The Tao never does anything,
yet through it all things are done.
If powerful men and women
could remain centered in the Tao,
the whole world would be transformed
by iself, in its natural rhythms.
People would be content
with their simple, everyday lives,
in harmony, and free of desire.
When there is no desire,
all things are at peace.
Tao Te Ching
by Lao-tzu
(trans. Stephen Mitchell)
Monday, July 30, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Fruit Trees on a Monsoon Afternoon
ouch!!
i just cut my thumb wickedly out in the garden, where i've been working for hours. pulled some grass to clear the area around a purplish, mountainous borinda bamboo that a friend of nick dawson's brought us from taplejung district and some sliver of it went through my thumb & out again. ow! it was bleeding a lot before, but it's ok now. hurts, though...
it's about 6:30 pm on a saturday. my first day staying home in our compound in budhanilkantha all day since we came back to kathmandu ten days ago from the states. it's been a lovely day, fresh this morning, then drizzling & rainy all afternoon. quite overcast actually, with billowly clouds on the horizon against the southern hills behind koppan monastery. now that i'm inside, i can watch the clouds ('both sides now') while typing upstairs in out computer/tv room (for those of you who've been here...). as you can imagine, it's very, very lush during july in the himalaya. the monsoon.
there's also a peaceful view north of the forested, 7,000' ridge on shivapuri from where i'm sitting. a cluster of houses a thousand feet above us. my clothes are still damp and the temperature is dropping. yet, listen: the birds are giving their final chirps of the day -- goodbye day -- before darkness settles in...
just an hour ago, our little rivulet had a foot or more of water pouring down with the gutteral, gurgling sound of a mountain creek overflowing. i'm surprised the fish in the ponds are smart enough not to be washed away. while the duck floats contentedly paddling against the current...
like f. scott fitzgerald's famous image of our restless american souls at the end of 'gatsby'.. trying to capture the past that eludes us, always...
well, it's summer and south asian wet is always impressive, so there's tons of stuff growing, multiplying & creeping everywhere... leah doesn't even want to go in the garden because she knows that there are leeches back there. i usually end up sufering one bite a visit, no matter how many hours i'm out & about -- although sometimes i'm lucky & see the little black creature before it enjoys a liquid meal at my expense.
this afternoon i saw a globular hornet's nest hidden on the fence in the climbing roses along the road in the back. unexpected & strange, no doubt, but actually, quite lovely decorated with whirling brown, white and tan colors like europa or io or one of the oddly resplendent distant moons of jupiter. anita says when it gets much larger, the nest will have honey & we can smoke out the hornets. well, they can... i think i'll run for cover (with ms. leah) if someone wants to challenge a wasp's nest, even for homemade honey. no winnie-the-pooh me!
still, there's nothing like nature to keep the mind occupied, rested & observant. the colors and patterns. colors & patterns. no wonder hours slip away when i'm out back meandering, trimming, cleaning, cutting, carrying, standing or just staring.
as dame rebecca west said about the balkans before the second world war, wherever you found water moving, you'd find an old turkish man standing. i think i'm slowly becoming that old turkish man in the mountainous exurbs of kathmandu...
as the wise old penguins in the cartoon 'madagascar' say, 'just smile and wave; smile and wave'...
actually, since coming back, the garden's offered a few treats as we've had the pleasure of eating home grown corn on the cob, iceberg lettuce and sweet & sour licchis. the corn & lettuce, of couse, is seasonal, while most of our fruit trees were planted when we made the back gardens over the past 2-3 years; but everything comes up quickly here. although, coming to think of it, the fruiting licchi tree must be 5 years or so, since it's much bigger than the other licchi trees & it's the only feeding us now.
early the other morning when i was strolling out back before work, i counted about 20 orange, lemon & grapefruit trees . it'll be a literal orchard in a few years, if they stay healthy. there's one absolutely adorable young grafted orange sapling (only three feet high!) ladden with about 70 green fist-size oranges and another with nine fruits that look more like dark green xmas ornaments hanging above our pond.
then, there's leah's favorite: two cute reddish mangos on a three foot grafted sapling from siraha district down in the terai (near the indian border). the save staff brought it up to me a few years ago with the licchi saplings.
