Will you be my valentine?
Heart warm as blood, feet cold as snow
Check in
Red time, white time. Harlequin time. Carnival is ramping up in Rio. Mardi Gras is Tuesday. Today is the lunar new year, of which more below.
Meanwhile, as always, remember who you are, your authentic self.
Take a little time, each day—only a minute or two, to remember that. Look at your teeth, your forehead, your face in the mirror. This is you, perfect and complete.
The season turns again
It’s spring already, according to the Celtic calendar, which counts the season from February 1. That is Saint Brigit’s Day, also known by its Celtic predecessor, Imbolc.
Having spring start in February makes more sense than waiting for late March to begin the season.
But beware of false spring. That’s a spate of warm weather that often appears in about the third week of February. Homeowners are tempted to start gardens. That’s usually a bad idea; the weather will turn cold again, maybe even freezing.
Valentines and ashes
Ash Wednesday, a solemn day in the Christian tradition, falls on February 14 this year. Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day: a weird combination of messages.
In the words of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
In the words of the Spangler Candy Co.: “Luv Ya,” “Be Mine,” “XOXO.”
The New England Confectionery Co. (NECCO), which introduced candy hearts in the mid-1800s, went bankrupt in 2018, and Spangler bought the brand, including Sweethearts candy hearts. After a hiatus, Spangler also brought back NECCO wafers, a favorite of mine before I stopped eating sugar.
Dueling holidays
Our friends at timeanddate.com note that Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day shared the same date three times in the previous century— in 1923, 1934 and 1945. The dates will coincide again in 2029, and that will be it for the rest of the twenty-first century.
Valentine’s Day is always Feb. 14, natch. But Easter’s date is calculated from the first full moon after the spring equinox. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is 44 days before that. Lent works out to 40 days total of fasting once you subtract the six Sundays and add back in Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
February colors
Red and white are the colors of February. The familiar tones of Christmas candy canes are transferred to snow drifts and Valentine’s candy boxes. I think red, more than pink, for Valentine’s.
One other red winter color: cardinals flapping in bare trees. I used to see cardinals when my family lived in Sioux Falls for a few years in the mid-1960s. I’ve never encountered them before or since. The photographer who took this photo lives in Columbia, Mo.
Dragon time
Lunar new year is today, Feb. 10. It usually falls on the second new moon of the western calendar.
This year is the year of the dragon, and the Chinese element associated with it is wood.* Wood connotes expansion and creativity. Combined with the energy of the dragon, it augurs a year of passion and wonder.
*Asian elements are wood, fire, water, metal and earth. Western culture has four, dating to the ancient Greeks. They are earth, air, water and fire.
I hadn’t realized before that the dragon is the only one of the Chinese zodiac animals that isn’t real, like the rat, rabbit, ox, etc. That adds to the magic of this year.
I couldn’t find a good stock photo of a Chinese dragon, so I went looking for one in my neighborhood. I found a few suggestive images:
Robert, my husband, was born in the year of the dragon, 1940. That meshes with his astrological sign, Aires. Both are full of fire and passion for living.
I used to think I was born in the year of the tiger, 1950. But my birthday, on the Western new year, is too early. I was born in the year of the ox. This makes sense, because my Capricorn tenacity is more close aligned with the placid ox than the fierce tiger. My friends David and Lisa Sarasohn, born later in 1950—now, they are tigers!
Skateboard hole
I was sitting in my power chair in the middle of Burrage Avenue in North Portland, trying to get my bearings, when a man came out of his house wearing a bathrobe and asking if he could help me. Maybe I needed a charge for the chair?
I told him I was looking for North Killingsworth, which he said was just a block ahead. We chatted a bit, and I noticed a crumpled skateboard in his parking strip.
“Is that a dead skateboard?” I asked. The man, whose name is Will, said that indeed it is. The hole in his parking strip has been there a long time. He keeps sticking things in it to keep it full, so that he doesn’t trip over it. The latest addition was that broken skateboard.
Thank you, Rosa
I was in North Portland because it was Rosa Parks’ birthday. Bus fare was free that day. I pay hardly anything to ride the bus, anyway, as I’m elderly and disabled, but I couldn’t resist a freebie. So I did a little exploring.
I took the first bus I encountered on the downtown Transit Mall, which was the 35 Greeley. It climbed along the bluff on the east side of the Willamette River, affording a great view of the grain elevators and berthed ships of the Port of Portland. I had an idea of transferring to the bus on Killingsworth, which would be the 72 line to far-off Clackamas Town Center.
But as I tooled along Killingsworth, I noticed that I was losing battery power.
Getting around town
I had already been to the Hillsdale neighborhood, offering to write poems at the farmers market and taking some books back to the library. That used up some juice, and my chair needs a new battery.
So, my adventure was nearly over. I cast around for a place to eat, but most everything was closed. It was Sunday.
But here was a 7 Eleven. I hadn’t been in one for years. Inside, a friendly counter person heated me a hot dog in an oven, not a microwave, and I bought a piece of pepper jack cheese for a dollar. The store was out of hot dog buns, but no matter as I don’t eat them. I ate that toasty hot dog with its paper wrapper warming my fingers while I waited in the cold winter sun for the returning 35 bus. It tasted divine.
Barnyard on the bus
Earlier this week, about a dozen passengers got on at an obscure stop on the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway where I’ve never seen anyone get on before. Half of them were assorted adults. The remaining six were a family unit: three adults, a babe in arms, a toddler with a cast on his forearm, and a little boy with a sucker in his mouth.
As everyone got settled and the bus finally pulled away, a whole barnyard of noise arose from the back of the bus.
Baby goats
Remember when the grammar police said you couldn’t refer to children as “kids”? Kids were baby goats, we were scolded. Baby humans were children.
