Of Worms and Wings and Other Sacred, Ordinary Things

Hello, my friends!  Below I have posted the transcript of a talk I gave this past weekend at a celebration of Emily Dickinson's poetry and gardens.  The event was hosted by the Powow River Poets at the beautiful Old South Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  At the end of the day, some folks asked if I'd be willing to share the transcript, and I thought posting it here on the blog might be the easiest way to do just that.  Those of you who read my blog regularly may recognize a few lines here from a post I wrote over the summer as I was drafting this talk.  I've included a few of my photos from past posts here with the talk, too.  Again, if you've read my blog for a while, and you know about my passion for gardens, fields, and woods, you'll immediately understand my love for Emily Dickinson.


Of Worms and Wings and Other Sacred, Ordinary Things

Thank you so much.  I want to say a special word of thanks to the Powow River Poets for this wonderful celebration of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and gardens.   I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday--especially an October Saturday--and you’ll see why in just a bit.

I should begin by saying that I’m not an Emily Dickinson expert.  I’m simply a devoted fan, and I have been ever since I was a kid in the 1970’s.  Back when I was about 9 or 10, I had two summertime obsessions.  They weren’t obsessions that I shared with my friends or anyone else.  These were mine alone.

The first was one that I’m guessing many of you also had and probably still have; I read every single thing I could get my hands on. Magazines, books, cereal boxes—if it had words, I read it.  And somewhere in all that reading, I stumbled upon a collection of verse among my dad’s old college poetry textbooks that included some of Emily Dickinson’s poems. And among those poems I discovered the first verse beyond the nursery rhymes of my early childhood that I knew I had to memorize.  It seemed to me so clever and true that I wanted to put it in my pocket and keep it for myself always.  So I did:

“The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the Bee—
A clover anytime to Him
Is aristocracy.”

These lines embody much that I loved then and still love now about Dickinson’s poetry—economy of line, frankness, and a knack for telling the small but significant truth.  In these four lines she captures the perfect symbiosis between blossom and bee—one of the world’s most essential relationships.  This tiny poem has always stayed with me.  When I was learning calligraphy as a teenager, it was one of the sentences I would write again and again, decorating it with flourishes in the curlicued shape of a bee’s flight pattern.  In the years since then, it’s been a mantra, a touchstone that even now I repeat when I’m working in my garden: “The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee,” I murmur as I trellis the sweet peas or weed among the thyme and rosemary, and again at night as I drift off to sleep, knees aching, hair still smelling of mud and leaves . . . “a clover anytime to him is aristocracy . . . .”

But getting back to my childhood summertime obsessions.  The first was reading, and as you might have already guessed, the second was gardening. I loved spending hours in my mother’s flower garden with my face as close to the peonies, the phlox, and the tiger lilies as possible.  In the garden, my senses were heightened, things seemed more real, and I felt more connected to all the thousands of lives around me than I did anywhere else—connected to the worms in the soil, the butterflies careening among the cosmos, the cardinals calling one another from the branches of our white lilac tree.  I wanted to be near enough to spy on the bees working their dizzy magic, near enough so that the flowers would, as Dickinson writes, “make me regret / I am not a bee” (808).  Beyond the garden was noise and flash and distraction, the next-door neighbors arguing, planes roaring overhead, and the distant wash of cars on the highway—people rushing off to a world that seemed preoccupied with less vital things--at least to me.  There in the garden was the much smaller, more vibrant world that Dickinson describes in Poem 1746:

The most important population
Unnoticed dwell,
They have a heaven each instant
Not any hell.

Their names, unless you know them,
’Twere useless tell.
Of bumble-bees and other nations
The grass is full.

The garden to me, as a kid, felt like existence at its most essential.  While I reveled in its beauty, I don’t really think I held a romanticized notion about the pretty flowers, because, I saw life and death quite clearly for what they were when I was in the garden.  In fact, I think if you want a child to understand death, you give her a hoe, a spade, and a pair of shears, and you send her out to vanquish the weeds, turn the compost, and deadhead the roses.  Much as Emily Dickinson did in her own mother’s garden when she was growing up, I saw death all around me in the garden—and in some cases, I was even the cause of it, whether I wanted to be or not.  I quickly learned that this was an unavoidable part of being a gardener.

I also witnessed intimately how everything that dies helps to bring new life into the world.  And that many of the plants that died each year had ingenious ways of coming back to life the following spring.  As Dickinson asks, “If a pod die, shall it not live again?” (Prose fragment 18)  Over time as I continued to garden, continued to watch pods die each season and then live again, and continued to read Dickinson’s poems about the gardens, orchards, and fields surrounding her home in Amherst, I knew that I had found a kindred spirit—and isn’t this one of the key reasons that we read (and write) poetry?  Dickinson herself called the poets she read “the dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul.”

As a girl, I couldn’t put into words what I was discovering about the interconnectedness of life and death in the garden.  In fact, I don’t even think I can now, really.  As Dickinson writes,  “Nature is what we know— /Yet have no art to say" (668).

