A Gentle Reminder

Recently, at the start of a busy day, I went out to the back garden. Marilyn had asked me to take a photo of the zinnias she had planted from seed. 

"They are taller than I am!" she had said. 

I wandered in the backyard, watching butterflies among the zinnias, then strolling to the cannas by the peace pole. These tall, red, blooms came from our friend Jen's garden. In the same bed is a sedum from a neighbor and a hydrangea that was a gift in memory of Marilyn's brother Mo. 

After a few minutes, I went back in the house and began an eleven-hour day of helping students with papers, attending meetings, preparing a workshop, and planning classes for the next day. 

All through the day, though, my mind would rest now and then on a monarch butterfly alighting on a zinnia, the sun on the flowers, the green of the grass. 

These images were gifts, arriving unexpectedly now and then and refreshing me--making me think of a poem I memorized in the sixth grade, back in India: William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," his meditation on daffodils. The poem ends, 

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The stroll in the garden reminded me that being outside and being really present for even a few minutes in the morning could provide a respite from busyness later in the day, the memory of those moments quietly and unexpectedly bringing beauty. 

Retreat

This drawing--a souvenir of an afternoon alone to catch up with myself, time to take a long walk, to ignore the clock, then to retreat to my study with a withered tulip in a blue, glass vase and to play with pastels, enjoying the freedom of not knowing how to use pastels well, knowing only that I want the satisfaction of making marks on paper, of messy hands, of being lost in a process, of looking up, eventually, to find the delightful illusion of three dimensions on flat paper. 

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How do you slow down and catch up with yourself? 

Double Vision and Second Sight

The first pot of the summer, as seen through our front door.

First, I noticed that traffic lights looked like three-leaved clovers, but aglow and blurry.

Then, driving east at dusk, I noticed the rising moon looked double, one white disk overlapping the other. I thought of the haunting Isaac Asimov short story I had read in college about a planet with two suns. More recently, I had watched the engrossing and disturbing film Another Earth, in which a second Earth appears in the night sky; leaving the movie theatre, I had examined the sky warily.

On this more recent evening, I knew I wasn’t really seeing two moons, but I was troubled enough by this double vision that I called my eye doctor and also, of course, looked up WebMD. 

It didn’t take long before I read that double vision was a common symptom of cataracts. So was second sight, the phenomenon of temporarily improved near vision which would then get worse.  That explained my wanting to look at my phone over the rims of my glasses, which had progressive lenses to help me see both close by and far away. 

I was young for cataracts, only forty-eight when they were diagnosed. I was given a new prescription for my glasses and told to wait a while.

A year and a half later, driving was more difficult and the moon was triple.  Grading papers was becoming challenging, with the text starting to float on the page. I found myself enlarging the font on the computer screen so that I could read and write emails. I was ready for cataract surgery.

Before my first surgery,
with my surgeon's initials above my right eye.

The surgeries were scheduled for earlier this month, one week apart, immediately after I turned in grades for the spring semester. I was nervous about the idea of the surgeon going at my eyes with tools, even though the surgeon is my eye doctor, whom I have known for years and trust completely. Nervous enough that I don’t remember what I read about the tools used.  I just repeated to myself that it was a routine surgery with a high success rate, and that since only one eye would be operated on at a time, I would not go blind as a result of the surgery. And not only would my cataracts be removed, but also the new lenses would give me near-perfect vision.

A drawing from my art journal after the first surgery.

The day after my second surgery, with my surgeon's
initials faded but visible above my left eye.
(I love accessories and am delighted I can now wear sunglasses without a prescription!)

Well, both surgeries were successful. I now have the remarkable experience of opening my eyes in the morning and seeing: the white embroidery on the white curtains, the print of a Derain painting on the wall between the windows, everything—and without glasses. I had been shortsighted since the fourth grade and needed progressive lenses as soon as I turned forty. Now I can see things far away and can see these words on a computer screen—all without glasses. This is new.  Startling. And wonderful.

The week after the first surgery, when I came home with 20/20 vision in my right eye, I would close my still-shortsighted left eye and marvel that I could see the purple iris in the backyard from the kitchen window without glasses. After the second surgery, I wandered around the gardens taking photos, in awe that I could see all that color, all that detail, all that glory without glasses.

When we first discussed cataract surgery, I said to my doctor, “You help people see! Don’t you feel like God?” I am an agnostic, but that was the best analogy I could manage.  After surgery, I feel like I am living inside a miracle. “Second sight” has a whole new meaning.

I feel fortunate that my surgeries were done just as the peonies bloomed.

I couldn't get enough color, so I took out my watercolors and played.

Peonies

Short-lived, extravagant, astonishing, peonies fill our kitchen with their fragrance.  As I sit at the counter, writing, I hear their petals fall.

The Urge to Make Things

One of the yarn bowls I painted two evenings ago.  It will look very different once it is fired next week.

Two evenings ago, as the snow swirled outside the large windows of the Illini Union Bookstore, I listened enthralled to a reading by Andre Dubus III.  He urged the writers in the audience to write, that writing was the point, that being published was nice, but that we have to write in the face of the inevitable rejection letters.  He described writing his novel House of Sand and Fog in twenty-minute segments while sitting in his car before he went in to teach at one of several jobs he was juggling at the time.  

After the book became a bestseller, he worked  on building his family home. At his reading at the bookstore, he spoke of framing his daughter's bedroom.   His agent asked him if he couldn't now pay someone else to do that, couldn't he get back to writing?  He was writing, he told his agent, but he also wanted to build his daughter's bedroom, that it was like tucking her into her blanket at night.  

