Crossing

A bridge at dusk seems an appropriate image for the transition from one year to another, the crossing into the untried, unknown.  

May it be magical.  I still remember how unspoiled and full of promise the new millennium seemed—and how quickly human greed and hatred undid its innocence.

Another year, on my other blog, I offered a poem, my End of the Millennium Way.  I hope it will apply again, at this less momentous turning.  I like to think I'll be renewed, to cross that bridge with eager hope for what is on the other side.

Happy New Year!

image:  Niederhafen mit Blick über die Niederbaumbrücke, Heidas

Glad Tidings

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!  

And a good week.  A week of rest and restoration, joy and plenty.  

Writing with Light will be on vacation until the new year, but in the meantime you can tour the world and its various beautifully lighted trees, in all those places I would love to be.

Image:  Floating Christmas Tree, Rio de Janeiro

Old Car

About to give away my twenty-year-old Mazda, I am awash with nostalgia for places we have been together.

. Up the Oregon coast to meet my parents, through Rogue River, Ashland (a valley of pears), and up to Yachats, where we lit our wood fires and gathered agates on the beach and warmed up afterwards with good peaty Scotch in the crow’s nest.

. Monterey, often—the graceful old adobes plastered white, with amiable inner gardens; one where Robert Louis Stevenson stayed while he was waiting for the love of his life to join him, the two of them figuring in Steinbeck’s story “How Edith McGillcuddy Met R.L.S.”; walking down Cannery Row past all the vanished sardine canneries, and on along the ocean to Pacific Grove.  At Easter, having brunch on the bay, in the tangy sea air, watching the otters frisk.

. Carmel, Jeffers’s Tor House, the luring cottages.

. The Tassajara parking lot, almost unable to drive after a three-day retreat where I learned to change my handwriting and so my life, to draw the tails of my gs and ys forward into the future, to keep my Cs open to admit more kindness for my mother, to make the loops that might inspire financial good fortune.  (Or then again might not.)  Rising at dawn, with the running bells, to sit in the hot spring baths and watch the setting moon, before coffee and breakfast.

. Half Moon Bay, so many times.  The valley of flowers and pumpkins, ponies, the old general store with local jams and salsas, my favorite jerk spices, snap peas and artichoke bread.  Running (sending up a cloud of gulls), walking (a dancing dog; looking out to distant shores), sitting (reading mysteries), eating fish a few miles north on the harbor, and finding my favorite fishing boat, “For Tuna.”

. Sonoma, the mission, the olive trees, Mozart with friends in a vineyard and then tracing out the constellations.

. To Rancho San Antonio, to see the newborn lambs and piglets.

. To campus for writing and archaeology classes.

. Happy beyond believing, to the lamplit cottage of my own true love.

. Panicked, to go and hope to find my mother still alive in the Emergency Room in Burlingame, so many hospital visits ago.

Though the car I’m graduating to (my mother’s) is a year older than the little blue Mazda, so neither new nor glamorous, I’m nonetheless reminded of the poem Back from the Word-Processing Course, I Say to My Old Typewriter—included in my first-ever blog!  

image:  Mazda 323, IFCAR 

Things That Make Me Sad

 

That a colleague’s daughter, at four, already knows what a cubicle is.

Humorless people wearing Santa Claus hats.

image:  snorable.com

 

Solstice Again

Let's celebrate the sun, and the magic of light!


After walking outside, faces turned upward, on this fine first day of winter, let's come back in, fix a pot of smoky Lapsang Souchong tea (the kind my father used to call Old Indian Moccasins), and savor this celebratory poem of Mary Oliver's, feeling more than a little pity for the hordes driving around the shopping center parking lots.

The Sun

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

 —Mary Oliver

image:  The Pen-y-Gaer Hillfort at the Winter Solstice, Eric Jones

Winter Solstice

Would that I were at Stonehenge, or even in the back yard in Santa Fe, under the clothesline, looking for the rings of Saturn with my simple borrowed telescope of chilly juxtaposed mirrors.


But even indoors, working frantically to beat the year-end clock—welcome back the light!




image:  2010 Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse as seen from Berkeley, Sean A. O’Hara 

Further Cheer

I feel like young Scrooge at school during the winter break, toiling on abandoned and unloved while all my mates are off frivoling (my favorite invented word) and making the most of the season's fun.  My most frantic time of year at work, this is, which makes me way behind on Christmas cards—especially now that I don't fly to Kona for the holidays and have that nice five-hour flight in which to get them all written—and cranky in general.  There is no chance to catch my breath and sit down with my new book, Mary Gordon's Home, and a peppermint latte or Flamingo Chai, in a precious patch of sunlight, and get my balance and my inner life back.

But instead of a "Bah humbug!" I send forth a Chagall angel making music to woo a little gladness from these grumpy, grudging times.

image:  Chagall, Angel on blue (glass)

Monday Cheer

I need something cheery for today, just as I've pretty much determined that I'll wear my new purple sweater all week—today accented by the violet Shakespeare Santa Cruz scarf, inscribed with lines from favorite plays.  "There's magic in the web of it."

And we will lunch at the cheery Calafia on duck dumplings or salmon salad with sliced persimmons, wild arugula, shiitake mushrooms, carrots and golden beets, warm quinoa pilaf, and rice wine vinaigrette . . . or possibly an apple and goat cheese pizza.

image:  Winterberry Holly, Derek Ramsey

Saturday Frost

This last week before the winter solstice (with only eight shopping days until it’s far too late to shop, except on-line and even then without some kind of impossible reindeer-conveyed courier), my sleep-befuddled eye is taken by

. a lake of frost at Stanford

. a Scottie dog strutting down the sidewalk in a handsome red sweater

. a reader sitting cross-legged and soaking up the afternoon sun in the apricot orchard outside the library

image:  Frost mist on Hjellevannet, Ernst Vikne

Late Friday Find

After a most discouraging and fretful day, and knowing I don’t have the energy to go out to our beloved sing-along Messiah tonight at the acoustically fine and aesthetically pleasing Stanford church, I have come across the following recipe in my tattered Joy of Cooking—while trying to figure out how to simply bake a potato to go with unexciting leftover chicken.  It warms the cochrells [sic] of my heart just imagining, fond as I am of fragrant pine and pungent retsina as well as potatoes in general.  I love the whole idea, and may have to experiment soon.  Well, sometime.  Well, okay, probably one of those forlorn dreams that will remain just that, like learning to play all of the Beethoven sonatas.  But you never know.  Sometimes I am inspired to great things.

Potatoes Cooked in Resin

Coming upon this sensational setup after an hour or two of skiing or skating is calculated to send the spirits of an outdoor group soaring all over again.  The kettle is cosily appealing; the scent of resin recalls the pine woods; and no method turns out a potato with so much distinctive flakiness.

Place in a large iron kettle:

10 to 25 lb. resin

This sounds extravagant, but the resin may be used repeatedly.  Heat resin to the boiling point.  Carefully lower into it on a large slotted wooden-handled spoon, one at a time:

Large baking potatoes:  1 per person

Allow them to remain in the simmering resin until they float to the top.  Remove potatoes and place at once diagonally on foot-square sheets of heavy brown paper.  Twist the ends of the paper and serve the potatoes in the wrapping.  Have on hand plenty of:

Butter

and in large grinders:

Sea salt

Pepper

Cold ale makes the best of chasers.

Sounds like heaven!

image:  Basket of potatoes, Dezidor