Beautiful things.

The Willamette River Historical Stream Channels

"This visually replaces the relatively flat landscape of the valley floor with vivid historical channels, showing the dynamic movements the river has made in recent millennia."

This poem:

...For once the shells split and sapphire 

And fire-opal fledge in their filth  

And six or seven small spurts of flame  

Are tumbled out into the dazzle

A micro press with approximately the most beautiful landing page ever:

This little glory of bookmaking:

(Charlotte's picture of things in progress)

Bone folding the pages. #bookproject

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Nov 25, 2015 at 5:47pm PST

Today I walked into my building at 10:30 a.m., and walked out at 7 p.m. In between, I graded and talked to many many students. Waited in vain for a few of them. Talked to colleagues who were cheerfully doing the day-before-a-holiday work of talking and waiting. Worked with Charlotte on the book project--so many steps!

I feel lucky about my work, all of it, the teaching and the planning and the writing and the dreaming. I am lucky in my friends, the ones I have known since I was a half-formed girl, and the ones I am lucky enough to work with every day. I feel lucky in my family: the big, beautiful chaos of it, the history of songs and movies and love and argument, the people from whom I come and the people who come, in part, from me. I'm lucky in love, in my marriage, in my home, in the solace and shelter I find there. The world is unendurable and unbearably beautiful. It's mystifying, it is terrible, it strikes awe. I am tired, I am impatient, I am alive.

Gratitude.

The word gratitude:

gratitude (n.) 

mid-15c., "good will," from Middle French gratitude (15c.) or directly from Medieval Latin gratitudinem (nominative gratitudo) "thankfulness," from Latin gratus "thankful, pleasing" (see grace). Meaning "thankfulness" is from 1560s.

The word grace, with which it is intimately linked:

grace (n.) 

late 12c., "God's favor or help," from Old French grace "pardon, divine grace, mercy; favor, thanks; elegance, virtue" (12c.), from Latin gratia "favor, esteem, regard; pleasing quality, good will, gratitude" (source of Italian grazia, Spanish gracia), from gratus "pleasing, agreeable," from PIE root *gwere- "to favor" (cf. Sanskrit grnati "sings, praises, announces," Lithuanian giriu "to praise, celebrate," Avestan gar- "to praise").

Sense of "virtue" is early 14c., that of "beauty of form or movement, pleasing quality" is mid-14c. In classical sense, "one of the three sister goddesses (Latin Gratiæ, Greek Kharites), bestowers of beauty and charm," it is first recorded in English 1579 in Spenser. The short prayer that is said before or after a meal (early 13c.; until 16c. usually graces) has a sense of "gratitude."

Over the past few days, my heart has been flooded with gratitude. Because our friend David, who just last week was in a coma and for whom we all greatly feared, spoke with us about the oeuvre of Tarkovsky and how we should watch all of it--"all of it!"--because it was so beautiful. Because of the intelligence and sensitivity, the loving hearts and great energies, of my sons and my daughters. Because I am lucky enough to have smiles and happy greetings from grandchildren. For my wonderful, thoughtful friends. Because I have a friend who has known me for more than half my life. Because of a husband, the words for whose goodness will always be radically insufficient. For many comforts and great pleasures. For an education and a job. For enough, more than enough.

To see the etymological roots of gratitude is to acknowledge that the idea of blessedness, a favor bestowed upon the thing praised, is a part of its conceptual frame. To praise something is to articulate its pleasingness, how it is touched by favor--by God, by one's regard.

We live in a world where one's praise of almost anything must acknowledge how the thing praised is only part of that world, where the act of thanksgiving must acknowledge the radical insufficiency of one's own comprehension of that world; where so much of that world seems to be wrought of pain. Where is the praiseworthiness of this? The blessedness?

Do you know how to think about this? What is the frame in which any of it makes sense?

I am flooded with gratitude. From my window looking into a dark street, I am grateful for, and suffused with, more than enough. Still, I hope to find a way to do something more, give more, to seek a better understanding.

Thanks.

I've been keeping a little running list of what I'm grateful for. A lot, as it turns out:

Idaho, because it is a part of my family's history. For the bears, moose, trout, tanagers, pronghorn I have seen there, on and off, my whole life. My whole life.

Scotland, because people I love live there. And because now, it is the country I have visited the most, and therefore I have history there too. Because my granddaughters speak with its inflections and vocabularies, and so will my grandson. Because of its northerliness and its mists and rain, because of the taste of its brilliant and brief summer. Because of its rivers and because of its villages. Because of the sea.

Walking, because it lets me let go. Because of how good it feels just to move.

