O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So shall the darkness be  light, and the stillness the dancing.

ts eliot ~ East Coker

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Now that we have baked our cookies and trimmed our trees,
now that we have wrapped our gifts and planned our dinners,
now that we have hung stockings and sent greetings and set tables,
assembled toys and trimmed wicks, written Santa and hung wreaths,
the time has come to abandon it all,
if only for a moment.

As we turn to our day of celebration,
Wisdom turns to extinguish the colorful strings of lights and dim the gleaming star.
Wisdom pinches out her candles,
sighs the music away and sends laughter drifting off to rest in deepening piles of silence.

Standing in stillness before her window,
Wisdom gazes toward one of the deepest mysteries of Christmas
And smiles at this truth: Christmas needs us not at all.

Christmas doesn’t depend on our planning for its existence
and it cares not a whit for our preparations.
Christmas is not a sale, a dinner, a gathering or party.
Christmas is neither the worship of believers
nor the rituals of the world.

Christmas is everywhere and nowhere at once,
Like moonlight or a passing breeze.
It is the song of a hidden bird and the thrill of sudden flight.
It is a hallelujah sung in secret
by exultant, broken-winged angels.

Christmas is a voice
telling an unbelievable tale with the confidence of a child
who murmurs to a single, astonished heart.

Christmas is a song rising and lilting to confound arrogance and pride.
Christmas is a sob, a peal of laughter, a ripple of joy ringing through the night,
A sudden gasp of exaltation and love.

Christmas is a story,
words piled upon words and more words,
stacked ever higher by invisible hands
until their form resonates with mystery and beauty.

In language so plain,
so simple and unadorned we nearly miss the mystery of it all,
St. John tells us Christmas is a celebration of the Word,
a blessed confrontation with the source and sustenance of life.

In the beginning was the Word, our good Saint says,
and at the end will be the Word.
And in these middle times where the longings of our hearts meet the limits of our lives,
the same Word that spoke order out of chaos,
that enrobed itself in human flesh and came to enliven both heaven and earth
echoes down the corridors of our lives.

The Word of Christmas is a Word of promise and hope.
It is a Word that stands in the midst of emptiness.
It is a Word that cuts a path through brokenness and pain.
It is a Word that challenges every easy assumption of our lives
and it is a Word sung best by angels,
their voices rising strong and sure into the night.

These are the nights when angels sing.
And if the tune has changed,
if the lyrics seem unfamiliar,
if the secret chords that compel their song
seem unlikely to have echoed that first Christmas night,
it is the same Word still.

Hallelujah

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Permeated with commercial hustle and cultural bustle, the days before Christmas are ferociously busy. It’s a time of almost continuous activity. Christian and non-Christian alike bake cookies, decorate homes, put up trees, exchange gifts, send cards or email and socialize until it seems every available minute has been filled.

Not only is the season the busiest of the year, it’s also the noisiest. The decible level of life rises perceptibly as carols and seasonal songs blare in grocery and department stores.  Television and cyber-pitchmen hawk their wares with increasing fervor, and impatient horns fill shopping mall parking lots with the honking of a thousand demented geese.

Even at night, in bed, the noise ebbs and flows in the form of  incessant internal questioning.  ”What have I forgotten?” “ Who will be offended if…?”  “Can we afford to. ..?”  ”Will there be time for…?” All the while, children nag and adults grow snappish.  By Christmas Day, many are ready to throw out the tree with the wrapping paper and get on with it.  Eleven additional  days of Christmas, stretching on to the Feast of the Epiphany, seem a horror.   Who needs more Christmas when we already are exhausted and drained?

Everyone knows a Scrooge or two, cynics who describe these seasonal excesses in terms that range from “evil” to “pathetic”. Obviously, they are neither. The gathering of family and friends, the joy of worship, the exchange of gifts can be sheer delight. For most people, the pleasures of Christmas are worth every minute of pressure and every ounce of energy they require. But as we anticipate our celebration, it’s worth pausing to remember we prepare in the context of a world far older than our customs and far larger than our plans. It is a world that travels an ages-old path and turns on an ageless axis with no regard for human intent and purpose. It is a hidden world, but imperfectly so. It can be searched out and surprised, and it can reveal itself in unexpected ways.

I experienced that hidden world one Christmas holiday in England.  After a brief stop in London,  I went on to spend a week in Wiltshire in order to celebrate Christmas at Salisbury cathedral.  I stayed at a wonderful inn and came to enjoy long conversations with the innkeeper and his wife. They were cheerful sorts,  bubbly and accomodating,  just as keepers of inns should be.  Best of all,  they were full of advice and ideas to make my English sojourn perfect.

When they discovered I hadn’t planned to make the trek to Stonehenge (“that pile of rocks in a pasture”, as another guest put it), they were aghast. “But you must go to Stonehenge!”, they implored. Laughing, I asked if  Stonehenge wasn’t better visited in summer. Giving me a look I’d learned to translate as, “Now see what this poor, benighted American is saying”, they replied yes, the summer solstice is more famous, but the winter solstice has its own good qualities. “For example”, they said, ”in the dead of winter there are far fewer tourists to clog up the roads.”

On the slightly ironic basis of “fewer tourists”, I agreed to make the trip with them. As we traveled, they told me a bit more about solstice. The winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the event. Following the solstice, days grow longer and nights shorter. The word itself, “solstice”, comes from the Latin solstitium, a combination of “sun” (sol) and “a stoppage” (stitium). However, legend says that at the very moment of solstice, it is not only the sun that stops. If you are in a silent place, with a quiet mind and a stilled heart, you can hear the earth catch her breath and pause, as she waits for the sun to turn and move, beginning his ageless journey toward the spring.

Charmed by the legend and intrigued by the science, I’d become truly  interested at last in exploring the “pile of rocks in a pasture”.  We arrived at Stonehenge not at the precise time of solstice, but on the day after. What crowds had gathered were gone. There were no ticket-takers, no vendors, no guides. There was only emptiness – a cold sun shining through high, thin clouds, cold gray rock and winter-singed grass dusted with snow. There was a wind that sighed, and a single bird, circling above the plain.

The silence was so complete I could hear my heart, beating in my ears.  A sense of presence,  profound and palpable, gripped my heart.   Anxious, no longer certain I was alone, I turned to see who might have come up from behind.   There was no one there.  There were only the rocks, the sky and the hush of wind, singing across Salisbury plain.

