tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51207790020533943522024-03-13T00:03:38.837-07:00Chance of Kingfisherskingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-80516157709338650112011-01-19T14:12:00.000-08:002011-01-19T14:19:51.173-08:00jet-laggingIt's one in the morning, and I've given up on the struggle for sleep.<br />Outside, water thick-knees are making strange sharp little calls and running around on their long little legs, eating insects.<br /><br />And I'm Here. Here being home in East Africa, after a year's absence.<br />Being immersed in the world--savoring having bare feet and wearing a sarong again, mesmerized by the thrumming of fans and the din of East African birds. <br /><br />The power went out when I turned up two days ago, so I spent a hot afternoon lying out on the verandah on a Cambodian grass mat with ants crawling over me, staring foggily at a hibiscus tree with sunbirds and barbets zipping about, feeling... happy.<br /><br />However, I'm well grateful that Iringa, where I will be in five days time, is higher and cooler, perfect for writing. The coast is a place where one's brain just wants to pack it in altogether, I find, and take to swimming every day and staring in awe at fish... <br /><br />Thinking deep and meaningful thoughts like Whoa, fish.<br /><br />That's all I've got this dark night. Over and out, world...kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-27822847715309579652011-01-07T10:04:00.000-08:002011-01-07T10:05:57.889-08:00A Reflection Off JobThe dead bee is dry and nearly weightless<br />one bundle of pollen still<br />fastened to its knee.<br />Its legs tucked in,<br />wings stiffly spread,<br />it did not mean to die<br />nor welcome its death.<br /><br />It smells of decay,<br />but faintly,<br />and the ants eat a bit<br />of its wing, and then leave it be.<br /><br />The ants live in front<br />of the altar in this Catholic<br />prayer hall. They have made<br />a small hole in the caulking<br />between the tiles and they<br />emerge and descend from<br />this hole in ones and twos.<br />Church ants, nourished,<br />no doubt, on holy days,<br />by communion wafers.<br />Will they say a prayer<br />for the bee while its taste<br />still lingers in their tiny <br />mouths, their clicking jaws?<br />Will they say a prayer for me?<br />The book of Job is<br />a troublesome book.<br /><br />The Buddhists have their seima,<br />their sacred boundary markers,<br />sunken into the earth around each temple;<br />The Khmer draw boundaries between the<br />cultivated world of village and rice paddy<br />and the dangerous alluring forest, but in<br />Job, the Hebrew God treats the entire earth<br />as Her space, His creation—<br />its bases are sunk,<br />its cornerstone laid,<br />and the stars sing and<br />the heavenly beings shout for joy.<br /><br />The sea is wrapped and barred and encased,<br />mighty and proud, but kept from the land.<br />Under the water, the waters that teemed before<br />anything rose from the earth—first the sea,<br />first the sky—and now we mortals kill first<br />the seas and the skies—we who walk on the<br />dry-land will go last, already the weakest among<br />us are going—the Khiansi spray toad is gone now,<br />thousands of others crowd the gates of deep darkness,<br />nearly gone, and we, we who have not seen the springs<br />of the sea, the recesses of the deep, we who do not know<br />the paths to the dwelling place of light and darkness, we<br />who cannot find where the east wind is scattered, we who<br />cannot guide forth the Bear in her proper season—<br />we have power, nonetheless, terrible power—<br />the power to destroy, the power to kill.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-30853602771739870662010-04-27T09:21:00.000-07:002010-04-27T09:22:26.790-07:00Retrospective 7: on the trip to Banteay ChmaThe authorities are getting ideas--<br />the woman who plants chilies <br />and the man who plant mung beans<br />have been told that they must stop<br />using the degraded field around <br />the U-shaped muddy moat that<br />encircles the jumble of stones and<br />precarious tower of the ancient<br />Khmer temple Ta Prohm.<br />Four giant serene faces gaze out upon<br />the landscape in the four cardinal directions--<br />the fourth face is splitting upwards from its chin,<br />gravity tugging at its supporting lintel.<br />The authorities are returning on the 5th of September,<br />to discuss these matters, these sliding stones.<br />The woman knows the type of wood that has been<br />used to shore up the four lintels and the bowing arches;<br />she gives me a handful of green chilies, bundled into a<br />pouch made from twisting her sarong. I put them into<br />the front of my shirt for the walk home under the blazing<br />sun in a humid sky threatening rain. Someone unknown<br />has been uprooting the shrubs that have taken root around<br />the dilapidated towers, burning the undergrowth. The smell<br />of hot ash rises as I slowly circle the tower to gaze upon all<br />four faces. On my way out I pass a structure <br />like a chicken shed<br />and see pieces of carvings, stacked haphazardly--<br />a lotus flower pillar,<br />three partial statues of meditating Buddhas--<br />the bases with the crossed<br />feet and the cradled hands <br />resting upon them remain, the heads and torsos<br />are gone. They were probably victims of the 1998 debacle<br />that allowed the Thai military to loot Banteay Chma, <br />the vast broken sister<br />of this small temple. These fragments <br />surely have great value,<br />but no one is guarding this precious rubble,<br />and I stand in the ashes<br />and reach out and lift one of the blocks--<br />a curving shoulder.<br />I look for its companions, but find nothing. <br />It is startling heavy, this<br />piece of ancient stone, and I feel like a looter, <br />toting around the Buddha's shoulder, <br />stroking the toes on one standing foot. Hewing off<br />these stones heads, these shoulders <br />would have required great strength<br />and heavy tools. These pieces of the twelfth century, <br />dismembered, stolen,<br />lie now in my insignificant hands. <br />The block scrapes against its fellows<br />when I lay it back down. It was the fighting that destroyed the temples,<br />a woman argues. The Khmer Rouge were at one temple, the resistance<br />was stationed over there. Originally she accused the Vietnamese, <br />but then the group of interested onlookers agreed that this fighting was fifteen years ago,<br />long after the Vietnamese had gone. <br />Time has become elided here, in these places<br />where years were marked by battle after battle. <br />We hid in trenches, she said. Airplanes<br />shelled them. They even cooked rice in the trenches. <br />Her grandfather was too afraid<br />to open his eyes.