirrors, an arrangement that highlights the various products on sale while also providing a moving, changing display of colors, shapes, and reflections. It might sound strange for me to admit that I stood several moments so I could see the colorful kiosk cycle through its various arrangements, but I wasn’t the only one. Before I could approach the window to snap these shots, Reggie and I held back for about five minutes while a woman and her daughter stood transfixed in front of the display, watching the artfully decorated kiosk turn around and around, offering a kaleidoscopic allure of light and color.

 

Ladies of the evening

These days, my after-work dog-walks happen long after dark, so I rely more and more on illuminated shop windows to light my way downtown and back home again.

The headless, well-dressed sisters at Miranda’s Verandah serve as a perennial beacon, loyal neighbors who always stand at silent attention as Reggie and I pass by, sniffing and snapping pictures as are our respective pursuits. How many other passersby–both window-shopping pedestrians and harried rush-hour motorists circling the rotary that Keene curiously terms a “Square”–have Miranda’s weird sisters welcomed over the years from their prime downtown vantage point?

 

Of frost and pheasants

It’s brilliant and bright outside: the kind of chilly day that deceives you with light. Why haven’t we learned over all these years that the brightest days are often the coldest, as if the light refracted through the remnants of a hard frost is even brighter than light unadorned?

Reggie and I saw a hen pheasant this morning: she was hunkered in the leaves next to a fence skirting one of the factories along the railtrail, and I was stopped taking a photograph while Reggie was sniffing dead leaves. Had the hen not moved, I’d have never seen her, as she was exactly the color of dry leaves. Had we both–Reggie and I–not stopped, I’m guessing this bird would have let us pass, not stirring the slightest to betray her presence. But with both a snooping person and nosy dog in close proximity, the hen first walked and then flew away, wanting to have nothing to do with our impertinence.

I don’t think I’d ever seen a female pheasant at close range and indeed didn’t recognize it at first, initially thinking we’d stumbled upon a female grouse. But the bird’s pointed tail and stiff, skittering flight were both indicative of pheasant rather than grouse, as was the fact that she flew to a nearby field rather than a neighboring row of trees. But my first startled impression belonged to no particular species: just the sound of leaves rustling, then the startled realization that one particular patch of dry-leaf color was vaguely bird-shaped and moving. In the split second before my mind could apply the category “pheasant” or “grouse” to that moving, bird-shaped patch of dry-leaf color, the only thought I could formulate was “some sort of brown, gallinaceous bird.”

Had I been a Stone Age hunter with a slingshot, that would have been enough for me to toss off a shot or two, as brown gallinaceous birds are tasty, regardless of whether you tag them “pheasant” or “grouse.” Instead, I raised my camera, had the presence of mind to switch the setting from “macro” to “auto,” then snapped several shots in the general direction I knew the bird to be, not being able to see foot nor feather of her on my camera view-screen.

Some of our best shots, I’ve learned, are blind ones, taken with an air of “what the hell?” J recently mentioned he’d like to try his hand at bird photography, and I’ve been slow to stick my birder’s foot in that open door. I think J would enjoying birding, as I do, and I think it would be something fun for us to do together…but I also know how difficult it is to watch birds with nothing but bare eyes and binoculars. Knowing how elusive birds can be, and knowing how challenging it can be spot them in any light much less the prime conditions needed for photography, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be go birding with a camera. As much as I like birding and photography as their own separate pursuits, I’ve always been too lazy to try to combine them.

For this reason, whenever J expresses his budding interest in bird photography, I find myself thinking, “Oh, you have no idea what you’re getting into!” But then again, most of us don’t know what we’re getting into on any given day, and we don’t let that stop us. Without having much of a clue but with an air of “what the hell,” we simply point our cameras, aim our slingshots, or stick our feet in doors, trying to have the presence of mind to switch our settings before taking a blind shot.

Click here if you want to play “spot the pheasant,” or here if you want to see a cropped version of the same photo. Enjoy!

 

One student’s trash…

…is another student’s art project.

