Carmel Mawle

A Truing of Vision

October 22, 2022 admin

Good art is a truing of vision, in the way a saw is trued in the saw shop, to cut more cleanly. It is also a changing of vision. Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in altered ways. Why ask art into a life at all, if not to be transformed and enlarged by its presence and mysterious means? Some hunger for more is in us — more range, more depth, more feeling: more associative freedom, more beauty. More perplexity and more friction of interest. More prismatic grief and unstunted delight, more longing, more darkness. More saturation and permeability in knowing our existence is also the existence of others. More capacity to be astonished. Art adds to the sum of the lives we would have, were it possible to live without it. And by changing selves, one by one, art changes also the outer world that selves create and share.

~Jane Herschfield, from TEN WINDOWS: How Great Poems Transform the World

From my window, a trail winds through the meadow and down into the ravine where my favorite little aspen grove dwells. There are other trees there – junipers, firs and spruce, lodgepoles and Ponderosas – but the aspens own that ravine, their common roots winding from the 19^th century logging trail all the way to the road at the top of the property.

Decades ago, bulldozers plowed along old wagon trails and built the dirt roads we now use, but before their roots were cut, they would have connected with the groves that climbed Black Mountain to its peak and probably crossed right over into Wyoming.

The aspens have an elvish quality, silvery white bark and leaves that reflect the sunlight and scintillate in the slightest breeze. Despite their elegant appearance, they are legendary protectors of our forest home. With a higher moisture content, aspens provide a both natural break against wildfire and shelter for fleeing wildlife. Much of the fire mitigation work we do is designed to encourage the growth of these exquisite groves.

In the late 80s, a plane crashed into the mountain across the valley from us. The resulting fire leapt over the Panhandle Creek riparian system to “Moon Mountain” above our cabin. Today, aspen roots weave through those charred conifers. They are undeterred by rock outcroppings and steep slopes. On either side of the ravine, they thread through crevasses and crumbling granite to emerge in thin white spears, crowned in golden foliage.

Like Trees

October 15, 2022 admin

If we surrendered

to Earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees

~Rainier Maria Rilke

It is Done

October 13, 2022 admin

I clicked on the Writing for Peace website today (for old time’s sake) and was greeted with a notice that the account had been “suspended.” It was just a matter of time. I guess they hope that the shock of seeing the end termed that way will compel some people to keep it up longer. But, as I said in my final Writing for Peace post, it’s time to let it go.

I will be forever grateful to all the writers and artists who shared their work with us and to the young people who took the time to meet our challenge. We have heard from so many young writers about the ways their lives were changed, but the truth is they changed our lives, too.

A friend recently compared Writing for Peace with the metaphor of the stone dropped into a pond. Together, we made some waves. Thank you.

On Grace

October 11, 2022 admin

I’ve been meditating on the meaning of grace.

As a child, I knew the word as a kind of prayer – “Let’s bow our heads and say grace.” It was something we did before dinner with guests, or when my grandmother was staying with us. It wasn’t until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous as a teen that I first heard the word used to mean a gift, freely given and undeserved. My life, until then, had taught me nothing was given unconditionally. Grace was a frightening concept.

I complied with the requirements of a twelve-step program out of desperation. My only hope for sobriety was to trust in a power greater than myself, and not necessarily a benevolent almighty god. I just had to trust that the program designed by two hopeless drunks could help me stay sober. I turned my will and my life over to this higher power, because I didn’t know any other way.

There were times when people fell off the wagon and returned to the meetings beaten down, claiming that their “slip” had been God’s will. Once, someone referred to a friend’s death, a fisherman in his early twenties who started drinking again and died by suicide, as God’s will. The idea that I was turning my sobriety over to a God that might will me to drink in order to teach me a lesson was terrifying. I found no comfort in clinging to a lack of agency as an excuse for my personal failings. Too many friends didn’t survive their slips for me to take a chance on the theory. It was by finding my own definition of “grace”, one day at a time, that I came to believe that my higher power doesn’t prescribe cruelty for personal edification.

I miss the mark on a regular basis. Learning to acknowledge my mistakes and forgive myself has helped to deepen my understanding of grace and its lessons in compassion and unconditional love. There is also an acknowledgement of my, our, innate worthiness. Grace may be a gift, given freely, but I no longer believe it is undeserved. We are each deserving of grace not only because of our potential, but because we are made of the same stardust, have the same elements coursing through our veins, and generations of trauma molded into our DNA.

My definition of “grace” continues to evolve. I’ve come to believe that we are all perfectly flawed creations-in-progress, filled with a multiplying grace that may take a lifetime to understand.

And that is a gift freely given.

On Impermanence

September 25, 2022 admin

“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh

Wishing my friends who are celebrating Rosh Hashana a very Happy and Healthy New Year!

The Autumn Moon

September 23, 2022 admin

It rained through the night and, when the sun broke through this morning, the saturated forest was suddenly illuminated. In the west, a rainbow appeared against the dark clouds over the yellow-tinged willows along the creek. Patches of gold and reds are appearing among the aspen groves. It is Autumnal Equinox. The earth, the forest, the sky, we are all in beautiful transition.

