Day 265 (only 100 more days to go - woo hoo!)

Have you ever loved a crazy lunatic of a black dog?
Have you ever grown an erythrena from a lucky bean seed until it is 10 ft tall?
Have you ever killed a flock of starlings by accident by putting out warm water for them to bathe in, in the middle of winter, so that when they flew off in -20C temperatures, the water on their wings probably froze causing them to plummet to the ground?
Have you ever laughed yourself silly at a funeral?
Have you ever grown a baby in your own body three times, once two babies at the same time?
Have you ever cast the spell of art, showing children how to express themselves with paint and coloured pencils and graphite and clay and wire and papier-maché and all kind of other things?
Have you ever lost your mind, your self, your knowledge of whose breath you are breathing, during sex?
Have you ever spoken in tongues, but not in church?
Have you ever taught your language, so easy in your own head, to children with another language in their heads?
Have you ever cried for so many days that your eyes disappeared?
Have you ever discovered evidence of fireworks in 'your' meadow and hated the perpetrators with all your heart?
Have you ever been accepted into a clan and given another name, from people of another race?
Have you ever been terrified for your life while people threw rocks at you?
Have you ever lived the rollercoaster of the last 55 years on earth?
Have you ever found yourself enchanted, almost every school morning for ten tears, by 1200 students singing Bawo wethu osezulwini (The Lord's Prayer in isiXhosa), with that inimitable South African sun shining on all those heads containing such beautiful music?
Have you ever said something terrible in public and never been able to take it back, to rewind it into your mouth and your memory again?
Have you ever created something no one else has ever created, and been so very proud of it, and then given it happily away?
Have you ever smelt fear?
Have you ever loved someone so much that in that moment you feel as though you will burst into noisy blossom?
Have you ever been struck dumb and wet-cheeked by the beautiful radiance of crimson, golden, carmine-flushed, claret-blushed, vermilion glowing incandescence of autumn trees in New England?
Have you ever sat up with a sick child and earnestly made an agreement with "god or whatever means the good" to willingly die in its place?
Have you ever been capable of cheerfully ringing the neck of someone who hurt your children?
Have you ever embarrassed your children by metaphorically doing just that?
Have you ever taken off on bright new wings after getting divorced?
Have your ever taken a gigantic leap and left your own beloved country for another strange and peculiar one? 
Have you ever felt the delicate thrill of a nuthatch's feet on your hand?
Have you ever stripped your moer (lost your temper utterly) in a public place, like an airport, or an RMV, and been ushered into a little room, offered tea and pleaded with to calm down?
Have you ever made a nest on the couch, settled yourself into it, and read a book all day, from cover to cover, melting into the story, and been surprised and bewildered at the mundane life you were returned to after the final page?
Have you ever fallen in love with a meadow?
Have you ever nearly died from eating a poisonous squash you stole from someone else's field?

Have you ever, on this, the last day of summer, gone swimming in the silvery light of the nearly full  moon in the cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, floated on your back like a mermaid and forgotten which was the sky and which was the ocean?
Have you ever kept a new year's resolution for 265 days?

Day 264

Her messy desk this morning.

Even though she only had to be at school by 11am today, it was still a mad rush and suddenly the time was 10.15 and she hadn't left yet! 

The bed had been too comfy, sleep too inviting.  Then her morning tea, sweetened with honey and cooled down with milk, had been so delicious that she had had to sit and savour it.  Outside the sun had beckoned, the birds had needed feeding, the black dog had made a request for her to throw a yellow ball in the meadow, the piggie had required dandelion leaves, her favourite food at the moment, which are becoming scarce since her husband mowed down her constant supply in the overgrown lawn. 

The ancient cat had miaowed for a good old neck and ear-scratch, and after that for her vitamin-enriched treats, which she takes so carefully from the woman's fingers, one at a time, so sweetly.  All the indoor plants had suddenly decided that now was the time when they needed watering, they absolutely could not wait until the evening.  The washing in the drier had mumbled something which sounded like "...folding" although that had been something she could easily ignore, not being a living being, and therefore not as needy.

She made a colour-wheel for her grade 7 classes, who are doing beautiful graduated abstract watercolour paintings inspired by Paul Klee, and then tonight she drew a man and a woman arched around the wheel, holding one another by the feet, like elephants with their tails, spinning around the colourful world.
 

Day 263

Delightful little girl on the shuttle bus in front of me last Saturday.

She was so dear, but I was not impressed with her father, who bit her pigtails and pulled them with his teeth until she cried out, which he repeated several times while we were waiting in the queue for the bus.   He had a pinched face and a scrawny body, and I took an instant dislike to him.  His other daughter was in the arms of her grandfather, his wife's father, and she looked so sad and solemn that her expression led me to think badly of her father.  Perhaps this little thing has enough spirit to survive this man.  I really hope I am wrong about him.

I heard an horrific report on the radio today about sex trafficking in America, and about the big campaign to shut down the adult services department on craigslist.org, which has actually achieved that demand, it has been shut down. Children as young as 11 and 12 (and many others of course) were being bought and sold each day on this site (and I suppose other sites now too).

Apparently the internet has changed the way prostitution works, so that now it is not just women walking the streets, but a client can order someone to be brought to him, just as you would order a book or an item of clothing from an online store.  Which makes it much harder to police, even though it seems as though it has never really been policed properly, mostly a blind eye is turned, on this, the "oldest profession in the world".

