Season of loss

Last month we lost a young member of our family of close friends. He was only thirty years old. Pneumonia took him suddenly. Sage, we will miss you.

DARKNESS FALLS EARLY

How do we remember joy
When hurt is deep?

So deep it lives with the leviathans.
With the scattered remains of ships.

The keening of whales
In the snores of our houseguest
Keeps me awake. I cannot dream.

Waiting in the line
At the supermarket,
It goes through my mind
This is the price we pay for loving.

Would we still give our hearts
If we had to pay in advance?
The first hour of pain
Would change our minds.
But we love by instinct
We can’t seem to help it.
There is no answer.

I believe in the Creator of rainbows, of waterfalls
I believe in the Creator of small birds and starlight.
In the Creator of springs and streams
Of quick-moving rivers
Of wind in the treetops
Of mud
Of green hillsides
Of slow black cows,
Their sides swaying, minding the path.

I hold fast to these things,
This fragile gospel
As the road bends sharp before me.

copyright Cathy Larson Sky 12/12/2009

WHEN LIFE IS HARSH,

I want Christmas/I want the red and green, color of blood, color of pine.
I want silver haired ladies in Frosty the Snowman, skating scene sweaters.
I want mulled spiced wine and cheese balls, presents stacked in a crazy pile;
I want elves, piquant and bell-capped, or round and apple-bellied, and
Angels -- ornate Victorians or home mades of clothespins and cotton balls.
I want the lift in my heart when I see, turning up the drive, the tree lights beckon from the window.

I want the feeling of Benny’s Hardware/new tire smell wafting from the bicycle rack/cello-gleam of dolly packages, housing bunting babies, or nymphs with curly poly-thread wigs/pink or swimming-pool blue ponies with shimmering manes and tails.

I want my arms around a wriggling, impatient toddler, dressed in snap-up peejays, her breath sweet upon my neck as I carry her on my hip to the sink, where I wipe sticky candy mess from pudgy soft fingers, the chocolate of foiled Santas from her tender mouth, from her cheeks flushed crimson from sugar, and waiting, and not having to wait any more and

Christmas early morning
Christmas lustrous night
Christmas, her shining bobbing orbs and winking lights
Tracing the snowy yard
Breathing up into a lapis sky
Where a scattering of tiny rhinestones,
The wake of angels’ wings,
Blink joy in the cold stillness.

Copyright Cathy Larson Sky 11/17/2009

DISCLAIMER

Recently my husband, Patrick, pointed readers of the Chiff and Fipple, an Irish music discussion page, to my blog. He did this out of enthusiasm for my writing. I am not just a musician but also a writer. Along with the novels, poetry, and stories I have written over the past 30 years, I've often penned articles about Irish music in newspapers and in journals. However, this blog is just about whatever is in my head at the time I feel moved to write. I am sorry for those who expected, understandably, to find a blog about Irish music. You will find a link to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin to the left; also a link for Tarot readers and mystics, and some author biographies. It's a potpourri.

I didn't ask Pat to put my blog on the Chiff and Fipple. If I'd known he was doing so, I would have stopped him, sweet as he was to recommend my work online. It was like standing up in a pub and and recommending a church down the street.

FICTIONAL TWITTER BETWEEN CHARLES DICKENS AND MARK TWAIN

CD: Saw 5 or 6 li’l bros begging tday near my aptmt.

MT: That sucks, dude. What is world comin 2?

CD: It makes U, like, want 2 do sumthing. :0(

MT: Could be a book, bro. :0)

CD: Yeah well tell that 2 my publisher.

MT: What up there?

CD: My numbers are lo.

MT: U trust him?

CD: No way.

MT: Hey man, don’t give up.

CD: Same to U. BTW how’s your fam?

MT: Not great, man.

CD: ????

MT: Totally my fault, dude.

CD: ????

MT: Messed up, bigtime. Got hustled.

CD: Oh man. How bad?

MT: You don’t wanna no.

CD: That bad?

MT: Worse. Like, ruined.

CD: Need a gig?

MT: Scribe type?

CD: No, man. Stand up.

MT: Like, in stage?

CD: Yeah. It means $$$$. Bigtime.

MT: You’re shitting me.

CD: No way. Can U get over here?

MT: There?

CD: I could get U a couple gigs.

MT: Awesome! When?

CD: Let me no when U can come over.

MT: I’m on it!

CD: Gotta run. Namaste, bro.

MT: Later, man. Thanx.

