Friday, December 22, 2017
comfort and joy
Today is one of those winter days during which a gray sky is warmed by the golden smudge of the sun radiating from behind the low cloud cover. The solstice has just come and gone and here we are, turning to that light once again. We walked down the street last night to the big old church and heard a concert of carols in the round, sung to us and our neighbors by candlelight. Haunting and memorable. New snow from this week and the promise (threat...?) of more on the way, and soon, has me gazing at the transformed landscape, and trying to paint it. From safely inside the warm house. I've also been reading because Santa stopped by early with a new Ronald Blythe book, Under a Broad Sky (Canterbury Press 2013). I opened it right away, to this (p.1):
"It is a relief to find that one does not gain a mature vision of everything - that the first sight of snow, for example, will be as serviceable, wonder-wise, as that of all the snowfalls in one's life. A six-inch snowfall establishes a presidency that takes our breath away, partly by its nerve, partly by its loveliness, bringing our ant movements to a halt, transforming everything from twig to a cathedral."
His observations of country life and literature are timeless and I recently ordered all of his remaining books of essays (those not already on my shelf, I should say), originally published as his back-page column for the Church Times. I say his remaining books of essays because this year he ceased to write them. He is 94. He says, in a recent brief interview, “I live very much in the present. I wake up in the morning feeling ever so well, and feeling today is the big day.” Lovely. May we all be able to say the same.
Most days, I resolve to do just that. When I can't work outside - too cold, too cold! paint freezes and so do I! - I gaze out the windows of my studio into the woods and find delight in the marks that nature makes. In turn I try to describe them on canvas and in the pages of my diary, with marks of my own. With varying levels of success and failure, as usual. This week, on the easel, on a small canvas:
A little painting of almost nothing - just some marks like snowflakes. A quiet reverie during this season of peace. I am off to wrap presents for my nieces and nephews and extended family, but before I go, happy holidays, and tidings of comfort and joy, and a few more words about snow, for good measure. From New and Selected Poems Volume One by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press 1992; pp.150-151):
First Snow
The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain - not a single
answer has been found -
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