A while back Tim and I watched a shattering British movie called London to Brighton, about just such a situation, where an older prostitute (about 24) is ordered by her pimp to take a young runaway girl to an old man and how what ensues thereafter leads to them running for their lives, jumping on a train to Brighton.  Absolutely brilliant and mindbogglingly shocking.

We can thank our lucky stars to have had good parents, to have lived the lives we have lived, because that is all it is, luck.  To be born above or below the railway tracks, is it karma, or just fate?

But even though all these terrible and terrifying things are happening, we still have to get up each morning, we have to live our everyday lives with some measure of happiness, we have to keep the light above and the dark below, ignoring neither.

So here is my symbol for all those girls and women,  finding the door unbolted, the pimps horribly dead, swimming away from the cruelty, away from the suffering, coasting through the blue blue water...
Light and dark, up and down, orange and blue, who are you? 

I ran 2.12 miles (3.41km) in 28 minutes today, hard going, last km easier. (8.12 minutes per km, which is lousy!)




 

Day 262

Three sisters.

I noticed these three spectators while watching the amazing Scottish band Albannach perform in the Piper's Pub yesterday, which was basically an open-sided tent.  (This link does not do their presence justice, but does give an idea of the sensual enchantment of their music.)  We made a mistake in where they were playing so we arrived too late to stand close to the "stage" area and when I found myself being crowded in, the beginnings of being squashed feelings came over me and I had to get out, so I made my way around to the back, where hardly anyone was standing, and I found that I had a good view of the band, albeit from behind! 

I think the photograph captures the characters of these three very well, or so I imagine.  The middle child, on the left, is practical and stubborn, not really moved by the music, just there because she has to be.  The eldest, in the middle with the turquoise top, is the responsible one, and thinks she is grownup compared to the others.  She kind of shepherded them into this area behind the band, and then copied what the other adults were doing, and whistled with the best of them at the end of every number!  The youngest one on the right is the dreamer, look at how expressively she is dancing, she's just lost in the rhythm of it, spellbound, so sweet, reminded me of my Jessie-Jess, and my Ems, when they were little, and always dancing at these kinds of events, oblivious to everything but the music.

The hand on the left belongs to this gorgeous rangy woman, like the littlest girl all grown up in a few years' time.  She was also caught up in the sensual sexual emphatic cadence of this big drumming piping movement of sound.

I haven't run for a while now, but will run tomorrow morning again.  Late this afternoon I went to the beach thinking that if I didn't manage to swim I would run.  Although the water was cold (63F, 17C) I couldn't resist the waves, a gift from Hurricane Igor.  I swam and boarded for about 45 minutes, crashing my body through huge waves, tumbled by a few, catching many, some so strong that the surge almost washed me off my board, forced out at last by the thought that if I stayed in any longer my feet probably wouldn't follow my brain's orders to walk me out on to the beach, they were that numb!

When I walked in the door it was already evening and Tim looked up from his book and asked, fairly placidly, "Where on earth have you been?  I was wondering where you were because it's nearly dark and it's cold."  And I was suddenly so happy to think how lucky I am, that I could do this, going off on my own to swim in the crazy waves, that I am a free woman, compared to the tyranny under which so many women in the world live.  I didn't have a husband who said I should stay at home to make dinner, or to clean the house, or to wash his back, or even because it was dangerous.  He worried a little about me when he realised how long I had been gone, but that was all.

Early on in America, I remember asking a new acquaintance if she wanted to come with me on a cold winter's Sunday afternoon to Borders Bookstore, one of my favourite places, where there are thousands of wonderful books, and you can sit in easy chairs and read for as long as you like, or drink delicious hot chocolate and chat in the warmth of their little coffee shop.  She was all excited and said she would love to come, but a few minutes later she phoned me to say that she was sorry, she couldn't after all, her husband wouldn't let her.  I was puzzled, "Your husband won't let you?  Just tell him you're coming with me for a couple of hours."   She replied that no, she couldn't come, and that was that.  I was utterly shocked.

The silvery sea and the darkening sky.

Day 261

What they really wear under their kilts.

Tim and I went to the 35th annual Highland Games in New Hampshire, the gathering of the clans, of which there were about 60!  Who knew?  There were literally thousands of men dressed in kilts, with sgian dubhs (daggers) tucked into the top of their socks, highly decorative sporrans and the like.

My mother would have loved it all!  We have Scottish blood and hers ran strong, stirring a love of bagpipe music, highland dancing and of the lochs and misty mountains of Scotland itself. 

I think many of us must share this blood, because so many people I know are touched by bagpipe music, brought to tears by its mournful beauty. (It doesn't take much to bring me to tears, as my children will all attest to).

Watching all these people so splendidly wearing their tartan, bearing their flags, shouting their war-cries as each clan-name was announced, I thought about how human beings have a great need to belong to a group, a clan, a family, something to love, to fight for, to be proud of, to make them proud of you.  (The announcer went through the clans alphabetically, and I had to stifle laughter when the public address system blared forth, "MacNipple!" to loud applause and battle-cries.  I think it must have been McNichol, but I had funny pictures in my head.)

I have adopted Massachusetts as my home and feel pride when I hear that we have the highest standard of education in the whole country, when I take visitors into Boston on the harbour water taxi, seeing that skyline that is now part of my idea of home, driving home to my little town which I love.  But it is nothing like my deep gut knowledge of my true country, the country of my heart, my roots, my Table Mountain, my Indian Ocean, my Great Karroo, my dry summer earth, my rainy winter streets.

