Jelisava

St. Francis and his birds / June 2010

This was the day of being thankful for an office with open windows and tall trees outside where birds perched and sang their hearts out after talking on the phone to someone in a windowless office who wanted to know did I keep birds because they could hear them singing in the background.

Knitting cables: CB6 means slip three stitches onto a cable needle and hold them to the back, knit the next three stitches, then knit the stitches off of the cable needle / Mt. House / Feb. 2010

This was the morning of the guitar players and the knitters discovering how much they had in common. Look, said the guitar player, pointing to the cable sequences on the knitting pattern, you have minor chords in knitting, too.

The Knitting and Luthiering Workshop / Mt. House / Feb. 2010

This was the morning of the guitar players and their strings and the knitters and their strings working in companionable harmony at the Knitting and Luthiering Workshop.

Delightfully colorful seeds in my November garden; I think the secret to a content life is to always be germinating new ideas and thoughts and projects and talents and interests / New Jersey / Nov. 2009

“I sing praise to seeds, their rhythm is always the same,
they open and close and jealously transmit their secret.”

(from Lesser Psalm by Edvard Kocbek; full text of the poem after the jump)

. . . and I sing praise to the rambunctious rhythm of the family: Turkey Stomp

“ ... the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget ... ”

This line has been swirling through my head for the past few weeks. A function, I think, of age, life and all the nor'easters that have hit New Jersey this fall. The nor'easter winds circle back and blow the leaves in endless circles, around and around. In my head, the things I can't remember spin with the things I can't forget. The line is from Tom Waits' haunting song, Time. Over and over, I hear Waits' rich, gravelly voice and the song's mournful melody. It has such wonderful imagery: “the wind is making speeches,” “it's raining hammers, it's raining nails,”  “Mathilda asks the sailors 'Are those dreams or are those prayers?'” Guess I'll have to wait for my storm to pass; for the vorticity to slow. “... so put a candle in the window and a kiss upon my lips ...”

“The sounds of the earth are like music, the old song goes, and the sounds of music are also like the sounds of the earth, which is of course where music comes from. Listen to the voices outside the window, the rumble of the furnace, the creak of your chair, the water running in the kitchen sink. Learn to listen to the music of your own lengths of time, your own silences.”

~ Frederick Buechner, from Whistling in the Dark, A Doubter's Dictionary

A look back at a wintry scene on this first day of spring (it actually sleeted for a while this afternoon) / Northeast PA / Feb. 2009

I placed an online order for a CD with CD Baby.com and received a reply that made me laugh out loud. I don't know if they did this just for me ... but it is, without a doubt, the best "we are shipping your item" email that has graced my In Box:

Sing a radical song of protest / New Jersey / Dec. 2008

In the early 1940s Woody Guthrie worked with Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress to compile the Songs of Woody Guthrie. After receiving a copy of his finished book, he wrote a pleased letter to the LOC and included some advice for congress. As our new congress was sworn in this week, I thought his words (and lyrics) timely:

The audience at the Hot Sauce Festival talent show knows the meaning of "bringing out the family treasure"! / Mountain House / Aug. 2008

At the girls' barn jam in the O's newly constructed barn we stomped our feet to the rhythms and freely spilled our drinks on the floor / New Jersey / Sept. 2008

Because difference constitutes music . . .
Sound is . . . the rubbing of notes between two drops of water, the breath between the note and the silence, the sound of thought.
. . . To write is to note down the music of the world.

~ Helene Cixous