My neighborhood, which is not remarkable in the least, but which I love because I can follow its seasons and evolutions by walking through it. For that fantastic apricot rose bush, for the brilliance of the yellow berries in November when all the leaves have fallen from the ornamental tree. Because of its specific sequence of dogs.

Music, for all the ways it sweetens things. For music itself. For instruments and players. For singing. For listening.

Ornamental trees, which flower and fruit not to be useful but to be beautiful. Roses, one of the most elegant of flowers. Because the flowers are borne up by thorns. Because of the elegance of the thorn.

My job, which, when all is said and done, means so much to me, and which allows me to do my part. Because it has taught me so much. Because it has given me one more means to make use of my gifts and efforts. Because it has brought me friends and colleagues. Because it is worth doing.

Afar, which is how I see some of the things I love the most. My beloved, walking across campus. The furthest branches on the tallest trees. The waterfall across the river. The pronghorn leaping among a herd of cattle.

Birds, dinosaurs of the air. For the way they never fail to lift my heart when they fly. 

Wind which tosses the leaves and is the moving air. Which makes a wild music.

Rivers and bridges both, the moving water and the place to stand as the water moves under my feet.

The road, which leads everywhere. For the maps that show them, both ancient and modern. For the directions. For the journey.
 
Ruins, evoking the past and still standing there, solid, uncovered, still emerging and implacably themselves.
Stories, the ones we carry and the ones we invent, which are the same stories.

Photos, little distillations of atoms and light. In albums, printed and encased, or digital, shimmering from the screen. Which form sequences. Which must be rewoven into a context. Which contain the faces of the beloveds.

Cameras which capture everything and nothing. For the urge to capture. For the instruments, which are a kind of sight, and a kind of longing.

Movies, little distillations of atoms and light and motion.

Berries both edible and not. Which are the carriers of seed. Which are the culmination of flower.

Los Angeles, which is the holographic, mysterious, blatant and veiled One Place. Which is emblem of my desire to know, to reach an understanding, an agreement with my own past.

Poetry and syntax and paragraphs, ways of organizing language. For the urge to organize language, to convey, to propose, to make beauty.

Parties. Made of family or friends or both, with music and food, laughter, flowers. For all the reasons, flimsy and durable, we muster for this purpose.

For travel. Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, NoCal, Portland, Aberdeen. For the people I saw there, for what we did together, for what I learned. 

For the renewable pleasures--for dinner out and dinner at home, pancakes, the flowers that return every spring and summer. For movie night. For visits with my children and grandchildren. For television. For favorite songs.

For friends, old and new. For my oldest friends, who remember things about me that I've forgotten. For the specific pieces of their histories that I share with them. For the tea, sandwiches, scones, pho, omelets, pancakes, toast, salad, pizza, curry, cake over which we've shared confidences, laughter, outrages, gossip, movie reviews, and poems.

For my children, who transformed my life. For their energy, verve, beauty, sweetness, tartness. For the fight and the wit in them. For the kindness and the joy. For my grandchildren, who transformed my life again. For their specificity. For their enthusiasms and obsessions. For superheroes and Legos, transformers, Polly Pockets, art projects. For their jokes and fits, for the ways I can see their parents in them. 

For my parents, for my siblings and siblings-in-law. For my nieces and nephews and cousins, my aunts and uncles. My grandparents before all of us. For my identity, which emerged from this storm of love and origin. For the history connecting us. Because they are absolute and essential.

For my husband the historian, whose patience and presence in my life sometimes leaves me, literally, without words adequate to describe. For him. For the blessing of him.

happy thanksgiving to you, the people. I count you as my friends. tomorrow when I eat pie, I will be thinking of you.

Dear French restaurant,

I'm not quite sure why, but I seek you out, French restaurant, and especially in cities where I do not live. I think, in fact, I may never have actually eaten at the French, or French-ish, restaurants in my own town. But I am drawn inexplicably to the bistro as a category when I am away from home, and particularly when I'm on my own.

When I'm on my own, I want food with a tradition, food that's not afraid of its own commitments, food that is simultaneously a little bit snobby and, paradoxically, also as comforting as soft clothes and comfortable shoes and butter. Lots and lots of butter.

It's a bonus when the staff are kind. This has happened to me two times, but each of those was a memorable time. Once in San Francisco, the waiter, who had either a real or a really, really good faux French accent, asked me if I wanted "still or fizzy" water, and told me that the sauce on my salmon was "delicious," pronounced with extra French syllables. Tonight, the guy was not remotely French, but he was really nice, and he brought me extra bread when I asked for it, because the saffron sauce on my moules safran was so unbelievably, stunningly delicious. And a spoon when I needed it to eat the sauce.

