Patterns stop me, interrupt trains of thought, perfectly good runs, conversations and sometimes even presentations. Beautiful, graphic, repetition. Bold shapes repeated over and over and over again.

The above shadow play, certainly not a rigid repeating pattern, but a pattern nonetheless line the Ashuwillticook trail. I run this rail trail near my house, especially when I am in need of a flat run. But just noticed, stopped in my tracks when I saw these patterns today and looked at the trees from a renewed lens.

I began thinking of J. Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day, which is celebrated today, the last Friday of April in MA, and many of our states, and something that he said about trees.

And it all comes from a little tiny seed. Morton goes on to describe the process of planting and the science behind what happens to the seed as it becomes the tree, finishing his address with the commentary on how humans have cut down and consumed trees, but often do not replant or restore the forests. This sentiment was his reasoning behind creating Arbor Day.

Planting a seed, any seed is a commitment to the future, a fostering of hope, a belief that the tiny little thing will grow into something solid and massive, life-giving and beautiful.

My tree work and writings began as a way of creating my own forest in a treeless city. It was a gathering of friends, a gathering of quiet and peace, in an otherwise noisy place. I have seen the transformative power of trees for the earth and for humanity, and I honor this today with plans and actions of how I can be a better tender of the earth.

And even though summer is a ways a way, this Mary Oliver poem comes to mind. She talks about knowing how to be idle, something that is very hard for me to do. But today, besides planting some trees and doing a wee bit of grading, I was idle today. I sat down in the grass and dug my hands into the earth and marveled at the tiny little particles that surround the roots of these baby trees. I gazed at the rain falling. I wandered without much of a mission across the fields. I took a nap. I let myself go from whatever to whatever, being, not doing. This is my offering, my prayer today.

The last two lines of this poem always stop me, and I ask that question of my life, what do I want of it? Being in the world, being of the earth, being with the trees, the forest, my family, my animals. She is calling me to be, not to do do do. Or is she?

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” This website uses that quote as its motto. I came across this site while trying to find a link for the man in India who planted so many trees near some river that the land is being protected as a national trust. (But I haven’t found the link yet, so if you know this story, please send me the link!)

Maybe I’ll subscribe to the news feed, and add a bit of inspiration to my daily blog and subscription reads. What do you read daily?

I also send them. Some that I make, some that I buy. Sometimes I wonder who enjoys the sending and receiving more. Me the sender, or the recipient.

While in Venezuela I kept a look out for a post office. We were traveling in such remote areas that finding one by chance never happened. I also never found any postcards. The couple of “souvenir shops” we visited didn’t sell any.

So, I made some. I couldn’t stand the thought of going to Venezuela, my first time to South America, without sending anyone a postcard. This is coming from someone who spent a year sending postcards to 20+ people for every place I visited for more than 72+ hours. And, those were all handmade cards–of tree rubbings. (Don’t know that project? Go here.)

I don’t know if they will every arrive. I never found a postoffice, I gave them to our guide with some cash and the hope that he would follow through. So hopefully, fingers crossed, the recipients will get them. At this writing it’s nearly three weeks since I handed them over, so who knows where they are…

I want to live some place where calla lilies grow like weeds, on the side of the row, free for the picking. This particular lily is in Venezuela, where I spent the past 10 days, biking, hiking and exploring the Venezuelan Andes. And now it is spring, well, feels like summer on this freak warm March day, and time to spring clean, the house, the mind, the soul.

It reminds me to revisit my goals, to make new goals, and get rid of old goals, the ones that I’ve outgrown. Having goals gives me inspiration, a plan, something to anticipate, to look forward to. I recently reminded my students of the importance of setting goals, and mapping out the steps to achieve those goals especially as they approach graduation.

I need to do it just as much as they do.

I’ve been thinking about my goals a lot lately. Like many people I know, my life is consumed by busy-ness, and I want that to change. I also want to live someplace where bougainvillea grows. And both of these things are not going to happen overnight.

So there’s the long, long-term plan (to relocate someplace warm) and the many shorter term plans, the things that I hope to do sooner, than later.

Some goals are yearly, like running 1000 miles, trying to read a book every week or two, making art/writing creatively everyday, and having a girl date every week or two. Other goals are multi-yeared, like  tenure, or down the road, like getting a Fulbright. But I think about them. I write about them, and I start to make plans.

But none of these goals address that bigger one, how to minimize that feeling of busy-ness. The older I get, the more I seek quiet–this helps with the busy-ness. So I silence the radio in my car. I sit in meditation. I attempt to walk and run mindfully in the woods. I choose to be alone, to stay home, to find the quiet.

Finding time in my day to focus on the third eye, to breathe, to sit, becomes my heroin, the fix I need to get my bliss, and this becomes the greatest goal of all.

