Year of the Owl :: March, 2022
This morning I made oat and honey bread, brewed a pot of green tea, gathered my notebooks and laptop and turned on Puccini because I love the sound of opera floating from the windows while I sit on the deck and write. At last it is warm enough to sit on the deck and write. Ravens are croaking somewhere on the other side of the creek, the neighbor is shouting at his dog, the kid who rides the dirt bike is gunning his engine just at the curve of the road below the house as he always does. When the engine noise fades, I catch the soft hoot of the owl in the woods.
Yesterday, a woman I’d just met told me she was out walking in the park and saw two baby Barred Owls perched on a branch. The mother was nearby; when the woman stopped to watch the babies, the mother flew over the woman’s shoulder, gliding through the notch between her shoulder and her ear. A warning. Once, at a raptor rescue center, the woman said, she had put on a thick leather arm glove and an owl had perched on her arm.
“It was so much heavier than I thought it would be,” she told me.
All at once, people I care about are very sick. Maybe they will not live to see the old age I am always planning on. When the woman was telling me her story, I found myself wishing I could hold that owl on my arm and test its weight ahead of time. You can be so sure of yourself and then it can all change. Suddenly, I could not listen to the owl story anymore. I interrupted, told another story about myself and coyotes. The woman looked at me, disappointed. Maybe I had not at first seemed like someone who was self-absorbed and bad at listening. Maybe I had seemed like someone who would understand about the babies and the owl flying so close she could feel the air bend to meet its wings.
I am someone who understands about the owl, but it was still hard to sleep last night. By 3 am I was tangled in a long skein of dreams about the ways I disappoint people - storytellers, family members, everyone. I have noticed that the onset of grief and bewilderment seem to have one of two effects on people: they either fall back or push forward. I do not want to fall back into the woman who is held captive by the mild disappointment of strangers, who believes that the right thing to do is always whatever makes other people relax. I have to shake off the urge to return to old ways of being and push on, accepting that I have my own weight, my own demands on the world.
This week I’ve been reading Patti Smith’s strangely wonderful memoir, Year of the Monkey. I confess I had never listened to Patti Smith’s music until recently, I only knew her from the internet and a couple random quotes, but I’m totally hooked by her roving, creative spirit and her comfort in her own skin. I don’t think she’d give a damn that some stranger somewhere once misunderstood her, but I know for sure she’d attend to the message of owls when they arrived.
“You don’t see things like that. You feel them…”
Sometime in the near future, sickness will take someone I love. I will hear the owl again and again. It will watch me from its invisible perch, it will show itself to me, to strangers who will tell me the story whether I am ready to hear it or not. It will all be so much heavier than I think it will be, but I am confident that I will push on anyway, all the way to the edges of my life, growing, changing, disconcerting, disappointing, becoming, until it is my own time to push on into whatever comes next.
Don’t worry, there are lots of good things going on here as well! We are having a long-delayed wedding in a couple months and I will be meeting my French son-in-law in a few weeks. (Thank you for the visa at last, State Department!) I am taking a very light class load this spring and summer so we can celebrate and get to know each other, then I’ll be back at my books full time in the fall.
I’m also happy to tell you I have a story in the upcoming issue of Dark Mountain, which launches April 21st. It’s written around the theme of “confluence” and involves the deep connection between women and the earth, shape-shifters, and the boundaries between human and animal worlds. It’s a story I really love. If you are interested in reading it, you can subscribe to Dark Mountain’s biannual publications here, or buy individual books here.
I hope you are all enjoying the change of seasons, whether you are heading into spring or fall. If you feel up to it, let me know what you are reading and listening to right now. My list is below.
Reading lately:
Tove Ditlevsen’s The Copenhagen Trilogy
– I came to this memoir through Ditlevsen’s poem Self-Portrait 1. She was telling the truth!
-I didn’t love this as much as The Overstory, but this wrangling with the grief around climate catastrophe and loss has really stuck with me. I’ll be hearing Powers speak in April and I’m really looking forward to it.
Sylvia Warner Townsend’s The Corner That Held Them
-By recommendation of Melissa Wiley. A deep, slow dive into the life of a medieval nunnery without the soft gaze and the sheen of piety. Nothing very much happens and I loved it.
– A 19th century-style novel set in the early days of the old growth logging in the PNW. Sasquatch, wild forests, and a fierce female protagonist.
Listening to lately:
Kiese Laymon read his book Heavy: An American Memoir
-Unbelievably good. Half the experience is listening to Laymon read in his own voice.
Sabine Devieilhe & Marianne Crebassa singing Duo des fleurs from Léo Delibes’ Lakmé Opera.
That’s it for now!
Much love to you, friends. Thanks for being here!
tonia