Hello friends,
It's been a while. The trouble with doing any large research project is that no matter how hard you try to set many small deadlines they inevitably snowball into one giant looming deadline and eat up a month of your life. Now work is going well and I feel like I can stop, breathe, look around me. Happy.
This is excellent news because it coincided with a visit from our dear friend, Ruth, and a big adventure. I have discovered
Geocaching. Maybe I'm waaaay behind the times on this. Maybe you all already know about Geocaching (but, if so, why, why didn't you tell me??!). The
map on their website certainly makes it look like I am the last person on this planet to find out about it.
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| Paul with our first find |
For the uninitiated,
Geocaching is the grown up (or child-friendly) treasure hunt that will make your heart happy. People hide caches of all different sizes in all different places and upload the coordinates to the website, then you stick in the postcode of where you are and set off to find some near you. We live in the middle of nowhere and there are hundreds hidden on our doorstep. In our (so far extremely limited) experience these geocaches are tricksy things with log books inside so that when you (eventually) find them you can write your name on the list and walk on with that small glow of satisfaction that comes from secret keeping. I understand that there are many different kinds of cache in existence and that some house treasure like toys and sweets, but to be honest the excitement of finding one is reward enough. There are several things about this that are truly brilliant. Firstly, there are millions of them. I mean, the scale is ridiculous and so wherever you are RIGHT NOW you are probably near one and you don't realise. Isn't that a sort of deliciously exciting prospect?(When we first looked, the nearest one to us was 0.2 miles away...only the torrential rain outside stopped us from running out the house there and then.) Secondly, people hide them in beautiful, weird, wonderful places that you may not visit otherwise. We had a glorious Sunday morning walk thanks to the efforts of Geocachers in our area. Thirdly, it's a treasure hunt that feels the same as treasure hunts felt when you were little, except this time you get to hold your phone like a compass because we live in the future. It's just lovely, and magical, and creative, and it is a thing people do to bring joy to others, to share a nice walk with them. I think that's something special.
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| Ruth and Paul...See! How much joy! |
Another thing that has been on my mind this week has been Kenneth Rexroth's poem 'Signature of All Things'. I got so many lovely messages about the Mary Oliver post and a feeling of timeliness that went with it, so I thought you may enjoy this. Although Rexroth describes a 'deep July day' there is something about this poem that seems so of
this moment to me. I think the taut, beautiful language owes much to his brilliant translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry, and the result is somehow peaceful and soul-stirring all at once.
Signature of All Things
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| The view from our house, Sunday night. |
I
My head and shoulders, and my book
In the cool shade, and my body
Stretched bathing in the sun, I lie
Reading beside the waterfall –
Boehme's 'Signature of all Things.'
Through the deep July day the leaves
Of the laurel, all the colors
Of gold, spin down through the moving
Deep laurel shade all day. They float
On the mirrored sky and forest
For a while, and then, still slowly
Spinning, sink through the crystal deep
Of the pool to its leaf gold floor.
The saint saw the world as streaming
In the electrolysis of love.
I put him by and gaze through shade
Folded into shade of slender
Laurel trunks and leaves filled with sun.
The wren broods in her moss domed nest.
A newt struggles with a white moth
Drowning in the pool. The hawks scream,
Playing together on the ceiling
Of heaven. The long hours go by.
I think of those who have loved me,
Of all the mountains I have climbed,
Of all the seas I have swum in.
The evil of the world sinks.
My own sin and trouble fall away
Like Christian's bundle, and I watch
My forty summers fall like falling
Leaves and falling water held
Eternally in summer air.
2
Deer are stamping in the glades,
Under the full July moon.
There is a smell of dry grass
In the air, and more faintly,
The scent of a far off skunk.
As I stand at the wood's edge,
Watching the darkness, listening
To the stillness, a small owl
Comes to the branch above me,
On wings more still than my breath.
When I turn my light on him,
His eyes glow like drops of iron,
And he perks his head at me,
Like a curious kitten.
The meadow is bright as snow.
My dog prows the grass, a dark
Blur in the blur of brightness
I walk to the oak grove where
The Indian village was once.
There, in blotched and cobwebbed light
And dark, dim in the blue haze,
Are twenty Holstein heifers,
Black and white, all lying down,
Quietly together, under
The huge trees rooted in the graves.
3
When I dragged the rotten log
From the bottom of the pool,
It seemed heavy as stone.
I let it lie in the sun
For a month; and then chopped it
Into sections, and split them
For kindling, and spread them out
To dry some more. Late that night;
After reading for hours,
While moths rattled at the lamp,
The saints and the philosophers
On the destiny of man;
I went out on my cabin porch,
And looked up through the black forest
At the swaying islands of stars.
Suddenly I saw at my feet,
Spread on the floor of night, ingots
Of quivering phosphorescence,
And all about were scattered chips
Of pale cold light that was alive.
