Cherubim & Seraphim

200 years ago today, the angels announced to the shepherds that a Lord was born who is Christ the King and the Magi visited with their trinity of gifts.

Today, the announcement of the Redemption has evolved into the day to take down all the Christmas finery, put away the extra folding chairs, and take the leaves out of the dining room table. The kitchen is sorely lacking in fruits and vegetables, and the refrigerator only holds a half-pint of sour cream, the dregs of a quart of eggnog, and shriveled up chestnuts that were never roasted. We've subsisted on take-out Chinese, deliveries of pizza, and bowls of cereal for supper. Real time is back and I'm resisting the black and white, second-hand sweep of its pull.

For Christmas, M. gave me a chubby, papier-mâché angel covered in old-fashioned glass glitter. She's a sturdy little thing, definitely more humble than grand. She is not from the same angelic choir as the Fortitudo Dei, in which belong the Archangel Michael, the dragon slayer; Raphael, the healer; and Gabriel, the Annunciator. Neither is she a Romanesque fantasy, all wings and flowing blonde hair and see-through skirts. No, she is young and not yet fully formed from the mouth of God. I believe she may be an angel-in-training. I started her off watching over my miniature crèches, but now that Epiphany is almost over, I am bringing her upstairs and installing her over my computer.

Who couldn’t use a tutelary Angel? There are nine kinds to choose from (even Angels have class distinctions it appears) and certainly there must be one that fits the peculiar needs of a Writer. Archangels are in the highest order and certainly there are times when an Archangel will come in handy to slay our dragons, to heal our pain, and to tell reveal the great truths.

On the next rung down on the celestial ladder are “Powers, Principalities, and Dominations” (duties murkily defined but sound like they’d make excellent agents). Last but not least are the Seraphims and Cherubims. What better for a writer than a host of Seraphim, whose purpose is to stand at your feet and adore? (I can name a few Writers who appear to have had their own choir of heavenly hosts installed many years ago.)

Other times, a writer may need a more practical celestial being, such a cherub, whose purpose is to veil God from the world and be heavenly throne-bearers. Such a being would come in handy when the kids are clamoring for clean clothes, the boss wants to know why you are late again, and the husband wants to know why it's his job to buy the groceries and pick up the dry cleaning. When the ephemeral urge to write is felt, a cherub can carry the Writer through the sticky mud of getting started, and into the evanescence of make believe.

According to official dogma on angels (who knew there was such a thing?), appearances of angels last only so long as the delivery of their messages requires.

So today I am listening carefully for the message. I need to hear the secret, the message that will shake me up, cover me with silvery flakes, and carry me back to make believe.

Or is that Tinkerbell?



I'll Be Home for Christmas

I don't have to sing about it, because I am HOME for Christmas. Yippee, work is over for a week! I couldn't get a better gift this year.

Yesterday, I started the vacation with an early morning hair appointment. I was grumbling as I got out of bed, but I enjoyed it once I got there (kind of like sex these days). Most of the people at the salon are Europeans. My hairdresser is from Italy. He is a tall, spare fellow with dark circles under his eyes and thinning hair. He is very kind, but he does not smile a lot. He does not crack jokes. He likes to talk about "ambition", a very un-Italian topic, and gossip about local crime. He does not usually like my hair suggestions.

Do you think you can flip it all up in the back like Oprah?
I have never seen Oprah.
Well, she wears it layered on top, then longer in the back and sort of flipped out.
You need a razor cut for that.
Can I get a razor cut?
Long pause.
You could.
Long pause.
But it it might not be good for you.
Oh.

Then how about going a little red this time?
Long pause.
You could.
Long pause.
But it might not be good for you.

I stuck to my guns on the red and it's worked out fine except this time it's a little marooney-pink. Icee would get a kick out of it. The DH hasn't mentioned it - which means he's a little freaked out.

But this is the least of the attractions. First, Sophia shampoos me, giving me a great neck and scalp massage which sends tingles everywhere. I can easily go back asleep but for the incredibly uncomfortable plastic neck thingie of the sink which is cutting into my neck. She brings me a coffee in a real cup. I start talking about Italy with T., who is from Sicily. He tells me what I have to see if I go. The older lady next to me starts telling me about the trip her daughters forced her to take and I share my story about the 2 trips my parents took. When I tell her that my Dad died a year after their last trip, my voice quavers. She writes down the name of "1000 Days in Venice", my favorite romantic book of the season. I'm bonding with this little group, two of us with stinky chemicals and aluminimum foil in our hair like extraterrestrials in a 1950's sitcom. I am having a Steel Magnolias moment.

