Magnolia Monday

“Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.”


~ H.P. Lovecraft, “The White Ship”

Last year I nearly missed the magnolia bloom. It was mid April when it was in full blossom (perhaps beyond) and Max told me that rain made him feel good. Two weeks ago the same bush fussed with buds and I've had my eye on it each day since. It doesn't last long--its innocent, blushing youth.

I don't much like March. The shrieking wind, premature flourish, spurious hope, inescapable fray and wilt. Moist, silky efflorescence plummets to its doom. Becomes earth. Anon. Sky. Heavens.

Black and white.

Grey is the illusion.

And then... 

Spring's noble, ancient magnolia persists! Sweet magnolia. Riding in like a white knight on its cloaked horse, lance clenched in hand. Awaken! Hear ye, hear ye: Spring is for the living!

Monday is for the living.

Today is for the living.

Accepting the Challenge

Never try to arrange things. Objects and poems are irreconcilable. 

~ Francis Ponge

It is the last day of winter, the young, well-dressed neurologist says, looking up from the folder.

Mmm, yes it is, though it wasn't much of a winter, she replies mournfully. In any event, you'll be happy to know that your magnesium/B2 cocktail has taken the edge off the migraines. I haven't spent a full day in bed, dodging light, for two months now.

He's pleased by this news, though not surprised. His patients find relief. This, he knows. He seems to know a lot for his young years. Though she wonders if he, who’s never felt a migraine’s crippling blows—the rapid-fire constriction of nerves and vessels (in her case a three or four-day, often monthly, basal ganglia guerilla warfare, in which she is the only casualty, shut-off, shut down, from family, words, writing, lifeblood)—could ever truly empathize. Nevertheless, what he certainly cannot know is that in less than two hours she'll be sitting in a greyed and splintered teak chair by the table on her deck, in her skinny jeans and black cardigan, kicking off her black flats, unwinding the scarf from around her neck, lunching on last night's leftovers of salad and grilled salmon, debating the tense and POV in which to write this piece, and staring down a pretty, yellow daffodil plant that Mother brought to dinner the previous night. (She had thought to begin with: Mother brought daffodils to dinner last night.) He is confident, but cannot know this. She did not know that the day would progress as such herself. She, nor he, did not know that she'd find Francis Ponge at Symposium Books downtown. Ponge, Celine, Paz, Toussaint, all at steep discount. But she knows that when she leaves, he'll be sitting in his office with his next patient, reading his or her chart, peering up from under his wire-framed glasses and saying, It is the last day of winter.

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, the doctor's receptionist, says, as she hands her her stamped parking ticket and receipt.

Mmm, yes it is, she replies. Spring is such a pretty word.

Oh, it is. Very pretty, a welcome word, the receptionist smiles.

Goodbye my anemic winter, she thinks. Outside, the world is warming. As she walks down the street to the parking garage, she thinks about the daffodils, the color yellow, not like the walls of her kitchen which are tinted the yellow of Provence--a baby mustard--but the yellow of the sun at noontime when, during days that ululate spring, she sits on her deck for lunch and watches the glinting sun center itself above the teak table, much like she'll do today.

"Accept the challenge things offer to language," Ponge says.

(Ponge, who wrote of the wasp [or bee]: A little itinerant siphon, a little distillery on wheels and wings, like the ones that go about from farm to farm through the countryside in certain seasons; a little airborne kitchen, a little public sanitation truck...  [they] carry out an intimate activity that's generally quite mysterious... What we call having an inner life.)

Where was she now? Yes, she's left downtown's brick streets and is back home. She's on the deck. Vital fluids flowing. Taking notes: they are Tête-à-Têtes, their heads gently brushing against one another, and they need beaucoup de lumière. So she sets the daffodils out on the weathered teak table for a dose of vitamin D. They are delicate, yet hardy things. Their outer petals are lemony and frosty like a Matisse star. The rippled center cup,  trumpeting spring (she can almost hear the music), is slightly darker. The tips of the rubbery, bright green stems are curved upwards in a gothic arch--like the petals--and spliced open where the flowers, in clusters of three, have burst from their casing like electrical wiring freed from insulation. Fireworks!

