Keeping Time

Dear Friends,

The farming season is officially over! Whew! I haven’t written a blog for months. Not because I didn’t have time, but because the swirling activity was all geared towards outside, external, farm business, and necessary haste. I’ve written newsletters for Old Frog Pond Farm, but they promote the farm and encourage visitors. For blog writing, I like to travel on back roads, interior paths, to keep my finger on the pause button, to listen for thoughts that arrive in quiet moments and wend my way. A little like how I sometimes begin a sculpture. This morning I stayed in bed with my eyes closed and let the dreaming continue until seven! Instead of the darkness I was greeted with this view.

Sunrise Colors in the Pond

 I share this poem by the great 13th century Chinese Zen Master Wumen, the compiler of The Gateless Gate koan collection.

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

The great Zen master, Dogen Zenji, a 14th century philosopher, linguist, and poet, wrote in the fascicle, Uji, “The Time-Being.”

Since there is nothing but just this moment, the time-being is all the time there is. . . . Each moment is all being, is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.

 Translated by Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi from The Moon in a Dewdrop, writings of Zen Master Dogen

Dogen’s Uji text is only a few pages long, but he completely twists and turns and challenges our view of time. As a teacher he wants us to realize the wonder and completeness of each moment and not be caught by the conventional view of time as a continuum. These and other writings about time are inspiring a new sculpture, The Keepers of Time, though the title is always provisional until it is complete.

It begins with a wheel, one of two old cart wheels leaning against the chicken coop. This wheel has eighteen spokes, six more than hours on a clock. The Timekeepers are women who will inhabit the wheel. I envision them placing the numerals for the clock in position around the perimeter of the wheel.

I'm not sure if the Timekeepers recognize that time is not an abstraction, but something they are creating. Do they know there is no time apart from their creating time? How will they each play with their hours, days, and weeks ahead?

How do I have more time to read and write? This thought arrived in my mind this morning? I held it as if it was lightly filled with helium. It had form. But as I stayed with my attention on this thought, it squirmed away. For a moment I couldn’t find it. Then as if it could slither like a ghost under a door, it appeared again. It wasn’t a shape any longer. It was detaching, losing meaning.

In mid-November I gave a Dharma talk, Time Present, at Zen Mountain Monastery. Writing this talk is what started me on this investigation of Time. If you’d like to listen click here.                                             

Another new project is Two Chairs—Conversations with my friend, Lyedie Geer. Posted on the farm’s youtube channel are the first two videos of this new collaboration. In the winter of 2022, inspired by a purple velvet chair I inherited from my mother, and Lyedie’s blue chair, we decided to get together for conversation. We didn’t know where or what we were doing, but it was a treat to be together in person and talk as the pandemic was losing its grip First, I went to Putney, Vermont, with my mother’s chair in tow, then Lyedie traveled down to the farm and we sat in two chairs outside my studio near the pond.

In the first Two Chairs—Conversations, we explore Pruning—daring to make those difficult cuts—in the orchard and in one’s own life. In the second, Splash, we dig into the creative process as we talk about one of my new sculptures. We’re grateful to be working with David Shapiro, who also made our farm’s video.

Finally, I want to let you know Lyedie is an amazing coach of creative women. Until December 21st, she is accepting applications for the Bluebird award! I suggest if you have any desire to be encouraged and inspired in your creative life, click here to learn about the three-month pro-bono coaching program she is offering.

That’s it for now!

With love, Linda

Catalpa: The Hugging Tree

In full white flowering, a trillion frilly night moths perch on stems, sending out sweet scents of rose and bergamot. These clutches of flowers, each the size of a newborn child, balance at the end of every leaf cluster. The leaves, heart-shaped and lime green, lay open to the sky, each one positioned for the best photosynthesis. Catalpas reach peak bloom near the summer solstice, late for most trees in our climate. Summer is too hot for delicate blossoms.

Everything about this tree is large, embracing, and opulent. The wood, uprising from the ground, a trio of trunks, holds so much weight its steep ascent is inconceivable. It must be in the third octave of its life. Such a magnum opus. The tree dwarfs the building behind, my studio.