But she doth protest too much, because she did have the art to say it: When Roses cease to bloom, Sir, /And Violets are done,” she writes,

When Bumblebees in solemn flight
Have passed beyond the Sun —
The hand that paused to gather
Upon this Summer's day Will idle lie — in Auburn —
Then take my flowers — pray!”

Or in “A Bird came down the walk," where she describes the bird that bit an angle worm in halves, “ate the fellow raw,” drank some dew from the grass, and then “hopped sidewise to let a beetle pass.”  She intimately captures in her poems Tennyson’s “nature red in tooth and claw”  (“In Memoriam A.H. H.") with a scientist’s precision and a poet’s sensibility.  At the same time, she also explores the sacred in the everyday.  “I hope you love birds too,” she wrote to her cousin Eugenia Hall. “It is economical. It saves going to heaven.”  And in “Some Keep the Sabbath” (236) that great old chestnut taught in Introduction to Literature courses everywhere, she eschews conventional religion, finding her spirituality in the family orchard:

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

For Dickinson the garden embodied immortality. As a girl, she describes heaven in a letter to a friend as “the garden we have not seen.”  And many years later, just before her death, she asked to have her casket carried—by the workmen who tended the family’s grounds—in a circle around her garden, through the barn, and then up through the field of buttercups to the Western Cemetery in the center of Amherst.  Heaven was inseparable from the flowers, the birds, and the bees, which were all parallels to and metaphors for her own life—for our own lives.  That is not to say that she didn’t see them as ends in themselves, but that by seeing and valuing them for their own sake, she came to understand her own existence all the better.  In the garden she found a way to comprehend mortality—and proof of immortality.

When I was a little girl in the garden with my shears and my spade, Emily Dickinson taught me something that I would later come to feel in my bones as true, and it’s that at root, a gardener thinks about life and death always as one. In each flower's race toward blossoming is its race, too, toward decline. I'm saying nothing new, only that when you garden, this thought is always present. In the spring garden I am surrounded by the new growth of runner bean sprouts, the full flush of a climbing rose, and the last breath of a lush peony all at the same moment. My wheelbarrow is piled high with a day's kill: the weeds I pulled, faded blossoms I plucked, lily beetles I crushed between gloved finger and thumb. The gardener must not be squeamish about death. She must recognize its necessity even as she rejoices at the sight of her first ever iris uncurling itself with a flourish from the spear of its stem.  She must also accept its necessity when that iris blossom dies.

It’s a Saturday in October, and the garden is dying.  But it will live again—improbably, miraculously, this coming spring.  Even as it dies, it is living, and it will always live on, as will the iris, the rose, and the jasmine, the Indian Pipe and the clover, in Emily Dickinson’s words.

And so, because she had the art to say it, as well as anyone ever has, and as reverently, too:

“In the name of the Bee—
And of the Butterfly—
And of the Breeze—
Amen!” (21)

Note: Numbers in parentheses refer to poem numbers in The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin, 1999.

Mingle Magazine

I've been meaning to post some especially lovely news here, my friends.  This month I have the tremendous pleasure of sharing the pages of Mingle Magazine with several of the incredible women who attended Finding Stillness 2015.   We wrote a collaborative feature about the time we spent together, taking photographs, going on hikes, sharing meals, and just finding time for our creative selves at Kim Klassen's The Studio in Rivers, Manitoba.  If you've read my blog post about it, you know what a transformative week it was for me, so to get to work with my photographer friends on this piece for Mingle was pure joy.  I was especially excited that I got to spend a lot of time with Diana Foster to edit the text and gather the photos for the piece.  She is a consummate professional, but she's also sweet and smart and down to earth, and I felt so lucky that we worked on this project together.

I hope you are well, and that every single day finds you doing something you love--even if only for half an hour, but hopefully for longer.  I am finishing up a semester with my writing students over the next couple of weeks, which is bittersweet for me, because this has been an especially productive and exciting semester.  Watching my students' work grow and develop is always rewarding, but this time around has been especially magical.  I feel privileged to witness and be a small part of their creative journeys.  Besides teaching, I've got several photo and writing projects in the works, which I'll keep sharing with you, of course.  And I'm just getting back out into the garden, so there will be photos galore coming soon of new plantings and spring beauties as they begin to emerge.  

More soon from the Maine coast, chickadees! xo Gigi  

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable." ~Mary Oliver

Note to Self: Write Your Way Back

I hope you are well, my friends.  Here, life has been filled with work--lots of work--some sunshine, some almost unbearably sad days, some hectic ones, a few nights by the fireplace, more work, some serious pie baking for holidays and birthdays, and little time for writing my own stuff or taking photos--even silly iPhone photos.   December looks to be a bit wild, too, but I have promised myself that I will steal time every day for my own creative work.  I always tell my students and clients that no matter how crazy life gets, there is always, always, always time to write, always time to create.  And it's true.  I spend most of my days helping others with their creative processes, and while I LOVE every minute of it, I sometimes break my own rules and forget about my own process.  The fact is, there are always deadlines to be met.  There is always more work to be done.  We simply have to turn away from the noisy demands of life on a regular basis, seek quiet and solitude, and focus on creating.  I don't mean creating for yet another deadline or another editor; I mean creating for the pure joy of it.

