Picking Strawberries and the Practice of Simplicity

I kneel among the rows of plants, combing through the leaves in search of the bright red strawberries.  I pick enough to fill my hand, carefully severing their stems with my fingernail, then empty my handful into the bucket.  Everything is wet, and my hands and the knees of my jeans are soaked in minutes.  My thighs begin to ache first, followed by my lower back, as I constantly shift my position, trying to find a way to sit that is least uncomfortable.

An older man is picking opposite me; he has thinning white hair and a face lined with wrinkles.  I usually feel more comfortable with older people than with people my own age, so I smile at him as we exchange confidences about strawberries: the best berries, for example, tend to grow closest to the dirt and are hardest to find.  He tells me that this is not a good year for strawberries, and that the field is past its age of maximum productivity; he says that a few years ago he could have picked fifteen buckets of berries where today he has picked only three.

The field is full of people, both old and young, picking the berries.  There is something humbling about seeing all these people kneeling on the ground, gathering in these fruits that the earth has produced.  A few people talk quietly to each other, but for the most part it is quiet, and I cannot even hear the nearby highway.

"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" I have Thoreau's words echoing in my mind as I pick, and again later, when I am back home at my desk in the library.  I have been trying to do too many things recently, and as a result I have been getting nothing done.  My desk and the area around it are covered with stacks of papers and books.  My to-do list grows longer every week.  Whenever I am working on something I struggle to concentrate on it because I cannot stop thinking of all the other things I need to do.

Each strawberry must be picked individually, and I cannot pick with both hands.  One hand holds back the leaves, and the other picks the berries and places them into the bucket.  At the beginning it seems impossible that the bucket should be ever filled, but I keep picking, not consciously thinking about anything in particular, and before long it fills.  "I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail," Thoreau wrote.  I think that he would have approved of picking strawberries.

I have pared down my daily exercise routine; before, it was too long and I often became bored with it or simply did not want to do it because it took so much of my time.  I am trying to finish some of my notebooks that I am currently using, so I will not feel as though my thoughts are spread out over so many books, and I am trying to get back to writing poetry regularly.  Some of the projects that I want to do - another bookbinding project, making a portable shrine to the goddess Brighid, and starting a book journal - are going to be put off until I am finished with my current projects.  And I need to clean my desk.

"Simplify, simplify.  Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion."  One thing at a time, one berry at a time, and gradually the bucket is filled.

Thoreau on Reading

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. -- Henry David Thoreau

I have been re-reading Thoreau's Walden again lately; it is a book that bears reading over again every one or two years.  Every time I read it I discover new treasures, new things to ponder and turn over in my mind.  Although I do not agree with everything in the book - many sentences cause me to raise an eyebrow or shake my head inwardly - I never put Walden down disappointed.  It is the sort of book that only improves with further re-reading.

Some of my favourite passages in Walden occur in the section entitled "Reading."  For example, there are these sentences:

"To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.  Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written."

I know that often when I have been reading a book I have been at the same time thinking of other things in the back of my mind, and when I reached the end of the page I discovered that I had only skimmed over the words and hardly retained any of their substance in my mind.  Truly good and well-written books require our full attention.

Then there is this next passage:

"A written word is the choicest of relics.  It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art.  It is the work of art nearest to life itself.  It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; - not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but to be carved out of the breath of life itself."

Although I could argue over the universality of the written word - after all, some cultures have only an oral literature and not a written one - there is something to be said for the way that reading can enable us to live lives other than our own, to travel through time and space without leaving our chairs.  Perhaps this was what Thoreau meant when he wrote that writing was the art "nearest to life itself."

And only a true bibliophile could have written this:

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.  Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage."

Yet even more important than reading good books is living a good life, aware of the living world around us:

"But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard.  Much is published, but little printed.  The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed.  No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.  What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?  Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?  Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity."

A Book of Prayers

I have always been a collector.  I collect books and pens and interesting stones and sticks and dried flowers.  For nearly as long as I have been able to read and write, I have collected notebooks.  At any one time, I have several notebooks in use.  Right now, for example, I have my journal, a book used to record the books that I have read, a book for collecting my favourite poetry, a book for writing my own poems and stream-of-conscious ramblings in, and, no doubt, others that I cannot think of at the moment.  There is something in words - written words specifically - that I have always loved and I suppose that that partially accounts for my love of notebooks and my apparent need to fill them.