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-4861818337195043522010-04-09T05:07:00.000-07:002010-04-09T05:08:04.806-07:00Retrospective 6: the middle of AugustThe toads are going wild tonight,<br />Heart and Nga have been unfairly labeled gangsters,<br />the air is blessedly cool and I am back in the village,<br />joyfully so.<br />Grandmother Muon is better <br />and lavishing love upon<br />the sole remaining ginger kitten,<br />to my grateful surprise.<br />A candle burns on my trunk,<br />Sombath and Pin laugh with their mother,<br />we will go to that great old temple Banteay Chma together,<br />and my heart is glad.<br />Today, my 100th bird in Cambodia--<br />those lovely lovely rufous treepies,<br />hopping about in their sleek suits<br />of colors--grey and peach and white and black--<br />crying out and flying with the tips of their wing feathers <br />extended like fingers, soaring over the top of the ploughed field.<br />And the chestnut bee-eaters stalked me, following me on and on,<br />and unseen birds raged in a tree.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-61302843639797318842010-04-09T05:06:00.000-07:002010-04-09T05:07:11.659-07:00Retrospective 5: Grumblings on VolumeI am tired of the yelling<br />whenever anyone wants anyone else.<br />There is no thought of disturbing others--<br />my host father shouts at my host sister,<br />fast asleep in her small room,<br />to come and catch the pigeons.<br />It was half past ten.<br />They awakened me too,<br />demanding I come and hand over my torch<br />so we could catch and eat the pigeons.<br />It is not lost on me that I have been complaining<br />rather a lot about these broody pigeons,<br />but shouldn't sleep be somewhat sacred?<br />Whoever was up at half past five this morning<br />began noisily stacking wood,<br />my host brother Jane turns on tractors and leaves them to idle<br />at all hours--once it's light, it's daytime,<br />and when there's a task needs doing, it's my host sister they call for,<br />even in the dead of night.<br />I'm tired of it.<br />And I'm tired of loud music blaring from vast speaker systems,<br />first the flying horse evenings, <br />the carousel with terrible disco tracks,<br />then three nights of hideous wedding music, and today, <br />the day of penance at the temple,<br />monks chanting and megaphones squealing from four a.m. onwards,<br />at intervals.<br />I'm in essence tired of the VOLUME.<br />Why must everything be so loud?<br />Why must we all be forced to hear each other's events?<br />And how can earplugs,<br />which were Designed for ears,<br />be so absurdly uncomfortable?kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-39562802481356928962010-04-09T05:04:00.000-07:002010-04-09T05:05:44.892-07:00Retrospective 4: in Kampot at the riverhouse with friendsAh, Lord,<br />here I am.<br />Slowly clumsily surfacing--<br />my head aching<br />and my limbs heavy<br />from that drugged afternoon sleep,<br />here in the still hot sun of four o'clock,<br />in the soft shurr of a broom sweeping,<br />listening to the wind in the dry palms,<br />watching shadows shift,<br />feeling the world's glory.<br /><br />My obsession with newness,<br />my boredom, my desire to hunt,<br />to know, to number, to accumulate,<br />these things threaten<br />the pleasure of my birding--<br />I don't do well with sameness,<br />with ordinariness--Katie's book recommendation,<br />the spectacular ordinary life--<br />the very title makes me nervous.<br />But surely it isn't all bad,<br />wanting to know,<br />to see as deeply as possible<br />the world around me--<br />what is the red winged hawk<br />that hunts over the Frenchman's spring?<br />What is the red capped brown ball of feathers<br />that vanishes into the reeds of our farm's pond<br />whenever I steal up close?<br /><br />My thanks for a morning--<br />for flooded fields of water still as glass,<br />for tiny fish swimming over the hoof prints of cows,<br />for small bays cut into the thick stiletto palms<br />crowding the river's edge, covered with crab tracks,<br />for the yellow flowers with red hearts<br />that float along the meniscus of the brackish riverworld,<br />for grave mounds covered with thin strips of white cloth,<br />for rollers high and bright and fearless in the trees,<br />for wind in the papery sighing of the sugar palms,<br />for small bridges and boats that pass beneath them,<br />for all the many knit muscles of our arms,<br />that we can push an oar through the water, and row along--<br />for the possible treepie, and the innumerable brown bulbuls,<br />swooping from one bush to the next,<br />for a mighty fig tree towering above the forest,<br />for generous friends with quiet hearts--<br />and for last night's walk in the moonlight<br />along a river under the moon,<br />watching mountains against a starry sky--<br />for all these things,<br />my thanks, my praise,<br />my devotion.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-39409713819467211162010-04-09T05:03:00.000-07:002010-04-09T05:04:23.147-07:00Retrospective 3: Silence in MondulkiriAnd all I want are the green hills and the feathered things,<br />the quiet of this morning's tramp--<br />not a human soul but myself for three blessed hours.<br />Just the alarmed birds,<br />and judging by the packs of small boys with slingshots<br />glimpsed on my way home,<br />good reason for that fear.<br /><br />Solitude from people<br />and the presence of the creatures,<br />mute, instinctual, wild--<br />more resonant--<br />sounding,<br />ringing like bells,<br />tolling the energy and passion and creativity of God,<br />bringing us back<br />to a better understanding<br />of our place in the order of things--<br />loved, yes, cherished,<br />but merely motes in the vast rushing universe<br />borne aloft by God's undying love.<br /><br />They praise better than we do--<br />they praise simply by being.<br />They return my awareness to being a creature,<br />a creature of God, that lives and must die.<br /><br />Henri Nouwen wrote: <br />Silence is the way to make solitude a reality.<br /><br />Yet in the heat and the noise<br />and the unrelenting presence of others<br />in the Cambodian village--<br />how can I pray?<br />I who become alive<br />when alone and away<br />from the hum of human activity.<br />Teach me to pray, Jesu,<br />in the midst of the world.