Slow and slower

Honor winter’s passing with moderation

Check in

Slow down

Going slower is an antidote to the constant chatter in our lives. Typing more slowly, for example, helps keep thoughts from spinning away. Deliberation in your fingers forces deliberation in your mind. Better writing results.

Write slower
Drive slower
Walk slower
Read slower
Cook slower—check out the Slow Food movement

Take time to read a poem or two

What makes a vision?

By a window

Maybe I see a landscape outside,
Snow-flocked trees or flocks of robins,
Mountains, a sunset, the flaming red bricks
On the other side of the airshaft.
What makes a vision?
What I see, or what I wish I could.
What comes to me, what is taken, what is graven—
Orders of understanding.

Above-ground roots make this tree look like Bigfoot. Fran Gardner photo

By a tree

This tree has toes, moss-covered bumps,
Tops of the roots, scribed in the soil. 
Trees talk to each other, their roots twined in concert
Eternal connections from one to the one.
What makes a vision?
Sap running in spring, the fuse of our knowledge,
Fasting and prayer, dancing and feast.
We are what we intuit, what we dream, what we fashion
From intertwined roots and the patterns of love.

Taggers have had their way with this train along Wilbur Avenue in North Portland’s industrial district. Fran Gardner photo

By a train

All of the places, the vision, possibilities,
Where should we go now, where unexpected?
Why travel on tracks when we can blaze paths,
Deep into the forest?
What makes a vision?
Hurtling toward what centers our being,
Spiraling galaxies, muons and gluons.
Grains and particles, vast realms of darkness.
Encompass it all, our heritage, our dream.

A lonely tree is of itself. Yet we know its roots entwine and commune with others. Fran Gardner photo

By myself

I dreamed this world, or God dreamt it for me
Full of all wonders, triumph and grief.
What makes my vision?
Trying and failing,
Wondering widely, 
Wandering.
Always, always, the journey—
I will never arrive.

Take time to absorb a triad

Three words

• Crochet

• Crotchet

• Crotch

Crochet

You work crochet with yarn and a hook—a stick with a crook on the end. It’s fast and fun, but it has drawbacks over knitting. First, crocheting uses considerably more yarn. Because of the dense construction, the resulting “fabric” tends to be stiff. As a result, crocheted clothing is seldom stylish or lovely. It’s clunky.

Crochet is better for making lacy doilies with fine cotton thread or for crafting the ubiquitous granny square with worsted-weight yarn. Everyone should have at least one granny-square afghan on the couch.

Pronunciation

Most everyone uses the pronunciation crow-SHAY. But a character on one episode of the TV series “Darby and Joan,” from Australia, says CROT-chet. Maybe it’s a joke.

Crotchet

A crotchet is a scar you pick at. An odd, stubborn notion. Something that’s settled into your soul yet shouldn’t really be there. A little nitpicker that take up energy you could be using for living a more fulfilling life.

But wait. I like having crotchets. Being crotchety is part of my contrarian personality. I get off on being irked by other people’s big dogs in the coffee shop. On wondering why graffiti taggers don’t have a better sense of proportion. Kvetching when the odd produce—endive, escarole, star fruit—at the market isn’t fresh because nobody but me buys it.

I’ve even looked down on people who pick all the cilantro out of a dish. I don’t like cilantro, but there are limits.

Just don’t let your crotchets define you, okay? You and I are bigger than that.

Crotch

Only a few crotches of a huge catalpa are left as the tree is taken down. The huge street tree had become unstable. Fran Gardner photo

Crotch is a word that makes me want to laugh. I think of it as more male than female, although dogs love to sniff the crotches of both sexes. Etymologically, it has to do with forked-ness, like the crotch formed when a tree branches.

A crotch is something to protect, especially if you are a guy. The male anatomy is lacking in a few good things that women enjoy, like hips to hold pants up and protection from organs in the crotch.

Take time to comment

Leeks

Sunday, March 1, is the feast of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. He’s often pictured clutching a leek, the national flower of Wales. Shakespeare got a lot of mileage out of poking fun at Welshmen and their leeks in “HenryV.”

Leeks are associated with Owen Glendower, the great Welsh warrior. One of my favorite authors, Maggie Stiefvater, (@maggiestiefvater) has written a four-book YA series, “The Raven Cycle,” about teens who seek the dead warrior, possibly buried in Pennsylvania. Okay, it’s fiction.

