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Pushkin on society and the individual in Eugene Onegin (Johnson Translation):
Is it that we’ve become officious
and prone to censure in our thought;
that fiery souls’ headstrong enthusing
appears offensive or amusing
to the complacent and the null;
that wit embarrasses the dull;
that we enjoy equating chatter
with deeds; that dunces now and then
take wing on spite; that serious men
find, in the trivial, serious matter;
that mediocre dress alone
fits us as if it were our own?
X

Blest he who in his youth was truly
youthful, who ripened in his time,
and, as the years went by, who duly
grew hardened to life’s frosty clime;
who never learnt how dreamers babble;
who never scorned the social rabble;
at twenty, was a fop inbred,
at thirty, lucratively wed;
at fifty, would prolong the story
by clearing every sort of debt;
who, in good time, would calmly get
fortune, and dignity, and glory,
who all his life would garner praise
as the perfection of our days!

Pushkin was an Incredible poet.

I was thinking, in response to this passage (likely this is the affect he intended) that if we aspire to mediocrity for the sake of comfort, acceptance, even admiration (a pity, that, but I suppose out of context, creative brilliance is nearly blinding), it may be that for some the small sacrifice of the soul, of one’s creativity, is the price.  (Oh, drat!  Where did I leave that dream of myself lying about … ?)
Not for everyone, though. There are the managers among us, people who thrive on arranging, categorizing, doing.  So sublime in competence, so seemingly self-assured in the execution of things business, social, boundary related.  Alas…

it seems there is no comfort or welcome in the world for the artists – except amongst themselves.  Odd-balls is the technical term, I think …

…  it’s true that the socially able among us, the serious-minded masters of all that is important in politics, of all that is “right” and profitable, when faced with a swelling tide of passion, a brewing poetic tempest,  a brooding raincloud spattering unswept pavement … are sometimes caustic, jealous, disdainful.

They

are not skillful – rarely on time, barely present for the lesson.  And they are often dissheveled, spattered with paint, puffed up in defense or depressed by the sheer force of expectation foisted on them by

the skillful, shiny sleeping with credit card companies and marketing people.

We are too dull to perceive

a brightly lit (drugged or mad?)   watery-eyed (under-rested) , disjointed dreamy (unfinished),  sympathetic (undisciplined) , deeply invested (immature) rendering

of some moment, place, being, perception  … glimpse.    Glimpses don’t pay much.  They are so fleeting, nearly unmanifest, hard to market.  They pay when, completed and polished until dull,  you can mass produce them.  Then they are like cartoons.  Many glimpses in a row, taken together, in order they make a picture everyone can understand.  Uniformly.

It’s all mad rambling.

This is my first time wading into the waters of russian lit and (in translation) I find them remarkably welcoming.

Five is unaffected

An ocean of desire and curiosity flowing through her small body

catapulting through the world in pursuit of

toads

candy

eyeball kisses

Not like butterflies or suction cups

Lips grasping my eyelid and planting a kiss there

There is no love like the trusting love of five.

All is new, all is need.  And I am it’s object

artless and thoroughly invested, as love should be

a shower of tempests, a storm of independence and feigned indifference

alternating with a desperate petition for sustence, reassurance, and eyeball kisses.

If you stop to look, you might notice the sun’s slant is a little more direct; less low on the horizon.  During the solstice days it slanted and slanted and never came overhead.  Shadows in profusion.

But now it is starting to climb and Inga asks “Mama, when is it going to be spring?”

In years past I wished these short days and long nights away.  Counted the days, the weeks, until the sun set after 5.

This year is different.  Long, starry nights are permission to curl up by our fireplace and read delicious literature while the fireplace roars and flames smile at me through the glass.   I read Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton.  I read Zeena, by Elizabeth Cooke, and I looked out at the moon, which was blue this last time.  And I thought, with some regret, that the days will lengthen and the fireplace will be dark before too long.  And we won’t be close together as we are, near the fire playing board games.  We will expand in the spring air and spread out.

But not yet.  It is still January and Imbolg is still 3 weeks away.

In the morning there are little bird tracks in the snow.  Laurent tells me they are made by black-eyed Juncos.  Little puffy dark birds.  They leave delicate little prints in the round, frenetic patterns birds make.  And this week two foxes in the snow.  Two!  Flaming orange, swift, graceful, and gone in a flash.   Like magic.

A breeze lifts the summer heat, bends ripening grass with its knowing kiss

blue skies slant, the sun’s eye now less direct

over chanting grasshoppers and cicadas

Soon the school buses will begin their rounds,  dropping and picking their boisterous cargo

black-eyed susans fade, shrivel, nodding toward our wood pile

and a single pumpkin, rogue offspring of last year’s jack-o-lantern, ripens on a fence by the garden.

Soon the nights will be cooler, silvery, longer,  and darker

but for now the heat remains

She sleeps

golden hair streaming on the pillow behind her,

tiny hand resting, innocent, quiet.

My youngest, spirit indomitable

brave in the face of fever

Facing down the swine that has come

Unwelcome to our house.

Her perfect skin is flushed pink with heat.

More beautiful, even, than the serene glow of good health.

Eyes flutter when I hover above her,

Feeling her forehead, listening for her breathing, reassuring myself.

Half of my life’s treasure there.  The other half at school.  Undaunted, unhaunted for now.

Thank you

for trusting me to care for you.  For dutifully blowing your nose and drinking your water

when you don’t want to.

Perhaps tonight we will sleep sweetly.

Here are the mothers fathers grandparents guardians

Waiting.  Quetly, watchful.

Inside, our children play together

Just beyond the glass window that separates us.

Some of us try to capture moments precious in their fleeting-ness with cameras

Instructors, young almost-still-children themselves

entertain, demonstrate.

They are energetic, playful, skillful

Our children laugh, jump, tumble run

While we watch, sitting quietly with our thoughts behind the glass

watching over them

thnking perhaps of laundry, errands, other worries

separated by our thoughts

But here, togther this moment,  for our children.

to hear from an old friend

or know that your safe with the ones you have.  your lovers.  your family.  your friends and peers.

it’s the just knowing

that you’re accepted.  loved.  needed, even.   When it’s like that

the past can just be.  the moment is.  the future is okay.

Doesn’t thrive in intimate spaces

it blossoms where there is distance.

Use and Care:

Attended to regularly, not overwatered, it grows.   It likes sun – best not to crowd it or stand between it and it’s light source.

Compost is helpful.

A single stream of sunlight comes in through dirty glass

A river of light distorted,  illuminating dust

immortalized, mummified, caught like ghosts.

Paths in the light echo what the room has witnessed and recorded:

Desires, Comforts offered, dreams and wishes forgotten by the one who forged them,

but not by the room.

They are kept there, in it’s quiet embrace.

As a mourning mother holds the memory of a child taken –

sleeplessly and alone.

Her mind is such a place,

in which

a father’s garden grows

It’s perfect rows of carrots still lovingly tended

The patterns for children’s clothes lay, pinned to their fabric, arranged on the floor

A girl gazes into the mirror of a dressing table, dreaming of a dance

and an old man’s pipe rests, still warm, by his abandoned rocking chair.

Dust in the light

Until the sun withdraws, leaving the lover silent for another day’s dreaming.