Year of the Owl :: March, 2022

This morning I made oat and honey bread, brewed a pot of green tea, gathered my notebooks and laptop and turned on Puccini because I love the sound of opera floating from the windows while I sit on the deck and write. At last it is warm enough to sit on the deck and write.  Ravens are croaking somewhere on the other side of the creek, the neighbor is shouting at his dog, the kid who rides the dirt bike is gunning his engine just at the curve of the road below the house as he always does. When the engine noise fades, I catch the soft hoot of the owl in the woods.

Owls everywhere.

 Yesterday, a woman I’d just met told me she was out walking in the park and saw two baby Barred Owls perched on a branch. The mother was nearby; when the woman stopped to watch the babies, the mother flew over the woman’s shoulder, gliding through the notch between her shoulder and her ear. A warning. Once, at a raptor rescue center, the woman said, she had put on a thick leather arm glove and an owl had perched on her arm.

“It was so much heavier than I thought it would be,” she told me.

All at once, people I care about are very sick. Maybe they will not live to see the old age I am always planning on. When the woman was telling me her story, I found myself wishing I could hold that owl on my arm and test its weight ahead of time.  You can be so sure of yourself and then it can all change. Suddenly, I could not listen to the owl story anymore. I interrupted, told another story about myself and coyotes. The woman looked at me, disappointed. Maybe I had not at first seemed like someone who was self-absorbed and bad at listening. Maybe I had seemed like someone who would understand about the babies and the owl flying so close she could feel the air bend to meet its wings.

I am someone who understands about the owl, but it was still hard to sleep last night. By 3 am I was tangled in a long skein of dreams about the ways I disappoint people - storytellers, family members, everyone. I have noticed that the onset of grief and bewilderment seem to have one of two effects on people: they either fall back or push forward. I do not want to fall back into the woman who is held captive by the mild disappointment of strangers, who believes that the right thing to do is always whatever makes other people relax. I have to shake off the urge to return to old ways of being and push on, accepting that I have my own weight, my own demands on the world.

This week I’ve been reading Patti Smith’s strangely wonderful memoir, Year of the Monkey. I confess I had never listened to Patti Smith’s music until recently, I only knew her from the internet and a couple random quotes, but I’m totally hooked by her roving, creative spirit and her comfort in her own skin. I don’t think she’d give a damn that some stranger somewhere once misunderstood her, but I know for sure she’d attend to the message of owls when they arrived.

“You don’t see things like that. You feel them…”

Sometime in the near future, sickness will take someone I love. I will hear the owl again and again. It will watch me from its invisible perch, it will show itself to me, to strangers who will tell me the story whether I am ready to hear it or not. It will all be so much heavier than I think it will be, but I am confident that I will push on anyway, all the way to the edges of my life, growing, changing, disconcerting, disappointing, becoming, until it is my own time to push on into whatever comes next.

 Don’t worry, there are lots of good things going on here as well!  We are having a long-delayed wedding in a couple months and I will be meeting my French son-in-law in a few weeks. (Thank you for the visa at last, State Department!) I am taking a very light class load this spring and summer so we can celebrate and get to know each other, then I’ll be back at my books full time in the fall.

I’m also happy to tell you I have a story in the upcoming issue of Dark Mountain, which launches April 21st. It’s written around the theme of “confluence” and involves the deep connection between women and the earth, shape-shifters, and the boundaries between human and animal worlds. It’s a story I really love. If you are interested in reading it, you can subscribe to Dark Mountain’s biannual publications here, or buy individual books here.

I hope you are all enjoying the change of seasons, whether you are heading into spring or fall. If you feel up to it, let me know what you are reading and listening to right now. My list is below. 

Reading lately:

Tove Ditlevsen’s The Copenhagen Trilogy

– I came to this memoir through Ditlevsen’s poem Self-Portrait 1.  She was telling the truth!

Richard Powers’ Bewilderment

              -I didn’t love this as much as The Overstory, but this wrangling with the grief around climate catastrophe and loss has really stuck with me.  I’ll be hearing Powers speak in April and I’m really looking forward to it.

Sylvia Warner Townsend’s The Corner That Held Them

              -By recommendation of Melissa Wiley. A deep, slow dive into the life of a medieval nunnery without the soft gaze and the sheen of piety. Nothing very much happens and I loved it.

