Archive for March, 2009

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Dancing in the North

March 31, 2009

Saturday, I sat in the studio at North Star Ballet and watched the Senior and Junior companies rehearse for their Spring Gala next weekend. The Junior Company is performing Carnival of the Animals and the Senior Company is taking on the “white ballet,” Les Sylphides.

Fifteen years ago, I performed in one of the first performances of my adult ballet career as a sylph, a member of a rag-tag corps de ballet that ranged in age from seven to forty-six. I was one of the older dancers in the performance, without the background of a young studio dancer in picking up choreography and in giving my movements over to the direction of a choreographer. I loved the lush music of Chopin, the romantic poses, the stillness of the corps, forming a gauzy backdrop to the lively movements of the prima sylphs in their solo roles. It was when I truly came to love ballet and understand its power over dancers and audiences.

The dancers at North Star are well disciplined in their technique by Norman Shelburne and Sue Perry and the Spring Gala performance is the time when the company shows off what the dancers know and offers a challenge to the senior dancers in their last company performance. The kids in the studio have all grown up together since their creative movement classes, and a few reach this time of year poised to go off and try their luck at a ballet career. This year Jarrin and Sophia, who have been partners for all these years each are in the process of auditioning and weighing their options–college or apprenticeship? The path in dance is fickle. Some, who are determined, genetically lucky, and accident-free can make a life of it. Some who might otherwise have been beautiful dancers for many years to come are derailed by injury, lack of confidence, unlucky choices, or other paths.

Watching the girls and Jarrin dance to Chopin’s romantic etudes–the sylphs floating across the floor in bourre or light frothy leaps, the “poet” leaping for joy at their beauty, beating his legs in mid air, I wanted to hold the moment. The corps was not yet perfect–they practiced staying still in their poses, the poet and his sylph missed a few steps. All were tired, but persistent. And this moment in the studio, just before the final corrections, the last stitch of the costume, when these are all still teenagers about to become for a brief time the epitome of all that’s possible for a human to be, at least in our imaginations, is the moment in dance that I love best.

Tomorrow night I’ll go to tech rehearsal and get a few comments from the seniors. Saturday I’ll go to the performance and watch them float in the lights and share the moment of joy that audience and dancers share sometimes. I’ll go back stage and hug the ones I know well and watch them wipe streaks of eyeliner from their cheeks where their tears fall. Then we’ll all go out into the night air. It will be April, finally, a hint of light lingering on the northern horizon already, a breath of the warmth to come.

If you’re in Fairbanks, the performance is at Hering Auditorium, Saturday, 2pm and 8pm and Sunday 2pm. Don’t miss it.

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Poetry Challenge 11

March 28, 2009

Lost and Found

Now that the snow is melting in some places–not yet here–think of all the things that reappear that you thought were lost.  Write about a lost thing that shows up again in an unlikely place.  Think of the stuff that falls from your pockets in the car, or the glove you’ve been looking for that’s been buried under snow, or the grocery list from months ago that turns up in a book, or an old friend reappearing.  Write abut the loss, the finding, or both.

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To see one response on Cider Press’  blog check:

http://ciderpress.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/impulsive-writing-16/#comment-46

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

March 25, 2009

Past the equinox now and the light increases daily. By the end of April, light will begin to compress the deep dark of night to a few hours and we’ll be restless for the heady time of summer with nearly endless days and fizzy energy.

But now, we’re still firmly frozen in March; for us, it’s the cruelest month. The light brings promise of spring, but even a week ago the temperatures dropped to 30 below and we know more snow will fall. This is the month of divorces and suicides-not to be too dreary about it all. We know that other places are already past crocuses and daffodils. We start our seeds inside under shop lights or in south facing windows and hope for the best, for the garden is still covered in two feet of white stuff. Now is when hope fails some of us, when even all the love and care we can spare to others in our small community is not enough and, each March, a few drop away.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I heard the news of the death of Nick Hughes, here in Fairbanks. I first heard of him in the 80s when his father, Ted Hughes, came to the Midnight Sun Writer’s Conference as faculty. It seemed like a great coup to us young writers that we had gotten such a “presence” to come to our conference–though we also had Ray Carver, Tess Gallagher, Annie Dillard, and others who were rising at the time and are the literary establishment now. There was the usual gossip of writers’ conferences–who got special favor, a private reading, and why–but among the buzz was the astonishing news that Hughes was here in part because his son, Nick, was a Ph.D. student at the university and was working as a biologist and researcher here.

