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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 21, 2009

Temperatures dropping again. It’s a challenge to keep the horses comfortable with such radical fluctuations–from 50 below to 50 above last week; now back around zero and dropping to 20 below by the weekend. I blanket them with heavyweight blankets when the temperatures head to 30 below, trying to time it so that I do it before the temperature point where my fingers get too cold to manipulate the buckles but not before the blankets would keep their thick coats from doing the job they do so well.

Yesterday, Sam, the watch horse who insists in standing out of the run-in shed in any weather, was shivering when I went to feed him in the morning. He had stood out in the snowfall the day before and had had small drifts of it on his back, which turned to glaciers, stuck to his thick coat. If he were willing to spend time in the shed, like Mattie does, the ice would have never formed or would have melted and dried. But there he stood, coat thick with ice, some of it melted and wet to his skin.

I blanketed him with a fleece blanket liner to wick the melting ice away, and he looked happier. I saw him later, standing with his head over the fence, looking for dog walkers on the road below the corral, the blue fleece on his back frosty from where he had rolled and from the moisture wicking out of his coat. I took it off later in the day to keep his coat from packing down and making him colder and found that the ice had melted off his back and reformed down along his belly. I thought of putting a quilted blanket on him, but his back was dry and I knew that, if our temperatures really drop, I’d need to keep that blanket in reserve.

Today, his coat is dry. The sun is a little brighter than yesterday as it makes its slow progress back up our northern sky. Mattie stands sideways to it, soaking in what heat she can with her black coat. Sam, a white horse in the snow, is back at the fence, moving a little at a time to stand in a triangle of light, moving as it moves.

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 20, 2009

This morning we fed the horses in the dark, as usual, then made coffee and scones and watched the Inauguration. Our friend John came over and we made an event of it–gathering at 7:30am, sleepy still, but sweetened by honey-buttered scones and the joy of the crowd on the screen. After the speech and the hoopla–and after Bush’s helicopter took off for the last time from the White House lawn, we sat and talked and sipped warm coffee as the windows gradually lightened. My son, the dancer, called from New York; I’ll call my brother later today. Now the sun is up above the edge of the ridge; the fresh snow glows with creamy light; everything sparkles and seems new.

We talked about the dark of the year and how it affects us. John is here for his first winter and he’s feeling a bit ragged and sluggish. We assured him that this is part of winter in the far north: the dark and cold settle in together, our blood thickens, we go into a kind of mental hibernation even though we go about the motions of daily life. The difficult time comes when the light begins to return and our energy builds, but the snow is still thickly spread across the ground, the ground itself frozen solid, the deep cold still possible for months to come. It’s friendship that brings us through. When despair creeps into our hearts, a conversation or a good laugh can stave it off for a while. Or it’s our animals. When I need grounding, I go out to the corral and brush Mattie or detangle Sam’s mane–even when it’s too cold to stay out long or too slick to longe or ride.

Still, in the light shining now across the corral–the horses standing still and sideways to it, absorbing every ray they can, storing up energy for the rest of the sunless day-I can feel my own reserve of energy, hope, optimism replenishing.

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 18, 2009

More news from the psyche.

Still warm, by Alaskan standards. For a few days, temperatures lifted to around fifty above–for some, a hundred-degree rise in two days. Walking across campus, I felt a puff of warm breeze on my face–unfamiliar breeze, unfamiliar warmth. The lightness this brings to everyone’s mood is remarkable. How can temperature alone make such a difference in all the little troubles we carry? Yet, shedding coats, hats, mittens, even for a few days, we move more fluidly in the world, and spring seems possible.

By today, light snow, and temperatures back below freezing, but still warm, for us. As I write this, I’m thinking of the people gathering on the Mall in Washington, DC, and the change of mood and energy so many of us feel at the approach of Inauguration Day. While it’s not my intention to make this a political blog–there are too many good ones already (see Mudflats in the Blogroll for an Alaskan example)–the changing weather here seems to parallel a change of what? Mood? Politics? National intent?

