Sunset and snow

We have had the balmy tease of spring in the air for several days, but today things turned around. Looking out the window this afternoon I was surprised by the dreamlike snow falling, as if in slow motion, to the ground. It melted on the wet-black pavement but didn't melt on the wet black winter trees, and as the sun set the undersides of the winter clouds turned a golden pink. World outside: going about your business being so astounding and beautiful.

I got a new book for Christmas, one that I had asked for after reading these sentences which began the story: "The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow."

Lost in the Translation

Long ago a friend introduced me to this artist poet. His work is lovable, quirky, funny and definitely sentimental in the best ways. Take a look for yourself at Storypeople.

Artists like this remind me that everybody is walking around with these weird collections in our heads about the things we've seen or things that we or our friends have said as we're doing whatever we do in our little lives: drinking coffee, changing diapers, loving, dancinig jigs like Pinnochio, overcoming fears, and seeing who God made us to be.

Best write things down, best do a messy sketch. For posterity.

Jude the Great

I know and love a little boy who is cute as a button and three very inquisitive years old.
The other day he dropped something and said in an exasperated tone: "Bammit!"

Psalm for a clear January day

I love to take walks, and while walking always seem to wish I took the time to get out more often, even if it is raining a bit, or cold and dreary. There is something medicinal about walking in the quiet, or walking with the soundtrack of some of your favorite music. It makes me thankful, somehow allows me to see life from an arial perspective, from a "seeing the whole parade at at once" perspective. I almost always feel when I return from a walk a little sad that it is done, but a little better about life in general. It is a physical action during which my generally restlessheart and mind come to a place of quiet, and that is always good.

Today I walked, then I read this poem, then I walked some more.

I, 1981; from A Timbered Choir, by Wendell Berry

Here where the world is being made,
No human hand requiored,
A man may come, somewhat afraid
Always, and somewhat tired,

For he comes ignorant and alone
From work and worry of
A human place, in soul and bone
The ache of human love.

He may come and be still, not go
Toward any chosen aim
Or stay for what he thinks is so.
Setting aside his claim

On all things fallen in his plight,
his mind may move with leaves,
Wind-shaken, in and out of light,
And live as light lives,

And live as Creation sings
In covert, two clear notes,
And waits; then two clear answerings
Come from more distant throats--

May live a while with light, shaking
In high leaves, or delayed
In halts of song, submit to making,
The shape of what is made.