From the studio loft window I have watched a pair of swallows sit together, then fly off, soaring, and mating. Their brood began life in the bird box a few paces away. Red-winged blackbirds often sit on a branch and squawk, while nuthatches pace up and down the trunk. These tiny birds peck at bugs in the bark, quietly though, not like the red-hatted pileated woodpecker’s incessant jackhammering.

A few years back we had a tree company put two cables into the tree, worried about losing one of the trunks in a storm. This trinity of trunks now supports each other. One large branch broke two years ago. The branch dove to the ground and shattered, the wound along it—an accordion of frayed wood. But I wanted to leave it, not remove it, to see if it would heal. Now, buttressed by earth, new branches grow, flower, and bear fruit.

The tree grows twenty yards from the pond. I imagine it drinks heartily with every meal. Big tankards of H2O. Its size is quite out of scale for our small farm, but the Catalpa’s nature is to keep growing—water the source of its ecstasy.

The Catalpa makes its own shade, its own ecosystem, its own refuge. But now the bloom is over. The flowers are faded and brown, the scent has turned musky. It’s been such a presence in my life for the last ten days, I took my meditation cushion outside to sit near its trunk. That’s when I started using the pronoun “she” and “her” when I referred to the Catalpa. Her branches, her blossoms. She became more than tree to me. She became protector and guide.

While writing about her, I remembered that in my dream last night. I met an Indian woman, dressed in a drab brown and gray sari, with drab-colored brown and gray hair in a bun, and I knew it was Amaa, the hugging saint. I’ve never met her, but I’ve heard friends tell of their experiences, the process of waiting in a long line sometimes for hours, for the few seconds or minute it takes to receive her hug-blessing. In my meeting with Amaa, she cupped my shoulders with her hands, and then bowed my head so we lost eye contact but our foreheads joined. We were sisters, or mother and daughter, or some connected ancestor. She said, “Baruch Shalom” three times. Baruch is the beginning word of many Jewish prayers and means blessed. Shalom means peace.

The Catalpa tree became Amaa, became the carrier of this message of peace, strength, and resiliency. She communicated that we have untapped powers within us we are not aware of. The passing away of the blossoms became the rising of another voice, a steadfast and calming voice, reaching out to meet us. Inviting us into her embrace, always with open arms, the hugging tree, offering refuge.

Catalpa Tree, July 4, 2020

A Dream for the New Year

I went to sleep not having written a blog and this dream woke me . . .

I was in a room and it was time. My mind was clear and present. I agreed to have the injection that would end my life. But when a tall man with a black suit and white shirt arrived with a syringe ready to plunge the needle through my skin, I freaked. “No! No, no!” I shouted as I pulled away. He was determined and latched on, but I was thrashing wildly and ripped free of his grip. I would not give in easily, I wanted to live.

With every particle of my being, I fought back. Then I said, “Please, if I am to die now, I must tell my Zen teacher and community.” He agreed to let me go make a phone call if afterwards I would return for the needle.

I ran out of the room, ran as far and as fast I could. I was on the lam. Up and over bridges, staircases, down alleys, and across lonely boulevards. In an area with small shops I saw some boxes of biscuits and thought of snatching one, but resisted.

Then I saw my daughter. I called, “Ariel!” and again, “Ariel, come with me, please!”

She came over, I grabbed her hand, and we sprinted until we arrived on a grassy plateau. I was about to tell her what was happening when the tall man with the black suit and white shirt arrived waving the syringe. He grabbed my arm and said, “You will not escape me, now!” He jerked my right hand towards his body to plunge the needle into my wrist. He injected the fluid with great glee and strode away. But I had seen the needle catch on my sweater’s knitted cuff, the poison had not entered my body.

I had outsmarted death. I didn’t know how many more times I would be able to avoid him, but I secretly hoped for nine lives like a cat — and that when the ninth time came — I would be ready. I want no regrets, I want to go with grace.

You might wonder why such a strong dream at this turning of the year. A few days ago, I had breakfast with a friend who lost her partner to a re-occurrence of breast cancer. I have a friend struggling with depression, another paralyzed by the political turmoil in the world, and another beside herself with grief because of the destruction of the natural world. Many of us carry serious fear, and even terror.