It’s been a long dark journey through a kind of national despair for the past eight years, when the public dialogue has been driven by fear and impulse rather than reflection and reason. Horses can be made dangerous and frightening by humans who react around them out of fear–perhaps that’s also true of a nation. And horses can be calmed and rehabilitated by a calmer, reasonable presence. Perhaps we all long for that, as well. It’s a lot to place on one human being, to calm and redirect the restless herd of our national psyche, but, as I’ve said to friends here, an election isn’t about one person, it’s about us and who we want ourselves collectively to be. So, as light progresses here, we’ll watch to see how light can be progressively shed on us all with the turn of the political season. I wish for Obama all the best tools of horse and dog training: to be calm, attentive, clear-headed, non-reactive, and to lead by reward and praise rather than by punishment and fear.

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 15, 2009

Finally, warming weather, and, as if to overcompensate, spring-like weather. Here in the hills the snow is melting. There’s a constant tick of dripping water from the eaves, with the occasional rush of snow sliding from the roof. The horses, now free from their blankets, play the bite-y kick-y game through the fence: Sam reaches through to bite at Mattie’s neck or hocks and she swings around and lets loose at the fence beside him. They trot around and have a good laugh. Then they do it again. Because the fence is metal, it sounds like they’re playing an all-percussion New Music piece-silence, CLASH, the staccato of hooves, silence, with a few high-pitched squeals thrown in.

I’ve been thinking about this blog and my purpose for writing it. What do I mean by a virtual writers/artists/horse lovers’ retreat? What can I offer to you, dear reader? I’m posting links that are interesting to me and fit with my evolving sense of vision for this blog. I’ve posted a few poetry prompts, as well, though no one has posted a poetry response, yet (except me). An artist’s retreat–Yaddo, McDowell, etc–is a place to retreat to work on art, but also a place of connection, interaction of the arts. So, I guess that’s one hope I have here: to connect artists of different genres, to stimulate inter-arts connections, to kick-start ideas.

And where do the horses and gardens come in? In a literal place, they would be part of the scene-a horse rescue/retirement facility, an organic garden, a community table. This is part of the vision I haven’t explored here yet, except to write about my own horses and post a few horse links. I’ll write more and explore this more as I go on.

So, dear reader, I pose the question to you: How can this site serve you as artist, writer, dancer, horse person, gardener? How would you like to link to others? What can be done here that will feed your art?

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 10, 2009

Still deep cold. The weather forecasters are predicting warming trends in three days, but experienced Alaskans have seen this phenomenon before: the cold drags on, we get discouraged, the forecasters try to lift our spirits by predicting a break in the weather in three days; this can go on for weeks. So we’re in that part of the cold spell.

At this point, after this much cold, the effort it takes to do anything begins to seem normal. The car needs to be plugged in for an hour before turning it on, then it needs to be warmed up enough that the heat inside the car melts the ice around the gas pedal, then when we drive off, we move slowly, bumping along on flat-sided tires. Going into and out of the coffee shop involves a comical amount of taking off and putting on mittens, gloves, scarves, hats, layers of jackets and sweaters, snow pants. And we make foolish mistakes-taking our gloves off to adjust the buckles on the horse blanket can lead to cold fingers and cold fingers can frostbite. After being inside or driving through ice fog all day, we decide to walk the dog at night. The dry air makes skin itch, makes sparks of static snap between people and dogs, people and partners. We snap, too, as little irritations itch at the space between us.

So, I look at seed catalogs, the luscious colors of beets, cantaloupes, carrots, lettuce. In three days, they say, we’ll be above zero-maybe above freezing (but don’t count on it).

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 9, 2009

Sun on the eaves again today. Though the sun is lovely to see, clear skies mean more cold weather as the heat radiates away from the ground and off into the atmosphere. On the radio today, I heard that Tok, down the Alaska Highway, had 78 below. These are North Slope temperatures-minus the wind. They say we’ll enter a warming trend over the weekend. We’ll see.

