drought tolerance - notes from August

(from 20 August 2023, during a time of practice encouraged in the book Poetry as Spellcasting)

In the smoke of so many wildfires, I still light a small flame, to honor the element of fire, to acknowledge my relationship with this inscrutable source of heat and light, this relationship that does set humans apart — the ability to invoke fire, tend and use it. And will humans ultimately be destroyed by an excess of heat, having become too greedy with this knowledge and ability?

Is there any way to dial it back enough to simply live well, in some mode of harmony? That is the prayer in this candle and practice — a wish to be able to live well in relationship to everything around. The daily offering of water and flame activates an observance of our interdependence, these elements and the life I call me.

The smoke and drought make everything feel stark and struggling.

Breath and moisture are life, and 

drought-tolerant means 

knowing how to rest, 

how to slow essential processes 

to wait for the 

right conditions for flourishing

Rilke: “Künstler sein heißt: reifen wie der Baum, der seine Säfte nicht drängt und getrost in den Sturmen des Frühlings steht ohne die Angst, daß dahinter kein Sommer kommen könnte. Er kommt doch. Aber er kommt nur zu den Geduldigen, die da sind, als ob die Ewigkeit vor ihnen läge, so sorglos still und weit.” To be an artist means not to count or reckon but to ripen like the tree that does not force its sap and, trustingly, stands through the storms of spring without fear that summer will not come. It will come. But it comes only to the patient ones, who stand there with eternity stretching around them, quiet, vast, and free of worry. (Letters to a Young Poet, 23 April 1903, Barrows & Macy translation)

For Rilke, summer is the rich and ripening, fruitful time, whereas in my forest garden, the summer (from July onward) is drought and the time of patience.

The notion of drought tolerance, learned from observing mosses, combines with Rilke’s poem from the Book of Hours (II,1): “jetzt mußt du in dein Herz hinaus/ wie in die Ebene gehn” — now you must go in your heart out, as into an open plain.

It’s a going inward and an opening out, the open plain is found in the heart. There’s a deliberate sinking into the interior, a dormancy that is not sleep or shutdown, but activated choice, exploration. It is Kevin Quashie’s sense of surrender: “a giving into, a falling into self” and Audre Lorde’s “when we begin to live from within outward…then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense,” and the guidance I took from them to “surrender to the vastness of inner fertility.”

Forest shapes, trees inside out

The edge or seam (der Saum, another favorite word of Rilke’s) of the senses, which is the overlap of interior & exterior, where we balance to gauge what is needed for flourishing.

Speaking of seam, I’m working on the last two seams joining these narrow backstrap-woven pieces.

Handspun, handwoven cloth made of joined strips

Current weaving, cotton and hemp cloth for the kitchen

Dormancy     as skill of waiting

and also actively sensing

             heightened attention at       the border of

inner and outer                der Saum, like a sewn seam, overlapped

what is the balance of interaction at that seam, what needs to flow

in or out, open pores or close

    breathe in or exhale

                       or hold   that    breath

                                                            protect and/or immerse

my waxy coating and stomata can do both

attuning across this         in/out

                                                  passage, adjusting equilibrium 

to close up          when opening is a danger

       and to risk expansion when

                the scent of beloved invites                         (August 2026)

Evening light and wind making broken rhododendron shadows on the wall

Poppies - ok, this happened before August, but their shapes and colors, against the grasses…!

Rilke: “in deinen werdenden Tiefen zu tauschen,/ wo das Leben sich ruhig verrät” - to plunge into your developing depths, where life quietly reveals itself (Book of Hours I, 14, my translation)

sinking, submerging, pooling, — entering into the silent space of potential with open receptiveness …also related to ‘sich sein eignes Dasein ausschöpfen’ - to scoop out one’s own existence, oneself, to the very end (Letters to a Young Poet,12 Aug. 1904)…. the open resonance within, ‘Geigenleiber, von murrendem Dunkel voll’ - violin bodies, full of murmuring darkness

The waiting that is not only waiting, although patience is paramount — one is participating in growth and unfolding, invisibly. It’s going on at the depths, but not without attention, deliberate and conscious surrender (to the vastness of inner fertility).