And how easy it was long ago for people to feel this great bond with a locality, because they were born there, lived their lives there, and died in the same place.  Whereas someone like me (and of course I am not alone, this is a common occurrence, especially nowadays) is torn into several pieces, being a South African of mainly British, Swedish and Scottish descent, now living in America.  So when Maureen MacMullen, a Scottish singer, sang the national anthems of the three main countries represented at the games, God Bless our gracious Queen, "because Scotland is still part of the United Kingdom", Oh Canada, for all the Canadians taking part, and of course The Star-Spangled Banner, I felt some kind of affinity with at least two of those anthems.  And I missed of my own national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel 'iAfrika, wrought from four languages, a composite of ideas, so much pain and injustice and long years before it became the official anthem. And so much a part of my personal growth, when I was a teacher at Nombulelo, and learned so much myself.

There was a Mass Highland Fling, which I could see only vaguely, as the dancers were behind some gathered clans, but the sound of that music brought back the familiarity of those steps and gestures, and my limbs wished to join them.  I actually danced at the Highland Games in Scotland and won a silver medal when I was eight years old.  And when the Canadian Mounties Pipe Band struck up Scotland the Brave, I had to put on my sunglasses while tears poured down my cheeks.

The whole day my mother was with me, her warm arm around me as the sun on my back, her strong smiling voice singing out the words for my ears alone,  "Land of my high endeavour, Land of the shining river, Land of my heart forever, Scotland the Brave!"

Day 260

Mist on the fields this evening.

Doing the accounts this morning, opening all the envelopes with the beautiful little wooden letter-opener that my dad made me, I was enfolded again in that love, that great grand love he had for his children. 

My father had such energy for life, for beauty.  In that head of his was confusion and bewilderment about certain things, but always a deep ethical knowledge of right and wrong.  When I was a teenager I read an article about a hand-loom used by the Navajo tribe, and asked if he could make me one.  He designed one just from a little picture in a magazine, built it over a weekend and presented me with the finished product.  He helped me learn how to use it and I made a few runners, and even took it to university with me, although I can't remember using it there. He was always willing to spend time with me, to make something, to fix something that was broken, even though he worked so hard. 

When my mother died he was like a planet without a sun, and slowly foundered out of his orbit into confusion and dementia.  But in the early days he busied himself with things that he could still keep his mind on, and one of them was a little box he made for me with the help of his dear friend, my cousin Carol's husband Porti, who is a wood-carver, a maker of beautiful things.  He spent ages in his workshop with him, and eventually sent me this exquisite little lidded box.

It is strange to be at the age where the boys are quite grown up, and are off on their own with their friends, have little desire to spend time with us, these big independent sons who were such dear little tow-headed boys.  Sad to think that we have had our last camping trips with them as boys, gone to our last parties where they were the heroes of the younger set and our hearts swelled with pride at their good behaviour, their sweetness with the little ones.  We are no longer the ones who know the answers to all the questions, we have become "the old toppies", the ones with out-dated ideas, we are not cool anymore.  I know this is the way life works, how it is supposed to be, but tonight is filled with heartache at these thoughts. 

Well, I still teach adolescents, and had such a lovely afternoon class today, with good discussions, sweet students, and creative work inspired by the wonderful magical Marc Chagall.

Maybe this is inspired by him too. 
Waterlilies.

Day 259

My gorgeous daughters a few years ago.

Scenes from my morning:

Desperate attempt to sleep in after going to bed at 1.33pm.

6/05am - Alarm goes off, Tim gets up to wake boys, forgets to turn off alarm.

Set alarm for 8.30am.

The dog has a seizure on my bed.

Clomp downstairs to take dog out, dog and I run back up, jump back into bed, invite sleep into my closed eyes. Maintain foetal position trying to regain warmth of bed from a few minutes' before.

Tim, from bottom of stairs: "I think you'll have to take me to work Anne, because I have to take the car in to the garage and I can't find a ride..  I have to be there by 8.30 for a meeting..."

Clomp downstairs and pull on clothing, there are about 4 flies in the bathroom and I have no idea where they are coming from.  Kill two but two evade me.  Swear at flies and the world in general and drive off to pick up Tim at garage.  Offer Tim to be driver of car, but he doesn't take it up.  Drive car along backroads to Tim's work, Tim telling me the contents of a reputable magazine article surrounding the not-so-pious Taliban and things that they get up to.  Wonderful topic of conversation.

But the day did get better and reached a zenith in the middle.  My oldest American friend Mary and I went to beautiful Rockport, had lovely lunch, amazing conversation, wonderful shopping afterwards, all for my birthday treat!  She bought me a top and a long cardigan which are possibly two of the most beautiful pieces of clothing I have ever owned.   She said Joan (my mother) would have approved.

I had just recently met Mary when my mother and father came to visit that very first year we lived in Winthrop.  They were already in their 80's, and made their brave way across all those oceans to visit us in our strange and difficult first year in another country.  I had decided to invite Mary to tea, and my mother took her aside when I was out of the room, asked her what she thought of "Our Anne" and told her she hoped we would be friends.  Practically ordered her to be!

It was the luckiest thing, us meeting them, as they are like extended family now, Mary having even stood in as the boys' grandmother on several "Grandparents Days" at their elementary schools, when she would come and examine all their work on exhibit, then treat them to lunch, just like a grandmother would have done!  She and Jim also always spoiled the boys with all the "forbidden fruits", ice-cream, soda, KoolWhip, (synthetic cream which is utterly disgusting but which little boys seem to love) and other amazing treats.  They gave the boys a GPS system for their car for their 18th birthday, before we had even bought the car!  So that they would never get lost, her dear boys!

