Sunday Faerie Tale

Posted on January 6, 2013 by pacienciapaciencia

Slumber

On my bed, I have a grey wool blanket with a herringbone pattern, an orange ticking-striped down comforter, a white cotton blanket and an old Indian cotton blanket. All of these magic elements of my bed were piled and curled around my sleeping body early this morning, in the grey light of the beginnings of sunrise, when I peeked my head out from between pillows decorated with abstract Queen Anne’s Lace, and gazed out that window that I gaze out of each morning.

Yesterday at sunrise, my neighbor’s windows glowed golden in the blue morning light. A beautiful feature of this much snow is that, in those moments before dawn, the scant amounts of light, the photons just drifting through the air from the east, cast a deep cobalt tone to the landscape. Everything is blue and black, and electric light is golden-bronze, held in place for mere moments, each morning.

This morning, however, snow was on the horizon; Icould see it coming in ombre grey folds of clouds up above the horizon, behind the trees. Layers, as if folds of a giant blanket, grew darker grey the further out I looked with my early morning, sleep-weighted eyes. In the air, I could see not light, but snow.

Pulling on two pairs of tights, one wool and one polyester, a wool skirt, a tank top, a wool shirt, a shawl, a vest, jacket and a hat, I took myself ice skating out onto Upper Hadlock Pond. It was very early, not even 7, and there was no one else at the pond. In that early morning moment, when all was very grey-white, no shadows at all because there was no sun, all was silent and amazingly colorful in its simple shades of green, white, grey and black. Mere moments later, an ice fisherman appeared with his sled and buckets, said good morning and that he was surprised we were the only people there, and stomped off across the ice to his favorite fishing spots.

As I skated around, getting my skating legs back (it always takes me a few moments) and skating across a huge rough patch that is the only path to the beautifully clear and smooth skating area, I stopped-and-started my way across, noticing the lumpiness of the ice, getting my skates caught in patches of ice-snow, noticing how the waves had frozen in place, and that bubbles, forced up as those waves froze, had frozen, too, into these strange circles that look like white eyeballs or lilypads floating at the surface.

This photo is from the other day, when the sun was shining…

Onward into the morning quiet went I, paying much attention to where I was going so that I didn’t fall like I did two days ago. In those early moments, all you could hear was the swishing of skates on ice, and occasionally the most magic of sounds, the shifting and cracking of the lake’s surface. As the ice cracks and bends, it makes a deep gurgling noise not unlike the sound wine makes when poured out the neck of the bottle.

The ice sighed today, heavy with the weight of water moving underneath it, over the dam at the other end of the pond. The ice sighed as I skated over it, and tiny cracks formed alongside my feet as I slid over and around it, making curlycues and stripes and curved lines with my steel blades. Sometimes the sighing and cracking spooked me: especially when a crack happened quickly and I watched it form in the blink of an eye next to my feet.

In the eerie stillness of this early morning, when the sky was grey and white, and the trees deep green and bronze, and the ice white, myself and the ice fisherman were black against a stark landscape. Parkman Mountain peeked over the tops of the trees, now completely coated in snow and dotted with the tallest of trees. It was at this moment that the scant snowflakes that started moments before transformed into huge pillow-like flakes that fell with the rapidity of a rainstorm onto myself and the fisherman, my silent companion on the ice. As I skated, snowflakes became caught in my eyelashes and stuck to my lips. The snow fell, fell, fell around me but there was no wind so it drifted, and sank, through the air from sky to pond’s surface. The snowflakes were huge and seemed to be held in the air, as if they were tiny feathers delicately drifting downward toward the center of the Earth.

I stopped skating for a few moments and just listened. One of my favorite things about snowstorms is their silence: you hear nothing. This morning was no exception: I stood on my skates, still, listening to nothing, ears echoing in that silence. I stared into a little finger sized cove on one end of the pond, watching the snow fall, listening to the silent air, noticing how the branches of the pine trees looked like the bronchi of our lungs, watching them catch the snowflakes in their boughs. Caught in the moment, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, and not able to look away, became very emotional and breathless.

