This is what happens...

... because Willa just can't be bothered to put a post in here. This is a poem I wrote because I get up too early and don't take enough naps. And a Vogon friend of mine said he quite liked it, so I thought I would share it. Really, Willa, you need to write something here so I won't do this again.*




                 Dawn  11/30/11

Because I know the patterns
of the brighter stars,
when dawn breaks through,
below the cloud deck
and above the spikes of fir
and winter-naked cherry,
it's clear to me when cousin planets
wheel around and bend the lines
we draw for constellations.
Saturn visits Virgo, paired with Spica;
Mars in Leo,
all for an eye's blink
of cosmic time.

And I, in early pre-light,
have seen them,
glimpsed in one fragment planet-dawn.
In another moment:
The sun has risen,
the clouds covered,
the moment gone.



*someone, please, stop me!!

Snow Guys

When my kids were small and the snow was right, we went through a phase of rather elaborate snow sculpturing. Sometimes they were the classic fortresses, but if so they were more decorative than defensive. It was always more interesting to build towers and bridges. And significantly more engaging than that was the construction of snow guys. They had to be snow guys, because "guy" was really pretty non-gender/non-species specific. Bizarre was good, taller than the builder was almost inevitable. I seem to remember horses, dragons and any number of Calvin and Hobbes-inspired creatures sporting extra appendages and large teeth. Once the temperature started to drop and the construction-grade snow was refreezing, I always enjoyed looking out over the yard full of our handiwork and imagining some sort of life there -- static, albeit; a moment of alternative reality frozen in mid-expression. But all that energy put into their creation, how could they not somehow embody a bit of life, even if it would never express beyond their moment of stasis?
          The other morning I went to the barn to do chores, only just awake. And it was just after 5:30, so there wasn't much light -- more from the waning moon than waxing dawn. And whether it was a residual bit of dream from the sleep I'd just left, or some other inspiration from still having a soft night brain, the sight of the horse walking the fence line anticipating her breakfast suddenly made me ask the question, "Why life?" Well, I guess the obvious answer is "Why not?" And since I'm neither a philosopher nor a scientist, I can't really have an informed opinion. But it was amusing for me, because the minute I was watching this horse, I was also thinking about the Big Bang*, and all that energy starting from zero and endlessly dissipating. And when I considered it like a clock running down, each moment somehow less energetic than the previous moment (however time might be quantized), that was when I found myself marveling that life would trouble to be at all. Like gravity drawing matter together to form stars, galaxies and planets, is life as easy and predictable an expression of the aging universe as any star? Life is a medium for burning energy, after all. And the universe specializes in this, although admittedly it works against itself, what with that endless expansion business. Then there's that whole embarrassing mess with Dark Energy** which lends more than a little desperation to the scenario.
         Well, I've thought enough about that for now. It's clear why religions are so popular amongst so many members of our species. Sometimes I crave those boundaries, too. And sometimes when the snow falls wet, and it's just right for sculpture, I'm suddenly seized by a knot of creative energy -- who knows, maybe nudged to coalesce in me by a random wave of Dark Energy. And I'm inspired to dress up and go outside and build a snow guy -- a great huge snow guy, taller than me, with multiple heads and teeth like daggers. And when it looms all menacing and ugly in front of the gate, I'll pause for a brief meditative moment, hold my breath and feel its moment of frozen reality. Scary stuff, indeed.


*Dull, dull, yes, but what's in a name? -- well, in this case, everything (as it were)
**Yeah, we're good with names.

To Market

I spent a fair portion of my day yesterday piping at a local Farmers’ Market.  It was pretty awesome. I was just busking, but the citizens of Troy were kind and either way it was certainly quality practice time. 

I got more than money, too. I garnered a bag of fresh, lovely greens, and the vendors across the way who were from a local orchard gave me a bottle of cider and an apple. Best of all, a very young boy, who signed his name “John,” drew a picture of me*^ piping and left it in my case. That’s definitely going on my wall.

I also met a very nice relative of mine, previously we were only known to one another via the magic of the internet. It was, all in all, a very rewarding morning.

Farmers’ Markets, and particularly this one, are great places to watch people. There are the people who don’t seem to see or hear you, the people who shuffle by looking guilty, the people who nod stiffly and avert their gaze, the people who smile and enjoy and drop a bit of money, and the moms and dads who I watch out of the corner of my eye as they put a dollar bill in their 3 year old’s hand and make the familiar gesture to my case, “go ahead and drop it in. It’s safe.” ** To all of them I extend my hearty thanks, they all provide something.

Then there are people who come up and start dancing and clapping, which is interesting and entertaining, or people who try to talk to me while I’m playing assuming, I think, that I can talk because my mouth is free,***  unfortunately for them, I cannot. It takes all my powers of concentration to summon even the phrase, “thank you” while I’m playing. To do that I have to tilt my head to one side so all my remaining free brain cells can roll together in order for me to form an understandable word. Even so, whatever I’m trying to say still sometimes ends up rather garbled.  More often I try to stick to nodding and smiling. No matter what some of the hardcore feminist authors I’ve had to read lately say about women smiling too much, I still feel that it's a pretty good way to get you into, or out of, almost any given situation, or at least make it better.****^^

*I’m assuming it was me anyway because I was the only person there with pipes; I have super-cool purple eyes in the drawing. 

^Oddly, this is not the first time this drawing thing has happened.

**I try not to look too scary when I play, it was easier in this case because I was using bellows pipes.

***These asterisks are to represent all the dirty jokes I didn’t make here and that you may be thinking.

****Unless, for example, you’re a little kid and you’ve just accidentally set the house on fire, a situation where you’ll almost definitely smile and where you definitely shouldn't do so when you have to go explain to your parents.

^^ And I don't mean smiling in a "womanly wiles" way.