The Beauty of Life

The beauty that surrounds me is without compare, but every year at this time I discover that I am standing on the edge of something gorgeous and filled with allure. There is tension, there is sadness, and there is hope that all swills together into the giant blue cocktail glass we call the sky. What is there in the coming of fall that brings such intense feelings?

As the leaves fall in frozen showers of gold, I wonder at the world we are so privileged to live in, to love in, to flourish in. It doesn't take a miracle, it doesn't take a lifetime, and it doesn't take anything more than amazement at the sheer loveliness found in every waking moment to comprehend how precious are our lives.

A quick look at the garden reveals that my sunflowers gleam with ice. Until the morning thaws, they are preserved in perfect likeness of the sunny beauties that have greeted me all summer long. How fragile is life here and, yet, so resilient. A laugh wells up from inside me as the mental image of a giant dumping bottles of clear nail polish over the well shaped flowers blooms within my mind.  I cannot stop myself from contemplating the fantastic sight before me. I don't feel that it belongs to our world, but to the pages of a good fairy tale.

The chill air makes me shiver and I feel a warm smile spreading over my face. The fond memories of my life are lucid today and I possess a perfect clarity that is akin only to the thrill of walking barefoot through the first good snow of winter. Pure joy. Though the day is the same as yesterday, I know that today shall be different if only for the great dreams it promises to bring.

It's true, today's entry is not in keeping with my usual entries. Right now, form and narrative don't seem to matter or even have a place here. After all:

July 1st, 2014,

The world fascinates my every feeling sense, until all that remains is my soul.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I hope that you are able to look at the small and the large, the simple and the complex, and realize that the greatest beauty of all has nothing to do with where you are; rather, it has to do with who you are. I know that in my own life that knowledge has made all the difference.

I love our world and I love all of you who have helped to make my life beautiful.

Love,
Jenn

What I Have Learned This Summer

Every year, well, every season, I find that I learn more about myself and more about my environment.

So what have I learned?

1) Pick your flowers while you can because killer frosts come far too soon in this forest.

2) When adolescent bears are 30 feet from your door, they are adorable. When they proceed to eat the wild cranberries, they are merely cute.

3) Mushroom pale students + intense northern sunlight = pain

4) We no longer have to pick the squirrels off with the .22 because PJ, our year old cat, picks them off for us.

5) This world may be the same, but each moment brings new and unique experiences.

6) There is nothing better than the taste of sunlight.

7) If you listen hard enough, you can hear the Earth's heartbeat.

8) The smallest gestures in life produce the greatest results.

9) Your brain may feel clogged with duckweed, but at least it has a purpose.

10) Each moment is precious. Never let the frosts of life touch what matters to you the most.



Love,
Jenny

August 2014 (Because I Love Experimental Forms)

A note on the post: Just because I think they are fun to write, I have decided to write a blog post that is a combination of the braided lyric and the flash essay forms. Enjoy! ~MUL

Sweat. Trickling it slides and tickles. A mosquito flies by. Itching hands seek out the insect that is biting into tender, fleshy parts. A slap.

Summer’s autumn days are here. I walk through the compact of tan foundation with its cool powder puff of clay, and contemplate the insect sounds that flit here and there and all around. The days are hot. Exposure bleached my hair out long ago. The forest, sick with streaks of gold, flaked out in the sun for too long. It peels without interest. Those trees whose roots are shallow have leaves of half-green -- squiggled scorch marks -- and of half-yellow.

            

The hand feels wet and the mouth emits a groan. Great. Another blood bomb. But, look. The hand is covered in a translucent, clear substance. Sweat.

Well, that was a fun way to spend twenty minutes.

Have a magnificent week!

Love,

Jenny

              

A Beautiful Summer

A few weeks ago, a dear friend of mine asked me to keep him posted on how my summer goes. I told him that, in short, it glows. After that conversation, I began to think of just why this summer seems so perfect. You see, I expected it to be one of the worst in recent history because I intentionally took a very difficult semester in order to justify the slack fall line-up I have on board for travel reasons.

Why does this summer glow?

1) The world is a beautiful place.

2) I know I love others and that I am loved in return.

3) The creatures that surround me are made more brilliant by their simple needs and complex designs.

4) The forest acts more alive than I remember from past summers.

5) There is an abundance of sunshine to soak up and a blue, blue sky to wade through each and every day.

6) There are more songbirds this year and, for that very reason, more songs in my heart.

7) The breezes are gentle caresses that shield me from the bugs that bite and drive me crazy.

8) The berries glisten with raw seduction in both shade and sunlight; giant gems waiting to be picked.

