Up!

2009-06-29T12:30:00.002-04:00

the thrumming is back,
the hummingbird trapped
in the cage of my ribbones,
sipping the honey of my veins.

it says: love.

it beats its wings inside me.

my family is scattered as pollen,
and i red-eyed, sniffling,
blown about by the wind.
best friends all out of reach.

a hummingbird not bound
by a poor girl's body
can fly across the Gulf of Mexico,
flaps its wings in figure-eights,
flashes in the sun.

this one hovers. this one hums,
sips honey, traces infinity
across my chest cavity with each wingbeat.
keeps beating,
across the bright and barren reaches
- i have not seen my family in six months,
and will not for months to come -
keeps beating.

it says: love.

2009-06-22T11:07:00.002-04:00

After a lazy morning yesterday--let the chickens out, water the seedlings, have some breakfast, read a bit--my sister-in-law B and I decided to go for a hike. We're both slightly injured at the moment, a bad hip on her side and a trick knee on mine, so we opted to avoid our usual (and mountainous) trails. The little town we live in has a trail that circles it, of which J and I have hiked one small section, and we decided to do the whole thing, as it's mostly flat and we're curious. J thought it was ten miles, but I thought it was seven, and we left at ten with two apples and a bottle of water.

The trail crosses the road not far from our house, so that's where we started. The map gave mileage only for trail sections, and that inconsistently. We do some math, decide we'll be back around two. Across a wide field, then into the woods. It's been rainy and wet for the past week or so, and the trail had gathered a slick coating of mud. B and I slipped and sloshed and bemoaned our muddy shoes. We crossed the highway, and back into the woods.

Up a hill, around and about. Birds everywhere, water and mud everywhere. After a while, the trail deposited us back into town. We checked the map with some surprise - we hadn't gotten nearly so far as we expected. A quick detour to the co-op for another bottle of water and some energy bars, and the churchbells chiming noon. Yellow signs directing us west out of town. Soon we're back in the woods.

The morning started cool and misty, perfect for a hike. But the day gathered heat, the moisture in the air turning sticky. We kept walking. The trail wound through sloshy wetland, up little rocky hills, and back down. At the next crossing, the map showed us that we still hadn't gotten that far. We revised our estimate to a four o'clock return.

At four o'clock we were still some five miles out. Our earlier boisterous conversation had grown progressively more intimate, but now we go for long periods of quiet, all focus on just walking. I broke into my emergency stash of beef jerky, tucked away in my backpack in case I'm stuck out overnight unexpectedly; we'd long since eaten the apples and the energy bars. My knee chanting why why why and my muddy, blistered feet joined in. The dancing green canopy around us has become a blur. We talk intermittently - of love, spirit, change, and how tired we are - and we do not stop walking.

In the last leg, the trail split. The sign says "long way" with one arrow and "short way" with another. We actually pause a moment, considering, then take off on the short path with a burst of slightly hysterical laughter.

The trail, as it turns out, is 16 miles long. When we got home, we ate and ate and stretched and whined. B eventually summoned the energy to go get us a movie. Today I'm aching, but the knee is happier than I expected. And we finished the whole damn thing, which at mile 14 I was not certain we would do. And it though it took quite a lot longer than we'd planned, was a better way than most to spend a day.

2009-06-12T16:26:00.002-04:00

Here is the truth about farm animals: they die.

It is the truth about all animals, of course, and all life. But it is one of the strings in the long, strange chord of husbandry that the animals you care for will die, sometimes when you choose them to but often before, and you will be faced with the task of calculating the value of their lives.

I love my chickens more than they warrant, but when one fell sick, we did not rush her to the bird specialist in Shelburne. I coddle and cuddle my chickens, feed them from my fingers and tuck them into their coop at night, but they are not pets. They are livestock. We are runnning a farm.

We consulted with the state veterniarian, on whose advice we gave her Pedialyte out of an eyedropper every hour, and enticed her with cornbread mush. Twice a day I cleaned the fly-infested shit off of her back feathers. I moved her convalescent milk-crate nest around the yard to keep her in the shade and in sight of the rest of the flock -- a chicken alone can die of loneliness. At night we put her in a pet carrier on the porch to protect her from marauding weasels, skunks, and foxes, and to keep her from circling the electric fence, trying to find a way into the roost.

But she was not a pet. She cost us $12 and produced five eggs a week; at $3 a dozen she had just about paid herself off when she stopped laying last Friday. A visit to the vet costs as much as a visit to the doctor, and to take her in would have wiped out all our egg money and then some. Besides which -- or actually, because of which -- chicken diagnostics are almost entirely based on necropsy. People run blood tests on cows and sheep, because individually they're expensive and valuable. Chickens are cheap -- we bought full-grown pullets, but chicks are only a dollar or two -- and the loss of five eggs a week minor in comparison to a vet bill. Cheaper and easier to whack whichever one is the sickest and ship her off to the extension service to be examined there.

But still I love them. So I sat in the buggy dusk with the eyedropper of Pedialyte and baby asprin, and I smashed whole colonies of fly eggs stuck to her feathers. She was my third-favorite chicken.

