winter, photos

looking off the front porch, © 2015 Amber Schley Iragui

Winter in Portland is mild. Snow is unusual, and lasts a few hours or maybe a day. It usually changes to rain, freezes again, coats trees and walkways in ice—and the city literally shuts down. Mostly though, winter here is wet. It is damp and cold and dark and rainy. But it is not bitter. It is the end of January and already daffodils are sending up green shoots, the crocuses are blooming. I have the window in my office open a crack and I hear the crows making plans outside.

At this cheerless time of year, an hour of sunlight is like gold. Yesterday afternoon it was sunny for a bit, and joggers appeared in running shorts. A boy walked down the road in bare feet. A quarter of an hour later it was dark again and raining.

after morning drop-off, © 2015 Amber Schley Iragui

walking to the grocery, © 2016 Amber Schley Iragui

puddles, © 2016 Amber Schley Iragui

ice storm, © 2015 Amber Schley Iragui

{More winter photos over at Day's Dearest Wish and Eine Hand voller Stunden}

So little is a stone

Amber Schley Iragui © 2015

B U R N I N G   T H E   O L D   Y E A R
Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

*    *    *    *    *

It has been raining and raining and I'm having a hard time adjusting. I know that's what it does here: rain. I was born here; I lived here till I was twenty-five. But after fifteen years in New York—with the sun, and snow, and occasional thunderstorms—it's hard not to feel it is just too wet, too deeply damp, outside right now. I lay in bed and think about hibernation, of crawling into a warm little cave and sleeping until spring. A cave with a fireplace, and clearly a mantle, and a deep soft chair, and some books—and then we're basically dreaming about hibernating in my own house. My house but a little farther away from everything; away from the passing cars and the bouncing children.

But I like the sound of the rain, I admit. I like the sound on the roof of my office, now, as I write this.

I didn't watch the State of the Union address this evening. I only know that this event took place because, while the kids were falling asleep, I checked Facebook and there were all sorts of postings about it. And it occurs to me that I doubt I've ever heard a State of the Union address. Not one I can remember, at least. And similarly, when David Bowie died a few days ago—alerted again by multitudinous Facebook postings—I could not bring his voice to mind, or any song of his I knew. Disturbingly, his face is mostly familiar to me because a friend of mine owns a David Bowie doll that she dresses up posts photos of on Instagram. And so it seems to me that as far as popular culture and politics go, I'm pretty much hibernating all the time.

Which is not to say that I don't pay attention to things. I do, but just to a select few things. And to those things I pay close attention. For example: dreams, typography, the birds I see in the neighborhood. I pay attention to my children, not always what they say as much as how they seem to be doing. I pay attention to the plants in my kitchen window, and to book covers, and New Yorker cartoons; I take note of new authors and wait for their names to appear and reappear before I buy their books. I have been paying attention to what's been happening in Syria and Iraq, and watching the refugees streaming into Turkey and Eastern Europe and worrying for them. But I can't, you know, take it all in. There is far too much to pay attention to and I live in this small stucco house with lots of windows, under skies heavy with rain, and have small growing things to tend.

{ Julia's poetry wednesday post }

photo friday: license—to post as you wish

It has been bitterly cold here. Walking the children to their respective schools I've noticed how quickly the dog pee freezes in little puddles all along the sidewalk, an odd advantage of such weather when you have small children in a dense urban neighborhood teeming with dogs. Our lives have been mostly uneventful lately. We've had some illness (but luckily not the dreaded flu), a handful of tantrums, an unending supply of daily dramas arising from the running of our little school, the introduction of some new words (Lola and Ike built a "sex-slide" yesterday, and today one of Ike's made-up songs starred a "six-E laid-E"). Mostly I've been working, or trying to work, and cooking dinner, or at least attempting to. Charles discovered itunes and has stayed up late downloading classical albums and operas.

In the midst of this—the cold, the paid and unpaid work, the endless effort of raising two children—I found myself daydreaming about composting. A strange thing to daydream about, I concede. I recall as a child watching my father composting in our backyard, the steam rising from the black beds of soon-to-be-soil; he could stay out there for hours with the wheelbarrow and spade, processing his compost from one "station" to another. I remember walking back from high school, nearing home, and knowing absolutely that my Dad was out back, turning the decomposing matter. You could smell it a block away. We burned everything that could be burned in the wood stoves; took the plastic, metal and glass to the dump oursleves; and composted everything else.

And now here I am in Manhattan, daydreaming of taking the leftovers of our meals and making them into soil. With maybe a few chickens pecking around. And what's this, tears welling in my eyes? Oy Vey!