Category: 3+1 Things

3+1 Things Wrap-up: The +1 Thing

Karen

And finally, here’s this year’s final goal, which I marked as “optional.” It’s not a technical success but I made progress, I think.

+1. Go on a date.
Friends and blog readers tried to help me with this one: A friend tried to facilitate an introduction with her father’s coworker; I asked an acquaintance to find out a client’s relationship status (’cause I’m professional like that); and I met a friend of another friend with a group of people in a bar as a potential set-up.

But there was no real one-on-one “getting to know you” date–although, for that matter, there wasn’t anyone I wanted to get to know better in the first place. (Other than the client. But he was in a relationship. Again, I am so professional.)

In November, in an effort to find someone I’d like to get to know, I created a profile on OK Cupid and answered lots of their questions. I liked the fact that they used math and data to determine matches (better living through science!). But such questions as “Do you see yourself getting married in the next three years?” and “How long do you want your next relationship to last?” made me realize I had no idea what I want.

So my inner hippie recited some Rilke and I decided I owed it to myself to figure out what I wanted first. I do think I’ll give the internet one more shot in 2012, but I’m in no rush. I’m good at being alone: I bought a house by myself; I climb mountains by myself.

Besides, I have Toby.

3+1 Things Wrap-up: Thing 3

Karen

And the third goal this year was:

3. Memorize 6 poems.
Technically, I only have 4.5 memorized, as I’m still working on getting the middle of “Starlings in Winter” down and never found one I liked to replace the Neruda for September/October. But I’m still proud of the success–I’ve always had a hard time memorizing anything well, but this was easier than I thought it would be.

I have yet to recite them to anyone else (but just ask! you know I’m dying to be asked); instead, I say them to myself when I hike, or when I can’t sleep. There’s such a shift from reading them off a page–even aloud–to having the words come from your own brain. I may have to memorize more favorites.

3+1 Things Wrap-up: Thing 2

Karen1 Comment

This year’s second goal was:

2. Learn more sewing techniques.
I’m not sure I can say I accomplished this one, at least concerning fancy techniques like bound buttonholes or pad stitching–but I realized it’s because I’m not a “process” sewer. I’m all about the finished product, and don’t like to be working on things that are so painstaking they take months to complete (for example, hand tailoring).

But there’s a lot of ground between basic sewing and hand tailoring, and I did use some fancier techniques on a few projects: flat felled seams in baby pants, a faced hem in the first tunic dress, a little pattern drafing to alter that same tunic dress pattern a few times– and let’s not forget lined drapes, either. So I don’t think I plateaued by any means. (But I still haven’t figured out how to use the serger.)

In other sewing news, I bought some Liberty of London fabric after a long time without fancy fabric and called it a Christmas/birthday gift to myself. Just two cuts to get me from winter into early spring:
“Yoshie,” a print from winter 2010 (with tiny owls and horses and bunnies and hawks!)

and “Mitsi,” a standard print. Both will be dresses worn with colored tights.

3+1 Things Wrap-up: Thing 1

Karen

Yes, it’s time for the week-long wrap-up of this year’s goals. The first thing?

1. Walk, bike, or do yoga once a week.
Final verdict on this one: I like exercise! It makes me feel good! Anyone who hasn’t spent her life reading and/or in an office chair already knows this, but I’ve finally realized it. So what have I been doing? A weekly hike (even in the cold! although I’ve only made it out twice this month so far) and yoga once or even twice a week.

Yoga, of course, lets my inner hippie go wild; but I’m really seeing a lot of mental benefits, too. It also comforts the worrier in me, knowing that being old and alone holds a lot fewer terrors if you have muscle mass and crazy flexibility.

As for hiking, buying a house by Millcreek wasn’t planned but I’m so glad I did. There are plenty of shorter trails that fit into a weekend schedule, but because the canyon’s pretty steep, you get a lot of exercise for your time. The terrain is varied, the views are great, and you get to see lots of happy dogs and generally nice owners. (Another bonus for solo hikers who worry: You can believe a dog will sniff you out pretty quickly should you fall off a trail or something.)

I haven’t ridden my bike much but I can always add MORE exercise in next year.

3+1 Things Project: The Last Poem

Karen

I’m a little late posting the November/December poem in my 3+1 Things project, probably because memorizing anything for September/October didn’t happen. (The Neruda didn’t fit, I couldn’t get behind the Frost, and there were just too many other things to think about.)

But this poem–I will memorize this poem because it’s fantastic. Mary Oliver does it again. (Watch something like this video before you read it and you’ll really be able to see it in your head.)