“Nick?,” I said, “of ‘Nick and the Candlestick’?” Yes, that Nick, whose mother, Sylvia Plath’s, passionate poem about his birth meant so much to me as a, then, young mother. The child that figures so prominently in what’s shocking, poignant, and fascinating in Plath’s own death. I don’t want to dwell on this; what’s been important about Nick in our midst is that he lived a life as remote as could be from all this history. Those of us in literary circles who knew of his presence among us, knew, too, that he wanted nothing to do with the literary world. For all I knew, he lived among friends, was loved, loved the plant and animal life of the Interior and the wild, expansive beauty of the landscape much as all of us do who live here. For all I knew, that and our careful mindfulness not to bring the past to him, was enough. Sadly, it wasn’t.

So, now, March drifts toward April. We look around, emerging out of winter cautiously. Who is still among us? This is the time to smile at our neighbors, to give that hug–flu or no flu–to share what we can. We remember who we’ve lost and the lessons of their lives. We live with them; we incorporate them into our vision. We plant seeds; they emerge, threadlike, vulnerable, pale; we hold them in the light and hope they grow.

(To read more about Nick Hughes, here’s a link to Dermott Cole’s column in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner http://newsminer.com/news/2009/mar/23/poet-sylvia-plaths-son-prominent-fairbanks-biologi/

and a link to Plath’s poem, “Nick and the Candlestick” < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178967>  )

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

March 18, 2009

Temperatures have dropped again with bitter wind–unusual combination for the Interior, but as I write this, I realize that it’s happened several times this winter. Today is St. Patrick’s Day, but not much happening here at Mattie’s Pillow. All humans here have been laid low with a flu–mild in my case–and green beer is the last thing on our menu.

The snow is still thick on the ground here and settling and hardening in the wind. Out on the Iditarod Trail, the mushers are being buffeted with winds off the Bering Strait as they cross frozen Norton Sound. Some have scratched; some have needed helicopter rescue, dogs and all. The Iditarod, since it takes place later in the year than the Yukon Quest, and as spring gradually comes earlier in the North, usually has the opposite problem. For sled dogs, bred to race full out at the coldest temperatures and with the coats to help them do this, weather below zero is best. Too much warmer than that, and they overheat and need to stop to eat snow occasionally to stay cool. But this year, with the wind and deep cold the mushers are struggling to take care of their dogs and stay healthy.

Still, the race will soon be over, if it’s not already, and the stragglers can take their time getting in, cheered along the way by the people who live in villages along the trail: Shaktoolik, Ophir, Nikolai, Nome.

Now, St. Patrick’s Day is over almost everywhere. Charlie Rose is talking about the economic situation. Tomorrow, plant tomatoes for the greenhouse, watch horses shed, believe that summer will come.

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Poetry Challenge 10

March 15, 2009

Silence.

Stop what you are doing and listen. How silent is it, really? What is the most silent place you’ve ever been? How did it sound? Or write about the silence that occurs at odd moments in the day–between tasks, between places, between people. Sit in silence as you write and find the words that rise up there.

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Here’s a response from Glow at Beyond Ester:

the persimmon cat purred in his sleep
purred as he groomed himself
purred as his brother bit his neck
purred watching birds flit
purred while being brushed
purred while being stalked
purred while laying with dogs
purred at the vet’s office.

he purred on the couch
he purred on the bed
he purred on the table
he purred on the desk
he purred on the rug
he purred in the litter box.

the persimmon cat purred always.

October
when the persimmons for which he was named
thudded to the ground,
he replaced his purr with a yowl
a catawauling wail
a screeching hollar
a piercing scream.

on the way to the vet
in the car
for several minutes
the purr overtook the yowls
then the purr stopped.

now, silence in our house.
and a maple box inscribed
Persimmon: Purring Forever.

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And another from Glow (hmmm…must be a good prompt)

late Saturday night
frantic knock
the neighbor shirtless shoeless in January
my house is on fire, he said.

we hurried
but there was nothing to be done
firemen bustled to no avail
water cast again and again

I expected brightness cast against trees
giant whooshing sounds
a cacophony of cracks and crashes
but flames are surprisingly dark
fire surprisingly silent
the heat gobbled up sound
sucked noise like air
seized and smothered talk
only soundless smoke
wordless ash
molten bits of house
dribbled among us
nothing for us to do
but watch in our newfound deafness

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My response:

Potatoes
chopped in cubes
pale yellow, dropped
into broth. It bubbles,
the wood stove ticks,
small motors that smooth
our passage through the day
hum, though it’s now night.

