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The Cauldron and the Wand

October 20, 2011 by Cynthia

Butter, flour, salt and a few other things.  Flour floats in air backlit by sunlight.  A wooden spoon works and whirls, the world turns.  Simple ingredients into simple food – biscuits, hot, fluffy.

Homegrown tomatoes, basil, oregano and a few other things.  First Tomato Soup, solid recipe, but given my penchant for novelty, no two batches are alike.  Consternation but no complaint from my sons.  My thinking that food should be responsive to time, mood, need.

A large ceramic bowl, a common long-handled wooden spoon.  The cauldron to hold, conjure, and feed a world.  The wooden wand to transform and beckon the gift forward.  Cooking is not just chemistry, it is alchemy.

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And then there were none

October 12, 2011 by Cynthia

The last butterfly is slowly bobbing up and down on the launch pad, wings drying in a slight breeze.

Of six caterpillars, five survived to attempt the southward trip to Mexico.  Locally, the days, nights, and flowers remain warm – initial conditions could not be better.

There is majesty to these butterflies.  They became what they were not, utterly unaware of the original destiny contained within their caterpillar skins.  Their  metaphor for human transformation is succinct.

But metaphor only.

Beautiful, compelling, inspiring.  While I may dream of being a butterfly, or perhaps they dream of being me – their transformative process is not ours.

Successful metamorphosis is complete, unforgiving, relentlessly onward – archetypal in Nature.

Although we work our lives for creativity, tread both earth and sky, and mature in liminal space – humans are forever cyclical.  Unlike the caterpillar, we ride the arrow of time both ways.

Evolution, revolution – forward, backward, dropping off pieces for the future and going back for more.

The butterflies have gone on. Autumn leaves are falling.  Inward, outward, down to start again.

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Up Up and Away

October 9, 2011 by Cynthia

Mid-morning Friday on the loveliest autumnal day you ever saw, Mr. Saturday Night and a sibling emerged from stillness.

The bejeweled chrysalis that contained their transformation became crunchy, clear debris.  Organic artifact to changing times.

Home from school sick, my oldest and I marveled at the still-wet sheets of orange and black silken wings.  With such utterly different form, I could not help but wonder what those now-winged former caterpillars might be thinking, feeling – in their way.

When my youngest arrived home,  the jars were conveyed to the launch pad – a large Agastache plant in full bloom.  With a bigger body and wingspan than its cohort, Mr. Saturday Night fumbled a bit as they clung to flowers in the breeze.

Within minutes each butterfly flew up to a quaking aspen, it’s yellow mottled leaves of autumn offering perfect camouflage.  The two swayed gently up and down until dusk,  then disappeared into the garden.

As they moon rose and its siblings took to the sky, I brought the deteriorating chrysalis of Hunny Bear into the garden and nestled it under the milkweed plant upon which it was born, and once saw the sun, the moon,  maybe felt the breeze.

Butterfly number three emerged early yesterday morning, anxious to be off.  Born to run, there was no hanging around for him.  Crawling off my hand onto the launch pad, he was aloft and southbound in minutes.

This afternoon monarch butterflies, one, then two, gliding about my garden from time to time.  I have to smile.

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Exhale

October 8, 2011 by Cynthia

Exhale.  Bedside of my oldest around midnight.  Twenty seven exhalations per minute.  Sound asleep but breathing as fast as a panting dog.  Out of my depth.

Exhale.  The on-call nurse notes twenty seven exhalations per minute earns my son and me a trip to the emergency room.

Exhale.  1:00 AM detour around a fatal automobile accident, law enforcement wants to know where I am headed.  Downtown, ER.  Concrete cutters on the freeway fill the air with pulverized road, lights bright as day on the line of backed up cars.

Exhale.  The new Children’s Hospital, empty waiting room – beautiful.   A slow night?  No, the patient they just admitted waited three hours.  Luck.

Exhale.  Blood oxygen saturation low, not awful.  Not pneumonia.  Wheezing – short breath resulting from viral  inability to…exhale.

Inhale.  Albuterol, a bronchodilator.

Home.  Sleeping children.  Fifteen exhalations per minute.  Dawn comes soon.  Exhale.

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While I am at it

October 5, 2011 by Cynthia

Yesterday my youngest went on a nature walk with his class around the wetland area surrounding the school campus.  While surveying a stand of milkweed, he was thrilled to locate  a monarch caterpillar noshing on a leaf and excitedly shared his find with the class.

