chubby robins and the collective consciousness

Thursday, March 27th, 2014: 3:27 p.m.

"Keep in mind, Puerto Rico is covered in lizards, everywhere." 

I learned this from the girls with orange and turquoise hair, half-shaved heads and Harry Potter scarves. They passed by me as I sat on my rock. 

"I miss Puerto Rico so much." 

I hear you. I know what it means to miss a place so deeply you can feel your stomach lining quiver inside you. What it means to feel displaced in your home country. What it means to feel trapped no matter what you are doing, trapped outside of the only place you want to be. 

Today is warm. It's a nice warm, fifty-four degrees. The kind of warm that makes you feel as though you're wrapped in a wool blanket on the front porch. Not too hot, not too cold. Just warm. 

There's a breeze every once in a while that sweeps through, cooling me off, making me pull into my red jacket. 

I just ran four miles in another part of Schenley. I think my sweat is still drying, making me colder than normal when the breeze comes. 

I had lunch in the Schenley Cafe for the first time today. 

I was deciding between the toasted brie and orange marmalade sandwich and the apple, walnut, blue cheese salad. I was leaning towards the sandwich. I asked the server what she thought. 

"The sandwich is too sweet for me. I like my sandwiches more savory." 

I got the salad. It was $7.25. It was delicious. 

But, next week, my final stop at Schenley Park for this project, I'll celebrate with the sandwich. 

What's better than a gourmet grilled cheese? Not a whole lot. 

Today, even though it's warm, the sun is not out and the leaves no longer have the glow they did last week. They are their same dull browns and grays. Fingers crossed for sun next week. 

On the way into the park today, I saw a moss-like growth on a rock I passed. 

It was the same color as the walls of my old bedroom--my room in the last home I shared with Mom. I couldn't decide exactly what shade of green I wanted. My dad painted five different shades across my walls in strips. I almost left it that way but eventually decided on something called Dragon's Lair. 

I love collecting paint swatches. I have bags of them at home. Whenever I go with my dad to the hardware store, I sneak to the paint aisles and grab handfuls of my favorite colors. I make cards out of them sometimes. If the name of a color reminds me of someone, I'll send it to them in the mail. I love the paint colors for their names--Dragonfruit, Clay Ridge, Peony Blush, Canyon Mist. This reminds me of Siobhan's comparison of the forest colors to the Maybelline foundation display. We bring nature into our lives in so many ways, even in the most consumeristic settings. 

As I continued walking, I saw small flags pinned into the ground. 

One said, "Angela." 

The others were blank. I wondered what they were for. They seemed like miniature attempts at conquering territory, claiming land. They remind me of E.B. White's short essay from the July 26, 1969 New Yorker, "Moon Landing"--the essay that caused me to fall in love with him:

"The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all."

Brilliant. 

I heard some rustling and to my right, I saw three robins moving the dried, brown leaves and searching. 

They'd move the leaves, then listen. Move, then listen. Move, snatch a worm, suck it up. The robins were pretty chubby. I wondered how they got that way on a diet that consisted primarily of worms. Then, I thought, proportionally, this would be like us getting chubby on sub sandwiches. And it all made sense. 

I saw a few green sprouts trying to come up. Daffodils? This is the first green growth I've seen all season.

The leaves rustle easily in the wind today even without the help of the robins. I really wonder when new buds will come to the trees. Probably after this project is over, and I will have to come back anyway to see them. 

My dad just sent me this book of tree leaves in the mail to help me identify the trees near my spot. Thanks, Dad! :) 

I will have to wait until the leaves come so I can do so.

I am thinking of showing my place to my boyfriend, Will, and my best friend, Nat, when they come to visit me next month. It might finally be time to share. 

I think as my final attempt at identification for this project, I will try to figure out what my rock is made of--may be hard to do, but I will try. 

There are so many runners in the park. I wonder what their day jobs are that allow them this blissful afternoon in Schenley. I'm sure some are students, like me. Even though they are strangers, I feel connected to them through running. We both understand the primal need to push our bodies and lose ourselves in what they can do. We both seek that rush and thrill. 

I am starting to become nostalgic for this place already. It has become a comfort, a ritual, a constant this semester. I feel like I belong to it somehow in a distant, yet symbiotic, way. It is so hard to leave a place you love. It breaks you, sends a hairline fissure through who you are. It is a cruel separation. 

But, I am perhaps the only one in this relationship who knows that I keep coming back. The trees don't know. The squirrels, even if they have seen me before, will not remember. The streams with their freezing-then-thawing-then-freezing this winter, like a pulse in the woods, have no recollection of this girl in the red jacket, this perpetual rock-sitter. 

Or, maybe, they know it all. Maybe, in the collective consciousness of all living things, they wait for me, find comfort in the ritual, too. Maybe, that's just too-wishful thinking. :) Maybe, that's just human-centric and self-centered. 