I still haven't come fully to peace with this husbandry thing, the deal we make with our livestock -- I will care for you, raise you, clean up your shit and feed you good food, and I will take your eggs/milk/fleece/meat for myself, and in the end you will die. The deal we make with ourselves, because they of course do not and cannot agree to it. I think my chickens are happy. All the evidence of my senses and my knowledge of animal behavior leads me to think they are happy. Sometimes they want to keep their eggs, even though we have no rooster, and I take them anyway. I don't know how long we'll keep these hens. Their egg production will drop off after a year or so, and most commercial hens get the axe around then. We got dual purpose breeds -- eggs and meat -- on purpose.

I don't know. I know that they're all going to die whether I do anything about it or not. I know that my body demands that I eat meat, and that raising some part of it myself seems the best and most responsible course of action. I know that my chickens come running in a ridiculous stampede when I approach and then follow me around the yard, and that I love them, and that their eggs are the most delicious I've ever had. Is it fair to them? It seems fair to me, on the shit-shoveling and fence-moving side, but they can't tell me what they think. And we didn't take our sick chicken to the vet, and she did die. Was that fair? I don't know. What do you think?

2009-05-26T14:54:00.002-04:00

Poems have been knocking. I've been busy. I sometimes blame him for the times when I do not write, as though he has ever - even once - discouraged me or treated my writing with dismissal. As though I have ever, even once, asserted it as a priority to him in word or deed. Or to myself.

So the poems knock, and I do not answer. I feed the chickens, water the garden, go to work to roll out dough and count money, and come home smelling of fried. The poems stand outside for a while, peering in the window. One or two even try the handle of the door, but it is locked.

The reminder I set myself pops up on the screen: Qarrtsiluni chapbook due 5/30; finish revisions. But I have not begun revisions, even though when I first heard of the contest, the little voice in my heart said, quite clearly, Yes.

Old poems sit patienty in their files and folders, and they do not begrudge me their unfinishedness. They watch me with their single eyes when I have failed to provide them with a second. They watch me with their humpbacked bodies, their blurred and questionable outlines, their occasionally open wounds. One or two sit glowing and their glow fading, and they watch me with their young and perfect bodies and their sad eyes.

Some few have lived their purposes and fully: have been read by the only eyes that matter. Others were complete in the writing and few of either of these have I kept. It would be like keeping a candle or a star that has finished burning. And of course, none of them are mine in the first place.

Still, they come to my door, the door of my heart (the door of that great and four-chambered room, where the paint never dries). They knock (alive or dead, alive or dead?), but I do not answer. They leave me fragments of leaves and flowers, the calling cards of my poems, which all begin outside.

At night I unbolt the door, collect these scraps and read them. Some I can barely decipher, and others cover whole strips of bark, unfurling as I read.

I mow the grass more slowly than others, perhaps,
because I must pause for each rustle and hop,
cup its cold owner in my warm hands and take it
to the marshy spot on the edge of the lawn
-
the lilac blazes--
-
I dreamt you did not love me
and in the dream, I was glad
-
Here, the river-smell of desert --
at home, the mountain-smell of rain
-
as each moon passes, the yearning also
waxes and wanes. the old woman in the desert tells me
i am a baby myself. she appraises my hips and breasts,
both small, though she says nothing of that aloud.
she tells me i have time and enough of it.
but her eyes too are bright with longing,
bright as the round, full moon.
-
I walk the dirt road between field and field,
birds splashing up from the grass
with each footstep
-
& so we step wearily
into that well-trod track,
begin winding the heavy winch,
so heavy because it must close
both our doors at once. we take turns.
he pushes with accusation
and I silence. we make a good team
of mules.

Some I recognize as the arms or legs, the new horizons of my patient waiting-room of poems. I look up quickly out the window, as one does when recieving an unlooked-for letter from a dear friend, as though they might be somehow drawn to the writing by virtue of my reading it, and appear like magic, smiling.

When the propane tank exploded,
it sailed through the pickup and fifty yards up the hill.
They say the neighborhood shook
for whole seconds, so long that the birds stalled
on their branches and the women wiped their hands
and came outside to look.

By then the house was gone.

But the window only reflects my face back to me, and there is no poetry there.

2009-05-13T15:30:00.002-04:00

I was wrong about the bird-tree, which sits between our house and our landlady's, hung with feeders. It is not a crabapple; it is a lilac. What do I know of winter trees?

Besides which, I am not so good at being meticulous. Botany and baking are generally the only arenas in which I can be bothered to note all the details, and even then, I tend to throw in more lemon than the recipe calls for. Tend to know my plants by heart, not by the book.

But it becomes clear that if we are going to have a business--and, especially, if we are going to have a business together--I will have to find more attention in my personal budget. I forget to plug in the chicken fence; I forget to water the seedlings; I spend the day searching for a dress to wear to an upcoming wedding and by the time I get around to making that phone call I'm supposed to make, the store is closed. He--botanist because he loves things in order and loves to order them--cannot understand the skittering of my mind. I've not been sitting, of course, and that does much to exacerbate things: my mind always skitters, always has, but at least when I'm sitting I know it. These days I don't notice until he's lost his temper.

