Catch a Fire

For the first time since Aught Eight, I saw the turtles out today in Morningside Park, sunning on the rocks along the edge of the pond and floating out in the water and taking part in relaxing turtle activities. I take this as a good omen.

This year, St. Patrick's Day brings a sense of floating: a world adrift in a bellicose, uncertain time; sliding masses of humanity through migrations, excisements, shallow-rooted wanderings; and optimistic lanterns wave-lashed yet speckle the dark.

And today feels like spring. Spring. Truly Scrumptious. [Side note: did everyone besides me know that the authors of Chitty Chitty and Casino Royale were one in the same?]

Only 19 days till Opening Day. Light till nearly 7 PM. Turtles up and about. Spring is here. Sure, we could yet get lashed with the cat-o-nine-storms, but today I heard the thwap of baseball on leather gloves, uncreaking after a winter's nap. Like turtles, another good omen. Hope you too are floating a little lighter in your shoes, be they have toes curled back or otherwise.

In honor of St. Patrick's adopted island and the graces all around us, from Gerard Manley Hopkins, Irish Jesuit mystic poet - all great things:

34. ‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme’
AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Rambling 'round Brooklyn

Around 3.5 million people live in Brooklyn, making it the most populous borough of New York City. Yesterday, many of us took to the streets and parks to enjoy the most Spring-like day in weeks. Everywhere were runners, walkers; bikes, skateboards, strollers; horseback riding lessons and long-line kiting; short sleeves, long sleeves, hats, scarves, shorts; soccer, baseball, cricket, football, frisbee, handball. It was the kind of day when everything seems cut from glass, even the break and especially the sky where it is occluded along the edges of rooftops, water towers, steeples. Edward Hopper light in all directions. In celebration of wheeled freedom and temperatures in the 50s, I wandered, by bici, through various quilted sections of Brooklyn.

Red Hook along the waterfront of reclaimed warehouses, container cranes silhouetted, soon-to-open Ikea, sprawling Fairway grocery, main drag Van Brunt lined with oddities and antiques, early season baseball practice next to a series of giant grain towers – from the little I watched, the winter ice has not quite melted on throwing arms and creaky gloves.

I continued on through South Slope, past historic Green-Wood Cemetery (final home to, among others, Samuel F.B. Morse and Boss Tweed), into Sunset Park and up onto the eponymous hillcrest park: Walt Whitman, in his days with The Brooklyn Eagle, may have sat just there and imagined his yawp sounding across the rooftops in Brooklyn, across the East River above the beating financial drum of colossal Metropolis, and on to the rest of the world.

After winding back through Windsor Terrace - a pocket of columned-porticos, stalwart Farrell’s, lipped on the freeway - I visited an old friend, Prospect Park. Lying in the sun, I could almost convince myself that I needed sunscreen.


A few parting lines from that sweaty-toothed madman:

What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not - distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine...

Fogginess surrounds

Reading an article about surfing and pelicans in my favorite magazine Orion last spring, I came across the following: There is a German word, funktionslust, meaning “pleasure taken in what one can do best.”

Does the weather here thrill to bring us fog? Last night, the soccer teams practiced despite low visibility - looking out the window felt akin to flying through clouds and coming upon a gaggle of angels playing ninepins.

Babbo Natale's foggy beard draped all over - hoary weather reminding me again of Ireland ('Until the Battle of the Boyne Ireland belonged to Asia.' W. B. Yeats), and also of the California coast where fog is as regular as bow-tying laces, honeybees, and extra pennies rolling in gutters.

Another fog poem, this one from a poet of the California coast.

Boats in a Fog
by Robinson Jeffers

Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,

The exuberant voices of music,

Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness

That makes beauty; the mind

Knows, grown adult.

A sudden fog-drift muffled the ocean,

A throbbing of engines moved in it,

At length, a stone’s throw out, between the rocks and the vapor,

One by one moved shadows

Out of the mystery, shadows, fishing-boats, trailing each other

Following the cliff for guidance,

Holding a difficult path between the peril of the sea-fog

And the foam on the shore granite.