Dubus was describing making things.  He built his novel a piece at a time, and later, he built his family home.  They were both acts of creation.  

When I left the reading, I headed over to the Pottery Place, where I painted yarn bowls with a dozen other knitters.  Yarn bowls are ingenious containers that keep yarn from rolling away under the coffee table while one is knitting.  I had never painted pottery before, but my nephews have painted gifts for me.  As I chose colors and brushes and came up with a design, I felt like a child, playful and ready to experiment.  As I painted, I got lost in the process.  The blank surface of the bowl was like my blank computer screen or a blank page in my journal: an invitation to create something that had never existed before.  

I left the Pottery Place just as it closed, accompanied by another knitter, someone I had met for the first time that evening.  We talked about how remarkable it was that in this world of mass production, we had just painted bowls that were almost certainly unlike any others in the world, and how that was like the knitting we did, too, as we tweaked patterns, chose yarn, and knitted with our very personal tension, so that my stitches and hers would be different.

I came home wanting to write, to knit, to paint some more, and soon.  What I needed to do was to sit down at the kitchen counter to grade a paper.  The next morning, I had to teach, and to give feedback on a couple of dozen drafts.  And that was okay.  The delight and inspiration from my evening lightened the work I had to do, and I went in to campus the next day reminded that my students were creating, too.  

The cardigan I have been knitting and hope to finish before the winter is done.  I had to take apart over forty rows of over six hundred stitches and start the cardigan over in October, when I discovered I had twisted it when I joined it in the round,  but I haven't become discouraged yet.  

I finished knitting this hat last night.  I began it during one of the pauses in knitting the cardigan, when I had to wait to get advice about a next step.  

My favorite chair, where I often read and write and where I am writing this.  The red notebook is my journal.  I went through about half a dozen notebooks last year.  

The Peace of Knitting

Knitting my first cardigan with this blue-violet-turquoise Malabrigo is making me very happy.

The repetition of knitting brings me peace. Looping yarn around needles, feeing its softness and its weight in my hand, watching a skein turn into a hat, a blanket, a scarf--I have found pleasure and comfort in this process for a dozen years now. When I spot a knitter waiting at the airport or in a clinic, I feel a kinship with this stranger and find comfort in watching her hands move.

Recently, I began knitting my first cardigan. I am taking a class at my local yarn store, Klose Knit; the teacher is a new friend I made at a knitting retreat last January, when I spent an entire day among knitters and learned how to cable for the first time.

This is the final stage of the hat I knitted after I learned how to cable.

Here are some photos from the early stages of the "Sheer Beauty" cardigan I am knitting. I began with 665 stitches; I have begun the decreases, but, still, it's a very good thing I love the process of knitting. Completing each row is a triumph, and it will be months before I'm done.

Knitting on the deck in the September sunshine while not knowing what time it is--one definition of paradise.

New Harmony in the Spring

On the grounds of the New Harmony Inn.  We always stay in a room facing the pond.

When Marilyn and I want to get away to somewhere quiet and peaceful, we head south to New Harmony, Indiana.  Sometimes, we stop for ice cream or pizza in one of the small eastern Illinois towns on our way.  Driving on, we predict when we will round the turn and encounter rows of bright green John Deere tractors available for sale.  Then we know we are getting closer.  We look forward to entering the familiar, sleepy, historic small town of New Harmony--population 850--where we always stay at the New Harmony Inn and always eat at least one meal at the Red Geranium Restaurant. The predictability is soothing.  

On March 21, as spring break began, we headed south again.

We found out that New Harmony is celebrating its bicentennial, and the weekend we were there, there was a "spring fling" with artists and other vendors in the small downtown.  "There are people on the street!" I exclaimed, laughing, as we walked around in the cold sunshine on Saturday.This brochure shows a design that incorporates the labyrinth, a landmark of this town founded by Utopians in the nineteenth century.

 

To show you how small the town is, I'm including the enlargement of the town center, which has the flashing stoplight marked prominently.  As we drove around when we first arrived on Friday evening, we were the only car in the town center, other than the Sheriff's patrol car parked on the corner.  Once we arrive, we don't drive either.  We can get everywhere we want to on foot.

This photo was taken in the small, round chapel off of the Great Room where breakfast is served.  Even when the Great Room is full of conversation and clatter, this chapel feels like a place for meditation.

Just outside the chapel, we encountered this piece, which we coveted for our backyard. Art like this is scattered all around New Harmony.

  

This was carved into the back of a bench outside the town post office.  I love writing and receiving letters, so I had to photograph this.

We saw our first daffodils of the season!

I love the red door and white walls of this church.  (These are also the colors of our house).

This log house, next to the Red Geranium Restaurant, was built in 1814 and restored in 1959-60.

On Saturday afternoon, as the sun streamed into the Great Room of the Entry House, Marilyn worked on a quilt while I finished knitting the hat I had begun in January. 

We saw more signs of spring on our walk around the pond on Sunday morning.

Poetry can be found around New Harmony, too.  This was along a trail.  Auden wrote, "The trees encountered on a country street/Reveal a lot about a country's soul./A culture is no better than its woods." 

This is "Shalev: Angel of Compassion" by Tobi Kahn.  It is made of South Dakota granite and bronze.  In the distance, you can see the Wabash River.

Before we left town on Sunday afternoon, we walked the labyrinth.  These are our shadows.