If you spend an entire day vaccuming, washing floors, cleaning bathrooms, washing clothes and making beds, and while you are busy the children entertain themselves by emptying every toy box in the house -- here's the question: At the end of the day, can you consider your house clean?
*
"At first she was suspicious of the washing machine ... But little by little the machine seemed to her more carina, for it was after all only a machine, and it filled itself and emptied itself and turned around and around, and it seemed so marvelous to her that a machine could remember so much and was always there, ready and waiting to do its work. And then there was the machine for washing the dishes, and you could wash the dishes in a costume for the evening without getting a drop of water on your gloves. When the signora was away and the boys were at school, first she would put some dirty clothes in the washing machine and start that, and then she would put some dirty dishes in the other machine and start that, and then she would put a nice saltimbocca alla romana in the electric frying pan and start that, and then she would sit in the salone in front of the TV and listen to all the machines around her doing the work, and it delighted her and made her feel powerful. Then there ws the frigidario in the kitchen, making ice and keeping the butter as hard as stone, and there was the deep freeze full of lamb and beef as fresh as the day when they had been killed, and there was an electric egg beater, and a machine for squeezing the oranges, and a machine for breathing in the dust, and she would have them all going at once...."
Clementina, from The Stories of John Cheever
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Friday, November 04, 2005
This is where I live
In Central Oregon, one notices the smells in the air. I mean, everyone notices the smells, even someone like myself, who never notices anything. Ponderosa pines. Hot dirt. Wet earth. Rotting pine needles. Snow. The air smells clean, or maybe I mean pure; smells borne on the wind are unsullied.
*
I live in a hollow with pine trees taller than my house: ponderosas mostly, but also juniper. My neighbors have planted a few people-sized trees in their yards as well – aspen, larch, slow-growing alpine pines – but the ponderosas dominate. Ponderosas are beautiful trees. Their branches start up high, much higher than a man’s head, and their long needles grow in clumps at the end of each branch: so ponderosas don’t make a man feel crowded or trapped. They grow straight, straight, straight. They make good lumber, which is why all the trees in my neighborhood, though exceedingly tall, must be less than 60 years old.
The street I live on runs the length of the hollow and dead-ends at an unimproved park. I imagine that once upon a time, a stream ran there instead. It would have flowed from the park back through the hollow, banked sharply to the east, and then emptied into the Deschutes River. I often flow that way myself, emptying not into the river but in the children's park beside it.
"X" Street, a wide swath of asphalt, cuts down into the hollow right beside my house and intersects with the road-that-was-a-stream. This street creates a break in the trees, a sun break. In the winter I hang out in the yard on this side of my house, but in the summer I hide from it. In Central Oregon there is often a ten degree (or more) difference between sun and shade, and in the summer, two degrees of sunblock.
Because of the shading trees, my house stays cool, even in summer. In the mornings from June to September I open all my windows and doors to let in the warm breeze. It lets the neighbors in, too. I can hear the conversations of all the people walking toward the park; I hear the mountain bikers call to one another as they ride toward the trails in the Deschutes National Forest. My children listen for the dogs and other kids.
While I am surrounded by trees, I don’t live in a forest. This area was logged a generation ago, and then (because it was the edge of town for a long time) it was a dumping ground; in the last decade it has seen nearly constant housing construction. It is what they call disturbed land. The trees have grown back, and the hardiest understory plants grew back – prickly shrubs like currant and rabbitbrush and bitterbrush – and some small flowers and one or two invasive species. And, of course, we have planted grass and friendlier, thirstier flowers and shrubs.
Chipmunks and ground squirrels like ponderosas but they won't live with people -- or maybe we won't live with them? not liking burrows in our grass -- so instead we have aggressive gray squirrels. They drop pine cone discards all year long: plunk onto the grass, thunk onto the deck, and duck! They fight with the stellar jays. Quail run here, a few bunnies. The deer graze on by. Each fall I plant a few tulips just for them. Also I hear rumors of coyotes. Two years ago my son and I glimpsed one in the park; a year ago my neighbor saw one chase down a rabbit. And every few months, someone loses a cat.