One afternoon in South Africa, I went to brunch with the man, Kevin, whose farm I was staying on. We ate at a delicious place called Ile de Pain. Kevin was a photographer and had struck a deal with the owner of the restaurant--Kevin took and printed large-scale photographs of the bakers at work to hang on the restaurant's walls and, in return, received a free loaf of bread every week. Kevin and I sat outside with bread and scrambled eggs topped with fresh pesto, shaved parmesan and arugula. 

We had just gone to a pranayama (extension of the life force, extension of the breath) yoga class. I was thinking about yoga and why we do it. At that point, yoga had seemed to me like a self-centered endeavor. I felt a bit selfish focusing only on how I felt, what my breath was like, where my center was. Shouldn't I be spending that time with other people, interacting with them and not just putting all my attention towards how to make myself better? 

"No," Kevin said. "In the collective consciousness of the world, you affect everybody. Even if you can't see it, your negative energy becomes a part of everybody else's energy. Nothing is separate from anything else. You need to be in a good place so that those around you can feed off that and also reach a good place. You need to take care of yourself."

I think that may be why forests are such peaceful places. The natural energy that the trees, plants, rocks and animals give off is so steady. It's steady from their years of history and growth, from their lack of self-consciousness and their ability to just be. They are the ultimate levelers in the collective consciousness and, as humans, we feed off that wholesome stability. As Kevin also told me: "The flower doesn't try to be anything. The flower just is." 

At any rate, I must leave now for the day. Those things that pull me back to life outside this spot--the ticking parking meter, the unwritten lesson plans, the books that must be read--now flood back in. 

Maybe, next week, the trees will blush with green. 
Maybe, I shouldn't wish for something as specific as green. 
Maybe, I am just lucky to know I am coming back.

Maggie

spring blinks awake while i walk on smoothened treads

Friday, March 21st, 2014; 3:48 p.m. 

This morning, I woke up with a headache. The kind that sits right above the eye, the kind I can push on and make throb. I walked onto our back porch while the coffee brewed. I saw the sleek, long-haired black cat that Kyle and I have named Greta. She was alone. She came over and meowed and rubbed against me. Sometimes, Kyle and I try to get her to come inside. She has no collar and stray cats roam our neighborhood. We love her and want a cat of our own. But Greta knows there's a wolf inside the house. She never enters his lair. As I turned to walk back inside, it began to snow. Greta's green eyes glowed. 

It's 3/21/14, and it snowed this morning. I was surprised. I wasn't upset. I've long since given up on being upset when the weather doesn't act like it's "supposed" to. Isn't that just ensuring disappointment? The sky doesn't owe us anything. 

I read essays through the morning and into early afternoon, the headache still throbbing above my eye. 

I decided to go back on the porch for a breath of air. The snow was gone, the sun was out--the day was beautiful, had dropped its ugly snow mask. I was planning on going to my nature spot tomorrow but couldn't not be outside today. I ran to get ready to head to Schenley. 

As I sit on my rock now, my headache is gone. 

Because this is where I belong. Outside, in the sun, its light casting a shadow on my writing hand moving across paper. 

Instead of my snow boots, today I am wearing my hiking boots. 

The ones that saw me through my year-long trip right after my mom died. They are worn, the shoelaces bitten through by a puppy named Loala who I lived with for a bit in South Africa. I can't bring myself to replace them. The boots are way past their maximum mileage, the tops so loose there is little to no ankle support, the treads so worn, I would slide down a cliff with no chance at gaining traction. But that's not why I wear them. I wear them because of where they have carried me, the stories they hold, the dirt of three continents and almost fifteen countries pressed into the ridges of their soles.

They have helped me chop wood in a small commune in Germany, walked with me at feeding time through fields of alpacas in Ireland. They have moved me slowly through a Belgian forest during a silent meditation where I befriended a spider, fallen with me as I tripped on a street car track in Amsterdam, struggled with me as I climbed a mountain in the middle of Ghana. They have supported me while I've cried, found my way again, gotten lost again. They are a part of me, and I feel right when I wear them.

They hold all these stories--stories that now, as I begin to write my thesis, I am trying to make sense of, to figure out how they affected me, really, in that first, full rush of grief. To distill, somehow, what they all might mean and how I can move forward with them now. 

Walking, as I just did to get to my spot in Schenley, has always been my solace. When I need a "break" from life, when I need to leave a mental space no longer good for me, I walk. I move, I drag my feet across pavement, sand and grass. I aim forward and let my hips do the work of release. I've moved miles just to find myself again. 

I used my running app today to track how much I walk each time I go to my rock. I found out it is 1.02 miles round trip from my car to my rock and back. 

Today, I am happy to walk in the sun. The details make themselves known to me in a way that they haven't in months--for the first time since coming to Schenley, I see the lights of a stadium in the distance. I see the snow from the day still on the trees. 