Every year as the darkness deepens, as the days grow shorter and the sun  hastens his journey toward the solstice turn, I remember Salisbury Plain - the stones, the silence and the song. My first experience of that deep and richly textured silence was not my last.  I have come to understand that my experience was not dependent upon the stones of an ancient culture or the shades of a people lost in time.   A sense of presence, a conviction of deep connectedness to the larger world in which we live is intrinsic to the nature of life itself. It is part of our birthright, and there is no predicting when, or where it will appear.

When the mystery of connectedness does surprise us - whether in a snowstorm-emptied New York street or a mist-shrouded grove of Redwoods, whether at a baby’s crib or a parent’s grave, whether in an empty classroom or an overflowing church, whether near a dawn-touched shoreline or the familiarity of a suburban yard, its nature is unmistakable, and the poet’s words apply:

If you came this way
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead; the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

T.S. Eliot ~ Little Gidding

There will be no Stonehenge in my travels this year,  no moment of wonder in the emptiness of a wind-swept English plain. But the sun is lowering in the sky, and soon enough solstice will arrive. If we are wise, we will find a bit of space, a little emptiness, some moments of silence in the midst of our celebrations to embrace its coming and its promise. As we ready our hearts – as we prepare a room built of those moments of solitude and silent attentiveness that so often elude us – then as surely as the sun stops, and the earth breathes, and the cold wind sweeps the plain, we will experience the joy which has embraced this world.  It is a joy which does, quite truly, bring heaven and earth to song.

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Christmas comes differently to the country.

Threaded around and through twin pieces of rusted rebar that serve as mailbox supports, the shabbiness of the plastic pine garland is apparent only to the mail carrier, or to the woman who trudges in slippers up the lane from her house, hoping against hope to find greetings in her box.  From the road the garland appears perfect, full and fresh.  From a distance, even plastic communicates the woman’s message: in this house, we celebrate. We mark the season. We share our joy with you, the passer-by.

Farther down the road,  a wreath made of vines adorns a gate closed across a cattle guard.  Its ribbon flutters in the wind, attracting attention, drawing the eye through the gate and into a pasture.  There’s a brush pile and some uncleared mesquite. A few trees, pushed over and left to die, wait to be added to the pile.  Despite the cattle guard, no livestock roam. There’s no stock tank, no house or pond - not even a pile of rusted, broken-down machinery.  Only a despondent wind sighs through the fence and across the field.

With no house in sight the wreath seems misplaced until the eye travels on to the horizon, discovering a single, spreading oak hung with drops of red, silver and gold.  Clearly the ornaments are the size of basketballs or larger, to be seen at such a distance.  It must have required a team of youngsters to get them into the tree. Swinging in the breeze, beautiful in their simplicity and striking in their isolation, they whisper their poignant reminder: in this emptiness, in this fading light and behind this unworked land, there is human presence.  

At night the country shines.  As darkness overcomes the fields and hedgerows, a star flickers into life atop a windmill, suggesting a tank and an unseen herd.  Curves of lighted icicles mark the end of lanes.  A fire flickers in the distance.  Where homes cling more closely to the frail netting of roadways, the shimmer of tree lights glints an ornament or two into existence.  In yards, occasional twinkling nets flung over bushes light a path for latecomers.

To eyes accustomed to the insistent glow of cities,  the lights seem frail and faint.   When city folk arrive to celebrate with country friends, their expectations of riotous color and overwhelming light makes the singular star, the barely visible twinkle, seem impoverished and insignificant.  Trained over the years to equate Christmas with lavish celebration, obsessive consumption and elegant gluttony, they find the modesty of a single star embarassing. 

Christmas, it seems, has become the season of extravagance. Its most common complaint often sounds suspiciously like boasting - there simply is too much to accomplish, too many obligations, far too many demands. Ironically, that same extravagance also makes it the season of not enough: not enough money, not enough time or energy and increasingly little good will.   Constrained by the limits of age, by economic loss or the demands of a complicated daily life, far too many hear the casual question – “Are you ready for Christmas?” – as an accusation, an occasion for discomfort, anxiety or guilt.   Have we sent enough cards? Strung enough lights? Purchased enough gifts?  Will there be time enough for the baking, the cleaning, the entertaining?  Will our efforts be approved by those around us, or will we, too, be judged impoverished and insignificant? 

The Church always has had an answer for the extravagance and angst of our season – a nearly forgotten and oft-dismissed answer to be sure, but an answer nonetheless.  Underneath the roiling surface of our preparations lies a great truth: this is not the Christmas season. In the Christian tradition, Christmas begins December 25, with the Christ Mass, the Feast of the Nativity. It continues on for a traditional twelve days, finally culminating in the Feast of the Epiphany, the visit of the Magi to the Christ child.

These days leading up to Christmas, these days we love to fill with light and chatter and exhaustion, make up the forgotten season of Advent. It is a modest season, not meant for hyperactivity or extravagance.  This time is meant for emptying, lying fallow, waiting.  This is our time to embrace the darkness in which stars still shine, to shiver in a cold destined to be filled with the warmth of presence, to acknowledge human limits in the face of unutterable and infinite longings.  Simple and unadorned, austere, barely more than ordinary, Advent grants one of the rarest of gifts - celebration on a human scale. 

One of most beautiful tributes to the truths of Advent and perhaps the most modest of all Christmas songs was written by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965).  Published as Carol of Advent in Part 3 of The Oxford Book of Carols (1928), People, Look East is set to BESANÇON, an ancient carol which first appeared in Christmas Carols New and Old, 1871, as the setting for Shepherds, Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep.

Farjeon, a native of London and a devout Catholic, is best remembered for her poem Morning Has Broken, often sung as a church hymn and popularized by Cat Stevens (now, Yusuf Islam).  A prolific writer of children’s books and Hans Christian Andersen award-winner  for The Little Bookroom, her poetry is remarkably plain, almost mundane, and yet perfectly suited for musical settings.

