The solstice. Another year turning towards the light again. Tonight we celebrate, with many of our friends coming at last. Lacy, I think of you on this day, always – of the sunlight on our hair and of our shared intuitive understanding of the importance of the solstice. I miss you. And special love to Emay today as well, who gave me the most wonderful frame last night with the stool’s three monograms (EMW, LMR, CML – not sure I realized before that all of our maiden names started with M … am reminded of Susan Eldredge’s best friend from college, Sally Edwards, because they met when seated in alpha order). I spent yesterday afternoon in Providence and am thoroughly flummoxed. This is the job I’ve always wanted (though I never knew I wanted it), the people I want to work with, and I’m just not certain about the personal and family price I’d have to pay. This decision goes to the absolute core of much that is unresolved in my life, of all that is complicated about me.

Toward the Solstice, 1977

The thirtieth of November.
Snow is starting to fall.
A peculiar silence is spreading
Over the fields, the maple grove.
It is the thirtieth of May,
Rain pours on ancient bushes, runs
Down the youngest blade of grass.
I am trying to hold in one steady glance
All the parts of my life.
A spring torrent races
On this old slanting roof,
The slanted field below
Thickens with winter’s first whiteness.
Thistles dried to sticks in last year’s wind
Stand nakedly in the green,
Stand sullenly in the slowly whitening,
Field.
My brain glows
More violently, more avidly
The quieter, the thicker
The quilt of crystals settles,
The louder, more relentlessly
The torrent beats itself out
On the old boards and shingles.
It is the thirtieth of May,
The thirtieth of November,
A beginning or an end.
We are moving towards the solstice
And there is so much here
I still do not understand.
If I could make sense of how
My life is tangled
With dead weeds, thistles,
Enormous burdocks, burdens
Slowly shifting under
This first fall of snow,
Beaten by this early, racking rain
Calling all new life to declare itself strong
Or die,
If I could know
In what language to addrses
The spirits that claim a place
Beneath these low and simple ceilings,
Tenants that neither speak nor stir
Yet dwell in mute insistence
Till I can feel utterly ghosted in this house.
If history is a spider-thread
Spun over and over though brushed away
It seems I might some twilight
Or dawn in the hushed country light
Discern its greyness stretching
From molding or doorframe, out
Into the empty dooryard
And following it climb
The path into the pinewoods,
Tracing from tree to tree
In the falling light, in the slowly
Lucidifying day
Its constant, purposive trail,
Till I reach whatever cellar hole
Filling with snowflakes or lichen,
Whatever fallen shack
Or unremembered clearing
I am meant to have found
And there, under the first or last
Star, trusting to instinct
The words would come to mind
I have failed or forgotten to say
Year after year, winter
After summer, the right rune
To ease the hold of the past
Upon the rest of my life
And ease my hold on the past.
If some rite of separation
Is still unaccomplished,
Between myself and the long-gone
Tenants of this house,
Between myself and my childhod,
Between the childhood of my children,
It is I who have neglected
To perform the needed acts,
Set water in corners, light and eucalyptus
In front of mirrors,
Or merely pause and listen
To my own pulse vibrating
Lightly as falling snow,
Relentless as the rainstorm,
And hear what it has been saying.
It seems I am still waiting
For them to make some clear demand
Some articulate sound or gesture,
For release to come from anywhere
But from inside myself.
A decade of cutting away
Dead flesh, cauterizing
Old scars ripped open over and over
And still it is not enough.
A decade of performing
The loving humdrum acts
Of attention to this house
Transplanting lilac suckers,
Washing panes, scrubbing
Wood-smoke from splitting paint,
Sweeping stairs, brushing the thread
Of the spider aside,
And so much yet undone,
A woman’s work, the solstice nearing,
And my hand still suspended
As if above a letter
I long and dread to close.

I love lighthouses. Always have. Today, I’d like to transport myself to the foredeck of Brea on a July bluebird day, sailing past Bird Island light (at left) with no cares in the world. Or, as my father insists, “being sailed.” Fine by me. Just being away from the world, nothing to think about but the wind and the waves. Where’s my time machine?

Ithaka (excerpt)

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
Ask that your way be long.
At many a summer dawn to enter
– with what gratitude, what joy
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.
Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you were destined for.
But do not in the least hurry the journey.
Better that it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all that you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you the splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not decieved you.
So wise have you become, of such experience,
that you will already have understood what these Ithakas mean.

Always in search of more experience, more richness, more challenge. Cavafy knows, and I know Mr. Valhouli did too.  How I miss you, James Valhouli.

Today was a big day: I took Gracie to see her first Nutcracker. We went with Aime and Catherine Card and the girls were positively spellbound. All the ballerinas were “princesses” to Grace and she’s still talking about the “nutcrack.”
And, we’ve started reading our first Real Book: Alice in Wonderland. I’m impressed with how she follows the plot and she keeps asking to read the “wonderland book.”

In other news, Whit took a bite out of Grace’s leg today. Literally a bite. Grace is going to covered in bruises, just like her Mum.

Throw Your Arms Around the World at Christmastime

A lot of people are commenting on this year’s card’s tagline. Few seem to remember that it’s from “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band-Aid, one of those late-80s Feed the World type of affairs. Our friend Bob Geldof led the thing. I love that song, and love that it takes me back to being in London … the most vivid memory of that time is of the annual St Pauls’ Girls’ School Christmas (yes, Christmas, not holiday) concert. At the end of the concert every doorway opening onto the Great Hall was packed with girls leaning into the room, singing along to “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” (which remains my favorite carol). The whole Great Hall lit up with candles and wreaths and what felt like thousands of swelling voices. I wish my scanner worked because I have some great pictures of those days.