travel

Reappraisal

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

When my oldest was seven or so, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma changed the way I think about food and the food industry that, inevitably, feeds the vast majority of the country. His newest book, How to Change Your Mind, about psychedelics, is a book I’m reading exactly at the right time in my life. While I’m unlikely to be looking to score a few tabs of acid — I am a single mother who intends to stay on one particular side of the law, for one thing — the book is primarily about reappraising your life — in the supposed midstream, after a few years — maybe decades, compounded by child raising — of living.

What was I looking for at 21? Same, but different….

The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.

— Michael Pollan

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June — and More June

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

On the first glorious day of summer, my daughters are on Lake Champlain, walking along a causeway in this enormous lake. The day holds that nearly unbelievable deep green. Walking down to the diner to meet someone, I keep marveling. Just soak it in, I tell my deeper, more distrustful side. Sweet summer… sweet…

Before the white chrysanthemum
the scissors hesitate
a moment.

— Buson

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My cat at work in my office…. thinking…

Flipflop Cobbler

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

All day long yesterday, June hummed along, perfect in temperature, glossy green but not over-brilliant, busy with hummingbirds, bumblebees, a few stray mosquitoes.

What a day, everyone repeated, all through these hours capped off with a retirement party. One high school student shared the story of the facilities manager who repaired her broken flipflop when she was six. He used duct tape and a staple, gave it a test wiggle, and said, It’ll do.

‘Auto Mirror’
In the rear-view mirror suddenly
I saw the bulk of the Beauvais Cathedral;
for a moment.

— Adam Zagajewski

 

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June, old quarries, Barre

 

Bloomsday & Father’s Day

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

These two are aptly paired up for me as I learned about Bloomsday — this Irish holiday celebrating James Joyce and his Ulysses — from my father. I was probably 4 and sitting on the living room floor with my sister, a predominant childhood place involving wooden blocks and tiny dolls. My father was listening to NPR and mentioned the day was Bloomsday. Such a pretty word, I remember thinking. Much later, in high school, my sister and I devoured Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist.

James Joyce, so infinitely complex and rich — which, perhaps, pairs up perfectly with parenthood. Happy Father’s Day!

Welcome, O life!

— James Joyce

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Photo by Molly B.

Summer, Age 14

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

14 years ago yesterday, I sat in my friend’s kitchen nursing my newborn while she labored to bring into the world her daughter. Her mother-in-law served me a bowl of chicken soup from an enormous pot she had cooked.

Returning from a walk yesterday evening, I spy my daughter reading on front porch with her cats. Those days with an infant I hardly had a sense of evening from afternoon, in that churning wheel of nursing and diapers and tending.

Time passing threads all through my writing — how can it not? — and yet, sometimes I find myself staring through a window, thinking, here we are, right at this very moment.

The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.

― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

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Left the Shoes on the Back Porch…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

After a day of brilliant sunshine, rain moves in during the night. My daughters’ cats, in the screened windows, wake me with their hungry mewing, against the background chorus of steady rainfall and birdsong.

Arriving home from work, I see my daughters have been swimming that afternoon, their hair in damp lanks around their shoulders.

As if in an instant, summer has unrolled in Vermont — verdant and colorful — while simultaneously the woods darken mysteriously with foliage.

90 days, poet David Budbill wrote. Frost-freeze — maybe — for 90 days in Vermont. Hallelujah.

Sparrow singing–
its tiny mouth
open.

— Buson

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