In this noisy silence,
the dog’s faint snore,
a tulip petal falls
from its thin yellowing
stem, from the blue vase,
I hear words said
yesterday or before
and you, in bitter
cold dark, driving,
driving up the hill
with milk.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

March 12, 2009

From here on the Ridge the sun is bright behind thin clouds. I can look out over the valley, and, over where the hill shoulders down to the river, there’s a thick spread of white cloud. “Freezing fog,” the forecast says, limited visibility. In a little while, I’ll head out to experience it myself, but, for now, I’m content to be at the kitchen table with a cup of peach ginger tea and this laptop.

Yesterday was Jeter the standard poodle’s first birthday and he e-mailed his sister Lucy and brother Kooba (the whole family has celebrity names–Lucy’s a red-head) to wish them happy birthday. For his birthday, he got two dog cookies from the fuel delivery man, a long walk, and a couple of pieces of cheese. A bath and a grooming would probably not have been a welcome present for him, though he needs it.

After sixteen years of living with our old dog, Kermit, living with a young dog is both a challenge and a joy. Though we had done plenty of research on dog breeds and, like the Obamas, had considered breeds like the Portuguese Water Dog, we still had some resistance to buying a breed dog rather than adopting a mutt like Kermit from the shelter. But when the poodle puppies showed up in the paper, we took a ride out to see them, and when the largest brown puppy lay in our arms, so mellow and sweet, there was no question. And the poodle at my feet has been a wonderful dog. He’s smart, energetic, enthusiastic to a fault, and, for the most part, eager to do what we ask him. I’m finally seeing, now, that things we ask of him are becoming routine, so there are fewer communication problems. However, in spite of his baseball player name, he’s not too keen on the game of “fetch.” He gets bored after a while and claims he can’t find the ball or the flying squirrel toy and would much rather run up the hill to see what’s happening there or go off and grab a piece of frozen horse manure to bring into the house. I think more mental challenges are in order.

I know that spring is on the way. Here, schools are on spring break. I have students coming by to see Mattie and Sam today, and our horse club will visit Tom Hart’s blacksmith shop this Saturday. The seeds arrived from Renee’s on Monday and I need to set up the shelves and lights to start the tomatoes for the greenhouse. The Iditarod is halfway over, though I’m not following it the way I did the Quest. Birds flit onto the planters on my deck, nibbling the remains of last year’s flowers, and zipping away. They still ignore the feeder we hung from the roof beam. The days are filled with light.

Still, there’s deep snow everywhere. I went out to work with Mattie yesterday, using the clicker to work on “stand” and “ears up.” Mattie is less fit at this point than Sam is, partly, I think, because she spends so much time sulking in the run-in shed while Sam is out enjoying the view in all weather. Her back doesn’t seem as muscled as his is, so I’m starting off with hand-walking, practicing “walk” and “whoa” and “ears up” all at once. As we circle her side of the corral, we end up walking through the parts where she doesn’t usually walk, and she and I both sink in to our knees. Good exercise for us both, but not very practical and a bit scary, since I know there are frozen brown piles under that snow–the ones we were planning to pick up the day the snow storm hit and that we’ll see again at snow melt in late April or early May.

This is the time of year when we feel most out of synch with the rest of the world, here in the Interior. We have spring fever–our minds wander, we think of places where there are flowers, we plan our gardens and summer training schedules-but we could be hit with snow and 20 below any day.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

March 7, 2009

“Snow falling night falling fast oh fast…”

This line from Robert Frost’s “Desert Places” runs through my mind each fall as the first snow falls and the days get darker. There’s something I love about the breathless quality of the line and the distantly observed beauty of fast falling snow on empty fields, the quick darkening of night. It’s something we know well here, the muting of light in snowfall, in winter.

But saying this in March is a different matter. Just when we are expecting more light, when the supermarket is filled with tulips and daffodils shipped up from Mexico and California, just when we’ve ordered our seeds and are setting up our seed starting tables and grow lights, the sky flattens with dark clouds and, for three days now, a snow fine as pastry flour sifts down on roads, roofs, the backs of horses. After the past three days, the garden is a foot farther under snow. The wood stove ash we spread there a few weeks ago is deep below white. Our spirits, about to lift with the small signs of spring in Interior Alaska–dog races, ice sculptures, the return of days longer than nights—deflate. We shoveled the driveway last weekend, giddy with the thought that it might be our last major plowing. We need to do it again and more.

