HAPPY NEW YEAR: THE DOG HOUSE IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

I woke, in a cold, penetrating dark, to slobbering kisses from carefree Scot, the Greenport Labrador who is staying at The Dog House this month, while his family is in Scotland.  He's an import from that Jerusalem, that green and pleasant land.  He's an enthusiastic lover, oh my soul, and morning, no matter how early, means breakfast can't be far off.

He dearly adores his food, but I've sworn not to spoil him --- he's sleek and shiny black, with a long-legged, shy grace that takes my breath away.  I never tire of watching him, flanks leaping, scooping up now shriveled tennis balls in his wake where, in my lost, much-missed summer, lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed.  If the stars hold my faith sacred, and don't cross me, they will bloom again next (already, almost this) year.  I hope to see their blessed burst again.  

For the next few weeks, Scot is bunking in with another Greenport pup, Ingrid, a Labradoodle whose mom, somewhere north of Moscow, reports thick, unyielding ice, which makes moving about almost impossible.  Except for the occasional spat at the Toy Chest (filled with the gnarled playthings of my lost, beloved dogs now heavenward), they are already great friends.  If only human friendships were so fast and so immediate!

Ingrid has some hip dysplasia, so she's slower moving and sad, with a plaintive air.  She's obviously missing her forever family.  It's poignant, and I, but most of all, Scot, encourage her to soldier on. Jolly her along.  She's smaller than Scottie, and her coal black hair is curlier, not the tight curls of a lambkin's coat, but wispy, half curls that end in a question mark.  During the day, at here-and-there intervals, I massage her hindquarters, which seems to give her some relief.  I only wish I had someone to massage mine, since we share that in common --- I've had two hip replacements and will soon, come April, have a new knee.

It's still dark, but a trickle of light means dawn will be soon.  In my dream, I was holding a candle, admiring Turner's use of light, spellbound, floating skyward, above the harbor.  As I awoke, I realized I was at the Frick, my second home when I lived in New York, a refuge from the deafening whirl and bottomless chasm, the surrounding urban storm; that which frightened, and did not relent.

I must have borrowed the candle St. Anne's daughter holds in The Education of the Virgin, a de La Tour in the same gallery, and confused it with the wolf's notion of "all the better to see you with."  Years later, I disappointingly discovered that many of this "Painter to the King," this baker's son's, chiaroscuro scenes were lit by candlelight, which dissipated and made commonplace the dramatic effect of that first de La Tour I saw, years earlier, reproduced in a dog-eared Guide to the Gallery that sat on my grandmother's bookshelf.  She taught me to read, so hers were the first books I loved; the first to open the world to me --- there is, was, and never shall be, frigates like hers that sail on in my heart's imagination.

By the time I was old enough to visit New York, she was no longer alive, though the lilies at the Garden Court continue to sing her praises --- a normal school girl who rode ten miles on horseback to teach in a one-room schoolhouse, in rural Pennsylvania. Later she, too, gave birth to a son (my dad) in Bethlehem.  A French Huguenot's daughter, she grew up dirt poor, measuring her happiness, and her family's, in barley and hay.

Painstakingly frugal, she recycled and re-used everything, long before it was popular or political to do so.  Her watchwords, "waste not, want not", always fell on respectful ears.  She never failed to tell my Swedish grandfather, as he raised his fork to his plate, "Smell it before you eat it". 

I was lucky enough to grow up almost next door. My heart spins with memories --- how I cherished them; and they, me.  There are no loves like those early, complete, resounding ones, infused with abiding warmth, such utter, unmitigated, acceptance.  

…Back with you from a dinner with the pups. Given Scottie's never-fail appetite, I separate them at feeding time.  He gobbles; she's a hesitant eater, takes bites, paces, and comes back to the bowl.  For Scot, there is nothing greater than the present, all the world concentrated in his laser beam desire.  He is so of the moment, so there, so admirable in his focus.  If only he can teach me his lessons --- to be indisputably in the now, tongue lolling, happy to be where I am, when I am, as I am, not as I could, should or would be.  If only!

To achieve that and other of Scottie's lessons, I've recently become interested in Nicheren Buddhism. One of its most significant attributes is its easily accessible practice of chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo (the fundamental law of life; the action of practicing Buddhism, the essential law and its manifestations, the simultaneity of cause and effect, the truth expressed through the sound of one's own voice). Chanting - this practice - is said to transform our fate, helping us break through apparent deadlocks and convert sufferings into happiness.  Hmm…the jury is still out on the suffering part, but I'll let you know how I get on:

“About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
― W.H. Auden

So, the best thing about Christmas, of which I never tire, are the carols --- 'Lo How a Rose, The Holly and the Ivy, and, my favorite, In the Bleak Midwinter: a Carol based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rosetti written before 1872 in response to a request from the magazine, Scribner's Monthly, for a Christmas poem. It was published posthumously in Rossetti's Poetic Works in 1904, and later set to music by Gustav Holst:

In the bleak mid-winter/ Frosty wind made moan,/ Earth stood hard as iron,/ Water like a stone;/ Snow had fallen, snow on snow,/ Snow on snow,/ In the bleak mid-winter/ Long ago./

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him/ Nor earth sustain;/ Heaven and earth shall flee away/ When He comes to reign:/ In the bleak mid-winter/ A stable-place sufficed/ The Lord God Almighty,/ Jesus Christ./

Enough for Him, whom cherubim/ Worship night and day,/ A breastful of milk/ And a mangerful of hay;/ Enough for Him, whom angels/ Fall down before,/ The ox and ass and camel/ Which adore./

Angels and archangels/ May have gathered there,/ Cherubim and seraphim/ Thronged the air,/ But only His mother/ In her maiden bliss,/ Worshipped the Beloved/ With a kiss./

What can I give Him,/ Poor as I am?/ If I were a shepherd/ I would bring a lamb,/ If I were a wise man/ I would do my part,/ Yet what I can I give Him,/ Give my heart.

"Yet what I can I give him, give with my heart."

Happy New Year,

Melanie