Her daughter is home from school, now, sitting next to her at the table, gnawing at a slice of watermelon.

Mom, don't you ever get lonely at home? she asks.

No, never. She leans her head back against the top of the chair, And it's so good not have to hide from the light any longer.

(She wonders if Ponge ever wrote about daffodils.)

The next day, it is spring. The sun shining all over again. Daffodils singing their songs and challenging.

Does not everything have an inner life?

Friday Night Frolic — The Reservoir at 8:00 am

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.
~Ayn Rand

I wasn't supposed to be walking along the paved path this morning, not alone, not at anytime or any day, but I had abandoned my first route—an attempt to reach the falls at the western end of the 252 acre reservoir—when I came nearly face to face with a fox halted on all fours. I noticed his red coat partially hidden by brush and I knew he had been tracking me as I approached his immediate territory. Not wishing to take any chances with a potentially rabid animal, I decided to slowly pivot back east, back through the rain-soaked leaves and muddy trail, back toward my car, the lone car, parked behind a local Masonic lodge. As I retreated I pulled my car keys from my coat pocket and shook them like a noisemaker just to let that fox know who was boss, all the while hoping he wouldn't come at me from behind, not looking back, not once.

There's a small baseball field at the northern end of the lodge's parking lot, backing up along the reservoir, and on the eastern side of the lot stands a chain link fence protecting the water supply. I hadn't before noticed that the reservoir curled around so closely to the field, which I'd been to only once or twice, late spring several years back when the boy used to play ball, long after he had confessed to me, but before he had worked up enough nerve to tell his father—who kept signing him up, spring and fall, year after year—that his heart just didn't connect with the game. Pulling grass and snapping at butterflies in the outfield should have been sign enough, but not to father's of mighty-armed, left handed boys. 

Dreams. 

[I wondered if it weren't denial (well, of course it was) that kept my husband from noticing what seemed so very obvious to me. I'd grown up with ball players. My dad, who'd coached, let his tomboy daughter (for whom, at the time, no hardball league existed) practice with his team and keep stats. I loved the game as much as my dad and brothers, and I knew when a boy was in love with it too. A boy gently smoothing a stitched, leather-covered hardball in his hands like it were a sacred thing, or stepping into the batter's box, face lowered and serious, as if it were a confessional and he was ready for release. Almighty God, let it go, set me free! There was a level of intimacy with the sport that my son just never felt. And that was okay with me. Eventually—after a mourning spell—it was alright with his father, too.]

With the morning chill and drizzle intensifying, I plodded through the thick brush along the fence at the edge of a cemetery and church bordering the reservoir and found the fence trailed off where the woods opened up beyond the hallowed grounds. At the risk of a $500.00 fine and imprisonment for up to one year, it was there I transgressed and climbed an unobstructed embankment to find a winding, smoothed asphalt path at its crest, surrounding the reservoir. (Damn the electronic surveillance and penalties. Tell me how one turns away from this path?) It was from this perspective that I could see nearly the whole of the reservoir. The view was grace, pure grace. Alone, in the midst of this serene form, I put down the knotty stick that I had picked up along the way, and stood looking at the water, the grey mist rising from it, the leaf-lined path, the evergreen and flora fringe, before freezing the moment with the camera built into my cell phone, its shutter sound effect slicing the moist air. 

And then I looked straight ahead and walked.

* * * 

Sharon Van Etten is a young singer/songwriting from New Jersey who spent her college years in Tennessee. It was there that she found the music that was to influence her highly personal songwriting. In the past three years she's put out just as many albums, and has found a solid American fan base.

Pitchfork, on Van Etten's debut album, Because I Was In Love: 

Most crucial to the album's success, however, is Van Etten's unerring sense for crafting memorable, seductive melodies. Here again she takes no shortcuts, as she largely forgoes standard verse-chorus repetition in favor of a more organic style, with wonderful songs like "For You" and "Holding Out" gently unwinding like the lines across a hand-drawn road map. Even in a folk scene that can sometimes feel over-crowded, Because I Was in Love positions Sharon Van Etten immediately towards the front of the pack.

From Because...

