Letting go is an ongoing practice, one that can bring us a lot of happiness. When a Vietnamese woman who escaped her country by boat was robbed on the high seas of all her gold, she was so distraught that she contemplated suicide. But on the shore, she met a man who had been robbed of even his clothes, and it helped her very much to see him smiling. He had truly let go. Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.

- Thich Nhat Hanh in The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

This.

Today's my dad's birthday. He's 73. Tomorrow he's having cataract surgery. Naturally I'm a little concerned but it is pretty routine. I'll call him afterwards. He wouldn't hear of my getting a sub and driving down to be with him.
Dad is a retired Superior Court judge. articulate, down-to-earth, funny, intelligent. He voted for Obama this year with a kind of glee that still surprises me when I think about it.  He dislikes George Bush and the Republican Party in general and will say why with no compunctions. He stands alone among his cronies in this regard but he doesn't try to hide what he thinks and even revels in teasing his friends about their politics. He's deeply nostalgic, as am I, and keeps mementos of his life in rural Walton County, Georgia, where he grew up and has lived for most of his life, all over the house. Last May his friends in the Walton County law enforcement and county government systems hired an artist to paint a portrait of him. it hangs in the courthouse there in Monroe. Dad has helped a lot of people over the years. This is a tradition he inherited and a role he chose, both. He tells me how my grandfather, who was the county sheriff for many years, used to go to foreclosure sales and buy what he could at the auctions in order to give it back to its original owners. I don't even know that I can say for sure how Dad has helped people. He doesn't talk about it, really. but when he retired in 2006 his friends and co-workers threw a big old party for him. it was a big deal and quite a surprise. I'll never forget his face when he walked in. When I was younger I always kind of thought of him as a sort of mellow, less immediately genteel version of Atticus Finch. I remember when he was working to help convict members of the Dixie Mafia in a highly volatile and controversial court case back in the early 80's. these were bad guys and at issue was a terrible fire, set for insurance purposes, wherein a family had perished. we couldn't go much of anywhere, my brother and me, while that trial was going on. My Dad's side, as I thought of them, won the case and I was proud of Dad for his role in the victory.
when I was a kid Dad spent a good bit of time in his shop, working with wood. My brother Brian and I would hang out with him from time to time. the place was cluttered and cold in the winter but it had a smell of sawdust and kerosene that I loved. there was an old beat up piano that needed tuning in the back and the shop was heated by a short squat woodstove. There were always mice around but they were part of the feel of the shop, its hominess and funky spirit. I still have several pieces of furniture Dad made there--small bookshelves and magazine racks, an old wooden box with various decoupaged images splayed across it, a desk that really belongs to my brother, and a tall bookshelf with my name carved into the top. When I go to visit him now we watch college football together and he shows me his orchids. one of his friends decided last year to give him about thirty orchid plants so he has a greenhouse full. Just beyond the greenhouse is his workshop--not the same one I grew up knowing, out in the country where we lived, but a smaller, less cluttered iteration. I haven't been in there in awhile. I don't think he does as much in there as he used to but he still likes to work with wood. He is a fine and talented storyteller and tells his tales in a calm, warmly modulated Southern drawl. they seem to me to have a stronger impact that way; the pieces of story fall into place in a smooth organic fashion, as if they were just always there. he told me that when Pearl Harbor happened, on his fifth birthday, he was scared at first that somehow he had caused it. my kind and gentle grandmother reassured him that that wasn't so. I plan to take my seldom used old Canon videocam to Monroe over Christmas break and film Dad telling some of his stories. I may post some of them when that is done. I will let you all know how it goes.

We have to sleep with open eyes; we must dream with our hands.

--Octavio Paz

I Want Something Without a Name

I want something without a name---No!
I'm not saying I don't know what I crave!
I want something without a name, light of foot, even
airborne, all feathers but feathers
detached in the air,
of fine plumage. I want that which
it will not be possible to say
I have had. What envelops and releases---
not chronologically, but envelops and releases
all at the same time.
One gesture, small as a man's. Passing through a liquid
and a solid state, and then an airborne
state, not chronologically, but all at the same time.
A brightness in the eye without the eye. No eyes,
no ears, no parts, all opening and closing
at the same time. Both closed and open of no
apparent distance from me. No distance. A hole
with nothing around it. No surroundings. A dive
to and from
not even a pool,
not even a plank.

--Erica Ehrenberg

Awakening to the truth that, as Byron Katie says, THIS is paradise. It's hard to internalize. It takes practice. Practice. and more practice. and learning how to breathe. but I believe it. I also like what Charlotte Joko Beck has to say: "You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeing it."

Okay, I hope this video works. I tried to post it some time back and it went away on me.

Realizing that my library is far too extensive. No one needs this many books. I'm going to start a side business as a bookseller and I'll also  be sending them out to friends and family. I'm out of control. it's unmanageable. I don't feel good about it. I made a choice to be a more discerning consumer last month, but I think I need to take it a step further and unburden myself of a significant number of these books. I will let you all know how it goes.

Cry Easily

Keep your intelligence white-hot
and your grief glistening,
so your life will stay fresh.
Cry easily like a little child.

--Rumi

translated by Coleman Barks

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.

--Thomas Merton

It's Robert Bly's birthday. Here's a poem of his. enjoy.

Dawn

Some love to watch the sea bushes appearing at dawn,
To see night fall from the goose wings, and to hear
The conversations the night sea has with the dawn.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.
Now you know why I spent my twenties crying.
Cries are required from those who wake disturbed at dawn.