The photo above is one I took in early November, right after Mr. Magpie and I returned from a trip to Sweden, where he had a literature conference.  I took hundreds of photos there, and I promise to show you a few inspiring ones, but in the meantime there's this shot, which, for me, was all about stealing an hour or so of quiet one day to set up my beat-up chalkboard, this lovely copper vase that belonged to my memere, and some fading flowers from my garden.  The little hanging votive lantern is something I discovered in a sweet shop in Uppsala, Sweden.  I didn't process the shot until about three weeks later.  I'm not kidding when I say that I've just really struggled to find moments in the day for quiet joy.  And when I do take a few moments, it's not long before I feel a rising panic inside my chest, a sense that things are undone.  I'll start to work on a poem or a photo shoot, and then I'll remember all the leaves that haven't been raked yet, the window that needs fixing, the lecture I haven't written, the new course I haven't even started to plan, oh, and, of course, the laundry I haven't finished--ever.  And then there are all the personal commitments to people that I feel I'm just not honoring.  It can be crushing, this feeling.  I know that you likely know it well.

However, there is a worse feeling.  The one that happens when I don't write the poem or set up a beautiful shot in some softly lit corner of the house.  Todd told me the other day that he met a fellow scholar at a recent conference.  She asked him what his wife does for work.  When he told her that I'm a writer and freelance photographer, a writing teacher, an editor, and an obsessed amateur gardener, her reply was, "Oh, she's a maker!"  Todd later told me what she said, and I felt, well, a little sad, because I haven't felt much like a maker this fall.  I've written a ton, but all of it has been for other people's deadlines.  I've actually felt lost, a million miles away from my own creative center.  

I help other people overcome this same problem pretty much every week, so it's a bit odd to be feeling it myself.  Thus, I'm taking my own advice: when you feel lost and far, far away from yourself--I mean your real self, the maker, the crafter, the dreamer, the alchemist--write (or paint or sculpt or dance) your way back.  Imagine a path in the forest. Your process is right there in front of you.  You left a trail of bread crumbs as you wandered far from home.  You'd forgotten that you always leave those bread crumbs, but you do.  You always do.  Just follow them back.  Every single day.  Forget the laundry mountain in the distance.  Forget the dark and frightening forest full of undone tasks.  Forget your fear of what might be around the next bend in the path.  Just do what you do.  You'll find your way home.

The Reason Why

"It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."  ~George Eliot

I chase the light all morning, longing for the perfect shadow, the glimmer of light on a petal, the glint of sunshine on the curve of a porcelain cup.

I've come to learn that I write and I photograph for the same reason.  It all stems from the same impulse, the same need.  

There is beauty over there, just there.  There is goodness.  There is light that I can nearly touch.  I must try.  I must.

What's Inspiring You?

See that light shining through the cheesecloth in the back of this shot?  That's honest-to-goodness sunlight!  Yes!  Daylight savings did not disappoint.  I was able to set up and take many, many still life shots all Sunday afternoon while the sun poured in through this upstairs southwest window. This particular photo is for a backlit assignment in Kim Klassen's Be Still--52 class.

I want thank the many folks who tried my lemon cookie recipe over the weekend!  I received loads of notes on Facebook and Instagram, comments here on the blog, and emails and texts about the cookies.  I'm so glad that you all love them as much as I do!  They are about as easy to make as cookies get, and the taste payoff is extraordinary.  I even saw photos of some other people's cookies, and they were gorgeous!  Nothing like bonding over baked goods.  It truly takes a village to bake a biscuit.

I'll have more recipes very soon.  In the meantime, I wanted to share a few inspiring links:

~Click--A print and digital magazine by photographers for photographers.  These women make a seriously gorgeous product.  Plus, they're running a fun photography contest from now until April 15.  Get clicking!

~Sarah Raven--This is a link to her YouTube channel.  I learn so much from her gardening videos.  Champion of heirloom varieties, she is a gardening goddess . . . and a brilliant teacher.  Plus, just getting to peek at the grounds of her farm makes me want to try new ideas in my own little piece of earth.  

~Thomas McGuane--This link will lead you to an NPR interview with Montana writer Tom McGuane.  Mr. Magpie heard the interview yesterday, told me about it over a quick lunch at Becky's Diner today, and I've just been listening to it and reading the transcript tonight.  It's definitely a worthwhile listen, especially for fellow readers and writers.  "I think there's only one interesting story," says McGuane, ". . . and that's struggle."  I have to say, after years of writing and teaching writing, I agree.

If you have a moment, let me know what's inspiring you this week.  I'd love to hear what you're up to.  

A Year and a Word

My word for 2015 is see.  Of all my senses, I am most inspired by sight, which is a bit ironic, I suppose, since I have weak eyesight, both near and far.  If you were to watch the steps I need to take to set up and shoot a simple photo like the ones of these pears, you might wonder why I bother.   

