Evening of Flowering Trees

Friday evening, it is still plenty warm when we set off after 9:00, down to 81 degrees after being in the 90s during the day. The light in the sky is still a bright slate blue behind us, reflecting off the glass towers of downtown as we approach River Road. At the Stone Arch Bridge, many people - families, couples, friends - are also drawn by the evening's relative coolness to stroll over the water in the darkening evening, a slender newish moon hovering over the condominiums and improbable-looking, asymmetrical new Guthrie Theater, its slender vertical marquees spelling out bright neon names of the three Tony Kushner plays being offered (none of which I have managed to take in).

Two women walk past, with their mismatched dogs, a tiny terrier and a happy young bulldog; the women lean toward each other, their perfume wafting past.

A large, sagging, shapeless man surges by on his motorized wheelchair, headlights beaming.

Three young adults sit on the stone ledge facing the walkway, drinking from a large jar of something orange - laughing and silly. (They are still there when we walk back.)

The evening deepens as we cross the bridge and turn around to walk back. I'm out of shape. We don't talk much. I have forgotten my camera, so take some pictures with my cell phone (fuzzy but capturing a bit of the late evening scene, still not full night though close to 10 o'clock).



When we get home, the air around our house is full of a light perfume. I spend a while outdoors just breathing it in. The smell triggers memories of the summers a few years ago when I was on a 10-month contract, from late June to late August off. Those summers were spent diving back into work on my Endless Dissertation, which allowed me to go to my tiny rented office and spend long afternoons and evenings, reading, journaling, pacing the hallways of the converted high school now home to small enterprises (alternative medicine, ecological study centers, lawyer and therapist offices for people doing it as an extra job). The Bookhouse was a half-block away, home to a large collection of used books, including women's studies, religion, and philosophy. Because I was researching popular feminist spirituality, it was a good source of material - and a great place to lose any sense of time.

Somehow, the academic work I needed to do could proceed only when I kept up to date with sleep, dreamwork, and meditation. It took me a while to figure that out. At the end of each summer through those years, I would reluctantly go back to my job, and despite my best efforts, the whole creative gestalt of the summer would grind to a halt, and I would be stalled out until the next summer.

The evening smell of the trees brings back memories of my dissertation summers, because I was sleeping during that time by an open window, with the fan upstairs pulling the hot air out and the night air in across my face. I smelled the perfume in the night and couldn't for the longest time figure out where it came from. Finally it dawned on me it came from the boulevard trees, those slender trees put in by the city after all the elms died.

Now, they are spreading wide, shading both the street and much of the yard, joining branches across the street, and stretching out over the roof. I hadn't noticed until recently that they had grown so big. They are loaded with the little white blossoms now that fill the air all around the neighborhood with a smell something like lily of the valley, only not so cloying. They started blooming just after the solstice, and are now at full bloom.

Something about the light perfume filling all the air around us, something about the memories, perhaps because it's Friday evening and the weekend still stretches out as an unbroken lake of possibility, puts me into the edge of a state of kairos - the kind of time very different from chronos, where it's business as usual, work-a-day, clock time. Kairos edges out chronos, too, when life is broken open, by birth or death, or by some unexpected gift. When I'm writing from a place of truth, I'm in kairos. Meeting for Worship, when it's truly "gathered" or "covered," shares this quality, a still, waiting, listening - time-out-of-time. It's walking through the cupboard into Narnia (or the place between the worlds). It's akin to Buber's I and Thou encounters, face to face with ultimacy in truly meeting a loved one, a piece of art, or, for Buber, even a cat or tree (Buber had to stretch quite a bit to allow for cats and trees, but I don't).

Here's a picture of one of the boulevard trees taken this morning - click to expand. I'm sure there are other people who would be able to identify what it is, but I really don't know.

(Later: I looked it up here.)

Some awards - and happy solstice to all!

A while ago, I was pleased and surprised to find I had been awarded my first-ever blog award by Mel of "From Clutter to Shine" (the award described here). Thanks, Mel! I've really enjoyed your blog, finding out about "unschooling" (I'll do a post sometime on why I kept my kids in school, and about experiences with the first years of Friends School of Minnesota). I especially loved Mel's story about how her little dog Oscar came into the family.

I still feel much like a newbie, and I'm not completely familiar with the folklore and protocol of blog awards, but they are good fun. Here's the award:


Now I have to say something about watermelons, before proceeding with my (drum rolls) awards forward. That is - there's a certain easy rhyme between the fruit and my name which my younger brothers exploited early in life (e.g. "Mary Ellen, watermelon! Mary Ellen, watermelon!). I can't catch any more of the memory than a certain taunting exuberance in their voices. So, yes, I have an affinity for this award, and beyond the "#10 for excellence" I am also attaching to it the meaning of "rich, ripe, juicy, and fun." With that in mind (further drum rolls), I pass this award along - in the spirit of "no obligation blogging" - to a few peeps (and reserve the right to pass it on to more if the fancy should strike):

Leone and Kim, for diving back into the juicy work of painting, committing to doing it for the long haul, and bringing up treasures from your creative souls. (I also wanted to introduce you to each other.)

