Epiphany Ramblings

When I saw that the National Cathedral was having an Epiphany service at noon, I decided to rearrange my plans and go to the National Gallery after the service.  I had planned to see the Vermeer exhibit.

In retrospect, I could have walked back to my seminary apartment after worship and been just as happy.  The worship service was perfect for the day.  When I knelt to take communion at this rail, I looked at this vast carving behind the altar, with stained glass windows above it, and I felt my spirit soar, just as the architects and artists intended:

Then I walked to the Metro stop to go downtown.  I got a bit turned around, but happily, I had my phone and Google Maps was able to direct me.  I went straight to the National Gallery, where I expected to walk right in to the Vermeer exhibit; after all, it's been here since October.

I got there at 2, and the woman staffing the Information desk told me there was a 4 hour wait.  I can't think of anything I'm willing to wait in a 4 hour line to see, so I went to the other exhibit I wanted to see:  Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South.  Some of the artists are still alive, and they all lived and created in the 20th century.  Many of them lived in Gee's Bend, but the scope is much larger.

I had seen a larger exhibit of Gee's Bend quilts back in 2004 or so.  I have mixed feelings about them as works of art.  I could make the claim that some of them, like the above, are both art and bed covering.  But some of them, like this one, are not:

The big panels of fabric don't seem like an artist intent on breaking the rules--it speaks to me of someone who wishes she didn't have to do this.  There's no quilting on the piece.  I'm not sure what holds the layers together.  The stitches on the edges are loose, which again, says to me that the creator was not delighting in the process.  It's very unlike this quilt which has intricate stitches and quilting done by hand:

It wasn't all quilts.  There were interesting works of assembled pieces that some of us wouldn't even see as art materials:

There was painted and welded metals:

I was most captivated by the works of Thornton Dial, who assembled all sorts of materials into works of art.  Here's one that uses a frame of mattress coils (what mattresses used to contain as their core) as the base of the art:

This one of Thornton Dial's, called "Refugees Trying to Get to the United States" has a message, with its pink, yellow, and brown headlike objects in the center, but I'm not exactly sure what it is.

After I took in the special exhibit, I wandered through the other gallery that had selections from the Gallery's collection of works of art from the first 5 decades of the 20th century, mostly paintings.  It was strange to look at the works of Picasso and Miro after seeing the works in the special exhibit.  They seemed flat and dull, even though I understand how they broke new ground, making it possible for works like those in the special exhibit.  I also understand that they had different resources and different objectives and lived in very different life circumstances at a very different place and time.

I returned home a bit worn out, which makes sense--my phone tells me that I walked almost 7 miles yesterday.  For much of the afternoon, even if I wasn't walking, I was on my feet.  After my video call with my spouse, I read for a bit and went to bed extra early, even for me.  I was asleep before 8, and I slept until just after 5, and it was a sound sleep.

In an hour, I'll leave to go see my 16 year old nephew at a swim meet.  It will be a different day, but I'm looking forward to it.

Epiphanies Past and Present

Today is the feast day of the Epiphany, a holiday that celebrates the arrival of the wise men who have been studying the stars when they notice a new one.  They travel, looking for the one whom the star heralds.  They consult a ruler, Herod, and they inadvertently trigger Herod's jealousy, which sets into motion a series of horrible events, the murder of every child under the age of two in Bethlehem.  Jesus isn't there--in a dream, Joseph has been warned to flee with his wife and baby, and he obeys.

I've been looking through my Epiphany posts for the last few years, and I am struck by how much my life has changed.  In 2020, after writing a paragraph where I talked about how I wished I could keep Epiphany,  I wrote, "Instead I will go to my workplace where I will get ready for the term that starts on Wednesday, do some accreditation writing, and then have a New Student Orientation. I'm tired just thinking about it. There's shopping to be done (supplies and food for New Student Orientation) and paperwork--lots and lots of paperwork. Sigh."

Ah, the good old days, before that school was bought by people who changed the academic calendar and severed most of us from our jobs.  The good old days, before the pandemic, when that school still had students and faculty and the hope of increasing enrollment.

This year, I am in a very different place.  I thought about being at seminary and how strange it is that we have no Epiphany worship today.  Then I wondered if the National Cathedral might be having worship this evening.  Did I want to be out and about this evening after going downtown to catch the Vermeer exhibit which leaves after Jan. 8?  

Lo and behold, the Cathedral is offering a noon Epiphany worship with the Eucharist--hurrah!  So I've rearranged my schedule.  I'll walk to the Cathedral for the service, then I'll walk to the Metro stop that's an hour away.  I'll head downtown, and if all goes well (which it should), I'll still have plenty of time for the Vermeer exhibit.