And yet, I cannot imagine my life without photography or gardening or design.  My writing process is also profoundly influenced by imagery, whether I'm crafting a poem, an essay, an article, or a piece of fiction.  A good sentence begins for me with an image and moves from there.

I'm grateful for the technology that lets my weak eyes see, and I never take it for granted.  I chose this word for 2015 to remind myself to use my eyes, my mind, and my heart to really see, to take in the play of light and shadow through a lace curtain on a summer afternoon or the rough and nobbled grain of the wood on an old farm table--to see things as they are, on their own terms.  And this goes for people as well as things . . . and animals, too.  I want to foster in myself a greater sense of empathy for others and for whatever journeys they may be on.  

I have a full year ahead in my work life as well as my home life, and I know that truly seeing will require me to stop and take long stretches of time.  I am often good about guarding and using my writing time to its fullest, but I need to be better about sitting still and being quiet just to simply see. This will make me a better artist, a better writer, and, I hope, a wiser and richer me.  

I gave myself the gift this new year of signing up for a still life class with my dear friend Kim Klassen.  Kim is one of the most inspiring people I know, so if you are looking for some creative inspiration in 2015, take a peek here.  For me, Be Still--Fifty-Two couldn't be a more perfect way to take that time I need to see.

Have you chosen a word for the year?  If so, please feel free to share it in the comments.  I'd love to learn what word you've selected and why.   

Wild Mind

Remember the baker's twine I mentioned at Thanksgiving?  Well, here's mine in the photo above, and as you can see, it's still at loose ends.  That's fine with me.  Nothing is done or nearly done on my list, and yet I took time today to take and process photos.  It felt good to set up shots, think about light and mood and cropping.  I didn't have room in my head for worry.  I was in my working wild mind.  I go there for photos and for writing; I don't let anything in the outside world touch that part of me.  It's too precious.  You know when people ask what you'd grab first in the case of a house fire?  Besides the kitties and Mr. Magpie, I'd be happy if my body and my wild mind made it out intact.  

It's not exactly my brain that I mean.  My brain's part of it, I suppose, but it's my gut, too, and probably my heart.  And other parts I can't define.  I don't talk about this with many people--just the writers that I help to craft their poems and stories and letters and thoughts, and the people closest to me, the ones who don't mind when I get that absent look on my face in the middle of supper or someone's birthday party right when it's time for candles and cake.  I don't mean to be antisocial or rude.  It just happens.  I smell the scent of cinnamon or catch a glimpse of a book on a shelf that I read in 1982, and I'm gone . . . back to my wild mind for however long it takes.  I'm sharing this with you because I know you get it.  You go there, too, I bet.  You call it something different, but you can't imagine living without it, and that is why we've found each other. 

The Gifts of Blogging: A Publication and a Giveaway

Happy November!  Here in Maine it has started off just as any self-respecting November should: with bone-chilling cold and torrents of rain.  I don't mind one bit, as this gives me the excuse to drink cups and cups of chocolate yerba mate latte, and to sit down with the latest copy of Artful Blogging.  For years I've looked to the pages of this gorgeous magazine for inspiration and community, so it's with giddy joy that I get to share the news with you that my writing and photos are featured in this issue.  And I'm even more excited to tell you that to celebrate, I'm giving away one free copy of Artful Blogging to a reader of The Magpie's Fancy!  Read below for more details about how you can enter the giveaway.  

Somebody pinch me.  What a thrill to see my work included with so many talented bloggers, writers, artists, and photographers.  I was especially over the moon to learn that two of my blogging friends, Kim Klassen and Beth Mcwilliams, are in this same issue!  That makes the whole experience all the sweeter.  

I've been writing and publishing for more than two decades, but this particular publication means more to me than most, because when I started blogging six years ago, I had no idea that it would become such an important part of my life.  I write a bit about that journey, and about how the more I played and experimented with photography (a real trial by fire), the more I couldn't tell where writing ended and photography began for me.  Each inspires the other so much now that I can't imagine not doing both.  I hope my article will give other writers and bloggers some inspiration for their own work--where to begin and how to enjoy the process along the way.

There is one other reason that this publication means so much: simply put, I had nearly given up blogging when the editors at Artful Blogging contacted me about doing a feature.  It wasn't that I had stopped loving writing posts or that I no longer wanted to connect with readers and fellow bloggers.  It was that feeling that I've heard so many writers and bloggers talk about of being pulled in too many directions by social media, by work, by family, and life's many other obligations.  

The early years of blogging had been straightforward, but now I felt like once I had published a post, I needed to share it on Facebook, Tweet about it, Instagram it, Link to it on Flickr, and otherwise communicate in every way humanly possible short of sending smoke signals to subscribers.  My old warm and friendly blogging community had become scattered over the years by the onslaught of social media.  We were doing our best to keep up with each other, but sometimes it was just overwhelming.

