Saints and shopping carts

Exploring words and touring a library

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Spring has arrived. Just like that. The official date is Tuesday (March 19), but I’m with the Celts: the season got underway on Imbolc, February 1.

Yesterday, when I set out on an adventure, I was struck by the perfume of spring blossoms immediately as I came outdoors. The air is soft, the sun bright. All is crisp and new. My heart turns over.

A hydrant guards a tree just starting to blossom. By the time you read this, trees will be blooming all over town. Photo © Fran Gardner

Another sign of spring: the mating frogs are back in the water feature below my window. Their croaking, in various rhythms and registers, is strangely comforting. I wrote a poem about that last year.

This year’s crop of frogs is less polite. They harmonize throughout the night, not stopping at 10 pm like last year.

Frog chorus

They sing in waves,
Trills, ribbits, croaks, croons—
Is this really how they choose their mates?

On sunny afternoons, they’re silent,
But rain and dusk make them raucous.
I visit the pond, but I can’t find the frogs.
They are invisible— 
Heard but not seen.

I’ve never heard the frogs’ night chorus
Till now.
In this spring as it smooths into summer.

These frogs have good manners; 
Their croaking chorus falls silent at 10,
After, only the occasional raspy ribbit
As one lone frog still seeks, 
Is seeking
Some form of eternity.

Three words

• Discipline

• Decision

• Direction

Discipline, a harsh word that can open your soul. For me, it means staying on the path, hunkering down with one idea, one project. Finishing what I begin. For a dilettante like me, this is hard.

There’s still a place for the oblique idea, of course. The one that breaks my straightforward thinking, blasting it into shards that reform in a new direction.

Discipline helps me breathe in that new idea and move along.

Decision is the cousin of discipline, and its navigator. Always, on any journey, there are forks in the road. Not every decision is worthwhile. Sometimes you have to backtrack.

But if you have faith in yourself—as I do for you!—you will find the right road. Decide based on your heart. Listen closely to its murmuring. Then listen again. It might have an afterword for you.

Eventually you may realize that every decision is the right one. Even the ones that seem wrong at the time.

Direction is mutable. You start in one place, end up in another, often with no idea how you got there. When I started writing this essay, I had no idea of its outcome. I looked at the sky, and a million stars beamed down on me.

I had to chose one: decision. I had to pursue it: discipline. And here it is at last, pointed in a direction I hope is a good one.

Shopping carts

I kept encountering shopping carts this last week. First, there was one kissing a post.

Then, a lonely one

One with a full load

And, finally, twins

By the end of the week, they had all disappeared, rounded up by workers from the supermarket they had strayed from.

Covid time

The covid lockdown began in mid-March 2020. Just four years ago, but it seems like another life.

While the nation shut down, we at Rose Schnitzer Manor were pretty much confined to our apartments for about 14 months. Meals were delivered. A few times a week, a drink cart appeared and we could have a cocktail. But activities were curtailed. Religious services and exercise were available as TV feeds. And we all know about Zoom.

Although some nursing and assisted living facilities had major outbreaks of Covid and many deaths, Rose Schnitzer Manor, had only one (one! not even serious!) case of Covid during the entire lockdown. There has been a rash of mild post-vaccination infections, then they have stopped, too.

That was then

It’s like a bad dream, those empty streets and buses and shops and restaurants. But the scars remain: children who missed a year of development and school; our shattered sense of security; rampant suspicion about the disease, its origins, whether vaccines are a godsend or a government plot to 1. enslave us, or 2. kill us outright.

We survived Covid. More than 1 million in the US and more than 7 million worldwide did not.

We survived, for now. But in the process we squandered a mighty chance for us to pull together as a society. Instead, we let a minuscule piece of RNA tear us apart.

Library

I did some aimless exploring last week and ended up at the Central Library in downtown Portland. It’s newly reopened after being closed for renovations.

I didn’t spend much time there, but I did notice a few things.

• The bathroom on the ground floor is unisex. The stalls are actually rooms with doors. Total privacy, maybe too much. I notice men don’t stop to wash their hands.

• There’s a rack in the lobby with a few dozen laptops in it. You check one out with your library card for two hours. This is an improvement over fixed terminals you had to wait to use. You can take the laptop anywhere in the library, do some writing or research, and email your results to yourself.

• New furniture invites innovative reading styles. Here’s Jenny, reading a book called Wicked Portland.

The book, by Finn J.D. John, includes the tale of a Nancy Boggs. She ran a house of ill repute and didn’t want to pay liquor taxes on her business, so she reestablished it on a barge in the Willamette River, moving from the east bank to west to avoid the taxmen. After someone cut the mooring line on her craft and it was nearly swept out to sea, Boggs gave up and started paying the taxes she owed.

