REFRESH PART II

 This is a different kind of refresh.  Over the years I've written about museum days, those days when you can join any century mid-stream and hang out with Dutch Masters, French Impressionists, whomever you want.  What about today taking a break with Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986).

Earlier this spring we were in Santa Fe, New Mexico and visited the O'Keeffe museum and sights.  On assignment for LOOK magazine (anyone remember LOOK?), photographer Tony Vaccaro took this picture of O'Keeffe in 1960 in her Abiquiú house.

Most of us think of O'Keeffe as the person who painted large flowers.  The artist disputed male critics who saw the blooms as depictions of female genitalia. They're flowers, she said.  I make them large so you can see them.  We must agree.  What great female artist wants Freud as her muse?  An interpretation that is gendered and outdated.  Although for me as a woman, the idea of our bodies flowering can also be quite lovely. No contradiction, I think. 

Red Canna, 1919

Untitled Abstraction, 1970s

But her range is much wider.  This abstraction was painted when O'Keeffe was in her 90s and apparently reveals small hand tremors in the movement of the brush.  Then, years before, Geranium Leaves in a Pink Dish, 1938, so clear and round where the other shapes in Abstraction add curves and verticality.  

Oil on Wood Panel

Today we went to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh and found another O'Keeffe.  Art, poetry, music, the wind in the trees, orange and yellow leaves covering my back patio, chili in the crock pot, family coming to dinner--so many ways to refresh ourselves.  

 

Yesterday was NO KINGS and 7,000,000 people across America protested the authoritarian policies of Donald Trump.  Our demonstration in Durham was a wonder.  We were 7,000 marchers--one out of every 1000 demonstrators was right here in my city.

 

Thank you world.  I am refreshed.       Nina Naomi 

 

SEASON OF MISTS, LAMENTATION AND HOPE

There's something about the change of seasons that is hopeful.  The heat of late summer has lifted.  Doors and windows stay open waiting for the evening chill.  No matter what is happening--and there's enough happening today for lamentations to pierce the Heavens--Autumn still comes.  For this we must be grateful. Our human sinfulness has not, so far please God, prevented summer, fall, winter or spring.  The world keeps revolving.  And here we are, in another October.

So easily this season gives rise to poetry.  In 1902, in "Autumn Day," Rainer Marie Rilke wrote, "Lord: it is time.  The summer was immense. / Lay your shadows upon the Sundial, / and in the meadows let the wind go free."  This speaks to me.  I have a sundial in my side yard that marks a death.  I have a meadow where the wind goes free. Then the last stanza, "Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore. / Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time."   A melancholy premonition that we must ready for what comes next, we and the birds and chipmunks and all who fly south, burrow or grow winter coats for warmth. 

The last lines tell a truth about war too. Here is where our lamentations lie. Palestinian citizens are being slaughtered in return for the slaughter of Israelis by Hamas. Children for children.  An eye for an eye.  Ukrainians are still suffering to defend their homeland and young Russians are being sent to kill or be killed. As fall turns to winter, "whoever has no house now will not build one anymore." 

Even earlier, in 1820 John Keats called autumn, "Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness," using sensuous imagery to describe its fleeting abundance. And isn't abundance always fleeting?  Robert Frost wrote, "Nothing gold can stay."  How briefly are the dogwoods red and the maples yellow?  Their radiance falls to the ground and turns to mulch.

How is any of this hopeful, we might wonder, if we have not changed since Robert Burns wrote in 1784 that "Man's inhumanity to man / makes countless thousands mourn."  How can hope live amongst historical rivalries and political chaos? Why do we find it in the turning of the earth?  

maybe each new season reminds us that the earth abides. Maybe we relish that something is predictable.  Something there is from which no one need run. 

I fear the sentimentality of this thought, I who am not being slaughtered or evacuated.  But surely moments of hope are good things.  Surely, we need not be ashamed to appreciate fat mounded mums in russet and yellow or smiling pansy faces in purple and white. The colors of fall are exuberant for a reason.  This October they might make one hope that death and destruction will not have the final say. 

They might remind us that while we cannot be complacent or resigned, nor should we be without hope.