And so, I had cut back dramatically on posting.  I was working on writing and photography projects, and I didn't even realize that I was missing blogging.  And then I began work on the Artful Blogging piece.  It reminded me all over again of why I'd started to blog in the first place.  This place, this blog--this is pure joy for me.  Whether I have 10 or 10,000 readers, I get to write about and photograph the things that inspire me.  I get to connect with likeminded people.  And I get to read their stories, too.  I can't imagine a better reason to be here.

And so, as a gift of friendship and community--and of my heartfelt thanks for visiting me here--I'm offering a giveaway of this new Winter 2015 issue of Artful Blogging.  To register for the giveaway, simply leave a message on this post by Wednesday, November 5, at noon Eastern Standard Time.  

All are welcome to enter, wherever you live and whether this is your first time visiting or your 500th.  I know many of you prefer to send me emails or Facebook messages.  If you would, for this contest, please leave your message here on the post.  That way I can be sure to keep track of entries.  You don't need to type in one of those awful codes to prove you're not a robot.  Just leave your comment along with your name and an email address where I can reach you, and I'll see it and then approve it for publication.  Please let your friends know about the contest, too.  

If you've ever read Artful Blogging, you know what a truly gorgeous and inspiring publication it is.  If you don't want to wait for the contest, you can purchase your copy at any local bookstore that carries Stampington & Company publications in its magazine section, Barnes & Noble, or Books a Million.  You can also buy it directly from Stampington & Co.  

Thanks, as always, chickadees, for being so wonderful.  xo Gigi  

Apples and Obsession

Thanks so much, my friends, for the warm and funny emails and Facebook messages about the Portland restaurant series.  I had a fantastic time compiling the lists, and I now apologize for making everyone so hungry!  I made myself hungry, too.  

Fortunately, I'd just bought lots of apples at Sweetser's Apple Barrel, so much snacking has been going on around here.  The ones in the photo above are Stayman Winesaps (early 19th-century variety), which, I won't lie, I bought simply so I could photograph them.  I think they're just gorgeous little apples.  It turns out that they're also good ones for storing, so I'll be able to eat those, too, once I'm done taking their portraits.  In the meantime, I've been eating big juicy Snow Apples (a very old French heirloom variety) and  Cortlands (a 19th-century variety from New York) and Brocks (Maine heirlooms from the early 20th century that are a cross between McIntosh and Golden Delicious).  

I also made an apple crisp from my old standby recipe, mixing the different varieties together.  It was delicious, but I found that I had to bake it longer than I normally do, which is always something to keep in mind when baking with different varieties of apples for the first time.  Some, like McIntoshes, break down quickly when baked.  Others hold their shape and crispness for much longer, so pie, crisp, and  apple sauce cooking time can vary quite a bit.  The extra time was a small price to pay for the apple crisp.  It had a depth and complexity of flavor that I've never achieved in a crisp before.  I also upped the nutmeg a wee bit, which I wouldn't normally do, since nutmeg can be overwhelming, but I took a chance based on the flavors of the raw apples as I sliced them for the crisp.  I'm glad I did.  The nutmeg took on an almost ginger-y quality against the golden delicious characteristics of the Brocks.

Can you tell that I really, really love apples?  Yes, my love borders on obsession.  So much so that I wrote a poem about them several years ago.  That poem was later published in Soundings East.  It's been a long time since I shared one of my poems here on the blog, but all this talk of apples has me feeling nostalgic, so here's the poem, which is also a bit of a creation myth, I suppose . . .

SEARCH NO MORE

I learn apple before I am born:
my mother sits beneath a tree at Green Point Farm,
slicing crisp moons of McIntosh.
She teases them from the blade with her teeth,
filling her Rome Beauty belly.
A is for apple, she sings--
Sack and Sugars, Slack my Girdles,
Golden Knobs.
I kick in reply,
begin my hungry dance into life.

Over time we make pies, cider,
sauce.  Delicious, I learn,
aren't delicious at all, and crabs
are best for jelly.
When she reads me Snow White
I know why the girl craves the Queen's apple,
heart-red, white as her own skin--
biting in, she becomes a greater tale to tell.

A is for ask, appetite, apologize--
Eve and Aphrodite stand sorry before me
in the Children's Book of Ancient Stories,
apples in their upturned hands.
With a pencil I draw them: Eve's Incomparable,
Aphrodite's Perfection--fruits I will eat
until the basket is empty.

Brown snouts are bittersweet
for blending with Hangdowns and Golden Drops.
I can pare one in seconds,
say the alphabet while I twist the stem:
Who will I marry?  K or M?
I make a crust to catch him,
pack it full of Seek No Furthers,
bake it till the sugar runs,
wait for my prince to come.

A is for apple, answers, alone.
My mother shines Jonagolds with her coat sleeve,
teaches me to carve swans and crowns,
stud them with cloves, make tarts
from Grannys, butter from Ida Reds, dry
the Packhorses and Admirables
for apple dolls with black, beaded eyes
and the faces of wise
old women.

By Gigi Thibodeau

October First

The morning comes slowly, with silver limning the hawthorn and lilac branches in the yard.  Night's shadows hang on, and the sun never quite shows itself before the rain begins.