But it is spring. The lilac tree will be confused with nothing, now. Its branches are alive with color: cardinals and goldfinches, orioles and bluejays, red-winged blackbirds, jeweled hummingbirds, and the post-modern black-and-white of an assortment of woodpeckers. Bald eagles send the chickens scrambling for their coop; the tulips have almost passed and the big lillies starting to take their places. A fortnight still until last frost, and we have tomato plants with two sets of flowers, ready to go three weeks ago into the greenhouse we decided not to build this year. Rhubarb. Ramps. Peas and potatoes in the ground. Full leaf-out here on the valley floor. Green. Green green green, the earth stepping out into Oz from the dreary Kansas of winter. It's all going to be okay. Spring is here.

2009-04-28T17:59:00.002-04:00

Spring thrums. The vibration wakes me in the night: not rain, not wind, just a sudden jolt of life, a pulse that lifts me out of bed to watch the window, where the lights of passing cars on the highway strobe softly across the trees. In the morning, the foreground has gone green, all the field and marsh and willows, green. The mountains loom bare still, streaked with snow even, still. The birds sing louder than the highway can growl, but not louder than the fly slapping herself against the windowpane.

2009-04-23T15:18:00.002-04:00

Spring lunges like a child in rainboots towards a puddle. The dark reflection of the sky shatters; something within us breaks. We turn our gazes upwards, towards the wind, towards that scent and stir of movement. One tree bursts into full and indecent bloom, while those around it merely blush. Tiny flowers peek up at us through the ribcage of a roadkilled deer, picked quite clean once the snow released it.

2009-04-07T15:13:00.002-04:00

Turn off the radio,
and let the frogs chorus you home.

Turn off the radio;
I can tell you the news: the news is death,
it is greed, and it is hunger.
Turn off the radio. Open the windows,
and the frog-song will rise
in waves as you pass each marshy place.
Open the windows,
and breathe the woodsmoke,
banked against tonight's hard frost.
Open the windows,
and breathe the cold fresh air.
Turn off the radio.
Listen to the stars.

2009-04-06T14:01:00.001-04:00

Spring on the windowsill, if not yet outside.

2009-04-02T10:59:00.003-04:00

He says,
Do you really want babies
but got chickens instead?
after I get up to check on them
in the middle of the night,
and after I take a hundred pictures
and even a video of them doing nothing
except being chickens, and I coo and call them darlings,

And so what if he's right?
This is no time for having babies -
the economy and the environment,
the end of the world as we know it, besides
which, we're broke and we fight too much -
it's a perfect time to keep chickens.

And so what if I love them
more than they warrant.

That's what humans do.

2009-04-01T15:31:00.003-04:00

I started writing this morning, about the cloudy sky and the warmish weather, and the short memory of my body that now insists on warmth and gets sulky when the cold wind blows. But I want to tell you about my house.

The windowsills in our living-room are painted a soft lavender-blue, almost precisely the color of the mountains which sit distant, behind the white barn with its faded silo, behind the bare-yellow willows and the patchwork buffs of field and marsh. In the bright sun and leaf of summer the striking coincidence of color will be lost, but I love it now. For all my sulky yearnings, now is when Vermont makes my favorite weather, the blustery and overcast days, the rain-loud nights. This cloud-stained light that drapes everything in gloomy romance. I love it.

I love that our windows face either the mountains, or the woods. A state highway runs by not a quarter-mile from us, parallel with our street, but a happy arrangement of trees and barns and silos blocks it from view. On the other side, "woods" might be a bit of a generosity, but the scene nonetheless consists of trees and brush and nothing else. From one kitchen window we look straight at the landlady's house, and she at ours. But a chokecherry and several bird-feeders intervene, and hers is a nice house and it's only the one window.

I love that this whole house is ours. This is the first time I've lived somewhere with no shared walls. Of course, I share them all with J, but that's another matter. We can practice guitar and banjo late into the night if we wish, vacuum at early hours if the inspiration strikes. It's lovely.

Also, we have chickens. I love the chickens. They're learning to come when called, and when they do come, it's usually as a chicken stampede. I love the chicken stampede: fat waddly bodies going asfastastheycan, wings flapping for emphasis, trying to maneuver around each other to all get there first. Earthworms have begun to appear, and watching the chickens discover the earthworms provided a solid half-hour of high entertainment. (Even better than watching them discover the electric fence.) They're so damn domestic, all clucky and scratching about, and us with a fridge full of eggs.

It's a good house. It's a good home. Finally, we've got a home.

2009-03-26T07:16:00.002-04:00

At six-thirty, there was light enough to feed the chickens by, and a salmon stain spreading at the edge of the east. The morning smelled like a day that intended to be warm. Two more of the chickens suffered to let me touch them, and the boldest one nearly knocked the compost container straight out of my hands with her enthusiasm. They all take on the same squatting stance when I pet them - all the ones that will be petted - and I wonder if they think me some sort of giant rooster.

The sun broke over the hills just after seven, and suddenly the world was awash in gilt. The birds made chorus and that beguiling morning-smell increased. You will think me a fool, standing there in my knit hat and steaming breath, but it smelled like summer, like a cool summer morning promising heat to come.

