El Sol

El Sol, the sun is bright today in La Paz. When we left Anchorage on January 6th, the temperature was -15 degrees farenheit, many hours, almost a day later, we landed in San Jose, Bajio Sur, Mexico where it was 70 degrees - a gain of 85 degrees.
The sun's short path across our Homer, Alaska sky this time of year is in stark contrast to it's warmth and proximity here in La Paz. Yesterday we went to the Playa de Belandre. It was especially beautiful - the tides were extremely low and I walked around the southern point observing tide pools along the way, keeping my eyes peeled for shells - the ones I finally began to see, making infinitesimally small pathways in the sand, were surprisingly alive, so I did not gather any after all. Somehow, I had imagined the shells abandoned, not as little houses carried on the backs of living creatures and so I left them to themselves and their unimaginable journeys. Crabs moved so quickly that I could only trace their existence from the corners of my eyes. Clams slammed shut with a pop as I passed. Eventually, I saw a long black and orange snake, possibly an eel and wondered if it was "electric". Wayne ventured closer to it than I was willing to go and claimed it was dead, but I was not sure of its demise and became wary of the existence of others lurking somehow just beneath my feet. The air was hallowed and its embrace healing. Such a difference between this environ and the one in which we live in Alaska! Today, it was almost too hot. Uncaring, I sat purposefully in the direct path of the mid-day sun, soaking up its rays, conscious of how far away that small yellow globe will seem upon our return home, how I will miss its proximity and warmth. At the latitude in which we reside, the earth tips away and toward un-starred space this time of year. Even in summer, when the globe rotates toward the sun, we are still farther away from the sun's warmth than other latitudes, although it lights our lives with nearly endless day. I am amazed at the bright heat I feel today in La Paz. The brightness of the sunshine almost hurts and I wear sunglasses though I still squint from behind their protective lenses. The sun - giver of life - pours forth its warmth here in the south of Mexico and far away, in the north, I imagine our home in mid-day brightening only in cloudless skies, momentarily crimson, before the cold gray of the shortened days. There is something to be said for that cold distance, its shadowy purple indigo flame. Never before my life at that latitude have I been so aware of the sun and its defining role in my welfare, our minute place on this whirling globe, how it turns and turns in space, how much a part and parcel the sun's pull plays on our fortune. I rub tanning lotion into the loosening skin of my legs, then turn my face skyward. The chariot of the gods makes its way across the sky, pulling the sun in an ever-deepening and eternal drama above the known horizon; in La Paz it barely moves, as though suspended. Those who live here hardly notice. They nod against the imperceptible chill, wear long sleeves and pants... dream of summer.

Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander: Brief Explication

I ran across Mark Doty's posting of the inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day" by Elizabeth Alexander and was inspired to comment:

In the poet's reading, I heard common sense, a down to earth presence in the words and voice, a simple (but not simplistic) note without pretension. I heard a call to love that echoed the essence of a particular place in history, a crossroads in which America stands, and I heard not religion, but a voice that reached past the noise of all our individual affiliations or leanings, the noise of difference and said, "We are here together."

Seeing her words on paper with its line breaks and stanzas gave me the opportunity to go even further into the experience of yesterday.

Below is a copy of the poem as it reads on msn.com:

Praise For The Day

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

---

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. A chapbook edition of Praise Song for the Day will be published on February 6, 2009.

On Inauguration of President Barack Obama: One American Voice

The tears came during the final few minutes of his speech. Turning toward my husband, Wayne, I saw that he, too, was wiping away tears. I knew that this moment in history would have great meaning for us, but I did not anticipate the force with which it struck.

For those, like us, who were impressionable children when JFK took office (Wayne was eleven, I was seven) and then when JKF, MLK, and then RFK were assassinated, with LBJ in office, this moment is more than a hopeful one for the new generation (our children); it is also a profoundly healing one for those of us in-between.
During the inaugural speech, when Obama said these words:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

That is when the tears came and they represented relief beyond hope, as well as grief. It has been with increasing sorrow that I watched our now former president compromise that very charter in the face of terrorism, taking, along with his cronies, a reactionary, misguided and hawkish stance – resembling a drunken John Wayne running the bad guys out of town. It was reminiscent of a bad western movie - maybe Bush aspired to Reagan’s model of leadership, but the timing was off and the script just didn’t read true.

At the same time, to give Bush Jr. some credit, he had the unfortunate task of leading our country during a time in which "the sins of our fathers" would come to light and thank God for that. For that reason, I am grateful for the bad times – for I believe they have served and will continue to serve to bring about change we can trust. With that change comes a new beginning and a new light to shine on our country, as both example and inspiration to the world – with that change comes a spirit that is both old and new, its roots in our founding fathers and mothers, the spirit of service and of unity in the face of great need.

There is no room or excuse for the greed and corruption in which our leaders have taken part and that we the people have been complicit in by very virtue of that charter that tells us we have the power to say no. We did not say no, or if and when we did, we did not say it loud enough.

It is with our new President Barack Obama and his leadership that we may now find the courage and the hope, as people, to offer an enthusiastic yes to change, change that represents no less than the radical spirit of that charter in which our country was founded, and a resounding and firm no to anything less.

Clyde The Fraud Dog Days

Summer 2005: There is a rainbow, the last fourth of it shining out from the depths of a billowy white cloud with grey edges sitting over some small cove across the bay. The water today is cerulean blue and the trees myriad shades of bright green, the kind of green that comes from mixing blues with yellows, and Clyde is running in what we call a yard, a little over a acre of grass edged with alders, devils club, fireweed, nettles, and raspberry bushes clinging to clay soil as though their fragile roots could hold off high tide and wind and all the forces of erosion that chip away at the bluff our house sits on and just above.

Clyde’s coat is shiny black, almost achingly gleaming, and feathered strokes of white wisps curl off his chest and toes. Clyde prances like a proud horse, if his nostrils were larger, I swear I could hear him snort like a mustang. He paws the ground and throws his head back, glancing at me to see if I’m watching. He finds his new toy and brings it to me but then changes his mind and runs the other way trying to get me to play the game his way. I watch the neighborhood pheasant make an awkward u-turn as he stupidly wanders in Clyde’s direction, but Clyde is sufficiently distracted and not much of an animal chaser anyway.

I walk with Clyde up the dirt road we call our street for half a mile or so and then we turn around and slowly walk back down, stopping every few feet just to stare at the rainbow and how it just sits there without fading over some small cove across the bay, how it shines color on some happy place blessing the entire bay with its presence and how it is not by any stretch of the imagination the first rainbow I’ve seen since moving here and I wonder if I will ever become desensitized to rainbows.

Wandering down the dusty lane flanked by green I notice a neighbors log house and how like a kingdom it seems. It is a home assuredly grown over decades of living in one place and it reigns over at the same time that it seems to serve the land it sits on, the ocean it looks out on, the open sky it surveys, the mountains and glaciers and coves over the water that beckon.

When I was a girl, I played outside for hours. I hated coming inside even to pee. In the face of this- yet another rainbow- I strain to remember myself, a girl who climbed trees, caught crawdads, played in creeks, built bridges over ditches, and took long solitary hikes out of the subdivision and into nearby farmland. A girl who built tree houses and forts, I wandered the outdoors, swam, rode bikes, skateboarded, and pitched tents in the backyard. When my parents took us to visit relatives who lived by the river and the woods, they were the first place I headed, with another child or alone. Let loose from the car on a Sunday drive in the mountains, I scrambled headlong up the nearest rock as fast as I could, my lungs screaming until I could climb not one inch further and had gotten myself into a spot I surely might never get out of and always did, inching my way back down eighty degree inclines of slick rock to taunt my younger brother for not keeping up and then turning abruptly to lead him up yet another direction and possible disaster.

These are the things I remember now staring at this perfect place and this perfect rainbow. Clyde is patient with me, sitting beside me as long as I want to stand in one place, motionless. Homer, and the bay it calls home, appears, a long lost prince come to catch me sleeping, showering me with rainbows and light that turns shadows into glitter, waking me up from my adult slumber. Three cranes fly overhead, their necks long like their legs, their bodies a brown oval. The sound they make is haunting and beautiful. It is the sound that desire might make if it were made into music. It is the sound of a mother calling a child home at the last light of day.

I tell Clyde that we will be taking long walks on the beach, to prepare to spend entire days wandering up and down the east end of the bay. I advise him that it is time for me to go outside and play again, for no reason at all. That it is time for me to stay out long after I have to pee. He can come with me and we will look for dead crabs on the shore and circle rocks and more. I will throw sticks for him and he can swim all he wants in the ocean. Clyde’s tongue hangs crookedly out of his happy mouth and he meets my gaze with his, evenly as though to say I’ll hold you to that promise. We finish our short walk of long pauses and sit on the deck together. I wrap myself in a blanket and watch the sky until it is very late. Clyde sits at my feet with his head on his paws.

The rainbow does not fade. Stubbornly, bands of red, yellow, and green hang in the midnight sky of deepening dusk. The billowy cloud drifts away revealing more of the rainbow, which now arcs over half the sky, even as I retire for the night and the sun slowly makes its summer descent. Sleep comes slowly and I think it is my imagination when I hear the cranes again, whooping faintly, but insistently in the distance.

La Paz - Baja Sur

La Paz, Mexico. Blessed sun and plenty of it – I am here for a month, my first trip to Mexico. I won’t say how many years have passed, but I will say it’s about time.
I love the sound of the Spanish language. It has a lyric quality, comforting, soft and lilting, yet it is a passionate language also. The tempo and emphasis may change but it all comes from the same composer with its many different symphonies. I’m reminded of music lessons from my childhood. Black notes, clef treble, flats and sharps, three over four, one-quarter time, allegra, stacatto, lento; it all returns. Listening is like reading music.
There is a warm wind that blows in the afternoon. The weather is mild, hotter here in winter than our Homer summer. It cools quickly with sunset but not cool enough for a heater. We’ve needed an extra blanket once or twice, if that.
Managed to get hooked up electronically with phone and internet service today. It is, after all, a post-modern world. I am getting many opportunities to practice my Spanish. The people are friendly and, not only don't seem to mind my attempts to communicate, but go out of their way to assist me with their language. I have a long way to go with that, but am enjoying the journey.
More from the Baja Sur to come. Hasta leugo...

January 1, 2009: The View From My Window

Consider this: Multiple shades of blue marble the watered landscape, the barest hint of fuschia, like spilled paint, spreads outward over the sky, the alders trace a cold outline of deep maroon in the foreground. Traces of the New Year sun backlights the mountains across the bay, an ocher glow. Grewingk glacier makes a nonchalant retreat, holding the land like water cupped in a palm and spilling.
I am blessed.

Season and Solstice: A Celebration

A few thoughts on this, this evening, this night before the dawn, and the birth of whatever is new in each of us. May each of us feel that inner spark within and gently treasure it; may we kindle it into flame and fire, may it then burn steady so that we may warm others in the days and years ahead. Best on this, the solstice and the season - Kelly.
Photograph of Kelly with grandson, Jeremy - Alaska, 2008.