VivTown, Population: 1

During my lunch time walk, I saw a single white swan floating bright white against the dark waters of the channel.

Leda and the Swan by Peter Paul Rubens (1598-1600)

Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

— William Butler Yeats

Here’s what’s blooming in my house at the moment:

I went swimming at the neighborhood Y after work tonight. It’s a humble, budget-challenged place. The ceilings leak when it rains and the lockers are rusty; the “indoor track” is so small you have to run around it 18 times to run a mile. But the staff is kind and I’ve been going there for so long that I can’t imagine swimming anywhere else.

Tonight I was the only person in the small, 4-lane pool. Over the years I’ve heard people who have gone there to swim complain about the short lane-lengths (a wet version of the indoor track) and the old, tired aquamarine blue and black tiles. Not me. This pool is an old dependable friend, always there for me when I’ve needed to move my limbs through the too-cold water to work out my worries and find my rhythm to happiness.

Mounted on the wall at the shallow end of the pool is a bronze lion head out of whose mouth flows fresh clean water. How cool is that? Upon entering and leaving the pool I bow  to him, the old guardian, placed there in the 1920s, emblem of perseverance and courage.

A friend has invited me to take a drive to the  Peace Pagoda in Leverett, Massachusetts with him this weekend. Somehow this feels an apt journey after the amazing (miraculous!) events in Egypt. President Mubarak has finally fallen. May peace and the people and justice prevail.

Also just thinking of staying home. I am succored by my solitude right now. This morning, I drew the Hermit from the Tarot. Seemed right. Everything is telling me to Be Still. Do not run toward distractions. Even if the distraction is in the form of a Peace Pagoda.

On my way to work every morning, I walk across Fort Point Channel via the Summer Street bridge. On frigid February mornings, with salty high-velocity winds coming in off Boston Harbor, it feels nothing short of heroic to make it across without being blown away…

This morning I stopped midway,  lifted my arms  and faced the wind. I would’ve liked to fly away to Antartica — parachute myself into that unsullied landscape and walk for miles and miles in icy stillness and through the white upon luminous white until I could walk no more. Then, a dreamless nap until spring.

Now, warm in my cubicle, I’ve stumbled onto this poem by Tony Hoagland. It suits me perfectly today and saves me the time of having to write it myself.

Disappointment

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That’s what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn’t get the job, —
or her father died before she told him
that one, most important thing—

and everything got still.

It was February or October
It was July
I remember it so clear
You don’t have to pursue anything ever again
It’s over
You’re free
You’re unemployed

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude
with your scarf of resignation
lifting in the wind.

You can listen to Tony Hoagland read it here.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.
–Albert Einsten

This is a mandala I created during the first snowstorm of the season, which happened to fall on the Winter Solstice. It was warm and toasty at the kitchen table and yummy food was being cooked while I painted. I made a wish for all my dear ones while I sat there dipping my tiny brush into richly colored dabs of guache. This is the second mandala I’ve made in the past month. I have to say I relish making them. I love the mystery of not really knowing what it will look like until I’m done. It requires sitting still, sticking with the process. This mandala took me about 4 hours to complete. There were times during the process when I thought — this thing is ugly! But I knew it would become a thing of beauty (or, at least a thing) in the end, so I just kept going, as I am want to do — I just keep going.

Here’s another one I made:

As it happens, I made it on my oldest son’s  14th birthday. This one took about 3 hours. It was another snowy day (hmmmm there’s a pattern here) and we were hunkered down in the warm house with movies and various baked goods.  Every once in a while my son would peek in to my studio to see how it was progressing. At first, he wasn’t very impressed, but by the time it was finished, he thought it was totally cool.  Wishes for my son are inside this one: wishes for passion and zeal and love and health and humility.

It’s Sylvia Plath’s birthday. Had she not taken her own life on a cold february morning in 1963, Plath would’ve been 78 today. Here’s one of my favorite Plath poems:

 The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness –
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.