As the snow continued to fall, and the landscape became more fairy-tale like, and I was imagining all kinds of things happening as they would in faerie stories, and contemplating my life and the many interesting things that have happened and what it all means when one catches yourself in beauty for a moment at 7:30am on a Sunday morning, I began to realize that I could no longer distinguish my skate marks from the cracks in the ice. For a few more minutes, I spun around in large circles, holding myself up on my right foot and then my left, holding my hands above my head in a circle, bending my knees and straightening them, and slowly made my way back across the lake to the crossing point. For one last moment, I stood staring at Parkman Mountain again, now shielded from view by falling silent snow, and crossed the bumpy, crunchy ice back to the mouth of the pond. I skated over the pocked patches of ice, drawing more curls in the snow with my skates, dancing as best I could without falling. For a moment, I sat on the ice, on top of my mittens, taking off my skates and looking out at the landscape that was steadily filling with snow. Once again, silent, no sound save the swish of snowflakes falling around my ears.

I realized that, next time, I need to leave my boots upside down, for, as I was skating, they, too, had filled up with snow.

Winter Storm Advisory

Posted on December 27, 2012 by pacienciapaciencia

View from my living room window

I thought I would take a walk today, but nature had other plans: the first blizzard of this season, pouring down snow, blowing fiercely through trees and around houses in this tiny town. The snow has been falling now for several hours, and the wind is fierce, loud, tearing. It sounds as if it will rip the roof, or at least the shingles, off the house and open up my little home to the elements. It is cold, and wet and harsh: a real Maine winter’s day.

Tire tracks in snow

As I sit here, writing, listening to the icy wind, the sounds of pieces of ice being thrown down my street, through tree branches, decorating the wood of trees and the steps of houses with squishy-squashy piles of snowy mush, the darkness of a winter’s day hangs at the edges. Today is a day where it will never really get light, despite our steady march toward the light again, now that the solstice is passed.

Trees

Last night was a cold, clear night in which the moon hung like a small, round beacon, tall in the sky. My friend came to my studio last night to tell me to come outside and look at the moon. We stood on the porch and gazed at our satellite – perfect and white-grey in the nighttime, framed by the glimmering glow of two planets. Later, after an amazing Italian-Greek-Maine style pasta dinner, after mouthfuls of anchovies and olives and raw garlic and American Parmesan cheese (the only type we could find in the Pine Tree Market last night), we went outside again, bundled up in jackets and hats against the cold, and held high-powered binoculars in steady hands to look at the man in the moon. He disappears when you look too closely at him: then all you can see are the waterless seas, the craters, the mountains, all of those features thousands of miles away, yet, so close.

We listened to the glug-glug-glug of a wine bottle pouring Bordeaux into old glasses, holding the neck of the bottle up to our ears, closely. I climbed upstairs and looked at all of his garlic held in suspension above the room, in the rafters of the roof. I looked at a red and black and white wool blanket over a bed that has never been used, stared at two red owls, swooping in suspended animation, hanging from the ceiling. I gazed upon piles of old National Geographic magazines, perfectly tied into bundles, stacked in a corner. On the floor are seeds of basil and dirt from the garlic heads: all fallen from ceiling to floor since they were put up in the fall. That room smells of dry pine, garlic, basil and sage. At night it is golden, full of light, and the windows are dark black, staring out into the sky, out at the moon.

Do you see the shape of my neighbor’s house reflected in the water droplets?

What a place of magic this is, this mysterious home of mine. This place that is full of people yet feels so empty. This place whose stillness is magnified on days like today as snow falls and you see no one move, knowing that everyone, like you, is inside, being cozy, staring out the windows at the day as it passes, wondering what will happen, if the power will stay on, if there are enough candles, if the blankets are warm enough.

There is a beauty and a strength to stillness: to the perception of self that comes when one is alone as the blizzard rages outside. To the awareness of one’s body sitting on a white couch, under a pink blanket, coffee brewing on the counter to your left. Wind howling, sky white-grey, oak tree branches black; even the birds seem to be hunkered down today as I haven’t seen them. Maybe it’s time to go outside and visit the birch trees down on the Sound, to see how they are faring on a day like today. Or maybe, sit and sew awhile, and see how the time passes.

Rooftop, Trees, Fireside….

Winter Rain

Posted on December 10, 2012 by pacienciapaciencia

If You’re Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow

It is a very rainy day today in Northeast Harbor, Maine….we were supposed to get snow but got rain instead. The sky is grey, murky, no sky to be seen, really. The wind is blustery and gets underneath your clothes, no matter how much wool or rain gear you pile onto your self against it. Walking, you feel buffeted around by forces greater than yourself; pushed here, pulled there, by the invisible force that is the wind off the sea.