plus, there are scores of purplish guavas starting to grow from flowers, they're small, marble-size, but in a month or two will get as big as peaches. oh, yes, we've got some peach trees, too, but these are small nepali ones -- not the lush greek ones of our dreams. then, the little 'muntalas' are starting to pop up all over our one kumqat tree. there must be hundreds; but we'll have to wait a few months to enjoy them.
but the biggest surprise on coming back after five weeks away, however, are two chinese thorn bamboo shoots that must have pushed out of mother earth right before we returned. these 'babies' pushed out of the ground measuring 10" in circumference. wow! i'm not sure how tall they'll get, but i surely wasn't expecting such massive 'tusa' (as the nepalis say) from this bamboo. shakun found it, i believe, in a nursery when we were in phuket some four or five years ago. in the early years, you can tell the bamboo's age b/c each year the shoots get a bit larger. this chinese thorn bamboo (there are sharp thorns on the branches) has about four generations of shoots from the 2" circumference to the 3" circumference to the 5" circumference, then this 'mother of all circumferences.
of course, since it's monsoon, there's alot of new priapic bamboo shoots stretching skyward. the early varieties did their shooting in april/may, befoe we left, with the early rains -- but the later bamboo are starting their push about now.
we've a beautiful dendracalamus minor that i brought from a nursery near mom&dad's home in florida a few years ago that has seven exquisite shoots on the other side of the tea house pond. the new shoots have a dreamy, gray-green hue with faint yellow stripes on the stalks. the crown, when coming up out of the soil, has feathery, dark four inch leaves above the culm with short black hairs. they're quite serene & beautiful, as you can imagine.
like so much of life when young, tender, fresh & innocent...
worth standing and watching, too, just like the world-weary, turbaned turkish men many decades ago in the distant mountains of the balkans...
or berkshires or sierras or adirondacks or pyreenes or pocanos or olympias or rockies or jura or just in our own backyards...
good-bye, day!
i just cut my thumb wickedly out in the garden, where i've been working for hours. pulled some grass to clear the area around a purplish, mountainous borinda bamboo that a friend of nick dawson's brought us from taplejung district and some sliver of it went through my thumb & out again. ow! it was bleeding a lot before, but it's ok now. hurts, though...
it's about 6:30 pm on a saturday. my first day staying home in our compound in budhanilkantha all day since we came back to kathmandu ten days ago from the states. it's been a lovely day, fresh this morning, then drizzling & rainy all afternoon. quite overcast actually, with billowly clouds on the horizon against the southern hills behind koppan monastery. now that i'm inside, i can watch the clouds ('both sides now') while typing upstairs in out computer/tv room (for those of you who've been here...). as you can imagine, it's very, very lush during july in the himalaya. the monsoon.
there's also a peaceful view north of the forested, 7,000' ridge on shivapuri from where i'm sitting. a cluster of houses a thousand feet above us. my clothes are still damp and the temperature is dropping. yet, listen: the birds are giving their final chirps of the day -- goodbye day -- before darkness settles in...
just an hour ago, our little rivulet had a foot or more of water pouring down with the gutteral, gurgling sound of a mountain creek overflowing. i'm surprised the fish in the ponds are smart enough not to be washed away. while the duck floats contentedly paddling against the current...
like f. scott fitzgerald's famous image of our restless american souls at the end of 'gatsby'.. trying to capture the past that eludes us, always...
well, it's summer and south asian wet is always impressive, so there's tons of stuff growing, multiplying & creeping everywhere... leah doesn't even want to go in the garden because she knows that there are leeches back there. i usually end up sufering one bite a visit, no matter how many hours i'm out & about -- although sometimes i'm lucky & see the little black creature before it enjoys a liquid meal at my expense.
this afternoon i saw a globular hornet's nest hidden on the fence in the climbing roses along the road in the back. unexpected & strange, no doubt, but actually, quite lovely decorated with whirling brown, white and tan colors like europa or io or one of the oddly resplendent distant moons of jupiter. anita says when it gets much larger, the nest will have honey & we can smoke out the hornets. well, they can... i think i'll run for cover (with ms. leah) if someone wants to challenge a wasp's nest, even for homemade honey. no winnie-the-pooh me!
still, there's nothing like nature to keep the mind occupied, rested & observant. the colors and patterns. colors & patterns. no wonder hours slip away when i'm out back meandering, trimming, cleaning, cutting, carrying, standing or just staring.