9) The rocks sparkle more and make me wonder at the vastness of our world.

10) I feel myself glowing in the awakening that has followed a long sleep filled with beautiful dreams.

It took me quite awhile to come up with the above ten points, but I know my list really has no end. Each day, I continue to add new thoughts and beautiful observations that show me just how magnificent is the forest in which I live, how all of life itself is glorious. In my beautiful summer I want only to lean back, observe, and enjoy each and every moment with the peace that by my waking thoughts revives my soul.

In this moment, may each of you know that you are loved. I hope your summers glow.

Love,

Jenny

A Typical Day

I realize I haven't added to my blog of late and, for it, I apologize. The truth is, I have been contemplating a blog suggestion from an old family friend.

What is a typical day like in my life?

Good question.

The only answer that felt right is that there is no such thing as a typical day. But, that doesn't really answer the question, now does it?

7:00am - My parents have been up for an hour or more, and one of them shouts up to where I am curled up in my snug little world wishing I could ignore the sounds of their alarm clock voices. Daddy goes for a walk

7:30am - I switch to autopilot, and slip on clothing that reflects a mad scientist's ideas of good taste and ask someone to please put up the ladder. Daddy usually has my coffee poured and waiting amidst the continental mess I call a desk. When I sit down, it's a gross understatement to say I'm awake. Rather, I'm lost in my mind and trying to capture that beautiful dream I had to leave behind in my bed. I listen to my parents talk and maybe throw a random thought out there, but for the most part I'm a coffee drinking veggie.

8:00am - Still a vegetable for whom the world doesn't really exist.

8:30am - I start to contribute to the family by joining the philosophical, political, or sociological debate going on around me.

9:00am - I'm finally to the point that I can function, and I usually make more coffee. By now I'm thinking about school. My thoughts usually go something like:
          1. Spanish. Need to work on Lección whateveritis. Oh, and the next assignment.
          2. Faust. Hmm... I should probably sit down and figure out what I want to write my research paper on.
          3. Creative Non-fiction. Editing, again? Oh, well, I guess those cute little punctuations can be fun.
During this process, I'm usually toasting two slices of homemade bread, toasting them on Momma's cast iron skillet, and reminiscing with Momma.

9:30am to 11:00am - I study and Momma gets exasperated with me because all I want to do is talk. That's studying for you.

11:15am - I go plaster myself to the flatbed and soak up some sun in a pair of Daisy Duke lookalikes and work on my tan.

11:30am - Lunch break.

Noon - Back to work after I eat, usually bread again, and maybe have a short talk with Daddy who comes in to get out of the sun for a break. Throughout the morning, Momma usually reads or works with Daddy (depending on what he's doing that day).

12:00 to 2:00pm - Another tanning session where I hum old rock tunes, day dream, and think of those I care for most.

2:30pm to 4:00pm - Back to the books.

4:30pm or 5:00pm - I organize my studies for the next day. Really, there actually is an organizing thought behind The Monstrosity. Then, I take off for a 3 mile walk down to Homestead Road.

6:00pm - I'm back, buggy, and getting ready for dinner.

6:30pm - Dinner and a movie on my laptop.

9:00pm - Bedtime.

That is as typical an agenda as I can form. We take one day a week and go to High Level or, maybe, Peace River if we need major items. On those days, I swim laps at noon to 1pm and then go to the library to get online for research purposes and talk to my friends. There is nothing else typical about my life other than eating, sleeping, and breathing.

Love,
Jenny

Spring Revelations

What I write for MUL is sometimes the runoff work I do when developing an essay for a class. To survive this semester, my work often contains 3 parts whimsy and 10 parts coffee...

Every spring, the forest inhales and holds it breath. The air is laden with expectations of new life, a ballooned world rich with foreboding and tension. During this time, the world is brown with speckles of new green. The aspens are heavy with blossoms that resemble tentacled pussy willows waving in a whiff of breeze. In less than a week, the blooms begin to shrivel up into little brown strings that look more dead than alive.

Though I adore winter, this may be my favorite part of spring. I begin to notice grasses, golden all winter, flushed with green blush. The ducks, robins, and the small birds that look suspiciously like whippoorwills fill the air with sound. Frogs in chorus croak and rasp. They remind me of cicadas and crickets from Missouri’s sultry summer nights.

One unexpected morning, I look out the window by my bed and see the tree by the woodpile. What large leaf buds! How could I have missed the trees budding out? A closer look reveals that the trees are all budding and close to leafing out in the denouement of spring. I notice that the wild cherry trees have thin leaflets poking out from fragile stems, the rose bushes push forth their wispy leaves from between their thorns, and the lilac cuttings from our last home are lowering their green spears and will soon unfurl into soft shapes. If I blink, I know I’ll miss that exhale when the whole world grows up for another season of life and virility.

