Tag Archives: reflection

Now That I Know…

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{only the last photo in today’s post is one of mine….all others are Google Images found by searching “fog”}

What seems like many years ago, I taught in a school in East Austin in a room with one bright orange wall.

Orange was the color that designated 8th grade rooms, although I taught all three grades in that room. Typically, while I was a teacher, I was “split” or taught multiple grades in the same year. It was really challenging at first, but became much easier as time went by. In this room, my second room in that school, there were many windows along the back wall and it looked out over the rooftop of the first floor and beyond that, the neighborhood where all the kids who came to us lived. That neighborhood was one of the worst in Austin, poor, ugly, dirty…a typical neighborhood that poverty and city neglect has left to decay and never improve. In that neighborhood there were no grocery stores or doctors, no movie theatres or good parks. You had to cross the interstate that was about a mile away to get to that sort of thing. I always wondered why a city would build a neighborhood so isolated from the city itself.

The orange wall was in the front of the room and was covered with two white boards and a flat screen tv, if you believe it. I taught almost everything via PowerPoint on that flat screen tv. Large screens with bright colors are lifesavers when you are teaching kids with the attention span of a fruit fly. There were two doors: one we used, and one we didn’t. The one we didn’t was typically covered in a huge poster made of butcher paper that somehow related to what we were studying. At that school, I made many of these posters as I loved to have large, colorful representations of what we were doing. My favorite one that we made was entitled “Dragon City” and was a city made of multi-colored block buildings all made by students. Below the city were tectonic plates that, tragically, were always moving, causing earthquakes. To the side there was a large volcano that was always on the edge of eruption. There was also an ocean with a tsunami at all times, high winds that caused hurricanes and weather conditions that created tornadoes. Life was rough and tough in Dragon City, but all the people lived there, anyway. When the students and I first made it, I made them watch part of Werner Herzog’s short documentary La Soufriere, and talk about why they thought the people would stay when they knew they might be killed.

Daily life in that school was difficult and funny. There were many students who were extraordinarily challenging, but there were also many who were great and inspiring with their intelligences. I tried my best to work with them and challenge them but also help them along, holding their hands a little bit and showing them things they would never otherwise see.

Because of the location of the school, up on a hill in the middle of Austin’s second greenbelt (although this greenbelt was unused by hippies looking for swimming holes), we had different microclimates than the surrounding neighborhood. Because we were up and away, typically our mornings, especially in the transition times between summer and fall, fall and winter and winter and spring, were very foggy.

In the back of my room I had an altar and a coffee machine (what more do you really need?). Every morning I made coffee with maple syrup in it; maple syrup was my reward for surviving there and at home as this was the year I got divorced. On foggy mornings, I started a tradition of fog bathing.

When the kids came in, I would throw open all the windows and we would let the morning fog roll into the room, filling the classroom with clouds. The fog clouds were cool and damp and murky-feeling, as if you were in a forest, not a building. If you looked out of the windows, you could see the fog pouring in over the sills, into our low pressure, controlled climate atmosphere of our school. Sometimes, when the kids weren’t in the room, during an off period, for example, I would sit in the front of the room, doing work at the computer and look up to see banks of fog like water rolling in toward me.

That school, despite its many problems, was in a beautiful spot in east Austin: ringed with trees and fields it sat. It sat on top of a seam of calcite, metamorphic limestone, that had been blasted to build the school. Oftentimes I would take the students in my elective out for a constitutional and we would go and collect beautiful rocks to bring back to the classroom. We would crawl around the retaining walls that were built along the back of the school, hiding when principals or janitors came by (they didn’t understand the need for constitutionals or for beautiful rocks), putting rocks and dead bugs in pockets to cart them inside and place them, delicately, on shelves or windowsills. Nothing ever happened to these rocks despite the concerns of principals: none were ever thrown at each other or through glass.

Sometimes we would go exploring in the woods just to see what was out there, and I would try to get the kids to scream primal screams with me in the woods; they had no experience of the outdoors and were scared of it. One of them even told me, “Miss? Black people don’t go into the woods!”. But after a few journeys, they liked going out there and climbing over cedar trees and into spiders’ webs and finding evidence of people living in those woods. They climbed around over cliff’s edges and got dirt in their shoes and needles in their hair. They would always come back when called, and in we would go again, to reintegrate into the world that was our school.

At that school we had a school garden, and goats, and an after school program in which we wrote a literary magazine and made pinhole cameras. I sat in the hallways and talked to students during my time off, and went into other classrooms who were struggling when their teachers quit in the morning, or the middle of the day.

The best times, for me, in terms of reflecting on what I was doing, what the work actually was, came though, on those days when I could stand, drinking coffee with maple syrup, and stare out those back windows. If I could stand and stare awhile at the plants, at the rocks, at the books on the altar, at the posters on the walls and floor, at the mobiles hanging from the ceiling, I could wrap my head around what I was trying to do there. I later realized that, although I was great at crowd control and counseling, that I needed to learn how to teach, and so I left that school after two years. It is only now, four years later, that I can look back and see the forest for the trees. Now I can see the beauty even of that place: the waves of fog pouring into my classroom as students worked on building cricket homes or proving photosynthesis in test tubes or reading about light years.