as dame rebecca west said about the balkans before the second world war, wherever you found water moving, you'd find an old turkish man standing. i think i'm slowly becoming that old turkish man in the mountainous exurbs of kathmandu...
as the wise old penguins in the cartoon 'madagascar' say, 'just smile and wave; smile and wave'...
actually, since coming back, the garden's offered a few treats as we've had the pleasure of eating home grown corn on the cob, iceberg lettuce and sweet & sour licchis. the corn & lettuce, of couse, is seasonal, while most of our fruit trees were planted when we made the back gardens over the past 2-3 years; but everything comes up quickly here. although, coming to think of it, the fruiting licchi tree must be 5 years or so, since it's much bigger than the other licchi trees & it's the only feeding us now.
early the other morning when i was strolling out back before work, i counted about 20 orange, lemon & grapefruit trees . it'll be a literal orchard in a few years, if they stay healthy. there's one absolutely adorable young grafted orange sapling (only three feet high!) ladden with about 70 green fist-size oranges and another with nine fruits that look more like dark green xmas ornaments hanging above our pond.
then, there's leah's favorite: two cute reddish mangos on a three foot grafted sapling from siraha district down in the terai (near the indian border). the save staff brought it up to me a few years ago with the licchi saplings.
plus, there are scores of purplish guavas starting to grow from flowers, they're small, marble-size, but in a month or two will get as big as peaches. oh, yes, we've got some peach trees, too, but these are small nepali ones -- not the lush greek ones of our dreams. then, the little 'muntalas' are starting to pop up all over our one kumqat tree. there must be hundreds; but we'll have to wait a few months to enjoy them.
but the biggest surprise on coming back after five weeks away, however, are two chinese thorn bamboo shoots that must have pushed out of mother earth right before we returned. these 'babies' pushed out of the ground measuring 10" in circumference. wow! i'm not sure how tall they'll get, but i surely wasn't expecting such massive 'tusa' (as the nepalis say) from this bamboo. shakun found it, i believe, in a nursery when we were in phuket some four or five years ago. in the early years, you can tell the bamboo's age b/c each year the shoots get a bit larger. this chinese thorn bamboo (there are sharp thorns on the branches) has about four generations of shoots from the 2" circumference to the 3" circumference to the 5" circumference, then this 'mother of all circumferences.
of course, since it's monsoon, there's alot of new priapic bamboo shoots stretching skyward. the early varieties did their shooting in april/may, befoe we left, with the early rains -- but the later bamboo are starting their push about now.
we've a beautiful dendracalamus minor that i brought from a nursery near mom&dad's home in florida a few years ago that has seven exquisite shoots on the other side of the tea house pond. the new shoots have a dreamy, gray-green hue with faint yellow stripes on the stalks. the crown, when coming up out of the soil, has feathery, dark four inch leaves above the culm with short black hairs. they're quite serene & beautiful, as you can imagine.
like so much of life when young, tender, fresh & innocent...
worth standing and watching, too, just like the world-weary, turbaned turkish men many decades ago in the distant mountains of the balkans...
or berkshires or sierras or adirondacks or pyreenes or pocanos or olympias or rockies or jura or just in our own backyards...
good-bye, day!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Changes in Latitudes Changes in Attitudes
Well, the world's flipped again...
After a day and a half long day's journey through the night (and a day...), we finally reached Kathmandu and hastened to our hillside retreat in Budhanilkantha -- above the congestion and bustle of the burgeoning city.
Yet, the global travel has become second-hand, even for six year old Ms. Leah Rose. We know, intuitively, before we start that the next two days are dedicated to simply moving our physical existence (usually including a few seriously overweight bags...) from one GPS coordinates to another one some 8-10,000 miles away. Usually this occurs, without any sense of astonishment or wonder, at 30+ thousand feet in the atmosphere, then in between take-offs & landings sitting patiently in a wide-range of airport/shopping complexes.
That, actually, is the easy part.
What is more complex and less discernable are the changes in attitudes that accompany these changes in latitudes (to quote the sage/song writer Jimmy Buffet).
These are the nuances of kulture, identity and values that underpin the differences among us around the world. The differences in dress, language, architecture et al are, of course, more easily visible when the plane touches down in NYC, Amsterdam (which Leah refers to as 'Hamster-dam'), Abu Dhabi or Kathmandu. But, the underlying cultural reference points are more subtle (sometimes) and elusive.