Now that the Fall semester at Keene State is entering its final month, student art projects are starting to appear on campus. Because student artists are typically starving artists, these projects are usually constructed from common, inexpensive materials. One past project, for instance, was constructed entirely from plastic coat hangers, plastic forks, and plastic drinking straws: materials a student could easily (and cheaply) acquire at the neighborhood dollar store. Other past projects have employed tin foil and styrofoam cups, and this year’s projects show a strong preference for chicken wire and papier–mâché.

As much as I enjoy visiting art museums to see installations made by “professional” artists, there’s something inspiring about the ingenuity of these student artists. Given the limitations of a short semester and cash-strapped lifestyles, it’s encouraging to see creativity find its own way to transform a trashcan’s worth of recylables into something far more interesting. Now that I’ve seen this sphere of chicken wire studded with bead-bedecked water bottles, I’m inspired to take another look at my own trashcan and recycle bin, wondering what sort of art-in-the-making I might find therein.

 

An apple a day

It’s a question I’ve pondered previously. In a season when summer abundance is cast off and lies in heaping piles underfoot, shouldn’t we feel bad to see such fecundity go to waste?

Not far from the Keene State College dining commons, there is an apple tree that is currently boasting a bumper crop of fruit. Bushels of apples cluster on limbs high overhead, and buckets of apples cover the ground and sidewalks underneath the tree: some entire, and others crushed. Although I’ve occasionally seen students eating apples while they walk on campus, more commonly they are eating ice cream, chatting on cell phones, or listening to omnipresent iPods. With a dining commons that offers an alluring array of comfort food, the most popular Apples on campus seem to be the laptop kind, not the proverbial Forbidden Fruit.

With so few students eating apples these days–and with a dining commons nearby where students can choose fruit that hasn’t been lying underfoot, crushed or entire–you might worry that this year’s bumper crop of local apples is going to waste, rotting on or under their tree. But as I’ve long suspected, nothing in nature ever goes to waste, there being some campus denizens who don’t have meal plans and thus find their food apart from the dining commons: Keene State’s friendly (and furry) clean-up crew.

 

The bright side

One of the things I like about this month’s commitment to post every day is the way it forces me to look on the literal bright side. When I announced that I’d be participating in this November’s National Blog Posting Month, I knew that finding something to say everyday wouldn’t be the problem, for words appear regardless of the weather. The challenge for daily posting in a darkening month is finding enough light to take pictures. On any given day, it’s not difficult to find something to tell you, but some day’s it’s a challenge to find something to show you.

In sunny months when I post every day or so, I usually rely on a daily intake of photos: whatever I blog today is illustrated with whatever I’ve just recently photographed. In November, however, there days like today when I literally don’t see much light of day. It was dark when I walked Reggie in the morning, it was dark when I got home to walk him again tonight, and I spent most of my in-between hours inside classrooms and my underground office, and neither of these places offers a great setting for digital photographs.

Point-and-shoot digital cameras need a lot of light to take decent pictures: that’s why most of the photos I post on-blog are taken outdoors. Outside on a sunny day, it’s difficult not to take good pictures, because the sunlight shows everything in its best light. But on dim days, even otherwise lovely things look drab and shabby. With less light to work with these days, scrounging a daily dose of bloggable pictures can be a challenge.

I’m learning this month to look at my sunny day dog-walks as my chance to stockpile photographic provisions for the rest of the week. Just as folks who go to the grocery store only once a week learn to make a list so they buy enough ingredients for an entire week’s worth of meals, I know that on my daylight dog-walks, I have to snap more than one day’s worth of bloggable pictures. I’m also learning that it’s good to have a well-stocked photographic larder in case of emergency. By posting all of my day-to-day pictures to Flickr–not just the ones I have immediate plans to blog–I know I have a pantry of non-perishables to fall back upon when my blog-cupboard is bare.