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-32874906759401106292010-04-09T05:02:00.000-07:002010-04-09T05:03:18.367-07:00Retrospective 2: blazing heatGod, <br />I cannot stand the noise--<br />the horrible music with the bass throbbing<br />the clashing of another music from across the street<br />the rumbling of diesel generators<br />the cries and yells of the dubbed Chinese films<br />the frantic barking of dogs<br />the hoarse crowing of roosters<br />the screeching claws and incessant cooing of the doves above my bed,<br />the popping of the fire of the burning corncobs,<br />blazingly hot and terrifyingly close to the house,<br />a single bucket of water propped beside them,<br />the wooden boards of the wall hot to the touch,<br />the sparks roiling and rising.<br /><br />Are you enjoying living in the wilderness?<br />the commune authority said to me today--<br />it's fully forested, this place. <br /><br />Relatively speaking. <br />But the burned logs roll out in wagons every day,<br />smoldering in the charcoal pits,<br />ending up as charred black lumps for sale<br />in old rice bags on the side of the road.<br />The poor feed off the forest.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-17655175148294681852010-04-09T05:00:00.000-07:002010-04-09T05:01:53.381-07:00Retrospectives<span style="font-style:italic;">It was a long year, my year spent largely in the village, and I spent less time writing in a journal than I have ever done. I took fieldnotes--jottings on my world and its events and people for my thesis, but I filled only one thin journal with thoughts on my own soul, my own self. I was lost to myself in some ways, which is perhaps necessary for being turned inside out, for trying to understand other lives. Yet I knew myself blessed by God--every door I needed to live in northwest Cambodia swung wide open and all I had to do was gather my courage and walk through them. And walk and walk, for it was a year, an entire year, of my one short sweet life. I am looking through this past year's slim journal tonight, and I have decided to post some excerpts in the coming days in this long neglected forum, in honor of that year now gone forever.</span><br /><br />it's bad when you forget to cite someone, but I did,<br />and here were their ringing words, given to us<br />to reflect upon at a February retreat:<br /><br />Whoever is on a journey towards God<br />goes from one beginning to another beginning.<br />Will you be among those who dare<br />to tell themselves: Begin again!<br />Leave discouragement behind!<br />Let your soul live!kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-70357527369864032162010-04-07T03:04:00.000-07:002010-04-07T03:20:18.338-07:00villageI just called my village family. In the village where I left them at the end of January.<br />I'm still spinning from it.<br />I begged them to summon my grandmother<br />from her little house,<br />who says water comes from her eyes when she thinks about me, <br />and asked when I'm coming back again.<br />I said in two years<br />and forbade her to get Heavily Ill.<br />My host mother and I discussed<br />the many layers of clothes I'm wearing,<br />the phone card I had to buy to ring them,<br />the dry hot season they're having,<br />and the fact that my sisters <br />had dreamed of me the night before,<br />which was clearly now <br />an omen that I would be in touch.<br />My brother Jane and I discussed<br />his fever<br />and the young papaya trees now growing<br />on his farm.<br />My niece Srei Leakh <br />informed me about her birthday<br />and the gifts she was given,<br />and asked about a hundred times<br />if I missed her.<br />The village chief, my adopted father,<br />said he's tired of working for no money<br />as the village chief,<br />but the authorities won't let him resign,<br />and asked when my wedding was scheduled...<br /><br />Which brings us to my Lie.<br />I felt bad about this Lie all year.<br />It was an attempt to go into the village<br />as a respectable and comprehensible unmarried woman.<br />I said I had left a fiancee back in Scotland,<br />who I'd marry after I finished my schooling.<br />And then by the time I started feeling really guilty <br />about this whole lie,<br />it had already been passed all the way up<br />to the DISTRICT GOVERNOR,<br />and it was too late.<br />I figured that if the entire district<br />found out I'd been telling stories,<br />they would assume that nothing<br />about me was as it seemed.<br />So now I had to kill this Lie,<br />this albatross of falsehood.<br />This involved More Lying.<br />Shameful.<br />I said that our hearts<br />were no longer in agreement<br />because I had been away too long,<br />and the wedding was off.<br />So. Lies upon lies.<br /><br />One of the gentlemen farmers,<br />this rich man who has a farm<br />and a job in the capital<br />and comes up occasionally <br />to faff about and get very drunk<br />with the village chief,<br />had informed my host family<br />that I had severed my heart<br />from them all<br />as evidenced by my not calling.<br />I felt quite annoyed by this.<br />But now they can tell him<br />he's wrong.<br />They dreamed of me,<br />and I called<br />from a cold land,<br />to a hot place<br />waiting for the rain,<br />and about to welcome in<br />their new year.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-5824922088407535102010-04-06T04:39:00.000-07:002010-04-06T04:40:43.720-07:00confessionI have a confession to make.<br />I'm no longer a bad birder.<br />One thing led to another... <br />and I got in over my head and started hanging about <br />charming and esoteric people who could say, <br />O, western marsh harrier, that's a first for southeast Cambodia <br />when a large brown hawk-thing dashed by... <br />and I let my deep and pressing need for knowledge to get involved...<br />and I've become a half decent birder.<br /><br />Hallum has informed me that I must resign my post as the head of the Bad Birder of Cambodia (and Friends). I said that surely as the founder of the whole glamorous endeavor, I couldn't be made redundant. He said that I was now actually a Birdwatcher, and would actually get up early in the morning for the cause. I admitted that this was true. He said I can remain a sort of spiritual director of the thing, but he is taking up the reins. I said that he needed to start using his binoculars if he wanted to watch birds. He said that this sort of talk is the reason I've been summarily promoted out of my own society...