The Leaves

The sun is high in the blue sky,signs of spring everywhere
in the middle of what is supposed to be winter here.
I think of you, how you have chosen to fall away.

Leaves everywhere both reminding us of winters past
and the promise of new life as spring already seems to unfold,
I wonder how you are and what is making you stay absent.

I see a big tree in the forest, reaching up to the light of day
and suddenly I feel I too, am a tree, with leaves rustling in the breeze.
My leaves are many, each a friend or loved one, close to my heart.

My leaves are many, large and small, new and old, fresh and brittle,
as I recall how close you felt just recently to my dreams and soul.
Now you are drifting fast away, like a leaf in a strong storm.

I watch the leaf float away, getting smaller by the day, and as I am
root bound, I have to stay and let you go, as I have watched many
a leaf blow to other horizons over the course of my life.

It is no cause for sadness or alarm, many a leaf has twirled down
to rest at the roots of the tree that is my heart, and added a coat
of warmth on a chilly day.

Those we love never really leave us, they become a part of our breath,
our story, our soul, as they gently weave our memories with the strands
of their gifts to the tree we are to be, so, I may miss you for a while.

Until the day I realize the pain of what I thought was losing you is now
a rich mulch keeping warm the roots of my being, as I hope that maybe
someday you might be yet another leaf for me to be proud of and enjoy.

Those we love never really leave us, they become a part of our breath,
our story ,our soul, as the scar of the absent leaf grows over and makes room
for yet more growth... I must let you go, with gratitude and grace.

So, wherever the wind takes you next, good luck, good bye, take care, be well
may the tree of your life keep growing too, and whatever leaves drop to your feet
may they too keep your roots happy, warm and strong.

Trudi Ralston.
January 29th, 2015.
For D.O. 

Slowing Down Time : Lord Baldwin 's " Left To His Own Devices"

The husband of a very dear friend of mine just put out his 2014 double album " Left To His Own Devices". I have known Diane and her husband Chester for 20 years now, my son was just two when we met. Chester and Diane Baldwin are a very unique couple who raised ten children with a love and devotion that is truly inspiring. Chester taught himself music and plays the piano, guitar, harmonica just beautifully, always recalling the best of his generation : Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits. He writes all his own songs and does all the instrumentation on his music albums. " Left To His Own Devices " is his most recent album ,a double album Chester finished in December 2014. I first listened to it in my car, as I spend quite a lot of time there these days, and I felt myself wrapped in the warmth of the melodies and stories of the well thought out ballads. As I listened I felt time slowing down, it was a wonderful feeling. I have often thought Chester's music is a reminder about everything that is right with this country, not in circumstance, but in spirit. I always feel better about life and its inevitable ups and down after listening to Chester's songs. In this double album, his voice is very warm and confident, like a well seasoned rich meal, the songs are super well balanced vocally, poetically and instrumentally. The songs are a testimony to his devotion to his family, especially to his soul mate, Diane, his wife of over forty years now. With candor and tenderness he bears witness to his love for her, and her love for him in a sincere way that is very reassuring in this stressed and selfish world. The songs are the best of what American ballads have to offer : a healthy dose of scepticism as to the sincerity of politicians and the powers that be, a love for family and spiritual strength, a concern for the future of the planet, a reflective and philosophical mind set that is seasoned well with optimism amid the concerns and doubts. It is a beautiful piece of art, full of humanity and warmth. Chester is truly talented, and is a delight when he cuts loose on a harmonica or guitar or piano solo. I was feeling a little pessimistic about the world and its cynical endeavours lately. Listening to " Left To His Own Devices " is just the medicine the doctor ordered. Another cool thing about Chester's music albums, is that he makes and designs also all his own album covers, and in this double album, neatly tucked inside like a great letter, are the words to all 36 songs! One of the songs is a stunning instrumental called " Heretic ". The double album is divided in two parts, one part called " Zeroes and Ones", which is more introspective, and the second part, " Future of Humanity ", which is more outward directed. Chester Baldwin's album inspires decency, humility, hope, kindness, all those things our lives and world need so very much. Do yourself a favour, open your heart, mind, ears and soul, and go get " Left To His Own Devices". He has a website : www.lordbaldwin.com. You are in for a treat, and if you are having a bad day, you will surely feel better after listening to songs like " Ain't We A Pair ", " You Are My Happy Thought ", " Just Right For Me ", " A Charity Man ", " Angel's Come Home To Rest ", " Love Is ". I have never been more impressed with Chester as a musician, poet and human being as I am in this his most impressive achievement yet. Songs that reflect upon some of the persistent problems of humanity, like " The Face Of Poverty ", " Future Of Humanity ", " Lot of Crazy Going Around", are a nice balance to the more idyllic love songs. This double album is truly well crafted.