So dormancy, patient waiting, is a skill, and the living being has to be attuned to the subtle shifts in external conditions as well as the pace and processes inside. It’s a balancing on the edge, the hem, the seam, of one’s own senses, learning to know the interaction of interior and exterior, what is needed for flourishing, not just in terms of given conditions but also action, commitment, when to burst forth or flow, or reach and stretch. 

(24 August, 2023)

Where the liberated Elwha River meets the sea (I’ve visited and mentioned Elwha many times, and was surprised to see that the last time also included notes about Kevin Quashie’s book.

Banana slugs mating and making the sacred symbol of the heyiya-if, from Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home

you see, I want a lot

That is really one of the best opening lines of a poem, isn’t it? Du siehst, ich will viel. (whole poem and my translation below)

The next line is Vielleicht will ich Alles: Maybe I want everything.

This is the selfishness of the seeker, compelled and uncompromising in the use of attention and time. I’m feeling a similar impatience, wanting it all, wanting everyone to Get It, uninterested in doing things that do not feed into this river of learning and listening, wishing to be more and more with whoever can share it. I feel it, in the demands I put on people (in my mind, at least), to bring their fullest selves into whatever we are doing. I know it’s irrational and unfair, but it’s me trying to will expansiveness into being, to support the opening we all need.

That last sentence shows the paradox of our situation - how and why can it be unfair to expect people to bring all of themselves to an interaction?   hmm….pause….

Because it is assumed (since it’s usually true) that we are all spread too thin, that portions of our attention are being rationed out among various, compartmentalized (if we’re good at this) areas of our lives, since we can’t possibly have room in our schedules or minds to devote to Just This One Thing Here Now, unless maybe we are getting paid to do that one thing, in which case we try to focus but only because someone is buying our time…?

What would it be like if ‘showing up’ were the norm, if each person were resourced sufficiently to bring themselves fully into the spaces they inhabit for work or play or daily necessity, if they could bring their emotions, their children, their pains, their broken hearts, their wild dreaming, so that the explorations we engage in together could be part of life and not a separately cloistered thing?   …end interlude….

I mean, this ROCK! I left it there, but kept thinking about it later. Love you, rock.

I’m working my way through Rilke’s early collection Das Stundenbuch, the Book of Hours, all written when he was less than 30 years old (!!). The title refers to medieval Christian prayer books, and the first section containing this poem is called The Book of Monastic Life. So “God” is there, but not always in a strictly Christian sense, and my favorite poems are when the idea of the divine is luminous and unbounded, seeping wide and woven into all life, and also an intimate listener, the you in “You see, I want a lot.” (In another poem he says “My God is dark and like a web / of hundreds of roots silently drinking.” Oh yes.)

And I’m actually undecided whether the ‘you’ in this poem (the 14th in the first section) is God - an easy assumption since much of the Stundenbuch is, as Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows call their translation, ‘love poems to God.’ With this one, though, he could be addressing himself, or the reader. The final stanza especially seems to be speaking to himself or fellow humans, although it could still be addressing the divine - possibly the object of his address shifts, but I’m happy to leave it amorphous.

Beach curve, showing how the tide sculpts around this point.

Later in this poem he says,

Du freust dich Aller, die dich gebrauchen /wie ein Gerät.

You love all who need you like a tool. This is beautiful to me, if you get past the negative sense of 'using someone like a tool,' in our extractive and exploitive discourse, and see a tool as essential.

One of my favorite tools, a low whorl spindle from Peru. Spinning Manx Longtan wool

People who have a real, felt need for this, as for a tool; that is, the thing needed to open something or create something. A tool is what gives us access, beyond what we can do on our own. It's also an extension of our bodies, an extension of our will, something we learn to work in conjunction with to do or make a thing, to make possible our own expression and learning.