Apocalyptica is perfect winter rain music….

I just took care of the birds for the morning, talked to the crows and bluejays a while, watched the little chickadees and spied for my woodpeckers, the momma and poppa that I love to see each day, but they seem to be out of town. Maybe they are all cozied up in a nest somewhere? I always feel badly for the birds on days like today: their birdseed must get all mushy by the afternoon. I wonder if they know to come in and grab it while it’s fresh, when it’s raining.

Welcome Home Cowboy Boots

As I sit here, on this old Afghani rug that I have carted with me for so many years, its colors, red, blue, pink, orange, worn and loved ever so much by me and by others who have sat upon it, I stare out my window at the morning: grey light, slightly tinted with blue. The power lines outside my window divide the view into perfect thirds: horizontal black lines across the window. The wind blows, moving them slightly up, then down. The trees, leafless, move in the distance. The houses appear all shades of grey today with no sunlight upon them to distinguish colors in the clapboards that encase their skeletons. The birds are now quiet, there are few cars, only the tick of the clock that hangs on the kitchen wall, and the sound of the wind as it whips around my home.

If I hold you with my emotions,

you’ll become a wished-for companion.

If I hold you with my eyes,

you’ll grow old and die.

So I hold you where we

both mix with the infinite.

– Rumi

Frozen, and Friction-Free

Posted on December 2, 2012 by pacienciapaciencia

“Do you have skates yet?” a voice said over the phone, while I was sitting and polishing silver at my table at the craft fair.

“It’s funny you should ask that, because I was just shopping for skates the other day, and was planning on getting some this week!”, I said, smiling.

“Well. We should get you a pair. I am going to come and get you and then we are going to go skating!”, he said.

I smiled, and said, “yes!”.

I was wearing a green dress with blue and pink striped tights, a beautiful but crazy jewel-toned scarf my friend Seze made me years ago, and the requisite cowboy boots: not your typical ice-skating outfit. In fact, my friends who stood there chatting and eavesdropping on my conversation said,”you are going to go skating in that beautiful dress?” They also said, “it would be perfect! You out there on the ice, with the fabric floating around you as you skate!”

So. I called him back and asked him to go my house and pick up corduroys and a better shirt, and he told me he’d dig through his attic and find something. It is the small battle of two stubborn people, two people used to running their own show, trying to figure out how to do things together….I pull, he pulls, one of us wins. He did, and when I climbed into the truck, he informed me that we had clothes enough for five people and that I had to wear everything, all at once.

Pulling off the side of the road, at the edge of Acadia National Park, near the closest to Bar Harbor entrance to the Carriage Roads, he disappeared into the woods, through the trees to the edge of the beaver pond, frozen two inches thick with ice that been consolidating for the last week or two. A few days ago, we stopped at the same spot, and he grabbed a cordless drill from the floorboards and we went and measured the ice; then, too thin, but yesterday, perfect. I could see him, crouched at the ice’s edge, lacing up his skates as I waited for a moment when no cars came by to take off my green dress, braving the cold air with my almost naked body, naked save my tights and undies and socks, pulling an old striped wool sweater over my head and warm pants over my tights, laughing at myself as the air whipped around my body, blowing my hair all about my head as I adjusted the scarf and zipped up my jacket over my new, skate-friendly outfit.

At the ice’s edge, on a large shelf of bumpy granite, I laced up my new skates, pulling the laces as tight as I could, remembering my days as suburban roller-blade champion. I was instructed to scoot out onto the ice on my butt, and then stand up. So, I did. Not falling, I held his hand and we slowly, slowly, skated out over the ice.

Clear ice, with white bubbles frozen in its surface. Clear ice, with leaves and lily pads suspended beneath my feet. Clear ice, with trees and two beaver dams poking through it. Lightly carving curves into the surface with our skates, marking that we had been there, on that ice.

As I got my bearings, my ice-legs if you will, he let go of my hand and I skated on my own, slowly at first, but then picking up speed as I felt more comfortable, feeling myself fly over the ice, smooth as silk under my skates. I found that if you barely turn your foot, you can spin in delicious circles and not fall. If you bend your knees, you get more power to push forward, and you can lean quite far over without the fear of falling. You can move your legs out or together and control your motion; you can skate over bumpy patches and pretend you are on a bike, cycling over gravel, using the motion of your body to absorb shock and keep going.

