You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November, 2007.
A couple of months ago, my husband and I drove up to the top of Mt. Spokane–something we had never done. Growing up, my family took alot of trips to the Colorado Rockies, including several drives up Trail Ridge Road (elevation 12,138′; Mt. Spokane is 5,880′), but I was still blown away when we got to the summit. The view is incredible in every direction; you can see all the way into Idaho, Montana, and Canada. 
There are mountains everywhere, fading into the hazy blue distance. (You can even see Steptoe Butte!) The lush mountains dip frequently into brilliant azure lakes and green valleys as far as the eye can see. Looking down on the world from so high literally took my breath away–everything was spread out before me, the entire world, it seemed, and all of it was so beautiful. But my favorite sight of all was this: a woman, with her young daughter securely 
in her lap, perched on the very edge of the mountain, just on the other side of the stone wall that people are not supposed to cross for safety’s sake, sharing that view, sharing the world.
Recently, while cleaning house, I came across a poem that I had scribbled down, apparently while I was at work at SMH (it was on their letterhead), and then competely erased it from my mind. Finding this poem was a bit strange for me, since it’s not exactly like most of my other poetry. I read it and went, “Wow. That’s strange and interesting. Not entirely like me. What in the world prompted this?” Well, I feel slightly courageous today, so here it is, in bizarre, unedited, dubious glory…
among the timely and unseemly waves
beats the vertiginous cry of the birds
soaring above and above the wide-open plain
of frosted blue-and-white crests,
the horizon flowing into the sand and water,
all becoming–have become–one
amid the naked breeze, clad only in its own solitude;
the carved ivory bone of whale smoothed
down into hollow notes of sorrow;
the scattered leavings, shards, of seaweed, shell, starfish,
moon’s eye;
the glaring sun playing its piccolo
for the dead
and the living,
those haphazard and wayward stars
flung cold into the night
with the crisp tarantella of the waves
pulsing rhythm for them to flicker by,
and the self-same bones and birds,
shards and shells, relinquish their ghosts
and sigh, a muted symphony,
an ode to that which once was
and in the twilight
between sunset and moonrise,
the hush is tangible,
a fragile sculpture spun out
in silken threads,
bridging night and day.
It feels unfinished, or perhaps that the last stanza doesn’t belong on this poem at all. It also seems like I was re-reading alot of Patricia McKillip when I wrote it…has a kind of Song for the Basilisk feel…
Since my trip to Portland at the beginning of October, I have learned something new about myself: I love old apple orchards. I discovered this quite accidentally, first by stumbling across the orchard on Highway 14, and then by wandering around the orchard at the bottome of Steptoe Butte when Sean & I went back to Colfax last weekend. There is just something so magical about these 
quiet plots of land, especially at this time of year. The air is so crisp with the cold, and the comforting fragrance of apples is everywhere. The trees are mostly bare of leaves now, but that only makes the apples stand out more. The trees are so laden with fruit that the apples look like clusters of gigactic grapes dangling tantalizingly overhead. The colors are so stark and vibrant against the cloudy sky, a feast for the eyes. It 
seems the very zenith of autumn, and it makes me crave Thanksgiving with its apple pie and harvest atmostphere so strongly. I wonder how many other old apple orchards have been purchased by WA state and turned into state parks… I can’t wait to return in the spring, when all the trees are blossoming. It will be so breathtaking. On the other side of the orchard, there weren’t as many apple 
trees, but we did discover this wonderful thicket. The entire ground was covered in a carpet of yellow autumn leaves, and the branches arched overhead to make a tunnel. At the far end of the tunnel was one lone tree, silhouetted against the afternoon sky, almost glowing. It was amazing–it had a very enchanted forest feel, the glade and the lone tree some sort of magical destination. And it makes me wonder, do other people visiting Steptoe Butte see this orchard the way I do? Or does everyone else pass it by with a cursory glance? What a shame that would be. If only more people could learn to really look at the things around them.
I am so busy these days! I can’t quite get the world to stop spinning so fast around me. I have 1,001 things that I am working on simultaneously, and another 100 or so that I need to be working on but am not. Does this happen to other people too, or is it something about my slighltly compulsive and exciteable nature that traps me into this situation with such frequency? I have Christmas presents to buy, Christmas presents to make, and even worse, Christmas presents to actually think up. I have at least 5 art projects, 3 novels, and 1 research project, all of which are going absolutely nowhere at the moment. I am avoiding the magazine rack of the bookstore because I know that if I pick up Somerset Studio or Cloth Paper Scissors, I will be inspired and come up with several more projects-in-limbo. My craft room, as you can see, is in appalling condition–almost as jumbled as my brain. It gets this way once cold weather hits because my craft room is located, tragically, in the basement, where it is even more frigid than outside. So I have a habit of stuffing any supplies I need into plastic bags and carrying them upstairs to work on projects there. At some point, this makes it very messy upstairs and I get frustrated by having piles of crafting supplies burying all the nice furniture, and I carry everything downstairs again. But I leave them in bags because I know I will be back in a few days or weeks with another project, and I won’t be able to sit in the cold basement long enough to complete it. Thus, the truly insane mess that has now completely consumed my work area.
So what am I actually working on currently? Are you sure you want to know? It’s kind of odd… I have invented my own language. *sigh* It’s been in the germination stage since high school, but I finally got my act together and finished it. I read something like a dozen linguistics books in two weeks, revised my alphabet, skimmed the entire dictionary, locked in a vocabulary of 1,304 words and then made myself a lovely dictionary-spreadsheet of the whole darn thing. I am currently in the final stage: typing up the grammar and syntax rules. Whee! I am probably insane to have enjoyed this process.
There is, of course, lots of other mundane things going on, like intensive house cleaning and moving of furniture, and these things eat up quite a chunk of time too. And trying to earn money. And watching my kitties cuddle up for warmth, which is a very comforting thing. How I wish to be furry like they are! And somehow, in the midst of all this bustle and the other undone things waiting to crash down on me, there are a few moments of serenity. On a routine trip to WalMart Tuesday night, we came 
across the most amazing, perfect harvest moon. It loomed over the horizon so large that it looked like it was about to collide with Earth, and it was a beautiful orange-gold color. I’ve seen some other impressive moons, but this was one of the best. Nothing beats an autumn moon hanging just above a very bland and stereotypical suburbia to remind you what it’s really all about.