Yesterday, we got six to eight inches in a day. Mattie and Sam’s corral is deep with it. The fence seems ridiculously short, as if Mattie or Sam could step over the top rail–except they’d sink in the snow on either side of the fence. They are too smart to try. Besides, what’s on either side looks the same, and they only get fed on the inside. So they stay put. They have to lift their feet a bit higher to walk through the deep snow. I hope this works as a kind of de facto fitness plan, because it’s too deep to walk safely after them on one end of the longe line, and neither they nor I can see where frozen manure piles are buried–a hazard for them and for me, and I want none of us injured.

Every spring I have grand training plans for them, starting right after Christmas. Every year, my plans discount the most important factor: winter. So far since January, I’ve been defeated by short days, 40 below weather, snow, chilblains from clicker training with my gloves off, winter inertia and counterbalancing activities–and now too-deep snow. The other night, a friend said, “Well, you don’t ride much; you just hang out with your horses like they’re pets.” I don’t think she meant ill by it, but, compared to someone in California, she’s right. I ride nearly every day in summer, barring smoke or rain, but getting two horses ready for riding after the long winter months takes lots of ground work. I feel behind. So does everyone I know, except for those with access to indoor riding arenas.

Mattie is staying dry in the back of the run-in shed. She blends into the shadows there and only comes out if she thinks I have food. Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t like to be confined. He likes to see what’s coming: airplanes flying over head, snowmachines on the road, a stray dog running by, a car coming up the driveway. His whinny is the most reliable sign that we have visitors.

Yesterday, I looked out in the thick snow and saw him napping by the fence. At that point the flakes were about the size of dimes and falling fast. Sam lay curled up in the deepening snow, his chin resting on the surface of it. I opened the door and called to him. He raised his head, looked at me, and lowered it again. I dressed as fast as I could and folded up my medium weight, waterproof blanket and carried it out to him. He wasn’t shivering when I reached him, but his thick coat was full of snow and wet where the heat of his body had melted it. I haltered him and he stretched out his front feet, stood up, and shook the loose snow from his back. He was probably OK; just napping and watching the snow fall, but I put the blanket on him anyway and he seemed more relaxed. He’s still standing out in the snow, the white stuff filling the places where the blanket makes soft folds along his back. Underneath he’s dry and warm, ready to guard the place.

Frost said–I can’t guarantee I have it perfectly–he could “scare myself with my own desert places.” I’ve always taken this to mean the places within where we know the territory–it’s ours and in our imagination, after all–but we find a familiar terror there, anyway. This may be the unresolvable questions that we all carry with us, or the vast unknown that is our future. This is the time of year when these “desert places” open their vistas to us unexpectedly, just when we’re expecting to slip on into spring unscathed.

The snow is beautiful as it falls. There’s an uncharacteristic wind, sculpting it into drifts. The tracks from our cars in the unplowed driveway will be filled in by morning and the curves of drifts may spread across them. A good day for a morning of coffee with chocolate and ginger scones. I’ll sleep on that thought.

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Poetry Challenge 8

March 5, 2009

Out of  Order

OK, so I can’t count!

Here’s one from my composition classroom, suggested to me as a journal exercise by D.A. Bartlett–my long-time mentor.

Write about a process backward. Either start with the end result or write about undoing something. This could be a cake or an action you wish you could take back. Or play time backward. Or, like these poetry challenges, just write things out of order–add randomess.

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Glow and I seem to be on similar wavelengths–missing things.  She challenged me to add a poem.  I think I was influenced by hers! 

My response:

 

Spring reverses itself.
seeds arrive in the mail,
snow slides from the roof,
a large hill of it
blocks the door. We carve
steps in its slope
to get over it. The dog
can’t stop barking
at the sounds snow
makes. Icicles form,
glisten,

then the sky darkens
earlier than yesterday.
We go sliding
back to winter, snow
sifting all over hoods,
our shoulders, the cleared
driveway.

In the morning you leave
sharp tracks in the snow.

By now, they are gone.

