Silver Rain

Rain through living room window

In Time of Silver Rain
by Langston Hughes

In time of silver rain
The earth
Puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads
Of life,
Of life,
Of life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies
Lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth
New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,
In time of silver rain
When spring
And life
Are new.

Raindrops on window panes

Fallen peony flower with raindrops

 

Old Farms, Abandoned

Abandoned farmhouse with swing set

Window, abandoned farmhouse

Steps to cellar

Barn ruin

 

“Abandoned Farmhouse”
by Ted Kooser, from Flying at Night: Poems 1965 – 1985

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard.  Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child?  Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm — a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls.  Something went wrong, they say.

 

It’s the Extras that Count

National Poetry Month. 12

“The world is what you see outside your window plus what you think of it.”
— William Stafford, from Sound of the Ax: Aphorisms and Poems by William Stafford,ed. Vincent Wixon and Paul Merchant

The view from my living room window

Camellias through my window

“. . . a poem, or other work of art, is fact and observation plus the man. . . . Our best growth is attained when we match knowledge with love, insight with reverence, understanding with sympathy and enjoyment; else the machine become more and more, and the man less and less.”
— John Burroughs, “Literature and Science,” from Under the Apple-Trees, 1916

The Wind’s Eye

“The word window originates from the Old Norse ‘vindauga’, from ‘vindr – wind’ and ‘auga–eye’, i.e., wind eye.”
— from Wikipedia

Vines and apartment window

I’ve always found something evocative about windows, and then I recently read that the word derived from Viking times meaning “wind eye.”  That seems appropriate even all these centuries later.

I liked the vine-covered facade of this apartment building on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, with windows nestled in.

“Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.

Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out. Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, out of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman’s story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep.

If it had been an old man I could have made up his just as well.
And I go to bed proud to have lived and to have suffered in some one besides myself.

Perhaps you will say “Are you sure that your story is the real one?” But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?”
— Charles Baudelaire, “Windows” translated by Louise Varese

Skyscraper Windows, Fun House Mirrors

“The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.”
— Augustus Hare

Seattle skyscraper reflecting the tile roof of an old church

What lovely abstractions one sees reflected in the windows of the skyscrapers of Seattle.  It’s like looking into those fun house mirrors at the circus.  The singular images in each of the rectangular windows above remind me of the individual frames of a film.  What is the story they tell?

“Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men.  A tower stands up like a sort of simplified statue, of much more than heroic size.”
— G. K. Chesterton

Painting with the Ladies at Bonnie’s Farm

The ladies under a tulip tree

This was my second painting en plein air outing with my lady friends from Bow, Washington.  We met under a tulip tree on Bonnie’s little 40-acre farm in the Skagit Valley.  I am still intimidated by landscapes and focused my work on a broken window rather than on the whole barn.  Maybe someday I’ll feel brave enough to paint a whole composition with buildings in a landscape — and even with people!!

The lovely old barn on Bonnie’s farm

Barn interior

Old door in horse barn

Weathered windows

My ink and watercolor sketch of barn window

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living in the Realm of Predictability

The old farmhouse where I grew up

“I live here in the realm of predictability.  Each day goes by, a mirror of the one before, a rough draft of the one to come.  The passing hours bring variations in the sky’s coloration, the comings and goings of the birds, and a thousand almost imperceptible things.”
— Sylvain Tesson, The Consolations of the Forest:  Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale

My father is rooted to the land where he has lived for over 90 years.  The Minnesota farm was his childhood home, and he has observed the seasons passing predictably year after year.  And now in old age, the call of travel and adventure no longer appeals.  From my perspective, life on the farm seems slow and unchanging, each day a “rough draft of the one to come.”

Still, there is a lot of richness in being so rooted.  As Natalie Goldberg says in The True Secret of Writing:  Connecting Life with Language, “Much can be done by doing little — with regard.”

Sylvain Tesson, quoted in the opening to this post, deliberately experimented with finding his inner life by removing himself to a remote, rustic cabin in Siberia.  He found that “Staying put brought me what I could no longer find on any journey.”  Writer Jim Harrison, writes about these same feelings in Brown Dog:  “Come to think of it, the main good thing out here snowbound in this cabin is that nothing is happening . . . I’ve got this personal feeling things are not supposed to be happening to people all of the time.  At least I’m not designed for it.”