Molly Gloss’ Wild Life

  – A 19th century-style novel set in the early days of the old growth logging in the PNW. Sasquatch, wild forests, and a fierce female protagonist.

Listening to lately:

Kiese Laymon read his book Heavy: An American Memoir

              -Unbelievably good. Half the experience is listening to Laymon read in his own voice.

Sabine Devieilhe & Marianne Crebassa singing Duo des fleurs from Léo Delibes’ Lakmé Opera.

Duolingo French Podcasts

That’s it for now!

Much love to you, friends. Thanks for being here!

tonia

Poetry in a time of war

I made a rule for myself a long time ago not to feel pressured or guilty about commenting or not commenting here on current crises. There are enough words going around at any given moment that mine are rarely needed, and I don’t think they are needed now with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. I just want to point you to poet Ilya Kaminksy (a USSR-born Ukranian poet who now lives in the U.S.) and his work Deaf Republic. I’ve seen We Lived Happily During the War around in several places but the whole book is worth your time. Especially, if you, like me, lie awake with a head and heart full of feelings and questions about war and its myriad agonies and dilemmas. I find I often don’t want “answers” so much as I want to acknowledge the way it feels to live in safety while others suffer, to just be helpless and confused and saddened. That’s what poetry allows. Maybe you will also find it a place of refuge.

Padraig O’Tuama’s take on We Lived Happily During the War.

For me, I’m sitting with this selection for awhile (from the final poem, In a Time of Peace)

“All of us

still have to do the hard work of dentist appointments,

of remembering to make

a summer salad: basil, tomatoes, it is a joy, tomatoes, add a little salt.

This is a time of peace.

I do not hear gunshots,

but watch birds splash over the backyards of the suburbs. How bright is the sky

as the avenue spins on its axis.

How bright is the sky (forgive me) how bright.”

May peace keep the people of Ukraine and all of us.

tonia

January, Fourth week :: 2022

Most of last week I kept a silent(ish) retreat. I didn’t go anywhere, I was just at home, opting out of the extra noise. I kept the phone off except for a few texts with loved ones, no music or podcasts, no television or movies. I wanted space to think deeply, to listen to my inner self for awhile. But my brain didn’t cooperate. It kept churning up weird bits of media I’d previously digested - pop songs, advertisements, movie scenes - like some kind of mental off-gassing. I began to feel uneasy, imagining my neural pathways coated with the greasy streaks of junk food culture. I considered the disturbing question: what if at the end of my life all that flashes before my eyes is an 80’s soda commercial and a scene from an Avenger’s movie? I might laugh about that idea if I didn’t recognize the way my mind latches onto such things, if I didn’t know those things were designed to manipulate my attention and stay lodged in my consciousness.

At the end of my allotted quiet time, I ran an errand and came home to find piles of feathers in the yard. Not the scatter of a sparrow or a blue jay (or one of my ducks, thank goodness); something bigger, different, something I don’t quite recognize. I kept going out to visit these remains, trying to imagine what, who, when, how. Was I asleep in my bed when it happened? At the grocery store? Eating dinner? The thought disturbs me unreasonably: life - or rather, death - occurring right out in the yard where I might have seen it, but didn’t. It tangles up with the week’s earlier feelings of regret: what else have I not seen? Have I missed what’s important? Am I a part of the real world or only the manufactured one?

For the rest of the day I felt the weight of these questions. How much am I shaped by what I truly value - the sacredness of earth and her creatures, my relationships with others - and how much am I shaped by the noise and expectations of a world that dismays me?

I went out at twilight, doubt clinging to my heels, and was startled by a deer, my old familiar, grazing on the pasture. She stood gently, her neck bent to the earth, entirely undisturbed by my presence. Deer have always arrived for me in moments like these; I read her like I once read scriptures. She was there for herself, but in another way she had come to comfort me, to remind me I cannot be ejected from my belonging. It was a grace, and I felt it as such. I called to her, she flicked an ear, we shared the last of the day’s light and then I went back to the house unburdened for a while, determined to stay a few more days in the quiet. I feel a spark of hope that there is something more inside, something else that might arise if I just give it the time - and silence - it needs.

We all know how to turn off screens, at least in theory; here are some other quiet practices to try:

Carry a book of poetry with you for waiting times. Or just look around, observing what other people are doing.

Don’t check news headlines.

In conversation, listen and encourage other people to talk while you say less.

Turn down the lights and sit in the semi-dark.