I see the trail to a new part of the stream I have never been to before. 

I'm convinced that attention to detail is what makes a writer good. The spark of connection and intuitive joining is the hallmark of the healthy imaginative mind. I am trying to get better at coaxing this forward, in a second-nature-kind-of-way.

I see my shadow in full force, notice its boldness on the tan gravel.

I feel playful in the Pennsylvania outside for the first time in months. The tufa bridges remind me of a story I have been piecing together for over a year now.

It's of a young girl and a castle surrounded by vanilla bean trees; a trailer home in the middle of the dark forest, a bent, old woman inside; the constant comings-and-goings of foreign jewel peddlers who have more to offer than mere rubies and diamonds--they have stories of ancient treason, born for the first time from their lips. 

It's 40-degrees out, but I feel, somehow, as though I might be in the center of a new spring daffodil. That sounds cheesy. It is. But I feel okay about that because, really for the first time in 2014, spring is uninhibitedly here. She's a shy thing, but she's mustered the courage to join us. Let's celebrate that. Bring on the daffodils.  

There's a buttery warmness that feels veneer-like but that I know is genuine. It is easy to be fooled in middle March that the sun is here for good.

I see the forest as alive, the sun illuminating every brown leaf on the ground, the streams gliding with abandon, the birds playing tag, their small hearts pumping and pulsing against the undersides of fresh feathers. I wonder: do birds sweat?  

I saw two cardinals, a male (bright red) and a female (a dull, light brown) together on a branch right near my rock. Last week, I was in Florida for spring break.

slightly different landscape! :)

My grandma told me why she loves cardinals--because they mate for life and protect each other from predators. They understand companionship, survival, teamwork. I agree with her--it's a beautiful thing, this natural, reciprocal love between muddied-red birds. 

So many people are out today. Some walk, some run, some have dogs. The dogs are brimming with confidence. They trot by, their taut chests heaving. They mark weeds and trees, move on, tail up. Today, they own the forest. Spring gives everyone an ego boost.  

My rock is freezing cold, still. It isn't fooled. I don't expect this spring warmth to last for too long. But I'll take what I can get. 

I've decided to do another blog project, similar to this one, over the summer while I am living in Washington, D.C. I will pick a place and re-visit it every week, write about it, post. I've enjoyed this ritual so much and don't want it to be over when the semester ends. It gives me a reason to just go and sit, be alone, breathe. I don't do that often enough when I have no outside incentive. I hope someday this will change. But, for now, maybe I will do a project like this wherever I go--to keep my heart accountable, to keep the ink fluid. 

I have identified the tree that I photographed a couple weeks ago. 

I'm almost positive it's a maple. Hopefully, in a few weeks, I will be able to confirm (or change) this assumption when leaves begin to grow again. :) 

As I sit on my rock, the world feels open again, capillaries are swollen, Earth's body is splayed. I imagine the roots beneath me extending forth for the first time in months, reaching for each other across the boiling inside of earth, meeting and melding, connecting by touch--refreshed and eager for this new regal season. 

Maggie 

mama, here, and the edges of spring

Tuesday, March 4th, 2014; 12:07 p.m.

It’s bright today. I squint my eyes to block out the sun as I walk in to Schenley.

If my mom were here, she’d ask: “Did you wear face moisturizer with SPF?”

She’d tell me: “Don’t forget your sunglasses.”

She’d say: “Go have fun. Stop worrying about me.”

Her birthday was on Saturday. She would have turned fifty-six.

I celebrated in an underground cabaret bar off Pike Place Market in Seattle. 

My best friend Natalie, who I met in college, was at the AWP conference with me. We toasted with Happy Hour Prosecco. We remembered days we’d had together with Mom. I told Nat how Mom called the people and animals she loved “Sweet Petunia”. I told her mom loved eggplant parmesan. I told her how I held mom’s small-getting-smaller body one morning and told her to “shut up.” We were in the garage of the last home we shared together. She had been apologizing at the end of the summer as I was about to get in my car and drive to North Carolina for my final year of college. She’d said,  “I’m sorry.” For not going out to lunch or to the card store or on walks with me when I’d asked her to on warm summer afternoons. She was too tired to go. The cancer was all-claws-out. She only ever tried to give me what I wanted. I had to let her know she hadn’t disappointed me. The chemotherapy started a month later. That day in the garage was the last time I saw her with all of her hair.

I haven’t really written about my mom yet on this nature blog. Somehow, being in this place has kept me in this place, in the physical world. But it’s an anomaly. My mother shows up in almost every other thing I write. I can’t not write about her. It’s the only thing coming out of me. I see so much of the world through my loss of her. But it scares me a little. What if I’m incapable of ever writing not about her? What if I can't write outside of this loss? I have been pushing myself to try. Natalie shared a quote with me last week: “Don’t let your struggle become your identity.” It's a quote from the musician Ralston Bowles. I try to keep this in mind about my writing.