Within minutes, the light became just morning light, pale and lovely, no longer charged with gold. A pair of downy woodpeckers came to investigate the feeder, and doves searched the ground for fallen treasure. The morning smelled of dirt and earth, frost, and chickens. I went back inside.

2009-03-25T14:28:00.003-04:00

The sound of an engine outside, stuttering, stalling. Then it passes.

I cannot get warm. I follow the sun from window to window, curled like a cat and wrapped in two of his sweaters.

My body craves protein and fat. Fuck vegetables. Their time will come. Give me beef stew and bacon and eggs and ice cream and chili. I want dairy, meat, and broth, though beans and nuts will do. Potatoes are okay, too.

The engine again outside. So loud. So cold.

Hot chocolate. Cookies. Lasagne. Sleep.

2009-03-24T13:40:00.002-04:00

As promised:

2009-03-23T20:13:00.002-04:00

The wind is so cold. I close up all the vents in the coop, rig up a door made of foam insulation to cover the screen door currently in place, duct-tape all the seams, throw a tarp over the top for one more meager layer of insulation. The wind takes the tarp right off, sends it snapping at the end of its line, sends the chickens scurrying in terror from the noise. My fingers become clumsy and cannot work the cord to tie it back down, but the cord has been snapped anyway. I cut a new length, hold a flame to the end to sear the frayed edge together. The flame will not stay lit, even with my whole body hunched around it, crouched low, cradling the damn lighter close to my belly. My numb hands can barely operate the child-resistant mechanism. Finally I can keep the flame burning long enough for it to do its job; not until I am back inside do I realize I've burnt my fingers.

At six o'clock, before my frantic ministrations, the thermometer sensor read 26 degrees in the coop. At 20 degrees they start getting frostbite on their combs and toes. I tried to smear Bag Balm on all the ones with large combs, which is supposed to protect them, but the one who looks the most like she might have gotten frostbitten already just would not be caught. After twenty minutes, much squawking, a few wing-punches to the face, and bashing my skull on the corner of the roost, I gave up. She can stick her head under her wing.

Now, at eight-thirty, the roost is at thirty degrees. Outdoors the temperature is 23. Tonight is supposed to be the really last cold night for a while, with a low of 18. I think they'll be warm enough. I hope so.

2009-03-18T19:03:00.002-04:00

A raw day. Not cold, particularly--in the high 40s all afternoon--but windy and rainy and in some ways more uncomfortable to be out in than the below-freezing temperatures we had last month.

Maybe only because my expectations have shifted: last month we still had two feet of snow on the ground and I put on the full winter gear to walk down to the mailbox. This last week, however, it's been sunny and in the sixties and I walked around with no long underwear and no hat. At one point I wished I had sandals on. So even this moderate cold comes as a shock. (Don't get your hopes up, remember?) I am loath to dig that long underwear back out. And one does not wear one's down coat in Vermont once the temperatures have breached 40.

I found myself wanting to turn the heat up this evening--to turn it up past where we set it during all that real cold. I put a sweater on instead--I'd shed that habit as well during our extravagant week of warmth--and started a new pot of tea.

Don't trust March.

2009-03-16T21:48:00.001-04:00

I'd forgotten that in Vermont, one ought not to trust Google Maps to know which roads are really roads. I've seen more than one sign that says, "If you are following OnStar, MapQuest, or Google directions to get to [town on other side of mountains], don't. It will be very aggravating and very expensive to rescue you."

But I'd forgotten that. So when the road turned to dirt (by which, this being March, I mean mud), I kept going. It'd been dry for a week; how bad could it be? I had good tires and a manual transmission.

Anticlimactically, it wasn't that bad. I only hit a few bronco ruts--the kind where the road takes you for a ride--and it had been dry, so the mud wasn't deep enough to stick in. After a little while, however, I began to think I might have missed my turn. So I found a dryish spot to stop, and pulled out the Gazetteer. I had missed my turn, I discovered, and I also discovered that this was probably due to the fact that my turn consisted of one of those roads that they print with a little dotted line. A class 4 road--and, as it turned out, one that hadn't been plowed all winter.

So I turned around in somebody's muddy driveway, slip-slopped back down the hill, and mapped my way there like I should have done in the first place. Ah! A road over, drawn with a good thick solid line. This proper pass over the mountain had a sign that said, "Snow Tires Required," but it had at least been plowed, and I have snow tires.

The rest of the drive went, if not smoothly, then at least without event. I got to the farm a little late nonetheles, but nobody seemed much to mind. The two topless kids peered at me over their quesadillas, all big eyes and curly hair, while their mother made me a cup of tea. "I'd make you coffee," she said, "but he's the one who makes coffee. I'm afraid I don't know how!" I assured her that tea would be delightful (which it was) and after a few minutes of visiting and tea-sipping, we headed down to the chickens.