Welcome boredom and stay with it.

Doze off any time you can.

Sing to yourself.

Practice pranayama.

\|/

Gathered this week:

~ A friend sent me this lovely little dance clip.

~ Your Bubble Is Not the Culture // Even though this article is about popular culture, there’s a lot to take note of in regards to how we perceive the world around us.

~ My family is practicing yoga with Tim these days. He’s got loads of free videos on youtube. He focuses a lot on correct form and building strength, which is just what I need. Plus he’s corny and sweet. (His subscription service is also amazing and well-worth the money - especially if you don’t go to the gym anymore, like us.)

~ I am happy living simply

“I am happy living simply:

like a clock, or a calendar.

Worldly pilgrim, thin,

wise - as any creature. To know

the spirit is my beloved. To come to things - swift

as a ray of light, or a look.

To live as I write: spare - the way

God asks me - and friends do not.”

(Marina Tsvetaeva, 1919, HT: Holly Wren Spaulding)

…

There are a few new readers here (welcome!) so I thought it would be nice to show myself and say hello.

Some things you might want to know about me - just for fun:

*I’ve been writing online since 2005. I’ve changed A LOT in that time.

*I write serious and live happy. Mostly. :)

*Enneagram 1/INFJ (Also a Gemini, which makes no sense to me.)

*I like kindness, fidelity, integrity, and generosity in people and I’m generally attracted to people in the margins.

*I dislike arrogance, proselytizing, over-confidence, loud voices, and selfishness. Also, those sheet cakes that come from the grocery store and people who don’t put their carts away when they’re done with them.

*I despise fundamentalism, whether it’s on the left or on the right.

*Part city/part country.

*Glasses, braces, mullet, perm, religion: middle school was hell.

*Definitely swear a little.

*Herbal tea, black tea, coffee with lots of oat milk, and red wine.

*I like talking to people who read here, so please say hello!

That’s all for now!

peace keep you, my friends,

tonia

January, First Week :: 2022

Meditation for a new year, snapped out the window on a trip downtown.

The beginning of any new season, for me, requires a lot of self-forgiveness. I’ve failed at nearly every goal I set for myself in 2021. I went backwards in some areas. I made devastatingly stupid mistakes. I lost huge amounts of time to my own mental fog and fatigue. It wasn’t a year of obvious successes (though there were some!). So this time around the circle, I’m allowing January to be a quiet, reflective month. I feel hesitant to choose a word or theme, to make too many plans. I’m tired of dictating to the year what I’m going to do. I’d like, instead, to leave room for surprise, to practice accepting what comes with equanimity.

During this first week of the year, I’m trying to shed whatever excess I can. When I cleaned off my office bookshelf last week, I found a small stone - a piece of pumice, formed from lava-froth in some distant past - that the kids had once collected outside. I had forgotten what it was; I picked it up expecting the weight of stone in my hand and found a marvelous lightness instead. Holding that stone in my palm, I felt an answering leap within myself: Porous. Weightless. Light. Steady. These are qualities I want to nurture in 2022. So, not a word or theme, per se, but an image, a stone to set on my desk to remind me that I am not some capitalist automaton required to pump out content with the blade-edge of the calendar at my throat, but a living woman, both fluid and solid, tidal and receptive, firm and still.

“I wonder what we will do with this year, what it will do with us and what together we and life will create during the twelve months ahead.”

Jean Hersey, The Shape of a Year

Oliver Burkeman says, “What you need…are tiny goals and a commitment to incremental progress ("small wins"), plus a willingness to encounter failure after failure as you stumble toward improvement.”

Thanks to Burkeman, I’m including failure and stumbling in my expectations for the year. It’s strange, I know, but already I can breathe deeper.

This month, I’m taking a class with Holly Wren Spaulding that I hope will help reignite a vision for my work. I’ve got a clean desk area, waiting journals, and nourishing books, but mostly, I’ve got my eyes open. I’m looking for the little patterns, the ways I sabotage myself, the places I knuckle under pressure, excuses I make, as well as the things that inspire me to create.

Two examples:

1. A reframing: I heard someone say the other day that they are a full-time practicing artist whether they are actively writing or not. Sometimes this person needs to work for awhile in other medias, but they are always an artist. This immediately allowed me to accept the seasons when words aren’t flowing and I need to work with my hands (everything from baking to knitting or gardening). Until she said that, I didn’t realize how much seesawing I was doing in my own mind, afraid I wasn’t committed enough. Now I know that every season is part of my process as a writer and I don’t have to shame myself for not being at the desk. A different way of understanding what I already am.