Let me close this post by remembering past Epiphanies that revolved around one of my favorite poems I've ever written.  In 2019, I had been listening to news stories about various immigration crises, and I thought about the 3 Wise Men and if they had come to the U.S. Border.  I made this sketch:

And then I started thinking about a poem with multiple strands:  Epiphany, a current crisis on the border, the crisis between east and west that ultimately led to the taking down of the wall between East and West Germany, a bit of the underground railroad.  Ultimately, this poem arrived, and Sojourners published it in 2020.  It's a perfect fit.



Border Lands


I am the border agent who looks
the other way. I am the one
who leaves bottled water in caches
in the harsh border lands I patrol.

I am the one who doesn’t shoot.
I let the people assemble,
with their flickering candles a shimmering
river in the dark. “Let them pray,”
I tell my comrades. “What harm
can come of that?” We holster
our guns, and open a bottle to share.

I am the superior
officer who loses the paperwork
or makes up the statistics.
I am the one who ignores
your e-mails, who cannot be reached
by text or phone, the one
with a full inbox.

When the wise ones
come, as they do, full of dreams,
babbling about the stars
that lead them or messages
from gods or angels,
I open the gates. I don’t alert
the authorities up the road.
Let the kings and emperors
pay for their own intelligence.

I should scan the horizons,
but I tend the garden
I have planted by the shed
where we keep the extra
barbed wires. I grow a variety
of holy trinities: tomatoes, onions,
peppers, beans, squashes of all sorts.
I plant a hedge of sunflowers,
each bright head a north star.

Scraps into Squares

Back in the busier days of December, I knew that I would have a stretch of unstructured time in January.  How would I fill the time?   I dreamed of writing poems, maybe making a few submissions.  I knew I would fill some of the time with reading.  I thought it was likely I would do some quilting, since it was the activity I turned to in December as I had "free" time.

For much of yesterday, I spent my time sewing small scraps together into larger squares.

I'm using scraps that I would ordinarily have thrown away as too small to continue creating with them.  It's an interesting continuation of a process I started at Thanksgiving.  At first, I was creating a log cabin pattern, but now I'm open to other possibilities.  At first, I wanted to pay no attention to color, but now I let myself do that.  Some squares will be created because I had fabric that fit the shape, and some because I cut fabric that would match the surrounding pieces.  

The goal, however, remains to end with a square of roughly 12 inches.

As I have stitched, listening to NPR or podcasts or watching a movie for free on Amazon (The Devil Wears Prada, which I loved when it first came out, but now I find myself cringing for several reasons:  toxic workplace, young writer abandoning her ideals, young workers set up to fail).  Part of me feels guilty--shouldn't I be doing something more productive?  I have more quilts than someone living in an age of global warming will ever need.

But it's creative and it's calming and I'm enjoying it.  I know that it won't always be this way;  I won't always have time/interest/motivation/space.  Decades of creative life have taught me that when I am feeling pulled into a creative activity, I should follow that impulse.  There will be plenty of days to come when I will look at my fabric piles and shrug.  Now my fingers itch to sew. 

I have plans to go to a museum or two, but yesterday I decided to stay put because it was supposed to rain buckets.  I have written a poem and made a submission.  I'm not passing up on money-making opportunities to sit and sew.  I'm not neglecting my responsibilities.  Yet still this sense of guilt nips at me.

I'm ignoring that nip of guilt.  I need to create 30 squares for the quilt top that I have in mind.  Let me sew scraps together, while I can.

Measurements and Markers: All the Ways We Track Our Lives

I have been thinking about measurements and markers, all the ways we measure success, progress, and our proof of life on the planet.  Here are some of my scattered thoughts:

--Yesterday, I made this Facebook post:  

"Just back from a walk around the neighborhood around my seminary, and I'm amazed at how many people have already discarded the evergreen wreathes that once adorned the doors. I understand why the Christmas trees must go, but the wreathes seem appropriate for at least another winter month or two.

Then again, it's almost 70 degrees here in DC today, and I'm walking in shorts, so maybe winter is over."

--I've been tracking the miles that I walk since I walk with the phone, and Google Maps will do the tracking.  It fascinates me.  Over the holiday, I went on a hike with poet Dave Bonta.  He uses Google Maps too, but mainly to figure out how far he can go with the time and weather that he has on the given day; he tracks out his hike in advance, whereas I head out and later check to see how far I went.  I was intrigued by the difference in our mindsets.