My classy friend Mary.

Later, the day plummeted downhill again.  I had to go to school for a Back to School Night, where the parents come and sit in their childrens' desks, and the teachers rush around to each classroom where they have 10 minutes in which to tell about their subject.  Only they put Art, Theatre and Music together so that we three teachers each have about 3 minutes to give out our handouts, then say a little spiel.

The best times are in the corridors outside with all the other waiting teachers, telling stories, gossiping, laughing at the fact that we all have to drive all the way home, go to bed, then get up tomorrow morning and drive all the way back in time to teach!

Day 258

Rabid Wolf spider dancing with her eggs.

Apparently this little spider is related to the poisonous European Tarantula and so its bite was greatly feared, although it is harmless to people.  According to legend, the only way to save someone bitten by a European Tarantula was to dance the tarantella!  

I didn't run today but rode my bicycle 6.6 miles to take my car to an auto clinic for a service, and then to fetch it again.  The only hill I couldn't climb while still on the bike was our driveway's terribly steep mountain!  Riding is easier than running because of the downhills where you can coast.

I have somewhat lost my nerve with cycling though.  I found it incredibly stressful riding on the road, with just a narrow strip for cyclists, and when a school bus, while passing me, suddenly emitted a loud noise while changing gears, I nearly teetered right off into the gravelly roadside.

Going back to fetch the car this afternoon I rode mainly along the pavement (which is called the sidewalk here, while the pavement is the road) but it is somewhat curtailing as it is full of little dips and holes and uneven patches in general, so my bum was pretty tender by the time I actually got to my destination.  I thought I was going at a riproaring speed, but an elderly couple riding bravely and seemingly unfazed by traffic rushing by, went by me in the opposite direction and then about 10 minutes later came up behind me and sauntered past, completing a 20 mile loop, most probably.

The thing with speed is that when you are older you know what can happen if you fall off.  In graphic detail. 

When I was 35 my dress got caught up in the back wheel spokes while I was hurtling down Cross Street to fetch something from a friend, in the fading light of a beautiful summer's day, resulting in me flying through the aforementioned fading light and crashing to the ground on my left arm, snapping the radius.  Extricating myself from the mangled bike which had landed on top of me somehow, and holding my rapidly swelling broken wing close to my body, I banged on the nearest door with the knuckles of my good arm, until an alarmed man answered and phoned Tim who raced down to fetch me.  At home he sat me down, took off my watch, had to carefully cut off my ring and bracelets, and instructed Stephen to give me honey while he phoned the doctor who told us to meet him at the hospital.  (Emma and Jess had been promised ice-cream, and Emma said, in a very disgruntled voice, "So does this mean we're not getting ice-cream anymore?")

So there is still a metal plate holding the two pieces together, with big bolts that you can feel through the skin, and my arm is a bit crooked, but works very well, apart from the fact that I can't do a handstand on the beach anymore, a feat I only accomplished a few years prior to the fall, so it was a very short-lived accomplishment.

Anyway, this fact prevents me from flying down hills as I was wont to do when I was much younger, which is quite sad.  I hang on the brakes now, and hope against hope that I will remain on the bike the entire way down the hill. 

My dad never really retired, and once when he had been called in for a consultation on a refridgeration job at his old company in Paarden Eiland, he was offered a ride on a big motorbike one of the young engineers had recently bought.  My dad, who must have been in his mid-seventies at the time, was thrilled, as he had ridden a motorbike in his youth, and so he hopped on and off he went.  It was fine until he got on to the freeway, and then, he told me, he lost his nerve, and couldn't even go faster than 70km an hour, and returned to the factory very cautiously, where he handed back the bike with a heavy heart.  He couldn't stop imagining himself falling off, and the damage it would cause his body, and his life.

An image of my hand on the steering wheel of my car.  When you first learn to drive, like the boys have just learned, the feeling you have is incomparable, it is independence, adulthood, the open road, speed, freedom!  And you retain a little of that forever after, especially when you find yourself driving alone with your thoughts, with those old dreams.

Day 257

Silver and gold.

She ran 2 km quite fast before school, although she can't remember the time now.  The sky was sunny with some pretty clouds and the meadow was warm and inviting.

But she had to go to school, where the children made beautiful drawings and paintings, and some were noisy and some were quiet and some were quite lovely and others were difficult, as always.

In the bedroom

The curve of the blue-green wave

He finds in her eyes,

She observes in his body

The contours of the land.

Light finds crows’ feet

Have tracked across their faces

And gravity expresses an interest

In their skin.

The shadows of time

Make haste across the ceiling.

But their  bodies still sing

And thrill to one another.

Outside, swallows swirl

All around the high cables

They move as one, all a-glitter

Deciding  the day of departure.

Inside, now they pull the covers up

Familiar, their bodies settle together

Their  limbs entwined in sleep

Dreaming of the deep snow coming

Day 256

Eastern Blue (Perhaps they are called Eastern Blues because of their blue blue eyes.  If you click on this to make it large it seems to be staring up at the viewer, upside down.)

The loud ringing of the phone caused me to leap out of bed feeling rather confused at 10:10am this morning.  I had drifted back to sleep after barely registering the kiss goodbye, vaguely aware of the house settling into quiet after the morning rush before school and work.

And what amazing dreams, vivid stories peopled by those I knew and strangers I didn't know.  Incredible locations, amazing events, with high energy and excitement so that when I woke up I felt charged and happy and flying!  And so guilty for having slept in like that.  I felt as though I had been caught by my mother doing something wicked!

