Jelisava

Making room for the future

Ladybug, ladybug fly away home and please take some clutter with you / New Jersey / Oct. 2009

I've been collecting things my whole life, filling the spaces. Now I find that I can't tolerate the mass of objects, the clutter. I want space. Empty space. Space to think. Space for what makes me feel happy and content and inspired and creative. I want closets and bookshelves with lots of empty space. I want to make room for the future.

Solstice morning

The solstice morning sun rising in the east over a snow-covered landscape / New Jersey / Dec. 21, 2009

"And then there is one particular tree, a tree that I always see because it is the northernmost one... It has multiple trunks all braided and buttressed, and roots that snake out over the ground as widely as it branches snake out into the air. ... At the risk of being spotted as hopelessly eccentric, I always stop for a moment and touch the course-grained, gray bark of it with my hand, or sometimes with my cheek, which I suppose is a way of blessing it for being so strong and beautiful. ...on one particular morning I found myself touching it not to bless it for once, but to ask for its blessing, so that I myself might move toward old age and death with something like its stunning grace and courage."

~ Frederick Buechner (from The Secret in the Dark)

Adverbly pronouned she verbed

The bright red leaves on the spirit tree frame the new angled porch window / New Jersey / Nov. 2009

When I was in grammar school I had a hard time learning the “parts of speech” (according to a grammar web site there are eight of them: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections). Reading came easily to me. I don't remember having to actually learn to read. One minute I couldn't and the next I could. I remember feeling so empowered — I could read not only books, but signs and billboards and things on the TV and newspapers — and I read voraciously. But I couldn't be bothered with learning the parts of speech and failed a number of tests. I was thinking about this recently after a discussion about school. It occurred to me that reading came so naturally to me that to actually break sentences and thoughts down into “parts of speech” seemed not only unnecessary, but ruined the poetry of the words. It spoiled the beauty of reading for me. Even though my (adjective*) teacher (noun*) railed (verb*) at (preposition*) me (pronoun*), I wasn't going to waste time with it. And all these years later I can say that I've gotten along just fine with words after all.

* According to the dictionary; I can't say for sure.

Inhale, listen, observe

The new screened-in side porch transports you to a calmer and simpler place; inhale the fresh air, listen to the street sounds, observe the movement of the sun / New Jersey / Oct. 2009

“As you simplify life,
     the laws of the universe will be simpler.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

The poetry of hands, 28

For Paulo my writer and worker with the sturdy hands / New Jersey / June 2008

Renovating an old house is a lot like writing —
full of pitfalls and revisions and it goes on and on

~ Heard on a TV show about New Orleans on PBS last night

Throw open the storm door

Fabric panels on my front door provide an ever-changing art gallery / New Jersey / Jan. 2009

“A genius is the one most like himself.”

~ jazz musician Thelonious Monk

There's something really wise and powerful in that statement and I'm trying to live it.

It's about all of our tracks

Changing the landscape; our shiny new porch / New Jersey / Oct. 2008

OUR PIECE OF THE PLANET (Naš Komad Planeta)

a few hectares
of the land our own piece
of the planet in the cadastre register
that sounds really good
speaks of our verve
and exceptional pleasure
we are changing the landscape
we are holding it carefully and
courageously in our arms
walking we are turning the planet
with our legs because our piece
is not just a delineated plot of land
it’s about all of our tracks
path cardiograms we are leaving
on the very heart of the landscape
in the soil under our fingernails
on our fingernails under the ground

~ Croatian poet Slađan Lipovec (from: Rijeke i mjesečine)

Hang out on the line

Clothes last longer. Where do you think lint comes from? * / New Jersey / Sept. 2008

The dryer has stopped drying. So a make-shift clothesline goes up. There is something comforting and alive about a full clothesline. The late September sun is so strong that the dishtowels seemingly dry in minutes.

* One of the top 10 reasons to hang your clothes out to dry from Project Laundry List. They advocate "making air-drying your laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy." Another good reason to "hang out": Sunlight bleaches and disinfects. And: It is an outdoor experience that is meditative.

Calm down

A Luxardo Maraschino toast to the refurbished porch posts (at least two of them are over 100 years old) / New Jersey / a cool September evening 2008

CONSOLATION
Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

... and speaking of oblivion ... $85 billion dollars to bail out a company built on risk and paper? (... not to mention the millions-of-dollars-bonuses these "leaders" got every year)  ... why not $85 billion dollars toward sustainable energy sources or health care or a thousand other things that would improve the world? ... they say they had to do it to protect the economy from another blow ... well maybe the economy needs another blow to set it straight -- kind of like when you're feeling sick for a while, but when you finally throw up you feel better ... OK, I need to calm down now ... pour me another glass of Maraschino...

The cardinal's kingdom

Overseeing his kingdom / New Jersey / June 2007

I've been seeing a lot of cardinals in the yard. Yesterday afternoon I saw a female cardinal head straight for the birdhouse that sits just to the right of what you can see in this picture (exactly where this cardinal is looking). As soon as she got there, a cacophony of sound erupted from inside the house -- I think there is a whole brood of hungry young cardinals in residence there.