One line in People, Look East always has seemed to me especially touching.  Make your house fair as you are able, says Farjeon. If it lies within your means, trim the hearth with a candle or two. Set the table with your best dishes, and the best cloth you can find.  Put up a tree if you will, or twine a bit of garland around a fence or mailbox.  But don’t frustrate yourself trying to outdo the neighbors’ lighting.  Don’t  try to fill a heart’s void with gifts.  Don’t exhaust yourself in kitchen or malls, or try to replicate a past that never was.

Instead, prepare as you are able, and then prepare again to celebrate as the world herself celebrates - guarding an empty nest, walking the fallow field, keeping watch under darkened skies for the star that flickers into life.  In the midst of the world’s extravagant preparations, take time to raise your eyes and look to the horizon, lest you miss the most modest of comings.

“People, Look East” sung by The Choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral ~ Click to play

People, Look East

People, look east, the time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today
Love, the guest, is on the way.

Furrows, be glad, though earth is bare
One more seed is planted there.
Give up your strength the seed to nourish
That in course the flower may flourish.
People, look east and sing today
Love, the rose, is on the way.

Birds, though you long have ceased to build,
Guard the nest that must be filled.
Even the hour when wings are frozen
God for fledging time has chosen.
People, look east and sing today
Love, the bird, is on the way.

Stars, keep a watch when night is dim,
One more light the bowl shall brim.
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together,
People, look east and sing today
Love, the star, is on the way.

Angels, announce to man and beast
Him who cometh from the east.
Set every peak and valley humming
With the word, the Lord is coming.
People, look east and sing today
Love, the Lord, is on the way.

Comments are welcome. To leave a comment or respond, please click below.  Special thanks to Daniel Lipinski for permission to use the last photo in this series. Daniel’s other photos, chronicling life on his Montana ranch, can be found here.

Everyone knows there are “cat people” and “dog people”.  I qualify as a cat person. Mine is a beautiful calico named Dixie Rose (short for Dixie-Rose-Center-of-the-Universe-and-Queen-of-all-She-Surveys). I already was “old” when I brought her into my life as an unloved, four month old stray. Apart from a painted turtle and a small black birthday puppy who lasted only hours (tiny and overly enthusiastic, the pup terrified me and was sent packing), she’s my first pet. Like a favored first child or grandchild, I believe her to be the most beautiful and most clever creature on four paws. I don’t think she’s the most spoiled creature in the world, but we’re working on it - diligently.

The first Christmas season I shared with Dixie, it became apparent some things would have to change. The entire process of tree-trimming, gift wrapping, and holiday decorating simply was more than she could bear. A swath of shredded ribbon, broken ornaments and pulled-down swags marked her passage through the pre-holiday festivities. When the tree went over for a second time and then a third, I surrendered. My first Christmas with Dixie, we celebrated with a bare tree that had been weighted down around the base with a length of 3/8″ galvanized chain. No candles burned that year.  Presents were hidden in the closet until time for humans to unwrap them, and all sparkly things were banned because of my furry darling’s quite literal appetite for all things that glittered, whether gold or not.

Christmas came, and Christmas went, and sometimes Dixie and I disagreed strongly on the nature of true celebration. Things weren’t always good that year, and the phrase “This hurts me more than it does you” came to mind more than once.

As a matter of fact, things were so bad for a week or so I began to amuse myself by creating the first of what would become a series of little ditties I called Cat Carols. You know the tune, and can add the “Fa-la-las” as needed.

Wreck the Halls

Wreck the halls all decked with holly,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la la-la-la.
Sheer destruction is so jolly,
Fa-la…
Tip the tree with all its treasures,
Fa-la…
Shred the presents for good measure!
Fa-la…

Fast away the fur-ball passes,
Fa-la…
To wreak havoc on the masses,
Fa-la…
Swinging through the punch and cookies,
Fa-la…
You can tell she is no rookie,
Fa-la…

It was the start of something wonderfully fun. When I included the lyrics in Dixie’s Christmas card to her vet, he suggested she keep writing. So, she did. Again, you know the tune:

Stalking in a Winter Wonderland

Collars ring, are you listening?
In the lane, eyes are glistening…
The moon is so bright, we’re happy tonight,
Stalking in a winter wonderland.

Gone away are the bluebirds,
Here to stay are the new birds.
They sing their same songs as we skulk along,
Stalking in a winter wonderland.

In the meadow we can build a snow mouse,
And pretend that he is fat and brown.
He’ll say “Are you hungry?” We’ll say, “No, mouse”,
But we’ll have you for dinner on the town.

Later on, we’ll retire
For a snooze by the fire,
And dream of the prey we’ll catch the next day,
Stalking in a winter wonderland.

Of course, not everyone loves the kitty-cats, and there is a song for them, too. While I don’t advocate the shooting of cats (or dogs, or people for that matter) I certainly can understand the emotions which might lead to a Christmas song like this.

Jingle Bells, Shotgun Shells

Jingle bells, shotgun shells, there’s that danged old cat!
Get my gun, let’s have some fun, I know just where he’s at!
Jingle bells, oh, Hell’s bells, now he’s on the run!
If I find my glasses that cat’s hunting days are done.

A day or two ago, I thought I’d feed the birds,
I grabbed a bag of seed, a second and a third.
But halfway ‘cross the yard, I saw the bushes shake,
It was my neighbor’s scroungy cat, a big orange tom named Jake.

Oh, jingle bells, shotgun shells, (repeat chorus)…..

I love to feed the birds, it makes me feel so glad.
But Jake, that danged old cat, he makes me so darned mad!
He’s not content to eat a lizard or a mouse,
He wants to eat my pretty birds: that cat’s a stinking louse!

Oh, jingle bells, shotgun shells (repeat chorus)

Finally, there is this cautionary tale. A great-aunt much given to malapropism used to caution me, “Tempus fidgets“. Just like a child, cats (and probably dogs) need to be reminded that tempus does, indeed, fidget, and the magical night is not far off.

Santa Cat is Coming to Town

Oh, you’d better not hiss, you’d better not bite,
You’d better not tempt the dog to a fight;
Santa Cat is coming to town!

He’s making a list, checking it twice,
Gonna find out who chased all those mice,
Santa Cat is coming to town!

He knows when you’ve been scratching,
He knows who you’ve outfoxed,
He knows if you’ve been in a snit
And refused your litter box!

With potted cat grass and catnip-filled balls,
Snuggly warm beds and mice from the malls,
Santa Cat is coming to town.