At the other end of the telephone was the school nurse telling me that Nick was sick and needed to come home.  I had to fetch him.  So I tried to pull myself into the real world, finding clothes, shoes, maybe if I put some earrings in I wouldn't look quite so asleep still!  The dog needed to go out, there was no petrol in the car, but eventually I got there and retrieved my congested son, brought him home and nursed him with nice things on a tray, cold drinks for his temperature, grapes and vitamin C, movies to watch (well, he found those himself) and then I took the black dog for her walk, thinking I would run later, but that of course didn't happen!

So today some images from that walk, in the cooling Eastern Seaboard temperatures of autumn, with a heavy sky above which gave way to rain eventually this evening. 

This little blue-eyed lass has only one antenna.  All the butterflies seemed lethargic today, perhaps their lives are coming to an end, or the weather got them down too.

The evil-berried plant.  These plants just look evil, don't they?  They belong in a fairy story, with an evil prince and a wicked queen, a nasty wizard and a feisty heroine who rescues herself for a change!


I have no idea what this plant is and this is the only place I have ever seen it, so perhaps it is magical.

Queen Anne's Lace and Molly.  I like the contrast of the black and the white and how the tail repeats the line of the stalk.

Symbiosis.
Milkweed with its pods all ready for autumn, and Bittersweet having taken up residence on the milkweed plant. 

Monarch caterpillar.
This was the sweetest little caterpillar that I found on a very runty Milkweed specimen indeed.  They have matching heads and tails, but the end with the longer antennae is the head of the creature.

I decided to help it along and put it on a better, larger, more juicy-leaved plant, so I started to break the stem of the leaf it was on as I didn't want to touch the caterpillar itself in case I hurt it with the chemicals in my skin.  As soon as I put my hand over it to do this, it curled up and played dead. 

I duly picked the leaf with the dead-looking caterpillar and settled it on top of a new leaf on the taller plant.

And I waited for it to come to life again.

And I waited.

I went to throw the ball for Molly for a bit, then came back and yay!  It was alive!  I hadn't killed it.

And then I had a strange interaction with this little organism.  I happened to cough while I was watching it, and it reared its head suddenly  while I was coughing!  It was as though the sound had frightened it!

So I coughed again, and it reared up again.  I thought that it must have ears, but on doing some research later, it seems they don't.  So it must have sensed the noise with its antennae.

I stood there coughing and laughing for about 5 minutes at this beautiful thing, which will hopefully still eat enough, pupate, metamorphose into a Monarch butterfly and then fly 2000 miles to Mexico.

Day 255

Tim photographing the new moon.

I hadn't run for four or five days, and yesterday, walking in the meadow I felt so tired when I thought of running, so patently unable to do it, that I could hardly believe that I can now run 5 km, can run without stopping for 40 minutes! 

I remember for years seeing runners on the road and wondering why on earth they would want to be doing something so stupid, just run along the road, so what?  And now I am one of those people!  Well, not hard-core, no, but I do love it, and when I ran today it was like meeting an old friend.  A bit difficult for the introduction, the first hill, but then settling down to a cup of tea, breathing easily, legs going at a good pace.  I ran my comfort distance, around 3 km, at a pace of 7 minutes 39 seconds per km. 

The only good thing about it becoming cooler as Autumn approaches is that running is easier in the chilly weather.  Otherwise my soul cries out against it!  Tim says that Labor Day is like a switch, as soon as it is over, the temperature drops and leaves begin turning.  And today it only got into the 60's! (16C).

Yesterday while I was sitting on the steps watching Lily on her daily constitutional into the sunny morning, a little hummingbird came blurring past and investigated my orange hair, before checking out the numerous Rose of Sharon blooms.  Not finding much nectar there either, it went to the feeder and drank long and greedily.

Usually you lose them once they leave, but I watched where it zipped off to a branch a little distance away.  The little bird then proceeded to have a good long clean and preen, going into contortions with its long bill stretching across its back, scratching behind its ear with its delicate little claws, checking for hawks, back to its belly, preen, preen, scratch behind the other ear, oh yes, that's good, that's very good, check for hawks, stretch out right wing, as far as you can, yes, good, stretch out other wing, further further, very good.  Quiver tail, check for hawks, Mmmh, that feels much better.   And me, watching all along through binoculars, laughing at the dear little thing.

Apparently this one may be a juvenile, as most of the adults are busy leaving, but the young ones linger sometimes.  And it is difficult to tell whether they are males or females as the baby males' ruby throats haven't grown in yet. 

So I attempted to draw one of these little creatures, and have decided that it is impossible really, they are like the ocean, impossible to convey something which never really keeps still.

Day 254 (111 days to go!)

Flying

Standing in a flower-bed below my window-feeder, I photographed chickadees this morning.  Not one of them was in focus, but I love the feeling of these images, ephemeral, joyous little birds!

I still haven't run, but went to the meadow for an hour with Molly this morning.  It amazes me that a small rectangle of earth which doesn't belong to me, is a source of such delight and wonder every day.

It's like a long marriage, this little tract of land, a voluntary confinement in this arena, through all the seasons of life, in the rain and the snow and the wind and the sun, with a promise in every bud, with storms and dark clouds, and also the blessing of a blue sky filled with bountiful white clouds.

It's the wildness of fierce creatures roaming in the night, the snorting powerful beauty of the muscled white-tailed deer, the delicate creative beauty of a mockingbird nest, the whinnying call of the screech-owls communing.