These are the categories by which we perceive each other, what we chose to observe (when we are thoughtfully observing...), the distinct intonations or inflections of shared language, and the social, cultural or religious values we intrinsicly prefer or elevate when we communicate (by signs, words, impressions or objects).
In these categories of human empathy or misunderstanding, lie some of the most challenging and curious aspects of this bi-continental, global life some of us have chosen to lead.
Exactly where it leads is, of course, another form of question... ;-)
After a day and a half long day's journey through the night (and a day...), we finally reached Kathmandu and hastened to our hillside retreat in Budhanilkantha -- above the congestion and bustle of the burgeoning city.
Yet, the global travel has become second-hand, even for six year old Ms. Leah Rose. We know, intuitively, before we start that the next two days are dedicated to simply moving our physical existence (usually including a few seriously overweight bags...) from one GPS coordinates to another one some 8-10,000 miles away. Usually this occurs, without any sense of astonishment or wonder, at 30+ thousand feet in the atmosphere, then in between take-offs & landings sitting patiently in a wide-range of airport/shopping complexes.
That, actually, is the easy part.
What is more complex and less discernable are the changes in attitudes that accompany these changes in latitudes (to quote the sage/song writer Jimmy Buffet).
These are the nuances of kulture, identity and values that underpin the differences among us around the world. The differences in dress, language, architecture et al are, of course, more easily visible when the plane touches down in NYC, Amsterdam (which Leah refers to as 'Hamster-dam'), Abu Dhabi or Kathmandu. But, the underlying cultural reference points are more subtle (sometimes) and elusive.
These are the categories by which we perceive each other, what we chose to observe (when we are thoughtfully observing...), the distinct intonations or inflections of shared language, and the social, cultural or religious values we intrinsicly prefer or elevate when we communicate (by signs, words, impressions or objects).
In these categories of human empathy or misunderstanding, lie some of the most challenging and curious aspects of this bi-continental, global life some of us have chosen to lead.
Exactly where it leads is, of course, another form of question... ;-)
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The First Lesson
As You Float
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told
you:
lie gently and wide to the
light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will
hold you.
Philip Booth, 1926-2007
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told
you:
lie gently and wide to the
light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will
hold you.
Philip Booth, 1926-2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Eyes Wide Open in NYC
Sitting in an apartment on 105th Street along Central Park West. The boys just woke up, while Shakun & Ms. Leah sleep peacefully upstairs. We're nearing the end of our month-long traverse across Europe & the East Coast of the States. Time, as always, slips past. We only have a few more days in New York City -- the first time since the boys were small that we've spent any real time here, near the origins of my family history in the US.
We've had a lovely time here in the City, meeting up w/ Scott & Malika, picnicing w/ Carl, Pam & their son, Sam, on the lawn of Columbia University, having a backyard barbeque at Lee & Janet's home near Montclair, NJ, having dinner w/ our Rose cousins on the Upper West Side, spending the day in the Natural History Museum, strolling around Central Park, taking the ferry out to Ellis Island, gateway to the States for millions, and visiting the Tenement Museum and Katz' delicatessen down in the lower East Side, where parts of my family first lived in the States.
Maybe there was a reason that Uncle Roger gave me a copy of his mother, my grandmother, Rose Marie Fischer Rose's one hundred year old birth certificate when we first stayed at his rural home, near the Connecticut border, upon our arrival in the States some three weeks ago. For I hear an echo or Rose Fischer Rose's father in the 1880s descending from his passenger ship, far from his native home in Russia, standing mutely first along the queues at Ellis Island, then dragging his suitcase along Orchard St. looking for an inexpensive tenement in which to live...
There is a bit of New York in so many Americans who can trace their ancestry to the millions of immigrants who came here in the late 19th C. seeking hope, happiness and a better life. Then, through endurance, hard work, study and stability, each woman & man lift themselves up on this new continent. Finding in merely two generations previously unimaginable wealth and security in the towns, cities and suburbs of the United States.
While happiness, not made of wealth -- rather a regenerative state of mind & soul -- can be found in any family, country or continent, if we are wise enough to value it...
