Month: September 2007

And so we go back to real life. The past two weeks have been such a lovely break from regular life – with vacation and time alone, etc. And this morning I woke up, put on the fall clothes (close-toed shoes, black patent, etc) and headed back to work.

“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” was talking about all the ways in which plants and animals use day length to drive major decisions: not just hibernation, but mating, and blooming, and sprouting, and birthing. It is deeply rooted, this instinctive reaction we all have to the waning length of days. We come honestly by the vague gloom that earlier evenings brings upon us.

The trees on the drive down were more mottled with red than they were two weeks ago, and the sky had that saturated, intense blue that I associate with early September. The light feels somewhat elegiac too but I think that is probably in my mind.

“I will try to give thanks for gifts strangely, beautifully, painfully wrapped.” – Rebecca Wells

“We all carry around so much pain in our hearts. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together like one little tidy confusing package. It’s a messy business, life. It’s hard to figure – full of surprises. Some good. Some bad.” – Henry Bromel

“I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can’t read any poetry.” – Randall Jarell

“Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.” – William Blake

“If you listened hard enough the first time, you might have heard what I meant to say.” – Anonymous

“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.” – Barry Lopez

Four Families

Growing up, Labor Day was always about the Four Families. Before we moved to Marion, our family had a house on Point Connett in Mattapoisett that we shared with the Young family (Maja, blonde, and Nella, bride, above). For at least a week at the end of August the other members of the Four Family tribe would arrive and we’d pile into bedrooms and spend our days together. There were Ethan and Tyler Vogt (Ethan the token male above, my oldest friend, one of Whit’s godfathers) and Ann and Matt Moss (Ann in black and white dress). We windsurfed and swam and went for walks and created elaborate song-and-dance shows for our parents. We slept wall-to-wall in the back part of the house and snoozed in the big hammock in the front yard during the day.
These other six children were the extended family of my childhood. They have remained dear to me, though we’ve scattered to the winds as we grew up. The picture above was taken at Nella’s wedding in late June this year. We have seven children of our own now (Andrew, Oliver, and Emma Vogt, Hannah Mead Gilheany, Eden Young, and Gracie and Whit) and the weddings come fast and furious. We grew up in the loose embrace of communal parenting, shared responsibility, and vast and varied experiences.