Tag: Du Fu

heat

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Li Bo (also known as Li Bai and Rihaku, friend of Du Fu, who has visited this site before) knew about heat. Read this aloud for its music and the relief of that wind.

Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-trees trickles on my bare head.

It’s hot here. I’ve lost count of the weeks without rain. I know there was one shower in late July but nothing for weeks before that, or since. I know we’ll lose some trees this year. We water the ones near the house—the copper beech planted for my parents, the little oak found growing on a trail near us (and seeded by a squirrel, I think, from an acorn gathered in a garden near Sakinaw Lake), the magnolia planted for John’s 40th birthday, the Merton Beauty apple in the vegetable garden. But the Douglas firs, the cedars, the hemlocks—well, let’s face it, we live in a forest, and there are too many trees to even begin to water in the way they need it: gallons, for those root systems anchoring them in place. Many of them are very stressed. We are too, a little. Though not too stressed to make chiles rellenos for dinner, half of which appear here, the other half eaten with roasted salsa, corn, steamed beans and tiny crookneck squash (and these remaining chiles will make a nice dinner tomorrow night, too, cool with tomatoes and salad of green beans and little potatoes with tarragon).

chiles rellenos

What weather. Flooding in so many places, temperatures in the high teens in Ottawa, and here it’s more like 33. Yet this morning the lake was beautiful and cool, the light clear, the sky as blue as a book of hours.  I’d love to wake in the night and hear rain on our metal roof. I think the trees would too. In the meantime, a white feather fan would be lovely, and wind from pine trees.

“The moon is just as bright as in my homeland”

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The eerie dark pink sun rising over Mt. Hallowell as we swim early mornings. The moon, almost the same colour in the dark trees, glowing as it passes the house. Smoke haze everywhere, the taste of it bitter at the back of the throat. My brother and his wife evacuated from their home in the Nazko valley. Always a mild anxiety as we look around, wonder about new fires, though the smoke comes from the Interior. No rain for weeks, none is forecast. I left laundry out for two days and when it came in, it smelled of fire, a dusting of fine grey particulate on the linen sheets.

But there are things to celebrate. John lifted the garlic and sorted it, letting it dry for a few days in a safe place (bears!), and then tying it to the rafters in the woodshed to cure for the winter. Next year I’ll plant more (I always say this) but I’m grateful for the beautiful heads of Red Russian, White Italian, and the gorgeous purple striped Metechi, from Kazakhstan.

metechi

I look forward to rain. We all do. And good news from the Nazko valley. In the meantime, I think of Du Fu and his brothers, though I know mine are safe:

Tonight we start the season of White Dew,
The moon is just as bright as in my homeland.
My brothers are spread all throughout the land,
No home to ask if they are living or dead.
The letters we send always go astray…

it might have been her

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spring grass

It might have been this black bear sow, the one who came to our house with her yearling in spring, it might have been her who swam just before us. On our way down to the lake, fresh bear scats on the road, and on the sand, fresh tracks leading to the water, in, then out again and off into the woods. I could almost smell her. And when I entered the water, I thought of all the creatures who need cool water, particularly on these hot days when the smoke haze is thick and the creeks are dry. I have bowls of water around for the frogs and we have a funny little pool, created from an old claw-footed bathtub, where the tadpoles have already become this year’s tree-frogs. The bird-bath is full and grateful robins use it most days.

Yesterday the air was so close and hot that we closed all the windows, put on the fans, and tried to stay cool. This morning I’ve just gathered a big bowl of greens — new kale, old kale, lambs quarters, chicory, blood-red sorrel, arugula going to seed — for a pie and while the oven is on, I’ll roast a little organic hen with herbes de Provence and lemons. A watermelon gazpacho. By evening no one wants to cook.

greens

The rain-barrels are almost empty and the Douglas firs are scarily brown. Not all of them, which has me thinking about water and its secret sources. We have a deep well, drilled into granite, and the water is pretty much the same year round. Cold, clear, and so far, there’s been lots of it. But no one should depend on anything staying the same; hence, the rain-barrels.

A few years ago, when we had 13 weeks without a drop of rain, I said I’d never complain about it again. During the wet winter, I kept my promise. And now I’m dreaming of it, dreaming of its sound on our metal roof. Here’s a beautiful little poem by Du Fu (712 – 770 A.D.). What he calls musk, I call the smell of Chablis — water on dry rock, flinty and delicious. Bring it on.

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.
I hear it among treetop leaves before mist
Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,
Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.
Flocks and herds of things wild glisten
Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across
Half a mountain — and lingers on past noon.

the firewood gate

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I went out to try to photograph the morning sky, pink suffusing the eastern and southern treelines, and everything so rich and autumnal. But the colour wouldn’t show up. But while I was outside, I could smell newly-split fir. (John spent the last few days splitting and stacking two cords of wood.)

firewood gate.JPG

Our woodshed was built with bits and pieces of cedar posts and beams more than 30 years ago. When you live where we live, you burn a lot of firewood and the woodshed was an essential structure. There’s a magnificent wisteria climbing up the right post, the one you don’t see, its trunk as thick as a good-sized tree.

The last week has been strangely stressful. A medical adventure for me, world events filling the airwaves — or at the radio airwaves; the ones outside are loud with wind and birds — and (maybe as a result of the medical issue) Time’s Winged Chariot whirring dangerously near. But the firewood is somehow comforting — its sweet smell, the quick winter wren that is busy investigating its new geometries for insects. So settle in, I tell myself, and remember where you are, who you are. Long conversations with my children have been a solace. News of Halloween: granddaughter dressed up as a garbage-truck driver (her current heroes, the guys who wave to her from the alley as they pick up the weekly garbage and recycling), clutching her plastic garbage truck as proof of her dedication; one grandson a pirate; the other (the youngest) a monster.

I think of Du Fu, that poet-sage of the Tang dynasty, who wrote of political corruption and the passing of time, and whose home had a firewood gate; he was nothing if not grounded in the particulars of home and hearth, all the while lamenting the injustices of the larger world. Time to do as he did, meditate on Autumn and its touchstones: the smoke and cold water, the song of a tiny bird among the logs, and the sound of the mountain.

I’ve heard them say that Chang’an seems like in a game of chess,
A hundred years of world events have caused unbearable pain.
The palaces of the noblemen all have their new masters,
Civil and military dress and caps are not like those before.
Straight north over mountain passes, gongs and drums ring out,
Conquering the west, carts and horses, feather-hurried dispatches.
The fish and dragons are still and silent, the autumn river cold,
A peaceful life in my homeland always in my thoughts.

(Autumn Meditation 4)