My transplanted wild violets are in bloom and, every day, I check the clumps of twin flower, my personal favorite, that grow on the northwest sides of random trees. The first mature green leaves in spring, I wait for their pixie-sized stems to form, for their duel-branched flowers to curve toward the many-layered mulch of dead aspen leaves, and for their miniature translucent pinks and white bells to flash up from the forest floor. The child in me wonders what it would be like to be smaller than an inch, wandering free through woodland halls of blooming twin flowers, unseen by the mountainous giants that thunder by my little trickling streams and deep mossy bowers.

When I imagine such an enchanting microcosm, I have a habit of craning my neck back and looking straight up through the overarching branches at the bright blue sky. The microcosm I live in is far vaster than any I might ever imagine. Besides, who says that the trees that curve about me couldn’t become giant flowers one day? It’s true, I openly refuse to grow up. Maturity is great, but to lose my imagination would make life dry, common, and dull. Who in their right mind wants to live that way? The world is so fascinating that I could never permit such a bland outlook on that which is an ever-changing myriad of kaleidoscope details. Could you?

Love,

Jenny

The Rites of Spring

Every year, the snow piles up, the winds blow, and the spirit begins to feel squashed into a tight little space by the grey skies and the never-ending white of the snow. Then, it happens. The thermometer begins to flirt and tease us in jumps of its thin red line. Haltingly, the snows melt, freeze, melt, freeze. I dig out my rain boots and wear them when there is too much squelching clay. Daddy thinks of his garden, Momma thinks of her canning, and I think of my flowers.

As I walk down the dry road in my black and yellow rain boots, I can't help but laugh. What a sight I must make! Besides the irony of wearing rain boots when it's dry, I am also carrying an open umbrella. Looking around, I see that I am under a patch of bright blue sky and I can feel the intense heat of the sun. Feeling quite smart, I carry on and, before long, feel the pattering of raindrops as the sun goes behind one of many very large, very dark clouds. I am reminded alternately of Mary Poppins and Igor Stravinsky's The Rites of Spring.

The Rites of Spring... Yes, that is the perfect metaphor for how spring arrives in the north. It begins in bursts that lead to a psychological agony with all the stops and the starts pulled out. It rains, is snows, it pours, it shines, and, ultimately, the wet clay-mud sticks to everything it touches.

I look up. There is a flock of geese flying in V-formation. With a smile I watch the changing of the guard, well, of the lead goose. Their sorrowful and awkward calls fly before them from high above my mere form, which is only glorious in its insignificance. My days shall be filled with sound once more, for with the coming of spring comes the Canada goose. They will come and squabble for the best nesting sites; as I jog, I will probably have the occasional hilarious run-in with mating pairs and their young. But for now, it is still wintery and blustery; after all, it's only mid-April. In fact, it's supposed to snow.

Then, as though Winter were in a rush, the snow melts and the squishing ground underfoot begins to dry. As the clay becomes solid once more, I will find myself looking around at the bare brown world. With an air of expectation, the forest will seem to say, "I'm still sleeping, but--" In consternation, I will find myself wanting to know, "but, what?" Then the answer comes, a small surprise, and I will answer myself, "but -- not for long." For beneath me, far below the limbs and branches that I trail my fingers against as I walk, there it will be: green.

Even though I am enjoying the awkward youth of spring, I have to admit that I shall miss winter. There's something so delightful in the way winter freezes sound into little bites that, though mournful, are just enough to make me think, to wonder at the world and everything in it. On warm days, were it not for the snow, I would never be able to see the snow lice turn my white world into gun metal blue, nor would I ever see their little, black hopping bodies jumping in their little lousey way. The snow louse is almost invisible because of its extraordinarily small size. They are everywhere now, but that is because it is so warm, and the snow looks sooty to the untrained eye. While looking at the lice, I often find spiders that have blown off their perches in the trees lumbering by; or, if it is still quite cold by spider temperature, wiggling their legs in slow agony.

The first green of spring, really isn't green at all. I've tried to put it into words so many times, but the closest I have ever come to describing that first green is that it is more silver than green. The first seen, is never old enough yet to understand the bitter chlorophyll that shades all the forest in fertile green, is always of a pastel Easter green, a dye that is too dilute, and shrouded in winter's last reminder, enclosed in a faint frost of silver, the first tender living leaf will begin to unfold, to stretch upward to the deep blue of the May sky.

The wonder of life in the Boreal Forest. The rites of spring.

Love,

Jenny