Last night, the heat broke in our house. I had just gotten home from Seattle after two cancelled flights, a night in an airport hotel room, a 5:55 a.m. take-off time, and an almost-missed connection. I can still feel in my thighs the burn of the sprint from Houston Gate C-30 to C-33. (Give me a break, I hadn’t worked out all week.) I made it to the gate as they were saying my name on the intercom. They closed the door shut behind me.

And then it was 55-degrees in my house and the landlord sent a guy named Emerson. He fixed the problem. It was the sensors. While we waited to make sure the heat would stay on, Emerson compared Kyle’s and my weights to Apacha’s.

“He’s ninety-five pounds? He’s almost as much as you. You’re one hundred twenty.”

Thanks, Emerson.

He asked us if we make parties and take beer. He asked us if we wanted to order a pizza. We’d just eaten.

He saw a couple extra filters in our basement, which my dad picked up for us last time he was here. Emerson asked if he could buy one from us—he had a job in the morning for which he needed one. He didn’t want to go to Home Depot first if he didn’t have to. We gave it to him for free and then it was 11:00 p.m. and he was gone. My travel day was finally over when I fell asleep an hour later.

Exhausted, with so much to do after the conference, I never would have carved out time by myself to come sit here. But I need it. And I am so thankful for this blog project right now to be sitting on my rock, quiet, at peace, outside.

I saw a chipmunk on my way in. He’s the first mammal, aside from a couple squirrels and fellow humans, that I’ve seen since coming here. I saw him go into his hole, saw him come back out and look at me. 

He scurried away and wedged himself between two rocks but continued to look at me, head down, paws flat. 

He reminded me of my Chihuahua, Tink. I know if I don’t make a life out of working with animals I will never be fully happy.

I saw more animal tracks in the snow, but I can't quite identify them. Rabbits, perhaps? 

The new snow covers the ice on the trails and so I could walk today instead of skate. I feel like I have been in motion for ages. I go to Florida next week to visit my grandmother, my mom’s mom. I will be on the move again, more planes, more landscape. The beach has never sounded so good. Just as I am thinking of this, I come under the bridge, which is dripping water. The effect on the snow looks like sand, wet and patterned from the tide under the dimming sun, darkened by the shadows of the sky.

 I love when such opposite ideas remind me of each other. Jonny and I were talking about this in Seattle and he mentioned it in his last blog post—a hand so cold it burns, a face so beautiful it makes you sad.

As I walk, I look down and see this rock.

It reminds me of the rock collection my aunt brought me back from Pompeii when I was younger. The box held a sample of nine rocks from the area near the volcano. A photograph of Mt. Vesuvius was taped onto the inside flap of the box. I used to sit on the Oriental rug in our living room and handle the rocks for hours, it seemed. I ran my fingers over the surfaces—smooth, dark obsidian; a pale yellow rock that felt like powder; an electric blue one made of small reflective crystals. I brought them to my nose and smelled the sulfur, heat, and silt. The graphite-looking one rubbed off dark onto my fingertips. The porous ones left a tingle outlined in dust on my soft pads. At one point growing up, I wanted to be a geologist. Fitting, perhaps, that I have found a huge rock to settle into as I write for this project.

When I got to my rock, there was a strange piece of metal on it and a mark from what looked like a butt that was not my own. 

I was a little surprised, disappointed even. I hadn’t thought about someone sharing my rock with me (back to that misplaced, perhaps, ownership thing). What if I got here one day and someone was already sitting here? What would I do? I used the metal scrap to wipe away the snow and began to write.

I have seen about six runners or walkers today in the forest. I think about Ryan’s question of how we react to people we see writing in public places. I wonder what these runners think of me sitting here, scribbling away, feet dangling off the rock, my green backpack tucked next to me. Sometimes I look up and we make eye contact. Sometimes, we smile. Mostly, we are lost in our elements, though, and don’t need each other just then.

This is the tree I will investigate this week. I have a feeling it may be easier to identify than my first tree.

I hear the stream, but it is faint, not fully rushing, slowed down again by cold. I hear a plane and a rhythmic birdcall. The bridges, as always, are frozen in time. The forest has settled into itself. The anticipation of change looks good on it.

But the sun is out and spring is not completely absent like it has been for so much of the winter. Right when I got to Schenley, I saw movement in a holly tree.

I looked in and saw a beautiful, plump robin. She moved up a branch, a bit farther away from me, and we looked at each other. I thought about her spring, how it seems to be beginning now, how the worms will someday soon be aplenty. How, if we are lucky, we may be seeing gorgeous blue eggs in the coming weeks, precious talismans of hope, sweet vessels of light.

Maggie