If we live to extreme old age, our bodies will inevitably wear out, slowing us down and making us stay put.  I got a taste of this during the two weeks I stayed with my Dad.  The challenge for all of us, regardless of age, is to stay observant to the things that come across our range of view, and to find the beauty in these still images.

Here is a window to my Dad’s world:

What Remains

“It’s all life until death.”
— Grace Paley

My 94-year-old Dad and the old farm house where he lives

Our family has been blessed with Dad’s long life.  If one of the central questions of our humanity is how to live our lives, trying to figure this out can become a bewildering predicament if we live to a very old age.  While staying with my 94-year-old Dad, I was reminded that one’s value and worth should not depend on what you do, but rather should be inherent in simply being.  Because at 94, life has slowed considerably, and a good day is not filled with lots of activities or accomplishments, but with moments of doing nothing.

A full life is inevitably filled with losses, grief and suffering.  But this post will focus on what remains, what my father is still able to do and enjoy.

Every morning of my stay, Dad cooked breakfast for both of us — usually bacon, eggs, and toast, with tomato juice or half a grapefruit, and once, pancakes.

Dad making breakfast

A cup of instant coffee with every meal

And after every meal, Dad helped wipe the dishes.

Dad at the kitchen sink

Putting the clean dishes into the cupboard

On Mondays, laundry day, and Dad still used the old Maytag wringer machine to wash his clothes and then he hung them on a line to dry outside.

Hanging his laundry

Mowing the vast lawn, a summer job, took several hours (with rest breaks).

Dad mowing the lawn

Through the window

Dad is now the oldest person in his parish.  He always said grace before and after meals.

“Bless us O Lord . . .”

Dad still read the local weekly paper and bought the Minneapolis paper on Sundays.

Reading the paper

Reading the paper in Dad’s favorite chair

Dad continues to play cards — cribbage and solo.  He gets together with two of his sisters, his brother-in-law, and son for a weekly card game.  They take turns hosting the games and then go out to eat after hours of playing cards.

Playing cribbage

The days were full of dozing and naps.

Dad at rest

And all of these things made for good days.  For that we are grateful.

Always Already Being Lost

” . . . everything is always already being lost.”
— Bradley L. Garrett, discussing Walter Benjamin on the nature of ruins, from Explore Everything: Place Hacking in the City

Looking through the living room window at my 94-year-old Dad mowing the lawn

I’ve just returned from two weeks of keeping company with my 94-year-old Dad on the family farm.  I’ve written about my father before, most notably a tribute in honor of his 90th year.  On this recent visit, I was reminded daily of the small, accumulating losses that accompany anyone into extreme old age.  Since my last visit in February 2012, I noticed that my Dad no longer checks his email every day, works on crossword puzzles, goes to mid-week mass, or plans and cooks even simple dinners, much less barbecued chicken.  His short-term memory is going, and it is doubtful that he will be able to continue to live alone in the old farmhouse, even with the considerable day-to-day support that a few of my siblings provide.

And this is going to be a challenge for our family, because Dad will not go willingly to another home no matter how much better a change would be for him — keeping him in physical safety, with good home-cooked meals provided, and lots of other support.  He wants to die at home on the farm.  The loss of his home, a reassuring space, would be heart-breakingly sudden, not like the other losses he has born, some so gradual that he might not even be aware of them.

We cannot stall the passing hours.  There is no promise of preservation.  I see in the slow, inexorable deterioration of the farm house, sheds, and barn — those that will be torn down when my brother builds his family’s retirement home on the land — the reflection of my Dad’s inevitable decline.  In spite of the pain, there is beauty in this collapse of our everyday existence.

Farm house window

East side door

Linoleum floor with sun and shadow

East side window

Roof of Uncle Pete’s garage

Interior, garage

Barn doors and windows

My view upon waking

Old farmhouse in the morning light

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Home Again, Home Again

“I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.”
— Ann Patchett, from “Do Not Disturb,” Gourmet, August 2006

A month is a long time to be away from home and husband.  I am glad to be back.

Photo by M. Vauterin

But before I move my thoughts back to my life here, I’ll share a few photos of cats from my travels:

Israeli cat, Gypsy

Haarlem cat in a window

Amsterdam cat with cool bow-ties

Another Holland cat