Sunset at Suminsby Park, Northeast Harbor

Now the fog I see and experience rolls toward me from the harbor that is 4/10 of a mile away. It rolls up the streets from out in the ocean, traveling like someone floating up into town, drifting down the main street, up Summit Road and toward me. It flows and falls between houses and garages, and peeks between the branches of trees. Fog is so much a creature of its molecular structure: water pours even in its different phases. A few days ago, I woke up to a foggy day where everything was grey and green. I stood out on the porch awhile, watching the fog move down my street, through the tall juniper trees, over my neighbor’s cottage, along the driveway and out toward the street.

A Bottle of Milk

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Last night I was making cornbread to go with some stew I had made a couple of days before, and I realized I was out of milk. It was 6:48pm, and I realized that there was nowhere in town to go and buy another bottle of milk, as the store closes at 6:00pm. I realized that even if I had a car, that it would take me 25 minutes to drive to the next town that had a store that was open after 6:48pm. I realized that I now live in the slow lane of life.

 

I used water instead (it was delicious cornbread) and all was well. I walked out, later in the evening, to take a turn around the town, as I am wont to do lately. It takes about thirty minutes, give or take, to walk around Northeast Harbor from end to end. As I walked, the police car drove past me. Then, he turned around and drove past me again. When he did it a third time, I realized that this was a pretty exciting evening for him…..32 year old woman, alone, walking down Maple Lane!

 

 

I was trying to sort out some tricky jewelry designs in my head: two commissions are presenting some design challenges and I find that walking, especially at night, really helps me get good ideas and inspirations. Mostly, I walk down streets where almost all of the houses are empty. A few windows glow, here and there, through the trees, but, for the most part, this town is asleep by dark. Right now sunset is at 5:30pm, and after daylight savings begins in a week or so, the days will begin to shorten down, down, down to darkness at 4:00. Luckily for me, December 21st is a mere two months away: the days will begin to lengthen as soon as my 32nd birthday passes.

 

 

Today I spent a couple of hours discussing life, the universe and everything with a friend while we drove around the park looking at the last of the fall leaves. Bursting yellow, ochre and brown, these lasting leaves seem to scream out against an increasingly naked landscape “we are here – Look at us!!!”. Up on the top of Cadillac Mountain we stared out at the islands that stripe the bay as it opens up into the Atlantic Ocean. The afternoon sun is so sharp, so angled at this time of year. It glances off flat salt water and shines with a bright gold that hurts the eyes. It slices through the needles of fir trees, and makes maple leaves glow orange-yellow-pink-brown-green. The wind is gentle and the surfaces of ponds are like glass. As you drive past them, you can see naked trees interspersed with bursts of red and yellow and orange that are reflected on the calm surface. The water is the color of mercury, or of burnished pewter. Everything in the late afternoon is still and shiny: metallic and glowing as the sunset pitches over the horizon.

 

 

 

Turning Around

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Loser by Shel Silverstein

This post is dedicated to everyone who has lost someone, whether through death or divorce.

In other words, it is dedicated to you.

I left Maine almost a month ago, and so much has happened that it feels like much longer, and yet, like yesterday. I remember the stillness of late summer there, the warmth of the sun and the bite of the first autumn chill in the evenings. I remember long walks and quiet rides in cars, looking at mountains while racing down a small highway. When I return next week, I return to a new-to-me house in a new-to-me town, in much colder temperatures and earlier sunsets.

But. For now. For this moment.

Last year, when I felt very alone one evening while walking to the bank in South Philadelphia, I realized that I had created a life for myself so out of balance that I was now living in a city that scared me at a job that was not fulfilling, and that job was all that I really had. I have never felt more alone than at that moment, and that inspired to change the course of my life to make it better. It was in that moment that I realized that all I had in my life was love for others and for myself, and that love was really all that mattered. It sounds simplistic, but I think it is true. I remember one of the reasons that I became divorced was because we had lost each other in all the stuff of life: the house, the car, the jobs, the junk. I realized that if I was to throw everything we owned onto a pile and burn it, would we have anything left? And the answer was no. Last year, I realized that my life was still not balanced, and I have been working on that balance ever since.  All we have is time, and sometimes we have so much less than we would think.

Lately, I have been thinking about my divorce, and the divorces of others. I am divorced and it seems to mean more to me than it does to others. I can’t really explain this, except that I have spoken to other people who are also divorced and we share the same sense of failure or shame or whatever you want to call it. Some people are able to move through it fast, make a clean break, wash their hands they’re done! But others, like me, even though we may look as if we are over it, take a little bit of time. Almost 4 years to be exact. I feel like, at this moment, I am finally becoming over with the divorce, as if it has passed through me and my time with it is finished.