<br /><br />I still don't take photographs of birds. My apologies to those dear (and sometimes annoying, yes, Eli, Ornithological Brother-Friend, I mean you) friends who keep asking why I don't. I really think that one either watches birds or photographs birds, and I would rather watch them. Someday, if I ever have a good camera again, I will reconsider this state of affairs. <br /><br />I am, however, going to learn to draw birds. I've become disgraced by my own field notes, which occasionally have a badly scrawled cartoon-like head of a bird that doesn't help me in the slightest when I identify it later. And I need things to do to keep me sane this year, and I can't just up and go the far reaches of Scotland in pursuit of birds anytime I leave the office. So. Birds. On paper. Drawn with pencils. And maybe some Markers. <br /><br />I bought a book about it. The main problem with the very gorgeous book that I bought is that the guy thinks we should all be drawing birds in the field. As in on the wing, on the wire, in the pond. This takes me back to the far reaches issue. And it makes me think that I should maybe then just get on with the photography... This whole birding thing just keeps getting more complicated. I have good binoculars now, and now I feel my life would be infinitely better if I had a Harness to wear them on. I have finally started using a birding notebook, and now I'm supposed to be dragging art supplies out to the lagoons? Honestly. I'll be living in a caravan soon, surrounded by archaic tomes on birds of the world.<br /><br />All of this to say that the BBC (and friends) might need rechristening. Suggestions welcome.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-71684517383604969302010-04-01T12:33:00.000-07:002010-04-01T12:35:55.618-07:00stripping the churchWe had our last supper this evening, <br />and then we stripped the church,<br />together, in silence. <br /><br />We yanked down these lovely sailing ships <br />the children made out of cut-apart plastic bottles--<br />their pennants sailed gaily above our heads all this Lent<br />while we thought of the food we eat<br />and the waste we make.<br /><br />We took away the altar cloth, which was brown,<br />with small white squares covered with the thumbprints of<br />our congregation.<br />It was all bundled up and dragged off.<br /><br />We took away all the stones <br />and the clay candle-holders <br />and the fishing net strung full of empty bottles and cans.<br />We carried out the cross.<br />It was all stuffed in the back room.<br />It felt like a kind of violence,<br />like we were killing things.<br />And I realized that each time<br />we deal in death<br />or act in cruelty<br />or turn from mercy<br />we abandon him.<br /><br />Our vicar read that <br />the disciples abandoned him<br />in Gesthemane,<br />in the garden,<br />with the mob that had come<br />to take him away,<br />and I wanted to say, no,<br />no, let's stay this time,<br />let's stay with each other,<br />let's keep watch with him,<br />let's stay awake,<br />let's hold his hand<br />through the long dark night to follow.<br />But they didn't,<br />and nor do we.<br /><br />Little Xanthy got confused when asked to blow out <br />the tea candles that represented the disciples, <br />and also blew out the big candle that represented Jesus. <br />Her brother Sebastian whispered loudly, <br />He's dead.<br />And Xanthy looked alarmed, <br />as if she had killed him,<br />and I thought, no, my sweet, <br />it wasn't you,<br />we did it.<br />We all did.<br />We blew out the light<br />and we walked away.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-75818757855163535122008-11-21T14:28:00.000-08:002008-11-21T14:38:21.349-08:00A new Celtic blessingWinter has come to us in my current place<br />on our curved world,<br />and all is cloaked with snow,<br />changing all the surfaces of things.<br />I fear it, but I am also in awe<br />of its rampant beauty.<br /><br />Weather is a blessing<br />in the midst of transient times.<br />It is impossible not to take weather seriously,<br />to avoid being pushed into awareness of the present moment,<br />whether that moment be drenched in sweat,<br />soaked in rain,<br />or chilled and frosty.<br /><br />Weather brings me back from my daydreams,<br />my wanderings between what I have left behind and what is to come,<br />and leaves me in this very instant, shocked by the coldness of the air<br />in my lungs, the tingling of my hands, clad in my grandmother's scarlet<br />gloves...<br /><br />Weather reminds me that I am here, now. For now.<br />For another six weeks, and then I will<br />be in a dizzingly different climate.<br />But the weather holds<br />me in the present moment,<br />nearing the end of this task,<br />yet with my hands still so very full.<br /><br />And with this thought of weather on my mind,<br />I was struck again by Celtic prayer, by<br />its rootedness to our geography...<br />Here is a prayer by J. Philip Newell,<br />a spiritual writer whose work I highly recommend.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow"><em>The blessings of heaven,</em></a><br /><em>the blessings of earth,</em><br /><em>the blessings of sea and of sky.</em><br /><em>On those we love this day and </em><br /><em>on every human family</em><br /><em>the gifts of heaven,</em><br /><em>the gifts of earth,</em><br /><em>the gifts of sea and of sky.</em><br /><em></em><br />May they come to you.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-27061915989000428662008-09-22T14:16:00.000-07:002008-09-22T14:19:08.899-07:00bright spots and tumbling headlongMy teaching is coming along.<br />My father advised me to simply find the 'bright spots in the room' and teach to that small crowd, and let all the rest come along as best they can or wish to.<br />But I'm new at this and an idealist still, and I have to confess I want them all.<br />I want them all to be bright spots--illuminated, interested, engaged.<br />A room ablaze with light, as it were.<br />And that's a tall order.<br /><br />The material for my afternoon class tomorrow is abstract and difficult, and I am seeking a way to bring them into it--closer to the frame... Like in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, that portion near the beginning of the book where the children are staring at a picture of the oceans of Narnia, and it is such a Real picture that they stare harder and harder, and the picture begins to move, and then the children are swept into the picture itself.<br /><br />That is the goal--how to make theoretical discussions of globalization so real that they start to swirl and flow, and we all tumble in headlong.<br /><br />Such a consuming thing, to teach.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-88132512410757396012008-09-12T10:18:00.000-07:002008-09-12T10:30:59.158-07:00in search of selfThe moon was luminescent last night,<br />a gleaming broken china plate,<br />and a wind was stirring<br />as my father showed me the grounds--<br />all the plants that must be uprooted or sheared<br />before winter comes.