We went back after school today to take a look at our newly found friend.  My son ran ahead of me on the boardwalk built to protect the environs, only to reappear seconds later downcast.  The milkweed stand, some two feet away from the boardwalk had been mowed, only shards of stems and ragged leaves remained — gone too was the young caterpillar.

This  mishap echoes the greater decimation of milkweed across the United States.  As the primary host plant of the monarch butterfly, milkweed  has come under attack from habitat development, herbicide use – and errant human aesthetics – of the kind that mowed the native habitat in our wetland.

We take so much, we give so little.  In my small garden I cultivate five different varieties of milkweed, provide cover, shade and water.  It does not touch the loss of one or  one million acres of lost milkweed – but at least it exists.  Do you want to keep breathing oxygen?  Plant a tree.  Want to see beauty on the wing?  Plant a milkweed.   Think global, act local, as they say.

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And still they wait

October 4, 2011 by Cynthia

Monarch update.

Having passed a pleasant weekend in a sunny window, five chrysalis wait.

The sixth chrysalis, the last caterpillar to go, has turned almost black.  Although chrysalis darken  before emergence,  this change in colour is too soon.  It speaks of  process gone wrong and very likely a caterpillar not likely to make the leap.

His (or her) name was Hunny Bear, the youngest and smallest, and named so for the habit of oozling half-way out the air-holes of its jar.  Much like Mr. Winnie-the-Pooh, who became stuck one fine day in the Hundred Acre Woods, just astride Rabbit’s hole.

Cold nights prompt me to  cover zinnias in my garden, to ward off frost.   It is October now.  Given their instinct to migrate instead of mate, late summer monarchs live longer than those borne of spring.  If they survive, their life span stretches six months instead of six weeks.  Something to be said for moving on.

Today I saw a bright orange monarch trippling through.  Could not help but think of those waiting yet on the sill.   Only time will tell.

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Status of status

September 30, 2011 by Cynthia

Returning to our regularly scheduled programming…

According to Monarch Watch, overall monarch migration numbers east of the Rockies are down.  The autumn migration is underway with Mexico-bound monarchs just broaching drought-stricken territories in Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas – as the report put it, 1000 miles of hell – a nearly flowerless / nectar less and waterless expanse.

Our six intrepid adventurers remain chrysalis-bound as days grow shorter, nights colder, and nectar bearing flowers in my own garden begin to fade.  Emergence is expected within two to eight days.

Will these stalwart individuals survive their transformation?  Will  daytime temperatures and nectar supplies still support life when they do emerge?  Can they endure the journey south and navigate  inhospitable terrain to find their own kind?

…Wait, this sounds like life after divorce…

Stay tuned.

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Off the wall

September 29, 2011 by Cynthia

Mirror, mirror I know so well
What of me if off your hook?
I cannot tell – it could be hell
with nowhere else to look

Mirror, mirror on the wall
What is it beyond you?
Mixed up things, unseen dreams
no lyric to form my songs to

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Tell me not your secrets
As you are so once was I
limited by the view

So I will come another day
To see what lies behind you
To dash for whispers before I’m crushed
Try to speak before I’m hushed

Mirror, mirror, gone to black
It will be some time before I’m back
For as you are so once was I
And now I’ve gone beyond you.

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Status

September 27, 2011 by Cynthia

Six chrysalis. Pale green and gold that should belong only to the wee folk, borrowed.

Quiet. Still. Seemingly asleep.

But  – given their gestation from caterpillar to butterfly is only nine to fourteen days, the change taking place must be terrific.

Never judge a book by its cover.

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Nothing to say

September 26, 2011 by Cynthia

Closets are interesting.  They hide from view artifacts of life and not-oft used objects that need to rest a piece.  Some closets are fancy, most are not. Closets hold what we cherish and what we need – whether useful or not.

All closets need a good sorting at some point.

In my case, it is the cupboard under the stairs, wherein objects  from different ages reside.  While I am opulent in retention of things relating to my children, memories from my own past are best moved along.  The thing – me – speaks for itself.

I found an old answering machine, 1998 does not seem that long ago, but I guess it is.  Packed in its original box, it hails from Canada where I  lived after my first life, and before this one.  Cats and humans are sometimes not so different.

Couldn’t help but plug it in – the idea of a message, even my own greeting  from the ether was compelling. 

A tinny, electronic voice repeated No message…no announcement.  Time and disconnection erased all else.  A deeply factual statement.

Closets are good for things remembered well.  And for me,  that includes things that remember – that also speak for themselves.  There is room for nothing more.

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