One by one, trailing their leader, six crept by me,

Out of the vapor and into it,

The throb of their engines subdued by the fog, patient and cautious,

Coasting all round the peninsula

Back to the buoys in Monterey harbor. A flight of pelicans

Is nothing lovelier to look at;

The flight of the planets is nothing nobler; all the arts lose virtue

Against the essential reality

Of creatures going about their business among the equally

Earnest elements of nature.

Fogginess abounds

Here in small town northern Italy, we are officially in the Season of the Fog. Apparently la nebbia plagues local airports, causing flight cancellations and the like. Apparently, it gets worse as we move further into winter. I've lived with cold, rain, and snow, in heat and humidity, but fog? It calls to mind Baskerville hounds and Heathcliff out on the moor. With life imitating literature, the fog brings some mystery to the day. This is Seamus Heaney weather.

The Peninsula
by Seamus Heaney

When you have nothing more to say, just drive For a day all round the peninsula; The sky is high as over a runway, The land without marks so you will not arrive But pass through, though always skirting landfall. At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable And you're in the dark again. Now recall The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, That rock were breakers shredded into rags, The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, Islands riding themselves out into the fog And drive back home, still with nothing to say Except that now you will uncode all landscapes By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, Water and ground in their extremity.

Watching all the cars go by, roaring as the breezes

Trains bombed with words, here and there around Italy:

I dance to the beat, shuffle my feet
Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps
'Cause it's all about money, ain't a damn thing funny
You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey

They push that girl in front of a train
Took her to a doctor, sowed the arm on again
Stabbed that man, right in his heart
Gave him a transplant before a brand new start

I can't walk through the park,

'Cause its crazy after the dark
Keep my hand on the gun, 'cause they got me on the run

I feel like an outlaw, broke my last fast jaw
Hear them say you want some more,
Livin' on a seesaw

Don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under

- Grandmaster Flash, The Message

A rose by any other name

The magpie is back, outside my window, walking with exaggerated strides and short hops. From the spotty lawn, she pulls seeds? worms? Her black head and shoulders look like an executioner’s hood and the flash of blue on her wings is captivating.

Back home, I am so-so with flora and fauna identification, an area I would like to improve. I felt most knowledgeable in the montane zone of Colorado where I worked for a few seasons, though the relative symplicity of the ecosystem there made it easier to learn than the crowded temperate forests of southern New England.

Here in northern Italy, I’m most often unknowing when it comes to the natural world. I have plenty of opportunities to see plants and animals that invite investigation, especially on my runs out along the Via dei Mulini, about which I have written before. Long elegant herons are justifiably skittish and leave off whenever I approach within 100 meters. Nutria, large riparian rats, are hunted systematically by farmers during the fall, after the corn and hay have all been take in; an invasive species, they are unwelcome and left dead on the sides of the road. During this season, I have also seen the men wandering the fields, usually with baskets and dogs, searching for mushrooms.

The European magpie I knew by name. It was not the bird baked into a pie, though that “Sing a Song of Sixpence” nursery rhyme, like many others, has an interesting back story – this one with pirates! Arrrr! The magpie, as I found in my research, is common throughout European folklore and is often associated with unhappiness and trouble. Occhio!

The list of plants and animals to look into grows. I will never be the Thoreau, Abbey, or Muir of Codogno, but perhaps I can take part in the ancient practice of naming the world around us.

A poem on names and the light inside the named.

34. ‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme’
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces; 10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Walking on the edge of winter

Today, walking back from the grocery store with a full red pack like a mountain peddler, I smelled woodsmoke and saw a palm tree. I normally consider these things to be of different worlds, but I was wrong. It is growing colder here, with nighttime temperatures dipping just below freezing, and I have heard rumors of snow. Apparently it does not get cold enough here to prevent palm trees from growing. I have also seen some succulents, like jade, and caught hints of fragrant plants that I cannot name, reminding me of California.

Just a short walk from our apartment, one can leave the small town behind and find the sky open up across scattered farms here on the flat plain of the Po Valley. Here are some photographs I took a few weeks ago, on a particularly breath-taking day. A distillation of fall.

