The entire day I searched for spring but
spring I could not find,
In my straw sandals I tramped among the
mountain peak clouds. Home again, smiling, I finger a sprig of
fragrant plum blossoms;
Spring was right here on these branches
in all of its glory!
Plum Blossom Nun (via the Nebraska Zen Center)
It’s sunny and gorgeous today, and most of my seedlings have gotten their second set of leaves, so out they go for their first day in the cold frame. It’s supposed to be sunny and gorgeous all weekend — the apple trees are leafing out, there are spinach and Italian mustard green seedlings sprouting — the chives and the Chinese garlic chives are up (I thought the garlic chives were a total loss, but the 2nd year they came up beautifully, and now they seem to be self-seeding all over the place). I’ve also got some raddicchio and chicory that overwintered and is now coming back up. It’s been a slow, cold, wet spring, but it looks like it’s finally on the move …
It’s been a grim spring here weather-wise. Cold. Gray. Snowy. Gray.
And yet, it’s been warm enough that these pretty daffodils bloomed. I don’t even remember planting them — they must have been in the batch I bought from one of Nina’s kids as a fundraising thing. At any rate, I was silly enough to plant them right under the dripline from the porch, so they got kind of battered, poor things.
I’m always torn about picking flowers from the garden — where will I enjoy them more? Outside? or inside? But since these had broken stems from the water coming off the roof, the decision was easy. Into the vase they go, and there they sit on the windowsill above the sink where, like the voracious spring birds draining my feeder, they make me happy while I wash my dishes.
Looks like spring’s coming despite the best efforts of winter to hang on.
Well, this is a week I don’t think anyone will be sorry to see end. The creative writing connection to this whole Virginia Tech tragedy really threw me for a loop for a couple of days. I have a couple of advanced degrees in Creative Writing and I spent almost 7 years teaching undergraduate writing. There’s been a lot written this week about the ubiquity of oddball students, and the difficulty of determining who is odd, and who is dangerous. I never had anyone who was seriously disturbed — just the garden-variety stories about beautiful twins who are model/assassins and who wind up skewered on the same spear, or my favorite, the one about the woman who crashed her car because she was distracted by feeling up her own breasts (written by a guy, of course) or the many many stories about breakups and divorces and young people who don’t know what to do next. There were some stellar moments, of course, the pre-med student, a big football-player kind of guy who wrote a lovely sonnet where he took the cliche that the “eyes are the window to the soul” and used the circulatory system as a metaphor. It was lovely. And a surprise to both of us. Or the undergrad at Davis who had spent her early childhood on the glassmaking islands off Venice, and wrote a lovely reminiscence about running through the glassworks with a pack of cousins. But there were always the spooky students. Every semester, a TA got semi-stalked, or in my PhD program we had trouble with someone in the program stalking another member of the workshop. It happens. And you always wonder what to do.
But what can one do when our mental health system makes it nearly impossible to get help for someone who does not think they need it? Anyone who has ever tried to get help for a relative or friend knows that unless someone makes specific and verifiable threats against another or themselves, well, you can’t get them into an inpaitent situation. And since most insurance companies won’t pay for outpatient care, well, we’re all in danger.
As for gun control — it’s a different issue out here in rural America. There are a lot of guns around, and mostly they’re a danger to their owners. We have the highest suicide rate in the country (long winters, social isolation, guns) but not much problem with people shooting other people. There’s a great discussion going on over at Making Light about this issue that pretty much sums up how I feel about the gun thing.
In other news — the bear got away. There have been reports of a bear down on the other end of town, and since the game warden is pretty sure he’s trapped this bear before, it seems that the sight of the trap caused him to move out of the MH’s neighborhood at least. And although the door being bashed was a bummer, the MH got a gorgeous new door on sale, and it looks great. So, all’s well that ends well on that front — the bear is still out there being a wild bear, the MH has a lovely new door, and we had some minor excitement for a couple of days.
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with it’s island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
From Praise, Robert Hass, 1974
After the bear came back a second night, and bashed in the Mighty Hunter’s front door, he called the game warden who brought this impressive culvert trap over and parked it in the back yard. About eight last night we heard clanging noises and went out to watch the warden set the trap and bait it with bacon and raw chicken … there we were, the MH, me, and all the neighbors, watching the game warden and thinking about bears.
So, off to sleep we went, half an ear cocked for bear noises outside. I had bear dreams all night … first the bear drove up in a green Subaru Forester, wearing a jaunty Tyrolean hat like the bear in Richard Scarry. The bear got out of the car, took off his hat and then, as if it was his job, morphed into an enormous scary bear in the backyard. Sort of like the great big bear that stood up and woofed at me and the dogs two years ago in Suce Creek. A big big dream bear on all fours looking at us and swinging his head back and forth, mad at us for wanting to trap him.
Alas, the bear either moved on to greener birdfeeders, or was wise to the ways of culvert traps, because this morning the trap was still there, door wide open, empty. Let’s hope the bear took the hint and moved along — because as exciting as the prospect of trapping a bear in the backyard might have been, I’d really rather the bear was out there doing what it should be doing — being a wild animal.
The MH called this morning to tell me there was a bear in his neighbor’s yard last night. Looks like it came up the creek from the river, and took out the neighbor’s birdfeeder. He said there wasn’t too much damage, but the sliding glass door is covered in big bear paw prints.
We discussed whether I should take my feeder down — I’ve really come to love my little birdfeeder. It’s right outside the kitchen window and watching the birds is such a pleasure when I’m doing dishes. They’re just ordinary little birds: sparrows and finches and chickadees with the occasional woodpecker or flicker for excitement.
I think I’ll keep it up for a few more days and see what the bear situation in town looks like. The MH lives down by the river, where there’s more wildlife than up here in my part of town. Even in the fall when my apple trees are dumping ripe fruit all over my yard, I’ve never had a bear up this far (although I am only two blocks from Fleishman Creek). I’m in the middle of the block, and a bear would have to come up a long alley to get to my backyard. There’s no sweet little creek to follow. We’ll have to see, I’d hate to lose my feeder, but birdfeeders are a real problem out here in bear country. To a hungry bear, a full birdfeeder is a gift — all that protein and fat — and as the saying goes “a fed bear is a dead bear.” So, time to keep an eye on the situation. If the bears are coming into town, the word will be out, and the feeder may have to come down.