Distressed Jeans

I needed some comfortable, familiar jeans for writing, and so yesterday I bought some good old-fashioned Levi’s 501 jeans – “original style,” as the young man with heavily tattooed forearms thought to inform me, without looking up, as he ran the credit card through . . .

I had to bite my tongue, tell myself it’s not the sort of thing he’d be interested in hearing any more than my own children would – about how my first “original style” jeans lain at the bottom of my father's swimming pool one summer back in 1974, looking eerily like the bottom half of a dead body – and of how my father would swim obliviously above them twice a day, early morning and again at dusk.  I was waiting for the chlorine to fade and soften them – and I’d jump in the pool weekly, take them out to inspect, wash, dry, and see if time had done the job of speeding up time. If they still had that cardboard feel, could still stand up like a paper doll, then back into the pool they’d go.  By August, they had the "right" kind of look to them, and I was ready for my first year of college.  I wanted to tell this young man that my mother was in dismay as to why anyone would do that to new jeans, she having been raised on a farm, etc. etc.  But -- I had no interest in her stories at the time, so why would this young man want to hear my story as he ran my credit card through without even looking at me?

But then I came home with my new jeans and went straight up to the attic to haul out one box of saved, sentimental clothing where that first pair of 501s still stayed – only a remnant of what they’d once been, having been hacked off to make short-shorts sometime after college – and isn’t it funny, I thought, that here is my second pair of 501’s – the pair that took me 10 busy years to soften up and fade the way I like them – the pair that went through the births and nurturance of three babies – always this pair of familiar jeans I’d put my feet into before stepping onto the wooden floor for a full day and evening of child caring and house caring – that denim, so faded and soft now, like a swatch of baby blanket worn through to its very threads.  I saw two clearly worn spots on the backside, thin as fine linen, just where the sit bones would have hit when that odd moment came to sit down – goodness knows, I didn’t sit much in those jeans except to nurse babies, I thought – maybe it was the deep knee bends that somehow strained the bottomside too, the stooping down and bending over to pick up toys or towels or crying babies . . . maybe games were played while sitting on the floor or scuttling across a rug.  And the color, I thought – I’m sure they were a dark hue when I bought them, just like the first pair I bought before college – because I don’t think "pre-washed" or worn-in jeans existed before my children were born.

So goes the attic reverie . . . of how indigo blue can be scraped away to reveal pale-eyed blue – and of milky white threads that bare themselves on cloth just like thinning grey hairs on a head or as weakened blood vessels show through a woman’s skin after all the family is raised and all the work is done and there’s finally time to sit down for a reason other than to nurse babies or read the children their books . . .

I show up for writing today, wearing a new pair of Levi’s 501 jeans – my third – and for once they are pre-washed and pre-softened (what is now proudly labeled, "distressed") because who has 10 years to soften up a pair of jeans anymore? . . . And so I'll sit at this kitchen table with notebook and pencil to do the job of writing today about a young man with swirling tattoos of deep indigo pierced upon fair young forearms that  never lifted a baby much less a lifeless body from the bottom of a turquoise pool – such distress, she writes . . . that can’t even look up as it hands over the bag of jeans . . . .

Harbingers

As I reluctantly sat down to write this morning, I glanced out the kitchen window and noticed an ice sculpture rising from a frozen pond of water in the bird bath. Though open to interpretation, I proclaim it to look like a glass bird, its wings folded meekly behind, perched on the bath water – its delicately shaped head, dovelike, looking away from me and toward the bush nearby.  Only after taking the picture did I notice the real-life yellow rumped warbler on a branch to the left, posing either in the same befuddlement as I, or in pride and presentation of his secret artistry -- which one?  I traipsed outside in the 20-degree temperatures, camera in hand, to investigate the apparition . . .

Some mystery of science was at play during the night or early morning hours, in which a bit of water rose up from the birdbath and began to freeze, and then another drop or two followed (pushing upward?), and that began to freeze – I suppose that’s the way it happened. I don’t see any reasonable source from above that might have dropped water down on the frozen surface in order to create this ice sculpture.  

The science of it eludes me; I can’t begin to comprehend, much less explain how such things happen. I secretly resort to a mystic explanation – though I think mysticism can have reasonable, scientific explanations without being minimized or disqualified in its significance to the individual.  Am I the only person who “sees” the shape of a perched bird rising from the birdbath?

I like to think that science and living nature and mysticism and everything understood and not understood have come together today to provide this odd little shape of a perched glass bird in my birdbath. And – call me crazy if you will – but I like to think that the shape is there as a gift from the birds, their way of saying thank you for feeding us through all these frozen, snowy weeks so that we could survive to be here at our traditional mating time in the middle of February.  The temperature will rise to nearly 50 degrees today, and so this bird shaped ice sculpture will be gone by the time I finish my daily writing. Already, I look out the window (a few hours later) and notice that the disc of water in the birdbath has begun to melt and float within itself -- causing the glass bird to rotate leftward, rightward, leftward -- like a watchtower guard . . . 

