Removing Chaff--Not So Easy

 I had a bumper crop of anise this year. 

The lacy-leafed bush that I grow as much for the monarchs it attracted one season as for its seeds. Sadly, the pudgy, iridescent green caterpillars have never returned to frolic amongst the sea-green gossamer that looks as though it would be equally happy submerged in some land-locked lake.

Monarchs or no monarchs, my anise bush has flourished. No matter, the birds like the seeds.

This year I harvested some seeds taking care to leave a fair amount for the goldfinches. I dried the seeds on a tray in my kitchen for a week, along with their fibrous leaves and delicate stems. Then it was time to get biblical-- to separate the wheat from the chaff.  

Oh what fragrance filled my kitchen! Reward enough for my efforts thus far.

The next task was not difficult but it was time consuming. I gently crunched the dry heads between my fingers and, with tiny tinkles, the seeds fell to the tray. So did many of the broken stems. As I have great plans to include the anise seeds in a Christmas cookie recipe, the stems had to go. This was when the clock seemed to stop ticking.

           

Finally I had removed enough of the stems to sift the remaining pile through a strainer. Of course some stubborn stems determined to offer up extra crunch to my cookies wound up amongst the seeds and these I removed as well.

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I find myself removing lots of sticks and stems from my days as well. I am increasingly aware of the limit to my days. The pressure to make them as fruitful as possible overwhelms me at times. I should relax--should enjoy the extra time I have post retirement. But I cannot. I have so many miles to travel before I sleep.

Unlike my effort with the anise seeds, this task is difficult. It requires that I give equal attention to my passions and to the significant people in my life---not necessarily an inclusive equation.  To balance them fairly means to eliminate some of the chaff that has accumulated. I can see that there might be pain associated with this elimination process. I encountered none with my little anise seed project.

I haven’t resolved it yet but my sanity will soon demand that I get started. There are only twenty-four hours in each day. I need to simplify my life so as to have quality time to pursue my favorites. Sounds like an internet thing…my favorites.

Meanwhile the leaves are tumbling outside my bay window--delicate reminders that the seasons are changing. That summer will soon be a memory.

I gathered an entire spice jar of seeds today and now I’m thinking I won’t ever get to baking those cookies. That would be only adding chaff to the wheat of my life.

I’m glad I left some seeds for the birds. They may be the only ones who benefit from my fragrant anise bush.

           

Inspiration or Discipline?

Is inspiration or discipline more important in creating art?

This is an ongoing discussion in two of the online writing/reading groups I've joined--Backspace and Goodreads.

In my first life, as mother to three daughters and florist for 34 years, I followed the discipline road and reached some level of success despite frequently being singed by both ends of the candle. I hadn't placed much emphasis on inspiration mainly because I didn't have the confidence that it would take me anywhere. Don't get me wrong, I placed an extremely high value on inspiration and the art it nourishes. I just didn't believe I had any seeds to begin with. And I was extremely frustrated.

Then about six years before I retired I gathered the courage to create inspired floral creations rather than pump out cookie cutter FTD designs. I had admired for over a quarter century designs by florists all over the world but never thought myself capable of attaining that level.

I guess I liken this to the difference between works by Stephanie Meyer or Nora Roberts and those by Jayne Anne Phillips or Andre Dubus III. All certainly very worthwhile reads but I have to think the two former authors are more focused on discipline and are probably more commercially successful whereas the two latter focus on inspiration (no doubt combined with discipline) and are more artistically successful.

I will grant that floral designs are in a different world than fiction. But I learned something during those last six years--I learned that if I had the courage to allow inspiration a seat on my wagon I could, indeed, create more artistically successful designs. I had the seeds all along! What a surprise when that art was validated by my clients who then inspired me to reach even higher.

So now here I am holding both ends of a new candle--the 'chronological one' that says I should retire, not rewire. The other--the one desperate to create. Does that mean I discipline my self to crank out fifty novels between now and the end of the rainbow (even assuming I find an audience!) or do I discipline myself to sit down every morning and listen to my muses and follow their inspiration?

Yep, you guessed it.

I'm an old friend to discipline--a newer one to inspiration. Who knows--maybe the three of us will be surprised with an audience. If not I have these two friends who've helped me enjoy the process of trying.