It is a field of desire everywhere, the green desire for growth, the force that sets the continuation of the species. A hawk patrols the air and sometimes there is death with blood and fur or feathers.  There is thick brush all along the perimeter, some with thorns.  There are little secret passages here and there, some into the dark forest, some short-cuts to the other side.  There is a long view and a short view.  Suns and moons, stars and shadows.

And a magical hummingbird herself.

Day 253

Molly waiting impatiently for Lily's food. (note the posture, every muscle tensed, the ears forward and ready, and how her legs have slid further and further away from her body :-))

You just have to laugh sometimes, even when you are crying on the other side of the laughter.  Lily the ancient cat is definitely on her way out now, I really believe this.  She didn't eat at all yesterday and couldn't seem to drink, she kept us all awake at times through the night with her yowling, and this morning in pity I gave her the water from a tin of tuna, which she suddenly lapped down like crazy!  I filled the tin again and again and then squeezed out the water into her saucer, and she kept lapping happily, and when I left for school she was lying ensconced on the carpet looking fine! 

The boys phoned me to tell me that when they got home they gave her chicken which she wolfed down, and that she had eaten all her food as well!  But still, she is skin and bone and big avocado eyes, and I fully expect her imminent demise.  But I laugh at Molly, and I laughed at Lily who whacked me with her paw when I was getting her bowl to clean and fill with food this evening.  She thought I was bringing the food and lifted her paw to tap my hand in an irritated way when I picked up the bowl instead of putting it down!

I felt rather useless this afternoon as an authority figure, with three crazy hormone-raging teenaged girls who got into that giggling nutty mood together, feeding each other's frenzy, until my art room rang with their mad laughter.  I suppose I should have been angry with them, and got them all to sit at separate tables, but I usually see their side too, it was quarter to five on a Friday afternoon and at their age I would most likely have felt exactly the same, and it is such fun to laugh like that with your friends, all together, the happiest you'll ever be, probably.  They were not being belligerent at all with me, in fact they kind of treated me as a fellow conspirator, which role I had to keep on rejecting.  They just couldn't seem to help themselves, and the situation was compounded by the presence of two older boys, the only other students in the room. 

This is the little blue couch which Markie gave us 5 years ago.  It is old now and the large seat cushion kind of gradually leaves its place against the back of the couch, sliding forward uncomfortably for the people sitting on it.

But, as a place to read, for just one person, with your back against the big pillow on the right, the soft orange blanket to put over your legs if you get chilled, it is the best nest in the world!  Your body sinks down in in a very delicious way, and you waft away into the world of your book, just like that!  If occasionally you look up distractedly, your gaze floats over birds flitting to and fro around the feeder, or vaguely notices afternoon light reddening the tall pines.

Day 252

Sun.

My back is much much better, I slept and dreamed and thought amazing thoughts that I should remember in the morning but of course they had floated away when I tried to retrieve them.  Still not better enough for a run, still a little stiff and the pain hiding just under the surface somewhere, so I walked again with the black dog, in the field full of little white butterflies which are called Eastern Blues, for some reason, as I have mentioned before.

The boys have their own car and their licenses and off they go.  But sometimes, you still have to rescue one of them, the one without the car for that day, from school for an orthodontist's appointment.  I was listening to an interesting interview with the author Jonathan Franzen when I stopped outside the school for Matthew to get into the car.

My children seem to believe that they have some kind of inalienable and absolute right to listen to their music when they are in my car.  It has been the same with each one, and worse still when they are all together, or in pairs.  Sometimes they will remember to ask me if they can change the station, but invariably they will just merrily find something they like, although they do consider my tastes, not ever playing anything remotely like rap (which I loathe) or a song which contains the swear-word "m-f" which is my very worst swear-word and which I will not tolerate. 

Tonight I pay tribute to Matthew, who plays good music in my car, and explains it all to me, who unpacked the dishwasher tonight in his inimitable way, on to weird and wonderful surfaces, the colander surprisingly balanced on top of a tin can next to the microwave, two cups lost on the counter, wondering why they were not in the cupboard with all their siblings, and a couple of sharp knives which never found their way back to their wooden block home.

To Matthew, who lost his wallet for a week, containing his school ID, his bank-card, and his brand new Massachusetts driver's license ID, but whose friend luckily found it in his house.  To Matthew, the lateral thinker with the scientific mind, who has written three completely different versions of his College essay in as many days, and is finally happy with the latest version, featuring his deep love of Ceramics.

Day 251

Blue-eyed Darners about to mate.

The mating ritual of the dragonfly is something to behold. 

The theory is that the male dragonflies have evolved a mating method whereby they don't get eaten by the female, unlike their poorer relatives, the mantids.  So the picture here shows what could be considered foreplay in the dragonfly world.  The female has to accept the male, and then he carefully grabs her head with his anal  appendages, which position he will hold before, during and after copulation. 

The male dragonfly has his genital opening for sperm at the ninth abdominal segment.  He also has secondary genitalia on his second segment.  Just before copulation he moves the sperm from the ninth to the second segment.  When the couple have found a suitable place, the female then curves her ovipositor forward to make contact with the second segment and receives the sperm.  They make a heart or wheel shape and this is called "The Wheel position".  (As opposed to all the other positions in the dragonfly Kama Sutra, like the "Bicycle position", or the "Antelope position".)

I'm glad I'm not a dragonfly, although the copulation of human beings is almost as funny.  I would be very angry to be held by the head before, during and after though.