Chickens everywhere. Perched on fenceposts and parked cars, scratching in the snow and muddy sod, scurrying out of the way just in time as we drive by. He had separated my chickens--we'd decided to buy fifteen-week-old pullets rather than day-old chicks--so they were in a smaller pen inside the greenhouse where they all roosted for the winter. We'd had three warm days in a row, and with the sides still down, the greenhouse was getting a bit... overpowering. We worked fast: he reached into the pen, snagged a chicken, and handed it to me, and then I stuffed it in a crate. We only had one escapee, a little Silver Spangled Hamburg who we had to finally catch with a net. We got ten birds in one big dog crate, and three each in a cat carrier and a wax box which had previously contained cabbage. Except we put four in the cat carrier and only nine in the crate, or maybe it was ten after all, so that when I got them home and unloaded them it turned out we had one extra.

J noticed this, and then we spent the next forty minutes counting them. Have you ever tried to count chickens? Ours at least are several different kinds, so you can count the black-and-white-ones (six), the plain brown ones (four), the brown-and-black ones (two), the brown-and-gold ones (two), the white one (one), and the little black one (one). See? Sixteen. But the next time you count, there are five brown ones and six black-and-white. Seventeen. Or four brown but only one brown-and-gold. Sixteen. Or five brown and everybody else in line. See? Seventeen! Eventually, we decided we were 90 percent sure that we had five brown instead of four and seventeen altogether instead of sixteen.

When I called the farmer, he insisted that he'd only hatched four brown ones, and we couldn't possibly have five. So maybe we don't. This weekend we're going to clip their wings back before we put them on pasture, and we can count them then as they go out the door.

[pictures forthcoming, I promise!]

2009-03-12T14:39:00.002-04:00

Spring spring spring spring.

But I know it's just a trick. All the snow melts away and the birds come out everywhere, and it gets warm for a few days, and my little heart says spring spring spring spring. And then BAM! it's going to go right back to brr brr brr and snow snow snow and mud mud mud. This may only be my third winter, but I know that much. Don't trust March. Don't get your hopes up. Don't let the teapot go cold.

2009-03-10T09:58:00.000-04:00

Thaw. The hem of the snowline slides back, revealing the mountains' muscular curves. The fields sigh softly underfoot, and suddenly birdsong fills the morning.

Of course it doesn't last. Probably there is a good foot of snow still between us and real spring. The temperature drops steadily all day, the wind rising. North slopes freeze into a hard and treacherous, beautiful sheen. It'll be sugaring time soon, time for seedlings and chicks.

We walked the snow-crusted edges of our yard, plotting the garden to be. We have yet to see the soil, much less gauge or test it, but we can reckon the play of light and shadow, and our hopes would fill at least half of any glass. Each week we make the trek over the mountain to J's mom's basement, where we gather the trappings of our lives. The essentials we have carried with us for months: long underwear, toothbrushes, pillows, our favorite cooking pots and books. The rest we collect in order of need: first come more cooking pots and pans, the teapot, and books. Some favorite pictures make it into the first load, along with the banjo, the mat for the front door, my favorite red chair. The next round brings some more clothes, the kitchen details (dish rack, utensil tray, potholders), the vacuum. Our station wagon holds a surprisingly large load: the kitchen table and chairs, and our coffee table fit in there too.

Rabi at wockerjabby wrote recently and eloquently about wanting things, about buying them as a result of want, rather than need. The list of things I want for my new home keeps growing: a doormat outside, a full-length mirror, a loveseat, some artwork for the kitchen, curtains, a mudroom bench. Do I need any of these things? No. Our house was functional before our first stuff-gathering trip. We had a small dinner party last night, and while it would have been nice to have had more seating, people have sat on the floor since forever and it's really not so bad. Several of those items would be useful - the bench especially, and the doormat - but they still aren't necessary. Like Rabi, I'm opposed to wanton consumerism on principle; like her, I would have been highly unlikely to buy any of those things new; and like her, the real reason I haven't bought them is that we can't afford them.

I feel torn here. It is important to me that my house be warm and inviting and a pleasant place to be. Right now we're putting out a lot of expense for the farming operation, and spending more on mirrors and curtains doesn't make sense. But if we did have the money, I'd have mirrors and curtains, even though I don't need them (all the windows in question face the forest).

If consumption is the answer to our economic problems, I'm not sure I understand the question. All the solutions that emphasize more lending, more borrowing, and--therefore--more debt seem to be ignoring the first rule of holes: stop digging.

2009-02-25T09:03:00.002-05:00

In college, I took a class called Opening the Creative Mind. The class involved a lot of silly exercises and attempts to connect us with our "source" and our "muse" and our childhoods, which were supposed to have been full of carefree creative energy to which we could return.

We were encouraged to revisit the joy of climbing trees, of playing, of freedom from others' opinions and ideas. "Become your eight-year-old self," the teacher crooned, "and let that self guide you to unfettered creative delight."

Look: My eight-year-old self had an ulcer. My eight-year-old self carried a little bottle of mint-flavored Mylanta in her backpack to take before every meal. My eight-year-old self was seriously stressed out.

I did not climb trees. I was afraid to hang upside down on the monkey bars. I was a clumsy, shy kid who started reading at age three and from then on preferred reading to most human company. I had a few close friends, and enough social skill to avoid being much picked on, but I was not exactly what you'd call unfettered.

