Planning will never replace dumb luck

Our Air Quality Alert is still with us. I believe it’s the same one that was initially supposed to end last night about 7 pm. Meanwhile, cumulous clouds pile up every afternoon, do their best to become storm clouds, fail, or succeed somewhere nearby, and leave us muttering about cloudy skies and continuing drought. I think we’re close to three inches below normal precipitation so far this month. Maybe this afternoon, or tonight, or tomorrow, or next week sometime, we’ll finally get some rain? [For the record, the preceding paragraph is somewhere between an observation and a complaint, an observelaint?]

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now... J. Mitchell

Photo by J. Harrington

Due to the air quality (or lack thereof), I’ve been pretty much staying inside this morning and reading about reciprocity and gifts in traditional ecological knowledge, at the moment in the form of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay on Mishkos Kenomagwen, the Lessons of Grass, in which she tells a version of the story of the Women Who Fell from the Sky. That caused me to remember that Joy Harjo has a volume by that title, so I went to see if I have a copy. The answer is not yet. As I was looking online to refresh my memory on what the cover looks like, I also discovered Harjo has a recently published illustrated volume of her poem Remember. The latter looks as though it would almost perfectly complement the book our granddaughter gave me for Father’s Day this year [see this June 19 posting]. Since I also received a gift card at one of my favorite book stores on Father’s Day, I intend to reciprocate by using it to get a copy of both Remember and Woman to share with that same granddaughter. See how sometimes it just all comes together?

I think we may have also begun a positive feedback loop with the assembly of the two bookshelves our son gave me for Father’s Day. Beginning to turn stacks of books into semi-organized collections feels rewarding enough that we’ll do some more of it the next time we get a rainy day that’s too stormy and full of lightening to stand in a river waving a graphite stick. We may well salvage most of this summer if we keep this going with the flow attitude.

Remember

Joy Harjo     1951 – 

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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