Outside of our individual family stories, there is so much to explore in this City of wonder. The variety of people is remarkable. Just walking down Broadway and 108th St. we meet a Nepali who is working at an Indian's newspaper stand. Kiran Desain's "The Inheritance of Loss" novel made visible on our stroll. 'How do you like the US?', we ask. "It's all work," he says with a smile. Then, driving on 125th St to the Triborough Bridge, the City shifts its hue to the Black American culture where hardly a white face appears. A day later we have dinner at an intimate Japanese restaurant in the East 60s among the suave, elegant and well-heeled. Such is the impressive diversity of this busy, cosmopolitan, globalized world.
We hear the hurt people express from the tragic events of 9/11 -- but even more we perceive the ceaseless energy that powers this City to an almost constant transformation, peopled by everyone from everywhere on this planet layered on a constant creativity in enterprise, design, food, art, drama and architecture.
Yet, we are floating, passers-by in this bustling, booming urban landscape. Travelers from a distant land, guests in our own country. Eyes wide open to the changes that absorb the restless American identity.
We are merely observers of the day soon to return to our own distant garden outside Kathmandu, far from this fascinating, competitive, striving, kalidescopic world swirling, like the larger currents of man's destiny, around this always absorbing island of Manhattan.
We've had a lovely time here in the City, meeting up w/ Scott & Malika, picnicing w/ Carl, Pam & their son, Sam, on the lawn of Columbia University, having a backyard barbeque at Lee & Janet's home near Montclair, NJ, having dinner w/ our Rose cousins on the Upper West Side, spending the day in the Natural History Museum, strolling around Central Park, taking the ferry out to Ellis Island, gateway to the States for millions, and visiting the Tenement Museum and Katz' delicatessen down in the lower East Side, where parts of my family first lived in the States.
Maybe there was a reason that Uncle Roger gave me a copy of his mother, my grandmother, Rose Marie Fischer Rose's one hundred year old birth certificate when we first stayed at his rural home, near the Connecticut border, upon our arrival in the States some three weeks ago. For I hear an echo or Rose Fischer Rose's father in the 1880s descending from his passenger ship, far from his native home in Russia, standing mutely first along the queues at Ellis Island, then dragging his suitcase along Orchard St. looking for an inexpensive tenement in which to live...
There is a bit of New York in so many Americans who can trace their ancestry to the millions of immigrants who came here in the late 19th C. seeking hope, happiness and a better life. Then, through endurance, hard work, study and stability, each woman & man lift themselves up on this new continent. Finding in merely two generations previously unimaginable wealth and security in the towns, cities and suburbs of the United States.
While happiness, not made of wealth -- rather a regenerative state of mind & soul -- can be found in any family, country or continent, if we are wise enough to value it...
Outside of our individual family stories, there is so much to explore in this City of wonder. The variety of people is remarkable. Just walking down Broadway and 108th St. we meet a Nepali who is working at an Indian's newspaper stand. Kiran Desain's "The Inheritance of Loss" novel made visible on our stroll. 'How do you like the US?', we ask. "It's all work," he says with a smile. Then, driving on 125th St to the Triborough Bridge, the City shifts its hue to the Black American culture where hardly a white face appears. A day later we have dinner at an intimate Japanese restaurant in the East 60s among the suave, elegant and well-heeled. Such is the impressive diversity of this busy, cosmopolitan, globalized world.
We hear the hurt people express from the tragic events of 9/11 -- but even more we perceive the ceaseless energy that powers this City to an almost constant transformation, peopled by everyone from everywhere on this planet layered on a constant creativity in enterprise, design, food, art, drama and architecture.
Yet, we are floating, passers-by in this bustling, booming urban landscape. Travelers from a distant land, guests in our own country. Eyes wide open to the changes that absorb the restless American identity.
We are merely observers of the day soon to return to our own distant garden outside Kathmandu, far from this fascinating, competitive, striving, kalidescopic world swirling, like the larger currents of man's destiny, around this always absorbing island of Manhattan.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Zen Plums in Red Wheel Barrows
Moonlight slants through
The vast bamboo grove:
A cuckoo cries
Basho (17th C. Japan)
Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams (20th C. New Jersey)
The vast bamboo grove:
A cuckoo cries
Basho (17th C. Japan)
Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams (20th C. New Jersey)
Shadows, Stars and Light
"The stars about the beautiful moon again hide their radiant shapes,
when she is full and shines at her brightest on all the earth"
Sappho (a long time ago...)