For as it is written, "Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.  The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.  The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.  All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full."  Ecclesiastes 1:4

                                                    Nina Naomi

 

AN AUTUMNAL DAY OF CONTRASTS

President's House

You can enjoy beautiful walks now almost everywhere.  Cooler air,  leaves crunching underfoot, deep reds and russets and golds.  Nature seems happy to shed and reveal its shapeliness.  Knuckle-head pumpkins, red warty pumpkins, smooth white and traditional orange jack-o-lanterns.  Clusters of mums on doorsteps of homes and shops, shades of purple and pink, red or orange, yellow and white.   And apples of every variety ready for caramel, cinnamon or nutmeg.  Fall is a season of excess.    

I was feeling its bounty yesterday when I was caught up short passing the historic President's House on the campus of Princeton University. Life is full of contrasts, as we know.  So switch gears with me if you will.

In front of the President's House is an iron plaque commemorating sixteen of the enslaved men, women and children who were bought, sold, traded or inherited by the men who lived in the house.  They too lived their seasons in the spot I was standing.  Loved and worked, laughed and mourned in this lovely university town. In the house and on the grounds of the President of the University. It is not something to notice and pass by.

I studied the names.  Caesar and Harry served one President.  Joseph and Sue another, Peg yet another.  Names given them by those who enslaved them, of course.  In 1766 a Jamaican mother would not have named her infant "Sue."  An African woman wasn't given the birth name "Peg" by her family. Possibly the earliest dehumanization taken for granted by the enslaver.  

But there's something more particular that caught my eye. Look at the sign closely. The plaque lists two unnamed women, an unnamed man, three unnamed children and an unnamed 11 or 12-year-old boy.  

This memorial was placed by Princeton University in 2019. Much good has come from the Princeton and Slavery Project, which developed from an undergraduate course in 2013. You can look it up as I did.  

But why in 2019 would these children be listed as unnamed?  A name might be unrecorded; it might be lost to history or unknown; but a person is not unnamed.  The enslaved community was no different than any other. Their mother named these children. The children, the women, the man and the boy were each loved by others who knew their names intimately and called them out, lovingly or in anger; in whispers or in fear. Our imaginations do not fail us here. 

I feel like there is a carelessness in so describing these children and adults.  Perhaps a paucity of feeling.  I wonder if this is another way racism unconsciously affects even those who try to make amends. 

I want to think about this.  I am glad during this bountiful fall of walks and road-trips for this time to think about the injustices of today that are so rooted in the brutalities of yesterday.  To remember our history in a tangible way, by the small gesture of touching the raised cast-in-iron mementos of people enslaved where, by the grace of God (and Abraham Lincoln), all now walk freely.  Simple things remind us how much remains for us to do.

Questions of evil like strings of seaweed rise tangled from the depths.  But we are meant to be aware of these contrasts, to confront the disconnects.  To not pass by but rather do good however we can.        

                                                 Nina Naomi  

  

 

 

 

 

PRAYER FOR AUTUMN

 This is the time when the ground turns gold

When red confetti falls

And the woods out my door is living and dying.

      Grant me O Lord an eye to see and a heart to feel.  

These are the days when the wood-smoke curls

And the pine cones crackle

When logs are split

And the crock pot simmers.

      Grant me O Lord a mind to ponder and love unbounded. 

Tonight is a night when the air is moist and the stars shine low

When moonbeams reach deep, deep in our rooms while we sleep content. 

     Grant us O Lord a nourished soul and a giving spirit.

     Grant us wisdom to gather your gifts and count them, one-by-one-by-one. 

      Amen

N.N.

AUTUMN FORAGING

 

 My foraged fall tablescape came out just right.  Just a handful of acorns, autumn leaves and a couple of blooms from red-tipped mums.  Treasures from a brief walk outdoors.  I also found some coral mushrooms for the first time in my woods.  

As you can see from my bare toe-for-scale, it was a moist warm afternoon.  I had to look these mushrooms up.  Clavarioid fungi they're called.  There were quite a few in this cluster, some yellow, some white,  springing up from decaying vegetation.  The part we're looking at is the branched coral-like fruit body.  I watched a YouTube video, "Cooking with Tam" which included how to harvest, but decided to leave mine alone. 

I'm also hoping to better capture the turning leaves this year.  This is a scrawny old dogwood, but still the hints of red drew my attention.  A hanging basket of mums brightens the foreground.  