We haven’t started this year’s song, but things are stirring, and “O, Christmas Bush” seems a likely candidate. It’s pure silliness of course, just another bit of holiday excess. On the other hand, excess isn’t always bad, and sometimes silly excess is a path to truth. Looking at Dixie, singing her little carols to her, I suddenly remember another carol. “Joy to World”, we sing, “The Lord is Come. Let Earth receive her king“.

We don’t sing, “Joy to human beings, joy to those who walk upright and drive cars and open too many credit card accounts and are nasty to their neighbors.”  The joy we sing is meant for the whole world, for stars and dirt, mountains and seas, trees, rocks, valleys and hills and every creature who inhabits them all. While we prepare our hearts, heaven and nature sing out the truth. Gifts of the season are meant for all, and we need to love our world enough to include it in our celebration.

In the meantime, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, whether you take the promises of the season seriously or whether you don’t, accept these bits of silliness as a gift from Dixie Rose. Feel free to laugh at them, sing them to yourself, or pass them on to friends. Believe me when I say an entire room filled with pet-lovers singing these songs can be hilarious, and they’ve been known to bring a smile to the face of even the Scroogiest animal “hater”.

As for Dixie, she continues on her best behavior. She’s learned she can avoid kitty-jail by avoiding kitty-misbehavior, and so we trim our tree in peace.  I hang ornaments that stay in place and display cookies and gifts without fear. While I prepare our celebration, she spends a good bit of time sleeping in the low afternoon sunlight, visions of catnip-plums dancing in her head as she waits in perfect peace and joy for whatever might come next.

In this season of Advent, this season of waiting and anticipation, may we all be blessed with such peace and joy!

Previously published in 2008, this post has been revised and re-published due to overwhelming demand (one request) and constant nagging by Dixie Rose and her agent.  I didn’t know about the agent until recently, but I should have.  Comments are welcome. To leave a comment or respond, please click below.

Many of the childhood Christmas projects I remember most fondly required very little in the way of materials, and even fewer tools.  When we wanted garlands for the tree, we’d string cranberries or popcorn with nothing more than a needle and some thread.  Everyone likes a little sparkle, so we shaped aluminum foil around thimbles and tied up our “bells” with ribbon.  Silver, crystal and gold swags were breathtaking but far too expensive for our parents’ budgets.  Knowing this, we satisfied ourselves by finding our scissors, cutting slim strips of paper and then gluing them together into chains. Red and green construction paper was best, but even magazine or catalogue pages would do, and in only an afternoon we could drape mantels, doorways and trees with festivity.

This year I found a new project, one that requires even less in the way of material.   All that’s needed is a measuring  device and a little imagination.  A good tape measure is best – the kind used by carpenters or contractors – metal, twelve feet long, able to be locked while someone calculates on a pad or 4×6.  If you don’t have a metal tape, any sort will do. Perhaps you have a delicate, purse-sized cloth tape like those preferred by dressmakers and crafters, or a slim, three-foot pocket tape given out as an advertising promotion. If you don’t have any tape at all, a ruler is fine, or even a piece of 8-1/2″  x 11″ paper.  Precision isn’t important here, only the ability to measure.

Once you have your tape or ruler, find a place in your home that seems about 10′ x 10′ square. If you aren’t certain what 10′ looks like, do some measuring.  Reel out the tape across a living room or bedroom floor. Get a feel for the space, and then find a corner of your apartment or house where 10′ x 10′ can be easily visualized.

My own 10′ x 10′ space is my dining area. It’s exactly that size,  if you don’t count the little built-out alcove I have china tucked into, and can imagine walls extending through the openings that lead to the kitchen and living rooms.  Facing the east wall, I sit at a lovely teak computer desk with an open hutch, the printer and scanner tucked neatly beside it. To the north is my window, my ever-changing vision of water and sky.  Behind me is the oak dining table that graced my parents’ first home, and two press-backed chairs caned by my mother.  Small enough for two, it can be extended with leaves to comfortably seat as many as eight, or ten very good friends.

Behind me on the west wall are two shallow, glass-fronted china cabinets, mission-styled and made especially for a small room. To the south, against the half-wall that separates dining and kitchen areas, a small mahogany Chinese tea cabinet holds cameras, candles, a few skeins of yarn, and cloth napkins in its two drawers. I spend most of my at-home waking hours here, reading, writing and dreaming, surrounded by some of my favorite possessions: a print of cowgirl Helen Bonham, a collection of oil lamps, an abalone shell, the china wash basin the cat curls into for sleep when the weather warms. 

It’s a lovely, comfortable room, but in the end it’s only a room – one of five in my apartment, 100 square feet out of 840.  Granted, I’ve lived in spaces that more nearly resemble this room than my full apartment.   The sailboat I lived aboard for a year might have had 100 square feet of living space, even though it could sleep four in a pinch.  “The Place”, my beloved cabin out west, held everything needed for a comfortable stint in the country  - woodstove, bed, chainsaws, table and chairs - in an expansive 196 square feet of space.  But those were temporary living quarters, even when “temporary” was measured in months rather than weekends.   For much of the world, 10′ x 10′  isn’t a getaway but a way of life, a routine, an inescapable reality. 

In an extraordinary collection called 100 x 100,  German photographer Michael Wolf recorded the lives of 100 residents in their 100 square foot flats in Shek Kip Mei, Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate.

Located in Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong’s eighteen Administrative Districts, Shek Kip Mei was the first resettlement estate built after a tragic squatter fire on Christmas Eve, 1953 left approximately 50,000 people homeless. Refugees from Mainland China, they had been living on mixed agricultural and Crown land just north of the Walled City of Kowloon, itself the site of a squatter fire in 1950.  While there is some disagreement about the nature of the government’s response to the tragedies, there’s no question the beginnings of Hong Kong’s current housing policy can be traced to the Shek Kip Mei fire.

Completed in two phases during the middle 1950s, Lower and Upper Shek Kip Mei Estates comprised 42 blocks of 6, 7 and 13 storey buildings.  Redesigned, reconfigured and rennovated over the years, Shek Kip Mei became more livable, but remained what it was in its inception: minimal housing for the maximum number of people.