Confucius told his followers, 'Bring peace to the old, have trust in your friends, and cherish the young.' And he lived during turbulent times. The message I received in my dream is to live life to the fullest. I am grateful for my Zen Mountain Monastery community who helped me survive in my dream as they have through difficult times. I am grateful for my daughter who brought her angelic presence to the dream as she so often does in daily life.  

Ariel and I on a Hike, Selfie, 2016

Dreams have a lot to offer us. I tried to go deeper into sensing this ‘being alive’. I felt each thing awake — the singular blade of grass, the snowflake, the pink salmon. We shape the world with what we do, what we see, and what we think. Mind is what I cherish because it connects us all — each person born and unborn — each tree and star. And just maybe, the poison to my body had no effect because it will never have power over mind.

I wish you happiness and well-being in the coming year!

May you receive and offer gifts of kindness, generosity, and creativity.  

Many Hands Blessing Earth

Happy New Year 2018

Cutting Off a Leg

I started writing a follow-up to the blog, All about Art, from two weeks ago in which I unintentionally wrote about six women artists and did not mention one man. I thought about the fact that this would never happen in an issue of ARTnews or Art Forum, despite the work of the Guerilla Girls, a nonprofit organization that since the early 1980s has been raising awareness of the lack of equal representation of women artists in major art museums and galleries. Then I proceeded to write about some of the male artists exhibiting at Old Frog Pond Farm this fall.

Where I Get My Water, Ray Ciemny 

Ray's piece is a commentary on the scarcity of clean water for many people on our planet. Made of scrap steel and rubble, the girders were salvaged from the old Fitch’s Bridge above the Nashua River in Groton, MA.

Then I changed my mind, because it is the opening of apple picking and I felt I should write about the beautiful diversity of apples ripening in the orchard.

Then I had a dream where I had to cut off the lower half of my leg.

Cutting off one’s leg is a major life altering event. In my dream, I wasn’t upset about it, but was calmly trying to decide when would be the right time to do it. I wasn’t considering the challenges or the healing or the rehabilitation—it was a dream after all, a symbol.

Losing a leg in a dream is fairly easy to analyze. Our legs are what we stand on, what supports us, and having two legs gives us balance. To dream that I was about to cut off a significant part of one leg seems to indicate that something in my life is out of balance. Or is it a way to take control of what is out of control? Or, maybe, I saw myself as split in two, two legs, and was trying to become one. I agree, there are other, better ways to make myself whole, but my unconscious did find the imagery to express itself and get my attention.

When I wake up with an image from a dream that is very clear, I like to contemplate and write about it. This cut off my leg dream was giving me a clear signal of the need for radical change, though what exactly it refers to remains opaque.

I could be anticipating the craziness of harvest time. Yellow, red, green, scarlet, and striped fruit orbs weigh down the flexible apple branches. There is an abundance of ripe fruit out in the orchard, but there is an angst that comes with it. Apple-picking time is when both my husband, Blase, and I feel like we have absolutely no control over any moment of our lives. We interact with hundreds and hundreds of people, through emails, phone calls, and complete strangers knocking at the back door. You might call it the downside of success, and sometimes it feels overwhelming.

It’s also possible that I was disturbed by Freedom Baird’s haunting sculptural installation, Graft. She has used the cavity from a once twin-trunked oak tree and created a prosthesis of sorts.  

Graft, Freedom Baird       Photo:Robert Hesse

Freedom Baird writes,

Like so many I’m preoccupied with environmental stewardship (this preoccupation has ratcheted up to acidic alarm under a Trump administration). Recently I’ve been experimenting with ways to catalyze a reconsideration of humans’ relationship to the “natural” world. Specifically, I’ve been inventing objects that push against the construct that man and nature are separate. Projects have included synthesizing plastic utensils from food, grafting milled lumber onto a living tree, designing prosthetic limbs for amputated trees. . .

I’ve been horrified by recent government proposals to cut back the boundaries of protected land. Specifically, the acreage around the Bears Hill National Monument in Utah that President Obama protected honoring the request of tribal nations before he left office. It’s enough to make anyone who cares about our environment feel out of control.

But the truth is the next seven weeks are much too busy for me to spend time thinking about other places and possibilities. Dream or no dream, I need to focus on what is right in front of me. I need to have two feet firmly on the ground.