I may write this entry in phases. Today, I’m headed out to a meeting to talk about a project I’m involved with this spring-a high school outreach program involving science, writing (my part), and dance. We’ll be working with rural Alaskan and Alaska native Junior High kids who have selected this class as an elective. How this will all go together will be interesting to see, but the writing part will be about observation in the natural and human world and translating that into language. We’ll work with poetry to start, then touch on prose. Ultimately, there will be a presentation involving movement, storytelling, poetry. The wonderful part for me will be working with dancers I know and sharing the creative impulse with them and with kids who are at a wonderfully inventive stage of life. An added plus is that I will be working with my dancer son, Ira, who is coming up from NYC to work on the performance part of the project. The idea for Mattie’s Pillow evolved, in part, from long discussions with him about what’s happening in the arts in New York and what Alaska has to offer that no other place does.

More later.

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 8, 2009

Here’s news of the psyche.

Deep cold persists here. At forty below or colder, metal becomes brittle. Things break. Anything plastic can shatter at the slightest bump. And the psyche, usually plastic and pliable, becomes brittle, sharp-edged, and dense.

We are all waiting for the cold to lift and tallying up the list of broken things to repair: frozen pipes, a car window that won’t roll down, a phone line inexplicably dead, our frayed good will. It takes so much effort just to get the car started and drive to town that we do without things like ice cream rather than go to the trouble.

In a few days, the temperature is supposed to rise above zero. Next week, the first of a series of meetings and other activities starts. These dark days, the last of Winter Break, the first of my sabbatical semester, will seem such a luxury in memory once the activity of spring begins.

Spring, however, is a matter for the psyche here in the Interior–we’ll have snow till late April, into May (ah, even writing those words brings some relief). Spring finds its way to us through dreaming of gardens, browsing seed catalogs, beginning the slow conditioning of horses for the first day of good footing and riding. Then, in a day, the snow will be gone, the birches will be a cloud of yellow-green, the cranes and geese will babble in the sky, the horses’ coats will shed in ragged patches, and the garden will already seem behind schedule.

On the radio, just now, a warning about ice fog, bad air quality, driving with lights on, or better yet not driving at all.

Thanks to all who’ve visited this blog. I’ll post more poetry challenges, for the psyche.

Update: 11:30 Alaska Standard Time–Sun on the eaves for the first time in weeks.

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 7, 2009

Thinking of time today–how fluid and how relative it seems. We’re still deep in cold here. Everything takes more time. This morning, heading out to feed horses in the dark, I put on so many layers that the dog lay back down to rest and wait while I performed what must, to him, seem like a dallying obsessive task: putting on all the layers of down vest, wool sweater, hoodie, Carhartt’s jacket and lined workpants, my two layers of socks and Arctic Sport Muck Boots, lined gloves and liners, fleece hat and smoke ring. The dog sighs. He needs to go out, and I am fooling with all these pieces of cloth that he’s forbidden to chew.

And driving. First the car needs to be plugged in for an hour or more, then warmed up at idle in spite of air quality alerts, then the windshield scraped, then slowly driven off over bumpy tires that have developed flat spots from sitting in the cold.

But time has always seemed fluid to me, clocks arbitrary. On these days when I have the privilege of staying at home and writing, I tell time, if at all, by NPR–thus marking the day in hour or half hour moments–or by the quality of light in the day–so marking the day in ever lengthening blocks of hours. Right now, the sky is lightening with improbable pale pink at the horizon line, then a watery yellow, a bit of green–the yellow green of new spring leaves–then a pale blue that deepens as I look to the north, towards Barrow and Nuiqsut, where there has been no sun for a few months now, only pre-dawn and dusk light.

Time is a broad sweep here in the North–measured in the position of the sun. Winter, the sun is in the south–a short shallow arc over the horizon then back down. Summer, the sun circles from northeast to northwest, a wide long arc through the southern sky and north again. Time in summer is a long stretch of frenzied action–work, gardening, riding, evening baseball games, walks, canoeing, road trips–we cram as much in as we can, knowing that winter will come along to grind time down to its slowest essence again.