"Shadows cast by the street light
under the stars,
the head is tilted back,
the long shadow of the legs
presumes a world taken for granted
on which the cricket trills"
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
when she is full and shines at her brightest on all the earth"
Sappho (a long time ago...)
"Shadows cast by the street light
under the stars,
the head is tilted back,
the long shadow of the legs
presumes a world taken for granted
on which the cricket trills"
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
A Return & New Beginning in America...
we're here in philadelphia at my sister claudia's with my extended leslie clan during this july 4th week after a peaceful retreat up on a lake in the adirondacks.
i still retain a special childhood affection for that great swath of primeval upstate new york forests from my suburban dreams of a romantic, pre-american iroquois confederation ('the lust of the mohicans'...), as well as youthful days spent tracking white tail deer in the glades or gunnel-pumping on the dark, quiet lakes in that wilderness. there is a part of each of us, i assume, that carries these youthful geographic origins in our individual souls like eternal touchstones of innocence & utopia...
that last week of june in the adirondacks basically served as a pastoral respite after our ten days of intensive travel & late nights traveling from amsterdam (what leah now calls 'hamster-dam') to the bucolic idyll of lagrasse, france with uptal, caroline, matthew & his boys --including a swift, rollicking side trip to barcelona to enjoy the spirt of the final football championship of la liga -- then back by ryanair from carcassone to charleroi and the slowest midnight trains to our, of course, delayed airbound path from schipolto the states.
en route from nyc to our cabin on friends lake in the adirondacks, we stopped at northfield mount hermon (nmh) for a day to get a feel of joshua's new school and meet some of the folks who will part of his new life. of course, so close to my old digs at smith & amherst, i couldn't resist showing shakun & the kids scott & my ancient apartments at park annex and next door to helen hills hills chapel, as well as stop for lunch at famous fitzwilly's restaurant, scene of a few late night st. patrick day celebrations during our distant college years...
northfield mount hermon sits a few frisbee throws away from the vermont border overlooking that lush new england green of the connnecticut river valley. there had been two campuses, northfield for women & mount hermon for boys -- but they've united the 600 students at the mount hermon campus now leaving, alas, some absolutely exquisite 19th century buildings across the connecticut river. instead they've started to build some new structures, including a modern arts center on the more open spaces of the mount hermon campus. although, if they could pick up a couple of those magnificent polychrome stone edifices at northfield and transport them to mount hermon, the magnificent architectural lineage of the school would be enhanced for more generations to come.
fortunately, josh really liked his feel of the school, even quiet & empty as it was during the summer vacation, while the folks we met who work there were very warm, kind & open. while on campus, we had an hour w/ one of the nmh soccer coaches. the coach couldn't promise josh anything, as they have a couple of all-americans on the team & some strong players coming from outside the states, but he was sure that josh would find a spot on the j-v team, if not the varsity.
the best part was when, in the middle of the conversation about favorite positions, players & tactics, the young nmh coach looked at ezra and asked him who's better he or his brother. w/o missing a beat, ez said, 'he is.' pointing to josh w/ a sweet, brotherly, understanding smile. we felt, by the end, that the coach would have been happy to recurit ezra there on the spot, as well, but neither we (nor he...) were quite ready to sacrifce both our beloved sons to the alter of american higher education & soccer dreams, at least not yet...
yet these dreams have a habit of becoming reality. appearing first as candle-lit thoughts in the quiet of our minds late at night as mental images float in our free consciousness hovering between day & darkness. then, at some odd moment they are verbalized, often spouting like an oxymoron or non-sequitar in a day-dream or erupting at some moment of anger or frustration, like a seed finally brusquely breaking through the topsoil into the light of existence.
our lives are like that, it seems. images of our futures playing like a taste of the occult in our present realities. inspirations or ambitions lurking in the shadows of the today's seeming substantiality preparing themselves (and ourselves...) for their sudden appearance later in the performance.
we know that these children of ours will grow up and leave us. we prepare, as best we can, for such changes. but, we struggle, as well, letting go of what we so profoundly love.
after all, whose life has not been forever changed by having children? these little creatures whose arrival signifies the end of a certain aspect of our own lingering childhoods while permitting us a re-exploration of what childhood actually means, not to mention, a second chance to recreate the joys & simplicity of those fragile, fragrant years.