<br /><br />This morning, before first light,<br />they were gone. And I awoke<br />to stillness. The television has<br />been disconnected, and I sat<br />at the table with coffee in my<br />hands, observing the trees post<br />their solemn watch around the<br />pond, and listened.<br /><br />Things rise in silence.<br /><br />This house is large for a hermit's cell,<br />it allows for restless pacing, or escape<br />from one's self, room by room, and is<br />full of artefacts of our lives. And I am<br />no hermit, nor monk--I am not<br />withdrawing from the world in order<br />to pray from the world, as Merton<br />once described the Trappists. Instead,<br />it is refuge, it is where I can come home<br />safe to myself. Home from the dizzying<br />effort of sharing this small store of wisdom<br />and experience that I have, trying to be<br />lucid, to be clear, to be reflective, to open<br />doors rather than hurling them shut.<br /><br />I feel as transparent and as public in<br />little Houghton as I have felt anywhere--<br />it's like being on stage in some medieval<br />morality play--with the same cast of<br />archetypal characters. The students, we<br />are told, time and again, watch us. We<br />are watched. Will the audience think<br />me Judas if I never attend chapel?<br />Will the audience consider me a Pharisee,<br />a Roman, or Nicodemus, seeking truth<br />quietly in the night?<br /><br />And I who am used to having<br />many selves,<br />(shuffled like cards for the hand that must be played)<br />many worlds,<br />wonder--<br />can I be true to one?kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-47117018281021119342008-09-04T14:20:00.000-07:002008-09-04T14:21:56.348-07:00Sea VoyageIt's been over a month now<br />in this place of berries and bears,<br />of shy wood ducks and tall rows of corn,<br />this North America I left more than ten<br />years ago, never intending to return for<br />more than visits.<br /><br />The students are here now,<br />over one hundred of them<br />in my hands, and the<br />responsibility weighs<br />upon me. There are so many<br />ways to mean well yet go wrong.<br /><br />I suppose that's true in all things in life.<br />But I feel, as always, unprepared for<br />this next journey in the long sea<br />voyage of my life.<br /><br />As always, I lack a compass, or good maps,<br />I sail with the stars, and many are the mistakes<br />made in my attempts at celestial navigation. I go<br />east, to the beginning of the world and the end of<br />all things, and I do not doubt that I shall be welcomed<br />home, at the end of my portion of days.<br /><br />But some days I tire of the sea,<br />of always leaving the dry land behind,<br />of the terror of thunder and gale and storm,<br />of the threat of smugglers' lanterns,<br />and all the long uncertainties of the journey.<br /><br />Some days I think this is a fool's errand,<br />this life lived in faulty service of a Lord<br />I scarcely understand.<br /><br />But there are companions for the journey,<br />most days, and strange wonders, like<br />dolphins and phosphorescence in these<br />mysterious waters.<br /><br />And though the water onboard is brackish,<br />and the water without all salt,<br />I have heard tell, that at the edge of the world,<br />where I sail with all the hope and courage I can<br />muster up, the water is sweet.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-13499641799614019672008-05-18T10:36:00.000-07:002008-05-18T10:37:15.303-07:00Pentecost at Saint James<em>Breath came into them<br />and they lived.</em><br /><br />This phrase from Ezekiel 37 was written in many languages, set unobtrusively on the shelves in front of unadorned glorious sunlight yellow walls.<br /><br />Over our heads, tissue ribbons of fire descend from the wires that stretch across our encircled chairs—red, gold, coral, bronze, lemon yellow.<br /><br />In the front of the room, where we kneel to take communion, glowing crimson swathes of cloth descend from the ceiling to two white pedestals, pillars of fire.<br /><br />Our skepticism about the good we seek to do<br />must not erode our compassion,<br />Geoffrey says, retired mime.<br /><br />He enacts Ezekiel 37, first a frenzied urbanite, a puppet of meaningless frantic repetitive motion, then dead, then slowly returning to life, blown back into self awareness.<br /><br />In the song, poet Kathy Galloway renders the Spirit female—<br /><em>She comes with sister’s carefulness<br />strong to support and bind.<br />Her voice will speak for justice’ sake<br />and peace is in her mind.<br /><br />She comes with power like the night<br />and glory like the day.<br />Her reign is in the heart of things—<br />O come to us and stay.</em><br /><br />We daringly attempt an unrehearsed responsive reading of the scriptural Pentecost account,<br />with drums and shakers,<br />and a great babbling in many tongues.<br /><br />I half expect the roof to fly off<br />and a white dove descend.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-16246931706557808522008-04-22T10:23:00.000-07:002008-04-22T10:44:29.052-07:00If I were a hawfinch, where would I be?Sunday was a momentous day for me. I finally screwed up my courage, unlocked my bicycle from the bike stand in George Square, near my office, and rode it up and down the hills of the city to my home near the sea. I have a bus phobia, as in, I fear being flattened by a doubledecker bus while careening along on my bicycle. Thus I'm so not into the riding on the main roads.<br /><br />I read this lines and find this simply ridiculous. I was a motorbike riding fiend in Cambodia, and I can't ride a bicycle in Edinburgh. WHY? WHY? In my defense, my phobia is rooted in an actual near death-by-bus experience from when I was 10 and had insisted on my ability to ride a bicycle to school in Oxford... And they just swoop by you, missing you by inches, and... Agh. Can't do it.<br /><br />Okay, so I got halfway home, buffeted by wind and breathless, and then the domes of the glasshouses of the Botanic Gardens rose up out of the city. I dismounted the bicycle, which had a Very flat tire by now, locked it up, rooted around in my bag for my binoculars--which British birders call Bins. Have you got your bins? Lovely.... And went in search of a hawfinch.<br /><br />There's one in the photo below, from a few posts back. But I have yet to see one in the winged flesh. They are hard to see. They hang out quietly way up in the canopy of trees, munching on fruits like cherry which they crack with their fierce beaks. And I had heard, somewhere, that the Botanics in April were the best place in Edinburgh to see a hawfinch. Ergo the bins in the handbag.