We skated to the edge of the pond and I saw flat granite pieces going down into the ice; this place must have been a quarry years ago, before the Park gained the land and absorbed it. The granite, flat as a blade, covered with lichen and mosses, its smoothness broken only by a small fir tree growing at the ice’s edge. I was struck, again, by the beauty of this place and inspired to make more beautiful things based on the beauty that I was witnessing.

We then skated to the opposite edge of the pond, where the darkness of late afternoon had begun to creep through the trees, casting black shadows out onto the smooth surface. There was a half moon of clear, black ice near the water’s edge, and then a cast of ice so different. It was clear that the water had refrozen there, over a bit of time, for under the surface were cross-hatched rectangles of white ice crystals, frozen under and over each other, like a basket woven of ice. Creeping together and out over one small section of the pond, looking like tiny tiles laying on top of each other, turned this way and that, out into the center of the pond. Here and there dotted with trees or grasses poking out, the white cast of ice spread before you like a road to follow, albeit bumpily, with your skates. I came back over and over to skate on that section of the pond, just to appreciate the amazing processes of nature that can happen as temperatures warm and dip at the beginning of winter.

After a while of skating in huge circles and small circles, of watching someone much better at skating than I do cross-overs and figure eights, of remembering that scene in Fantasia when the faeries turn the landscape to winter, of attempting to balance on right foot and then left, of realizing I didn’t know how to stop, he said, “five minutes?”

I said, “seven!” and then he taught me how to stop.

When we were finished, and sitting on that same granite ledge again, taking skates off and putting shoes on, the dusk was imminent and pensive, shrouding the trees and the pond in an almost tangible cloudiness of early winter: looking out at the trees, their colour changed from the pure green of daytime to a rusty, bronze green as the darkness imbued everything. Looking up, the sky was a blanket of silvery grey clouds, deep and close. The trees’ reflection shimmered on the frozen surface of the pond: all you could discern was a shape of a mass of trees, not the individual trees that you can see on a still day in summer. We walked back to the truck as night fell, darkness coming down from the sky to the earth as another day came to an end.

We finished the day by driving along Somes Sound, gazing out at the lights of houses dotting the waters’ edge on the other side, looking at the toothed silhouettes of the two mountains that line the southern edge of the Sound, watching the trees disappear into the blackness of night.

Deep blue mountains, black water, grey sky: winter.

A Time to Keep

Posted on November 5, 2012 by pacienciapaciencia

“Life isn’t long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege even to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!”

Tasha Tudor

I was just on the top of Flying Mountain with a friend, staring down at Somes Sound and out over the sea to islands beyond. Staring up and out at clouds, one could see layer upon layer of water vapor stretching out to infinity in colours of blue, white, grey, gold, and lavender. The wind blew up the sides of the mountain, pulling copper-colored oak leaves off the trees and buffeting them up and over the granite ledge, up and over our heads as we watched them float. Sitting and staring out at the water below hurtling by as the wind pulled the surface into peaked waves, while, as we sat in a patch of sunshine, everything was warm and almost still.

Being very lucky, I have spent a portion of almost every day lately being a Flaneur, or visual explorer of my new home, this beautiful island of Mount Desert. Another friend told me, a few days ago over dinner, that I was personifying the spirit of writers and artists from Paris from earlier in the century by spending so much time just walking and looking. Imagine my delight in reading about the Flaneur and discovering that photography is also an integral part of the leisure of walking with the intent to observe and note one’s surroundings. To be sure, part of the meditation of walking, of perambulation, is the keen sense of observation, of noticing as many birds, leaves, trees, rocks, etc. as possible and recording them in your brain for the mere moment you catch them. In that moment of saying: I see that crow as it sits on the branch, you forge a small memory and are present in that moment, with that crow and that branch on that day. While yes, the moments are fleeting, the process is deep and valuable.

I have now lived in my little house that floats above the street for exactly two weeks. It feels like I am just now settling in, although I am still thrown off by the furniture of someone else. I am used to a house that is wholly mine, wholly created by my desire to find weird old things, furniture that is comfortable and interesting to sit on, with my pictures on the walls. Here, I have some elements of me but they are on or about someone else’s things. So, it is a transitional place.

