This Apple-Shaped Earth

The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them
is something grand,

I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is
happiness . . . .

                                  —Walt Whitman

This Apple-Shaped Earth, bronze, Linda Hoffman, 2022

Do you remember as a kid thinking people on the other side of the world were standing upside?

My new bronze sculpture, This Apple-Shaped Earth is installed in Brookline, Massachusetts part of Studios without Walls exhibit along the Muddy River near the Longmont “T” stop. The theme is The Earth We Walk, and I made this piece especially for the exhibit. I wanted to highlight that this earth is all we have—there is nowhere else to go. We need to take care of it. This wonderful outdoor exhibit features thirteen artists. Put it on your summer to-do list! It will be up through September 5, 2022.

I also have a sculpture at The Edith Wharton’s Estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, part of the SculptureNow at the Mount 2022, featuring large-scale work of thirty artists. My favorite piece in the exhibit is the majestic dragon, Cecilia, by sculptor Robin Toast. It took three years to cut and stitch pieces of sheet metal to make the quilted dragon’s skin. It’s definitely worth a visit! The exhibit runs through October 19.

Cecilia, stitched sheet metal, Robin Toast, 2022

And a third outdoor exhibit that I recommend is the 2022 Outdoor Arts Biennial: Passages in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Take a stroll through this delightful village and you will find thirteen sculptures elegantly installed throughout the community. Refuge, my giraffe riding on a turtle’s back is installed near the library and playground. I’m hoping to see the giraffe and turtle’s noses rubbed smooth from young fingers discovering it.

Refuge, Linda Hoffman, Installed in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Photo: Molly Dickinson

And later today, Sunday June 19th, I will be giving a Dharma talk at the Fire Lotus Temple in Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the regular Sunday Service which begins at 9:30 with liturgy, followed by two periods of sitting meditation, and then the talk. I’ll be talking about Pruning, Juneteenth, and the Seven Factors of Awakening. The talk will be up on Zen Mountain Monastery’s podcast page sometime this week,

Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Juneteenth Day!

Happy Summer Solstice!

 Love, Linda

What is a Jizo?

Ancient people made stone piles to mark a site as sacred, while today we use stone cairns to indicate the direction on a wilderness trail. For over a year I had a small pile of stones on one of my work tables. It just sat there and didn’t draw attention from visitors to the studio. It didn’t point me in any direction.

When I begin a sculpture, I sometimes don’t know where I’m going. I will let something sit for a long time. I know there is a seed there, but it is buried in the earth. It’s as if my life, the practical everyday side, needs to catch up to the trusting, mystical side. My cairn waited, occasionally toppling to the floor.

Then I was asked if I could make a Jizo for the garden at Zen Mountain Monastery. Jizos are protectors. In Japan, even today, they are along roadsides, on city street corners, in temples and shrines. These stone figures are particularly important for the protection they offer to women, children, and travelers. A wood roughly carved Jizo sculpture had been in the garden at the monastery, but when the Jizo House was completed, a small building designed to house monastery retreatants, this wooden Jizo moved to the front door of the Jizo House to be a welcoming presence.

Jizo first appeared in Buddhist iconography in the 7th century in China as a male monk with robes and a staff that had rings on the top that jingled when he walked.

Jizo Bosatsu by Zen-en (14th century) Collection Asia Society

The jingle-jangle would scare away predators as well as warn away small animals that might get stepped on. But Jizo as it came down the centuries became more often represented by rough stone carvings. Red bibs were often tied around them as prayers for a deceased child, and women would knit little caps for them, too. I remember visiting a temple in Kyoto where there was a venerable sea of Jizos. It was a temple where women came to offer their tears for a stillborn or aborted child.

Jizos at Kiyomizudera Temple in Kyoto. Photo: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kiyomizudera-temple

Sometime during Jizo’s history, they became associated with the earth. The English translation of the word is “earth storehouse” or “earth womb.” 

Forest Jizo, Photo credit: https://www.okujapan.com/blog/japanese-jizo-statues

When Yukon, the monk who is the gardener at the monastery asked me make a Jizo, I immediately said yes. That’s when I began to hear this small collection of stones on my table speak. Earth mother, protector, guardian. Jizo traditionally was male, but became non-binary. Jizo simply cares. Working on the sculpture, I began to think of all the beings Jizo cares for, and I placed them all over their body.

Jizo in Wax with Iris Stem

Yukon had made it very clear that this Jizo needed a staff, and it had to be one like the traditional Jizo with rings. I picked out a couple of stalks from the dried iris clump near my studio door. They were the right size and I liked the idea of using the dried seed pod for attaching the rings. Zach Gabbard at Mission Foundry did a masterful job casting, welding, and burning out the iris pods to make the staff.

Jizo installed at Zen Mountain Monastery Garden, 2022, bronze

Jizo Staff in Snow (detail), Photo: Mn.Yukon Grody

A Jizo’s vow ensures that they will help all beings no matter what misdeeds have caused their suffering. Makers of Jizos, as well as those who venerate them are said to receive gifts. How grateful I am for the opportunity to make this sculpture and install it in the garden at Zen Mountain Monastery. May this Jizo be a protector for the earth’s beings everywhere.

