Copses Speak
Not A Day Without A Line | Pocket sketchbook | © Laurie Doctor
The outcome isn’t up to us. Even so, I persist in believing that moving into the moment, and away from managing it, changes everything that is going to happen: I see a left turn that wasn’t there before, a hummingbird arrives out of clear air hovering close to my cheek, a single yellow leaf floats in slow motion down to the ground. It helps to befriend boredom. Patience joins time to eternity, says our Kentucky poet, Wendell Berry.
I try to remember this when I am struggling with a painting, impatient with what I see. Who do I think I am to assume for the canvas what is next? There is even some relief in knowing the outcome is not up to me. The solace is in part due to remembering that there are prompts in the air, always there. As now, when I just stop and listen, my hand is prompted with words that unearth what is holy in every unfinished mess — all the falling piles of paper burdened with words that have lost their way. And I know, or at least my hands know, that when I find the lost words they lead me right back to you.
As now I am prompted to go outside and sit and listen for just ten minutes. I bring my kitchen timer instead of my phone. I listen. A bee drones over the purple salvia; the cicadas buzz in cascading waves making a resounding percussion accompaniment, from soft to loud, as if rising up the trees, first on my right, then to my left, across the tree tops, over the hillside, this pattern fades and returns. In the midafternoon of a late summer day, this rattling orchestra is interspersed with only one lone bird verse; the chip chip of the cardinal. The nomadic tunes of spring have already departed from the forest.
This week I kept going with pairing the unlikely words — sparked by Patti, a reader from last month’s post. She sent in two words: talking and tree. I decided right then to pick up the book next to me, close my eyes, and point. The two words I found, on facing pages, were copses and speak. I only realized in the process of writing back to Patti that somehow my fingers had chosen the same meaning as her words! This filled me with delight. I am not sure where I am going with this exercise, but it is a great way to play, to invite synchronicity.
A ledger for word pairs (left)| Did you notice that I used two of these word pairs in my third paragraph? Sketchbook © Laurie Doctor
Word Play | Pocket Sketchbook | © Laurie Doctor
Is summer the most patient season? It still has a languorous lengthening feeling around the next thing, some remnant of childhood when summer really was a time for being out of school, for not having any homework. For not being on call to anyone or anything. For being idle — not the swindling time kind of idle— but the kind that rekindles the imagination — the physicality of riding a bicycle, going to camp, swimming, climbing a tree, wandering. I didn’t know what prayer was, or what it meant to pay attention, but these are the same thing to any child outside alone, lying in the grass, watching the clouds.
The lightning bugs still hover in late evening over the grass and in the trees. There are times, when the sky is dark, that they can be confused with stars. In these times, even though I don’t love the heat, I want summer to linger a bit longer.