My childhood wasn't unhappy; don't get me wrong. I remember lunch hours filled with elaborate and wonderful make-believe--underwater explorers, settlers on the prairie, or Native Americans, the perennial favorite, always preparing for an impending winter--and I read a lot of books and loved them. Like I said, I wasn't picked on, though I certainly felt well outside the realm of cool even then. Thinking back, I have no idea what my classmates thought of me. I can remember no particular cruelties paid me, with the exception of a pair of boys who used to hassle my best friend and I, and trapped us once behind the obstacle course wall for a kiss.

In Opening the Creative Mind, I recall nothing said of work or habit. We spoke of flow and inspiration and how the great masters thought that God worked through them; we did not talk about how hard they worked.

So I started reading early. Started talking earlier still--before I could walk--started counting and multiplying and writing long before those things were taught in school. Before I was in school. In first grade we had a number of the day, and we sat in a circle and tried to think of ways to make that number: 4-1=3. 2+1=3. 1+2=3. And I said: 6÷2=3. -2+5=3. In second grade we each had a bookworm, a segmented insect made of construction paper, and for each book you read, you got another colored circle to add to the body of the worm. Books over a certain length garnered two circles. They hung on the back wall by the cubbies. Mine reached the floor early in the year, full of segments for the Lord of the Rings and Anne of Green Gables.

So people told me I was smart. People were proud of me because I was smart. I could barely ride a bike, I couldn't catch a ball, I wasn't pretty, but I was smart.

(Mom, I know you think I was pretty.)

At eight, I wasn't doing poorly in school, but I was worried. I was worried because for the first time, some things I was being asked to do required effort. I remember the first word I got wrong on a spelling quiz. (It was "probably" which I spelled "probly" because I that's what people actually say.) I had long ago conflated my grades with my intelligence and my intelligence with at least a portion of my worth; at eight, or maybe a little before, those grades no longer always came effortlessly. Smart meant effortless. I hadn't had to work to be smart before--do you see?--and now I did. So maybe I wasn't smart after all.

I recently read a great article about praise and self-esteem. The article claims that a child praised for her intelligence will tend to have a lower self-esteem and a lower chance of future success than one praised for her hard work. Because you can't control smart. And once you've been seen to have such a prized and elusive quality, you are constantly in danger of losing it. Any failure negates it.

So at eight, I self-identified as a smart kid. I was in the special after-school program for smart kids, in the advanced math class. But I felt--not consciously, but quite clearly just the same--that a) smart meant effortless and b) that I was going to be found out. Sure, homework often was easy, but not always. And sometimes I failed. (Failure meant anything other than an A.) Deep down I knew I was just masquerading as a smart kid, and that eventually I would encounter a problem that couldn't be solved easily, and I would have to work at it, and everyone would see that I had to work at it, and they would know I wasn't really smart. (And then no one would love me.)

Until I read that article, I had never really identified those feelings. Or that the whole thing plays out over again with the idea of creativity. I used to write and paint and draw, and people said I was creative, and I thought that creativity came from some magical source and that if I had to work at it, I wasn't really creative. So I would sit with paint and pencils and wait for inspiration to strike, for creativity to descend. Which sometimes worked, but mostly did not. And I began to feel that maybe I wasn't so creative after all. I stopped painting, stopped drawing. Stopped writing stories. Stopped writing mostly altogether.

Occasionally, I took an art class, and always I surprised myself with the work I produced, even without that evasive muse. Not phenomenal, but consistent, and pretty good. But then the class would end, and without the pressure of having to create, I would slip back into passive mode, waiting.

In my writing group last night, we briefly discussed Malcom Gladwell's book Outliers, and the now-mildly-famous idea of 10,000 hours: that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Or, put differently, that 10,000 hours will make you an expert at anything.

Someone in the group asked if it was a self-help book, and I scoffed. A self-help book would tell you that it takes ten minutes a day for six months. 10,000 hours is two hours a day for thirteen years; nobody's got time for that kind of commitment. But think about it: no mention made of talent, or inspiration, or intelligence. Nothing innate or elusive, nothing handed down from God. Just work. Just lots and lots of practice, lots and lots and lots of work. The only popular cultural affirmation of that idea I can think of is Edison's quote about genius and the ratios of perspiration to inspiration. But still: the lightbulb did not become a symbol of a strong work ethic.

Much can be (and is) made of special formulae and materials for successful writing. A room of one's own and a Moleskine and a MacBook, all of that. But I think that all successful writers share only one common habit: They write. They put their hours in.

I still self-identify as smart and creative, and I still have that slippery feeling that eventually I'll be found out as fraud in both arenas. What I am only beginning to believe about myself is that I am a hard worker. And that hard work suggests growth, not defeat.

2009-02-23T14:20:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we moved into our house.

Wait, let me rephrase: yesterday, we moved into our house!

Also: my brother came home safe and sound. Thanks to everyone who sent us their thoughts and good wishes. I think I want to ask him to write something here about his adventure. What do you all think?

