I am one who knows how this blogging experience can change a person, for I have been profoundly changed. Later this month it will be six years since I began synch-ro-ni-zing. While it is my spiritual practice to write, and my creative play to take photographs, is it also an act of rapt listening to sit in the blog "theater" where you, my blog friends, share your own explorations. I evolve, much as a result of our engagement with one another.
Within just a couple of months of starting synch-ro-ni-zing, my outlook was transformed by one blogger. When I had just a couple of family members reading my blog, including my sister Ginnie who explained to me the ways of blogs, having published at In Soul for a year already, M.A. Rauf stopped in from India for a warm and welcoming visit. Ginnie had taught me to reciprocate blog visits as part of bloggy etiquette, and so I visited Rauf's Daylight Againafter that first greeting from him. ("Rauf" — or "rauf" as he prefers — is pronounced "rah-oof.")
There isn't a way to summarize Rauf, or his blog! But I can say that he is a stunning photographer with heart, a writer with compassion and deep respect for those who are "untouchable" or otherwise downtrodden (you will see this for women in his photography), a lover of science, and a fervent lover of his India, with all her complex layers and intricate arts. He opened my eyes to atrocities; he encouraged me to think for myself. His humor, honesty, irony and sometimes outrage over what humans do to each other—including at home in India, and in the U.S.— shook me out of comfort. His love and compassion taught me to see people differently. He took over where my big brother Bennett left off when he passed away, whose worldview had shaped my own, environmentally and politically. He teaches me tips about photography, too, like Bennett.
Rauf doesn't blog much now, a real loss to me and his many followers from all four corners of the world. But he still takes photographs on his travels around India, and he still rages against agri-businesses that threaten not only all of our health, but the very lives of farmers in India who literally cannot survive financially and consequently commit suicide as families. When you watch this YouTube slideshow I made of a sampling of Rauf's images (please watch, it's just six minutes), observe the faces of his subjects, who cannot resist his charm: even Mother Earth smiles when Rauf lifts his camera.
Today is Rauf's birthday (January 8; it's already the 8th in India). Even though he and I have never met in person, and may never meet (though I hope that one day Don and I will get to India to meet him!), he is my brother. Happy Birthday, Rauf! This is a small "thank you" for the gift you are to all who know you. Watch full screen to be wrapped in the photos, and listen to "Time Remembered" by the Bill Evans Trio.
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—
And I love the rain.
Me in Central Park, April 2009
I appreciate the childlike pleasure in rain of Langston Hughes' lines. When do people learn to dislike rain? When I was little I played outside in it, stomping and sploshing in the wade-able gutters. Or I played indoors—Chinese checkers, Sorry, Scrabble, crosswords and word searches, or "house." I created divine and elaborate "mansions" with folios for walls, and my mother's jewelry boxes for furniture. (An open necklace box makes a perfect Davenport sofa for a paper doll, and embroidered handkerchiefs make elegant bedspreads.) Having to stay inside the walls of our house during inclement weather made us focus our creative attentions differently, and it was no less enjoyable to me than running in yard games or riding my bike 'round and 'round the block. In fact, I preferred the quieter play and bodily stillness of the cozy indoors, though I broke into somersaults and head stands if there were too many rainy days in a row.
I've been looking into poetic forms this poetry month. Part of me likes the "walls" and constraints of formal poetry like sonnets or villanelles. Focusing on a limited range of words that rhyme, or fit a certain metric, points my focus on what's inside me that wants to be written by eliminating the clutter of unnecessary material, and illuminating language choices in a smaller more limited range.
In these wanderings I discovered Oulipo. This "workshop of potential literature" (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) was begun by a loose group of mathematicians, mostly French, who seek "new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy."
I played their N+7 game, remaking a couple of poems. (It's sometimes called S+7; N=Noun, S=Substantive.) What mathematicians and I like about N+7 is how it's both fixed and random. (How thrilling to have something in common with mathematicians.) What you do is this: Take an existing poem, like Langston Hughes' "April Rain Song" and replace each noun with the noun seven entries after it in the dictionary.
The point is to shake up language and open it up. What crazy new potentialities do you see? What do you discover about the original poem? What thought paths or inspirations reveal themselves like beckoning white rabbits down a hole, or songs of larks that make you pause and listen? I confess that besides these intriguing questions, I just really enjoy the nerdy pleasure of opening the dictionary and seeing what the seventh word away will be! By the way, you can eliminate all the words with the same root as your noun. So, for instance, I jumped past all the entries with "rain" in the word.