*
John Daniel tells the Native American story of Payatmu, who hailed the sun rise every day. When he stopped celebrating it, the sun stopped rising.
"The point is not that we should learn the Sioux language and perform the Sun Dance, or that we should plant corn in dry places and sing it up with Zuni song rituals. We can't simply borrow another culture's religious sensibility, evolved through ages, as we borrow a coat. Nor is it crucial to believe that certain words and actions cause the sun to come up. But it is very crucial to understand the sensibility from which such words and actions flow, to understand that the continuance of life depends on the thoughts, words and acts of each of us."
Remembering the Sacred Family, an essay within The Trail Home.
*
I live in a hollow with pine trees taller than my house: ponderosas mostly, but also juniper. My neighbors have planted a few people-sized trees in their yards as well – aspen, larch, slow-growing alpine pines – but the ponderosas dominate. Ponderosas are beautiful trees. Their branches start up high, much higher than a man’s head, and their long needles grow in clumps at the end of each branch: so ponderosas don’t make a man feel crowded or trapped. They grow straight, straight, straight. They make good lumber, which is why all the trees in my neighborhood, though exceedingly tall, must be less than 60 years old.
The street I live on runs the length of the hollow and dead-ends at an unimproved park. I imagine that once upon a time, a stream ran there instead. It would have flowed from the park back through the hollow, banked sharply to the east, and then emptied into the Deschutes River. I often flow that way myself, emptying not into the river but in the children's park beside it.
"X" Street, a wide swath of asphalt, cuts down into the hollow right beside my house and intersects with the road-that-was-a-stream. This street creates a break in the trees, a sun break. In the winter I hang out in the yard on this side of my house, but in the summer I hide from it. In Central Oregon there is often a ten degree (or more) difference between sun and shade, and in the summer, two degrees of sunblock.
Because of the shading trees, my house stays cool, even in summer. In the mornings from June to September I open all my windows and doors to let in the warm breeze. It lets the neighbors in, too. I can hear the conversations of all the people walking toward the park; I hear the mountain bikers call to one another as they ride toward the trails in the Deschutes National Forest. My children listen for the dogs and other kids.
While I am surrounded by trees, I don’t live in a forest. This area was logged a generation ago, and then (because it was the edge of town for a long time) it was a dumping ground; in the last decade it has seen nearly constant housing construction. It is what they call disturbed land. The trees have grown back, and the hardiest understory plants grew back – prickly shrubs like currant and rabbitbrush and bitterbrush – and some small flowers and one or two invasive species. And, of course, we have planted grass and friendlier, thirstier flowers and shrubs.
Chipmunks and ground squirrels like ponderosas but they won't live with people -- or maybe we won't live with them? not liking burrows in our grass -- so instead we have aggressive gray squirrels. They drop pine cone discards all year long: plunk onto the grass, thunk onto the deck, and duck! They fight with the stellar jays. Quail run here, a few bunnies. The deer graze on by. Each fall I plant a few tulips just for them. Also I hear rumors of coyotes. Two years ago my son and I glimpsed one in the park; a year ago my neighbor saw one chase down a rabbit. And every few months, someone loses a cat.
*
John Daniel tells the Native American story of Payatmu, who hailed the sun rise every day. When he stopped celebrating it, the sun stopped rising.
"The point is not that we should learn the Sioux language and perform the Sun Dance, or that we should plant corn in dry places and sing it up with Zuni song rituals. We can't simply borrow another culture's religious sensibility, evolved through ages, as we borrow a coat. Nor is it crucial to believe that certain words and actions cause the sun to come up. But it is very crucial to understand the sensibility from which such words and actions flow, to understand that the continuance of life depends on the thoughts, words and acts of each of us."
Remembering the Sacred Family, an essay within The Trail Home.
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