Needing someone, divine or human, like a tool is intimate, and tender, and sweet, and vulnerable, and fundamental - dear Rilke! So right and true - and also how I want us to need one another, with that real recognition of here is what I want and need, and you are the unique being to help me with that, and I commit to learning how to properly work with you, so that we can do this thing together.

Honoring others as tools, which brings the tool back to its rightful place of trusted, essential collaborator, not just an inanimate object.

Was I saying something about the heiroglyphs on the beach? These worm tracks on driftwood look like script.

I was talking about this with my Rilke study partner (yes!! beyond thrilled to have one, especially a native German speaker, especially someone who Gets It,) and we both wish for this approach when we are teaching: to have people know that they need what we have to offer, and be committed to engaging themselves in the work of learning, so that teacher and student are in it together, sharing an experience that enhances the abilities of both. Students who need the teacher like a tool are exciting students, not passive recipients, but moving toward something with intention, and gathering what they need with active curiosity.

Still weaving black wool… nearing the end of the warp.

The desire motivating this poem, the thirst and serving (jedes Gesichts,/ das dient und dürstet) show Rilke’s mystic affinity. He is fundamentally a spiritual, mystic poet, his writing a form of seeking, and I find his words in conversation with those of Rumi and other mystics. In Coleman Barks’ translation, Rumi says “There are guides who can show you the way. Use them. But they will not satisfy your longing. Keep wanting that connection with all your pulsing energy.” With the simple, straightforward opening of this poem, Rilke claims that longing, and offers it with such intimacy that I can hear the word ‘beloved’ in the margins.

Du siehst, ich will viel. You see, I want a lot.

Vielleicht will ich Alles Maybe I want everything:

das Dunkel jedes unendlichen Falles the darkness of each endless descent

und jedes Steigens lichtzitterndes Spiel. and sparkling play of light of each climb.

Es leben so viel und wollen nichts, So many live and want nothing,

und sind durch ihres leichten Gerichts encountering only smooth

glatte Gefühle gefürstet. and superficial ease.

Aber du freust dich jedes Gesichts, But you are happy with those

das dient und dürstet. who thirst and serve.

Du freust dich Aller, die dich gebrauchen You delight in all who need you

wie ein Gerät. like a tool.

Noch bist du nicht kalt, und es ist nicht zu spät, You are not yet cold, and it is not too late

in deine werdenden Tiefen zu tauchen, to plunge into your becoming depths

wo sich das Leben ruhig verrät. where life quietly reveals itself.

• R. M. Rilke, Das Stundenbuch, I 22

winter plans

I’ve got big plans for the next couple of months. They do not involve any travel, but possibly lots of walking. They are not about getting out, but going in. Digging around in my house and studio and digging on what I find there. Given that I’ll have a decent amount of time at home (if all goes as planned,) I hope to share some of what I do and find. Like this little piece, for example, about which more detail in the Akha page (under the textiles tab - I know, lots of pages, that’s how it is around here. Kind of like my studio space.)

Akha pouch with seed beads and metal discs, mounted on stretched linen, hanging in my studio. Purchased in Chiang Mai, Thialiand, 1998

I’m in my burrow and growing my peace and skills, with the help of fiber and textiles and the many people around the world who have given of their skills, over time, to enrich us all.

Action in the studio ranges from the always-in-progress weaving, to hand stitching, to machine piecing a quilt, to reading and writing and collage and sometimes all of them together. I’ve been modifying an 1895 tome on women’s health as a form of ….. resistance, or therapy, or radical optimism? Somehow it feels right to mark out all but the most positive, affirming words in this book of pompous misogyny masquerading as scientific knowledge. And often, the happy words are very few.

Book page, collaged and marked, with the words “support future friends now” remaining visible.

Book page, collaged and marked, with “CHILD - life - life” remaining.