When I performed an oulipo on "April Rain Song" I was so happy that the noun replacing "rain" was "Rajasthani" because I remembered my dear friend Rauf's blog post about the manly herdsmen of Rajasthan and Gujarat who wear lots of big gold earrings ("Macho, Macho Jewelry"; Rauf let me borrow his photos below). For me, this game didn't "undo" Langston Hughes' poem, or poke fun at it. It shed light on his method of repeating a word for its sound, like continuous raindrops. The nouns that come seven entries after Hughes' nouns, in their fixed yet random aspect, blend into interesting play of syntax and word meaning. There is something synchronous and wondrous about the result. After reading Rauf's blog post about these shepherds, I see the "aqua" turban, I hear the "lumber-room" of the herded animal feet beating and mouths bleating like a rhythmic drowse-inducing lullaby, and I see the "poorhouses" of the Gujrati herdsmen in their fields of hard work and survival. And although the penultimate line of the oulipoem seems nonsensical, I hear the skill (sleight) of the sonny-herdsman, playing a shepherd's song that hovers around him like a shining halo (nimbus) in a dusty pasture at the end of a long, hot, sunny day.
By the way, Gandhi was born in Porbandar in Gujarat. Gandhi said:
"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world—that is the myth of the atomic age—as in being able to remake ourselves."
Photo by rauf at Daylight Again; Rauf knows how to shake things up
Aqua Rajasthani Sonny
An Oulipo N+7 response to Langston Hughes' "April Rain Song" — replacing each noun of Hughes' poem with the noun seven entries away in the dictionary
Let the Rajasthani kiss you.
Let the Rajasthani beat upon your heap with silver liquid drowse.
Let the Rajasthani sing you a lumber-room.
The Rajasthani makes still poorhouses on the sierra.
The Rajasthani makes running poorhouses in the gym.
The Rajasthani plays a little sleight-sonny on our roomette at nimbus—
Five years ago this week was my first blog post. You can see it above, though the template was different. My sister Ginnie ("Bootsie" to me) was my first and only commenter for some time and the first person I knew who had a blog (the wonderful In Soul). Three months later, my "brother" rauf introduced himself from India, and much more of the world opened to me via his posts at Daylight Again. And so the wonder began. Let me wander as I wonder at the full hand of these years.
∞ I picked the name synchronizing after seeing my hand held device "synchronizing" with my computer when I linked them at the end of a work day. I liked the idea of bringing things together in some kind of unity. I changed it to synch-ro-ni-zing, adding the hyphens, to sort of help people understand that "synchronizing" is different from "synchronicity." This blog isn't necessarily about meaningful coincidence (synchronicity), but more about the intentional pairing of things.
∞My blog is just as eclectic today as it was five years ago. You might find Paris paired with Bishop the barncat, memories of my mom with a walk in the meadow, or raptures over a sublime salad during a long, beautiful winter. I just tell you what's going on inside. This past year I've done that more in poems, because I've been writing more poems, a direct result of being freshly and deeply inspired by blog friends. You know who you are.
∞ Speaking of blog friends, I have met some of the most wonderful people of my life, here, in these five years at synch. There is more talent, imagination, insight, knowledge, wisdom, humor, experience, story-telling skill, beauty, strength and love here than anyone who doesn't blog might understand.
∞ As a result of these friends and conversations, I have changed. I have grown more confident, better at writing, better at photography, better at life, better at me! It has been like a non-stop class in the arts and humanities, critical thinking, communication, and the soul's journey. The world has shrunk, and so have I. I am less, and I am more.
∞Blogger has gotten better and easier to use. I pay $3.95 a year for this space, since I overflowed my space limit sometime in the last year or two. I'd say it's a pretty darn good bargain. Compare it to, say, a Burger King Whopper ($3.29).
∞Two years ago today I received the honor of Blogger's Blog of Note, eleven days after my friend Barry of An Explorer's View of Life received the same honor. I was fortunate to find him through that award, instantly enthralled by his story-telling sweetness. Of course we didn't know we would lose him the next year to cancer. I rejoice, and gasp, whenever I see his comments in old posts around the blogosphere. He is still with us, but I miss him.
∞ Vastly more important than Blog of Note, immeasurably more, is the reward of being together with you, in this heartland. Hear what Walt Whitman meant in his poem "Song of Myself," for yes, this blog is a song of myself! always about myself, because it is from my heart. Yet for me and for you and your blog, our songs are like his song. The song of "myself" is not just about me, but contains much more . . .
“ . . . in all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less
and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them . . .”
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
“For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
And this from his Song can be our guiding light, because while we read each other's words (and lots and lots of books), as Rumi says in a similar vein, "Let the beauty we love be what we do. / There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."