Book Review: Water for Elephants

I have a thing about fog. While grey skies in Michigan take me into a hole that is difficult to deal with, fog intrigues me. Maybe it is its ethereal nature, as if by poking my finger into it the greyness disappears like air in a balloon. Maybe it is the calmness that it invokes.

Southwest Florida had a rare dose of extended fog early this month...it crawled in off the Gulf late one afternoon while I was driving home from the north and thought maybe a gigantic fire was raging in a palmetto forest but I could not smell smoke. It was like an opaque cocoon that both comforted and unnerved me and it didn't roll back out to sea for five more days.

About that time I finished reading Sara Gruen's WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, released in 2006,
which I would recommend to anyone. It is a delightfully romantic story set in the last depression
(to separate it from our current one!) told from the memory of 93 year old Jacob Jankowski whose parents are killed when he is finishing Veterinary School in New York. Though he had planned to join his father's thriving veterinary practice, Jacob learned not only that his parents had mortgaged everything they owned to send him to school but that even his father's practice was dissembled to pay their debts.

Penniless and unable to concentrate on his final exams Jacob runs off to seek solace and winds up on the train of a disfunctional circus at a time when any job at all, no matter how horrific, was worth keeping.

For seven years Jacob found his love of all creatures, his high moral standards and his passion for Marlena at life-threatening odds with his superiors whose personality issues ranged from
wanton narcissism to murderous greed.

Jacob is now a spunky old man whose mind is stronger than his body and who rails against the inane rules of the nursing home he calls home. He rarely recognizes his infrequent family visitors but remembers in finite detail his days in the circus. Sara Gruen deftly carries the story from Jacob's current frustrations back to his luscious recollections of what once was. His longing for his beloved Marlena, a beautiful equestrian and star of the show whom he eventually marries but who passes before him, sugar coats his memories that are not always so pleasant.

The third dominant character is Rosie, an elephant purchased for her promise to redeem the circus's failing revenues and who placidly endures her terrible abuse until her own sense compassion is uncontrollably violated.

What endeared me to this story was Sara's wonderful understanding of people and what motivates them to make bad choices. She juxtaposes horrendous cruelty against unbounded compassion but the last page left me with confidence that goodness is master and that all creatures, animal and human, deserve and benefit from it. Her research into a world of human and animal oddities that is foreign to most of us is thorough and her sense of humor softens the sharp edges of an often wicked world.

The circus world is a microcosm from our past but its 'rubes' and its stars teach lessons in WATER FOR ELEPHANTS that are universal and current with a pace that grabbed me within the first few pages and held me captive until the end.

Getting back to the fog...by the fifth day it began to unnerve me. The sun would peek out midday and then recede to let the greyness return. Maybe it was just to remind me of what I 'd escaped for two months of winter. Or, maybe it was to reassure me that fog is like a good read or the healing time spent writing--a lacuna that both embraces and tries to understand the sharp edges of the present.

Monday Musings #2--Light Fantastic

Saturday, I took a walk with my dogs (of course)...total of five,
including me. It was midway through our biggest snowfall yet this year--twelve inches over 24 hours--and it was after sunset, so I could feel the big, fluffy flakes tickle my nose but I couldn't see them. Not, that is, until I photographed a few scenes along the Rouge which rivers through our neighborhood. Then, magically, the flakes appeared like tiny Tinkerbells of light, floating across the front of my camera lens. At first I thought the flakes were on my lens and tried to wipe them away. When I realized they were actually drifting from above, I let my excitement carry me away and began snapping wildly to see how many I could 'catch' digitally.

And then I began to think about this phenomenom, new to me, but probably not to most photographers.

What other aspects of our lives do we know exist, can sometimes feel, but cannot see, until they reflect the light?

Emotion--love, regret, fear, joy--and the range between all these; the essence of our heart.

Spirit--the food of our soul, the invisible connection between ourselves and our world as it is now, as it has been experienced by those before us and as it will exist tomorrow.

Knowledge--the stuff of brains which sets us apart from animals and plants because it enables us, for better or worse, to remember our past, anticipate our future and contemplate our demise.

And from where does the light shine that illuminates these three, renders them visible?

It shines from us, from the way we live and the way we treat every living creature we encounter.

If these encounters are not brilliant, emotion, spirit and knowledge will still exist, but we will lose out--we will not enjoy the childish joy that they inspire.