More recently, I have become a collector of prayers, prayers both old and new, as well as new prayers that have been adapted from old ones.  I find them in books, and on blogs and websites.  Some of them I write myself or adapt to suit my own purposes and life.  Just as with notebooks, I cannot say exactly what it is that brings me to collect the prayers: my love of words, certainly, as well as my love of poetry.  But there is also something more that draws me to these prayers, something in the devotion and love and reverence expressed within them.

I love to repeat the prayers aloud to myself and listen to the sound and rhythms of their words.  Magic, if it is anywhere, is in words and poetry.  I have always loved reading aloud, whether it be poetry or prose, and making the words come alive on my tongue.  I have even been known to enjoy public speaking.  There is power in both the spoken and the written word, and it is a power that I have long known of and respected.

Of course, when one collects prayers, one needs a place to put them.  Merely stored in a file on the computer is no good; the words must be handwritten in real ink on the real page of a real book.  It is the only way to truly honour the words, by shaping them by hand, letter by letter, feeling the texture of the paper through the nib of the pen.

My prayer book began with this small book that I bound myself (with all of the imperfections that come along with making something yourself).  Into it I have written my favourite prayers, beginning with that passage from St. Patrick's Breastplate:

"I bind unto myself today

The virtues of the starlit heaven,

The glorious sun's life-giving ray,

The whiteness of the moon at even,

The flashing of the lightning free,

The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,

The stable earth, the deep salt sea,

Around the old eternal rocks."

I have illustrated the pages with small stickers and images that I have cut from magazines.  I chose calm, restful images that will not distract from the words.  The result is a book that can be read late at night before sleeping or early in the morning before waking or before sitting down to meditate or perform ritual.  And, most importantly, there are still many blank pages, leaving much room for more prayers to be collected.

For information on how I made this book, see this post over at my other blog.

Just a quick note...

As you have probably noticed, I have a new design for my blog.  The basic layout of the page elements is the same so hopefully you will not have any trouble navigating my blog.  The top header has tabs that link to all of the pages on this blog, while the right-hand sidebar contains the welcome message, blog followers, my profile, blog archives, links to the most popular posts, top labels of posts, blogroll, and LibraryThing widget (as well as a few other odds and ends).  There have been no changes here so you shouldn't have any problems.

However, if you do have any issues with the font size, colour, background, etc. please let me know.  I want my blog to be readable for all visitors, so please leave a comment if you think any improvements can be made in this area.

I would also like to mention that I have redone my Recommended Reading page.  The page now contains a much longer list of books, with separate sections for fiction and non-fiction, and with more detailed descriptions of the books.  If a book has been reviewed either here or on my other blog or if it has been featured as a Book of the Month, then I have provided the relevant links.  I urge you to check out the Recommended Reading page now if you have time, and I should have another post up sometime this afternoon.

Pagan Values Month: What I Value

I value truth, courage, persistence, and honesty.
I value sincerity, integrity, faithfulness, and a good sense of humour.
I value discretion and boldness, caution and daring.
I value imagination and strength of character.
I value trees, lichens, flowers, mosses, stones, hills, rivers, oceans, valleys, prairies, and all things that walk, creep, crawl, swim, fly, or slither on this planet.
I value books and stories and storytellers, songs and poems, singers and poets, and all of those who create art and do anything to make the world more beautiful.
I value diversity and culture, freedom and restraint.
I value the power of words.
I value my fellow human beings, even when I think that I do not, and I value myself.
I value peace.
I value food, air, and water.
I value the choice to speak or to remain silent.
I value science and the scientific method.
I value education and learning and all of the teachers that I have known in my life.
I value families, however unconventional they may be, and I value all of my ancestors, known and unknown, who have lived and died before me.
I value the home that I live in, and the gardens and farms and stores where my food comes from, and the roads that this food travels on to reach me, and the appliances that cook and store this food.
I value life, love, the rising of the sun, the setting of the moon, and the turning of the stars in their round.
I value.