And he did not look askance when I had dessert on top of that, a Normandy apple tart. With some sort of extra special whipped cream and salt caramel sauce, just the right amount of each.

French restaurant, you were everything that I needed and wanted in a restaurant tonight, and more.

And that sauce was so, so good, it made me grateful. For sauce.

htms

Dear May 1,

Thank you, today, for the way my ribs seem to expand a little more fully with each breath.

Thank you for the chance to talk to friends, here and there, all the day long.

Thank you for a final exam that consisted of students reading their poems to one another, and thank you for poems.

Thank you for saving my late wake-up with a quicker than usual trip to the bagel place.


Thank you for the wet driveway in the morning, and the cool air and the brilliant sun in the afternoon. Thank you for a moon ringed with clouds, but shining through.

Thank you for the growl of thunder I hear now, thank you for a chance of rain.

Thank you for the good sleep that, thanks to last night's insomnia, I feel certain I will have tonight.

sincerely,

htms

Good will and thanks.

I started writing a thanksgiving post yesterday but when I started to write about my children I started to cry, so I decided to wait a minute. But it's Thanksgiving today, so I just want to say I'm grateful for

writing and

my good life,

and music and art

and the good health of my parents,

my brother and sisters,

Bruiser,

my darling my husband,

all kinds of growing things,

farmers, books, movies,

friendships old and new,

my children who fill my heart and my life,

and the beautiful grandchildren.

Today, I feel lucky and full of joy. Thanks for stopping by occasionally--I'm grateful for you, too.

September yada yada yada the darkest part of the year.

OR: The Year in Pictures, la troisième partie.

SEPTEMBER.

We had a last Labor Day hurrah in Idaho. Hurrah!

Huzzah!

Tiger RIP.

OCTOBER.

Ain't nothing but a beach thing. Hermosa Beach.

Possibly the raison d'etre for the L.A. Project: finding the Bartlett Motel, where my family stayed for six weeks when we moved there. I was fourteen. This motel had no swimming pool. We told the time by daytime game shows, sitcoms, and soaps, and we were damn good at it. Lomita holla!

NOVEMBER.

Risked the Continental Divide and also Rock Springs, WY, where many a better man's (and woman's) dreams have gone to die, to visit our friends George and Maureen in Clark. 'Twas swell.

I am thankful for my sisters and brother (sister E here, representing).

I am thankful for my aunts and uncles (darling Aunt Sal, also representing).

I am thankful for my whole family in all its nooks, crannies, and permutations, actually.

DECEMBER.

Events of all stripes--dutiful (finishing the semester, grading, fretting about grading), infelicitous (the sick), felicitous (I won an XBox!), and festive (tree, present-buying and -making, craftacular)--all culminated in the arrival home of this young man:

and we just couldn't be happier for him to hang up his suit and stick around for awhile.

Tomorrow: the Best of 2009. As promised.

The thankful list.

So here's what's going on, the night before T-day:

I am watching Dirty Sexy Money. We had an impromptu dinner out with running son, college daughter, singing son and his wife, me and the historian. In the oven, there are squashes and pumpkins roasting. That's all the preparation I'm doing tonight, which is possible because I'm going down to Utah Valley for dinner with my mom and dad, sisters and their families, my brother's son and daughter, and my darling auntie. So all I'm bringing is a pumpkin pie, a green salad, and a couple of vegetable dishes.

Which leaves me plenty of time to tell you some of the things and people I am thankful for. My daughter the makeup artist said she always makes a list of 100 things she's thankful for every Thanksgiving. I started my list while I was responding to portfolios on Monday, so as it turns out, I'm not finished with it, but here are some excerpts:

1. love of my husband
2. how wonderful each of my children is
9. drinking a pot of tea while working
17. happy marriages for my kids
18. good relationship with my former
29. writing group
30. bruiser
31. betty
32. a washing machine
37. farmer’s market
38. movies
39. my comfy chair
40. the end of every teaching day
41. when I see evidence that my students have learned something

Of course, I also have grandchildren and friends to list: little Miriam, Evie, and Deacon; Carter, Alex, David, Jenna, and Rachel; Mary Sue, Ann, Jill; Jen, Allison, Lynn, Melissa, Jason, Clint, Ron, Stephen, and Jennifer. I love the fact that my children have good friends that I've been allowed to know. I am grateful for my wonderful parents and my splendid siblings. Tonight, with no work tomorrow and the prospect of a lovely family day, I feel like my whole life is a blessing. My life is good.