Night Swim, new edition

Sept. 

I put this copy of my book in my father's plant that he gave my husband and I for a house warming more than 15 years ago. The plant didn't bloom for years but when my dad died in 2010, a month later it started blooming. You can see why this plant feels special to me. I wrote about that here. 

The new edition of Night Swim recently found its way to the top ten spot on B&N's Nook bestseller list.

Thich Nhat Hanh in Boston, September 15, 2013

Post by Jessica Keener.

Yom Kippur, a child's thoughts

Yom Kippur begins this evening and it brings back memories when I used to fast as a child. I began fasting when I was about seven and stopped the year I turned seventeen and went off to college.

As a child, fasting heightened my awareness of everything—time, smells, sights, sounds, thoughts. By the end of the day, without the usual prompts of meals and snacks to mark my routine, the day took on a quality of air where space and time became one, my feet barely on the ground where I stood. I spent those days fasting with other Jewish kids on the quiet streets and sidewalks of my suburban neighborhood. As usual, we rode bikes, played hide and seek, rode bikes again, or found things to do with stones, dirt and sticks.

Plus this: on this day of Yom Kippur, we picked our super special--sacred--apples from our neighbor's small orchard. Those gnarly trees, weighted with fruit, lowered their limbs for our easy reach. Each of us—maybe we were half a dozen kids—walked among the leafy trees in search of our own, flawless apple, unbruised, red and shiny.

Once I made my selection, I kept my apple close, in my hands, for the rest of the day until that precise minute on the clock when I returned to earth, could break the apple skin with my front teeth--and eat!

The apple represented my reward. But it also represented life, beauty, survival, temptation, and the power of nature and G-d, a power that created this aromatic and sweet tasting fruit. My apple overflowed with its roundness, its redness, its greenness, its "is-ness" and became my companion, my cheerleader urging me stay the course, to last the whole long day of fasting. Nestled in the curve of my fingers,I felt my apple's solid nature, its promise of future nourishment. "I’m not going anywhere," it said. "Treat me right, don't drop me. Polish me, honor me, and I’ll be here for you when your fasting is done." 

And it was. Every time.

It’s been years since I've fasted on this holiday, but my body remembers with fondness and gratitude the help I received from my neighbor's red apples. 

For all those fasting on Yom Kippur this year, I wish you a good one that allows you to focus on the day’s meaning of atonement and forgiveness and to find some cleansing in the process.

Iridescence

Post by Jessica Keener.

September

Post by Jessica Keener.

Independence Day Week: leaves, bees, shattered glass

July 1
As summer settles into its lush, green phase, I'm taking a closer look at the beautiful formations of leaves. This one swirls into a pinpoint of darkness, I wonder what lies beyond in there, what knowledge? What gravity or mysterious force pulls these swirls to a single, circular, unifying point?

July 1

A little further along my walk today, I passed a tree that was dropping what looked like flower nests. As I took this picture, several more perfectly formed flower nests plopped on the ground with a thud, thud. It was if the tree's twigs were rigged with springs for these flowers were, literally, before my eyes, bungee-jumping off the branches and flinging themselves to the ground. I'd never seen anything like it.

July 2
Today, I once again looked closely at leaf patterns. These tightly woven ones remind me of those strings of gimp I used to braid into necklaces and bracelets as a girl. Art from nature, of course.

July 3
Trying to get one decent picture of a bumble bee at work turned into a comedic event. I clicked and deleted many failed shots as these fellas move constantly, which made me wonder what keeps them going? Solar panels tucked into their yellow jacket cells? They are not eating and snacking all day, they are flying, lifting off, landing, moving, gathering, searching. Even this shot has a tiny blur as I only had one second at most to get a still moment. I have new respect for these amazing beings.This one, and dozens more, were harvesting this fully blooming hydrangea bush.

Looking into smaller worlds, I found this flowering, purple weed in the grasses. Perspectives around what is small, smaller and tiny become big, bigger and giant within the context that measures it. The question is: what's our ability to see into these dimensions, large or small? What do you think?  

This striped bloom, for instance, with its five definitive sluices that flow to the center--other flowers organize themselves around the number 6 or 4 or 3. Looking closer, these petal veins aren't so different than our fingerprints, a good reminder that we all connect in surprising ways.