Here we are. Slow time. Things may or may not get done. We are tending our literal and inner fires, banking them up for the days ahead.

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View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 6, 2009

I’m sitting in my living room near the woodstove balancing the laptop on my lap. The stove we bought when we moved here has a window at the front, so we can see curls of light from the flame as the wood burns. These days, we’re burning only birch, those lovely trees with their white bark that peels like sunburnt skin in summer. We’ve stacked the split wood on the stove to warm  to room temperature from 40 below; I admire the clean whiteness of the bark, the dense grain of the wood itself.

In Interior Alaska, birch is the hardwood we have. It gives off more heat than other available wood such as spruce, cottonwood/poplar, or willow. The wood curves as it grows so that the trunks of birch trees look like giant legs or hips. Interior artists such as Kes Woodward or David Mollet have made much of this quality.

Today, I have been clearing out a physical space downstairs to write–a room and a desk that has been burdened by boxes, years of graded papers, old bills, a bicycle, yoga mats, sleeping bags–all the things that needed a generic place to stage when we needed to move them from someplace else. Now there is a path to the desk by the window with a statue of the Buddha, a long-suffering plant, some rocks from various places, and, on days with no ice fog, a view of the Alaska Range. I have a sabbatical semester starting today; my plan is to finish the chapters of a book of meditations n the horse, working title And the Horse, and to continue a practice I started last winter of setting a daily poetry challenge in hopes of completing a chapbook. I will post drafts of the horse book as I complete chapters and will post poetry challenges for myself and any readers who want to take them up.

As for Mattie’s Pillow, I am growing into the blogging process. All two of my readers have given me good feedback so far, and the look and content of this blog may change in the next few days. For now, while I am still mostly inside by the fire, gazing out at Mattie and Sam themselves, so handsome in their blankets and frosty manes, I will be exploring how this virtual space can parallel the one I have imagined and how I can begin to make connections between people I care about and others who care about the things I do.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 4, 2009

Here on the Ridge, it’s thirty below zero. Down in the valley, it hovers between forty and fifty below and the ice fog sits thick along the roads, riverbanks, neighborhoods.

This fall, with the high oil prices, people who hadn’t used their wood stoves in years dusted them off, went out to the wood cutting areas, and began burning unseasoned wood. We were lucky enough to have had several large spruce trees fall in the last couple of years and were able to harvest a downed birch and buy some two-year old birch logs over the summer. But in some areas, the extra smoke and water vapor released  from burning green wood or coal has been hanging in the air for months. Now that we’re in a period of deep cold, this smoke and vapor hangs frozen into ice fog–hard on living beings.

We are in the last days of the winter break between semesters. We’re down to one working car, but we’re holed up in our living room, dozy as hibernating bears, stoking the wood stove, watching the Christmas tree lights flicker, watching the skyline pale from orange to watery green to dusky blue. For a few weeks, as we begin the slow return toward the sun, our part of the Ridge will be in shadow. A few houses down our road, they get a couple or hours of sun each day, but we are at the head of a deep bowl of land, so it will be while before the sun reaches pver the rim of the Ridge to us.

Outside, the horses stand, blanketed, dreaming of grass. Mattie likes to hang out in the shed, sulking. Sam, the guard horse, stands by the fence, looking down at anyone driving or walking by on the road below. Their coats are thick and long: Mattie gets an undercoat like a dog; Sam’s is dense with close-growing hairs like a caribou.

I’m still learning about blogs. I’ve visited other blogs to see how they format their pages, who their audience is.

I have two main purposes for this blog at this point. First, I want a concrete way to develop ideas for a literal Mattie’s Pillow–a place with buildings, people, etc.  I’m starting this by posting links to poets, artists, horse and dog and gardenig sites–anything that fits the image I have of Mattie’s Pillow.  Second–though I’m doing this first–I want a way to share the work I do on my current sabbatical: poems for a chapbook and chapters for a book of essays on the horse.

What I’m not clear on now  is who my audience is. This may take some time. I don’t  yet know who you are, but it may be you.

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