When you’ve made a commitment to post daily, you also approach each day with a different, more optimistic attitude. In addition to looking on the literal bright side, you also look on the proverbial one, viewing your day with an eye for the interesting, inspiring, or otherwise remarkable. On most days of a dimly lit, mid-semester month, there’s not much exciting happening in my life: prepping classes, walking the dog, doing chores, and reading piles upon piles of student papers isn’t exactly stuff to write home (or blog) about. But into each life a little sun must fall, and even the dullest days have their bright moments if you train yourself to spot them. A commitment to daily posting can provide that training if you make a concomitant commitment to keep your water-cooler whining to a minimum, deciding to post about the things you like about your life versus the usual complaints about the daily grind.

A Christian minister once told me that the grass is always greener where it’s watered, and a Zen teacher once told me that whatever you pay attention to grows. If you spend a thirty-day month counting your complaints, you’ll realize by month’s end how rotten your life is. If you greet each November day with an attitude of optimistic expectation, wondering what sort of blog-worthy moments of insight or inspiration will dawn today, you’ll never be disappointed.

“You make, you get.” This is a simple Zen truism, but it points to the same wisdom of the Christian motto, “Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find.” If you approach any November morning with an expectant attitude of “What interesting or inspiring thing will happen today,” that request will be answered. If you greet every November day with expectation, every November day will provide you with something of insight or interest. And if you prodigally post today the ingredients you’d intended for later in the week, you’ll somehow find that you still have plenty, your pantry filling with the miraculous manna of daily inspiration.

 

The replacements

Wednesdays are precious because I can sleep without an alarm clock, waking and then walking whenever the sun stirs me. On teaching days, Reggie and I walk in the dim-lit morning or after-dark evening, but on Wednesdays, we can visit in full daylight the various neighborhood landmarks we see only faintly on other days.

Reggie and I do very little exploring these days, tending to choose the same streets and sidewalks day after day: our usual route. It’s as if the purpose of our twice-daily dog-walks isn’t to explore new places but to discover what is different about the old ones: a process of getting re-acquainted with a long-familiar place.

They’re building two new houses at the end of the street, clearing the weedy field that Reggie and I occasionally use as a shortcut, leaving a narrow fringe of scrubby trees that still shelters our resident Cooper’s hawk. Losing yet another shortcut is just the latest change to our usual dog-walk route, the first being the fencing (and then the demolition) of the old abandoned factory on Water Street, where this morning a boring crew was working with a tall drill, preparing this lot for whatever its next incarnation will be.

Land is too valuable for prime real estate to remain weedy and abandoned for long. The bike path Reggie and I have walked so many times on our way to or from downtown has been re-routed due to construction, the topography of its gentle slope–the low banks of an old railroad bed–taking on a new, unrecognizable shape. I can’t count the number of buildings that have sprung up–and are still arising–around Depot Square, with the new Moving Company mural pointing to the way Railroad Street has radically changed over the years I’ve lived in Keene.

Already, I have a difficult time remembering what the now-demolished portions of the warehouses at Beaver Mills looked like, their still-functional remnant being the only thing that remains. The old mill that was converted into retirement housing is finished and looks like it’s been here forever. Even the local basketball courts, whose construction necessitated the clearing of a row of birch saplings that felt like yet another loss when it happened in the months after my separation, now seem like they’ve been forever planted here, even acquiring their own fringing row of new birch saplings, narrow neighbors to replace the ones that were lost.

For every thing that passes, something arises in its place: this is the rule of both life and impermanence, the subtle and inextricable link between passing and continuance. The law of the living is that all things die; the law of the dead is that life goes on after you’re gone. Last night after dark, students in my Frontier in American Literature class sat discussing the string of deaths chronicled in Annie Dillard’s novel The Living, noting with quiet sadness the way that Ada Fishburn, one of the early-generation Puget Sound pioneers whose story the novel recounts, barely seems to mourn the sudden passing of her husband, Rooney.

Years before, en route to the Pacific Northwest, Ada’s young son, Charley, had died, crushed under the family’s own wagon wheels, and Ada and Rooney had quickly buried the child under a cottonwood tree in soil studded with the bones of previous emigrants. Soon after the burial, Ada, Rooney, and their surviving son had to move on, following their wagon train to the coastal frontier where Ada would bear two more children, lose one, then lose her husband in a well-digging accident: a numbing string of loss that leaves her resigned and reserved.