I went for a long awkward walk, feeling like someone recovering from surgery, after a terrible night trying to get comfortable with a sore back.  I am no good with pain, it is SO debilitating.  (I know no one is really good with pain, but I think I am the worst, if anything bad (very painful) happened to me I would just curl up and die.  I would not be brave.  I would hate it, I would hate to be dependent on someone, especially if they had to wipe my bum.)  But I am a believer in exercise for any defective part of the body, so yesterday I went running thinking that it would solve my back-ache.  But I think it made it worse.  So today I went walking merrily through the meadow, swinging my hips and my arms in an attempt to improve the elasticity of my ligaments, muscles or whatever it was that was hurting so much!  Tonight it seems a little better, so I am hopeful. 

So a pencil portrait of Emma for tonight.  Nick said something wicked at the dinner table this evening, and I chided him, "Emma! Nick, I mean!" which I often seem to do, confusing these two children of the four, so alike in many ways, hot-headed and with a twinkle in their eyes.

Day 250

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes,
And they all look
Just the same.

Seen on an outing over the Labor Day weekend.

I ran 2.07 miles (3.28km), my comfort distance, this morning, with a sore back, for some reason, which I hoped would be cured by the run, as I haven't run for 4 days, one of the longest breaks I have had this year, except when I was sick.  It just didn't seem to happen, too many things to do, going out to visit people, and not coming back until dark.  My back is still full of pain, which is odd, as I never get an aching back, I have my father's strong bones, I think.  I hope.  I didn't have a watch or a phone, so have no idea how long I took, but it was probably quite slow, taking it easy. 

It was my second day of teaching, lovely and exhausting again.  It is always the case, your body (and psyche) have to adjust again to the emotionally and physically draining power of teaching.  It just gets sucked right out of you, all that energy and enthusiasm, so that on the long ride home you are biting your lips to keep awake, rolling down the window to bask in the cool air, just wanting to be there, to be home, to be kissed by your menfolk and teased and cajoled, to sit on the couch and have pleasant conversations, to eat the lovely supper your husband has made, sausage and mash and peas, delicious!  Your dad's favourite meal.

Self-portrait.  I am in love with soft pastels!  Nick the artist came and criticised my picture while I was drawing, telling me that the eye was too big, too low down, not enough light, with all the authority of an
AP Art student, and I just silenced him with "Poetic license, Nick. I'm going for an impression, not realism."

Day 249

White clouds and white horse.

We are made of memories. And so much of what we remember takes place in or around our homes and the houses of our friends, and the buildings where we work, so that all this architecture exists as part of the many and varied maps in our heads.

I can walk in the front door of 10 Forest Drive, the beloved house my parents bought just before I was born, and which they left only when I was in my late 30's.  I can hang my school hat on the coat-pegs, step into the lounge and see my  mother doing needlework there, with the sun streaming in at the leaded-glass windows.  Up the stairs which were first bare and later had carpeting, are our rooms, with colour and character and familiarity.  Home.

I went back there in 2003 and introduced myself to the people who lived there.  They were so sweet, with three children as well, and proudly led me on a tour of the house, with all its additions and improvements.  Everything looked so much smaller than I remembered, and I laughed to see, still engraved on the door to what had been my brother's room, the letters P I G, which I carved there once when he had gone too far and enraged me with his strength against which I had no armour.  It had been painted over, probably quite a few times, but  was still quite visible.  We never forget places, and I wonder if they perhaps retain something of us, the laughter lingering in the walls, the arguments stuck in the thatched roof, the music of the piano still reverberating somewhere in the floorboards.

And 16 Cross Street, with its bright colours, a spring-green lounge and vivid chairs, the worn step, the purple curtains I made with patterned strips on the bottom, the clerestory windows in the big hall which took on many different roles at different times while we lived there, bicycle and laundry room, lounge, dining room, family room.  The murals on the walls, the happy days, the hot summers swimming in the sky-blue pool, the enormous pecan-nut tree, underneath which the girls and later the boys would sit for hours cracking open little stacks of nuts they had collected.  Surely that house remembers us, so much life, so much creativity, so much noise, so much sex and love.

My friends have just bought a new house, just moved in, and we went there today to help unpack boxes and move some furniture.  Although mostly we sat around and ate and talked and admired the sweetness of their grandchildren, who arrived to have lunch with us and to enchant everyone.

So they will begin the task again, of pictures on the walls, dreaming in the sun-dappled lounge, making meals, living their lives, filling the house with their presences, enlarging the maps in their heads.

My newest little god-daughter, Clara.  What long fingers, what sweet little fat wrinkled arms.  What an honour.

Day 248

Brown-eyed girl.

Henri Matisse lived from 1869 until ten months before I was born, so he witnessed enormous changes in his lifetime, technological, societal, environmental, horrifying and amazing events.  His own daughter was active in the French Resistance during the Second World War, was tortured and on her way to Buchenwald concentration camp when she managed to escape. 

Yet his entire oeuvre depicts colourful peaceful moments: women, nudes, interiors filled with pattern, the bold cutouts of his later years, full of life and movement. 

I have just read a book called McKay's Bees, by Thomas McMahon, also set during an eventful period of American history, when a set of circumstances fomented into what became the American Civil War.  To the characters in the book these happenings are all peripheral.  "They live their lives and pursue their goals inconvenienced but hardly deflected by the cataclysmic events around them - the way most of us live now." (from the book-cover blurb).