International Pagan Values Blogging and Podcasting Month June 2010

Book of the Month: Always Coming Home

"Perhaps not many of us could say why we save so many words, why our forests must all be cut to make paper to mark our words on, our rivers dammed to make electricity to power our word processors; we do it obsessively, as if afraid of something, as if compensating for something.  Maybe we're afraid of death, afraid to let our words simply be spoken and die, leaving silence for new words to be born in.  Maybe we seek community, the lost, the irreproducible."  -- Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

There are some books that can be read and re-read over and over again and never diminish in quality.  There are other books that simply must be read again to appreciate them.  Each time we read one of these books it is a new book; we are older and have had new experiences and every time we read the book it teaches us something different.

Such a book is Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home.  This is a book unlike any other that I have ever read, fiction that feels more like non-fiction, the creation of a culture, a language, a people, a world.  It is nearly impossible to describe satisfactorily; perhaps I had best leave that to Le Guin's own words:

"The people in this book might be going to have a lived a long, long time from now in Northern California.  The main part of the book is their voices speaking for themselves in stories and life-stories, plays, poems, and songs."

Apart from the stories and poems, the book also contains explanatory pieces on the location, beliefs, food, clothing, houses, music, and life of the people, as well as a glossary, maps, and even recipes.  It can be read straight through from beginning to end, or can simply be opened to a random page and read in pieces, a story or poem at a time.

Every time I open this book I am transported to a world that is much like our own except very different as well, a world that is both our past and our future.  It is a world where people, technology, and nature are in balance in a way that they are not today.  It could be described as a utopia except that it is not, the people and the world are far too real: they experience real suffering, real pain, real anger.  They are not perfect, yet I have not yet read this book without wishing that I could live there, or at least visit.

The people of Always Coming Home live a life that many today would describe as very spiritual, but as Le Guin writes, "They had no god; they had no gods; they had no faith.  What they appear to have had is a working metaphor."  The stories and poems range from tragic to comic, but perhaps the poems are my favourite part of the book; this short poem gives a good feel for the overall tone of the book:

"Don't break your handbones
trying to break mystery.
Pick it up, eat it, use it, wear it,
throw it at coyotes."

The Family Tree: Maple

My parents planted the maple tree, along with a mountain ash, not long after they built our old house, which must have been almost thirty years ago.  When I was born, the tree was still young, yet vigorous and fast-growing.

I loved that tree.  I watched it through the seasons, as its leaves turned from light green to dark green to yellow and gold.  I watched robins build nests and raise their young in its branches.  I sketched its leaves, examined the lichens growing on its bark, and sat in its shade.  In the fall I raked its leaves and, when quite young, buried myself in them.  I sang to that tree as I circled around it and I poured water at the base of its trunk as an offering.

In the yard of the house where we live now, there are several maple trees growing, all of them older and larger than the one I grew up with, not that size or age really matter.  Trees, like people, are individuals.  I am still getting to know these ones.  The shapes of their branches and the texture of their bark are still unfamiliar to me.  But I am learning.

The native maple of this area is the Douglas maple (Acer glabrum var. douglasii), named, unsurprisingly, for naturalist David Douglas.  It is a small tree that grows most frequently as a shrub and often has stems of a distinct reddish colour.  However, the maple that is most commonly planted ornamentally around here is the Norway maple (Acer platanoides), which can be recognized by its seeds, which form the shape of a mustache.  This is the maple that I grew up with, that is growing in our yard here, and that casts its shade in many yards throughout the town.

There are many maples - over 100 species in the genus Acer throughout the world.  One of particular significance to Canadians is the sugar maple (Acer saccharum), whose leaf is the emblem on our national flag.  Flipping through the pages of my favourite tree book, John Laird Farrar's Trees in Canada, reveals many more, including the aptly named bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), which grows on the West Coast; Manitoba maple or box-elder (Acer negundo), which does not have maple-like leaves at all but leaves that are more similar to those of an ash; as well as red maple, silver maple, striped maple, and others.