--I am no longer tracking calories or pounds or my heart rate.  I think about all the logs I have kept in the past, all the markers that mattered to me.  I am keeping a list of books I've read and places where I've sent my creative writing.

--I took my spouse to the airport yesterday and returned back to my seminary apartment in the early afternoon.  By bedtime, I had fabric draped over all sorts of surfaces.  I am going to try to make some serious progress on my various quilting projects over the next few weeks and into February before my seminary projects will take over much of my free time.

I love having a project like quilting the big project together and having it draped over me, keeping me warm, along with having a project that consists of small pieces.

--As I moved about my afternoon, I kept an eye/ear on the Speaker of the House elections.  I don't understand why Kevin McCarthy wants this job so desperately.  It's clearly going to be a very toxic work situation.  Yuck.

--But then I also wonder about me--what does it say about me that I have never wanted a job that desperately?  Perhaps that I am happy to say goodbye to all sorts of things--power, prestige, money--if I can avoid a toxic situation.  The jobs that I might want that desperately may not even exist anymore--that factor, too, is one explanation of why I look at Kevin McCarthy and shake my head.

Slow Returns

This morning, I feel more off-schedule than most mornings. That may be because I am off schedule.  Last night, I didn't get to bed until 10 p.m. (very late for me), although I did have a nap.  I didn't sleep well, but I did sleep until 5:15 a.m., which is late for me.  Let me collect a few thoughts here.

--Before sunrise this morning, it was 65 degrees in the mountains of Asheville.  Very strange.  It was warm enough yesterday to be out and about in shorts in Washington, D.C.  In fact, I was tempted to turn on the AC, but I didn't.  This week is unseasonably warm, while last week, it was unseasonably cold.  I do realize that using the word unseasonably implies that we can predict these things, but in a world of rapid climate change, past seasons won't look like current seasons, which won't look like future seasons.

--Long ago, I got a Kindle Fire 7, because I needed to be able to take videos of students to support the social media person's efforts at the school where I worked.  I never was able to make it work as a video camera, but I kept it, thinking that at some point in the future, I might want a reader of some sort.  A few days ago, when my spouse expressed a wish for a reader, I handed him the Kindle.  He's spent some time trying to figure out if it can be the kind of reader he wants.  I'm not sure how it will all turn out, but it does make me glad I kept it--even though I realize it may result in us buying something more flexible, like an iPad.

--My spouse and I have had a very good time together during this time of his visit.  I'm trying not to feel sad that he's not living here with me, full-time, the way we had planned when I was severed from my job.  It's good to have a house that is ours, in a place near Asheville where I want to live long term. And these past weeks have not been my usual seminary life, since he arrived once my Fall 2022 classes were over.

--We've done a bit of exploring of the neighborhoods that border the seminary.  Yesterday, we decided to get a pizza from a local chain, Pizza Boli--it was one of the best Greek pizzas we've ever gotten.  We've made several trips to Wegmans, including one last night.  I felt very grown up, driving after dark.  I don't drive much these days, except for longer trips.  It's a very strange turn of events, especially when I consider distant days of on ground teaching, where I would drive from location to location to location.

--It's also strange in that I don't return to class (the ones I'm taking and the ones I'm teaching) until late January.  In past years, I've leapt right back into working life in the first week of January.  I have never had this much time off for Christmas break.  I could get used to this.

--As we've watched T.V. (by which I mean we're streaming stuff and watching it on the T.V.), I've stitched smaller and smaller scraps together.  It's too hot to have my other project draped over me as I quilt.  The small stitching reminds me of the counted cross stitch that I used to do.  My plan for these small scraps stitched together is to end up with 12-16 panels that are roughly 12 inches square.  And then I'll fashion them into a quilt top--and then, a quilt.

--As in the past, I've read more fiction during the break than I usually have time to read.  And I can look forward to a few more weeks of reading fiction.  What a joy!

--In the next few days, I want to do some serious thinking about my approach to mornings.  For a long time, I've been aware that I spend too much time internet surfing first thing in the morning, and it's usually not nourishing.  I know that I wrote more and read more in the past, before I had a laptop that went with me everywhere.  I submitted more creative work and was more widely published back then too.  Let me think about realistic ways to replicate that setting.

 

Returning to the East Coast

Here I am, back on Eastern Standard Time, except that I'm really not.  I'm still at the point of jet lag where I have to stop to think about what day it is.  On Saturday, December 31, we began our long trek back from our very strange vacation in Hawaii.