I'm following up on all the pleasures I wrote about in "Note to Self," 9/26/20.  That post ended with the admonition "Vote. Pray. Create. Love. Believe."  I've done a bit of each today--even voted.  We stood in a socially-distanced outdoor line for 2 1/2 hours to cast our early ballot.  How good that felt!  As you can see, in North Carolina tangled undergrowth encroaches even on polling places.  We vote in Hillsborough, a historic pre-Revolutionary War town located on the Eno River.  Beautiful in the fall.

Don't you love the changes follow the seasons? Funny how many years we can live and never tire of the simplest pleasures of them all.  Sunshine, rain, falling leaves, bright berries, birdsong, breezes . . . .  As I write these words I actually feel them.  How the sun, rain and leaves in autumn rest so gently upon us.  Breezes not too warm, not too cool. By our walkway the late-fall camellias are a breath away from blooming; the ready buds dip impatiently.  Soon, soon ready for a picture.  Ready for my tablescape.

I'm not sure what foraging is a metaphor for.  I know sometimes we forage not just outdoors, but in the attic of our own thoughts.  Gather, collect, manage, craft, build . . . . We can forage anywhere.  

Enjoy the season!

WEATHER BROWSING, A SIMPLE PLEASURE

Hints of autumn today with a high of only 82°F.  That may not sound like much relief from the heat but in the North Carolina Piedmont it is.  Here the leaves don't change until late October.  They begin to fall in mid-November and the trees aren't bare until January. Late Fall, short Winter, early Spring and long Summer.  September will continue hot with rampant mosquitoes and the mighty chigger.  The idea of lying in the grass to star gaze would be folly.  Chigger welts heal slowly! 

I love my weather app.  Our temperature is always about the same as in Rome.  High there today 86° F.  No coliseum here or motor bike rush hour; no il primo pasta course or il secondo meat or fish course.  No house Montepulciano.  But we do have similar weather.  

London, where I wish I could live one month (or more) out of every twelve, is pretty dreary weather-wise. Mostly wet or less wet.  Sun at around 3 p.m.  Although right now late afternoon it's 64°F with blue skies.  Really lovely for London.  Even with the pandemic Londoners must be enjoying their outdoor cafes.  Somehow the weather seems irrelevant when we're there.  Some places we love rain or shine don't we?  

In Keswick, England, a market town on a tranquil lake called Derwentwater, it's raining and 51°F.  No doubt it feels colder.  We spent one glorious chilly week there in full rain gear tracking down a stone circle from the Neolithic era.  After a long hike we found out we could have taken a tourist bus.  So glad we didn't! I've got exuberant video of sheep clambering on the stones, their bleating outdone only by the relentless wind.  

And it's always fun to check Fairbanks, Alaska.  Right now it is 43°F in Fairbanks.  Not bad at all.  (Post: "Slow Journeying Through Alaska," 9/9/17) When I check the weather in places I've been or lived it brings back memories.  Living in London where our daughter was born; a wonderful visit to here or there; a sabbatical year . . . .  I know we can't travel right now, but I've enjoyed weather browsing for years.  It's not just pandemic-yearning, though there is some of that I'm sure.  

Maybe the pleasure springs from the miracle of nature, the changing seasons and the beauty of the world.  Maybe a small detail like the weather in Yellowstone National Park (Post: "Adventure Therapy," 3/31/17)  sparks the imagination.  Or Bryce Canyon, Utah (Posts: "About Awe," 10/18-20/19) where the temperature swings 40 degrees in a day! 

Bryce Canyon

People everywhere enjoying the sunshine, looking for rain, foraging for food, lighting outdoor fires, bundling against the cold and seeking the world's wonders.  Our commonality.  

It's a good hobby.  A simple pleasure.

                                                                         Nina Naomi

 

 

  

THE GOODNESS OF MEMORY

Leaves burning remind me of Fall
The kids playing on the swing set while I rake
Matching green sweaters with hoods, pumping, out and back 
Sarah with her little bones, happy; Adam in boondockers, whirling  
We're feeling the chill, our hands and cheeks as the sun sets 
Damp earth, smokey air
Dinner at McDonald's, baths, soft pajamas, little feet, wet hair
Fragrant life
There's nothing wrong with my memories, nothing at all 


Sometimes it feels calm, the movement of life, the blessing of the surrender to time. 

Nina Naomi