There are many maples - but part of my heart will always belong to a particular Norway maple growing in the yard of a house that no longer belongs to us, and that I might never see again.

Reference:
Farrar, John Laird. 2009. Trees in Canada. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited.

The Way North, Part Two

To read Part One, click here.

The northern mountains rose before her, appearing one morning as the clouds lifted. For a long time they seemed to grow no larger, remaining a line of dark jagged peaks along the horizon. The wind blew cold from the north. And then the mountains grew quickly and she was among them, in the true north, the free north, at last.

The mountains did not look as she had imagined. Their peaks were cracked and broken, crowned with gleaming white glaciers or obscured with cloud. The valley floors were carpeted with thick forests, and studded with lakes of a shade of blue that is seen nowhere else but in these glacier-fed, mountain lakes. Rivers travelled their inexorable course to the sea, winding through the valleys or raging down the mountain sides as waterfalls. Even the sky seemed closer.

The following day she entered her first northern village. The stone houses and buildings clung to the edge of the mountain, appearing to have been carved directly into the rock. The village was a maze of terraces and stairways and roofs that inexplicably became someone else’s floor. The people of the village were tall, dark-haired, and fierce-looking, even the children. The men wore their hair long and the women cut theirs short and dressed as the men did. She felt strange among them, with her brown hair and brown skin, yet they welcomed her kindly, asking her where she was going and where she had been.

“I travel north,” she replied, “as far north as I can go.” They wished her luck on her travels and the next day, after having slept and eaten well in the village’s tiny inn, she pressed onwards, deeper into the northland.

One morning when the wind felt like winter and the rattling leaves were being blown from the trees, she stopped at one of those tiny roadside temples that are so common in the mountains. Wind chimes and banners hung from its windows. Indoors, the temple held only a few benches and a long, low table at the front, covered with candles, some burning and some not. An old man was in the back corner, sweeping. He nodded to her as she entered but said nothing.

In silence she approached the table. Taking a candle, she lit it from the flame of a burning candle and set it down again on the table. She gazed at the flame, listening to the wind chimes and the wind blowing outside, and she knew that she would travel no further north until spring.

The Way North, Part One

She had left the city on the first day of spring, feeling no regret as she walked for the last time in the muddy streets, through the market busy with people, past pickpockets and beggars, haughty lords and traders from across the seas. She took the main road that led straight north out of the city. The road was busy, filled with people coming and going: merchants, soldiers, poor people looking for work that did not exist, farmers with their wagons, priests, and the occasional wandering minstrel.

When spring was beginning to turn into summer, the road became narrower and quieter. Towns and villages were smaller and farther apart from each other. The large, prosperous farms of the fertile southland began to be replaced by forests, and people herding cattle, sheep, or goats. The people of the villages were poor, and watched her suspiciously as she walked past.

The innkeepers of the inns that she stayed at shook their heads when she told them of her journey. “Not a good time of the year to be heading north,” they said. Of course, they would have said the same at any time of the year. “It’s not good for a nice woman like you, a woman from the city, to be travelling here, alone,” they said.

And she smiled and thanked them and asked about the road ahead and continued on. As she left, they shook their heads sadly and then went on with their work.

But she was cautious, very cautious, as she travelled, knowing that it was indeed foolhardy for a woman to travel alone, especially here, in this wild land between the north and the south. Highwaymen roamed the main road, while the forests were full of bands of outlaws, or so she was told. She was careful who she talked to on the road, and not too proud to hide in the bushes if she saw a group of men coming along the road towards her. She carried a long sharp knife with her, just in case, and sewed her few gold coins into the soles of her shoes.

And she walked on, northwards.

She left the main road when it turned towards the west and took the north road, the old north road that led to the mountains, built, it was said, in the days before the invaders came from over the sea, before the land beyond the mountains was covered with ice. She met very few other travellers now, and there were few villages and even fewer inns.

She shot rabbits and quail with her bow and slept on the ground. She chewed on the dry traveller’s bread that she had bought in the last large town and watched the flames of her campfire flicker in the twilight. She was prepared – she had known what would be needed to walk alone to the north. She was not afraid, even on nights when the moon was dark and the trees swayed, creaking, in the wind.