A link to the best writing I did in 2023?

Maybe: No Spoilers 

Happy New Year!

I dreamt of journeys

There was a moment on the way to Charles de Gaulle airport Thursday morning when I looked up to see Jerry laughing with a young black man on the train. He too was headed toward the airport. When we arrived Jerry told me that the man had leaned over and said something, Jerry said to him “That’s not French” and that’s when they laughed because he was speaking an African dialect. Jerry speaks an international language which is kindness. He always has but I love to catch it to remind myself how fluent he is in so many ways. Later while we waited to check in at our airline he helped a woman get to a plug for her phone and then in Dublin, he paused and helped security reload trays on a conveyer system while I put my shoes on. It’s these small moments I’ve witnessed for the past forty years.

            And it is exactly forty years this month since we first met. It was 1983 in Naples Italy and he and Tommy D. Strickland came bursting through the computer space where I worked. Tom was part of the command I was stationed at, and he and Jerry had arrived on the same flight and had attended intercultural relations (ICR) class together. ICR gave you a review of Italian life and culture, some language, taught you how to ride the buses and trains, etc., I’d been in Italy since March and had a few acquaintances, but Jerry and Tom and I became good friends, and then another, Kathy, came to our command in February. That was our core, for a while and then Mary Jane arrived, and we had a nice group. One of our big events was when we drove North in two cars to the National Park of Abruzzo and camped.

I knew Jerry for a good while before we ever started dating. And Europe is always the backdrop to our life. Jerry likes to say, “What are the chances that someone from Joseph Oregon, and someone from Moundville Alabama will meet in Agnano Italy, and fall in love?” So, it is good to go back to Europe, had I been thinking more clearly when we decided to go away for Christmas I would have chosen Naples. But Paris is always a good idea.

On this trip, we stayed in a small apartment in the 7th arrondissement. We had ten days and no agenda aside from being. Being with one another and being in Paris. The 7th arrondissement includes the Eiffel Tower and the surrounding gardens. [Small note: On Wednesday the 27th, it was the 100th anniversary of Gustave Eiffel’s death; the workers at the tower went on strike.] There was a concentrated effort to visit places we had never been: the Rodin Museum, the Paris Flea Market, Place Bastille, the Pompidou Center, and Montparnasse, etc., I’ve been trying to get to Eugene Delacroix Museum for a while and we were blocks away and it is temporarily closed; c’mon! We found the oldest church in Paris, the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés; I took Jerry to the Luxembourg Gardens, the Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, and to a small park next to the bookstore. From there we went to the Pantheon and into the church of Saint Gertrude, the patron saint of Paris.

            We strolled the Seine, we looked at the now low profile of Notre Dame, we went to the Louvre and the Orsay on their late nights and we had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. We walked a lot. We walked in the rain, we walked at night, we walked and walked and walked. We went to open-air markets. I found Jerry one of the best macaron places. We cooked in our little kitchen and slept hard and long. I dreamt of journeys but no arrivals. 

Is it over yet?

 

2023 ...

Sweet fairy wren

"We are shaped by the landscapes we are born to as inescapably as any other earthly creature born to any other ecosystem." Margaret Renkl

This is the last full week of classes for the semester. Today was the last day of Earth Science if (if!) you needed to take the final exam. I did not need to, so I didn’t go to class. I attended the lecture on Tuesday and turned in my lab, which just seemed respectful to the Professor.

Then I went to the last Mass Comm class today before our final next week. Tomorrow is the last regular class for Film Appreciation, we’ll watch one more film, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure which was chosen by one of the students after a “quiz” victory. It was really fun actually, the quiz and the film will be fun to see again after all this time.

I’ve finished all my blogs for the class, and I have a little bit more to write on my final paper, I’m comparing True Grit 1969 & 2010. A good excuse to rewatch the movies and read the novel again. After watching and writing about the movie There Will Be Blood, it’s nice to think about a film where a female gets to tell a story (have more than ten lines). I’m all set up for the Spring semester but will enjoy about a month's break.

I went to get my haircut on Monday and as I walked into the salon I was asked if I had checked in online, “Yes.” I said.

“What name?”

“Mary”

“Okay, got you.”

And then this man walked over and sat down next to me and said, “Mary, your son will save us.”

What?

“Do you know that song? It’s about Jesus.”

                            

Yesterday I watched a Carolina Wren at my front door. It was patrolling all the bricks and stones looking for bugs. I think I got a good six- or seven-minute observation before it was spooked by a couple of sparrows, jerks. I want a wren for my best friend.

Here are some random pictures from the past few months.

Spelunkers R Us

 

The evidence is in! This was before we got into the deep water. I would like to note the young woman in the back warned us all that if she died in the cave she'd haunt us all forever. She made me laugh every class. I failed to get her excited about anything outdoorsy, as she said often, "My idea of a hike is going from one store to another at an Outlet Mall." 

Visit a cave again? For me, yes, please.

Anything can happen*

“Anything can happen, the tallest towers

Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded.”*

This week the ecology class wrapped up. We went on our final field trip which was a visit to Sempler Cave, about half an hour from campus. One of the other professors at the college owns the property and he and his family are stewards of the cave. I will say that if one needs a way to lose the world for an hour or so a trip into a cave where you need to shimmy around rock and crouch through openings and wade through waist-deep water cave exploring fills the bill. Yes, the water was cold -- no colder than Wallowa Lake in July -- but there were cricket frogs and bullfrogs, and slimy salamanders and brown bats. On the property itself, there were horses, goats, and dogs. A place of peace and beauty and safety. I wish it for the world right now.


*Anything Can Happen, Horace translated by Seamus Heaney

Speaking of blessings

 

There’s a field just at the edge of the neighborhood that was mown earlier in the summer for hay. Right now, it’s just about belly high on a deer. At least the deer I see there, as the sun cups them in the morning, are belly-deep. It has been a hot and pretty dry summer here and I’ve never seen this field irrigated so belly-deep in September is probably about right.

At school, I’m taking an ecology class and each week we have a field trip. I knew the class was going to be good because on day one, as we headed to Richland Creek a coyote ran out of a cornfield and crossed the road in front of us. Blessings. So far, we’ve collected stream samples to check for invertebrates, there was a hike up some bluffs to a hill prairie (lizards and scorpions found), and during the last class, we went out to Fossil Creek and looked for fossils. I found over fifteen. One had to work hard not to find a fossil. The class is very small, six people, so the field trips and the labs are really effective. Lots of time, everyone gets to work through things. Next week it looks like we’re off to another stream in the area.

Meanwhile, in Film Appreciation we’re watching movies and discussing techniques. We’ve just finished Documentary. Now we’ll be focusing on cinematography. Today we watched 1917 and next week we’re scheduled for Children of Men – each could fit in the category of “wrenching”.

Speaking of blessings, the fawn in the picture came to our yard at least three times and slept or stayed calm while awaiting the parental unit's return. She may have been in the front yard a week ago as well; I could only see one outline when I looked out the front window. I wonder if now the deer are closer to the morning light, blessing another yard, out near the hill where the hay is belly-deep as the sun bends into fall.