210919 Vineyard Ineffable

sept. 21 september, equinox, full moon, Rain's baby is coming any day now.

"if you listen you can hear the waterfall in the blue jay call / and you search to glimpse wings in the leaves" 

(from angels and mustard seeds, my - see footnote *** )

*****

The Alexander teacher says "let your feet release to the earth ... "

I have only "reached" my feet into the earth imagining roots, as connecting to the energy of gravity, the magnet of the earth. But to release - it was an epiphany and its novel idea of letting go, letting the earth take, draw, open and accept, was a joy of realization. It didn't work well in the city: there was something selfish and destructive in releasing pain or waste into that burdened earth. But here I release my pain and broken energy knowing that the earth, the mountain, accepts and will transform it, draws it in like rain and corpses to remake into new energy, fodder and new life. *

*****

We have returned to the vineyard. We were five and a half weeks in Toronto, went to the hospital twice more. First time to the ER - got pills and were sent home. The second time we had arranged with a fortunate contact to meet her colleague in the ER and they would admit me. The colleague was a neurologist. He arranged admission and the next day began investigations into my back pain. I was there five days and they ran tests and gave me inadequate meds, but they were thorough and caring. We learned that there was but one thing wrong with me, head to toe, a compromised disc in my lower spine, but that was not the cause of my back pain and numbness, or hand and foot spasms. This disc is affecting my right leg, weakening it, but the nerve specialist was confident that exercise would probably heal the damage. He also said it was highly unlikely to be causing the higher back pain and numbness. Having exhausted our medical resources, K and I decided we might as well be here. In addition, Indre and Robin are gone back to school in person and we consider it unsafe, because of covid, for us to remain at the Etobicoke house, and my pain has been getting better since the fourth of September, (I'm not sure yet why.) It is wonderful to be back.

*****

The chorus of a song: how have I lived with music these sixty years and not seen what is a chorus. It is abstract, like a dance, a painting, or an instrumental piece of music  - a collection of words that as a whole, as a chant, presents an unworded message. I think I have struggled against this notion of the ineffable, the expression of ideas and feelings that eludes language, that perhaps transcends language - why is that? And yet haven't I given lip-service to this concept - no, I don't think I have - I have kept silent. I have persisted in thinking that there must be words for it all. Words for the meaning of the dance or to describe the feeling we call "joy" as we smile at the sun, at the lake in the storm. Paintings, ceramics, have I ever really "seen" them? I love many paintings; I even own an abstract or two, but I wonder if I process the experience through language rather than letting my heart, my imagination (Wallace Stevens), my other eyes, see it. But I have felt such love and joy in arts of all kinds. I must nevertheless have doubted the validity of the ineffable, devalued my psychological and emotional reactions to it, or was in denial about them, as if the "merely subjective" (my quotation) was somehow less, well, valid. The irony is that I am an artist, and a collector of beautiful things, my Staffordshire collection, the art on my walls, the clothes I wear. They are full of meaning! The joy I feel to see or touch them: it is real, of the real world. There is the sound of water in the blue jay's song, and the sound of waves when the wind blows in the trees on the ridge. ...  Why do I feel as if I learned all this once and now I have to learn it again, on some other level?

It is surreal here on the mountain. This view of thé Missisquoi Valley, the witches, and the barn, which I have looked at daily for months, photographed hundreds of times, suddenly, after five weeks' absence, becomes three-dimensional, real and unbelievable. Like Wallace Stevens' "...alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala", this valley, though not alien at all, but viscerally familiar, is so "point-blank ... and actual" as to be transcendent in its myriad dimensions. ** The chorus, the ineffable, and so, one turns to Wallace Stevens.

*****

I didn't have room to pack my Staffordshire lion, although I had hoped to bring him. Then during my last walk-through of the house I picked him up and plunked him, unwrapped, on top the the stuff in the back seat (mostly soft clothes bags). He is not very beautiful, but I love him. Sophie, the puppet who visits at #48 at Christmas, says she likes ducks.

  

*****

In the mornings the valley is filled with sleeping clouds. I am so glad to be back. Thank you for visiting. Just let fall what doesn't fit, take what you like. Be well. The pandemic is not over.

Mumma Yaga

*****

* The Alexander Technique, developed by Frederick Alexander, circa 1890.

** Wallace Stevens, Arrival at the Waldorf, 1942.

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*** Poem, MY.

angels and mustard seeds

angels:

sometimes these 

messengers show up in trees,

autumn colours burning

and of course they are winged

they come more rarely as bears, growling, brown

and woolly

always they bring her nearer

listen

if you listen you can hear the waterfall in the blue jay call

and you search to glimpse wings in the leaves

mustard seeds:

i have a pearl necklace

my grandmother gave to me

the jewel is a mustard seed

for faith

in yellow flowers in summer fields

the child never gave it a thought

now sometimes i cannot hold it tight enough

in december

i think of bears in caves

of seeds in earth

of sleeping underground and under snow

she is so sleepy, you see

it makes me tired too

but i'm mortal and

the house i live in has no hearth

so i light candles

for sun-return

the tree outside the window has no leaves they are swept up

but its seeds have

wings