Is the bleak mid-winter behind us?

In February I was really in the doldrums. As a typical winter fan, it’s startling to find that this year that was waning. The wind and the ice forced me inside. For the last few weeks I didn’t want to do much of anything. I kept thinking of the title of Christina Rosetti’s poem In the Bleak Midwinter, which was a hymn we sang growing up. Bleak indeed. But alas, this week the high temperatures are in the fifties. The sun is peaking through the PA grey clouds. Perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This week I worked from am arm chair in a cashmere turtleneck with the windows to the house open wide. Laura Marling’s album Patterns Repeating played in the background as I wrote. The curtains blew in the breeze.

The downside of having nothing but time is that all the days begin to blend together and everything feels wavy and a little like Groundhog Day. But we are at the time of year where seeds must be started. Jared cleaned out the high tunnel and dug a trench for the ginger order which should be arriving soon. We started three flats of spinach. Up this week are more greens and herbs. I finished processing and sorting my zinnia seeds saved from dried Floret seed heads that I had the foresight to save. I am grateful also for the celosia and dahlia seeds I saved and processed in the fall. On Sunday, I pulled out all my dahlia tubers and inspected them for surface mold, plunging any moldy tubers into a bleach bath and letting them dry in the sun. While they soaked up the warmth, I too sat on the patio with my face to the sun.

A few weeks ago, we went to a farming conference which filled me with renewed vigor for perennial food crops, forest gardens, and getting even weirder with what we grow and eat. I got to talk about beans. This week I perused fencing options online to expand my flower operation despite federal funding freezes and the mass firing of government workers meaning our grant opportunities have all dried up. We were accepted into our town’s tiny farmers market, which is an exciting new adventure. I have to focus on these positives and look at all of the good happening close to home to keep me from falling into a pit of despair about the state of our country. At night, I lie awake worrying about the avian flu leaving hundreds of migrating birds dead in the quarries and fields around us. I worry about our egg layers. I worry about the songbirds.

But, hope springs enteral, I hope.

February was a slow reading and writing month. I cut more from my story than I added which, while part of writing, never feels as fulfilling. My brain was elsewhere for a lot of this month. Time seemed to stand still.

I finished A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch. What a wild book. Love triangles abound. There was a scene that made me yell “what the fuck!” out loud in my empty house. If you’ve read it, you definitely know the one. It was also a very violent read. If it were the only Murdoch I read, I would be, well, startled, but not entirely turned off (but, again, if you’ve read it, not turned on either, okay?). My friend Rich sent me some mail last week which included a postcard with a photo of A Severed Head and a torn out copy of Shelia Heti’s latest New Yorker story The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea which I had just listened to her read on the Writer’s Voice podcast. This would feel serendipitous if Rich and I were not always in sync on these things. The mail had a Toni Morrison stamp, which I have a sheet (or do they call it a book?) of in my closet.

I was able to savor Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a glorious recommendation from Lindsay Glass. What a treat, Lindsay. I am so happy to have your recommendations. Dillard’s 1972 nature book (Dillard did not like the classification book of essays) made me eager to get back to my creek and see how it has changed over the winter. I was reminded of all the private joys I’ve experienced there. The occasional scarlet tanager visitor, a deep woods bird we usually don’t see around here. The tree that fell across part of the creek we now use as a welcomed bench to sit on or to set our towels and lemonades. The little crayfish that we watch back into the tiny “garages” as we call the little crevices in the limestone and clay. Or the time I, extremely hungover for hopefully one of the last times, invited people over to swim in the creek only to discover a large snapping turtle had taken refuge in the deepest spot. So, instead we laid and took in the sun on blankets and talked. That is just how it is at the creek. Sometimes something else needs it more than you.

Written when Dillard was in her 20s, it feels young in a refreshing and rambling way. There’s a lot of religious and philosophical references. There were two afterwards she wrote later (and later) in life about her relationship to the book and how it has changed over time. It made me think about my own relationship to my past work and how it changes as I age— the embarrassment I have to push down when I find something immature or unfinished years later. There was a passage towards the end that I copied out into my notebook. It felt like a significant reminder for right now:

“Thomas Merton wrote. ‘There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.’ There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.

I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

Reading Pilgrim slowly was a great distraction from the news and Dillard’s central focus on her creek reminded me of W.S. Merwin’s 1977 poem “Avoiding News by the River”—

As the stars hide in the light before daybreak
Reed warblers hunt along the narrow stream
Trout rise to their shadows
Milky light flows through the branches
Fills with blood
Men will be waking

In an hour it will be summer
I dreamed that the heavens were eating the earth
Waking it is not so
Not the heavens
I am not ashamed of the wren’s murders
Nor the badger’s dinners
On which all worldly good depends
If I were not human I would not be ashamed of anything

I got my hands on Ali Smith’s new book Gliff from the library. The story is told through the POV of Bri, a nonbinary teenager who is separated from their mother and left to take care of their younger sister. The kids are smart, mature, and witty. The book is set in the near future when a totalitarian regime has taken over Britain. It was heavy, and in true Smith fashion, dizzying, but I saw in it some hope and encouragement. I would call it a five star read.

I also read Wuthering Heights and I have to admit, it was a struggle for me. I think for several reason. One being I knew the story, so I just felt less wonder about it. Two, that I loved Tenant of Wildfell Hall so much that I just kept comparing it to that. But, like Anne’s book, Emily’s was also disparaged (and in some editions even rewritten) by Charlotte and so thus continued the curiosity of what the hell was going on with those Brontë sisters.

I have decided and announced to my friend Elise that in March I will be attempting Middlemarch in its entirety. If I read 30 pages a day I will be able to finish it before the month is done, with some wiggle room for off days. As I tend to read more than that a day, I don’t think it should be a problem but I shouldn’t say that here. I have not made it far in the past.

As I look forward to March, and the lion and lambness (my computer kept autocorrecting that to lameness) of it all, I am trying to feel out whether I have the mental capacity for one more writing class before taking a pause for the spring. My intention was to do a class a month for at least the first three months—the months when people are stuck inside and itching for something new—and then reevaluate during the start of the farm season to see how we are all feeling, and what I think is possible with my schedule. I am feeling ready to get the hell outside, is how I’m feeling. How about you?

I have deleted the Instagram app off my phone, occasionally checking in on my laptop, but largely aiming to avoid it, so instead of asking there, I am asking my loyal readers and followers here, do we have a March class in us and if so what is speaking to you more—weird fiction or writing about art? I will trust that you will get your answer to me however you feel is best. I am excited to hear your thoughts.

For now that is all I have, but I feel lucky to have you here.

Be well my sweet friends. May I see you by the creek so soon.

CM