The Jaguar

Dreams are an interesting part of my nights, always have been ever since I was about ten years old. Last night was no exception. The dream placed our house in a big, dusty field in the middle of summer. I was checking on our green house and unlike our greenhouse in waking hours, this one was dusty, full of run down plants and flowers. It was eerily quiet inside, until I noticed a rustling behind the dead Morning Glory flowers. Then the rustling became accompanied by a slow moving dark shadow. A large dark shadow. I froze in my tracks. What was that? Just as I thought the motion was reminding me of a big slithering snake, the shadow morphed into a menacing, snarling jaguar staring me down with a throaty growl and hypnotic, fierce eyes. Instead of wanting to run, I decided instantly that I would not. The jaguar walked up to me as if in slow motion and stared me down. I did not look away and stared right back mesmerized rather than afraid. I remember thinking: " I know he is looking right at my throat, and I don't care if he kills me, I am not cowering, I am not moving and I am not running. " and I didn't. The jaguar screamed in my face, and I did nothing. Out of the blue, I suddenly decided to put my arms around him. I thought he would tear me apart. But that is when the dream got interesting. The jaguar started purring and put his head on my shoulder. He accepted me. For the rest of the dream we were friends, and I brought him meat I thawed out of the freezer. I remember thinking : " I wonder how Michael and Nicholas will react to the jaguar, and he to them? " As it turned out, my husband and son were cool with the big cat, and he seemed right away at ease with them. I remember thinking what a strange place this was for a jaguar to wander into, a big, dusty field in what looked like the South somewhere during a very hot, dry summer. What I liked about the dream was all the space I had around me. The houses, including ours, were very small, but the open space all around us more than made up for the cramped living quarters. The jaguar and I roamed the fields seemingly outside the boundaries of time and hardly needed words or commands to communicate. Like I was part jaguar and he was part human. I woke up feeling elated, like I had really been wherever the dream had taken me, and really had been hot breath to hot breath with a live, fierce, beautiful jaguar who for one endless, glorious night was my best friend, my soul mate. 

The Visits

Yesterday an aunt of mine, one of my father's older sisters, Tante Blanche, passed away in Belgium at the age of 85. I had always hoped I would have been able and allowed to see her one last time. I am so relieved and grateful in my heart of hearts that I have renewed friendships with three of her daughters. Distance has been a challenge in many instances in my 39 years in the US, but death has a way to sharpen even the most cutting concerns. The rather sudden death of Tante Blanche brought to the foreground some hard realities about my life here. My two younger sisters are buried in Georgia, very far away from Olympia; my father was cremated and his ashes were spread out at the cemetery of the Alzheimer's home he was living at in Oostende, Belgium. My mother died in Fort Worth, Texas and is not buried anywhere I know, since she donated her body to John Hopkins University. I have one living sibling, a brother a year younger than me who refuses any contact, even by mail, so it is like he is already dead. So the idea of going to visit the family graves on Memorial Day is surreal. Yes, I think that is a nice word for it. Much better than tragic or absurd. There is a very small grave I get to visit as often as I like, because it is that of my kitty Sneakers who lived with us for 13 years and who died after a stroke three years ago. I know, a cat, but I loved her, and it was like she knew she needed to die in our backyard, unlike our cats Tom and Sylvester who took ill one day and just disappeared in the afternoon light many years ago never to return. She knew I loved her, and she died at home, so I could bury her wrapped in her favorite blanket and with her favorite toy, in a small wooden coffin my husband made for her. So I could put wildflowers on her grave, and a little tombstone with a heart, that would allow me to walk up the steps past the hazelnut bushes to visit her and talk to her. Because she is the only dead soul I lost I can go talk to, go visit. I feel like a child because of the heartbreaking naive pity of it, that her little grave site is where I go to talk to her, and my dad when I miss him. It is almost inhuman to realize the sadness of it, or the realization that people who don't know me or my story and my life, would think me soft in the head. I am not, I just have no other way for a bit of closure, a bit of dignity amidst so much intense loss, anger and pain. I am glad my cousins can go to their mother's funeral the way it is supposed to happen. That they can visit their father's grave, and their sister's grave, as she died very young. And I am glad they can all go to the cemetery together, and that they all love and respect each other. I have a fondness for westerns, not because of all the fancy and gratuitous shoot outs, or fancy horse riding or the bar fights, but because often someone dies and is buried very far away from their family, and people have to leave the dead and buried person behind, never being able to really come back and visit the grave site again. It makes me feel my own circumstances about grave sites and cemeteries are not completely insane or impossible. So, this week I will think of my aunt, my father, and go see the little grave of Sneakers. She was family, and in my heart she will always be, and I can touch the cold little tombstone where the memory of her warm fur and heart still makes me smile, and cry. 