The grammarians lost that one. “Kids” is now widely accepted as a descriptor for . . . kids.
But back to the bus. I imagined I heard real billygoat-type kids. In a joyful sense. Baas and coos and some shrieking and shouting. Those kids were a lively bunch!
Somehow, I don’t think the other passengers minded. It was happy noise.
They all got off downtown, heading for the big farmers market that ties up Portland State University on Saturdays. When last seen, the little ones were leaping along like baby goats.
Poetry corner
Here’s a poem about ideas:
Idea patch
There’s no dearth, Not on this earth, Above or beneath Or through the knothole. . . Polished and neat, Or scruffy and worn, Any old idea Is better than none. Bring me an idea, In ribbons of words, Verbal confetti, Sprinkles of sense. My heart’s full of stuff, But never enough. I can’t cram more in So I leave it outside. I want to sleep now. Alone in the forest, What will I find there? Maybe confetti. Sprinkle on words, Handfuls of verbs— Outside of myself, I pile on bricks. In the thicket of thought, In the forest of mind— Now is when, Here is where The idea meets the wall. Time starts to wheel backward, Peeling away The idea from the wall, Scattering confetti. It lies on the floor, Naked once more. Carefully coddled, My precious newborn.
Ready for another challenge?
Consider making a commitment to create something each day for 100 days. Lindsay Jean Thomson spearheads the effort at the 100 Day Project on Substack. It begins on Sunday, February 18. Here’s her description:
#The100DayProject is a free, global art project that takes place online. Every year, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of creating. Anyone can participate (yes, that means you!). The idea is to pick an action—it can be anything at all, drawing, writing, dancing, singing, quilting, making jewelry—do it every day for 100 days, and share your process online.
The hashtag #The100DayProject will flag people to your work if you post on social media.
Will you do it?
I’m not certain how I feel about this project. I’ve tried 100 day efforts before, only to have them fizzle.
It’s not that I can’t commit. I’ve been writing exercises every day for 30 years, albeit with some significant pauses. And I am reading War and Peace in daily increments, again guided by a Substack, Simon Haisell’s footnotes & tangents.
All I have to do is read one chapter a day, and most are just a few pages long. And I am totally in love with Thandiwe Newton, the narrator who makes the audiobook come alive. So far, it’s easy to keep up. War and Peace is a really good book. But you knew that already.
Small projects
To make a daily little creation—a photo, a poem, a mini-essay, a drawing—do I need the structure of a daily requirement, or a prompt? Why can’t I just create freeform, whenever the spirit moves me?
The obvious answer to that is that spirit doesn’t move me often enough. Or something else comes up. Something always comes up.
I have some projects in mind that would lend themselves to a daily discipline. For example, I could write about a different word each day. One flavor of that project, called Pandora, involves shadow words, negative concepts that contain germs of truth. The challenge is to make each description different, to pry out hidden meaning, to change the way the reader experiences that word.
Another word of the day could focus on words that look or sound funny or odd. Like shampoo or askance. Thing is, most words can appear odd if you look at them askance.
Finding time
Do I have time, even for just a 10-minute project? Well, here’s a thought. How about if I give up one of my daily rituals, like The New York Times Spelling Bee, or the Jumble (that’s in The Oregonian), or the daily NYT crossword? That would free up 20-40 minutes, more on the late-week, tough crossword days.
I am off to mull and ponder these possibilities. I may do the 100-day project. I may or may not share with you whether I am doing it.
But it’s there if I want to try it. Or if you want to give it a go.
Check out
Barista on the ball
“Say, this is an old twenty,” the counterwoman at Less & More Coffee on the Portland Transit Mall told me.
It was one the eight $20 bills I had found in an abandoned skein of Red Heart acrylic yarn a few weeks ago.
She pointed out that the likeness of Andrew Jackson was in a relatively small oval in the center of the bill, not the outside-the-box figure with the flowing hair that graces the new-style bill.
I checked the rest of the 20s I had found. They were all the old style, which was superseded by the new design beginning in 1998.
So that says something about the stash I found. Whoever hid the money in the yarn probably did it a quarter century or more ago.
Buying stuff
As I noted above, in January, the resolution was to buy nothing. Well, now January is history. I have some books already queued up at betterworldbooks.com. I always look there and elsewhere on the web before going to Amazon. Why let the behemoth have all our money?
I also want to buy a fancy fountain pen from jetpens.com. But maybe I have enough pens already.
And I’d like to check out some fabric at Mill End Store in Portland. I haven’t bought any fabric at all since I started writing for Substack. It’s overdue. Fabric lust is real.
Fabric megastore
The late Fabric Depot in Southeast Portland is much missed. A locally owned concern, it carried absolutely everything, all the manufacturers, all the styles. An acre and a half of floor space. Fabric lovers made pilgrimages.
Unfortunately, the store closed for good in 2018, four years after the death of its founder. The burden of maintaining all that inventory must have been enormous.
Now to you
My hope is that you rest comfortably for the rest of the week. Winter is finally turning the corner. Dirty snow and tired slush are in the future. At least the days are longer. And the trees are starting to bud.
Walk outside every day if you can. The sun is your friend, and so is the rain. Steer clear of puddles. And don’t forget to write.
It’s the best of habits.
—30—
You've inspired me, Fran. Perhaps I'll take one of my 3000+ photos as a prompt and write a 50-100 word story. Or maybe I'll discipline myself to write one entry a day in a diary book my daughter gave me that has prompts concerning personal history. Like you, I do a lot of different things to exercise my brain, but these two projects will be fun to add. And like you, I may or may not share. Good luck on your project, Fran, and thank you.
please take battery charger along with you, would hate to see you get stuck -- even though I'm sure this might provide some very interesting reading for us subscribers