Following that one-lane road path leads after two miles to Mulazzana, a collection of 6 or 7 houses with no stores and a church I have never seen open. Beyond that, it is almost another two miles before one reaches the village of Camairago. I do not know how many miles I have run and biked along that road, but I am familiar with its turns, stretches, trees, the irrigation ditches that line it. Recently, as the weather has cooled and the rains have cleared the hazy air, distant mountains that were formerly invisible have come into view: the Ligurian Apennines to the south and the snow-draped Bergamo Alps to the north.

A poem from a man of the mountains.

Riprap
by Gary Snyder

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

Walking on the moon with the lights turned off

Last night I wandered through a carnival being set up in town. Here in Italy these traveling amusements are called Luna Parks, though that may be a brand name? The community of carnies is living around the corner from us and the park itself is set up just down the street. While I am certainly peripatetic, I can only imagine what a 21st century nomadic life would be like...

It was odd to walk the midway before it has opened for business, like being in school on Sunday or a ballpark in November. An amusement park with its shutters down and its plugs pulled. Flashy wheeled carts and miniature fire engines and flying horses at rest. Wooden bottles in no danger of falling boxed up. A bull roping gig set to snort steam collecting dew. Bumper cars lined up in their shawls like boats at a winter marina. Food booths linger already or still with the scent of popcorn and toasted sugar. A whirly top with flanges for seats and standing room screaming only quiet dark. All of it waiting.

Durante medio siglo
la poesía fue
el paraíso del tonto solemne
hasta que vine yo
y me instalé con mi montaña rusa.
Suban, si les parece.
Claro que yo no respondo si bajan
echando sangre por boca y narices.
- Nicanor Parra

*******
For half a century
poetry was
the paradise of the solemn fool
until I arrived
and I settled in with my roller coaster.
Go on up, if it strikes you.
Of course I won’t respond if you come down
pouring blood from your mouth and nostrils.

Fields and mountains

I walked out into the fields at dark the other night. Partly I was curious to see what the path I run almost every day was like after sundown, and partly I wanted to face, even in passing, some of those fears of darkness that seem ingrained in us. The town’s development ends at a rounded curve where the path begins – or ends, depending which way you’re going. The path is mostly paved but not lit. At a turn, I veered off the pavement. I watched my step through cornstalk stubble, the field having recently been shaved. I heard a splash in the fieldedge irrigation ditch; I suspect it was a nutria spooked by my arrival. [Nutria are rodents the size of small beavers that live in waterways, marshes, bayous, swamps, and the like.]

The path is technically a road, connecting our town with an outlying village, the frazione of Mulazzana, and so is used by cars, mopeds, tractors, threshers, trucks, bicycles, tillers, walkers, runners, and other sundry motorized farm equipment. And nutria, though they usually cross it transversely from one ditch to another. That night, a few cars passed, sweeping the fields with their headlights, traveling in a little globe of light visible from quite a distance across the flat landscape.

I saw stars, though not as many as I had hoped. The glow of Codogno behind me and the streetlights along the autostrada cast an often-overlooked pollution into the sky. The cloud ribbons above looked almost like dull versions of the Northern Lights, and I thought of a friend in Alaska who is probably a loosescrew bodhisattva. I thought also of a mountain ridgeline east of Seattle in the North Cascades.

Gazing up at a starry sky reminds me of Frost again and another thing I feel to be true: we need wilderness. In his famous letter in defense of wilderness, Wallace Stegner quoted the writer Sherwood Anderson, “I can remember old fellows in my home town speaking feelingly of an evening spent on the big empty plains. It had taken the shrillness out of them. They had learned the trick of quiet...." The rectilinear farms around Codogno do not have much directly in common with big empty plains or the great tracts of wilderness in the west of the United States. This part of Lombardy feels much more like Kansas than Vermont or Oregon, but, as for Stegner, the idea that wild areas exist is some consolation to me.

People have been living in the area around Codogno for over 2500 years, but the fields at night feel at least one step closer to wild than my balcony above the street. These fields, as well as the bici vecchia culture, have lessons on the trick of quiet. Hope you’re finding some in your nape of the way as well.