Rudy the Cat, Jizo, and Yukon

We can all make Jizos. Build stone cairns, or bake a stack of cookies for a friend. Offer flowers, smiles. Spread the care, extend the love. I’d love to offer a Jizo making workshop when we can all meet again in person. Let me know if this interests you.                      

Jizo in the Snow, Photo: Mn.Yukon Grody

An Invite and Housekeeping Update

Farm in Winter Drone shot by David Shapiro

Dear Friends,

First an invitation to an upcoming reading of my memoir, The Artist and the Orchard, on February 8th at 7 pm on zoom sponsored by the Maynard Public Library, Maynard, Massachusetts.

Second the laundry!
In order to simplify and streamline our communications, the Apples, Art, and Spirit blog will be delivered from Squarespace instead of Mailchimp. If you now receiving the blog and would like to continue, you need do nothing.

If you are also receiving Poem of the Month, you may continue to receive it, but then again you may not. The Poem of the Month will come from the farm’s website and be a separate mailing list. If you want to make sure, please sign up here!

If you’d like to receive the farm’s newsletter with news about the farmstand, pick your own, our CSA, and farm events, you will need to sign up here, unless you are already on that list.

With apologies for this winter re-organizing — it will be worth it!

Your first Apples, Art, and Spirit Newsletter is almost ready to send!

Love, Linda

The Year of the Frog: What Orchardists Do While Apple Trees are Chilling

I’m working in the studio on a sculpture of a frog. I talk to it while I sculpt it. I ask questions. I stroke it and I pat it. You might say I have fallen in love with this frog—though I’m not intending to kiss it, and definitely not desiring to meet a prince. This is not a frog of fairytales, but the frog who is the subject of a haiku by Matsuo Basho, Japan’s most influential 17th century haiku master.

Haiku was originally a seventeen-syllable introductory verse to a longer series of linked poems. Then in the middle of the 15th century, people began to write these short poems as a separate form. They sent them to each other, shared them. They were often playful. Basho, a maverick, was keen to use this form of poetry to express something more serious. For almost all of his life he explored the writing of haiku. Haiku became an evocation of an experience, of a moment. As an art form, it aligned with the development of Zen Buddhism in Japan, and became an instantaneous presentation of the whole without intellectual commentary.

How much could be expressed in few words? How to express an emotion like loneliness without using the word?

In 2001, when I first visited this rundown farm with its old apple orchard, I was awed by its large pond. Years earlier I had lived in Japan and been influenced by the Zen poets and traditional Japanese arts. This pond reminded me of one of Basho’s haiku and I named the farm Old Frog Pond. There are at least a hundred translations of the poem—some quite strange—but literarily it is:

Furu ike ya/ old pond (‘ya’ is a word of emphasis but without specific meaning)
Kawazu tobikomu/ frog jumps
Mizu no oto/water’s sound

In a traditional haiku, the first line often sets the scene. In this poem, we are introduced to the view of the old pond. This ageless pond might make us think about the beauty of the moon’s reflection in water, or how an old willow’s branches coax ripples on its surface. The pond may hold in its depth old carp, ancient beings.

In the second line, our gaze narrows as we see a frog. In traditional haiku writing, “Frog” was considered a season word to indicate spring. In Basho’s poem this little frog appears, a small creature, perhaps just coming out of the mud on an early spring day. Our mind holds the fragility of the frog within the expansive pond. We hold the singular among the universal.

Then, all of sudden, we are woken from our musings with a ‘splash’—the sound caused by the frog’s jump breaking the surface of the water.

Suddenly, everything disappears—our thoughts about this old pond, about the frog, the season, the setting. Only the sound exists. We are no longer thinking or making up a story. No frog and princess here. For a moment we even forget ourselves—just splash!

What does it take to be absorbed in the moment? Why is this significant?

How do we absorb ourselves in an experience? How do we have an experience?

Who is this ‘we’ that experiences?

Basho trained for several years as a Zen monk. He continued to wear the robes of a monk as his daily garb. His writing of haiku was the practice of a Zen art. His language was always simple yet conveyed the complexity of our heart/mind. In Japanese the character for kokoro, carries the meaning of ‘heart’ and ‘mind’, unlike in English where these two words are distinct.

Working on sculpture is different from writing. I form the muscles of the leg with melted wax. I press and shape the thick and sinuous body parts. I carve into hard wax the lines of the nail ridges on its webbed feet. Wax sticks to my finger tips and palms, and hardened wax packs behind my nails. When I work on the frog, I touch only frog. When I gaze at the frog, I see only frog. This frog does not jump. It is sitting. Contemplative you might say. Prayerful even. There is no splash.

A concrete pillar stands in the water between the lower pond and the small stone bridge before the pond water flows into the vast Delaney wetlands. It’s been calling for a sculpture since I moved here. Once this frog is cast into bronze, it will live on the post and gaze east towards the rising sun. Its feet will dangle and tease the water.

While working on the sculpture, I wondered if the frog should be carrying anything on its back or holding anything in its hands. But the frog was adamant. I’m just a frog. I’m a frog that is completely myself. Not going anywhere, not doing anything. Maybe that’s why I love it. Maybe that’s what love is—not needing something or someone or ourselves to be any more than just what and who we are. Not needing to do anything, only experiencing this moment fully.

            Next spring I hope you will come to see this Frog in its new home.
May we all find the stillness and wakefulness of Basho’s Frog in the New Year!