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Bob Frost

Karen

I don’t read a lot of Robert Frost but The Writer’s Almanac featured this poem over the weekend and I thought it was just right. I’ve been hiking in Millcreek Canyon pretty regularly since June and, climbing “the hills of view” on Saturday, I looked around and it was fall. Sigh.

Reluctance
by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

I may end up memorizing this one instead of the Neruda for September/October–I think the rhythm would be nice to work on while hiking and I’m still not feeling my first choice. Also, I don’t have any rhyming poems in my list, let alone any that allow me to say “and lo.”

3+1 Things: On To Poem #5

Karen1 Comment

It’s time to move on to the penultimate poem in my 3+1 Things memorization project. The Mark Strand for July and August was just right for the end of summer and feeling a little sad, but the September/October poem I picked doesn’t feel as appropriate.

Should I change poems to the Galway Kinnel I posted in June? To this? (That might be too sad, actually.) Or should I stick with the plan so I have at least one happier poem under my belt?

Here it is, if you want to help me decide:

Sonnet C, from 100 Love Sonnets, Pablo Neruda

In the center of the earth I will push aside
the emeralds so that I can see you–
you like an amanuensis, with a pen
of water, copying the green sprigs of plants.

What a world! What deep parsley!
What a ship sailing through the sweetness!
And you, maybe–and me, maybe–a topaz.
There’ll be no more dissensions in the bells.

There won’t be anything but all the fresh air,
apples carried on the wind,
the succulent book in the woods:

and there where the carnations breathe, we will begin
to make ourselves a clothing, something to last
through the eternity of a victorious kiss.

Poem Project: Halfway Done

Karen

Since it’s July, it’s time to move on to the next poem in the memorization part of my 3+1 Things project.* I was able to recite “Meditation at Lagunitas” to the snakes and the hawks last week, so now it’s on to Section XVI from Dark Harbor.

Maybe this is the nature of poems, but my choices this year have seemed really appropriate to what’s been going on in my life in any given two months. We’ll see if this holds true with Mark Strand:

It is true, as someone has said, that in
a world without heaven all is farewell.
Whether you wave your hand or not,

It is farewell, and if no tears come to your eyes
It is still farewell, and if you pretend not to notice,
Hating what passes, it is still farewell.

Farewell no matter what. And the palms as they lean
Over the green, bright lagoon, and the pelicans
Diving, and the glistening bodies of bathers resting,

Are stages in an ultimate stillness, and the movement
Of sand, and of wind, and the secret moves of the body
Are part of the same, a simplicity that turns being

Into an occasion for mourning, or into an occasion
Worth celebrating, for what else does one do,
Feeling the weight of the pelicans’ wings,

The density of the palms’ shadows, the cells that darken
The backs of bathers? These are beyond the distortions
Of chance, beyond the evasions of music. The end

Is enacted again and again. And we feel it
In the temptations of sleep, in the moon’s ripening,
In the wine as it waits in the glass.

*Since July means I’m halfway through the year, here’s a quick report on the other 2 (+1) Things:

1. I’m doing pretty good on the exercise goal.
2. I still need to learn how to use my serger or do other fancy techniques.
+1. I’ve been avoiding the issue of dating. Obviously. Although I could quote poems to someone non-stop!

3+1 Things: The Late Spring/Early Summer Poem

Karen1 Comment

Deciding to cut my yearly goals from 30 to 3 (because let’s be honest, will I really do the +1 this year?) does give me a lot less to blog about.

On the other hand, I have a much better chance at success: That section of “Ash Wednesday” is memorized and ready to be recited at a moment’s notice, which I have been doing for Toby at home during times of stress. (Eliot is really satisfying to declaim dramatically, I found out.)

That means it’s time to move on to the next poem I want to memorize, “Meditation at Lagunitas” by my old buddy Robert Hass. I have sections of this in my head already but I want to fill in the gaps so I can say it straight through. To Toby. (Yes, it’s probably just as well I am being realistic about that +1.)

Anyway, here’s the poem, one of my favorites, with the most elegant use of “numinous” I’ve encountered:

Meditation at Lagunitas

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Next Poem, Please

Karen

I picked the next poem in my 3+1 Things project–most of the final section of “Ash Wednesday,” by our buddy Tom Eliot–to coincide with Lent and Easter. (Actually, they’re all seasonally appropriate–“Starlings in Winter” falls in December, Dark Harbor comes in summer, etc.)

Since today is indeed the actual Ash Wednesday in the Christian calendar, I guess it’s time to move on from “The Poems of Our Climate” and start memorizing this one:

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth