The Green Wave

I’m writing this standing up, with the computer parked atop the woodstove. Odd, eh? I’m reminded of old Welsh ministers who wrote their sermons standing up or else on horseback. I’ll save that trick for another day, I think!

Why, you ask, are you standing up, Kate? Because it hurts to sit down. Yow! Apparently I sprained a disk in my back and now have a case of sciatica which means a weird combination of numbness, tingling, and pain in my legs and posterior. And how did you manage this trick, Kate? Well, at least in part by picking up the new harp and carrying it around without using my head. The good news is that I’ve got a Dublin-born chiropractor on the case and he tells me this sort of thing goes away in a few weeks. I’m telling you, fellow musicians, so that you might learn from my silliness and think before you heave up some massive piece of equipment or grab another armload of gear for the next trip to the car. In future, I’m going to be more careful, more prudent, and more gentle. That will probably mean moving more slowly and maybe doing a bit less. Or maybe asking for help and not being ashamed or embarrassed. And all this goes double now that Winter has come to town and the walks are beautiful but treacherous for instrument-and-equipment-carrrying types like us.

OK, now some good news to balance out the (sort of) bad. This year I resolved to have a truly merry Christmas season, and guess what? That’s exactly what is happening! (The power of thoughts again…) Since the first of December I have found myself delighted by holiday sights, sounds, tastes, and feelings:

• Lovely to buy a wreath at a local farm, go into the back of the barn and choose a bow, and watch the skilled woman tie and afix the bow.
• Coming out of class one day, two of my students from warm climes gasped with happiness at the snowfall. One of them said, “This is the best day ever!”
• I’ve attended two holiday parties and both were merry and real. Better still, both featured live, homemade music and lots of laughter.
• We’ve been making hot chocolate a lot these days. Just feels right and adds to the merriment.
• A neighbor has outdone himself with a fantastic light display. It has everything: Snoopy in a massive snow-globe, reindeer, colored lights, twinkling lights, angels, and it even sings carols. Some people might turn up their noses at ths, but I must confess: I love it. I feel so grateful to him every time I go by (and pre-sciatica, I found myself wandering up there to gaze at it all).
• Yesterday, four of us poets – all friends and all interested in Celtic lore – gave a reading at a cozy bakery. People came (wonderful!) and the bakery was decked with lights and cushions and a tree. Beautiful.
• When I foolishly drove my car into a snowbank, another neighbor came by with his plow and dug me out. He wouldn’t accept a penny and just said, “Merry Christmas!”

This season is easy to love. I hope you’re finding lots to add to your own merriment, enchantment, enjoyment, and happiness! If the spirit moves you, let me know some of your own holiday moments.

Isn’t it a wonderful thought: a good king? A man who stands at a window on a winter night, spies a poor person gathering sticks in the moonlight and says, “Let’s go out and help that man”? And yes, he does have a page, but he doesn’t treat him like a flunky: he solicits his knowledge and listens to him. Later, when they venture out in the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather, he leaves warm footprints to thaw out the frozen page. And at the end of it all, one poor person is less poor and all three people feel kinder towards the world.

This carol has always been my favorite, perhaps because I like the glowing medieval words, the detailed landscape, and the friendship between the king and his faithful page. I also like a carol that reminds us that if we bless the poor, we shall ourselves “find blessing.” There is something profoundly practical and at the same time elevated and idealistic about the song. It also offers tremendous scope for feeling. At various times in my life I have imagined myself as the page, striving to do my best but challenged by the night and the cold. At other times, I am filled with the purpose and power of Wenceslas.

And of course, my imagination is engaged by the thought of a long tramp through the moonlit snow, all the way to the mountain side and the little house “right against the forest fence, by St. Agnes’ fountain.” I see the door of that house opening and the man’s look of surprise and delight as he sees his king standing there, red-cheeked and covered in snow, flanked by a shivering page, holding out a basket of food and wine. I see the pair follow the man inside and I see him gesture to them to sit up close to the fire. Before long, they are laughing together, sharing cups of spiced wine pulled from the basket and warmed over the fire. And soon after that, the king sings a song about a good lad who helped his father. The page, hiding his feelings, tells a joke, and the man pulls a small flute off a shelf and plays a tune that remains in memory for days and weeks.

There are worlds and lives in songs.

What about you, reader? What’s your favorite carol, and why?

Recently, my true love read an article about men’s health that offered 16 pieces of advice about improving your health (never mind that some of them involved avoiding shark attack!). One of these gems of wisdom is to kick the habit of sugary cereals for breakfast. To that end, I’d like to share a recipe with you.

As with traditional music, as far as this recipe goes I am but one link in a chain. My friend Kathleen gave it to me, and she got it from a nutritionist; and who knows where she got it? Wherever it comes from, though, it is truly delicious and a great way to start the day.

Granola for the Soul
2 cups of rolled oats
1 cup seeds (any kind you like – and a mix is fun; my present batch has sunflower seeds and pepitas)
1 cup nuts (again, suit yourself and mix it up; I’ve used cashews, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, soynuts)
mix all these together

Whisk together:
1/2 cup honey or maple syrup (experiment and see what you like)
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon vanilla

Mix wet and dry ingredients. Spread on a lightly-oiled cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes at about 350. Stir once in the middle to keep it from sticking.

Variations:
These days, I love adding cinnamon to the mix or spice parisienne. Try ginger or nutmeg, too.
After it’s cooked, you can add shredded coconut, any dried fruit (cherries are decadent), or fresh fruit.

Bon appetit!

You can do anything in this life if you have conviction. Skill, talent, experience, and flair are all precious arrows in your quiver, but if I had to choose one quality of mind for an artist to possess, it would be conviction. It is not arrogance, but there is something of arrogance’s unyieldingness about conviction. One has only to think of Madeleine L’Engle whose brilliant book, A Wrinkle in Time, was rejected literally dozens of times before it finally landed a publisher and became an American classic. How did she keep going? How did she know that it should be published, that it was really, really good? Lucky for us, she did!

When I first sent a handful of poems to literary magazines many years ago, I lacked conviction. When the inevitable rejections came (and how could they not, as I’d sent my poems to journals like “The Atlantic Monthly”), I instantly concluded that the poems were just not good and even perhaps a little embarrassing. I did not try again for many years. When I did, I won a contest. After that, I sent more, and they were rejected. I concluded, once again, that that poems were not very good and perhaps even a little embarrassing; and of course, that meant that winning the contest was just a fluke – pure dumb chance. Years passed again. The cycle repeated. I spent years writing poetry but never calling myself a poet in public.

It felt brave and risky a few years ago when I made my own business card and inscribed at the top: “Singer ~ Scholar ~ Poet.”

How did I gain enough conviction to claim that title? By writing hundreds of poems, by reading hundreds of poems, and by getting published enough that it no longer seemed like an editor’s mistake. But I want you, readers – and especially if you are young or just beginning – to hear this: you can call yourself Poet right now. Or Painter, Dancer, Singer, Illustrator, Orator, or whatever you are. Don’t wait for years to allow yourself the expansiveness of being What You Are. And then do it for all you’re worth. And don’t stop.

• Conviction means turning away from that whinging inner voice that asks, “Am I doing this right?”
• Conviction means not caring about right or correct but focusing instead on instinct, personal standards, the built-in compass.
• Conviction means not asking for permission.
• Conviction means not waiting for approval.
• Conviction means keeping an ear to the ground, an eye to the wind – all the signs and significations of personal weather.
• Conviction means taking other people’s words into account, weighing them carefully, and measuring their worth by how they resonate (or not) with what is known already, what feels truly right.
• Conviction means allowing a vein of fierceness in yourself – and cherishing it.
• Conviction means courage + determination.
• Conviction means, quite simply, believing in yourself.

It interests me that lots of us – Emily Dickinson for one – continue to do what we do whether or not we get outside approval. This is conviction, too. Emily wrote to Thomas Higginson, the editor of “The Atlantic Monthly” (yes, the same one I tried) and asked, “Tell me, Sir: Is my verse alive?” He said no. No! Her poems, to his taste, were too wild, too heedless of contemporary forms and modes. After that, Emily wrote hundreds and hundreds of poems over the short years of her life. When her friends asked her later in her life to publish her poems, she refused. Perhaps she’d gone beyond caring whether the Higginson’s of the world thought her verse was alive. Perhaps – I hope – she knew it was alive.

Whatever you are doing, making, creating, sharing with the world, know it is alive.