solstice 1.03.2012

The sun worked its way over the horizon with usual orange pinks and dark purples. The color spreads from window to window as the site of its rising grows more yellow. Sharon Butala told herself “If I could do nothing more, I could pay intense and precise attention, I could at least make a detailed accurate record of life here.” She, having been grafted into rural ranch life with its ups and downs including crushing drought, was talking about much more than the rising sun. But all the same, I think observation, or “paying intense and precise attention” is critical to understanding our place in the world.
I have been in Two Dot many times for the Summer Solstice when the sun rises in my most northern window. I have always wondered if it would rise in the most southern window for Winter Solstice, making a kind of lovely symmetry in the room. And here I am just a week late and while the light of the sun’s rising is vivid in the south window it rises just a little to the north. I will still claim the symmetry of it, the sun drifting from north to south. Of course it is the schoolhouse on this spinning planet that is drifting.

winter palette 1.01.2012

A short winter stay in Two Dot began with a little desperation to settle down, to get the most of minimal interruptions and a long horizon. Of course there was family to enjoy, food to cook, food to eat and flies to vacuum…all important. But finally, looking out my six square windows, there is the openness, the stillness I long for.
Even with no snow, or ice, or frost the air is glittering under a bright winter blue sky. Bare cottonwoods and chokecherries stand in deep dark contrast to yellowy beige fields. It is not motionless. A roaring wind ripples through every bit of plant life, but it is constant and steadying. I will not read the whole stack of books I brought or get to all the projects on my list, but I am re-calibrating in a dreamy color palette.