I welcome this dark, wet start.  My thoughts, bright as the last of the marigolds, seem all the clearer for it.  The day is full of lists that must be finished.  I work, piece by piece, without pause.  No leaping ahead to the next task; no what if I can't, what if they don't, what if it never.

Here is the secret the scarlet leaves whisper as they drop from the trees: there is this one moment.  Only this.  

Autumn, Bloomsbury, and Other Inspirations

Since last week's post, I took a quick trip down to South Carolina to visit my big brother.  As we sat on the pier that extends from my brother's back yard into a glorious tidal marsh full of oysters and sea birds, the temperature rose above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  There's not enough sweet tea in the world to cool me off once it's above 95.  My body and brain were fooled for a few days into thinking that summer was far from over.

A glorious sunset at the end of a sweltering South Carolina September day.

Then I flew back north to Maine and stepped off the plane into--shiver--50 degrees and rain.

   

That's okay, though, because as I said last week, autumn here means dahlias and asters and still more tomatoes, at least until the frost.  It also means that it's almost time to begin planting bulbs for spring.  Last year I planted white 'Thalia' daffodils that grew beautifully in our little woodland border, along with fritillaria meleagris and alliums of various shapes and sizes.  This year I'm turning to my small library of gardening books for ideas about what bulbs to plant.  As much as I love blogs, websites, and Pinterest, when I need garden inspiration, there's no substitute for flipping through the pages of my favorite books.  In particular, I'm always interested in anything to do with English gardens, especially Bloomsbury gardens. Here's the book I've put on my wish list this fall: Virginia Woolf's Garden by Caroline Zoob with photography by  Caroline Arber and a Foreword by the wonderful Cecil Woolf.  

Available here.

Speaking of Bloomsbury and all things domestic and beautiful, Mr. Magpie and I had the great pleasure of reviewing two books for the Spring 2014 Issue of  The Virginia Woolf Miscellany a few months ago.  If you click on the link, you'll find our review on page 36 of the online pdf version of the journal.  It was a joy to discuss Virginia Wolf, a lush and heartfelt children's picture book by Kyo Maclear and Isabelle Arsenault, as well as The Charleston Bulletin Supplements, an edited collection of a series of "supplements" co-authored by Virginia Woolf and her nephew Quentin Bell in the early 1920's.  The collaboration between Woolf and the then 12-year-old Bell is a humorous and entertaining chronicle in pictures and words of the daily life at Charleston Farmhouse, the Sussex home of Virginia's sister, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Clive Bell, and as we state in our review, "a motley band of Bloomsbury bohemia engaged in disciplined creativity, strenuous play, and the daily practice of crafting life together" (36).  Some of you know that Mr. Magpie (aka Todd Avery) is a Bloomsbury scholar, and that Charleston Farmhouse is a touchstone for us--a place to connect with the things we value most about art, friendship, and living an ethical life.  If you'd like to learn a bit more about Charleston Farmhouse, visit the post I wrote after my first visit there a few years ago.

And for some quick visual inspiration, scroll down through this post for a few shots I took late last summer on a very cloudy day in the garden at Charleston:

I will soon have other publishing news, but in the meantime, click here at the Lilly Library's page to read Close and Affectionate Friends, a beautiful, small book that Todd wrote back when he was completing his PhD at Indiana University.  He curated an exhibition on Bloomsbury at the Lilly in 1999, and he wrote this book on Desmond and Molly MacCarthy to accompany the exhibition.  At the time it was only available as a printed book, but now you can read the e-version for free.

Todd has written and edited many articles and chapters, along with other books on Bloomsbury and Modernism since then, including Radio Modernism, which a review in the Woolf Studies Annual calls a "compact but meticulously sourced and argued volume," and Unpublished Works of Lytton Strachey, published by Pickering & Chatto. He has also penned two volumes--one published and one forthcoming--for Cecil Woolf Publishers' Bloomsbury Heritage Series, which you can read more about in the 'Books' section of Blogging Woolf.

It's not often that I allow myself to sing the praises of Mr. Magpie here on the blog, but I admire his work tremendously, and I love when we have the opportunity to collaborate on a project.  We are currently co-writing another book review, and yes, it is Bloomsbury-related, so I will keep you posted about it in the coming months.

I have so much to share with you--more Italian gardens, more Maine gardens, books I've been reading, and food I've been cooking.  As always, I'm grateful to you for visiting, and I love hearing about the daily ins and outs of your life, too.  Thank you for always inspiring me.  xo Gigi

The Blog is Dead. Long Live the Blog !

Hello, my friends.  I know it has been ages since I posted last.  Christmas came and went.  Then New Year's, and then even Valentine's Day, and still no posts from me.  It's not because I wasn't thinking of you, for I was doing just that--often and much--and I wanted to be here, but I was whelmed by life.  I appreciated the notes and emails and comments checking in on me.  I was fine, and am fine, now.  In fact, it's lovely to be here, typing away, thinking of you.

