The witchery of living...and art
An artistic exploration of Mary Oliver's poem, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
Over the last few months, I’ve spent some time with Mary Oliver. Most mornings, I read a poem from A Thousand Mornings, a slim volume of her poetry that graces my art altar. Some days, the poem and my tarot card draw combine together in a moment of serendipity that takes my breath away. Some poems, I read and read again. A handful don’t quite strike a chord with me, and that is ok. I still carry a bit of her poetic influence into my day.
One of her poems, though, has accompanied me in my studio since months. I read it in whole and in parts, pull out little snippets of it to add to my journals, change the order of her words a bit to make some found poetry.
And in that reading and re-reading, in the contemplation of Mary Oliver’s words and the re-arranging of them, I settle more comfortably into my bones, her words reminding me just how wondrous this world is, and how wondrous we each are.
I hope you enjoy these art journal spreads; you’ll find the entire poem at the end of this post.
Life is all about the simple delights. Warm bread, cool water, nature in all its glory, the small things that fill us with life. And yet, we complicate it. With our thoughts on loop, our fear monsters controlling our every move, comparisonitis running rampant. What if we just remembered the simplicity of life?
As Anne Dillard said, how we spend our days is how we live our lives. So how are you spending your days? There are the quotidian minutiae that make up our daily lives, of course. But are you making time for living? By which I mean are you making time for the things that give you life? Art, creativity, wonder seeking….We have just this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another. Or as Oliver Burkeman reminds us, all we have is about Four Thousand Weeks. Are you using those weeks wisely?
The witchery of living - just that phrase casts a spell on me! And I wonder, if you had to create a spell for living, what ingredients would you choose? What conversations would you have? What is it that you know? Those may be an interesting questions to carry into your journal…or into your days.
Beauty — where do you find it? For me, it’s in textured walls and peeling paint; in ancient ruins, carvings eroded by the wind. It’s in the fractal snowflakes within a cube of ice. In the curve of a sleeping cat and the delicate swirl of the handle of a teacup. It’s in the everyday, in every life, a thread of beauty, of enchantment. Do you see it?
I think of the year-that-should-not-be-named as a time of deep and profound personal change. I was lucky that I had a job, a comfortable home and a loving partner with whom to shelter. And that I had the time and spaciousness to think, to reflect, to dream some lasting changes into being. But while that year may have been one of profound internal shifts, the changes — small, subtle — continue…I do sometimes wonder, though, does it sometimes make sense, perhaps, to stay the same? What do you think?
As always, I would love to hear from you here in the comments or simply reply to this email and let’s get the conversation rolling!
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To end, here’s the poem that I explored in all of the art journal spreads above. Enjoy!
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
by Mary Oliver
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say–behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings of this gritty earth gift.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.
And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?
I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same or we change.
Congratulations if you have changed.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some fabulous reason?
And if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—your life—
what would do for you?
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements, though with difficulty
I mean the ones that are thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the ush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world