While the chemicals work their magic, T. insists I have two chocolate raspberry truffles, which he brings to me on a little crystal dish. I let the rich chocolate melt in my mouth and begin reading the book I've brought with me.

I am home. I am eating chocolates. I am reading books.

Life is sweet.


The Azure Journal - Silvershot

The snow is falling in great sheets of taffeta and tulle, swirling around me and threatening to suffocate me like the tulle skirt I had to wear to ballet class but couldn't get over my head. The snow is shot with silver and hits my face like stinging needles.

I am warm from cooking a great pot of Venetian pasta e fagioli. I opened cans of pureed tomatoes, thinned with some water, added minced garlic, fresh rosemary, sea salt and bay leaves. We have no dried beans in the house, so I added cans of creamy broad beans, chunky chichiti beans, and red kidney beans. I perfumed the pot with a little balsamic vinegar and a dollop of Beajoulais Noveau. I boiled ditalini pasta in another pot, and while it cooked, I found several heels of Italian bread in the refrigerator. I tore them into pieces, floated them on the top of the soup as it boiled and generously drizzled extra virgin olive oil on top of them. When the ditalini reached al dente stage, I ladled it into the pot, shut the burner and let it all stew while the flavors melded.

I need air. I take the whisk broom and sweep the front porch and steps down to the sidewalk. The snow is like a lemon ice down my throat and clears the malaise of too much heat and lolling around. I scurry back inside and through the pantry and around back and sweep the back porch steps, lifting the floor mat and flipping it over for sturdier footing. The garden is barely visible under great loaves of rising snow. I can still see the outline of the trellis against the brown garage, but it is outlined in white and the clematis vine has disappeared. In the corner of the yard between the arbor vitae, which are bowed with their royal cloaks of snow, the bright red rose hips gleam like ruby jewels. If I had on boots and a coat I could wade through the knee-dip fluff and pick them. They'd be the perfect complement to the trio of white ironstone pitchers that are standing in formation, ready for the everygreens and holly I will cut later in the month for Christmas.

My hands are stinging now and I rush back into the warm embrace of the kitchen. It is filled with the rich aroma of garlic and olive oil and simmering tomatoes. The cornbread I made for breakfast adds a sweet harmony to the heady aroma. From the back door window I can see my neighbor's bamboo bending in the wind. They are thirty feet tall, yet move with the grace of a prima ballerina. In unison they sway tasseled tops across the yard, then spring back up to sway the other way. I try to be so resilient.

I go back upstairs to my little art room and find a wonderful length of sheer silver organiza. I place it over my journal page and take a needle and thread and make french knots through the paper and into the the organza, securing it to the paper. My words are now covered with a scrim of silver. I cut the edges raggedly and let long threads of the shiny stuff work their way out of the weave and fringe the edges of my pages.

Today all is crystalline and warmth, white and whiter, crisp and honeyed with garlic and rosemary. A day of crunching snow, crumbling cornbread, and taffeta dreams.


THE AZURE JOURNAL - WRITING A LIFE

I spend my days behind a desk, or in a court of law. I sit and wait for the clerk to call my case, or for the plaintiff's lawyer to finish his cross-examination. I sit in traffic on the way home. I stand in line at the grocery store, the pharmacy, the post office. I make dinner, clean up, and sort the mail. I listen to essays, ask quiz questions for math, and brush my teeth.

In my heart I am writing every minute, transcribing against the soft flesh of my core all the wonders I have seen today: the snips of conversations, the touch of hands, the soft music of mother and child, and the cacophony of distress.

I write webs around my self, around my children and my husband, soft, luminescent webs meant to protect and brighten dagainst the darkness that encircles and threatens to put out the light.

I write poems and stories about the life I live inside my head. The life where each day progresses in bright Kodachromes of love, work, and play. I dictate conversations with friends peppered with birthday dates and college plans, all bright balloons of words that pop one by one when I hang up the phone.

I draw long, complicated words out of the dictionary in my mind and splay them across surfaces of crisp, white linen, incising cursive swirls and cross-hatches black with emotion. My nib tears great holes in the laid surface and the rip is satisfying to my ear.

I transcribe a life that is expected of me: Daddies at work and Mommies at the grocery store, and children rushing to play with friends. I muster a poem of chores, an essay of bills, and a long, sweet ode to paint and paper.