<br /><br />Well. Well, the Botanics are strangely full of trees. All kinds. All heights. And shrubs, in fact. Flowers and bushes and even thickets. I got in amongst the wandering crowds--loads of children in prams, loads... And while everyone else eyed the lovely shrubbery, I wandered around like a lost child trying to see some birds.<br /><br />There was, however, not a bird to be seen except for the occasional gull and crow. There was the sound of birds. I was surrounded by birdsong, more calls and whistles and shrieks and rattles than you can imagine. But not even a glimpse of the singers. After about thirty minutes I realized what an extraordinary thing it is to be simply focused on sound. The paper like curls of a tree's bark filled the world when I wandered one way, the rustle of bamboo when I wandered another. And the birds, louder and louder. I wandered in a daze, looking up into the canopy, aloft on a sea of sound, lost in the tops of the trees shaking against the dome of the atmosphere.<br /><br />Finally, I wandered out into something more like a traditional English park. And then, in that odd way birds have of upsetting one's expectations entirely, there were birds everywhere. Blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, magpies, sparrows, dunnocks. All ordinary common birds to a birder, singing their hearts out, pulling me into another world entirely. And then, when I had given up on seeing new birds entirely and was just happily engaged in sorting out which bird makes which kind of noise--a small brown bird fluttered by, and landed on the trunk of a nearby tree. I looked idly in its direction and realized that I had never before seen such a bird.<br /><br />This is, by the way, one of the reasons I bird. How often does one spot a new mammal? But in the avian world, entirely new creatures are there for the seeing, day after day, region after region....<br /><br />It was a lovely bird. It sat, perfectly still, as people strolled within arm's length of it. It was shaped like a teardrop, with a forked brown tail. Its belly and chin were white, its beak was hooked, its feet were pink and had a long long hindclaw. Its back was brown, but it redefined brown. Through my binoculars its feathers were an intricate mosaic of brown and black triangles and chevrons. Its eyes were bright black peppercorns. And finally, it moved. It tilted its head from side to side, then hopped, laterally, to another portion of trunk, and began to creep upwards, gently probing the edges of the bark for insects.<br /><br />It was, in fact, a treecreeper. A beautiful brown bird that creeps up trees. It was perfect.<br /><br />I did not see what I set out to see. But something found me. Praise be.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-72406432211136647602008-04-13T13:09:00.000-07:002008-04-13T13:15:46.417-07:00Mine own romantic town<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0nouBxkCtJB4eY0mho5y8bZtnpdow40MAqTnWH1WvvP0ApP26kwCSZFwtezKZE1QkzlgsjUXMm-hK3SR_Gv8NiNqS1sxYPZggkvTDiycSrtgA7d7grIo825AMCTjQhTn2mElBZt5wlzQ/s1600-h/0_engraving_-_one_1_080_edinburgh_castle_from_the_kings_mews.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188824988703287746" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0nouBxkCtJB4eY0mho5y8bZtnpdow40MAqTnWH1WvvP0ApP26kwCSZFwtezKZE1QkzlgsjUXMm-hK3SR_Gv8NiNqS1sxYPZggkvTDiycSrtgA7d7grIo825AMCTjQhTn2mElBZt5wlzQ/s320/0_engraving_-_one_1_080_edinburgh_castle_from_the_kings_mews.jpg" border="0" /></a>They're not my words. They belong to Sir Walter Scott, and they are about the castle in Edinburgh. Yesterday was Historic Scotland's public day, which means that the castle was free to the public. So I went, for the first time, up into the place I have gazed upon so fondly and so long.<br /><br /><br />It was fabulous. But I prefer Sir Scott's words to my own, and so here is his stanza:<br /><br />Such dusky grandeur clothed the height<br />Where the huge castle holds its state<br />And all the steep slope down<br />Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky<br />Piled deep and massy, close and high<br />Mine own romantic town.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC87jqxKRNcJ0l9ryuJH2f__SPWqe86dVDoHTBmZgjTf1irlpFT8i2Y2_rfHKCNq_OlZw35_TIn-kE1Yk7AB0ccUjjNlRWzexzg0mJah53E9M7XVyBF2IehHmTpnbZv-YUOcNuw3kc8jI/s1600-h/castle.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188824997293222354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC87jqxKRNcJ0l9ryuJH2f__SPWqe86dVDoHTBmZgjTf1irlpFT8i2Y2_rfHKCNq_OlZw35_TIn-kE1Yk7AB0ccUjjNlRWzexzg0mJah53E9M7XVyBF2IehHmTpnbZv-YUOcNuw3kc8jI/s320/castle.bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-15563175767999078352008-04-06T08:14:00.000-07:002008-04-06T08:18:50.663-07:00an odd dreaming of birds and snakesI’ve started dreaming about birds. They are always<br />different in my dreams than they are in life— larger, stranger.<br />One night it was a scarlet avocet,<br />black as night, with crimson Chinese characters<br />inked upon its back. One night it was hawfinches,<br />larger than hawks, their beaks thick as rods of steel<br />and their heads dimpled like the top of an apple.<br />Sometimes they are indistinguishable but large as elephants,<br />in pine forests that tower against the sky.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKHToI6Hl06vUorb6FRp29LSd-da28uHovfs8jmTRPt-LYhVL5fTKqLxBslUzVVjUO6t6n1wkDClqr4AmkIjzcuJFRHskUBQv-5tg_M59Cs6eti45EY90MG0Hmv4lJ0WkUFVdPdCPITWQ/s1600-h/minivet.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186151323519864242" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKHToI6Hl06vUorb6FRp29LSd-da28uHovfs8jmTRPt-LYhVL5fTKqLxBslUzVVjUO6t6n1wkDClqr4AmkIjzcuJFRHskUBQv-5tg_M59Cs6eti45EY90MG0Hmv4lJ0WkUFVdPdCPITWQ/s320/minivet.jpg" border="0" /></a>Maybe these landscapes are so large because<br />my life feels small just now, constrained,<br />my life lived within offices and in chairs in front<br />of monitors, with only my mind active, and yet<br />even that chained to the form of academic writing.<br />Natalie Goldberg once urged writers to think of<br />structure as a necessary skeleton, or like the skin<br />of a snake, that could be stuffed full with whatever<br />you liked, but had to be recognizable as a snake.