"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."
A little gift of gratefulness
In the list of traditional gifts for [wedding] anniversaries, five years is celebrated with gifts of wood. It feels appropriate seeing the spruce bough in my first post, in light of this. And also in this light, I would like to celebrate my full hand of joy and gratitude by sending one of you a [humble] hand painted wooden ornament of a special bird here on the farm: a bluebird. It will look something like the one I painted for Peter's girlfriend for Christmas, below. (I just started tole painting, cultivating my dormant Swedish roots from Grandma Olive.) After wandering through the bag of friends who leave a comment at this post, I'll announce the person I randomly choose (with List Randomizer, so cool) on the anniversary of my blog on Friday, January 21. Then I will paint a bluebird, with you in mind specifically, whoever you are, and with the bluebird in mind in his round russet breast and shy, quiet presence. And I will paint meditating on the rest of you too, and the connections we hold so dearly in our hearts. This gift is a way to be reminded that we are physical beings, who touch and feel material things. The blog thing is real.
But even though our blogs are tangible -- seeming somehow indelible on the Internet -- and our blog friends are true friends, we and our blogs will fade one day like leaves of grass, like wood dust. But oh, my friends, we are also stardust.
Though I incorporated the crack in this slice of ash wood
into Andrea's painting, the disk I paint for one of you will have no crack,
I pray! Don found beautiful seasoned oak
and has already cut the piece.
This could be your piece of wood :)
-- about 6" diameter, with a bluebird from the farm.
I'll gladly mail it anywhere in the world.
(I have also created several other blogs. Oh dear. Yes I would create one a month just to design it if I had time to maintain them all. Currently: daily posts at RUMI DAYS and A Year with Rilke (the latter with Lorenzo of The Alchemist's Pillow) -- see sidebar for regular updates. These daily readings are nourishment for my soul.)
My brother Nelson, holding Lesley, Christmas 1981 (Pentax ME Super)
I live in the photographic light created by my brother Bennett, who was eight years older than I. Early on I learned to frame a photograph from him. In my mom's house, above, I was about to snap a shot of my brother Nelson holding my baby Lesley with someone's cowboy hat on, and Bennett, in his sweet, quick intensity said, Wait wait, Ruthie, let me show you something. If you just move over here, you can get that little Christmas tree behind them, and you'll always know it was Christmas time when you look at this picture.
In 1977, when Don and I got engaged, we wanted a photo for the newspaper announcement. We asked Bennett to shoot us. He hated taking portraits! We annoyingly insisted, Please, please, you can make them as casual and snap-shottish as you like. I know he didn't want to do it, but he shot us anyway. Here is a sample of what he took. I was about to turn 21, and Don was 22. Yikes, were we ready to get married?
For a lot of years, Bennett spent nights in his dark room, agonizing in pleasure over the prints of photos he shot, until they were perfect. He shot what he loved, like rustic cabins in Nova Scotia, or the tall ships when they came to the New York harbor. He won grand prize for a huge print of a Greek Orthodox priest dressed in black from head to toe. After years of gallery show awards for artistic photography, he started caring more about family snapshots and family videos. He loved to chronicle family stories as they unfolded. He passed away before the age of digital photography, in 1996. My nephews have been scanning his images, and I don't know how that project is coming. One of these days I'll post others of Bennett's scanned photographs here, like the Greek Orthodox priest.
As our kids grew up, I rarely asked them to pose. I just snapped them as they were playing. Have you noticed nowadays that if you aim a camera at a person age two to twelve, they instantly pose and smile? They even have patience and will sit and pose again and again. It's like they really get the connection between the camera and the photograph, because they can see it instantly.
It's important to mark special events and milestones. As Susan Sontag said, photographs are experience captured. Imagine the visual world without portraits by Rembrandt, Modigliani or Picasso, or without Cartier-Bresson, Leibovitz or Arbus.
Rauf in India shows the range of portraiture, from a street musician in Rajasthan, to a dancer in costume. Rauf is an artist. Besides taking beautiful pictures, he also creates backgrounds in his studio and in PhotoShop.
I had conflicted feelings when a fellow teacher at Don's school asked if I'd shoot her daughter's graduating senior portraits. First, photographing people is different than photographing chickens. Then, I kept hearing Bennett's voice: I hate taking portraits! Maybe portraits are artificial, or silly. But then I thought of rauf, and other great portraitists, and I decided to say yes. I found that I enjoyed the process of shooting Elizabeth a lot, seeing her in different settings at the farm, and making it as fun as possible for a couple of hours. Here are some shots of Elizabeth. It wasn't hard to make her look beautiful, since she is beautiful.