then, the orb moves, the years turn -- both sides now, as joni sings -- and one finds oneself one summer on a new england private school campus seeing your son's world open in ways both tremulous & tremendous.
he is beginning anew, separating and pushing out from his protective womb in kathmandu, reaching for the dreams that lie within his deep heart's core.
bless him and protect him.
i still retain a special childhood affection for that great swath of primeval upstate new york forests from my suburban dreams of a romantic, pre-american iroquois confederation ('the lust of the mohicans'...), as well as youthful days spent tracking white tail deer in the glades or gunnel-pumping on the dark, quiet lakes in that wilderness. there is a part of each of us, i assume, that carries these youthful geographic origins in our individual souls like eternal touchstones of innocence & utopia...
that last week of june in the adirondacks basically served as a pastoral respite after our ten days of intensive travel & late nights traveling from amsterdam (what leah now calls 'hamster-dam') to the bucolic idyll of lagrasse, france with uptal, caroline, matthew & his boys --including a swift, rollicking side trip to barcelona to enjoy the spirt of the final football championship of la liga -- then back by ryanair from carcassone to charleroi and the slowest midnight trains to our, of course, delayed airbound path from schipolto the states.
en route from nyc to our cabin on friends lake in the adirondacks, we stopped at northfield mount hermon (nmh) for a day to get a feel of joshua's new school and meet some of the folks who will part of his new life. of course, so close to my old digs at smith & amherst, i couldn't resist showing shakun & the kids scott & my ancient apartments at park annex and next door to helen hills hills chapel, as well as stop for lunch at famous fitzwilly's restaurant, scene of a few late night st. patrick day celebrations during our distant college years...
northfield mount hermon sits a few frisbee throws away from the vermont border overlooking that lush new england green of the connnecticut river valley. there had been two campuses, northfield for women & mount hermon for boys -- but they've united the 600 students at the mount hermon campus now leaving, alas, some absolutely exquisite 19th century buildings across the connecticut river. instead they've started to build some new structures, including a modern arts center on the more open spaces of the mount hermon campus. although, if they could pick up a couple of those magnificent polychrome stone edifices at northfield and transport them to mount hermon, the magnificent architectural lineage of the school would be enhanced for more generations to come.
fortunately, josh really liked his feel of the school, even quiet & empty as it was during the summer vacation, while the folks we met who work there were very warm, kind & open. while on campus, we had an hour w/ one of the nmh soccer coaches. the coach couldn't promise josh anything, as they have a couple of all-americans on the team & some strong players coming from outside the states, but he was sure that josh would find a spot on the j-v team, if not the varsity.
the best part was when, in the middle of the conversation about favorite positions, players & tactics, the young nmh coach looked at ezra and asked him who's better he or his brother. w/o missing a beat, ez said, 'he is.' pointing to josh w/ a sweet, brotherly, understanding smile. we felt, by the end, that the coach would have been happy to recurit ezra there on the spot, as well, but neither we (nor he...) were quite ready to sacrifce both our beloved sons to the alter of american higher education & soccer dreams, at least not yet...
yet these dreams have a habit of becoming reality. appearing first as candle-lit thoughts in the quiet of our minds late at night as mental images float in our free consciousness hovering between day & darkness. then, at some odd moment they are verbalized, often spouting like an oxymoron or non-sequitar in a day-dream or erupting at some moment of anger or frustration, like a seed finally brusquely breaking through the topsoil into the light of existence.
our lives are like that, it seems. images of our futures playing like a taste of the occult in our present realities. inspirations or ambitions lurking in the shadows of the today's seeming substantiality preparing themselves (and ourselves...) for their sudden appearance later in the performance.
we know that these children of ours will grow up and leave us. we prepare, as best we can, for such changes. but, we struggle, as well, letting go of what we so profoundly love.
after all, whose life has not been forever changed by having children? these little creatures whose arrival signifies the end of a certain aspect of our own lingering childhoods while permitting us a re-exploration of what childhood actually means, not to mention, a second chance to recreate the joys & simplicity of those fragile, fragrant years.
then, the orb moves, the years turn -- both sides now, as joni sings -- and one finds oneself one summer on a new england private school campus seeing your son's world open in ways both tremulous & tremendous.
he is beginning anew, separating and pushing out from his protective womb in kathmandu, reaching for the dreams that lie within his deep heart's core.
bless him and protect him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)