Sometimes, to be able to live, you have to block yourself off from certain things.  It is important always to empathise, but there are some things you cannot have any control over, like the terrible abuse of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the fact that although a big drug-lord in Colombia has been arrested, you know (you've watched The Wire) that another will just step up to take his place, so that there will most likely be no glitch in the supply of drugs to the U.S whatsoever.  You cannot change the minds of some people who have no desire to recycle anything, even though you sort and take stuff to the dump as though your life depended on it.  You have to realise and live with the fact that there are people who are educated, who even have post-graduate degrees, but who never really THINK.  That there are terrible men who hate women and do bad things to them, that many people take out their frustrations on creatures smaller than they are, like children and animals. 

All these things mill about inside your head and sometimes make you weep, but there are only small things you can do to help, like give charitable donations.  Like be kind to everyone. 

So a part of you understands Matisse, sympathises with McKay, and leads you to make your own way, to create your own art, decorate your own nest, live your own loving life.
  

Tonight, my own colorful ode to being a woman, to Art, a shout-out against sadness! Thank you Matisse!

Day 247

Pretty old cat on her excursion outside today, in which she walked with a confident if somewhat wobbly gait, down the stairs of the deck, and a little way into the forest.  She lay in the dappled shade of a tree for a while, feasting on the warm sun, then on her way back to the house, had a dabble in rain-water collected in a plant container, testing it first with one paw, then the other, fascinated by it.  Sweet old Lily-cat, ancient life-force, many more than nine lives, this one.

I persuaded my husband to come to the beach with me to experience the wonderful waves Hurricane Earl had churned up.  He has not been much and has a naturally white skin, so I covered him in sun-cream.  It is an extraordinarily intimate thing to do for someone, it is a knowledge of that body, like mothers with their little children, or with partners, mimicking what one usually does in a more private setting.  (He just showed me his tummy which has an enormous red burnt patch around his belly-button, so I wasn't as knowledgeable as I thought!)

We are in the latter part of middle age now, the two of us,  and as I rubbed the cream into his skin I felt a certain tenderness for this man, and for this body which I have watched and loved over many years.  So much about men confounds me, their love of violent movies, their lifelong fascination with naked women, their inability to find something in the kitchen cupboard, their consistent need to hide emotion, to name but a few.  And I know the same holds true for men about women.   But on good days, like today, it is important to remember how much we have gone through together, how we have held one another in rough times, and pulled one another along by the hand into happiness at other times.  How we laugh together, what good friends we are.

Once, when we were much younger, Tim jumped up out of bed one night, stark naked of course, switched on the light, and proceeded to dance about the bedroom, leaping and prancing, up on to the bed, down on to the floor, just about climbing the walls, with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand, trying to kill a pesky mosquito! (South African mosquitoes are loud) I lay in the bouncing bed and laughed and laughed.  When the boys were about eight I told them the story one day, and Nick reflected on it, saying, "You're so lucky, mom, to have a husband that makes you laugh.  I hope my wife laughs at me like that one day!"

In the churned up sea of huge waves this morning, there appeared next to me a couple who must have been in their late sixties or early seventies.  They both had white white hair (although that says nothing, under the henna my hair is white too!)  He was standing knee-deep in the water taking photographs of the enormous waves and his wife enjoying them.  She chided him, asking him to come in with her.  I loved watching her energy and enthusiasm and we chatted a bit, she was so friendly and sweet and utterly delighted with the water!  She was having a wonderful time, falling backwards into the waves, going under the particularly gigantic ones, and coming up shrieking with laughter, for all the world like a little girl!  He went out to put away his camera, and remove his hat and glasses, then joined her in the waves and next minute he had swept her off her feet and was carrying her along, both laughing uproariously!  I made a date with Tim in 15 years time, when I am 70 and he is 66, to still be swimming in the waves together!

Self-portrait for today.

Day 246

Sun and Life

Sometimes growing things strike me as being so utterly beautiful.

The winter-squash plant (top left), so delicate, so perfectly formed to do what it must, with little delicate yet super-strong tendrils to furl on to something for balance, sometimes even itself.

And the little blue-eyed dragonfly, such a gauzy gossamer floaty celestial being. (I know it's not a growing thing but it just fits in with the general beauty theme.) 

The little candelabra Celandine, with dying flowers and yet-to-be flowers all on the same graceful dancing stem.  They are the most prolific flowers and the bees love them.  All through the summer there are always Celandine going to seed with their long pods, fully flowering Celandine, and other small green Celandine plants just beginning again.

And the last photograph, the sweet potato I found in my cupboard trying so hard to grow, that I decided it must, so it is happily living in a bowl of water, putting forth perfect stems, leaves and light on the little table next to the back door.  It enchants us every time we look at it.

My first day of teaching today, so exhausting, so exhilarating, such interesting teenagers.  It was so super-hot, again, days and days of heat we have had now, and then at the beginning of my last class, with the upper school kids, it began to rain, lovely green-smelling rain, and I invited them all to follow me downstairs like the Pied Piper, to run on the grass in the rain, to feel the wet clover underfoot, to be cool, oh at last!  Only the younger girls came with me, the others were too shy, I think, and they were so funny, they were like little kids, doing strange little dances and pretending to be trees and flowers, like they had been taught when they were much younger.  We all laughed outrageously, felt better and went back inside to work.

It's still raining, thanks to Hurricane Earl!

Continuing the theme of the positive Life-force, the image for tonight.  This dancer turned out looking just like one of my students, one for whom I have a very soft spot.