writing

Mind, Cold, Beauty

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

17 degrees below zero this morning.

When I head out to start my daughter’s car before she heads to work, a perfect half moon is poised over our house, moonbeams glistening on our black metal roof.

Cold. But the Vermont way is to say, I’ve seen colder. I have. I will (presumably) again. Just as the body accumulates tolerance, the mind unwittingly relaxes into perspective.

But that’s the mind. As the dawn opens up, the sky bruises violet. Stars gleam. The day moves on.

It’s interesting.
Lied upon one another
The umbrellas in the snow.

— Shiki

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Painting the Kitchen the Color of Cake Batter

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 7 Comments

In the sub-zero cold, my daughter’s car cranks over after a long hesitation. Start, or not? Oh, February. So much effort.

The girls are gone skiing while I’m painting the kitchen. The cats move around from stepladder to drop cloth. Meanwhile, I listen to Dolly Parton’s America podcast. I had no idea Nelson Mandela was a fan of Parton.

The girls return with their cheeks bright red, cold and hungry.

Here’s a poem from Ensouling Language.

It is good knowing that glasses
are to drink from;
the bad thing
is not to know what thirst is for.

— Antonio Machado

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Vermont, Sometime in January

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

Midwinter. Need I say more?

I remember a Vermont winter when I was in my twenties where January was sub-sub-zero. 25 below zero, in what seemed like a cold snap that wouldn’t snap.

Not so, this year. Rain, slush, ice. Some sparkling skiing days.

The cats drape on the couches, dreaming of tuna perhaps, their little furry faces rubbing our hands. Midwinter is that particularly good place for work — or at least the kind of work I do, much of it at a laptop and not re-roofing a house. My daughters and I talk about swimming, of wandering in wet sand along the ocean, of ice cream cones (so dull I am, preferring vanilla), but in January that’s all imaginary…. for the moment. In a warm, well-lighted house, that’s just fine.

Let’s pull some blueberries from the freezer and make muffins — and another little silver pot of espresso, too.

So much money made
by clever temple priests
using peonies

— Issa

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Why Vermont?

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

The service we attended Sunday was for a beloved student in my daughter’s high school. A devastating, tragic death. Monday at dinner, her sister and I ask about the day. This is a rural high school, maybe 300 students in grades 7 through 12. The principal asked the whole school to crowd into the auditorium.

What did he think was going to happen? she asked me. We all cried. We all sobbed.

In particular, she told us about the teachers — the men, too, she emphasized. They cried.

There’s certainly less-than-desirable elements about living in rural Vermont: the winters can be nearly unendurably long. It’s an insanely expensive state to live in, particularly in a single income home.  But when the utter awfulness of tragedy rears — as it has before, and as it will undoubtedly do so again — these little communities circle the metaphorical wagons. These hard, hard experiences remind me why I live here, and why I can’t ever imagine leaving.

The earth says have a place, be what that place
requires; hear the sound the birds imply…

— Wiliam Stafford

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Cusp

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

On the eve of another year, my daughters and I talk about that trite tradition — resolutions — and I think of these lines from Rilke:

Whoever you are: some evening take a step
out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are…
The world is immense…

Not so long ago, walking outside our house meant wandering down our dirt road and looking for pebbles or newts. While the big world has always been around us, how much mightier the possibilities seem now. And that, I suppose, sums up where we are now.
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