July 4th - My short essay is published in The Huffington Post: Independence Day: Facing Fears of Violence.  Here's a link to it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-keener/independence-day-facing-f_b_3546678.html  Hope you'll take a look and let me know your thoughts.

Charles River

My floppy statue of liberty crown

Field surrounding the hatch shell, where the Pops play and guests sing

July 6: At 3 a.m. last night, a body-shattering explosion startled and scared us out of sleep. My husband, son and I gathered in the dark to assess what it was? Silence followed, then we heard clinking, like rain, or hail on the porch floor. We went out to look. Somehow, the glass table top had spontaneously imploded, crashing into thousands of pebble-sized pieces on the deck. Relieved that it wasn't a prankster throwing a rock or anything sinister, we eventually went back to sleep. The next morning, we guessed the glass top probably had a small fissure. The excessive heat caused it to expand against the metal frame containing it, until the glass smashed inward. I swept up the remains and put it in a paper grocery bag. 

And, that, my friends, is how my week wrapped up.-- Shattered glass, which I always take to mean some kind of tension-building karma has been released. During this week in the world at large, we've had a tragic plane and train crash, and eruptions in Egypt. The list goes on, doesn't it. But, life goes on, too.

In My Father's Garden

This is a golden chain tree; at least that is what my father called it when he found one growing in the woods behind our house where I grew up. I remember the day he showed it to me. I followed him across the long backyard lawn to the ledge where the woods began. Maybe I was eight or nine. The woods sloped fast down a hill to a gravelly, private road below. Tall pines and oaks and maples grew in these woods, the shaded ground covered in dense fabric: layers of brown pine needles.

It’s a golden chain tree, Dad told me, pointing.

This thin tree looked reedy and delicate in the shade, a few yellow petals dangling from it. He’d found a jewel.  

I’m going to transplant it, he said. He walked around it. 

As usual he had a plan. My father liked to map things out in his head—new highways and byways that included paths and flower beds, stone-dotted trails and walkways through his garden. He’d already picked out a place for it in the front yard.  I thought it was grand. A new tree!  Sure. Why not! The excitement was in the discovery of this sapling in the woods, and then the possibility of what it would become. 

So began one of his favorite activities: shoveling dirt. He became someone else when he dug holes. I stood back and observed, offering an occasional nod and approving comment. Looks good, I might say. Maybe I held a shovel—kind of like a nurse assisting a surgeon—passing him the appropriate tool when he asked for it. 

Here, hold this will you?

He handed me the shovel, then reached for the trowel in his back pocket, using it to perform close-up, more refined scraping and scooping.

During this process, I listened to his grunting, watched sweat beads spin into the air. Everywhere dirt—on his pants and face, knees, hands, cheeks.  Messes in the garden didn't disturb him at all.  (Messes inside the house, I'm afraid, drew out a different, beastly and frightening response.) But in the garden, he maneuvered, pushed, tugged, carved a moat around the root until all essential parts of the root and trunk released, and he pulled the sapling out like a babe from a womb.

Then he swathed the roots in burlap (towel or sheet, I can't recall) and carried the tree over his shoulder. He offered explanations for each step.  I trailed him, crossing the lawn again, passing through the side yard until we rounded the house and crossed the front yard to a far corner under my bedroom window.  There, he stopped, pointed to the new, anointed place next to the house. He turned the tree upright and placed it carefully into a freshly prepared cradle of dirt. 

Next came Dad’s foot stamping dance. Round and round the tree, Dad filled the new hole with sod. He went down on his knees and with his square-shaped hands he kneaded in the loose dirt around the roots again.  He pushed and pressed, tucking and folding in more dirt between spaces, making things snug for the tree.

Thinking about this now as an adult, I see how Dad understood that this displaced tree needed to feel secure, anchored, and most of all—loved.

The tree took. It grew tall and lived a long, good life.  Many decades later, I returned to our old house and saw that it was no longer there in the owner's yard, but my memory holds to the vision of it. I watched it bloom every spring, below my bedroom window--those long, brush-like shimmers of gold, proud and graceful. Each year, they returned to show me that my father was more than a scary, raging, distraught self. I needed to know this—those sunny, gentle flowers and garden, they offered proof. 

(Published in Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-keener/in-my-fathers-garden_b_3361890.html)