I am struggling with all the transitions, all the newness of the present time, but know that it is fleeting and dynamic as is everything else. I know now to forgive myself when I feel lonely or out of place, as that is just part of the process of adjusting to a new town and new people and, ultimately, a new me. A new you is a scary prospect, especially when there is such a personal dedication to that idea.

Sometimes, I feel very alone, and that aloneness I think is scarier because I don’t intend to change it for a while. This choice, this time living here, is about finding myself in the sea of life. About cultivating and creating a life dedicated to artworks and quiet time and time in the woods and by the sea. It sounds simplistic because it is simple: that is the idea. The simplicity of sitting on a picnic table by Somes Sound and then going to the studio to make a pendant inspired by the way the light looks sparkling on the water; that is what this time is about.

A friend told me last night that it is amazing that I got what I want, a place and time to be creative all the time, and that I am enjoying it and doing it. Be careful what you wish for, I always say, because you almost always get it. I wished for this life, and now that I have it, I am spooked by it sometimes. I am spooked by the peace around me, by the niceness of strangers, by the love I feel for this small town, by the love I feel for cooking, for writing, for metalsmithing and knitting and walking and driving around. I have no idea how to cultivate this life for the long term, but have to trust that I will be able to somehow.

I have been looking into the lives of other strange girls, like Vali Myers and Tasha Tudor, and wondering where they harnessed the bravery from that let them lead their lives the way that they did. Did they just find it one night, late, alone in bed or on the porch? Did it come to them early in the morning over coffee or at the kitchen table? Where does the confidence in a sense of self come from? Maybe you just keep going, one foot in front of the other and not worry too much?

Worry is one of my guardian spirits: she is always there, creeping around in circles around myself. In some ways, I welcome her in that I think she has helped me make wise decisions, but sometimes she dominates the thoughts too much and I wonder where Temperance and Confidence are. Perhaps they take a lot of day trips, mini-vacations, and visit me only intermittently. Perhaps I need to create a home that they think is theirs, so that they stick around more and Worry can take some of those day trips out into the country.

My dream is to buy some land sometime next spring (Spring 2014), I hope, and start to build a little house for me and some spaces for gardens and animals. Maybe there will already be a house or a barn there. I wish to invite people there, but that it will always be my place. I don’t know if it is the sadness that is lingering around the sidelines of my mind lately, or the transition into the stillness of winter, but I really feel that I require my own place, a place of space and quiet that will always be mine. When I think of this, the risk of being the witchy lady who lives at the back of a field somewhere, with chickens and alpacas and vegetables and flowers, I worry: what do I think about that?

Eccentricity is this tricky knife’s edge of being true to yourself coupled with a need to not just do things because they are weird and people will take notice. Eccentricity is saying my weirdness is ok, and this is me and always has been so there is no point in suppressing it for a sake of comfort. I feel like, for the first time in my life, I am being true to myself and doing less and making more. I feel very shy around others and am hesitant to express myself in words. Making something, drawing, cooking, is much easier. Writing is much easier: if I could write to everyone then maybe I could actually speak and say what needs to be said, but I think if I started communicating via letters or passenger pigeon that might be a bit odd. I have to work on my tongue-tied nature, that spirit of Worry always there, always saying, “is that the right thing to say? What will they think if you say that?”.

I have been writing of myself lately as if I am a spider molting an old shell, a new one forming in the harshness of cold air and sunlight. I feel like the shell is starting to harden, toughening up here, loosening there, allowing new joints to move and swivel around, but that I am not ready just yet. I am still very delicate and my sense of things very tenuous: as if maybe, now, I can reach out and grasp onto certain things and know them, but that the majority is still yet to be discovered.

A new phase of life, indeed. Life in a Tasha Tudor place where I work with ladies who are jewelers, fiber artists, potters, midwives, yoga teachers, moms, spinners, and who store and can food for winter and order organic vegetables by the pound from local farmers to make organic sauerkraut. A place where the pace is slow but yet the days pass by fast. A place where no matter how cold it is outside, the inside of the studio is warm and I can wear tank tops while forging copper and melting silver into beautiful things. A place where my heart is loosening, slowly, and allowing my own happiness to form without the need to martyr myself to others. A place where boats come from Canada and drop off fresh fish in Maine, where old Victorian houses sit in small towns overlooking still shores in the late autumn.

Paciencia, Paciencia

Have patience, Patience

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