And I have some news.  After four years here on Blogger, The Magpie's Fancy will soon be moving house.  I will let you know when and will share the new address here.  I'm developing the new site now, which will serve as my online professional and creative hub, and will be a place for readers to visit for inspiration in writing and photography, as well as the daily celebrations and challenges of living a creative life.  I have met so many kindred spirits through The Magpie's Fancy, and I hope we can continue to inspire each other as I move to the new site.  I'm planning to have it up and running by March, and I will keep you posted, I promise.

I've read several articles recently about the state of blogging.  There are those who say it is dead--or at least dying--but I disagree.  I do think that, like everything else in the online world, blogging is changing quickly, and the most committed bloggers are adapting right along with these changes.  Various social media play a major role in the brave new world of blogging, especially Pinterest.  As a daily pinner myself, I can say that Pinterest is a faster way to reach out and grab inspiration and ideas from the Interwebs, and its image-rich, tile format makes it an incredibly fun tool, but it lacks the depth and richness of blogging or even of Instagram and Twitter.  When I pin a gorgeous garden picture to my "Gardening Fancies" board, I am pinning it for myself.  It's nice when others see it and pin it, too, but I don't really care one way or the other.  Can I promote my own work on Pinterest?  Yes, I can, and I occasionally do, but I also often see my own work pinned without any attribution and with a link back to some random person's Tumblr page.  I kind of loathe Tumblr.  There, I said it.  People complain about Pinterest's lack of attributions, but if it weren't for platforms like Tumblr, where people can reblog with a click, acting as though curating a bunch of images is the same as blogging original content, then we wouldn't have nearly as many problems with Pinterest.  I don't pin things on Pinterest to impress others.  I pin them because they inspire me, and I want to remember them . . . and to be able to find the original source at a later date.  In fact, in my case "social media" is a misnomer when it comes to Pinterest.  While I do truly like seeing what my friends and family pin, for me, pinning is simply a continuation of a practice I've had since I was a kid.  I have always torn pages from magazines and hung them on my walls or filed them in a drawer in my filing cabinet.  It brings me great joy, and I often pin between appointments or while I'm eating my oatmeal in the morning.  I can never get enough ideas about books or design or gardens or chocolatey sea salt concoctions!

So, I don't whinge about the demise of blogging.  I don't think it's dead at all.  I think that savvy bloggers are figuring out ways to expand their view of what a blog can do as a promotional tool, a resource, a professional outlet, or a place to share daily thoughts.  People need to have original content to pin on their pin boards.  We can't all pin this set of images (or others like it--you know the ones that you see recirculating on Pinterest every few weeks)

over and over again, forever and ever and into infinity.  By the way, this wonderfully shabby chic cottage was originally featured in The New York Times.  It's a Catskills hunting cottage turned into a Rachell Ashwell-esque fantasy by Sandra Foster.  I've seen it pinned a thousand times, usually without attribution.  

Beyond the original content issue, though, lies what is the heart of the matter for me: community.  I have made warm, deep, and lasting friendships through blogging that I wouldn't trade for the world.  Some of those friends are no longer blogging, or are blogging more sporadically as other forms of social media--yes, I'm referring to you, Instagram--take up more of their time, or as their lives get more hectic.  As so many of you know, blogging well can take enormous amounts of time and energy.  One has to wear several hats, and for those of us who chose not to rent advertising space on our blogs, its financial rewards can be limited, non-existent, or indirect, as a way to promote our own work.  For me, the greatest reward of blogging is the friends I've made.  Second to that is the chance blogging has given me to develop my skills further.  I have been a writer nearly all my life, but I came to photography much later, through blogging, and I am so grateful to have discovered this passion.

I would love to hear your thoughts on blogging and social media, in general, if you care to share them.  There are days when I find all of it overwhelming.  On those days, I take a very long hike (or, right now, snowshoe) with my camera--no iPhone, no distractions.  Unplugging is essential to my creative process.  Maybe these last two blog-free months have been just a prolonged break from overstimulation.  The one thing I'm realizing as I scroll through Pinterest each morning, and as I develop the new website, is that there are loads of incredibly talented and creative people in the world.  On those overwhelming days it can feel like an artsy, hipster, moss-covered, lace-doily-ed, glitter-coated, pomegranate-glazed, hand-calligraphed, dumpster-salvaged, and ironically-mustachioed avalanche of beauty and wisdom that I just want to try to outrun as it thunders down the mountain towards me.  Other times--most times, really--I want to jump right in the middle of the beautiful mess and see where it takes me. 

The Essence of Living Locally

Stone wall, Peaks Island, Maine 

Just touching base today to wish a warm and happy Thanksgiving to American readers of The Magpie's Fancy!  

I also wanted to let you know that I have two stories in the newest issue of t.e.l.l. New England Magazine.  I'm thrilled to have my writing and photographs in t.e.l.l.  It is a beautiful publication that celebrates the local people, places, and traditions of New England.  The editors are creating a unique place for writers and photographers from the region to showcase their work, and I'm honored to be a part of it.  I was also pleased as punch to discover that my friend Laurie Wheeler has two photos in this issue as well.  