There’s a lot more that’s new at the library, but I’ll end with the carpet. It is, in the words of one library employee, “garish.” What were they thinking? Variations of the blotchy green carpet are in nearly every room, assaulting the eye. I think the green cabbages are supposed to be roses.

In the teen area of the Beverly Cleary Room (children’s books), the carpet has splotches of orange. Many of the new bookshelves are on wheels, making them easy to maneuver. The books on the bottom shelves are raised, so they are easy to access, even for someone in a wheelchair.

Saints

Tomorrow, March 17, is St. Patrick's Day. This is the one saint’s feast day that is widely celebrated in a secular manner.

The Episcopal Hymnal, a common reference for me, lists nearly 40 tunes named after Saints. One is St. Patrick’s Breastplate. A favorite of some congregations in Portland, it’s a complex hymn with three distinct parts. It starts with five long verses in G minor, then switches to G major for 16 measures.

This middle section is a well-known Irish prayer:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

The hymn slips back into G minor for the last 32 bars, repeating the awkward cadence of the beginning:

I bind onto myself the Name, the strong Name of the Trinity, 
By invocation of the same, the Three in One, and One in Three.

The words are attributed to St. Patrick (372-466). Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the harmony for the middle section (the rest is melody only).

Other saints in song

About a year ago, I wrote about St. Kevin, the patron saint of blackbirds. His tune, to the words “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness,” was written by Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame.

Sullivan wrote another tune with a saint’s name, St. Gertrude. It is “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

Intuiting a saint

I was once in the presence of a saint, but I could not figure who it was. In the mid-1980s, I was called for jury duty. (As a journalist, I would never be impaneled, but I went along with the process.)

All us prospects filled a huge room in the Multnomah County Courthouse, reading, conversing, playing cards. No cell phones or video games in those days.

I can remember as clearly as today feeling a presence of immense goodness. It was nearly overwhelming. I scanned the room, over and over, but could not find the source. There was a nun, but that wasn’t it. It was a mystery.

This experience affirmed my understanding that Spirit moves among us.

Less saintly

I’ve also encountered negative energy on a couple of occasions. One was on a Trimet bus. Someone bad was on it. I don’t know who. I didn’t want to know. I got off and waited for another bus.

When I lived at home in Southeast Portland, I had a lot of neurologist’s appointments at Kaiser Sunnyside, and was alway experimenting with new ways to drive home, avoiding I-205. One took me into a neighborhood on the outer edges of Southeast Portland, near Flavel Street, that creeped me out. I got away as quickly as I could and I am not going back.

Have you ever had an experience like this, feeling strong energy, good or bad? I think some people are much more sensitive than I and sense energy in and from others all the time.

Day’s wishes

What I wish for this day:
Soothing rain, but not on me.
Good words for others.
Sandy beaches, and a chance
To find a Japanese float.

Cast adrift in a rudderless boat,
Scorned women, cold and afraid,
Sail away to an island far in the mists
Mating with monsters, birthing giants.

Where did I read about women and giants?
Just yesterday and the source is gone.* 
Too many books, too many impressions,
Too many photos, too many poems.

Cast me away on the beach with the floats.
Losing my memory along with the waves.
Flitting like fishes, the words skim beyond me.
I grasp, come up empty, but still dive again.

Beaches are memories, stuff of my past.
I can’t walk on sand, not with the walker.
Keep me alone then, closed in a room
With piles of books I struggle to read.

Too many impressions, time to reset,
Retreat into memory, stare at the wall.
Watch the clouds moving, drink some hot coffee.
Let the sea cast my life back . . .

Stop the bleeding. 
Just stop.

*I later remembered; the anecdote was from Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel.

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Another sign of spring: dandelions are here.

Photo © Fran Gardner

About writing

I haven’t been encouraging you to write lately. That’s partly because I let my own practice slide. I had several days of early appointments that conflicted with my time for writing exercises. I then endured a period of self-doubt, if you can believe it. I considered just letting writing go and returning to other creative pursuits, like quilting.

But, I couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing or shortchanging my paid subscribers.

So here I am, back on track and hoping you can be, too.

Writing for everyone

You don’t have to be a “writer” to write. You can be a farmer or a tax accountant* or a trapeze artist. Writing three pages (or 20 minutes at the keyboard) each day will make your life better.

*If you really are a tax accountant, I’m looking for one. Message or email me.

Write about anything. Give in and let Spirit guide your fingers. You will be amazed at what turns up in your writing, especially after a week or so of practice.

Find time and time will find you. Get to work 20 minutes early and write. Sit on a park bench or in a coffee shop and write. Best of all, curl up in a favorite chair with your notebook or you laptop and have at it.

Great things await you.

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