What do you do to minimize the busy-ness? What are your goals?

And now, Rilke…

And what might I do with this glorious extra day? Wouldn’t it be nice if today was a special project day, instead of it getting folded into our regular  patterns and routines? In the world according to Melanie, it would be a day where everyone in the world got to do whatever they wanted, an extra weekend day, a day for one’s own devices, a day that could not be used to get caught up on the backload of work, email, or other stuff, but a day to work on that special project, to invent, imagine, fantasize.

Last year I read a number of books on motivation designed for the business world. A couple of forward thinking companies build days like this into their schedules. Days where employs get to fool around and play, experiment and try out ideas. A day where pressure is eliminated and the joy of finding bliss in the creative process, whatever that process might be, from art to engineering to cooking to playing with kids, etc. THAT is the job of the day.

Join me with this fantasy…imagine what you would do today, if today wasn’t just folded into the regular routine, but instead was that special day for you to pursue that idea or dream that gently taps, taps, taps at your sub-conscious.

Branching Together unites the work of Helen Hiebert, Sun Young Kang and Michelle Wilson, three artists who work with paper. Each artist is on a journey, a path, a way that branches together and outwards to others. Trees with their branches and roots, reach out to life and death, and invite the viewer to walk the path, the way between. They each engage the viewer, ultimately asking what are the paths that we walk, as child, mother, and citizen? Handmade paper, made from the earth, serves as the primary medium linking these works. But each artist transforms this everyday material into an artwork that invites the viewer to see their reflection and find moments of connection in their own life.

The centerpiece of the exhibit, Mother Tree, is a visual and emotional journey made tactile with natural fibers and was conceived by Helen Hiebert and serves as a symbol of the vulnerability, strength, and sense of community she feels as a mother.

Mother Tree by Helen Hiebert

Mother Tree was created with translucent abaca-based paper. Strands crocheted from cotton, linen, hemp and flax form the roots. Some of these strands are crocheted by Hiebert, many more are crocheted from others who read about her project online or experienced it at a gallery. Contributors include notes with their strands. The strands represent milk, and as Helen explains, “as the milk cascades to the floor, it turns into roots and these roots are multi-colored and multi-fibered, representing all of humanity and our diversity. The threads in Mother Tree symbolize the lifeline that connects all women to their past as well as to their future.”

Like Mother Tree, To Find the One Way, by Sun Young Kang, also begins with a personal experience, her response to the death of her father, and the inseparability of life and death that connects us all to our ancestors and our children. She too, explores these lifelines that connect us all to our past, as well as our future. To Find the One Way is inspired by the Buddhist idea of the number 108 and the renderings of the character  (Tao), which has various meanings, including “path” or “way.”  Kang extends the play with the number 108 by extending it to 1080 pieces of paper, all marked with the  (Tao) character.

To Find the One Way, Sun Young Kang

Kang used burning incense to make the negative space on each page, creating absence, which represents death or loss. When lit, the absence creates a shadow. This shadow has triple significance; it draws attention to the negative space, and the absence the space suggests, and it calls to mind memories of the one who is absent. Every character of emptiness on the paper creates 1080 different ways or paths. Each of the paths connects absence and presence, the past and the now, the loss and the memories, and death and life, lifelines of dualities between which we all journey.

Michelle Wilson, also uses absence in The Ghost Trees. Wilson aims to find the intersections in one’s lifeline where thought takes action, where one decides along the way to make a stand. In her case, the stand represents her love of nature, and the ecological links that paper inherently represents. Through the use of watermarks, this installation creates a “haunting” in the paper itself, evoking the immense deforestation that occurs every year to keep up with the demand for paper.

Ghost Trees, by Michelle Wilson

The lines, paths and ways created by fiber, paper and shadow that each of these artists create branch together as they journey from birth, through life and into death. Where are the places inside of each of us that mother, that mourn, that take a stand? How do they branch together in you? How do they branch together in me? How do they branch toward each other, bringing us together as we journey in this great community of earth? I ask you this as the curator, to think about this as you experience this exhibit, what is your path? How is it part of this greater communal journey of birth, life and death?

Be sure to join me on March 22nd for a crochet/knit night at Gallery 51. Come crochet/knit a root for Mother Tree.

Making, creating something–whether it is art, food, a poem, an experience for someone, a new project for my classes, this also gets me into the now, the IS. And these are the things that then may kindle the IS in someone else. So not only does it get me into the now, it often gives someone else something to ponder, to consider, to love.

John Dewey has a few things to say about this too:

And we are all artists. Everyone of us creates. We create stories, meals, love, poems, little doodles, and so many other things. We get inspired by common things, chance encounters, random moments. Loving these moments, embracing the IS, often feels in itself a creative act. Embrace your now, your IS. Be creative. Be love. Be you.