I just returned after taking my dog for a walk—it’s 3:30 pm, but the light is horizontal and turning amber, the mountains bright with new snow, seeming eager to reflect the little light that remains. It’s cooler—temperatures are dropping this week—and my dog, while bundled, cannot stand shoes and his feet are getting cold so I turn around, thankful still that we were able to get out for just a spell.
The small dusting of snow remains on some of the larger trunks of birches or cottonwood and seems to draw attention to the synapses of branches against the sky. It reminds me of a Rilke quote I wrote down long ago and also came across today:
These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.
I was reading Old English poems a bit more after writing about them last week—and was reminded of the poem-fragment The Husband’s Message—a poem that is seemingly spoken by the piece of wood on which the poet wrote his message to his beloved. I love that idea—and thought of how people still carve initials in trees, we write on paper—try to create something of evidence that will last beyond our own body—or at least with that hope in mind on some level. Trees holding space, bringing attention to what is not otherwise present.
I was also reminded of reading about the Old English healing charms that are often listed alongside riddles, too often glossed over as neither science nor poetry. The power in them lies in their repetition, their ability to invoke—the way that the poems are stitched to chant, to be read aloud. The spell part of it—what the church and scientific thought began to dismiss as heathen or nonsense—is that through repetition, chanting, invoking, relaying older formulas of speech, performing them, embodying them, speaking them aloud in public, in front of witnesses, the words drew their power—a means to marry the past to the future, create the present. Truth is what can be repeated, retold, understood by more than one. Words need both sayer and listener, writer and reader.
Anne Dufourmantelle, in her book In Defense of Secrets, comes at this idea from the opposite direction, writing on the power of what remains unsaid—and yet how this too attests to the power of words. Secrets are words that hold power over us when they are unsaid but could be—and they also hold power when they are said aloud and made public. She writes:
No truth exists, then, if it isn’t attestable and thus repeatable. That with neither witness nor repetition, we are in the domain of pure experience. Truth begins when we can confirm it.
Thanksgiving has been fraught since its inception. When I was younger, it was a holiday I was mildly appreciative of, when I was ignorant of its propagandistic and genocide-denying origins. I liked the idea of a holiday based on gratitude rather than god. I wasn’t necessarily raised with religion, so the religious holidays we celebrated always felt lovely but uncertain—before I had learned of the many, deeply rooted, overlapping origins of every holiday, the many many traditions inherent in all of them. All ways of marking the year, of attention drawn to the time of year.
I do like to think of giving thanks in common—that while gratitude is something that we are told to live by, the sense of being in unison in doing so, taking a day off—two days off—to recognize it collectively, with one another, is at least a modern act that still ties us to thinking of others, family, friends.
I both wish and wish more, though, that we could understand our history without the lies we are taught to repeat as truth. DuFourmantelle writes in another essay from the same collection that
…for the Greeks, saying yes to fate meant the possibility of freedom from it.
That is what knowing the truth of history can give us—freedom from it, to not be consigned to ignoring it, keeping it secret, holding power over us all in different myriad exploitative ways.
So our holiday gathering was small, as extended and chosen family were far from us. My son turned the lights out so we could eat solely by candle and fire light, which he has loved to do in the winter since he was young. We sat the dogs by us as honored guests. It began to snow. We were grateful.
The etymology of thanks is rooted to the same trunk as think—from Old English þanc, a sort of past tense of think. Sing is to song, as think is to thank. I like this, in that to feel gratitude or thankful is impossible without attention, without thought, without noticing that which fills you with a sense of fondness and connection.
This is all to say I’ve been thinking and thankful for the words we share, of what we give attention to, of how we speak words that we hope hold some meaning for one another, inscribing them on this digital glowing ephemeral tree. That we give our attention to the time of year, of November drawing to a close—the Norway of the year—of the birds and trees, snow and cold. Attention to a time of year that above all, is focused on the waning light, to hold the darkness where it lands, enjoy its velvet quiet, and wait for the sun’s return. Thankful for it all.
"The etymology of thanks is rooted to the same trunk as think—from Old English þanc, a sort of past tense of think. Sing is to song, as think is to thank. I like this, in that to feel gratitude or thankful is impossible without attention, without thought, without noticing that which fills you with a sense of fondness and connection."
I'm taking this into the classroom.
The light in all your photos is so beautiful!
I’m taken with that idea of where and when truth begins. It makes me think of embodiment, and how hard it can be to accept a truth when a person hasn’t experienced it themselves.