At a local produce stand, green, yellow and white leeks contrast with orange carrots and a purple eggplant. Fran Gardner photo

Leeks are an odd vegetable. I don’t remember them in the markets of my youth. Nowadays they languish at the greengrocer’s or supermarket. I’ve never seen anyone else but me buy them.

Leeks are good as a layer in quiche (I use them with tomatoes), and they mellow out onions in other dishes. Vichyssoise is a cold soup of pureed leeks and potatoes. I make a warm soup with leeks, potatoes and mushrooms in homemade chicken stock.

I like leeks à la Grecque, too, poached in white wine and lemon juice with garlic, peppercorns and possibly capers. This dish can be served hot or chilled.

It ain’t necessarily so

Sometimes I write a poem using someone else’s rhythm.

Ira Gershwin wrote better lyrics to his brother George’s tune of “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” from “Porgy and Bess,” but I wanted to try matching George’s cadence.

That’s life

It ain’t necessarily so
I don’t know where I want to go
I bought me a ticket, got lost in the thicket
I just keep on missing the show.

I’m dreaming myself a new life,
Dancing on the edge of a knife
I’m caught in the middle, but don’t give a fiddle
As I grieve through my era of strife. 

You might think I have something to say,
That I bring out my psyche to play
But I’m here to tell ya that I’m not a fella
Who can sing a new song every day.

So this is the end of this rhyme
I’ve searched for a concept sublime,
Trying to pinpoint the midpoint of no point—
But mostly I’ve wasted my time.

Prompts

As February, with its resolution to write more, fades away, I have a few thoughts about writing prompts.

I seldom use prompts because I always have something to write about. Imagine, some people pay to get daily prompts in their email. More power to them. Whatever gets you writing is a force for good.

If I ever do want a prompt, I have a foolproof method for finding one. I open a book and find a phrase at random. Like this one, from Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton: “Some of [the] most fruitful thinking times are when I wake after sleeping a few hours.” I could write about midnight composition or the glories of napping—but I’d also consider commenting about proofreading, as the dropped word “the” was not caught when the book was edited.

Recycled

A favorite source of prompts is the recycling bin. I pull out a few pieces of leftover junk mail and find phrases there. Like this, from the Lands’ End catalog: “Stripes or solids.” I could say something about that. Another: “All the versatility you never knew you needed.” What a fun phrase to pick apart.

Or this, from a handout from the organization American Rivers, which works to remove unused dams and reservoirs: “There’s a popular saying in the river community—‘We all live downstream.’ ” That phrase moves me. I want to explore what living downstream means.

There is rich ground everywhere to plow for prompts.

So go on, find your own prompts. Or just sit back, breathe and close your eyes. Inspiration is waiting for you.

That process actually foreshadows next month’s theme, which is “gathering inspiration where you may.” I’m looking forward to it.

Check out

New instruments

This past week, I encountered two musical instruments I’d never heard of before.

I met a man on the street carrying an intriguing brown leather case about two feet long. What was inside it? I asked. A bass flute. I’ve encountered bass clarinets and double bassoons and the double bass fiddle, but this was a new one. He told me the tone is low, mellow and stirring.

A woman in an online writing group clued me in to another new instrument—the rubber chicken.

Rubber chickens squawk when you squeeze them. Due to the vagaries of manufacturing, each bird emits a distinctive pitch. Assemble chickens with different pitches, and you have an orchestra.

Here is “The Sound of Silence” played by a guy in a tuxedo squeezing rubber chickens.

Lego message

A reader board outside the Milwaukie location of Milwaukie Lumber carries this message of apology:

Milwaukie Lumber sells Lego building toys right alongside grown-up building supplies like lumber and tools and hardware.

Rick at the store said customers have pointed out that there signs were inaccurate in referring to the toys as Legos. Evidently, the Lego company prefers to see the word as singular, as in Lego set or Lego blocks.

You know how old I am? I remember my childhood Lego blocks came in two colors, red and white. Evidently other colors like blue, white and yellow were available, but I didn’t have those.

We kids shared toys. I may have had a sibling who growled, “Lego my Lego.”

Till next week

Thanks for reading Becoming!

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See you next week!

Love,
Fran

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