I also like to think that this “apparition” is a harbinger of writing ideas to come -- maybe a herald to corroborate the message in my daily horoscope which I read in the newspaper today:
“A creative idea you put to rest should be reinstated. If your intentions are honorable, you can start anew.”

Seeing Pasternak in February

February.  Take ink and weep,
write February as you're sobbing . . .

. . . while black Spring burns deep
through the slush and throbbing. ("February. Take Ink and Weep")

Rouse your soul!  Make the day, foaming.
It's noon in the world.  Where are your eyes?
See there, thoughts in the whiteness seething,
fir cones, woodpeckers, cloud, heat, pines.  ("Sparrow Hills")

And it's suddenly written again
here in first snow is the spider's
cursive script, runners of sleighs,
where ice on the page embroiders. ("Winter Nears")

Snow all through February,
and time again
the candle burned on the table,
the candle burned.  ("Winter Night")

Snow is falling: snow is falling,
not snowflakes stealing down,
Sky parachutes to earth instead,
in his worn dressing gown.  ("Snow is Falling")

How many sticky buds, candle ends
sprout from the branches! Steaming . . . ("Spring")

That's why in early spring
we meet, my friends and I,
and our evenings are -- farewell documents,
our gatherings are -- testaments,
so the secret stream of suffering
may warm the cold of life.  ("The Earth")

Thank you, Boris Pasternak, for the beautiful poetry that lets me see . . . before writing.

That One Wing, A Tribute

Yes, birds were in a flurry last week before Virginia’s second snowstorm of the season – and yet they maintained admirable cooperation and a systematic seed-and-nut gathering routine. This week – impending bad weather once again – there’s something different about the flurry, and I’m not sure how to read the signs. They’ve lost their peace; they are frantic.  Heads are turning abruptly, hops are stiff and tense, flight is recklessly rapid – there’s aggression in the air. The smaller birds are just as mean as the larger birds – pecking at each other, even at their own kind, possibly their own mates, in the acquisition of one seed or nut. Hurr-ee! Hurr-ee!

For months I’ve observed this one large, peaceful, and solitary yellow bellied sapsucker perching himself against the bark of a tree closest to the window near my writing spot – not to mention closest to the suet feeder which he savors at the rate of one cake every two or three days. I'd begun to call him my mascot.  Last weekend during the snowfall, and as I was writing, he found his usual spot not far from the suet, fluffed up his feathers, and hunkered down – unruffled by snow as by the flash of my camera. He has been the most trusting and unhurried of all birds at the feeders. This is the bird who knows – when I rap on the window in my own fit of aggression to scare away hordes of starlings who rob the feeders in planned descent – he’s the bird who knows that I don’t mean him: “Not you, Mr. Sapsucker,” I sometimes say once the starlings have lifted and gone elsewhere. Though he is closest to the window, and in direct line of my rapping, he never flinches one wing at me but rather lifts his red-capped head to pause patiently beside the suet cake – “I can’t eat while you’re rapping,” he might be saying. Then I apologize to the sapsucker – “Not you” – and he slowly resumes the nibbling of his tasty, nutritious treat – and I go about my writing. That’s our routine.

What will I do now? – my mascot gone.  Unbelievably – this trusting, plodding character – downed and eaten alive by a red shouldered hawk.  I had looked out the window just as a hawk was plucking feathers from a large bird -- like what I imagine an old woman would have done to a rooster meant for an angry soup in times gone by.  I suspected . . .
. . . meanwhile, the hawk’s mate sat perched in high branches, shrieking the only two syllables he (or she) knows, kee-yer! kee-yer! – which sounded more like a warning to all would-be do-gooders like myself – Keep 'way! Keep 'way!

Variegated feathers and a stain of pink sullied the white snow – grey downy feathers, meant to keep in warmth and kindness, were suspended briefly in the thick winter air. I made an obvious presence at the window -- but knew it was best to let the job be done completely rather than half-way.  I saw the hawk, at times, looking straight at me between shreds – his mate’s cry beginning to sound more like a challenge and a threat, Come 'ere! Come 'ere! – and I remembered a few years ago when a workman told me about a hawk that had tried to snag a Chihuahua from his parents’ back yard.

Five minutes later, neither bone nor beak remaining, the aggressor’s mate swooped down gleefully from his perch and gently nudged his mate, this time mumbling something that looked like, Enuf, enuf a'ready, let’s get outa here . . . and they flew in tandem to some unknown place.

Writing stopped for what has turned out to be three days -- though I can't entirely blame the loss of my mascot.  I went outside with trepidation and a shovel, all the while noting feathers that were perhaps “too grey,” “too dark,” “too small” – any reason to hope the victim had been anything but my friendly sapsucker – but that one intact wing could not be denied – that one wing that never flinched – and now this:  though it be three days – the uneaten suet cake at my writer’s window.