<br />I haven’t done very well accepting that I need to<br />build a snake right now and have been wrestling<br />around with the form, frustrated. Perhaps it is a<br />useful metaphor to embrace. Perhaps I need to see<br />this week as making its spine, one weird vertebrae<br />at a time, laying them into their lovely interlocking<br />pattern. Maybe the birds are my desire to escape,<br />but it is a blessing to be on this journey towards<br />a PhD at all. Perhaps I had best be on my guard,<br />to guard this feeble little serpent of a project from<br />the fey eye of the eagle circling in the currents far<br />above. <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186151314929929634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYSyaRoeM3xHMJPHLEKGuDvSLbuoN6Pfv4vmbn9d27oO6ShzG2bxMCRjHzxCr2eJy_nj2Es2E05Oaz8v8jPpLwT1gA9ak6xTax9vK9rt1Cjv4XkRVt_s2yfuyLwIVp_hKgEdsJ5QkeJY/s320/Hawfinch-2ndMay.jpg" border="0" />kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-33257096422399595612008-04-06T08:10:00.000-07:002008-04-06T08:14:11.341-07:00A Late Reflection on the Death of JesusThis reflection by Marty Wroe was good to sit with and meditate with on Good Friday, and I wanted to share it, even now, Easter long past.<br /><br /><em>After Jesus drank the wine, he said,<br />Everything is done! He bowed his head<br />and died.</em> John 19.30<br /><br />That’s all, folks!<br />Show’s over.<br /><br />Let’s go home, nothing left to see,<br />Jesus has left the building.<br /><br />Has left us all.<br />Has gone.<br /><br />Who’d have thought it would come to this?<br /><br />History colliding with mystery.<br />In the beginning was the Word and the Word<br />is now sentenced.<br />Full stop.<br />Close quotes.<br />New paragraph.<br /><br />Whatever ‘everything’ is…<br />‘Everything’ is now complete.<br /><br />Things seen, things unseen.<br />And things in between.<br /><br />Everything that was started has finished.<br />Every beginning has found its loose end,<br />all thoughts been taken to their logical conclusion.<br />And any others.<br />At this moment, on this day,<br />we have seen it all.<br />A God bows his head respectfully<br />and dies.<br /><br />Everything dies.<br />Life dies.<br />Death dies.<br /><br />Everything is done.<br />Except love.<br /><br />Only love is not done.<br />Only love will not die.<br />Everything is finished except love.<br /><br />Love bears all things,<br />believes all things,<br />hopes all things,<br />endures all things.<br /><br />At some point everything will be done.<br />Except love.<br /><br />Love is never done.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-28930576589633578622008-04-03T07:58:00.000-07:002008-04-03T08:08:43.710-07:00juxtapositionsHere is a picture of a place that will probably closely resemble the village where I'm bound come July and then in January 2009 for a year--though I'm hoping for a little more vegetation, perhaps foolishly...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKuAN7UOJl6D1qNSoBBMptdJYClnxiumQyx_9YMM5v6h-q-5xg0IsxVOd9ZRJiKtNruR414VZaOuUjmmK03N9k40b-Rst1sIM-uiWN3tjUEPSTsg0HjMVqYOmCmCvMyCG1v6fY2a-y5g/s1600-h/mine+sign+in+yard.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185034653497740658" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKuAN7UOJl6D1qNSoBBMptdJYClnxiumQyx_9YMM5v6h-q-5xg0IsxVOd9ZRJiKtNruR414VZaOuUjmmK03N9k40b-Rst1sIM-uiWN3tjUEPSTsg0HjMVqYOmCmCvMyCG1v6fY2a-y5g/s320/mine+sign+in+yard.jpg" border="0" /></a> Here are the website photos of my church--Saint James--and our Easter prettiness. I made those butterflies; the children made them more beautiful. I am an Origami Queen.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWl37TI1VpSH0JBB0hm3Vt8jaftYautWkpmMl8BxaFv9l7Nm_2KkdMUKzKjGnh0pm4fNTTPcRyuAouVjaFz5tBlxWEhUW4BOp1l5QoyG9hkjJfWC3__dNp4-AzEBajASRD2gpJTEYL6ow/s1600-h/easter.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185034662087675266" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWl37TI1VpSH0JBB0hm3Vt8jaftYautWkpmMl8BxaFv9l7Nm_2KkdMUKzKjGnh0pm4fNTTPcRyuAouVjaFz5tBlxWEhUW4BOp1l5QoyG9hkjJfWC3__dNp4-AzEBajASRD2gpJTEYL6ow/s320/easter.png" border="0" /></a> And here is my friend Ruth's photo of our fair city in the snow--it's Dickensian, and also o so atmospheric.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNQ9Aj8U-9ClZ6A53DHAffrSpxkMuwHvTzqnIXehoZQ_IDx6lmjEK_CJJPRV7vCeNuT3neCuwjD_nbmSJlP0P71yVdehotNBNiNU6KPedAitbW_28lLsHBQMmxALvFHsh3aQLfB0k4VY/s1600-h/edinburgh+snow.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185034670677609874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNQ9Aj8U-9ClZ6A53DHAffrSpxkMuwHvTzqnIXehoZQ_IDx6lmjEK_CJJPRV7vCeNuT3neCuwjD_nbmSJlP0P71yVdehotNBNiNU6KPedAitbW_28lLsHBQMmxALvFHsh3aQLfB0k4VY/s320/edinburgh+snow.jpg" border="0" /></a> I leave now in three months and my heart and mind tracks between these alternating landscapes--landmined village, wintery city, church community... Juxtapositions, it is.<br /><div></div>kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-53037178361925903962008-04-01T07:21:00.000-07:002008-04-01T07:22:06.537-07:00bird joke, aka Lisa tries to display her jolly sideWhich bird is always out of breath?<br /><br />A puffin’kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-89337018313961042762008-03-31T09:46:00.000-07:002008-03-31T10:21:56.003-07:00good moment bad momentDears,<br />This is how my vicar always addresses his emails to us: Dears. I like it. I'm adopting it.<br /><br />I have had terribly good intentions these past few weeks, wanting to write about Easter at my church and the week I spent in New York with my mum and my brother, mourning my grandmother. But I haven't managed a word.<br /><br />So I begin now, without finesse, at six in the evening on a Monday night, hours away from laying down the work of the day. When I was back in the US of A for a week, there were some good moments and some bad moments.<br /><br />Here are some good moments--above all the snow that lays down and stays down for the cold winter months in western New York, the birds are visible--<br />visible on the ground,<br />on the cold waters,<br />in the leafless trees.<br /><br />More birds than you could ever wish for and some in shocking colors--<br />the crimson flash of a cardinal<br />the cornflower blue of the mocking jays--<br />and Canada geese strewn across the landscape--<br />scattered amongst the corn stubble poking through the snow, pecking for scraps,<br />flying overhead, gathered in conference on the shores of the rivers...<br /><br />Here is a bad moment. My grandmother died a week before we could make our way back to her side, so when we arrived she had already been buried, in a blue dress the color of the sky.<br />She was just gone.<br />There was no body,<br />no coffin,<br />no gravestone even,<br />as my mother thought it was probably yet to be carved<br />and did not want to go to the cemetary until it was ready.<br />Just her absence, with us as we planned her memorial service.<br />Although to be fair, it was mainly my mother who planned it, just as it has been mainly my mother who has carried my grandmother through these last years of her very long life.