2009-02-11T07:56:00.003-05:00

I woke up this morning thinking of my brother. He'd emailed me the latest draft of his life plan earlier in the week; he said he signed up for classes at the community college and was really hoping to land a good job he'd interviewed for. Previously, he'd been trying to sell his car to fund a trip to Europe, but had been struggling hard over the balance of exploration and freedom versus stability and responsibility. Had been trying to decide what path would greater serve his life and his conflicting needs for exploration, freedom, stability, and responsibility. My response to his email had been, No Europe, then?

I woke this morning thinking of that response, of his struggle, and regretting my flippancy.

How to know when you're on the right path, or off of it? How to know which glows with the promise of satisfaction, and which sparkles with fairy-lights and fool's gold? And, god, the urgency of it. The feeling of your life unreeling, a river passing inexorably by while you who should be master and conductor flail about, muddying the water. The feeling of your power lurking, waiting, knowing that if only you could find the right goal at which to aim yourself, you would be unstoppable. The feeling of that power being wasted.

Yesterday I finished reading The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. It is a re-telling of the Biblical story of Dinah, whose father was Jacob and whose brothers murdered a whole city in its sleep. The story focuses on Dinah, on women, on giving them the voices that the Bible gives only to men. We follow Dinah and her mother and aunts through the daily movements of their lives: gardening, weaving, baking bread and brewing beer. Giving birth and raising children.

Perhaps because I have found that I love the tasks of a country housewife - gardening, baking, packing crocks of vegetables to preserve, darning socks and hanging laundry on the line - something of that life appealed to me. I do not think that I could be happy in a world where I may not speak if a man is in the room, a world bounded by my hearth and my husband's goodwill, no. Not now. But if I was raised to it?

Years ago I worked for a few long days with a pair of Hopi elders. In the frosted sunrise they told us a story about the place of men and women in the world. Though not the same as a Caananite's as imagined by Anita Diamant, a traditional Hopi woman's life has similar boundaries, and those boundaries are similarly clear. Each task in the running of a life has its proscribed author: Men do the farming, women the cooking. Always. At the time, and before I'd learned my country-housewife ways, I felt a dim yearning towards the structure they described.

What would it be to know your place in the world? To know it from birth, to be taught its mastery by your mother and your mother's mother, to have a clear passage from girlhood to womanhood marked by corn pollen and a revelation of secrets, or by scented oil and the earthen figure of a goddess? To spend your life in one place that you know, in the company of a tribe of family and friends. To have no one ask you, ever, what you "do" or what you want to be when you grow up.

We have gained in exploration and freedom, there is no doubt. I love science, calculus, and mechanics, in addition to the darning of socks; do not mistake me. My husband has the stated wish of being a stay-at-home dad when that time comes, and he loves baking and the tending of soil as well as I do. When we argue we are on equal terms. Nor do I wish to disrespect those men and women constrained to lives that do not suit them, lives that may even crush them, whether that constraint be by veil or poverty, ignorance, tradition, or force.

But The Red Tent was wildly popular amongst women friends I had in college, and I still do not know my place in the world.

But this is about my brother. My brother who recently awoke to the infinite possibilties of this life and was, I think, utterly overwhelmed. And of course; it is impossible to be sure that you are choosing your toothpaste correctly with so many choices. How is a person supposed to choose a life? And not just any life, but a life of spiritual significance, of generosity, of uprightness and passion. How? How do you know which choice is the right one, how do you know which path to take? How do you cope with the crushing feeling that you are wasting time, precious time, that you should be doing something amazing by now, that you should be doing something by now that is more than working this crappy job, but what? But what and how? And oh, what if you make a mistake? What if you should have gone to Europe?

From the great height of my twenty-five years, some of that sense of urgency has waned. I have found the right path, for now, and I no longer worry that it must be the only path I ever tread. I have lost my terror of choosing wrongly, though perhaps that has something to do with the incredible relief at having chosen. I have a goal. I am unstoppable.

My mother and father and I tried to guide my brother's searching. He wanted to be independent of my parents and their finances; he wanted to renounce; he wanted to travel, to follow the tug of spirit that had been calling him; he wanted to stay home, save money, and work hard; he wanted I am sure more than he told any of us and perhaps more than he understood himself.

Here is something I have learned: There is a sense amongst at least some people in this culture that when the "right" path is found, it will lay itself at your feet with all hinderences removed. You will glide down it with effortless happiness and this is how you will know that you have chosen rightly.

Perhaps this is so; I do not believe it. My goal has made me unstoppable because I will work until I achieve it, and I know I have chosen rightly because the work - right now I have a job on-call at the bottling plant, moving cardboard boxes from one conveyer belt to another for nine hours a day - because the work is hard and stupid and worth it.

I suggested that my brother get a job with the National Parks or something similar, get out of the house and into the wilds where lives the only spirit my family has ever acknowledged; and make some damn money while he's at it, rather than stay suckling at my parents' financial teat. (Full disclosure: my parents still pay my health insurance and phone bill; my self-righteousness is unearned.)

I don't know what they suggested to him. I don't know what conversations he had with friends or my sister or God (by all accounts he's been talking often lately with God). I don't know if any of what I've written here actually applies to how he feels or felt. But he has chosen something.