For Pop and Ice, for being - well - so danged funny and sharp and full of juice.

And for my first-day, first blogger-sister Minka - far away but close at hand. Thanks for introducing yourself that first day of my blog. I enjoy peeks at your days, your travels, and your dedicated teaching of lively ninth-graders (here's the photos from their school trip to Venice ).

Yes, I know I'm supposed to tag six, but I'm not one for the rules. And - again - rules are made for breaking, guys, so take this award and do what you will with it, split open a couple and spit the seeds out far onto the lawn. That's the right thing to do on a hot, muggy, longest day of the year.

Happy solstice - and may our planet be healed and healthy for our children's children and far beyond.

(No obligation blogging, remember!)

More to come . . .

I've come to the end of a busy week, focused on providing support for my #2 young adult son (Ben) to finish an intensive 3-week (May Session) course. He never quite hit his stride, and by the third week, when things were already winding to a close (an oral final exam, short papers due, labs due), he was a fair ways behind. So we launched into Mom-Homework-Helper mode - in some ways, my primary identity back when he was in high school, but little needed through the three years he has been in college. Mostly, I made sure he was fed, got him to (finally!) make a dental appointment, and printed out the articles he needed to read (his printer is out of ink). And I hosted him while he studied into the night, driving him home to his off-campus rooming house in the early hours. (He was able to study without as many distractions at our place.)

A complicating factor in the week was that Ben's dental exam resulted in two long stints at the dentist over the following two days getting a number of fillings. Also, we needed to drive out to a far suburb to get a camp physical that we could afford (because my health insurance wouldn't pay for a physical if it was a "physical with form," according to his clinic - thus costing us over $200 - she suggested a MinuteClinic instead where these were $30).

One early evening this week, when I brought Ben home to have dinner and study, I noticed something strange out of the dining room window - too big for a cat - loping along the sidewalk on the other side of the street. I called Ben to watch with me as the animal (half cat, half monkey) strolled unhurriedly to the telephone pole at the corner and started hitching himself up, arms reaching up, then pulling up his body, the way people shimmy up a pole. At the top, though, he got stuck for a while, and also wary as we came out to watch him and take some pictures. Note - we live within the city limits of Minneapolis, but close to some parkland that hosts deer, fox, and other wildlife.

(Click on the picture to see him in more detail.)



This marathon study week was all to get Ben through in time to drive him to Wisconsin where he will be a camp counselor at Camp Woodbrooke, a small, very simple, woodsy Quaker residential summer camp for kids. Did I mention that Ben is studying to be a kindergarten teacher?

I took Friday off to shop and pack for his two months at camp, and washed a large number of his clothes. The night before we drove to Wisconsin, Ben stayed up all night (fortunately at his place) doing the on-line labs, and then finished one of the his summary papers on the drive down. Somehow, he does manage to come through. I'm proud of him -and exasperated - and extremely tired (and sore from driving the little borrowed gas-sipping Saturn with the stiff steering wheel and clutch).

What's more to come will be some reflections I did on the drive back through "unglaciated" (that is, hilly and woodsy) Wisconsin. I love road trips, especially through beautiful country.

The meaning of my blog name revealed

I looked on Google for my blog name and found this skit (for boy scouts):

This Skit is meant for Boy Scouts, Webelos scouts. Decide for yourself if it is appropriate for your younger scouts or not.
Required:	3 scouts
Preparation:	Largest scout stands center stage with arms raised like a tree.
Script:	Scout enters stage, pretending to drive a car real fast. He swerves around, drives over a cliff, falling, falling, ... and then jumps onto the tree and hangs on tight. Scout : Oh no, my car is totalled 500 feet down there in that canyon. I was sure lucky this tree was growing out of the side of the cliff. The road isn't too far up there. But, there's no way I can climb that cliff. Scout : Man, my arms are getting tired. (squirm on the tree) Scout : Help! Heeeelp! Is anyone up there? Scout : Help! Heeeelp! Is anyone up there? My arms are killing me. (squirm around on the tree) Deep Offstage Voice: I am here. I am God and I will help you. Scout : Cool! What are you going to do? I can't hold on much longer. God: Let go of the tree. Scout : What?!? I'll fall 500 feet and splatter all over the rocks. God: Do you believe in me? Scout : Well, sure. God: Then you have nothing to fear. Let go of the tree and I will save you. (pause) Scout : Is anyone ELSE up there?