2. An observation: I’m at my most receptive and creative early in the morning, which makes it a perfect time for writing, but I noticed that if I engage in conversation before I sit at my desk (either digital or face to face) I will not only get pulled out of that receptive space, but I am also likely to start doing household tasks, or looking up something online, or getting involved in someone’s emotions. It’s the smallest of things, but it can delay my work for the rest of the day. One January question is how to guard and use that precious morning time. (Keep the phone turned off? Earplugs? Blinders? Move to a desert island? )

Tiny steps. One by one.

I know I’m not alone in this wrestling at the new year. We’re all struggling in various ways with loss and fatigue. I sure wish we could meet up for some good food and conversation around a table. (Wouldn’t that be great?) But since we aren’t able to do that, we’ll meet in the places we can, and we’ll just keep going, all of us, messy, unproductive, inconsistent, and occasionally wonderful. At least that’s my hope.

with much love,

tonia

Gathered:

~ “Consider that rest is not a time set aside, but a spirit brought to every time.” L.M. Sacasas

~ Lesley’s silent films feed my soul.

~In praise of reading “old” books - and a list of ideas. Maybe it’s better to let books ripen, see what sticks around, instead of rushing to get the newly published books straightaway.

~ A word to adopt for 2022: ”Respair”: fresh hope, a recovery from despair.

December, Fourth week :: 2021

The chair where the owl perched is covered in snow now, but I don’t ever pass it without a tiny uptick in my pulse, a split second when I wonder if that blocky brown shape will be waiting there, will fool my eye again. At first, I’d thought a limb had fallen from the apple tree in the night and somehow landed upright on the arm of the adirondack chair, but a moment later, it swiveled its impossible head and fixed me with an amber stare. Twice this autumn, it came to this spot; two days in a row I stood frozen, pinned like a moth under its gaze until at last, it blinked, unfolded its wings, and disappeared into the trees.

Biologists say that an owl sighted during the day means that a disturbance has occurred - it has suffered a loss of habitat, a disruption in hunting patterns, or maybe, a lost mate - an affirmation of the folklore of North American Indigenous peoples who say the owl is a bad omen, a messenger of death. I joked about it with friends later, my own early morning harbinger of doom perching on a pink adirondack chair.

I don’t know if the owl I saw is one who regularly lives in our woods. During most of the year I can lie in bed and hear several calling through the open window. Their whoo-whooing among the night trees is as reassuring and comforting as this daytime appearance was unsettling. Despite my joking, the weeks after the owl showed itself to me were a storm of loss. Our new dog was hit on the road and killed instantly, relationships frayed, depression stalked loved ones, plans upended and collapsed, I lost months of writing and I couldn’t find the nerve to sit down and write again. I’m not particularly susceptible to omens and signs, but the owl unnerved me more than I’d like to admit. I feel the ghost of it hovering around that chair every morning I go by. Its remembered shape is a fixed point, a talisman of my own vulnerability, but also a symbol of another year of disruption and loss for all of us. It hovers over all the breakdowns we’ve endured, the painful exposure of our true beliefs, the shock of our disconnections and malaise, the revealed power of the market, the media, and the moronic, our fear of getting sick, our proximity to death. Of course I flinch when I think of seeing it again - how much more loss will we face?

A great deal, most likely. I feel the world I once knew passing by, receding into the past. It is not the owl I flinch from, it is the demand that I look truth in the eye and see it as it really is. I want to continue on in my comfort, believing untenable beliefs, assuming my neighbors and I agree, feeling confident that someone somewhere will make disease and extinction and turmoil go away, but that luxury is past. The owl stares at me without blinking and it won’t look away.

Strangely, now that the shock of these realities has settled in, I arrive at the end of the year feeling a little steadier. The owl has come. Change is here. Death has arrived. But I am strong enough to live within it. I know what lies ahead requires courage, as well as creativity and hope, and that’s what I want to mine in 2022.

As MFK Fisher wrote: “When the wolf is at the door one should invite him in and have him for dinner.”

I’ll be writing more about that and the image/theme I’ve chosen for the new year later. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying this quiet-ish week between the holidays. I’m looking forward to a new year of sharing and learning with you all.

Happy New Year!

tonia