Yesterday my brother disappeared. Left a note - written with an old family code so that there could be no mistaking his hand - and all his belongings save a backpack and some clothes. He's on a journey. I am proud of him and afraid for him, glad that he has found a direction and sad that he did it in such a way as to scare my poor parents half to death. There is a long tradition of young men taking a walkabout, a vision quest, or a road trip to seek out the lives they want to lead. I am curious to see what he finds. I think there is a crucial difference between comfort and safety, and I think even that safety is mostly an illusion we prop up with fear. Still, I hope he is safe. And I hope he finds something.

2009-02-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

What I Learned in the Zen Monastery

1.
Sex is not power. Except
that it can be. If you want it,
if you take it. Sex is powerful,
no denying that. I learned
how it had been a weapon, a thing to wield,
how I had wielded it, what damage I had done. I learned that
I did not know what to do with my hands
when I set that weapon down.

I learned to walk without the weight it,
to meet new people without the shield of it.
Learned new reflexes that did not reach for it.

(It is only later
that I am learning that perhaps not all power
corrupts. That perhaps there is a place
for swinging my hips.)

2.
Mindfulness is no-such-thing.
Even after two hours a day - even
after sixteen hours a day of zazen,
even after I had touched my true heart and the open center of oneness,
had constructed and deconstructed the ten thousand dreams of self,
wept for a full week,
walked for a whole day alone,
sat once for an hour without moving a hair,

I still forgot my water-bottle every time I set it down.

3.
Love is power. Not power-over,
not power-from. Not even power-to.
Power like sunlight is power,
like truth is. Love is not what we think it is.
Love is hard, like a cocoon is hard,
like truth is, but harder. Because love is truth,
and more than truth, for truth at least
has a beginning and an end.
Love, once loosed from the cage
we strive so hard to keep it in
(For to what end do we fill our lives
with comfort and distraction,
but that of keeping love at bay?)
- once loose, well.

Just look what happened to Siddhartha:
poisoned on his own goodwill.
Power like that can't help but destroy.
(The caterpillar does not grow wings.)
Power like that, it can't be controlled.
(The caterpillar dies, don't you see?
All that which is caterpillar, dies.)
Once loose, power like that, power like love,
it isn't what you think. You can't turn it off.
No picking and choosing,
remember? It doesn't matter
if the coffee is sewage or saintly. Don't you see?
If your life is blessed or bothersome.
You have to love it just the same.

I didn't learn how to love, not really.
I still have an appetite for leaves.

2009-02-05T10:29:00.002-05:00

While J works eight and nine and eleven-hour shifts at his new job, I'm supposed to be finding employment of my own. I'm trying, don't get me wrong, but the options are few; at any rate, I've only been able to consume two or three hours of each day with the pursuit. When I was house-hunting as well, I managed to make it nearly a full-time occupation, what with the going to see of apartments and the having of only one car and so therefore walking for goodly distances to get to said apartments.

But now we've found a house, but we aren't there yet so I can't spend my time making it beautiful and cozy and perfect and home; and I don't have a job. It's the perfect time to be doing some serious writing, but I seem to have misplaced my muse.

I want to take advantage of the time I have until I actually do get a job (which hopefully won't be long). So I'm asking for some help. What should I write about right now? Is there something you've always wanted to know about me or farming or fritattas? Some subject you can't believe I've never covered, or one I mentioned in passing that piqued your interest? A pet monomania that you need each person in the world to be somehow involved in? I promise to write at least something about every (not-completely-awful) suggestion I get.

2009-02-03T07:36:00.000-05:00

So far, every time I've been looking for a place to live, as soon as I've found the right place, I know it. (There is a possible exception for Philadelphia, but I did know the right roommate as soon as I met her, so that counts for something.)

In Prescott, the very first place I looked at was the one. It hadn't even been listed officially, if I remember correctly - just pure luck that I found it. We looked at five or six more apartments, just to be sure, but came right back to the first one. We'd had a number of failed attempts before we found our house in Burlington, but almost as soon as we stepped in the door we knew it was ours.

So as I've been apartment hunting over the past week, I've been (mostly unconsciously) waiting for that same thing to happen. And I've seen a lot of places in the past week, several of which were quite nice. But none of them were home. (Several of which were not quite nice and emphatically not home.)

We had two appointments on Sunday. One was for a three-bedroom with garage (our grouchy diesel makes that a priority) about 20 minutes out of town, in our price range; the other a two-bedroom without garage, five minutes out of town, on the extreme outside edge of our price range but with a garden space. The first was emphatically not nice, and not home: no light, no counterspace, really no kitchen space, generally dingy and all three bedrooms too small to fit our bed in. We left discouraged, and I made a call for a second appointment with one of the nice-but-not-home apartments, because at least it was nice.

But then we got to the second place. And - it was perfect. Just enough space for the two of us, a gas range (hard to find in this neck of the woods), good windows, a workshop area for J's homebrew and other projects, and garden space - an acre's worth! And we can get chickens! And we can get pets if we want! And the landlady has a policy of deducting $100 off the rent in May so you can buy flower and vegetable seeds! And she suggested we could barter landscaping/building a woodfired bread oven/other awesome projects for rent. And the place just felt good.

Home.

(We don't get to move in 'til March, but once we do I'll finally have somewhere to put all that nesting energy!)