In April of 2007, shortly before residents were to begin moving out in advance of Shek Kip Mei’s demolition, photographer Michael Wolf and a social worker began knocking on doors. An accomplished urban photographer who worked extensively in Hong Kong, Wolf had focused exclusively on building exteriors. At the urging of friends he moved inside, and in the space of only four days compiled one of the most compelling portraits of urban life possible. In an interview with the New York Times’ Valerie Lipinski, Mr. Wolf said,

“I had the methodology worked out. You open the door, and you put the camera with one foot of the tripod inside. I used a small flash to bounce off the ceiling. I wanted to see into every corner. I took three or four photographs and moved on to the next one. If someone said no, I didn’t waste any time trying to convince them. In total, I photographed 118 rooms. When I had them all printed, it was almost a new looking at these interiors, because while I was photographing, I really didn’t have time to look really at what I was seeing.”

While the visual impact of the homes’ small size and clutter can be overwhelming, the words of the residents need to be heard as well.  As he took his photographs, Mr. Wolf asked each resident a few questions:  how old they were, how long they had lived there, what they did for a living and whether they liked living in Shek Kip Mei.  While the ages and length of residency varied, over and over the same good qualities were mentioned: convenient transportation, friendly neighbors, low rent, dependable air conditioning.  It all sounds so very, very familiar.

Today, Shek Kip Mei is gone, nearly all of its residents re-located into slightly larger living spaces within the same District.  A single block (Block 41, Mei Ho House) has been left standing and will be transformed into a youth hostel, preserved for its historical value and as a reminder of the resourceful people who lived out their lives within its walls.  Luckily, Michael Wolf arrived before Shek Kip Mei was gone.

Pondering Mr. Wolf’s photographs, I wonder: how did these people measure their lives?  From my perspective, a world and years away, it’s difficult to know. But looking into their spaces, I’m reminded how the measure of things changes over our years.  For now, I have space and light, the luxury of privacy and freedom of movement.  But just across the road, in a local nursing home,  residents are living out their lives in hundred square-foot rooms,  limited by age and illness as surely as the residents of Shek Kip Mei were limited by poverty and displacement.  Crowded into tiny trailers and rented rooms, survivors of Hurricane Ike continue to rebuild their lives, one square foot at a time.  Squatting behind a concrete block wall, three homeless men huddle out of the wind, not daring to light the fire that might give away their location.

Suddenly, in my own hundred square feet of space, I feel the richness of life, just as I find the coming of Christmas as simple to conceive as a childhood craft.  Lighting an oil lamp far older than my years, I move it to the middle of my parents’ table.  Clearing a stack of papers from the ornate Chinese tea chest, I set out two bare-branched metal pines, their branches tipped in copper, and three green glass votives.  My grandmother’s ceramic angels peer down at me from the hutch and as the cat sighs with pleasure, I put a new, warm sheepskin across her bowl.

Watching as a fine mist blows down the fairway and obscures the view, knowing that the evening darkness will come early and there are chores still to complete, I slide the tape measure into the drawer and smile.  You can do a lot of living in a hundred square feet.

Many thanks to Dolce Belleza, who first made me aware of Michael Wolf’s work.  His Hong Kong: Inside/Outside is available from Peperoni Books.                                          Comments are welcome.  To leave a comment or respond, please click below.

I never can remember where I’ve left my car keys.  It slips my mind that I’ve been told to stop at the grocery for milk. I forget to swing by the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions and occasionally I forget to feed the outside cat.  I’m always forgetting this password or that, and I’ve completely forgotten the names of some of my high school chums.  People who claim to know about such things tell me this everyday-forgetting is unremarkable.  A little more age here, a few things more interesting to ponder there, and the mind wanders off, unconcerned with milk, kitties or keys.

Most recently, I very nearly forgot I’d promised Ruth, of the lovely blog Synch-ro-niz-ing, that I’d accept her invitation to join with a group of bloggers and write about the beginnings of The Task at Hand ~ more specifically, how it received its title.  It’s a story I’m happy to recount for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the sheer pleasure of remembering those first, halting steps onto the path called “writing”.

In late 2007, a project or two brought me to the point of wanting to learn how to post images to the web. Simply in order to have a place to “practice”, I began a  blog at Weather Underground.  It wasn’t an obvious choice for a blogsite, but I wasn’t a blogger. I simply was messing about, exploring and experimenting.  My first entry was a pecan pie recipe. My second, about a trip through the Texas Hill Country, suddenly veered off into memoir, and I was writing.  I posted again, and then a fourth time, amazed to discover people  reading and enjoying my words.

Two months and a few posts later, on a whim, I joined the Bay Area Writers’ League.  I certainly never had thought of myself as a writer, but I was curious to see what people who defined themselves as writers might look like.  As it turned out, they looked pretty much like me: in love with words, with stories to tell and more than willing to spend their time listening to the first, halting efforts of beginners or the polished, compelling presentations of published authors.

At the January meeting, I was introduced to the concept of “flash fiction” and decided to participate in the monthly contest.  The challenge was to respond to a photo posted in the group’s newsletter with a hundred words (or fewer) of either poetry or prose.  When I saw the photo selected for the contest, it took less than a second to recognize Sisyphus.  Too clever for his own good, Sisyphus may have brought his punishment upon himself, but images of that punishment have compelled artists for centuries.  Unfortunately, I had no idea how to cross the gap from image to words without falling into cliché.

Three days later, while working on a boat and thinking about not much in particular, the first line came to mind, fully formed.  The title came next, and then days of shaping words for meaning and sound.  In the end – and quite to my surprise – I’d written a poem rather than a piece of prose.  It’s title? The Task at Hand.

 The Task at Hand  did win the little “contest”, and from the beginning it seemed so right, so truth-filled, there was no question it would serve as the title for my first “real” blog at WordPress.  A non-writer, I’d written a writer’s poem, with room for all of the discipline, all the surprise, all of the faith and clenched-teeth perseverance that writing requires. Did I know it then? Of course not.  Even now I only know it only in glimpses, in fits and starts, and in those passing moments when a “right word” appears.

At the Bay Area Writers’ League, it’s the custom for the winner of each contest to read their poetry or prose aloud at the next month’s meeting.   After I’d read The Task at Hand, a fellow came up to me.  ”So. This your first poem?” he asked.  ”Yes, I’ve just started writing.” ”Let me tell you something, then. That poem’s like a suit of clothes that’s two sizes too big. That’s ok. Don’t worry about it. You keep writing, and in a few years, you’ll start to grow into it.”