.

MY MOVIE GEMS

My husband and I left Spruce Pine and drove to the metropolis of Asheville to view the new Harry Potter last week. Did I enjoy it? I don’t know. By the time the twenty minutes of previews were over, I was shell-shocked and couldn’t concentrate on the feature film. The dozen previewed films included end-of-the-world horrors (New York falling into the sea), screaming, machine gun fire, crumbling and crashing buildings, all at ear-splitting volume. Psychopaths, drug dealers, murderers and corrupt cops stalked one another through puddles of blood. Then came cartoon creatures, supposedly comic relief, whose main charms were belching and farting as well as sassy and low-conscious backtalk. It’s enough to make you believe in conspiracy theories. When I am at my most paranoid, I wonder if the media powers-that-be purposely set out to desensitize American moviegoers to fear and terror and bloodshed. That these things are considered entertainment is scary to me, too close for comfort to the Roman taste for gladiator gore. As for the potty humor – that’s not really my idea of speaking to the inner child. Lewis Carroll did a much more admirable job of that with his Alice, using literature.

Here are ten films I ordered through Netflix (many of them dealing with war), that are gentle, wise, character-driven, and full of insight and hope about the human condition:

Housewife, 49: an ordinary British wife and mother undergoes personal growth during WWII

Kiki’s Delivery Service (Japanimation): a young girl finds friendship and meaning in a lonely world

Grey Gardens (the film version, not the documentary): Streep and Barrymore are exquisite, especially if you have seen the documentary.

The Station Agent: friendship arrives in the strangest packages

Kinamand (Danish): humility, unexpected transformation

I’ve Loved You So Long (French): mystery surrounds a reunion between estranged sisters. Subtle, beautiful, evocative

Last Chance Harvey: virtuoso performances by Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Brilliant acting, I don’t care if the critics gave low points to the love story.

The Cats of Mirikitani (Documentary): a Japanese American street artist is befriended by his documentarienne.

Paradise Road: an all-star female cast, a transcendent WWII story

Goodnight, Mister Tom (Brit): a crusty village character takes in a lad from London’s bombing district

Moon Rant

May in the mountains was monsoon season. We have gone from two years of drought to drenching, soaking rain. The grass reaches knee level in two days. Fecundity has reached a new level. I’m glad that I am no longer a breeder because all this green moisture feels like the genesis of a new tribe stirring in the universal womb.

What harm? We need a new tribe, a bunch of folks who aren’t out to play king of the mountain or to argue over who can have the bombs, the biggest and baddest of toys. There has to be a better way to use our time here on earth. The newbies will know.

For one thing, the new tribe will honor wrinkles as marks of wisdom and find them beautiful. They will scratch their heads in confusion when they find ancestral skeletons with squishy blobs of non biodegradable material wrapped among the gnarled dried muscles of the face and ribs and slug-shaped plastic where lips once were.

I want to apologize to the future folk. I’m not sure what went wrong with my American tribe, why they got so silly and vain. Maybe we basked too long in the benefits of the sweat of our forebears and forgot to grow up. Bad guys got in there while we were building MacMansions and trying to have tighter abs.

Somebody tell us what to do. Help, not enough life boats to go around. Rich and richer first, then we’ll see what we can do about the men, women and children.

I’m ranting but can’t help it. Pluto and Uranus are having a field day while Saturn and Jupiter duke it out over who’s in charge. The June moon is full and hovers in a cloudy werewolf sky. Ah-oooo.

POEM FOR A RAINBOW

Divine spectrum

Arch of light

Bowed from mountain to mountain

You answer the rumble of thunder

And the wild mad rain

With Amen, Amen

In the green scented twilight

Under skies soft gray with tears

Your beauty is a fragile chord

Subtly, gently changing

With the shift of light and hue

Lilac and watered lapis

Lime and palest gold

What I could do with such music

I could fly

Stay, stay

Bright vision --

My heart's cry

While moments and moments

Wink past

The heartbeats

The seconds

Bear us away

On the tide.

copyright Cathy Larson Sky 2009
photograph by Brit Kaufman

March Meditation

March, with its overcast days and damp chill that seeps into the bones more insidiously than winter cold. March, with its occasional burst of spring-like days, soon replaced by more drear, which seems even more unbearable in contrast, like a promise believed but broken.