In June the Moon is Growing Soon

This week has been busy, busy, busy. But there have been occasional evening moments when I could take in the wonderful depth of the dark blue sky-sea with the moon hoisting its billowing sail and sliding across. I tried to capture that depth of evening light the other day - still lingering twlight when the clock said it should be deep night. But I'd need a tripod and delayed timer to avoid the smear and blur that come with late evening pictures even when I steady the camera against a tree. This one came out the best, but it's not exactly crisp:


Tonight, though, I caught the moon near full without too much blur:


That's it for me tonight! Except - isn't this an intriguing flower (if it IS a flower?) . . .

Blog Blog Revolution - Women's Voices

(Click the picture to see the new moon.)

It's the weekend - and (with Peter away for a while) I can just browse and ponder this expanding world, the blogosphere, that I've plunged into. And it does feel rather like a plunge. In reading these blogs and comments, I've felt there was something familiar about the give and take, the self-expression and response, that I finally identified as very much like the experience I had for many years as a member of the Women Poets of the Twin Cities (later Women Poets and Writers of the Twin Cities).

We started when I was a college kid, and the first meeting (if I remember correctly) was held in my scruffy apartment on Grand Avenue, a block from my school. This was (it dates me) the beginning of the Women's Movement, as we called it then, and women writers in my burg were just beginning to recognize that they had been second-class members of the writing community, or felt themselves to be. The journal editors - the creative writing professor/gurus - the international poets coming in for readings and booze-drenched parties - all were men, and we writing women came along for the ride. So some of us, who had met each other at those booze drenched parties (and sometimes shared the same booze-drenched writers as romantic interests), decided we were interested in - each other, each others' voices, each others' ideas, experiences, wisdom.

This group continued to meet, once each month, and did occasional readings and published at least one or two collections over the years. A couple of women who started with us moved away into lives of being full-time professional writers, feeling perhaps that the group wasn't up to their level, or not appreciating that the primary purpose of the group was not so much to hone the craft as to share lives at a deep level through the writing that people were doing. There was one woman in the group who was a particularly influential mentor to me in the art of being a mother and continuing to have a creative spirit. I needed that model when I started my own family.

Alas, I couldn't continue to meet with the group (though some of the members are, I believe, continuing to meet even today, more than 30 years later). Raising children - working full time - teaching occasional college courses on top of that - and trying to finish my degree on top of THAT - consumed more than a decade of the prime turf of my green and growing years. I also found that what discretionary time I had was spent with my Quaker meeting (serving on committees, being involved on the planning group of our regional Spiritual Nurture program for some years).

But - now my young 20-something men are (more or less) launched - at least out of the house for the present. After wanting to find some way back into writing that offered more than the insularity of my journal, I finally started blogging.

I had read blogs - usually blogs of some of my favorite authors, which I found when I researched them on Google. These bloggers seemed to have so much fun doing their blogs, and they had such lively, affectionate blogging correspondents. I thought it was something that could only happen to published writers, or - I don't know. People living in London.

But plunging into it myself, I find that it is a very open community, much like the Women Poets used to be, where each voice is given attention, whether or not it is polished. We used to give feedback of the sort and level appropriate to the sophistication of the writer, and always with kindness and empathy. It never was a "professional writer" sort of place, but a community of soul-builders, supporting the development of self-understanding and the strengthening of our women's voices, through calling out what was strong and good in what was shared. That's what I'm finding now in the blogosphere - hundreds of women (and men, too, but I gravitate to the women's blogs), all communicating facets of their lives, from the hilarious to the trivial to the heart-breaking, and receiving, for the most part, thoughtful and warm-hearted responses.

My Women Poets group started out as part of a revolution - thinking we needed to give voice to the previously unvoiced women's perspective to bring the world into better balance (remember this was at the end of the Vietnam War). I love that women now have places to share their lives - old and young, home-schoolers and professionals, mothers and artists living on the bohemian edge. And creating community with others, full of laughter and sometimes tears.

Work blurring with home

A short opinion piece in the paper struck a nerve today: (Jim Shea/Hartford Courant - "What a way to make a living") - with a description of something like "work-creep." He described that because technologically we can work at home, pretty soon there's an expectation that we are doing so pretty much all the time (checking e-mail, doing reports, doing work-related research . . . ). I had a list of work-related things I thought I would tackle over the long weekend, but didn't - instead, I experimented with my new camera, discovered and read new blogs, helped Peter get off to Philosophy Camp, then rushed my grown-up-kid Ben off to the urgent care after he got a deer-tick bite that was getting infected (bulls-eye rash, etc.). He should be fine, but I flipped instantly back into Full-Scale-Mom.