Blemish

Our house was built in 1984, interestingly enough, that was the year my husband and I met, in Austin, Texas while in graduate school. The house is starting to show some wrinkles, and seems to need more maintenance on an exponential scale, but as frustrating as it can be to realize it will from here on out need more repainting, re-flooring, re- upholstering, re- cabineting, I love its imperfections. The other night I came into the kitchen for a glass of water and noticed the small pull out cutting board that has scuff marks still from the previous owners who built the house. They were a Vietnamese couple who had met in a refugee camp in Vietnam in 1976, and had immigrated to Washington State. 1976 happened to be the year I left Belgium at the age of 19 to be a foreign exchange student in Dallas, Texas for a year. I felt a kinship with the marks left that always reminded me of the family who came across so very determinedly. To make another country your own is never evident or easy, I know that after having lived in the US now for 39 years, but this husband and wife came here with nothing but the desire to make a go of a new life and try and leave the scars of war and death and loss behind. The scuff marks on the humble cutting board are a nice reminder to be grateful, to be focused, to believe and forge ahead the way they did. They were selling the house we have lived in now for 25 years, and were moving to a bigger house with their son and daughter, finding the current house too small and too modest. They were moving up in the world. We have stayed in the same house, and I am glad. In a small house you have to get along, in a big house it is too easy to avoid each other. My parents had a big house and it was not a happy place. Our house in comparison feels like a cozy country cottage, and it is perfect for the lessons my heart has had to learn, about the importance of family, integrity, kindness, devotion,sincerity. Small is good. I hope the Vietnamese family found happiness in their bigger house. We ran into them in town a number of years later, and they were very surprised we were still living in their small house. They would be even more surprised to learn that 25 years later we are still there. The thought makes me smile. The house we bought from them is home, completely and solidly, it is where my heart grew roots and healed. It is where my son was raised from the day he was born, it is where we made great friends and neighbours, where many a dog and cat got a second chance at love and a home, where my heart finds peace among the many flowers of our backyard, where we swim, we have BBQ.s and roast marshmallows and make 's mores in our fire pit. It is where we dream, love, sleep, laugh, cry, eat, sit by our fireplace in winter. It is where we feel safe, loved, secure. The blemish in the cutting board like many a piece of wisdom seems unappealing at first. Until you realize it holds a nugget of precious importance about happiness and how it thrives in grateful, kind hearts that stay focused on the treasures of the spirit. The glitter of a forever greedy mind would be annoyed at the imperfection the scarred wood of the kitchen cutting board would seem to imply. Like a piece of raiku pottery where a crack is revered and filled with gold to show the beauty of the imperfection, the scarred cutting board is precious to me, because if gold is a treasure, so is the importance of a family lovingly living life each day, and in the process leaving their mark, the mark that says, we were here, as you are here now, love one another's imperfections in a perfect way. The blemished cutting board is a message I never get tired of.

Bird of Paradise

Soft like a child's contented sigh, free like the sky above its flight
a jewel and marvel for the eye and mind to behold
a majestic Bird of Paradise roams the longings in the visions of my dreams.

Silence everywhere the colour of velvet mist hangs uneasy on my breath.
I hear a song far away whose melody and rhythm feel heavy to my steps.
Far, far away, I hear your voice reaching for my faltering smile.

The Bird of Paradise dips its wings into a torrent waterfall that echoes your shadow's call.
Where did the horizon go, where is the sun, where the comfort of the bright moon?

Night falls heavy like a metal sound and doubt like a dying fire fills our questions with endless smoke.
Will our friendship survive all the turbulent changes, or will indifference win in the end?
Words do not come easy, seem to freeze into a blinded blur where before was warmth and hope.

Time slows like drying glue on a fractured clock.
I wait, you wait, uneasy passengers on a strained ride home.
We are friends, will we be at the end of this dark road?

Trudi Ralston.
January 12th, 2014.
For our very troubled times.
 

