in front of me yams and a slow cooker

Earlier today as I was chopping yams for a casserole that Tadzio loves, I was reminded of this poem by Ishigaki Rin.

There have been for ages
Objects always placed
In front of us women,
A pot of sufficient size
To match our strength and
A ricepot designed especially for fat
Simmering shiny rice and
In front of the glow from the fire that we have inherited from the
beginning of history
Were always our mothers and grandmothers and their mothers also.

What amount of love and faithfulness
Did they pour into these objects?
At times it was red carrots
Black kelp
Diced fish

In the kitchen
There always occurred the correct preparations for breakfast and lunch
and dinner
Before the preparations there were always rows of
Warm hands and knees.

Ah were it not for these rows of people
How could the women have so cheerfully
Done the cooking time and time again?
This is the face of an indefatigable love
This is the face of service performed day after day so that it becomes a
matter of routine.

painfully intimate

Tomorrow night Przemek and I are going to slip away to watch a Butoh performance. The word Ankoku Butoh - abbreviated to butoh - means Dance of Darkness. The best way to describe it is as a mixture of elements of traditional Japanese theater, modern dance, and mime. It breaks with the established rules of dance and relies heavily on improvisation. Imagine white painted bodies, slow movements, bold heads and contorted postures. The dance evokes images of decay, of fear and desperation, images of eroticism, ecstasy and stillness.A performance I saw years ago involved a slow, terrifying eruption into a moan.

Watching Butoh always makes me slightly uncomfortable. It is striking, and painfully intimate. It reminds the viewer that without a measure of sorrow, there is no life. Just as without the measure of life there is no death.



Image by Ivanalich

merci

Vous remercier mes amis. I've enjoyed getting to know all of you over the past couple of months while unravelling. It's so interesting to meet others through text and photos. I'm a little sad that this is our last week together, but I feel inspired to do more work. Perhaps to try a little harder and shine a little brighter.

Photo by Nikka

the first bird

There are summers when the heat quivers up from the ground and pierces my wide-brimmed hat. Summers almost without nights. During this season I love the dawn so much that I almost feel like it's granted to me as a reward. In the early morning, everything slumbers still in a primal blue.



Wandering alone at this hour I become aware of my own self, experienced with an inexpressible state of grace.



Often I return to the house just as the bell rings for the first Mass.

Photos by Nikka

pazzi

Pazzi is the name of the woman who taught me to carve marble in Italy. She is a Belgian woman originally born with the name Patricia, but she changed her name (and most likely her whole identity) when she moved to Carrara, Italy. In Italian, pazzi means crazy. She had a funny story about introducing herself to other Italian artists. She would introduce herself saying "Hello, I'm Pazzi. Invariably the artist would respond "Hello, I'm also pazzi."

These past few days I've been thinking about how true this story is for all of us. Everyone of us is pazzi. I witness it everyday in others. I'm sure they witness it in me. As far as I can tell, the only mistake (commonly made) is in thinking that you are not pazzi. I also find myself appreciating the wisdom and courage of my friend and teacher. I think of her, wild hair piled into a cap on her head, cigarette dangling out of her mouth, leaning over me wearing yesterday's clothes as she tries once again to instruct me on the pneumatic chisel. She is Pazzi ,and so am I. What a beautiful thing.

Pazzi has a daughter named Luna. Also an admirable name hinting at madness. Yet the name Luna is uniquely tied to Carrara and its history.

Lipka

Lately I've been awake and outside at dawn. The solstice is approaching and the linden trees are starting to bloom. The neighborhood is filled with their haunting fragrance.



photo courtesy of Cig Harvey

A Warm Little Hand

Nights as beautiful as Chinese calligraphy
Are marshy daffodil fields. I pass by
The marsh and watch as closely
As air

A warm little hand is a fruit bowl
I curl up in the bowl, as quietly
As a big sleep

Certain youthful arms feel like summer water
Certain ornamental feathers hatch a flying bird
Certain pitiful weather is crowned with stars
Certain terror memories, slippery as ice

If I live among them as lovingly as roots
If I fly above them
As leisurely as clouds
The clouds entering your dreams
Would be restless as fire

Oh, on Qinming, petals drop
All night through. Gathering up the petals
I am as melancholy
As patterns in the moon.