I’m like a kid that can’t wait.

The Task at Hand

Even the right word takes effort.

Quarried from a crevice of the mind
it stumbles into context from a surprised tongue
then slips again toward silence.

Breaking chains of metaphor,
pulled from its page by the gravity of doubt
it defies usefulness,

heaving past frail allusion
blocking passage after passage
with its heavy presence
until turned and nudged and tried again
for perfect fit
by one who never tires ~

the Sisyphean poet.

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One of my amusements during the holiday season is people-watching.  Particularly in situations where crowds, lines and captive children are the norm, amusement is easy to find.

During a Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving swing through a local grocery, I landed behind a child and his mother in the checkout line.  The boy might have been three or four, and he was fussy.  Hanging on to his mother’s skirt, he circled around and around until he found safety, tucked between her and the cart.  Turning to look past us to the vibrant displays of merchandise across the aisle, he pointed to something, tugging on her skirt to gain attention.  Busy sorting through her purse, his mother ignored him – a mistake she would come to regret.

The boy began tugging with both hands, demanding her attention as “fussy” transformed itself into ”cantankerous”. Finally pushed over the edge by parental insensitivity, he began to wail with rage and frustration.  He was tired. He wanted to go home. He especially didn’t want to be waiting in line while his mother sorted through coupons and double checked lists. As his outraged protest grew louder and more high-pitched, his obviously embarassed and distraught mother tried her best to reason with her monosyllabic son.

“Do you want to ride in the cart?” she asked.   No, he did not want to ride in the cart.  “Do you want to look at your book?”   No, he did not.  “Do you want me to spank you?”  “No”.  “Do you want to go to your room when we get home?”  ”No.”

In desperation, his mother looked at the overflowing grocery cart and asked, “Do you want a cookie?”   “NO!’, he shouted.  Obviously startled by an unexpected response, his mother asked again, “Are you sure you don’t want a cookie?”  “NO!!!”  Suddenly, his mom stopped. Looking at her boy she asked, “Do you know what I just asked you?”   “NOOOO!!!” came the reply, as he re-buried his face into her skirt.

Funny as the little drama was for those of us who were watching, uncomfortable and embarassing as it obviously was for his mother, what made it most astonishing was the intensity of the child’s “No”.  Caught up in the sheer, perverse pleasure of negativity, his ”No” had become more important to him than even a cookie.

Unfortunately, the instinctive response of a child can become the habit of an adult.  Looking around, it isn’t hard to find the nay-sayers among us.  Petulant, obnoxious, pessimistic and filled with cynicism, their entire raison d‘être appears to be shouting “NO!” into the face of life.  Offered the hand of friendship, the challenges of collegiality, the possibility of intimacy, their response is to cling ever more tightly to their rejection of every overture, every gesture of conciliation.

Tiresome and exhausting in personal relationships, negativity becomes corrosive and even toxic on a social level.  When whole groups begin saying “no” to one another, more than feelings get hurt. Society becomes segmented. Fear begins to erode acceptance. Selfishness appears, together with its unhappy twin, power-hunger.  From urban alleyways to the halls of Congress, from boardrooms to lecture halls, we increasingly are confronted by the spectacle of enraged, petulant children shouting “No” – albeit ”children” who also possess adult strength and power.  These “Nos” can kill, or reshape lives without regard for consequence.

Knowing all this, and understanding full well the power of negativity to erode, consume and destroy, I prefer the folly of optimism – a willingness to believe, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, that humanity at heart is good, that joy is possible,  and that no matter how broken, trust can be rebuilt. To paraphrase Faulkner’s famous words, I chose  to believe humanity not only will endure the shouts of “no” we call history, but that it will prevail over that history by the “yes” of courageous human hearts.

Is such optimism naive?  Has faith in humanity become outdated?  Have the cruelty, ridicule and small-mindedness of the schoolyard made dignity, perseverance and grace irrelevant?  Faced with such questions, it becomes my turn to speak a “no”, to affirm human decency and the possibility of grace and to align myself once again with a poet of my roots.  Let the naysayers of the world rant on. Carl Sandburg knows the people, and he knows the people’s ‘Yes”. 

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
    They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
    The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
    You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it…

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
    “I earn my living.
    I make enough to get by
    and it takes all my time.
    If I had more time
    I could do more for myself
    and maybe for others.
    I could read and study
    and talk things over
    and find out about things.
    It takes time.
    I wish I had the time.”…

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
    This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
    Yet this reaching is alive yet
    for lights and keepsakes.

    The people know the salt of the sea
    and the strength of the winds
    lashing the corners of the earth.
    The people take the earth
    as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
    Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
    They are in tune and step
    with constellations of universal law.
    The people is a polychrome,
    a spectrum and a prism
    held in a moving monolith,
    a console organ of changing themes,
    a clavilux of color poems
    wherein the sea offers fog
    and the fog moves off in rain
    and the labrador sunset shortens
    to a nocturne of clear stars
    serene over the shot spray
    of northern lights.

    The steel mill sky is alive.
    The fire breaks white and zigzag
    shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
    Man is a long time coming.
    Man will yet win.
    Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
    There are men who can’t be bought.
    The fireborn are at home in fire.
    The stars make no noise,
    You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
    Time is a great teacher.
    Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
    the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
    “Where to? what next?” 

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K9N6ECV2E5TY

Flung across the  landscape by the rising winds of autumn,  acorns bounce and tumble toward their destiny, the sound of their fall exploding into the air like riffs of small arms fire or the percussive chatter of  firecrackers.  If you happen to be standing near a car when the first gust strikes and an acorn-laden oak decides to let her seed-crop fly, the noise created by the collision of nature’s irresistable force and a human’s immovable object is astounding.  If you open the car’s door, slide across the seat and close the door behind you, the amplified sound is deafening, the storm of green and brown pellets less destructive than hail but no less impressive.

I experienced my first acorn storm in the Texas hill country, an area of valleys and ridges threaded through with oak.  Live oak is the area’s signature tree, but red, pin, lacey, and bur also root in its soil and history.  Like the sudden swell of redbud in spring, the astonishment of the prickly pear’s extravagant yellow blossoms and the turning of Virginia creeper as it climbs toward true red,  every country event can be an adventure – unpredictable, unique and unexpected – and the acorn storms are no exception.