But that’s an occasional exercise - as with many situations, I find it more fulfilling to engage and uplift the things that move me rather than to try to block out all the enervating, maddeningly entrenched negativity and ignorance. So many excellent people are moving along with their important, responsible, loving and living work. Voices I value right now are Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tricia Hersey, and Reverend angel Kyodo williams, as well as my forever homey R.M. Rilke, whose Book of Hours I’m moving through very slowly in German, dictionary in my lap and helpful translations nearby.

about that string

A word about the string. Eine Saite, a string, is the title of this gathering place of  thoughts and images. It comes from a poem by Rilke, Am Rande der Nacht (On the Border of Night), which sets up the speaker, the person experiencing, as a string: 

Ich bin eine Saite,

über rauschende breite

Resonanzen gespannt.

 (I am a string, stretched over rumbling, broad resonances.)

The full poem and translation are posted in the about page. I recommend reading the German aloud, if you can come close to pronouncing it. The rhythms are wonderful.

RIlke loves a wide open space - field of Queen Anne’s Lace and big firs during the heavy snowstorm days.

It has appealed to me to have “A String” be the title of a website that is mostly about spinning, weaving, sewing, textiles. However, I’m feeling the need to admit what German speakers must already know - although have been too polite to bring up: the string in Rilke’s poem is a musical instrument string. The word in German would be different if he were talking about yarn, thread, spun fiber. Strings for instruments are usually made from sinew or metal - a different material entirely. So there you have it, I admit to knowing that the stretched string in the poem is not the same kind of string I have stretched across my studio for weaving.

Beginning of a walknut-dyed weaving. 10/2 cotton warp and weft, mill spun.

And yet. We are in the world of poetry, where meaning is specific and also deep, layered. Any string of any material can be stretched across rumbling, broad resonances. The strings of my warp contribute to the vibrations within a vast space (more so, if I’m weaving outside.)

Weaving linen outdoors last summer.

The poem culminates in the realization: 

Ich soll zilbern erzittern - I must silverly shiver! 

(My translation, my exclamation point) The person who is a string suddenly knows how to participate, how to create something that will cause “everything” to “live under me” - or as I interpret, to enliven in that space over which I am stretched. And this is another parallel - when my yarn is spun, and stretched, and woven, I silverly shiver. I choose my participation, that will resonate around me, through all the enlivened things. 

Handspun cotton catching the sunlight

This is elusive, but it has been deeply known to me since I first read the poem: that there is a way to be in the world, activating your own sound, evoking harmony, resonance, dance, light.

My writing slows as it becomes harder to make the words say what I understand from Rilke - but it’s there in the poem.

In Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows’ translation, they say:

A silver thread,

I reverberate:

then all that’s underneath me

comes to life.

My neighbor finds resonance in shaping found wood sculptures and suspending them.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time, and about other things Rilke… so many unwritten Rilke thoughts! But especially lately, I’ve thought about poetry and translation and what words mean, because it’s important for subversion, for questioning what we’ve always been taught.

I learned about and ordered this book, an interpretation of the Therigatha, delving only slightly into the stir that it caused around the question of whether it could be called a ‘translation.’ (The current subtitle, “original poems inspired by…” is modified, post-stir.) Without going into my own reading of the original Pali text and various officially sanctioned translations, I will just say I’m more interested in finding out what a poem can do for you, how it cam make you feel and possibly change. (And this version of the poetry of enlightened women does more for me upon first reading than years of referring to the literal translations.)

And I also tend to think that anyone reading poetry, even in a native language, is engaged in translation to some extent, because we each bring our own history of understanding to all words, and we cannot say or know what a poet “means” with a certain word, apart from how it affects us. (Ooh, intent and impact… there’s another thick topic.)

I truly hope to bring more poetry here, alongside the weaving, since they are intertwined in my body and mind. This pulling of myself in the two directions, from words and intellect to hands and technique, makes me feel that they are two ends of the same string, and that all these meanings are present and vital, if not for Rilke then for me, through the intersection of his words and my life.