And this coming week, there won't be much unbroken project time at work, as we are doing three days of training. Also, I'm now working in a cubicle for the summer, with the buzz and rustle of others in motion around me (chatting, strolling past to visit the bathroom), which makes it hard to do concentrated work.

The columnist said we used to use the word "workaholic" - but now, he said, the behavior is admired. Is it? What changed? Why am I faintly guilty all of the time that I'm not doing "something productive" e.g. work-related?

In spite of the guilt, after doing the mom thing, I made it to my nearby public wild place, the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary. New camera: not so good at scenery (I revisited the reviews and found this was clearly stated), but nice quick, close-up pics of flowers. Also very nice to have something in my pocket. (Click to enlarge - REALLY large - I'll size them down in the future.)

Here are the links to new / old blog posts

I started with a recollection from a conversation years ago that led me to connect Rumi and country western music.

Then I went on a fruitless Google hunt for the perfect image of Divine Love.

I reflected on gender and the Spirit - which led to another search on Google images (and a Russian icon of St. Sophia and her daughters, Faith, Hope, and Love).

And the last posting of the "secret" (e.g. unvisited) blog was a long-poem reflection on loss, grief, and the search for connection, accompanied by photos from my favorite local nature sanctuary. (Note - pictures enlarge if you click on them.)

Then - I started over with this blog, and now it's all in one place.

No more blogging today - I need to get outside!

Putting it all together . . .

I started blogging very privately earlier this year, picking a pseudoname and an obscure blog title, and for some reason, nobody noticed or at least nobody commented. That blog was about, more or less, the spiritual side of my life. This blog ("Is there anyone else up there?") has been about pretty much anything going on in my life - except for the spiritual side of things. The tone has been more tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted, than my first blog, which had perhaps somewhat too much of a weighty or sometimes academic tinge.

For some reason, religion/spirituality is harder to talk about than most other things about us, except in contexts or communities where there is already tacit permission for God-talk/Spirit-talk. (I am really fortunate that one of these places is the college classroom setting where I teach one course a semester as an adjunct in Religious Studies. This is an overload to my "day job" doing college student services administration.) But I will say that, even though I am a member of the Society of Friends - where a spiritual practice and religious experience are supposed to be common ground - even in that community, many people struggle to find ways of talking about what is really going on with themselves spiritually. And there are many, many differences among us in my Friends Meeting - often around this difficult notion we call "God".

So, I'm plunging in today and uploading into this current blog the postings from that other, hidden blog, with the thought that this writing reflects important parts of the puzzle that is me. Maybe there are other long-dormant puzzle pieces that will stand up and want a voice (the poet part of me? the memoirist part of me?). You'll find them in January and February.

Let me know what you think!

New Camera - Old Dog - Spring Days

Somehow, I blinked and May is almost gone. It started with an unusually hot and bright May Day parade and ceremony in Powderhorn Park, put on for the last three decades by the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater, and involving scores of neighborhood people.

The theme of this year was the importance of the soil and of green, growing things as the real source of our wealth, contrasted to greedy profiteering / credit card companies / banks, etc.



During the pageant, I sat under my umbrella for more than an hour, feeling smug and grateful that I had some protection from the unusually bright sun.

I was using my old camera, which has served me well for several years - very advanced for its day, with 3+ mgpx photos. But I've been hankering for something that would be small enough to carry in a pocket, which I could always have around, so I would take more pictures (and have things to illustrate this blog with, incidentally).



So I picked up the latest version of my old camera - still very much automated, which wouldn't please a real camera buff, but works for me. Playing around, I found that it can do very acceptable short videos (I'll try not to subject folks to too much self-indulgent sharing). Now 10 mgpx.

Last Easter, Bridget brought a bowlful of little packets of candy and flower seeds for folks at Meeting. I took home some extras and found that I liked the Spongebob Squarepants gummy crabby patties, so picked some up on sale yesterday at Walgreens. Don't eat them before breakfast.

Speaking of SpongeBob, you might get a kick from this movie review from the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/spongebob.

The big question this holiday weekend is whether I'll get out and plant any of these seeds. I bought a big shaker-can full of flower seeds - last year? - some time ago, and never planted them. But I did plant five baby flowering trees that Joelyn got when she donated some money to the Arbor Day Foundation. A couple of them - skinny twigs, really, poking out of their little bowls of earth - are looking like they might sprout.

But mostly I've been taking pictures of my ancient and creaky dog Rufus. He has good days when he eats well and seems happy to stumble about in the yard or take a short walk, and less-good days when he seems to have no energy and turns away from his food. Kidneys shot - cataracts - arthritis - hearing shot - yet he still seems to enjoy being on the planet.

Off to do some lunch, then help Peter finish packing for his month at Philosophy Camp, then - who knows? - a nap could be in the picture. Or tackling the grown-over garden and planting those bright flower seeds?