The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?

--Chuang-tzu

I really wanted to find a live video of them that didn't pick up all sorts of background chatter, but I couldn't find one. Still, these are lovely songs.... I hope you enjoy them.

On Orchids

We live by tunneling for we are people buried alive. To me, the tunnels you make will seem strangely aimless, uprooted orchids. But the fragrance is undying. A little boy has run away from Amherst a few days ago, writes Emily Dickinson in a letter of 1883, and when asked where he was going, replied, Vermont or Asia.

On Shelter

You can write on a wall with a fish heart, it's because of the phosphorus. They eat it. There are shacks like that down along the river. I am writing this to be as wrong as possible to you. Replace the door when you leave, it says. Now you tell me how wrong that is, how long it glows. Tell me.

--Anne Carson

Language---how it comes together or doesn't in the hunks of it my students hand me at the start of the year. what I can see in between the bad spelling and invented words and run-on sentences. the stories they tell and the intensity with which they tell me about themselves: their broken bones, favorite songs, the animals they love. lists of verbs, paragraphs about weather, false starts scratched out with forbidden purple ink.
and images---how close do I have to get for things to come into focus? is there a way to show what I see or is it enough to show what's there? how much light is enough, on that flaking blue brick?

                                   The Ninth Planet

In the shadow cast by the end of time who will believe the earth was not merely a vast plain
Faith requires a law to assure clay's obedience to gravity and light
Who wouldn't believe that otherwise we would slingshot into space, oceans would pour from the earth's stark edges. The universe is the most human of individuals---
Lowell never saw the proof of Pluto in his lifetime:
Observing the erratic wobble of Neptune's orbit, he plotted diagrams and equations
and left instructions as to where in the night sky the wanderer would be found

--Kazim Ali

http://www.kazimali.com/
http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/kazim_ali/

It's been kind of an interesting week. I've had a bad sinus infection for the past ten days or so and Monday finally went to the after hours emergency doc. She apparently heard something funky, did a chest X-ray, and upon reading that a CAT scan was ordered. I only had to wait 24 hours to find out that I was all right, but it felt like longer. I'm feeling better and happy to be, essentially, strong and healthy. Grateful, too, in a way I wasn't in touch with before. I want to write more about that soon.

About a month ago Ron and I spent the weekend over in White County, Georgia, in a little mountain town called Sautee-Nacoochee. This town is adjacent to the camp and gaudiness of Helen, Georgia, which was basically a ghost town in the late 60's when it was revitalized economically by its transformation into what's meant to be a replica of a Bavarian village. I don't much care for Helen but I had read about Sautee-Nacoochee and its commitment to preserving and celebrating the artisanship and generous rural community spirit of the area. And I read about a play being produced there, something called Headwaters, a community effort that was essentially a storytelling done in dramatic form. So we drove over there and spent an amazing weekend exploring the forests and galleries and the Pottery Museum and such. But the highlight of the visit was for me the Headwaters play. This play, co-authored by a woman named Jo Carson, was a compilation of dramatized stories based on the lives of the residents of the Sautee Valley. The actors were pretty much all local with I think one or two exceptions. One of the primary stories involved a community effort to build a therapeutic hot tub for a local family with a disabled child. Other stories showed the histories and adventures of characters from the town. The stories weren't all larger than life in terms of scope and ambition but they all held a spirit of communitarian energy that was infectious and inspiring. As we walked into the old restored high school gymnasium where Headwaters was performed, Ron noticed a book for sale and pointed it out to me. it turned out to be written by Jo Carson, who co-authored and helped to produce the play we were there to see. The book is called Spider Speculations: A Physics and Biophysics of Storytelling.I bought it and immersed myself in it over the next few days when I could. It's a great book. It deals with production of community storytelling efforts like Headwaters and Swamp Gravy, which Carson also helped produce and which helped to revitalize and restore the little town of Colquitt in south Georgia. I've been thinking since then, off and on, about the power of storytelling to reframe, heal, nurture, and empower. I was amazed at the connections Carson drew between storytelling and healing and at how she was able to show how these connections really, truly played out in the plays she helped produce.

After the play, the actors and producers spent some time talking to us about the production and how things came together. Their love for what they did, their descriptions of the improvisational nature of how scenes played out and lines were written and altered and songs chosen and sung, made me happy. They told us about how the bear masks made out of gourds had to be adapted and how they were grown there in Sautee. They talked to us about how the stories morphed here and there into themselves as the production came together and how and why they picked the music they did. They made me want to sponsor a communitarian storytelling effort here in Jasper. We already have a strong dramatic outfit called the Tater Patch Players, and I had just been to see their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at a Pickens County farm the previous week. I don't think I have time but it's something to think about. The kind of energy Headwaters shared with its audience is something I think any community could use. Here's some more information if you're interested.

Swamp Gravy
headwaters
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-546

I ran across this book review this morning. Looks like quite a compelling read and incredibly pertinent given McCain's choice of a running mate yesterday. check it out.

http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=9781586484255

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/books/review/Brooks-t.html

The more I approach you in reality, the more the key sings in the door of the unknown room.

--Andre Breton

A few weeks ago I went over to the little pond where I sometimes go to read, write, think, meditate, take pictures, pray. My mother's buried just up the hill and the forty acres that surround the pond are used by the local Episcopal church now. The land used to "belong" to the Cherokee and there is still an old Native ballground just up the road. It's my place to let things come to me. I don't always come away with a sense of that but on this day I did. it was around the time of the anniversary of my mother's death from cancer four years ago and I felt her spirit and presence very strongly. I sat and kind of offered up my hopes for my creative work, my work as a teacher, my spiritual growth, and just my self. I had a book by Mary Oliver with me, New and Selected Poems Volume Two. This is the poem I turned to. A poem for stirring things up, for breaking open parts of my heart that felt stuck together, closed. Oliver wants her God to know her, to know who she is. this is a longing that resonates powerfully for me and I sat and watched the dragonflies and the jumping fish and just let the tears come. after awhile I got up and took some pictures. the ghostly white chairs on the pondshore to my left took on a special poignance and I experienced their reflected contours in the brown and green and blue water as almost alive. it was a beautiful time and I felt connected, strengthened. known.

Meanwhile

Lord, my body is not yet a temple,
       but only one of your fair fields.
       An empty field that nobody wants, at leat not yet.
       But even here the lily is somewhere.
       Sometimes it lifts its head above the grasses,
       the daisies, the milkweed, the mallow.

And sometimes, like us, it sleeps, or at least
      leans below the blades of the grasses.
      Lord, I live as you have made me to live.
      I bite hungrily into the peach and the turnip.
      I bite, with sorrow, into the calf and the lamb.
      I drink the tears of the clouds.

I praise the leaves of the shrub oaks
     and the pine trees in their bold coats.
     I listen and give thanks to the catbird and the thrush.
     Meanwhile, the fox knows where you are.
     The bees leave the swamp azalea and fly straight
     to the shadow of your face.

Meanwhile, my body is rustic and brash.
     The world I live in is hedges, and small blossoms.
     Lord, consider me, and my earnest work.
     A hut I have made, out of the grasses.
     Now I build the door, out of all things brash and rustic.
     Day and night it is open.
     Have you seen it yet, among the grasses?

     How it longs for you?
     How it tries to shine, like gold?

--Mary Oliver