I write a play of a couple sweetly dancing at the Rainbow Room, a husband tall and strong, his face unlined by pain and sorrow. The wife is slender and agile; her gaze rarely leaves her husband's face.

Exit stage left.


Winterlight

They dragged me into the Christmas shop. Trying to perk me up, get me happy, forget about all the crap at home. It was too sunny and warm for Christmas trimmings and my mind was on cramming the shopping and cooking around work this week in time for the big Thanksgiving meal that still falls to me to do even though we both work full time.

This was the same store that sells patio furniture. The place last summer where the clerk couldn't be bothered greeting us or getting out from behind the counter when we wanted to know what sets were on sale. "Over there", he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the entire floor of merchandise.

For Christmas they had cleared out all the summer stuff, and lthe place was loaded with trees, decorations, and giftware. Potpourri began making me sneeze as soon as we pulled open the door. Christmas carols blared over the loudspeaker, ornaments spun on trees, twinkling lights twinkled, music boxes chimed, and garlands were heavy with fake snowflakes and fruit. So much plastic and red! Too much gold and tartan!

I couldn't get into any of it and was sniffing in that snobby way where I pretend that I am the only person in the radius of one mile who understands understatement and natural fibers and where did all this ersatz crap come from? (My husband hates when I get like that. Too bad.) Since when did dogs need their own Christmas feeding dishes? What's with the mechanical mice with elf hats that run up wires on the tree? Creepy! The life-sized Nutcrackers were gathered menacingly in front of the entrance to Santa World. I wanted to see how many pre-schoolers would work up the courage to go in and see Santa if they had to pass that lot of grinning monsters without wetting their pants!

Some ornaments did catch my eye. There was a set of blown glass ornaments that were all the characters from The Nutcracker. They were silver and pink and very delicate. And $29 apiece! Another tree had very cool, oversized balls in 60's neon colors of magenta, chartreuse, sky blue, and cherry red. They were hand painted with whimsical, artistic Santa faces. I was ready to buy all six until I saw the price. $29 each again!

I decided to pout by the front door until my mother and sister could see that nothing they could do would make me happy today and they should stop trying because my life sucks and I am sick of it. Yeah. But as I stood by the entrance, I saw boxes of long tapers in dozens of warm colors. I did need some candles for the table for Thanksgiving. I began to search through the boxes for the right shade of green that would look rustic yet elegant in my silver candlesticks. Then I spied a display of candlesticks with candy cane stripes of red, green, and white. On the other side of the door was a wooden hutch with a display of over-priced candles that came in jelly jars and heavy corrugated cardboard boxes. I was rolling my eyes at the packaging, knowing it made up the high price, when I caught a whiff of "Gingersnap", and the aroma of my late aunt's gingerbread cookies flooded me with memories. Now I had the green tapers, the candy cane tapers, and the gingerbread votive in my arms. Suddenly a smiling clerk with a Santa hat appeared and handed me a basket. Oh. Thanks.

Around the corner under a fake tree decorated with swaths of hideous flocked velvet ribbons and fake jingle bells the size of an elephant's hernia, were chunky pillar candles in graduated shades of red to green, and an over-sized oval-shaped candle the color of butternut squash. There were candles round and white as snowballs, squat pillars with wax overlayers molded and painted to look like damask; candles in bright colors the shape of Christmas presents tied with ribbons; tapers that swirled like ribbon candy; serious two-foot pillars made of rich, creamy, tan beeswax that belonged in a church; and thick, stubby votives in velvety soft colors of jewels.

By now I had a basketful and laid them on the counter. As the clerk rang them up, I spied a basket of white tapers decorated with toys that had increments of 25 marked in black on one side. Advent candles, the clerk explained. I had to buy one each for myself and my sisters. She packed up the lot. By now, everyone was waiting for me by the front door. When we went outside, the sun had set and the streetlights were on. Despite the gloom, my mood lifted. The bag of candles rustled in their tissue paper in the brown bag and I set it carefully on my lap as my sister started the car. I looked at my mother and sister and realized I was the only one who had bought anything and had to laugh. Shopping always cures the blues for me.

When I got home, I placed the beeswax votives in demitasse cups and placed them in a circle on the oak dining room table like an early Advent wreath. I poured some Beaujolais into one of my great-grandmother's crystal wine glasses, the ones I never let anyone use for fear they'll break. All the stuff that had me in knots earlier in the day loosened with the wine. I raised the stemware in a toast to the coming Solstice, and sat in silence, watching the gray winterlight melt into the candle flames and listening to the earth creaking on its axis in one more rotation toward the light.