But the gray skies only make more beautiful and luminous the pink weeping cherry trees that grow in our front and back yard. The trees look like divine beings from another planet, reminding me of the delicate, fragile beauty of the moment. Just behind them, garbage cans are in display -- ours knocked down by the city sanitation workers, who seem to derive primitive joy out of flinging and tossing things around.

If I have a prayer, it’s this: Teach me to fill more space inside me with beauty. I still see and feel the garbage in my life: troubled relationships, thwarted hopes and desires, regrets, shortcomings. But let them take up less space than my gratitude and joy when I perceive the tender and tiny miracles that surround me each day.

A BEAUTIFUL FRIEND

This evening I learned of the death of a special friend. He was a mustang quarter horse and his name was Romeo. I met Romy in 2005 when I attended a three-month class called Women's Intuitive Horse Riding at Blue Skies stables in Chapel Hill. Deborah Pearson-Moyers, the instructor, allowed me to follow my heart's desire: to seek, as an adult, the answer to why I had so longed for horses when I was a child. In the most painful years of my childhood, I had an imaginary horse named Ronnie who greeted me at the door when I went outside, and stayed by my side while I roamed the woods beyond my house. In 2005 the deaths of my mother and closest friend left me feeling very much like the frightened child I'd been at eleven. At age 57, I decided to pursue a special relationship with a real horse. I was not disappointed. Romeo welcomed me, nickering softly, the first day I attended class. His wisdom, kindness, and willingness to share his life with me was remarkable during that enchanted spring. Almost every person, child or adult, who met Romeo felt the loving and generous soul of this incredible horse and became a better person for it. I wrote this poem for Romeo four years ago. Rest in peace, dear and treasured friend. I love you.

ROMEO’S SONG

At the water trough

Once my thirst is gone

I hold my lips

Above the quiet pool

Tasting the coolness there

I carry its peace with me

As you lead me.

Ring of metal, gate’s skirling sweep

The round pen

A circle of earth

Where I may graze.

You have work for me

I can yield, even as I must

Keep watch over my Others

My ears scan the air;

Their hoof beats, their calls;

Their rhythm

All resound

Here in the velvet of my chest

Here where I am tender

Here, where I am strong.

Your fear makes you slumber

And I trick you awake,

Teasing your will

Or make a wall with my Nature

As I graze,

So you cannot enter.

This is often my way.

Today you have come

Singing of love,

Your heart open

The sun streams over our shoulders

You wave the gnats from my eyes

Two-footed handmaidens,

With soft, laughing voices;

We are one.

Once I greeted you at the tall gate

And you were frightened

By the bony crunch of my teeth

But you heard music there

And did not run away

We mingled our breath.

Now I will carry you

Though all your bones are aching

I am your sacred ground

Your heart, beating slowly.

June 13, 2005

Copyright Cathy Larson Sky 3-06-2009

COLLEGE TOWN, CABIN FEVER

Next month Spruce Pine votes on a referendum allowing liquor to be sold in this stolid Christian “dry” community. The ruckus over this is unpleasant. Everything’s on my nerves. I’m still peeved about the way the local Republican party bombarded us -- registered Democrats -- with junk mail every day preceding the election (including a right wing propaganda DVD) and flooded the answering machine with ugly phone calls. My husband is an outspoken supporter of the pro-alcohol campaign who vents his opinions as editorials in the local paper. His volley of letters with Ruby, an elderly Baptist local who is anti-drink and anti-Obama, has escalated into a mini-war. An example of one of her headlines: “Obama is a Communist and so was MLK.” Now Ruby’s writing us directly. Her recent letter, on pretty bluebird paper, enlightened us with the 'fact' that the president is by-sexual!

I got fed up last week. On Thursday I drove the four hours to Chapel Hill and reveled in the psychic oxygen of culture, good food, and the company of my adult kids and educated, funny, articulate friends. For the last three of the eighteen years I lived in Chapel Hill, I complained about the town’s ubiquitous and often posed political correctness, the encroachment of the upper class, and the compulsive drive toward development and greed: rising rents driving local businesses to bankruptcy. Now I’ve swapped those social tensions for those of Spruce Pine, these ills don’t seem so bad, especially when a distracting riot of films, restaurants, coffee bars, shopping, and museums offer their charms.

It’s been difficult this week re-adjusting to small town mountain life. I am home, but simultaneously longing for home. My heart is in two places. How many homes do we have in a lifetime? What is this concept of ‘home?’ Every place, every thing is flawed; I know this, but I’m still confused. The crippled real estate market makes relocating implausible right now, so I've got to learn to be happy where I am. The Toe River rolls along in deep green currents, clean and fresh, but the cold wind makes my face raw while I’m walking there. My friend the kingfisher chirrups from his hollow on the river bank, but he’s not showing his face.