Twins

An image I saw when last watching BBC News America is lingering persistently. One of the British journalists was interviewing Syrian refugees in a refugee camp in Lebanon. The dire circumstances of strained resources at the camp were even more disturbing because of a recent winter storm that had brought bitter cold and snow. In one of the tents was a young mother with newborn twins. The babies were wrapped with great care in warm blankets and sleeping peacefully, unaware of the brutal reality they were born into. The mother was calm, dignified, saying she prayed that God would bring better days for her family. It was Friday at our house, cleaning day, and our dog had gotten sick and well, that gave even more laundry of her blankets than usual, plus she had kept me up literally all night with her stomach ache. I had finally gotten to sleep at 4:00 in the morning, and by 7:00 she got me up again. Somehow I managed to plow through the mess of soiled blankets, and then just for fun, our cat had gotten ill too with something he ate outside. Boy, so much for buying quality dog and cat food, somehow our animals manage to get into trouble on occasion anyway. Who needs sleep? I felt very determined though not to give up on my all too necessary chores, and I kept thinking of the serene young mother and her two beautiful babies. Her sense of calm, her dignity, it just touched me deeply. I thought of how much she would like to be sure her babies would be warm enough, have enough food, how she would be worried that she may not have enough nutrition or strength to feed her babies. I thought of her other children, her worried husband. It seemed the camp was running short on food, on water, on medicine for the children who were fighting the flu in tents without enough heat. I sometimes mourn the loss of the privilege I grew up with, but I have never gone hungry or even come close to it, I have never been cold, or without proper medical care. I have a cozy home with plenty of food, we have not everything we may want, but we certainly  have more than we need. We live in a modest neighbourhood, on a quiet street with good neighbours, we have a great backyard that gives us an abundance of flowers, berries and vegetables each summer. We have an above ground pool that keeps us cool when the house gets hot, a fireplace that keeps us warm in winter, and we live in peace, without the terror of war and its nightmares of destruction, trauma and death. Whatever I may think I  have had to overcome, whatever I think it is I still have to deal with, it is embarrassingly unimportant in comparison to the mind numbing challenges of living in a refugee camp in winter with two brand new babies. I pray that the young mother's prayer will be answered , and that she and her family may be blessed with a future that will hold hope, peace and the end of the horror the war in their country has brought them. I pray she may have a home again that she can call her own, where she will see her children grow up in peace and all the blessings and promise that gift brings.  

Fog

The last week we have had a rather impressively persistent amount of pretty thick fog. We live down the street from a lake and the fog really adds a touch of beauty and mystery to the waterfront drive and the hills. Everything looks like a soft watercolour with vague charcoal outlines. It is of course annoying to drive in the mist early in the morning and late at night, and this time around the fog has been hanging around all day. It makes everything eerily quiet. I have mixed feelings about fog. A cousin of mine only in her twenties, was killed in a car accident on a very foggy night. I always think of her whenever the fog gets very thick. Fog is so imprecise in all its potential to be very dangerous. It is imprecise, period. I think that is why it is unnerving, we can't see its intentions, its dimensions, it deceives us visually, gives us the illusion of outlines, of perspective. It is a reminder of how little control we have over our lives, when all is said and done. We like to understand things, have insight, have depth and visibility. Fog mocks all that. It erases certainty. Now, if you want to hide or have to hide, fog is a great ally. We also like mist- ery, right? Mystery can be charming, thrilling, seductive, hypnotic, it give us the idea that we are walking into a world previously unknown. That evasive quality can of course, backfire, as many a movie or book about mysterious adventures tend to deal with multiple complications and disillusionments. Of course, in the books and in Hollywood, the problems tend to get resolved rather nicely, or, they turn into well explained horrible endings and tragic disasters. But in real life, walking through the fog rarely leads to a treasure chest, or fountain of youth or an ending that brings closure and a clear answer. At best, it leads us down the wrong road , delays our schedule, annoys our straining eyes, or gets us in a wreck or near wreck. Fog hides things, changes them, disappears them, and we can't even touch it, just feel it cold presence. It is an annoying reminder of how little we understand real mysteries, like origin, destiny, death, the meaning of life, and other things humans have been trying to rationalize or comprehend. So, mist, fog, is cool in a dramatic sense, but in its cold, scientific way, it is just another thing that makes us feel what really matters, what we really grapple with to understand, is as ephimerous as the air fog is made of. When I think of Merlin in his cabin in the woods, comfortable with his dusty pile of mystical books on magic and existence, fog seems very comforting to me, at least as a concept. But when I think of my dead younger sisters, my dead father and mother, fog and its hazy blanket brings no relief or answers.
It just irritates me with its stifling, stubborn silence.