I’d been told about acorn falls from my first days of  hill country porch-sitting.  Some folks talked about the Great Fall of ‘78 the way northerners refer to particularly memorable blizzards.  While it’s easy to know by sight if the crop is good, there’s no way to predict the beginning of their fall.  Despite my eager curiosity, there was nothing I could do but wait - through one year, then two, then three - never knowing when I finally would experience acorns as they were meant to be experienced, in a cacophony of sound clanging like a dinner bell for every woodland creature within earshot.

When it happened, it was remarkable and slightly unnerving.  Long after midnight, the first acorn fell from the oak overhanging the cabin, hitting the tin roof like a gunshot. Roused from sleep to full, heart-pounding  attentiveness I watched shadows prowl, wrapping their fingers around the window frames like stealthy intruders.  The gust of wind responsible for separating seed from tree had set the outside lantern swaying and given the shadows life.

As the wind laid and the lantern ceased its swinging, the shadows settled back into the darkness. Certain at last that neither man nor beast had come to claim my life, I lay back myself, and just was drifting into sleep when “POINGGG!” Another acorn fell against the tin and scrabbled down the roof.  As the wind began her insistent rise, branches bent and bowed as other acorns fell, and then more, until the night was filled with their strange percussive rhythms and the metallic overtones of their sound against the roof. 

Today, crunching my way through the shiny brown litter that drifts against the curbs, I grow nostalgic for those cabin nights and the autumn days I spent gathering acorns for the world’s most pampered squirrel.  Squirrels can survive and even thrive with commercial feeds, but my Mr. Squirrel was discriminating, with an educated palate. He preferred slices of sweet potato, fresh dandelion greens and blossoms, fresh-pulled grasses, native pecans and, of course – acorns.

Nothin’ says lovin’ like a freezer filled with bags of acorns, and nothin’ says “flat-out crazy” like a woman roaming beneath the oaks, filling plastic bags with nature’s bounty.  Though he was only a baby and not ready for acorns his first autumn of life, the next year he had acorns galore. Unfortunately, his surrogate mother hadn’t yet become squirrely enough to gather as she should, and there was a brief period of time between the end of the acorns and the beginning of the dandelions when my friend was unhappy.  After that, I’d learned my lesson, and three days of gathering could keep him through the winter.

Quite apart from their  ability to entertain country visitors or please an eipcurean squirrel, acorns are interesting.  They come in assorted sizes and colors, and sport a whole variety of rakish caps. Practically speaking, they’re a critical part of the food chain. Just as my squirrel doted on them, deer, mice, rabbits, foxes, raccoons, turkey and quail, jays, woodpeckers and water-fowl enjoy them as well.  

Crop size varies from year to year, partly because of differences in the production cycle of various oaks.  The perfect combination of sunshine and rain can produce bumper crops that raise tin-roofed sleepers straight out of bed, but crops can be diminished, too, by disease, drought, and freezing temperatures.

Most publications from county agents, universities and arborists note the wide variation in acorn production from year to year, and almost always include a caveat against attempting to draw other, “more speculative” conclusions from the number of acorns.  When they do, they’re going up against centuries of folk wisdom. For many people, acorns are predictive.  I grew up with grandparents who firmly believed an abundance of acorns was a sign of a harsh winter to come.  Years later, a friend who’d grown up in Nebraska shared her bit of  weather wisdom from the plains: “Busy squirrels, blizzards swirl”. It was accepted wisdom in her town, and remains widely accepted around the country.

In a slightly different vein and despite scientific protest, many believe that in a drought cycle oaks produce more acorns, not fewer, as a way of ensuring the trees’ survival.  Here in Texas, after a summer of especially severe drought, I’m hearing the theory offered up again by folks who believe our bumper crop is a last gasp from water-deprived trees.   Through a summer of drought the oaks set  their minds on survival, creating, nurturing and finally shedding huge numbers of acorns to drift against the curbs and cover the ground – potential trees, tiny bits of life-yet-to-be ready to lie fallow, and wait, and dream of the sunlight and rain that will bring them into being.

I thought about those acorns at my overflowing mailbox last week.  The holiday catalogues had begun arriving.  As they piled up in great drifts and heaps of glossy, enticing paper, I realized some were old favorites I expected to receive: LL Bean, Vermont Country Store, American Spoon Foods.  A few reminded me of years I’d looked for special gifts: Bissinger, Orvis, Whiteflower Farm.  But most of them I’d never seen and certainly never had ordered from, catalogues like Monticello, Acacia, Bits and Pieces, and in a bit of delicious irony, Acorn.

As the stack grew higher, I became curious and made a count.  In only four days I’d received received 57 catalogues, far more than ever before. Looking at them, I felt slightly queasy.  Meant only to lure and entice shoppers with their glittering baubles and luxurious goods, they seemed to be an unintended sign of something quite different: retail desperation. In a diseased and drought-sticken economy, with the threat of frozen spending on the horizon, merchants across the country are beginning to take on the appearance of slightly desperate oaks, trying to ensure their survival by raining down catalogues like acorns around our feet.

Certainly we aren’t dependent upon catalogue retailers for our survival in the same way that squirrels and deer depend on fallen acorns.  And yet, just as in the woodland world, our connections are close, and the health of any is dependent upon the health of all.  As I watch small businesses close half a nation away, as I watch the decimation of entire cities, I hear the rumors and whispers beginning even in my own still relatively stable state.  An owner sells a boat here, a person quits a club there. A friend gives up her gym membership, a family decides against lighted christmas decorations for their home.  A house stays on the market too long. A young person’s college cuts her curriculum.  A single mother’s job is ”downsized”.  In the silence, each fact drops with a thud as we sit up, startled and anxious, wondering about the sound and trying to interpret its meaning.

In Washington, of course, things are neither so grim nor so fraught with anxiety for the senators and staff, lobbyists and representatives who make it their business to shape the life of a nation.  As autumn deepens and the cycles of life begin to turn again, as the winds of desolation rise and the clatter and clamor of failing businesses and falling hopes ripple across the land,  they seem content to live life as it always has been lived.   Perhaps, I think, it may be that the sturdiness of their office walls and the splendor of their chambers shield them from the sounds we hear.

