Thursday evening, my grandson and I were at Filoli Gardens visiting Rose Wonders, the troll created from nature by Thomas Dambo. It was quiet, just us.
Haruki Murakami:
Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.
Wonder
Friendship
Last night we enjoyed a wonderful gathering with friends old and new at Filoli Gardens for their evening event. Tonight I read from Brian Doyle, How the Light Gets In and Other Epiphanies. He ends the essay “Poem for My Friend Shoshana:, with this:
Friends are the clans we belong to by
accident
Of place and space and grace. What a gift, such a
seeming
Chance: could such a pleasure really be just
happenstance?
Birdhouses
I’m intrigued with the variety of experiences at Filoli Gardens. After lounging in the redwoods, I entered a trail magically filled with birdhouses.
Return to Filoli Gardens
Yesterday I explored the lower part of Filoli Gardens, intrigued by the many sculptures along the trail. Then I met Rose Wonders, a Thomas Danbo Troll. Thomas is a Danish sculpture artist who builds giant trolls from recycled materials.
Garrison Keillor Today
Garrison Keillor just sent $100.00 to a guy named Trygve Hammer running as a Democrat for Congress in North Dakota. Why?
Keillor’s words: 9/10ths of the state is owned by something called Alignment Rectangular Regulatory Trust, the stock of which is 95% held by Chinese investors, will the state still have two U.S. Senators and a seat in Congress? Are citizens allowed to serve in public office if employed by a foreign country? Or does this come under the heading of “None of your business”?
One could ask the same about South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming.
I skip a bit and continue with this:
The polling I’ve seen from North Dakota tells me that seven out of eight wouldn’t vote for a Democrat if she were appareled in golden light and could levitate. Dakotans think of Democrats as people who saw The Nutcracker too many times as children and who get their political views from Norman Rockwell paintings. People who can’t drive a car without the government GPS telling them when to turn and which way.
He ends with this: There hasn’t been a Democratic Senator from North Dakota since I was in high school. If there’s another one, I want to go to the victory party. I won’t drink but I’ll stand near people who do.
If you agree, you might send money to Trygve Hammer.
Feathering
I’m with Brian Doyle’s closing words in his essay, Silence: “heart naked as a baby”.
It’s so visual, the baby wet and naked in the bath, the heart equally wet, moist, exposed. I pause, look at my grandson’s baby pictures, a video of him lying on his back waving arms and legs, gurgling at the ceiling fan twirling above, breath, an extravagance rippling through his torso.
Wonder wanders. Can my heart be “naked as a baby”, breath connecting the years?
Return to Our Senses
Today I was at Book Passage attending a reading by Lee Klinger Lesser. She read from her book Return to Our Senses: A Path to Stability in an Unstable World. To begin, Lee led us in grounding on our chairs and feeling the support of the earth. She led us to make a fist and feel how we were affected, and to notice how a fist of anger affects us. Also, notice how a different fist, a softer meeting, can lead us to a resilience that meets the challenges of these days. Lee discussed her work with Veterans PATH, PATH standing for Peace, Acceptance, Transformation, and Honor. Lee has changed lives with this program, healed the wounds that come with war.
She leads retreats with wildlife fighters, helping them to deal with pain, loss, and death. She spoke of Jarvis Masters, a wonderful man and how he’s transformed his unjust path on Death Row to teach and lead with speaking and his books. I could go on and on about the open heart that is Lee, and the works she does, but I’ll just say to buy her book and feel hope for opening your heart to bring forth your part in changing yourself, and in that, the world.
Silence
I’m reading Brian Doyle’s essays in his book, One Long River of Song. I come to this, an exchange with his sister who is a nun and lives in a monastery. He asks his sister questions about silence.
What did you do when you were silent?
I listened, she says. I listened really hard.
Did you make any noise at all?
Sometimes I found myself humming, she says, but it wasn’t any music I’d known before. Which is pretty interesting. Where does music come from that you never heard before?
Good question, I say.
And I found, she says, that it is relatively easy not to talk to other people, but much harder not to talk to animals. Isn’t that odd? Why would that be?
Another good question, I say.
Respect
I finished reading Mink River by Brian Doyle, a book I love. Needing a little more of his voice, I came to a book of his poems How the Light Gets In: And Other Headlong Epiphanies. Here’s one, a soft note for the night.
October Poem
What is the best poem you ever wrote in your
whole life?
I ask a friend of mine, aged six, and she thinks
about this
For a whole minute, looking down in the grass for
words,
And she says, The time I tried to make a coat for a
mouse
From spider-webs. My sister and brothers helped
me find
The webs. It takes a lot of webs to make a jacket
for mice.
We apologized to the spiders. This was in October.
Mama
Said we could borrow webs as long as we were
respectful.
That’s the best poem I ever wrote, and I didn’t do
it alone.
How We Choose To Live
I know that those who read this blog are politically astute, but in case you missed Nicholas Kristoff today, I’ve copied the link to gift it. There’s many reasons to despair about our country’s decline, but I think Nicholas Kristof is graphically and tragically clear in what’s happening. Both political parties have responsibility though one clearly dominates the abuse. I’m happy to pay taxes to support those who need help, but that’s not what’s happening. It has to stop and reverse before we have a revolution like the French and I doubt any of us will benefit from that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/opinion/poverty-america-oklahoma.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2FA.sA-h.AybYGzwZ2Qpy&smid=url-share
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