And We Are Fine, from Tramp (2012)

NPR calls Van Etten "hypnotically complicated." I think she's going to stick around long enough to hypnotize many of us. You can find more on her latest album here.

Wednesday's Weekend Wisdom

The Suburban Soliloquist is starting a new Page (up top, by The Muses, etc.) entitled Weekend Wisdom which will feature an amalgamation of original photography and quotes from the wise ones--our humble writers, philosophers, artists, scientists, educators--thinkers and doers. The most recent WW photo/excerpt will be shown at the top of the sidebar (as the passage from Candide does, at this writing), refreshed each weekend, and will link to the SS's Weekend Wisdom photo album. (The Suburban Soliloquist tired of seeing her profile accentuated due north on said bar and has quietly redirected it south).

And although it is not the weekend, it is Wednesday (a beautiful one at that--the kind that makes you wish it were the weekend), which fits in with the semi-alliterative theme here on the SS pages and sidebar. So, please forgive this confusing introduction, as well as post-publication edits. Oh, you didn't notice?

Anyway, that is all for Wednesday. More this weekend, when the Weekend Wisdom page will be published (up top!).

When You Want Something...

.... all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
                                              ~Paulo Coelho

Logging out of  amazon.com: as difficult as looking at this picture. 

Did you ever notice how difficult it is to sign out of amazon.com? Or is it just me? It's like navigating the Amazon Rainforest—it's steamy (well, yes, it can be) and rich with broad-leafed verdure and slithery, fidgety creatures that come at you from all angles. I'm hypnotized by all the newness (and oldness) it has to offer. I could get lost in it for hours, days, even months—not that I want to—and I begin to feel like I've picked up some exotic virus as I try to weave myself out of its knotty green web. I need a fine-honed machete to carve my way out of that habitat. Fortunately, unlike a rain forest, it has a help button.

I am looking forward to this:



Paulo Coelho's Aleph will be released on September 27, 2011. You can pre-order a copy at amazon.com.

An excerpt from Aleph, as printed in Coelho's blog:

I see that Hilal is starting to feel uncomfortable.
‘I’m not interested in what our relationship was in a past life. We’re here in the present. In Novosibirsk, you made me forgive you and I did. Now I’m asking you a favour: tell me that you love me.’

I hold her hand.

‘You see this river?
“ Well, in the living room in my apartment at home is a painting of a rose immersed in just such a river. Half of the painting was exposed to the effects of the water and the elements, so the edges are a bit rough, and yet I can still see part of that beautiful red rose against a gold background.

“I know the artist. In 2003, we went together to a forest in the Pyrenees and found a dried-up stream and we hid the painting under the stones on the stream bed.
‘The artist is my wife.

“When I met her, I was convinced that our relationship wouldn’t work out, and for the first two years, I was sure that one of us would leave.
“ In the five years that followed, I continued to think that we had simply got used to one another and that as soon as we realised this, we would each go our separate ways.
“ I thought that a more serious commitment would deprive me of my “liberty” and keep me from experiencing everything I wanted to experience.’

‘I understand and respect what you’re saying,’ Hilal says. ‘But in the restaurant, when you were talking about the past, you said something about love being stronger than the individual.’
‘Yes, but love is made up of choices.’

We are both gazing at the river.

‘Silence is also an answer,’ she says.
I put my arms around her, so that her head is resting on my shoulder.
‘I love you,’ I tell her.

‘I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake, where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.

‘I love you like a river that gives water to the thirsty and takes people where they want to go.

‘I love you like a river which understands that it must learn to flow differently over waterfalls and to rest in the shallows.

‘I love you because we are all born in the same place, at the same source, which keeps us provided with a constant supply of water. And so, when we feel weak, all we have to do is wait a little. The spring returns, the winter snows melt and fill us with new energy.

‘I receive your love and I give you mine.
“Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures.
“But a love with no name and no explanation
‘Like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course, but simply flows onwards.

‘A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you.’

Maybe it’s the afternoon, maybe it’s the light, but at that moment, the Universe seems finally to be in perfect harmony. We stay where we are, feeling not the slightest desire to go back to the hotel, where Yao will doubtless be waiting for me.

"I love you like a river which understands that it must learn to flow differently over waterfalls and to rest in the shallows."  Oh my, I'm so looking forward to this.