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And Glow’s

 

Despair was later, now anxiety
spun me through the woods
as I searched for the white cat.
The house was half empty, half full.
My things only, hers gone.
Her new lover’s truck
needing a valve job, I noted,
chugged down the drive
nearly backing into the fence.
The goats bleated watching
the antique bureau nearly dropped.
Just go, I said.
It’s true, she said.
You lied, I said.
She means nothing, she said.
You cheated on me, I said.
A strawberry blotch,
mouth-sized,
spread across her neck.
A blush gone awry.

The white cat lay dead in the moonlight
A copperhead slithered silently
after, and, I assume, before.
Maybe a slight rustle of leaves
a twitch of grass
was all that warned me
and the cat
of disaster.

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From Alaskapsych (not sure which challenge this is for):

Heraclitis et al

I stepped in the same river twice,
and twice again.
Time and tide waited for me,
dreaming,
I was awake

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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

March 3, 2009

Sam’s Dream

This afternoon, I went out to work with Mattie to reinforce some of the clicker training I’ve been doing with her. Now that it’s March, the sun is higher in the sky and stays out longer so that, at 2 in the afternoon, both horses are dozy and take naps in the sun.

When I got to the corral, Mattie’s halter slung over my shoulder, brushes in the grooming bag in one hand, clicker and beet pellets in my pocket, I noticed Sam stretched out flat, a white horse sleeping in the snow. He lay completely still; a thin cirrus of breath rose from his nose. Every time I see the horses sleeping like this, I have a moment of panic. As a child, I read that horses sleep standing up, which they can, and I saw horses sleeping with their legs tucked under them and chins resting on the ground. But it wasn’t till I had these two in a corral so close that it seems like part of my living room that I realized that, like us, horses need periods of deep REM sleep, totally relaxed. It’s a sign of how safe they feel in my corral, I guess, that they can sleep so vulnerably as this, though I notice that they do it one at a time, with the other usually standing watch.

I stood watching him for at least five minutes, maybe more. His breath was slow and long and I could see it rise in a mist around his head at regular intervals. His ears swiveled forward and back, as if he were listening to a rider he respected. His hooves twitched, first the back, then the front. Once, I saw his legs move as if pushing off into a collected canter. Sometimes he bobbed his head up and down slightly. Sometimes he wobbled his lips as if taking a treat or working his mouth on a bit. His eyes flickered, too; they seemed to open and close. He switched his tail.

I wondered what I was watching. I imagined he was dreaming of his former life, the training he had, the shows or exhibitions. I imagine that Sam loved his training and worked with an exacting trainer who taught him things I’ll never know about. I imagine that he misses this work, and has only tolerated those of us who’ve had him in our lives since them. Sam doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and in his eyes, we all may be fools.

I have to go through a pass-through between Sam’s and Mattie’s sides of the corral to get to Mattie, so I waited for Sam to wake up. I could have walked right by him, but he would have heard me coming and sprung to his feet. Eventually, he opened his eyes and rolled to his belly, feet tucked under him, head up to see me. I held my hand up, in the “stand” gesture, and he lay there, still drowsy, and let me walk up to him and scratch his forehead-something he usually resists. I talked to him and rubbed him on the neck, then left him, still resting, and went to see Mattie.

Things went well with Mattie. I worked on clicker training to reinforce the “ears up” command and “stand” as I groomed her with the rope slung over her withers. She was drowsy, too, a black mare in the sun. When I brushed the sun side of her, her coat felt so warm that I didn’t need my gloves. I finished by picking out her tail, using detangler, while she stood, head half-lowered, eyes half closed.

All in all a good day to be with horses.

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Poetry Challenge 9

March 2, 2009

Found Poetry

Find a bit of language–overheard conversation, labels on an object, street signs, etc–and use it in a poem. Break the words apart from their usual sense. Surprise yourself with what’s contained in them. For example, in the Effie Kokrine class while we were listing phrases from a freewriting exercise on the board, one student said, “Energy drinks rock,” and I heard it as noun-verb-noun instead of adjective-noun-verb, so that in my mind, the energy was drinking the rock. A good start for a poem.

What do you find? What do you hear? What else does it bring to mind?

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Here’s a response from Glow:

ruby crescent fingerlings
fat small doggie paws
swamp mama’s greatest
persimmon fur pie

the verse repeats
the new celtic fiddle restrings
the cats peek out from under
blood gushes, snow flitters

I play at night before bed
dream characters sing all night
I wake up with music
skimming through my head

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