Tilting Towards Light

Each day the light grows shorter. I am impatient with this steady erosion of daylight. I yearn for total darkness when I put the key in my car on the way home from work at 5:00. The sooner it is pitch dark by 5:00, the sooner the light returns. The darkness comforts me. I feel like withdrawing right now. And I feel the giddy rush beginning to build toward the holidays. I am tired of doing. I'd like a week of thrashing rainstorms and cups of Earl Grey tea. I could stay in my gray velour robe and wear the wild leopard fuzzy slippers that Julia gave me last Christmas, listen to my new Liz Phair CD, write in my journal and paint books.

Stan installed this gas fireplace last year. I fought it him about it for a few years. I like wood and woodsmoke and the snap crackle and pop of a real wood fire. But seasoned firewood is rare and expensive around here. You need a place to stack it and a strong back to carry it in. Our last few loads were green and burned like turnips in the grate. I got sick of cleaning out the fireplace and finally caved and he put it in last year. They are ceramic logs that sit in our grate, with a material that looks like ash underneath. The gas pilot is hidden under the logs. With a press of a remote, the fire wooshes up. It's as warm and bright as wood flames. The logs singe and are soon covered in a realistic soot. We've had people over for an evening and none of them knew it wasn't a wood fire until they realized we never added a log to it all night. It's become a hedonistic pleasure. I flick it on before work for ten minutes and drink my coffee beside it. I can still ight a fire even if we are about to go out for the evening. It's made our hearth the heart of the house. All week we've had wild winds and I've come home wrung out from trying to keep the car on the road. A glass of cabernet, a lighting of the candles and the woosh of the fire turning on are beautiful things to come home to.

I love home and layering my nest. Over the years and four houses later, the insatiable urge to buy and decorate has left me, replaced by more artistic urges. But still I browse through magazines for inspiration and like to spend Saturday afternoons rearranging the little bits and pieces of shiny stuff I've collected. As winter appraoches, I'm pulling out the pewter chargers my sister gave us as a wedding present. I've put away the margarita glasses in fiesta colors for next summer and replaced them in the cabinet with sapphire blue goblets my late aunt gave us ten years ago. Last month, my sister underwent a cleaning binge at her house and gave me the original sapphire blue, stemmed dessert dishes that were the inspiration for my aunt's purchase. The original ones were my grandmother's and she gave them to my sister when she got married. I envied them for years and my aunt found the new set in a catalogue and gave them to me one Christmas. The old ones are very fragile and have a little crystal in the middle of the stem and I've put them in the curved glass cabinet.

We used the newer ones a few weeks away when I made my first pot of beef stew for the fall. I invited over my sister and my mother. The table was set with my mother's old earthenware dishes that have blue bands. The tablecloth was a deep burgundy and the blue-stemmed goblets looked rich and jewel-like. I'd bought a collection of bumpy, warty gourds and squashes at the market and piled them into an impromptu centerpiece. My daughter was home from e and we were seven at the table. The beef stew was redolent of autumn with its peppery taste. Made from my mother's recipe, it was layered with memories of our house on Claire Avenue and the long dining room, the french country chairs, and the wide dining room table where my father and mother sat at either end and we five girls tethered the sides in an uneven line up.

I like impromput, quiet nights of entertaining. I am giving back to my mother little bright snapshots of our family together once again. I share with her and with my family the tastes and smells of my childhood. We sit surrounded by the city we all grew up in, a remarkable accomplishment after our years of living all over the country. The fall leaves rustle on the side porch and moon comes up over the living room windows. Our cheeks are flushed with the wine and the table is littered with the crumbs of Italian bread we use to mop up the last juices of the stew. The kids begin to talk of dessert and someone plugs in the coffee pot and the aroma resuscitates us enough to clear the table and lay out coffee cups and an apple pie. My husband patiently marks chestnuts with a slit and banters with my mother about her method of cross-hatching an "x" on the flat side of the chestnut. He claims they don't open well that way after they are roasted. Jessica announces she has to take a shower as she's going out at ten. Chris disappears upstairs to play go on the computer and Julia badgers my mother into a card game. Stan and I clear up and make eyes at each other because we are tired and no one is helping. Then he drives my Mom home and by the time he's back, I have the lights out and the fire glowing and the candles lit. We have glasses of Grand Marnier and sit on either ends of the couch. He rubs my feet and we flip on Saturday Night Live.

Such is the wild, romantic, rocking social life of forty-somethings. And thank God for it.