Zheng Danyi
Melancholy

light waves

Everyone has been quietly preparing for the transition to summer. The school year is wrapping up for the children, and tonight is their end of year program. Przemek has been handing out his homemade strawberry jam to the teachers. So much of this year has been about Tadzio's first year of attendance at the French school. It has been so interesting to learn French as a family. "Tadzio, où est la balle?" "La balle est là-bas."It seems appropriate to conclude this short post, and the school year, with a video featuring waves of light and the sounds of Paris.

light waves
Originally uploaded by wild goose chase

Islands

This week Tadzio and I have had some time off together. While he naps and plays outside pretending to be a monster, I've been reading the Joanne Harris' Coastliners. The imagery of Harris' story sinks into a reader like a day at the beach; one can almost smell the salty air, feel the wind and expect to find grains of sand stuck in their hair after closing the book. I'm fairly certain this book inspired our trip out to one of our own nearby islands this morning. My plan was to go to the island to pick strawberries at a small u-pick farm, and then spend some time exploring the beach and the river. It was hilarious and predictable to watch Tadzio pick strawberries. He ate far more than he picked, and would lose himself in dreamy reverie watching a tractor plow a field in the distance. Nevertheless, we filled our bucket.

Tadzio wanted to gather cut flowers for my birthday, so we stopped and harvested peonies in a second bucket. He operated the garden shears with anxious guidance from me. Here is a photo of our cuttings. Peonies are such glamorous flowers. I couldn't resist taking photos of them along with about thirty photos of my boy filling himself with strawberries under a gray island sky.

The Wings of Summer

When all but one summer day is left thundering here
I lean inward, and see you, wings folded in a loose shirt
Walking on my clean floor. Evening breezes are gentle
And cool, in a place autumn wind does not reach

Where are you from? Like a fireball, you make the metals in me shine
And tinkle, now left, now right… We hover
Over a crowd of strangers, in circles and spirals, … Ah, summer
Happiness attacking my heart, how do you enchant me so much?

Oh, higher, let us watch like birds. Look, a world
Of tiny hearts, wriggling. Look, there—
Our fated homeland. Ah, summer wants to ripen all the fruits
Below! Look, the fall wind is climbing over the snow mountains

Ah, why aren’t you the grand dream of a spider, all your life
Wearing ill-fitting clothes? Ah, why aren’t you a butterfly
Within a butterfly? In your warm body, there is sadness cold as water
Hot will turn cold. Ah, in the glimmer of your fire, I want to put on

A pair of summer wings! Following you, like a fireball
Collecting all the fleeting rays of the summer day, to make a song
Oh, my wings, see me leave the ground, elevate, choose a
Direction. Why do I find in your name the moon of my life?

-Zheng Danyi

Salt and a Flock of Sheep

Let me begin with a story.

Once upon a time, there was a narrow street lined with fine gardens and elegant courtyards. An emperor housed his one thousand beauties here. Each night, he would pick a name from his list and then shower his love on the lucky lady. He soon tired of this method and devised a sheep-drawn (or perhaps goat-drawn) carriage to let the sheep make the decision. Wherever the carriage stopped, a lantern would be hung at the door, and a night of tenderness would begin.

One clever lady, and the most beautiful of all, took fate in her own hands. Every day, she would have the freshest grass cut and put near her doorstep at dusk, thus she secured the emperor's favors night after night. But before long, fresh cut grass began to appear at nearly every door and things went back to usual. Determined to be the emperor's only love, the woman one day discovered that a little salt added to the grass would make the sheep much happier. From that night on, they would not eat any other grass but hers, and no one knew why.

When evening falls, the lanterns look fat. All is before me
But mind is on salt and flock of sheep

This twelfth-century story of an emperor and his concubines, condensed into two cryptic lines in the love poem Phoenix, gives a glimpse of the older, grander, and tenacious tradition that remains operative in Zheng Danyi's poetry. Remote, obscure, decadent, perhaps even politically incorrect, the story nonetheless intrigues, lending a seductive charm to the poem. In his poems, we feel the light and shadows of the ancient legacy, yet, like the story of salt and sheep, they shine through just enough to give depth and context, while their dates and facts may evade us.

The above is an excerpt from the introduction Zheng Danyi's Wings of Summer by Luo Hui.

And what do those lines of poetry suggest to me? Those moments in a relationship when all is before you, but the one thing you can think about is how to carry out your one little trick or ritual that somehow manages to keep the love flowing. Perhaps a strategy to control the experience. Or just get laid. Here is the full stanza.


Here is no home, but the summer breeze is just as cool
Now I see her drinking cold water. Then
She counts the freckles on my neck
When evening comes, the lanterns look fat. All is before me
But my mind is on salt and a flock of sheep.