Adam was called in to name the Red-Winged
Blackbirds, the Diamond Rattlers, and the Ring-Tailed
Raccoons washing God in the streams at dawn.

Centuries later, the Mesopotamian gods,
All curls and ears, showed up; behind them the Generals
With their blue-coated sons who will die at dawn.

Those grasshopper-eating hermits were so good
To stay all day in the cave; but it is also sweet
To see the fenceposts gradually appear at dawn.

People in love with the setting stars are right
To adore the baby who smells of the stable, but we know
That even the setting stars will disappear at dawn.

(from the Paris Review)

This is from his album December. I have always loved it.

This one by Nicholas Roerich. It isn't about Christmas really. I'm not sure what's here beyond the image for me. but it fits.

(inspired in part by Jeannie's answer.)

My family. Their humor, kindness, and intelligent sweetness is always nourishing.

The way the view from my deck always changes. My mother called it the portal. It shifts from being a bowl of color in winter when the sunlight plays with brown angles of treetrunk and hunks of coniferous green to being a drift of mist and fog and gray cotton in rain. The mountain disappears then amidst the swaths of cloud and there's a gentle intimacy to the space when that happens. It settles and stirs and breathes quietly amidst and around falling snow.

My friends. The way they call me on my bullshit, support me when I'm struggling or sad, encourage my creative efforts and the work I do. The way they show me new ways of seeing and being.

Language. And silence.

Remembrance. Being open to the moment, being permeable to what now has to offer, is ultimately where I find my deepest joy. But I understand Thomas Moore's perspective when he writes in The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life that memory and the attendant movement into the past is important to him as a writer. I can get bogged down in nostalgia but I also love this part of myself, the part that creates little altars as homage to where and who I've been, and to who accompanied me there.

Toys. I kind of collect old toys and those that have a certain funky character to them.  Right now on a table in my bedroom there's a miniature school bus, a handmade wooden Jacob's ladder, an old Batman comic book, a hackey sack I got on Coney Island, a little red model sedan that I've had since childhood, and a funny-faced little man who looks kind of like Homer Simpson and who I found sitting on the fence of the Burnt Mountain overlook, his face turned towards the dips and crests of the hills as if considering their seasonal changes.

Food. Banana pancakes, pasta with spinach and roasted red peppers and black olives. Eggs with brewer's yeast and smoked Gouda. An occasional fat homebaked Southern biscuit with pear preserves on it. polenta. Mashed potatoes. Collard greens with vinegar on New Year's Day. Pad Thai. Moussaka. Cornbread soaked in buttermilk. Stir fry. Granny Smiths and winesaps from local orchards. Steamed yellow squash and baked butternut. Salads with crumbled goat cheese and dried currants and walnuts. Paella.

Music. Everything from Leonard Cohen to Chet Baker to old Jimmie Rodgers to Glenn Gould's renderings of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Pens. I kind of hoard them.

Jekyll Island in winter.

Watching hawks and cardinals and other birds.

Swamps and how they smell and the way they mirror light in teak colored water.

Letters. The kind you send in the mail.

Postcards.

Jewelry. Not gemstones really but more the kind made of beads and wood and little hunks of silver and jasper.

My grandmother's patchwork quilts.

Film. Wild Strawberries, The Third Man, The Big Lebowski, The Last Waltz. I could give you an exhaustive list but I won't.

Poetry. Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Bob Hicok, William Stafford, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, Pattiann Rogers, Robert Frost, TS Eliot, Robert Creeley, lucille clifton. And so many others.

Weather.

My cats.

Watching strangers in the grocery store, in the car rider line at school when I have that duty, walking along the street, laughing in restaurants. Their small quirks and kindnesses. Their sadnesses, witnessed and held and then released.

My students and everything about them. Even the times they make me crazy with their repetitive questions and frustrated faces. Their laughter and the way their writing changes and grows and the stories they tell me about their lives in homeroom all compensate for anything I struggle with.

Notebooks, both empty and full.

Paper lamps.

Art: Gustav Klimt, Charles Burchfield, Howard Pyle, Annie Leibovitz, Jacob Lawrence, Emily Carr. Romare Bearden. Vermeer. Funky unknown outside artists who pull together bits and pieces of strangeness to show us how to imagine.

Animals. the fox I saw a few weeks ago trotting along Mineral Springs Road. the fat black possum that tries to steal my cats' kibble. my friend's big dog that aches to jump up on me.
Fire: campfires, candlelight, hearthfire, sageflame in an abalone shell.
Prayer beads, labyrinths, and the holiness of lakewater alive with jumping fish and dragonflies and new ways of seeing the changing light.

It's not a list I can find an end to. I'll stop here for now.

Peace,

Laura

I took myself out for dinner  last night. I don't mind going out and dining alone but it had been awhile since I'd done it. Jasper has a relatively new restaurant, 61 Main, that serves almost solely locally grown and produced food. It seems to be flourishing and is right next door to a new health food store that also seems to be doing well. I'm glad to see this in my rural little north Georgia town. 61 Main is run by a young couple who seem full of energy and enthusiasm. I like to look at the paper lamps and the photographs of flowers and vegetable grown at the local community farms, Whitestone Farm and Dig It Farm. The coffee is also from a local company called Foggy Hollow and is rich and wonderful. I had a big cup of grassy green tea, the roasted beets (which are amazing) and a cup of minestrone. Then I got a slice of the best carrot cake I've ever had to take home with me. I walked around a little, enjoying the cool wind and the blue lights on the Christmas tree on the courthouse square. I felt peaceful and quietly at home.

To see Void vast infinite
look out the window
into the blue sky.

--Allen Ginsberg