<br /><br />We created a montage of photos from every era of my grandmother's life,<br />and my mother wanted to blow up a few photos<br />to put at the front of the church for the memorial service.<br />So we drove to Walmart, this being the only remotely nearby place<br />that could scan and blow up photographs on the spot.<br /><br />We went into the Walmart, perhaps you have as well--<br />bright soulless fluorescent lights, tinny electronic music<br />of once loved songs, aisles piled high with things<br />at cut-rate prices--we were beguiled by the travel size aisle--<br />I forsook my No Walmart Purchasing principles for the<br />sunscreen tube that fit perfectly in the palm of my hand...<br />And then we found our way to the photo processing center,<br />an island in the middle of the large store.<br />The machines faced you to do your own scanning and ordering,<br />then women inside the island brought you your orders. Ostensibly.<br /><br />We scanned the photos of my grandmother, one of her quite recent, grinning madly, her hair as white as snow, the other quite old, at least twenty years old, when her hair was still dark brown. Then we waited,<br />and then the woman came over to us,<br />bearing the photos in her hands,<br />and said we couldn't have one of them.<br />Because we'd scanned a photograph done by a professional company--she had seen the signature on the corner--and it was against the law.<br />This moment, under those soul-stripping white lights in an island in the middle of a store I hate,<br />was the bad moment.<br />Because not only was this woman saying we couldn't have the photo we had made,<br />she was holding it in front of us,<br />flaunting it, this perfect photograph,<br />and in the absence of my actual grandmother,<br />this photograph suddenly became her, signified her,<br />and we could not have her, we were not permitted to touch her,<br />to take her away and care for her.<br />It's just that it's such a good photo, my mother said, nearly in tears.<br />I'm sorry, the not-sorry-at-all woman said, waving around my grandmother.<br />I could lose my job.<br />We want it for a <em>funeral</em>, my brother said.<br />It's against the law, the woman said.<br /><em>Look</em>, I said, not very nicely,<br /><em>what if we just take it for a day and bring it back to you AFTER the funeral? How would THAT be?</em><br />I could be fined $10,000, the woman said.<br />She would not be shamed.<br />She stood with that beautiful photograph of my smiling grandmother<br />clutched in her hands<br />safely behind the scanner,<br />safely out of our dangerous reach.<br />There was nothing, save violence,<br />to be done, so we took my mother's hands<br />and said, Come away, come away,<br />and left the photograph, the icon,<br />my dear sweet grandmother,<br />just over the counter,<br />just beyond our grasp,<br />in the most terrible store in the world.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120779002053394352.post-61063732674901994952008-02-24T12:19:00.000-08:002008-02-24T12:43:13.936-08:00one Sunday while birdingNature was my church today. I am so tired I can hardly lift my arms. I carried a friend's laser printer over to the office and then went birding for four hours, which involves holding binoculars up around the level of one's face, as you doubtless all know... Hence the arm-weariness. I reached my one hundredth bird sighting today on my European list. There were three finches, linnets, pecking for worms on a lawn. I am excited about this.<br /><br />But I went birding with a Real Birder a few weeks ago, and that made me realize a few things. I am too focused on seeing new things, for one thing--my only record of birding expeditions have been these lists where I record each new sighting. Mike was like, don't you take field notes? and I was like, huh? He has this wee notebook in which he writes down everything he sees, and notes where, and how many of them there were, and sometimes he sketches them. So you have this record of everything that was in a place, all mixed together. And--this was particularly mind boggling--he made me leave the Collins guide in the CAR. We'd refer to it later, he said, and wandered off. It turns out that you're not supposed to waste time birding referring to the bird book and staring fruitlessly between the page and the feathered creature. You're supposed to just look really hard and--of course--take field notes. You identify it later. In the moment, on the strand, in the dunes, in the thicket, you just look. You look so hard that you can remember it later. And you write it down.<br /><br />That takes a particular kind of attention, a particular kind of gaze. I bought myself a field notes book today, in honor of Mike, and went out to the sea alone, and wandered around for four hours in ever changing weather, and watched birds, and took field notes. Here are some random and lovely sightings:<br /><br />The high high sea was making all the sea birds reckless and crazy. Ten long-tailed ducks, Arctic ducks, were honking and flying about in a group of males, and then landing like bouncing water skiers then diving, then coming up and flying by again. They are white ducks with domed heads and chocolate and black and pink patches of color. Two long curling pintail feathers fan over their backs. Spectacular ducks.<br /><br />A kestrel was struggling fiercely to stay in one precise hovering spot in a strong wind, waiting for the mice to show themselves below.<br /><br />A sea gull flapping by suddenly shook its body like a dog coming out of a pool, a sudden silly shimmy.<br /><br />The ponds were full of hundreds of waders and ducks. Oystercatchers huddled in a tight black and white mass with their red beaks poking out of the chiascuro. Teal scooped for food--the males have brown heads with green patches rimmed with yellow. The females are clad in a boring variegated brown but have a bright green speculum on the side of their wing. Four enormous shelducks, which are actually related to geese, towered above the smaller birds.<br /><br />A flock of goldeneye on the river Esk were diving and diving, some of the males doing this display they do where they tilt their heads all the way back and then pump their necks up and down. It's ridiculous and delightful. The males' heads appear jet black, but in the light they shimmer jet green or metallic purple.<br /><br />After a sudden squall, a full double rainbow spanned the sky, their ends planted in the waders' pond and in the restless sea.<br /><br />That's it. Those are my sightings, and the sea itself was like the sea in my dreams, full and restless and steely grey. Things to dream upon, things to sustain me for the week ahead.kingfisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11865799937534392499noreply@blogger.com5