St. Brigid's Day Poem

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IMBOLC, AT THE WELL

Water soothe my burning head; fire

stream o’er the rocks, through crevices

of my frozen will.

Bark and lichen

silt and earth,

steady the pilgrim way.

Water, receive these weary feet.

Bless this brow, these eyes,

these cheeks.

Laurel and pine

hide my grief

in the weft of bough and leaf.

Weave me a new fabric

Whisper to me of tomorrow.

(copyright Cathy Larson Sky 2/02/2009)

Baby Boomer Fashion Phobia

Why, WHY? Now that Michelle Obama is the officially declared “new Jackie-O,” the First Lady of Fashion as well as the White House, WHY does her first big trend setter have to be the sleeveless sheath dress? It’s too cruel. The female news commentators covering the inauguration on TV – already sheath clad -- made me remember what it was to risk hypothermia for fashion.

In the ‘60s, I had two sheaths: one in emerald green, a knit, and the second in royal blue wool. I had a starry sun with pointed beams, a junk jewelry accessory, that I pinned in the center of the bodice. In those sheaths I shivered through Christmas parties, dances and dinners. No one ever wore jackets or little sweaters. You might gently drape your coat over your shoulders, sitting down, but you were careful not the ruin the line of the sheath. It was a simplicity thing. I remember observing pimply goose bumps on my arms when I was fixing my face in the merciless ladies’ room mirror.

But the cold isn’t the worst thing. Now I’m sixty, why, oh WHY is the new must-have body part a set of well-toned upper arms? Just when I’d resigned myself to my genetic heritage, turkey arms? They wibble, they wobble. My grandmothers had them, my mother had them. They made soft places to cuddle a grandbaby’s head. When I was small, I found those arms so comforting, so REAL. In my fifties I gave up my free weights, gym machines, aerobics, step aerobics – trading them for yoga. For walking. Exercise for the body AND soul, fitting for a slowed-down metabolism like mine. Jimi Hendriks’ Foxy Lady just isn’t my theme song any more; it’s more like Love is All I Have to Give, I'm Built for Comfort, Not For Speed, or, seasonally, My Funny Valentine.

But now . . . I am starting to panic. Spring is just a few months away. I only have a short time to get the mini-barbells from the bathroom closet, where they share a shelf with a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner. Hillary never would have done this to us. Never!

Small IS Beautiful (isn't it?)

GIVING, CHRISTMAS 2008 

My personal gifting budget was about one third its pre-retirement size, so I struggled this holiday season with the concept of “small.” Small is beautiful: I believe that. It’s a phrase from the title of the 1973 book by E.F. Schumacher, followed by “Economics as if People Mattered,” a supposedly influential philosophy that disappeared into the ozone layer, as as far as I can tell, after having lived through the advent of SUVs, millionaire consciousness, and the substitution of manipulation for integrity on the part of our government. At least Schumacher’s book changed me and the way I try to live.

Now the acid test. Come the second week in December, it was time to put my beliefs about humble spending into action. My gifts came from local Spruce Pine thrift and book stores, artist hideaway boutiques, Walmart, the grocery store, and my own closet.Still, certain bogus equations and axioms hissed in my head, like an evil sotto-voce, as I doled out my modest funds. 

Here’s one: Love equals big-ticket item Christmas gifts. Absurd flashes from pop movies filled my head, for instance, parents leading the college-bound child down the driveway, cautioning "don't peek!" (The denouement: a brand new car with a gigantic red ribbon around it. Fade out as hugs, tears, and smiles continue.)

Another: The greater the cost, the bigger the love. The year’s hot items, like brand new Ipods, laptops, and Blackberries, were beyond me. Being honest with myself I wanted to light up my loved one’s faces with joy: the particular joy of having Big Stuff. I itched to take out my credit card and commit myself to huge monthly payments I couldn't make.

The other meaning of the word “small” -- stingy, ungenerous, mean- spirited – apparently haunted me as I apologized for presents as I handed them over. “It’s nothing much,” I heard myself say, even though I had picked each item with thought and care.

This year I have more post-holiday blues and fatigue than ever. This confrontation with the force of consumerism has rocked my world, made me realize how insidious are its roots.