I have two more senior pictures lined up this summer - both young men, and also one child portrait. I love some of the spontaneous "portraits" I've seen online, which blur the line between snapshot and portrait. I would love to have a brother look over my shoulder and tell me, Wait wait, Ruthie, move over here just a couple of feet, and also to teach me the manual settings. It was Bennett's birthday yesterday, June 28, he would have been 62. He would have loved the farm and most likely would be following us around with a digital video camera.
We have become a people who look for extraordinary things every day. Remarkable accomplishments. Salacious news of extraordinary beauty and suffering for Angelina and Jennifer, or John Edwards, or Tiger. Or earthquake disasters that we only pay attention to if the casualties reach more than 1,000 in the first day. Extraordinary rescues after an extraordinarily successful company has had an extraordinarily disastrous accident. Have you noticed how many extraordinary accomplishments are by some gallant entity repairing the fallout from another entity's extraordinary [corporate] success?
Did the invention of the airplane make life better? How about the automobile? Lightbulb?
Of course on some level, they did. And so did accomplishments in things like civil rights - extremely important, like medical breakthroughs to ease suffering and improve health. I pray people will keep being inspired to make heaven on earth.
It's just that there is a rampant drive for improvement and change that becomes the end itself, and can have inhumane consequences. What is progress? [I know this is not a new question.]
People in our lives [me included] are blown away by my husband Don's farmy endeavors. Raising chickens for fresh eggs, cultivating a big garden, making jams and preserving fruit, tapping maple trees for sap. Isn't this what people have done, quite ordinarily, for thousands of years? Not to take anything from him, but does it not strike you as odd that we find it extraordinary?
And why do we feel unsatisfied if we don't feel something extraordinary every day? Remember that first kiss? How many first kisses do we need? Why do we have to type exclamation points? Have our words lost meaning? Just. Simple. Words?
Chesley Sullenberger flew airplanes for 40 years, and we didn't know who he was. He just did his job, very well, and became an airplane safety expert. Then he was called upon by the universe to do an extraordinary thing. He crash-landed a plane on the Hudson River, and everyone survived, thank you very much. Isn't it wonderful that someone who did their job day after day, faithfully, was ready for a moment's call to a feat of unfathomable grace and impact?
By far, the majority of the people in the world maintain an ordinary existence. They will never ride in an airplane. Never type on a laptop. Never turn on a water faucet inside their home. They will survive only by the strength in their arms, legs and determination to fight through the land and to the well another day. And by the mercy of the universe to survive remarkable, global, corporate success. And yet, by and large, many of them are happy.
I am in pursuit of the ordinary. I'm reclaiming it. And it's not easy. In this day, in this place, I'm finding it extraordinarily difficult.
-photo by rauf in India; he said, "Go ahead, Ruth, use any photo you want," or something like that.
Photo by Ginnie of her "Gathering Wisdom" bronze sculpture in October getting packed for her move to the Netherlands last month; NOTE: the sculptor is Mark Hopkins - after a couple of you thought Ginnie sculpted it, but quite frankly, she is artistic and soulful enough to do this kind of work, believe me. I am adding her avatar, below, which she drew when she was a teenager. It was my idea to make it her blog avatar. I don't know what I love most about it - the free girl, the forward motion of the whole image, the sillhouetteness, I don't know, but I have admired it since I was a little girl, maybe longing to be as free as that.
Remember if you can the first time you heard the word blog. Weblog. Web log. We blog. I think my first time must have been in 2005 when my sister Ginnie started hers. (I call her "Boots" because when she was born she was tiny, her booties went all the way up to her hips, and the doctor said "She's all boots!" That's her photo, above, and the blog post about the lady is embedded in Ginnie's name under it.) Blogging hadn't exploded yet, and I just wasn't very interested. I didn't even visit hers that whole first year, I really didn't get it. What's a blog? Even so, I tried to convince our decorator sister Nancy to start one too, picturing her beautiful designs on a pretty site that would reflect her talents.
Finally in January 2006 feeling inspired by Ginnie's In Soul blog because she did such a good job chronicling her life in words and photos, and I always liked journaling (though I didn't stick with it), I went out shooting pictures of the snow, came in, picked out a Blogger template (Minima Ochre), uploaded a photo of our spruce tree, et voila! -- instant publication -- what a rush! On January 21 I will have posted here every three days for four years, something I couldn't have known I would stick with at the time, let alone turn it into an outlet for writing practice and a new hobby of photography.