My students are young: they think that death is a tragedy that slams your life to a grinding halt. Older folks know the wagon train always moves on, with new things replacing the things we’ve lost: death is a tragedy, but its stoppage of time is merely temporary. Once they’ve read further, my students will learn that Ada Fishburn remarries and becomes Ada Tawes; my students will probably think she never loved her first husband, given she’s able to replace him. But I know that life is simply a series of replacements, this present thing being a consolation for that past one: every day, not just this one, is precious, with each one replacing its predecessor. The shocking realization isn’t that death happens but that life goes on, inexorably, the river of time continuing to flow whether you’re on the bank, watching, or slipped into the stream, afloat. All we ever have is time: time that is fresh and virginal when we’re young and seasoned with the ritual of replacement once we’re older.

 

Inexplicable

I can’t explain why some days when I sit down to write in my journal, the words flow easily while on other days my thoughts and words are halting. On some days, my mind locks onto a track of thought and my scribbled sentences come easily, and on other days my words are halting and my attention gets snagged by anything but the blank page before me.

It’s not exclusively a matter of having “something to say,” for on some days I blather quite easily about nothing while on other days, my words and thoughts trip over the Profound Thoughts I want to convey. For whatever inexplicable reason, some days are smooth and some days are choppy: there is no rhyme or reason to it, just as there is no logical explanation for why some days it feels easy to meditate and on others it feels like torture simply to sit still.

Neither meditating nor writing necessarily gets easier over time; you just learn to keep doing it–to keep showing up–whether it feels easy or difficult, smooth or choppy. After you learn that it’s possible to write or meditate even on choppy days, it becomes easier to keep doing it consistently, even though there are plenty of days when the actual doing feels difficult. Like walking the dog in all seasons, you learn to roll with whatever weather the day offers, persevering even when the way feels difficult.

 

Dropping the ball

Around 5:00 this morning, I gave up hope of finishing the thick pile of essay drafts I’d promised to return to my first-year writing students at noon. Going back on my promise wasn’t a huge deal, as we did something other than what I’d originally planned to do in today’s class. Keeping these drafts another weekend will give me time to prepare a grammar handout based on sample sentences from these essays, so it’s ultimately a good idea for me to take time finishing them rather than hurrying through the pile.

This marks that point in the semester when I realize there simply isn’t enough “me” to go around. For every one task I cross off my daily to-do list, a handful more remain undone. I have unanswered emails, unpaid bills, and a dusty apartment that demand my attention; the kitchen sink is filled once again with dirty dishes only one meal after I finally dried and put away the last overdue batch.

I sometimes think that teaching a course overload–full-time here, part-time there–is practice for growing old, because there eventually comes a point in any semester when you finally let it all fall away, like a gradually declining body finally surrendering to mortality after a good, long fight. Eventually, you just give up the ghost, throw in the towel, and let it all go. One by one, you loosen your grip on things you never had a hold on in the first place, giving way to gravity, inertia, and momentum–the inexorable trinity of Powers-That-Be–as you let things slip and sag into their naturally slouchy state.

It’s merely an arbitrary preference, you learn, that insists upon perpetual cleanliness, order, and timeliness. Lines don’t naturally want to be straight, ideas don’t naturally want to be ordered, and bodies don’t naturally want to be slender, upright, and toned. Something there is, they say, that doesn’t like a wall, and something there is that prefers life, work, and love all to be untidy. Why spend precious time and life-blood fighting that inescapable Something?

We did something other than what I’d planned in my noon writing class, and I’ll finish reading drafts over the weekend so I can hand them back in class on Tuesday. In the meantime, I’ve re-learned an important life lesson: deadlines can slip, promises can break, and your own tight hold on your schedule can weaken, but life presses on regardless. Is the true test of any juggler the number of objects she can keep aloft at any given instant or the skill, dexterity, and grace she exhibits in retrieving a single dropped ball?