Friday Night Frolic — Falling Waters: A Meditation

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.                                              ~John Muir

I know why Backwoods Betty left the city. Though this, I did not always know. Nor was I certain it was a good idea—Betty being a cityfied professional for nearly three decades, held captive by the city's assiduous urban hum, it's vibrant sheen, culture and diversity—I was worried, couldn't imagine how she'd negotiate the solitude of the mountains and northern boreal forests, the frigid and often dangerous winters, the slowed pace. As a second home, sure, but on a permanent basis?

But North of Franconia Notch is hardly an isolated, unfriendly or stagnant plateau. It is a series of verdant mezzanines, palisades of evergreens and brush, pillars of granite and peppery stones that line its natural corridors and wrap around its lush and coniferous woodlands. There, in the thick of this mountainous weald, it is to breathe crisp air and listen.

It is to be spoken to by a voice rooted deep in earth's core, an oracle.

It is to be in the company of good friends. Like the croaking bullfrogs at dusk.

Sunday morning we hiked Falling Waters. Here, along this rugged, root covered, stone lined trail, worn by the tread of many a trekking shoe, insulated from flurry and fuss, from what can sometimes feel like the madness of the world, we heard water falling: drips of clear liquid dropping from one green leaf to another, like Mother Nature's tears running down a stairway of foliage. Then, a trickle of water from behind slate and golden rocks, around fallen birch limbs, and quietly through the brook.

It is a conversation, accompanied by a lullaby.

Without television, radio or internet for the entire weekend, on Sunday we were still unaware of the events that had unfolded in Oslo, and Utoya. We climbed, quite blissfully, higher up the steep and sometimes muddy trail, and witnessed a different kind of unfolding: cool water plunging down granite steps. Pulling ourselves skyward, past sharp twists in the terrain, through shallow pools of water and up stone risers set by the AMC, the waterway widened and gushed from enormous slabs of stone into cascades of trilling aqua.

It is a melody.

We rested at the top of one of the largest falls, and absorbed the deep pigment of nature, whistling birds, barreling water, buzzing insects, pine and dirt and rock, the organic lyrics of the mossy forest.

It is a symphony.

Not knowing anything but the rich sounds of tall pines, clods of mud under foot, wild geese, bullfrogs, or fanning falls can be bliss. (It was Walt Whitman who said:  You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.)

But the north country is not about not knowing. The north country is about paying attention to knowing. It is a meditation on knowing the true identity of the world, and all its creatures, of self and of what brings oneself joy and peace.

It is a meditation on quality of life.

It is a libretto of life. And death. And renewal.

And it is a meditation on everything we don't know, may never know, may never understand.

We went up and down the trail unfettered by the knowledge of the chaos and killing in Norway. The whole weekend, unfettered. It's hard to believe. Some things we don't want to know. Some things we most certainly will never understand.

At the base of the trail, turning on the radio, it was a requiem.

Falling waters, slipping tears. Sounds that resonate.

I didn't want to leave.



Thomas Dybdahl is a Norwegian Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter. His music has all the serenity and lushness of a stream rippling through mountain gorges. His voice: undulating waves of light and sound. His lyrics: as colorful and emotional as the deep northern forest, flooded with the steamy warmth of southern everglades. The sound: rooted in pop, its branches having a multidirectional spread to folk, rock, country, jazz—it is as melodic, scenic and pristine as the glacial terrain and falling waters that seduce us, that speak to us.

His new album, Songs, was released this month in the U.S.



This week, Dybdahl has been touring the States, dedicating his shows to his Norwegian countrymen. Next week, he returns to Trondheim and the tears of Norway. There, he's sure to bring much comfort.


(In the background, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss speaks of quality of life by asking, roughly, how it may be defined and how it may remain high or become heightened? He reminds us that quality of life has nothing to do with what one has, but how one feels about oneself, what brings one joy. Næss is well known for his work on the principles of deep ecology. )

I worry no longer. Betty knows exactly what she's doing, and she's doing it well. There, in the backwoods of New Hampshire, is much joy and peace. I wish it were the same the world wide.

"In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks." 

~ John Muir