Click here to see the magazine.  You can adjust it to fit your screen size, and you can zoom in for easier reading.  My pieces, "Peaks Island Homecoming" and "Conjuring Autumn," are on pages 20 and 116, respectively.  I wrote the text and took the photos for the first story.  Jenn Bakos took the wonderful pumpkin pictures that accompany the second one.  You'll find gorgeous articles and photos throughout the magazine, plus some tempting autumnal recipes.  

Stone tower on the Back Shore, Peaks Island, Maine

I can't think of a better time than Thanksgiving to celebrate all things local.  As the big box stores seek to destroy the last vestiges of what is special about the holiday this year by opening their doors on Thanksgiving day itself, I am happy to ignore them.  I'll shop at local stores on Small Business Saturday, and I'll stop for a coffee at a favorite local cafe.  I know that I am fortunate to live in a city brimming with incredible shops and restaurants, but even here the chain stores are starting to encroach upon the local shopping district, and we now have not one but two Starbucks in our beautiful Old Port.

We have a choice.  We don't have to shop and eat and do all our daily business at chains.  In Portland we have more outstanding local coffee shops than I can count on two hands . . . and hundreds of restaurants . . . and many, many incredible bakeries . . . and dozens of specialty boutiques . . . and that Maine Adventure known as Reny's Department Store.  We can completely and utterly ignore the chains this Christmas . . . if we want to.  

I want to.  I love living locally.  I love thinking locally.  I love that other folks do, too.  And I love that my city doesn't look or feel or smell quite like any other city I've ever been to.  I love that the shopkeepers in all my favorite stores know me by name, and vice versa.  I can't say the same for the mall just over the city line.  If you've seen one mall, you've seen them all.  

Chickens in Autumn, Peaks Island, Maine

I am sending much joy to you and yours as the holiday season kicks into high gear.  May you be surrounded by those you love, and as the torrential rains pour down here in New England, may you all stay warm and dry.

xo Gigi

Picture This

Special thanks to Shutter Sisters for featuring this photo on their Instagram Feed last week!

Picture This

You live in a foreign country,

except to you

it isn't foreign

because it's where

you were born

in this, a different life--

imagine--

pears grow there

on your very 

own tree,

or maybe--get wild--

they're figs,

and you can use

the word pluck

for the first time

in your whole life,

at least this life,

but in that one

you pluck practically

every day:

harp strings, heart 

strings, whole mornings,

and the figs, of course--

but only what you need.

You never horde.

Imagine--

each fig is the first,

the last--

pollinated by the tiny moth

that has climbed inside

the fruit's tiny mouth,

laid her eggs

and waited 

for her prince to pluck

her out.

Imagine--

inside your mouth

for one moment

you hold seed

and flower

and egg,

all that you 

could ever want,

the world--

its birth,

its death 

inside

your mouth.

Copyright 2009 Gigi Thibodeau

Today I have reposted a poem I wrote back in 2009.  My life was headed in a very different direction then.  I was the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts Lowell; I'd just had a collection of poetry published by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and had just won a couple national writing awards; I was preparing for a more permanent position teaching poetry writing and children's literature at UML after having taught these and other classes there for nearly a decade as an adjunct professor.  I knew who I was, where I was going, what I would do when I arrived there.

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley / An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain / For promised joy" (Robert Burns, "To a Mouse"). 

And then, everything that was supposed to happen did not.  Namely, I lost the newly created position at UML--in the most spectacular and ugly way--due to hideous campus politics.  I lost many friends and colleagues.  I lost all belief in myself.  Every last bit of it.  And I lost all sense of who I was.  I had been a teacher for a very long time, not just at UML, but before that, too, in many other places.  Suddenly, I felt like that life had been a lie.  

This lie brings me full circle back to the poem.  I'd crafted it while I was writing my Kerouac lecture and poetry reading.  It was full of hope and excitement about the future.  When I read it now, I feel empathy for the woman who wrote this, for what she was about to experience.  I also feel a small sense of relief that nothing I hoped for came true.

Instead, with the support of my husband, I picked up the shards and shattered bits, and I began again.  We moved back to Maine, the place we both loved.  I started working one-on-one with writers, helping them shape their work and their words into stronger and stronger finished drafts.  I began selling more and more photographs.  My own writing grew richer.  The whole world split open.  Isn't that always the way when we keep our commitment to the muse, even in the midst of despair?      

We rented an apartment for two years while we saved our pennies.  Then we found a little cottage with enough land for gardens, and we scooped it up as quickly as we could.  We'd learned after many trials and disappointments in life to act quickly when it feels right in our hearts.  Here over the last year we've dug and planted several gardens . . . and have plans for more.

And we bought our first fig tree.  A Brown Turkey, it's called, and it's not cold hardy all the way up here in Maine, so we will have to coddle it, bring it in each winter to go dormant, coax it back to life each spring.  Already it's been fruiting like mad, though, and, yes, that photo above is of our very first ripe fig.  
And, yes, I plucked it myself.