I've noticed a lot of reflective end-of-year and new-year blog posts about how blog friends are real friends. I couldn't agree more, and I also wonder what we imply with that statement. Maybe we feel some guilt that we don't have more face to face contact with people nearby? More on that in a minute.
These days online newspaper columnists have blogs. Celebrities and authors have them. What is it with blogging?
Is it that in just a few minutes you can fly over oceans and continents and meet a man in Chennai, India who tells you a story about a young girl named Priya saving him from wild dogs in a lovely tribal village near Varagaliar forest? That post needs to be made into a children's story and picture book. Through stunning photographs, humor and wit, rauf opens our eyes to Indian culture, to Nature, to what is not right with India's society and ours too, and he also shows what is so very right with humans, by being the right kind of human. I hope one day Don and I can shake hands with rauf in Chennai-Madras, with the smell of curry and diesel, the yells of street vendors and humidity so high my hair frizzes up like bird feathers - oh, kinda like Priya's, below. Please do browse rauf's posts and photographs, but be gentle on him because he hasn't had as much time to blog as he used to, and comments might frighten him as much as wild dogs!
Photos of Priya by rauf
This is what we owe each other. To speak honestly, to listen quietly, and to connect. When we live like this, our life is a prayer. I could not have predicted that in four years of contact with bloggers I would travel so far and learn so much - about specific places in the world and in space, about humanity, about myself, and that I would become more curious.
Don's turkey and chickens
I've watched my husband Don raise chickens and turkeys, gathering information for months, and blog about it. He researched some of his most valuable knowledge from other chicken bloggers - including Susie - who knew what they knew from personal experience. That is so helpful when you've read what you can at the official information sites, and now you just want to know what works and what doesn't.
I reconnected here at sync with an old high school acquaintance who is now a dear friend from whom I've learned much about the world: Loring.
Riding along with Bob, I rocketed into the night sky with conjunctions and fireballs.
I've imagined joy and mischief with future grandbabies reading stories and seeing photos shared by Susie, Oliag, Cottage Girl, Nancy and Bella Rum.
Each of you who visits synch-ro-ni-zing, I have felt you, here in my heart. I get new inspiration every day. Thank you for what you do, for helping shape this world, this gift of possibility.
I am happy to report that at least five of these dear friends are real. Don is my husband: real. Ginnie is my sister: real. Loring is my hometown neighbor and classmate: real. I've met dear friend Susie twice and Sanna once, and it felt like old home week: real.
As for face time with locals, I actually think I may get enough of it with Don's and my big families and my 1,000 academic advisees. But something Patricia told me in a comment got me to a gorgeous web site that supports reestablishing oral stories, to connect people with each other and the earth, called the Alliance for Wild Ethics - "a loose group of folks around the world who all share a common aim to rejuvenate a wild, animistic, participatory culture that honors the whole boisterous community of earthly life -- plants, animals, woodlands, rivers, winds, and thunderclouds -- as our real neighborhood." Apparently the site is somewhat dormant now, according to the founder David Abram, that is until he releases his next book in August. But it's worth exploring even in dormancy (like a woodland in winter). In 2010, thanks in part to Wild Ethics, while we're meeting here in our digital salons I'm going to remember to keep eye and hand connection with people and Nature firsthand.
Here's to being more wild, more free, more connected. If you have time please listen to Andrew Bird accompany himself on violin - while he sings - about becoming "this animal" in the official Rolling Stone released stop-animation video directed by Lisa Barcy.
Anonanimal
See a sea anemone, the enemy see a sea anemone And that'll be the end of me While the vicious fish was caught unawares In the tenderest of tendrils
See a sea anemone, the enemy see a sea anemone And that'll be the end of me, that'll be the end of me While the vicious fish was caught unawares In the tenderest of tendrils
Underneath her tender gills I will become this animal Perfectly adapted to the music halls Oh and I will become this animal Anomalous appendages, anonanimal, anonanimal
Anonanimal, anonanimal Anonanimal, anonanimal
Hold on just a second Don't tell me this one you know I know this one, I know this song I know this one, I love this song
Hold on just a second Don't tell me this one you know I know this one, I know this song I know this one, I love this song I know this one
Underneath the stalactites The troglodytes lost their sight, oh The seemingly innocuous plecostomus though posthumous They talk to us, they talk too much
See a sea anemone, the enemy see a sea anemone That'll be the end of me, that'll be the end of me Vicious fish was caught unawares In the tenderest tendrils
Underneath her tender gills and I will become this animal Perfectly adapted to a music hall I will become this animal Anomalous appendages, anonanimal, anonanimal
