On, In, and Around Mondays: Kitchen Table Optional

I usually write on Saturdays, but this past weekend I found myself in the car for a total of seven hours. Four up (we missed our turn and accidentally pointed towards Canada) and three back.



As the miles passed, I watched snow. Snow, snow and more snow. Snow on orchard trees and baby pines, on Douglas Firs and golden swamp weeds, on russet-colored bushes and mountains in the distance.



For all the daylight hours I watched, and never tired of the snow.





Later, returning in the dark, I watched the sliver moon diffused behind clouds. Now the snow was blues and grays, barely glowing, and the mountains were a suggestion against the night. If I could have walked the 150 miles home, I would have. The moonlit snow was an endless invitation to awe.

Somewhere along the way I got to thinking about Capon's (and Ann Kroeker's) Heavenly Onion. I know our lives do not permit this kind of attention for every task. But there are moments when we have an hour (or seven), and then we have a chance to be in awe over snow, or an onion, or the soft face of a person we love. I thought about this too, and wrote a poem (probably just along where we missed the turn— and now you see how awe can derail a day, so you must be prepared for that eventuality).

Anyway. I was thinking of Capon's instructions, but I was without an actual onion or a kitchen table. So, as I said, I wrote a poem instead.

Says Capon...

Now take one of the onions (preferably the best looking), a paring knife, and a cutting board and sit down at the kitchen table... You will note, to begin with, that the onion is a thing, a being, just as you are. Savor that...

Assignment (Kitchen Table Optional)

Spend an hour with an onion—
Spanish if you like—
feel it round in your hand
before you uncover it
against itself...
knife slicing, piercing
towards the heart
through paper, water, paper, water,
releasing heat
that could make a grown man
cry.




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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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We're reading The Spirit of Food together at TheHighCalling.org. Join us? Also, we're accepting poems (random is fine if you don't want to write for the prompt); mine today is random. :)

Crossing the Texas Border with Spam

It was Sam's idea. Honor a person by sharing an item of any kind. The item just needed to have sentimental value you could somehow explain... to say, you are important to me because.



I received gifts of this kind from the HighCallingBlogs team. Many gifts were shyly given in private. All were (and are) cherished.

But the Spam. Ah, the Spam!

"Oh, I bet there's a story behind this," said the airport searcher.

"I, well. It was a gift."

The airport searcher looked at me with a small smile that said, Sure lady. "Don't touch anything Ma'am." (he said, for the third time). "I'm going to run the bag through again." (for the fifth time) "Without the Spam."

Personal items were strewn all over the metal counter. More gifts, some fragile, some amusingly resilient. Poetry soap, a ceramic butterfly, a baby shoe, kids' toothpaste, a white teacup, a stone engraved with "strength," a handmade candle, a poetry book, a picture of someone in his big-glasses stage (long ago). The rosary was hidden in my purse. The shalom necklace in a small tin.

In the end, I was not carrying any explosives. Nothing noxious or dangerous. Just a crowned blue can that spoke, with a laugh, of love.

Spam and Gifts photos, by L.L. Barkat.

On, In and Around Mondays: Window Shopping

In Chattanooga, I walked past windows, shopping for memories. Every city offers this diversion, and I am a willing consumer. Ordinary words like "open" suddenly seem like treasure in neon, blinking, "look at me." I look. I angle my camera. I capture "open" and the reflected sky that is, itself, opening to night.



I find I can take my Jesus home on a band aid, should I prefer Him over BooBoo kisses adhesive bandages, or protective rainbow monkeys or fairies. He cooperates nicely by agreeing to sit in a tin next to a plastic alien figure who, herself, has preferred to stay in the open. The sky is still doing its thing, now peachier. There is still time.



Surely I am in need of a fishnet stocking lamp, or perhaps a blender with a green bulb, or maybe a wire figure... blue-bikini clad with long wild hair opening to imaginary wind.

In the end, by trick of a lens, I take it all. Greedy consumer that I am. I take the "open" sign, the sky, night coming on, Jesus and the BooBoo kisses, blue bikini-clad figure wild as John the Baptist in his desert. I take, too, the fishnet-leg and blender lights of the world.


Chattanooga Window photos, by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

No Words

I do not want to put words to this place. Something in me simply wants to say, "Look..."



















... and, too, look at the Child who wanted to see.










Seashore photos by L.L. Barkat.

Casting for Beauty

Water washes over my toes. The sound of ocean ebb-and-flow eases tension. I stand, camera in hand, waiting for sun to set. Or I search the sand, the rocks, the waves.

He stands too.

A fisherman, waiting.

I hold up my camera as if to say... I'm fishing too, see? He moves on, becomes a silhouette against the dying sun. I watch him casting, casting. Fishing for dinner.



I am fishing too. Casting for beauty. With my lens I reign in a speckled rock.




I capture an accidental sacrifice— jellyfish rotting into amber blackness, spreads a star of beauty near what I call my lemon and peach shells.




With my digital memory I take home a garnet ball I now wish I'd put in my pocket, heavy as it was.




The world is lemon sherbet.




The world is peach sherbet too. I gobble it up with concave glass.




A red rock watches me. And I watch it. Subsumed, reincarnated, subsumed.




Here is a golden striped beauty, soft, so soft.




If I spent forever on this beach, beauty would break me. I would fish and fish and fish. Someone would find me on the far side of morning, belly up, an accidental sacrifice. Would they guess I'd simply been casting for beauty...


Long Island Rocks and Shells photos, by L.L. Barkat.

Last Night by the Sea

"Can we go see the stars on the beach?" she asks.

It is ten o'clock at night, past her bedtime. I have never seen the stars and moon over the ocean. I understand her desire. We go.

The beach is empty. Moon is soft in a black sky. Stars, we see stars. And the sand, beneath this street lamp, looks like moon dust. My Eldest leans into me, smoothes my hair. "Can I have the camera?"

She photographs the moon. Moon dust beach. And me, back to the land, face to the sea.

This, this is a beautiful way to spend our final night on Long Island. Moon, stars, sand, and a young girl longing to take it home in some small way. I understand her desire.




LL by the Sea, photo by Sara. Used with permission. Moon over Beach photo by L.L. Barkat.

Adios, Spain

Before we know it, our time in Spain has come to a close. I'm wanting just one more bowl of olives, another visit to a flamenco cave, mornings of birdsong, cool air that seeps through shuttered windows in Granada.

This place has captured my heart... its art, its people, the hum of a language I've studied but never been immersed in before.

At the airport I surprise myself by beginning to weep; we've spent every day with these translators (Jarit and Maria) and they've charmed us with their warmth, hilarious stories, and brilliance. As Maria is fond of saying, 'Spanish people are passionate,' and I can see this as she also begins to cry.

We walk through security, shoes off, belts off, sweaters in this bin, suitcases on that conveyor belt. Turning one last time, I see Maria wiping her eyes. Who knows if we shall meet again.










Photos of Granada and Seville, by L.L. Barkat.

Altars, Columns and the Virgin, Spain

Marble, carvings, soaring ceilings. Light, shadow, sacred statues. The Virgin and Child. Columns and candles. Hand-painted walls. The Virgin and Wounded Savior.

Sight drawn upward, through, inward. The soul rushed by glory and magnitude.

What hands toiled? Whose backs stooped? Which minds envisioned, planned, ordered? Are the names scrawled somewhere in secret? Did I touch them with my feet, my eyes, unawares? Can I thank those who brought joys and sorrows, a bag of bread to sustain their day, artistry to last through the years? Will they hear me now... gasping awe?