We had to check out of our resort villa at 10 a.m., but our flight didn't leave until 5 p.m.  So we ate a last Hawaii meal at the better restaurant that's part of the resort, and then my spouse waited with me and my parents, while the other half of the family vacationers  made their way to the airport.  Then we went to the airport, spent some time at the airport lounge that's a perk of the resort, where we were the only ones.  It's not the kind of lounge where there's free food and alcohol, but it was a relief to be away from the huge crowds of people in the airport.

The flight back was easier than the flight to Hawaii.  We didn't sit at the gate for several hours for one thing, and the trip back took two hours less than the flight there--both direct flights.  The in-flight dinner was strange.  We were asked if we wanted vegetarian pasta or chicken.  I chose the pasta, which was not awful, as far as airplane food goes.

I thought back to my earliest flying days, the mid-80's, where even on short flights, we often got a meal, if the flight happened over a meal time.  I would call ahead to secure a vegetarian meal, which was often a baked potato with a cheese topping or a pasta with a tomato sauce.  Saturday's meal was pasta with a white triangle that seemed to be tofu, not cheese.  There was a bit of salad on the side, and everything had some sort of vinaigrette.  There was a hard roll and butter.  The highlight of the meal was the packet of chocolate covered macadamia nuts.

I did get some sleep on the overnight flight.  I also watched 2 movies, one at the beginning of the flight, and one at the end.  I started with Top Gun Maverick, which I wanted to see when it came out.  It was about what I expected.  Then I went back to the original Top Gun, which has not aged well at all--I couldn't finish it.  

After several hours of restless sleeping, I watched Reality Bites, another movie which hasn't aged well.  At one point, I thought it perfectly captured my life, but now, I'm not so sure.  At one point, I thought it was witty and smart, but now I'm not so sure.  It is an interesting time capsule, a society without smart phones, a young woman making a documentary with a bulky camera instead of her phone, AIDS as a death sentence.

The plane landed, we got our luggage, and off we went to retrieve our car.  My spouse and I returned to my seminary apartment, where he'll stay until tomorrow when he catches a plane back to North Carolina, where we hope our little house has withstood the challenges of last week's deep freeze.  It may have been a great time for him to be away, with power and water disruptions.  Hopefully the pipes didn't freeze and the new HVAC system will still be just fine.

We went for a late afternoon walk around my favorite streets of the neighborhood.  I am happy to see that many of the holiday decorations and lights are still up, and in fact a few more have been added.  We napped, read a bit, drank some wine, ate some cheese and crackers.

Today we'll try to map out a schedule for the remaining home repairs/improvements.  We'll take a walk to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather.  We'll do more of what brings us joy before getting back to the work that must be done.

New Year's Eve Gratitudes

Here it is, the last day of 2022, the year I will think of as the year of whiplash or the slightly more positive pivoting.  It was a year of thinking we were headed in one direction, then being yanked in another, in all the ways I don't want to list right now.  It was also a year of considerable blessings, especially when considering how much worse it could have been.

I am thinking of this end of the week news of those who have died, the famous ones, just in these final days of 2022 alone:  Barbara Walters, Pope Benedict, Pele.  I keep looking at these 3 names, seeing connections and distinctions, the ways they broke boundaries or established them, and the ways that various parts of society would use them, shape them and be shaped by them.

I will have a very unusual New Year's Eve--at 5:00 Hawaii time, if all goes well, our plane will depart the Honolulu airport, and we will fly and fly and fly, east to DC.  It's a direct flight, and we land at 7 a.m., so it will be unlike some other New Year's Eve flights we've had.  I'm remembering one flight that took off from Las Vegas, where the people in the seat behind us had already been partying hard while on the ground.  Happily, although they were loud drunks, they weren't combative or vomitous.  I expect tonight's flight to be quieter.

I always say that I can't sleep on planes, but perhaps I will be able to sleep tonight.  If not, if the United in-air entertainment system is working, we should be able to get good movies.  Coming here, while the plane was at the gate for 3 hours, I watched When Harry Met Sally again, and later I watched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (a bit baffling, a bit intriguing, a lot tiring).  I watched part of Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, which I might return to, but I found the characters tiresome, so I probably won't.

I will peek out the window from time to time, watching the ground below, the sky above, the boundaries dark, the blinking.  I will think about stars and navigation, both the Polynesians following the Southern Cross in their impossibly small canoes, the wise men following a new star (Epiphany approaches), the book lists for my seminary classes that bring me joy.  I am returning from a resort vacation for the first time in a long time not dreading what lies ahead:  no soul-draining job awaiting my input (my ongoing online teaching is not soul-draining), no physical therapy (last May's vacation--so grateful for healing from my wrist surgery, so glad I'm not facing that kind of body repair right now). 

I am a lucky woman