But autumn has come to America, and the acorns are falling.

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The sense of presence slid gently across the cluttered desktop, palpable as sunlight. Nudging past my elbow, it rippled up my spine and chilled my shoulders, staking its claim to my consciousness like a squatter moving into a deserted house.

Suddenly attentive though not yet uneasy I turned, expecting to see my calico scowl of a cat peering at me across the dining table, irritated with my absorption in my work, intent on drawing me away for a bit of play. But the cat was nowhere to be seen.  When her name and a gentle, trilling call brought no response, I stretched and looked, unwilling to move from my chair.  She wasn’t under the table, not hidden in the plumpness of sofa cushions.  No sleeping cat lay draped across the wooden chair, her paws kneading at the air where they rested between turned spindles.  

Perplexed by her absence as much as by the vague promptings that had unfocused my attention, I turned back to the computer, ready to dismiss my unease and settle back into my work.

 
Then I saw it, nearly hidden by the papery chaos overflowing the desk’s half-shelf.   Crouched behind a small stack of notebooks it seemed to be doing a bit of stretching of its own, staring at me with a combination of insouciance and fear.  Accustomed to occasional spiders who seem to enjoy setting up housekeeping in the undisturbed corners of my life,  I barely glanced at the creature before I asked my usual, half-humorous question: “Well, look at you.  What are you doing here?”  “Waiting to introduce myself,” came the reply.

Startled beyond words to discover I wasn’t confronting  a spider at all and wondering if I could smack my tiny visitor into submission if it turned aggressive, I responded as though carrying on a converation with something that had just crawled out of my books was the most usual thing in the world. “Who are you?” I asked. “Vacillatory’s the name,” the word-creature said. “But you can call me Val.”

Despite years of  speaking and writing words, it was unnerving to hear an adjective speak back to me.  I might have thought less of it in those mysterious hours between midnight and dawn, the madrugada, the time when time itself slows and flutters in the night breezes like the curtains of our dreams , but this was full afternoon, and I was awake.  “And why is it you’re here?” I asked. “I saw your last post, about technology, Twitter and texting,” Val grimaced. “I thought you might be able to help me out.”

“What seems to be the problem?” I asked, remarking to myself that if a word could pout, Val would be the poster boy for the practice.  Finally, he got around to his point. ”Nobody likes me.”  ”Val,” I said, “that’s pure silliness, and you know it.  Vacillatory’s a perfectly good word.  You’ve got a nice balance of consonants and vowels, you’re beautifully symmetrical on the page, and even if you are just a tiny bit obscure, you certainly aren’t archaic.”   

“I know,”  he said. “But I’m too long. I’ve got five syllables and no one wants that many syllables these days.  I’m too long for Twitter and texting, and they can’t abbreviate me.  I’ve suggested vty, but they think that’s short for ‘victory’.  Vcilty gets turned into ‘velocity’.  I really like vsltry, but that ended up making me the hero of a Russian novel, something like ‘Vasily tries’.  I just don’t know what to do.”

“Well,” I suggested, “what about a spelling bee?  Those folks always are looking for nice, long, uncommon words. Couldn’t you pick up some work there?”  “They only happen once a year,” Val demurred. “Even if I got used in practice a good bit, no one would know about it. And they’d never pay attention to me at the contests. Everyone would be cooing over those cute kids.”  

“Fine,” I said. “Then what about National Novel Writing Month?  I don’t know how many people are participating this year, but even if it’s only a few thousand, when you multiply those writers times 50,000 words, there surely would be a place for you.” 

“NaNoWriMo – are you kidding?  Val rolled his eyes. “Those are good writers with good vocabularies, but word count’s the name of that game.  I might make it into an edit, when they’re got a little more time to fancy things up, but no one’s going to plunk me into a first draft.  It’s the same with the NaBloPoMo folks.  It’s hard to post every day, so most of them want easy, accessible videos or simple, straightforward posts. They don’t have time for creaky old multi-syllabic geezers.”

Determined not to run aground on his negativity, I tried a different tack.  ”What about plain, old fashioned bloggers, then? I’ve used you once, you know.”  Obviously exasperated, Val scrunched forward to make his point.  ”Of course I know you used me. Why do you think I showed up here in the first place?  Humans aren’t the only record-keepers in the world.   I happen to know I’ve been used 24 times in the past year - eighteen times written, and six spoken.  It isn’t much, but I’ve done far better than my friends Exuviated and Skirr.  That’s why I dropped by. I thought it might be worth the effort to track you down and see if I could get a little more work.  Being under-employed’s not much fun.”

Distracted by the cat, who’d heard our conversation and come out to explore, I turned away from Val and leaned down to scratch her ears while I thought. Finally I said,  “Well, Val, I’ll do my part. I promise. I’ll use your full name - Vacillatory - once a month, and do what I can to get you out there in front of the public. How’s that?”

There was no reply. While I’d been tending to the cat, my adjectival friend had slipped away, leaving nothing but silence, the soft hum of the computer, and a last sliver of sunlight fading through the glass.

Later, in the darkness, I wondered. Had I imagined Vacillatory’s visit?  Had I been conversing with a multi-syllabic elf with a bit of an attitude?  Had my Muse come calling, or perhaps some weird, word-obsessed version of Marley’s ghost?  Whatever the truth , it was impossible to deny the message written across my experience.  There are words which long to be spoken.  No longer content to languish inside a dictionary or thesaurus, unwilling to be consigned to pages of dusty prose, they seek us out, longing to discover new friends who still might be willing to give them voice.  Obscured by a blizzard of acronyms, fallen from fashion, thought to be too difficult or arcane for daily use, they are irreduceable and irreplaceable, resonant with meaning accrued over the centuries. They are the elders of our language: filled with wisdom, able to heal and ready to speak to those inclined to hear.

Anne Lyken Garner

A lover of the  Madrugada, poet Stephen Dunn captures the magic of its nightspell in a line from his poem of the same name:

“I love how life nags
and language responds.

But sometimes it is language that nags and life which is called to respond.  If the best of our words are to be preserved, if our sentences are to shimmer with meaning and paragraphs entice our readers with kaleidoscopic beauty, we are the ones who must commit ourselves to remembrance, understanding and use. 

Val and his friends are depending on us.

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