The Autumn Moon

by Ryokan

The moon appears in every season, it is true,
But surely it’s best in fall.
In autumn, mountains loom and water runs clear.
A brilliant disk floats across the infinite sky,
And there is no sense of light and darkness,
For everything is permeated with its presence.
The boundless sky above, the autumn chill on my face.
I take my precious staff and wander about the hills.
Not a speck of the world’s dust anywhere,
Just the brilliant beams of moonlight.
I hope others, too, are gazing on this moon tonight,
And that it’s illuminating all kinds of people.
Autumn after autumn, the moonlight comes and goes;
Human beings will gaze upon it for eternity.
The sermons of Buddha, the preaching of Eno,
Surely occurred under the same kind of moon.
I contemplate the moon through the night,
As the stream settles, and white dew descends.
Which wayfarer will bask in the moonlight longest?
Whose home will drink up the most moonbeams?

English version by John Stevens
Original Language Japanese

Golden Eagle

August 27, 2022 admin

“The golden eagle, that lives not far from here, has perhaps a thousand tiny feathers flowing from the back of its head, each one shaped like an infinitely small but perfect spear.”

~Mary Oliver

Another Modest Proposal, in memory of those lost

August 24, 2022 admin

On Memorial Day, I hiked our property’s wildlife trail with Max and my three-year-old granddaughter. We descended the rocky path into the ravine, wove through aspens and the dense stand of lodgepole pine, then scaled the granite formation we call Moon Temple. There, she released my hand to climb from one boulder to the next.

“Are you going to be a mountain climber when you grow up?” I asked.

She nodded, her eyes fixed with fierce determination on her next hand-hold. Watching her climb, my heart ached with love and the knowledge that across the country other families were grieving the loss of their children.

Since the Uvalde shootings, when 19 children and two adults were murdered by an 18 year old with an assault weapon, the death tally continues to rise.

I know many on the right believe more guns in the hands of the “good guys” will protect the innocents that our trained police could not. Gun sales spike after every mass shooting, and we will never get real solutions from lawmakers funded by the National Rifle Association.

I believe in the power of the written word to change minds. I’ve ruminated over taking the approach Jonathon Swift did in his 1729 satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal.” During that time, Irish families couldn’t pay their high rents, let alone feed or cloth their offspring. Much like today, the propertied elite were indifferent to the suffering caused by their greed.

Jonathon Swift proposed that, rather than watch their children starve, the Irish should sell their babies to feed the wealthy. He goes so far as to suggest recipes for infant flesh, “a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.”

Swift’s proposal raised awareness and inspired activism. I thought something similar might shock both the left and right into working together to end this insanity. The parallel to Swift’s satire would be a gruesome scenario something like a “whack-a-mole” game at a county fair, but here the moles are school children cowering behind their desks. The exorbitant fees for this game would be paid directly to the 2nd Amendment-supporting representative of your choice.

But I couldn’t write it.

It was too horrible to imagine. If the facts of gun violence in this country aren’t shocking enough, my fiction never could be.

Are there words that could sway gun lovers, those who value their imagined personal safety (or sport, or collections) more than the lives of innocents?

I suppose this is the dilemma for all writers who hope to change the world through their words. Reading fiction can increase empathy. Writing for Peace was based on that premise. We shouldn’t give up transporting readers to new understanding and compassion, but sometimes the best course is to write and call our legislators, opine in our local papers and on social media.

When our children’s safety is on the line, the most powerful writing we can do is register to vote, to show up at the polls, and to elect representation that will protect our democracy and human rights—representatives who refuse to accept money from the NRA or the gun lobby.

So here is my very modest proposal:

I challenge my writer friends to keep searching for the right words, and to keep working for change…

…for the sake of our dreamers and future mountain climbers.

Hopeful Imaginings

November 5, 2018 CarmelMawle

It’s Election Day Eve morning. The temperature has risen to 34, and the snow is dripping off the metal roof faster than it’s accumulating. I find myself wondering if this unforecasted warmth is a sign of the much-discussed “blue wave.”

No way to know until we know.

Either way, change is on the horizon. So we wait.

I try to keep myself busy. There’s a lot to do. Still working on getting our house in Fort Collins ready to rent. Still sorting through 22 years lived in suburbia, separating what will go to the kids, be donated, or go to storage, from what will fit into the cabin with us.

When the snow started this morning, it quickly went from tiny swirls to thick heavy flakes blowing from the north. The layer of clouds over the south were thin enough that the snow was illuminated in sunlight, though no blue sky shown through. Knowing better, I search the sky for meaning, for signs or omens, and this well-lit blizzard seems hopeful to me, too.

When the blue finally appears, I watch the clouds go their separate ways, and scribble a poem.

On the Wind

The clouds swirl and churn
in westerly gusts,
translucent and opaque,
sunlit whites and rainbow tinged,
roiling across the deep static blue.

The clouds are story-tellers,
masters of the unspoken
spoken word.
Petroglyphs and cave drawings
in motion on blue lapis.

Dragons and horses and ravens,
hunters and warriors,
whirling dervishes, and wizened orators
dance and change places,

a choreography of lives and deaths,
real and imagined.

If you weren’t able to vote earlier, tomorrow is your day. Brace the lines and make your voice heard.

So much depends on it.