I got married when I was 23 to a lovely person and we thought we should get married and that we would just work out everything else. And we did, for a short time, until life got in the way. We owned a house together, and once we bought it, we stopped being together. We would physically be in the same house but rarely had substantive conversations. We stopped being a team, we drifted apart, and eventually split apart permanently. Resentment had bred early and festered over a few years. Looking back now, I can see where it was born and how it expressed itself in the eerie quiet that were our discussions.

I remember learning the importance that you come from similar backgrounds during this experience: my ex came from two parents who had been married and divorced three times each, and my parents are still married. Unlike my family, where things get, well I am not going to say worked out but at least tolerated, in his family, divorce was rapid, rip off that BandAid, wash your hands you’re done. One day, after volunteering at the garden in my neighborhood, I came home to find a house almost empty of furniture with divorce papers on the counter. Within weeks, the house was sold and that was that.

Or so I thought. Turns out that I felt a lot of pain and shame and failure about that divorce, even though I know it was best for me and I think, for both of us. Turns out that it is not just like breaking up, although a huge part of it is that pain and that loss and frustration and panic. Turns out that I felt a ton of external pressures looming over me that I had failed my family and my community by not “sticking it out” and by getting divorced. I felt that my family judged me (they didn’t), that some of my friends judged me (but only a few), but more importantly, that my ever-present conscience, or committee in my mind,  disapproved of what I had done. I felt like I had let someone down (I had) and broken a vow (yup, did that one, too). I felt like maybe I would never be good enough to prove that it was the right decision, even though I knew that it was.

I think the problem with divorce is that it is so painful you can be downright terrified to ever risk having it happen again.  It hasn’t been til this week, this transition between Southern California and New Orleans, that I feel like this breath that I have been holding inside my body for three years has been breathed out. For some reason, I held on to that divorce, that pain and that shame and disappointment, for so long. For years! No one held on to it that long, not even the other person involved.

When I get home, I will be part of a small but strong community, and that is a hefty responsibility if you think about it. In Austin, I could get away with being anonymous sometimes, sometimes not wanting to be a part of my community because I was feeling somehow antisocial. In my new town, this will not exactly be possible. Everyone will notice me walking to the post office. Everyone will know I bought milk and cocoa at the store.

Making the choice to live in this magical place, my new-old-summer-now-all-year home is a huge one. It is a commitment to changing the pace of my life, and changing the priorities. I have spent so much of the last 3-4 years (we separated in early 2009) just spinning, confused, and trying to process something that happened that I think just had to have some time pass before it was going to feel better. At some point last week, I realized that only I can stop myself from spinning, can change my perception of myself as rootless and lacking direction. Now I can say, here is where I will be and put down some rootlets into new, rockier, colder soil.

The lurch of divorce is that your whole life was spread out before you and all the people who knew you knew that your life was spread out before you and there was a sense of calm and security when it was good, like, you knew that things were basically going to stay the same and there was someone to support you if things went bad. And you see, when you get divorced, all that flies out the window. All of a sudden you realize that the life you thought you were going to have is either gone or never existed anyway. You realize that the calm and security you felt was inextricably linked to another person who was as flawed as you. You realize that security is gone once that person is also gone. You realize that the person who was supposed to support you really wasn’t able to and now is gone when they were always supposed to stay. So, divorce is disappointing and also earth-shattering and painful and then you have to always say, from now on, that you are divorced. No matter what the reasons or root causes, or how much of a good thing divorce can be after time has passed,  it shakes your world at the core and that shaking is a painful process that can send you spinning off to new schools, new cities, new relationships, and new discoveries about yourself.

I believe I was much too young to get married at the age of 23. I believe now, that if I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, I would give one piece of advice and one only: take a deep breath and slowwww down. Had I done that, I might have saved myself some of the pain that I have felt over the last 3-4 years. But then again, if all things hadn’t happened the exact way they did, then maybe these realizations would never have happened, I wouldn’t be sitting in a living room in New Orleans really late at night, and wouldn’t be about to start living in Maine.

What have I learned on this trip about myself? I have learned that I am feel more experienced, or older than I thought I felt, and that I want a place to call home. I have learned that I really love cooking in my kitchen for friends or for myself. I have learned that I need to slow down this year and really think about everything that I am doing and how it impacts me and others. I have learned to forgive myself for my mistakes and try to move on. I have learned that I need to take deep breaths and brave steps from now on, looking forward and not desperately reviewing the past looking to change something that is already done. I have learned that I am an almost 32 year old woman who is stepping out onto a vast new plain of life with everything I know holding me up against the unknowns that, no doubt, are hurtling toward me during this new phase, and that I will be more careful with myself and with others, will be more true to my word and dedicated to myself and my friends and community.

I learned quite young that I had to depend on myself. There are lots of reasons for this, and they really don’t matter anymore. What I took from that discovery as a young girl was that I had to do everything myself, no matter what. During this trip, I have seen almost everyone that I really truly love in many different places all over our country. I have spent time with some amazing people and I have an incredibly diverse family of friends who make me happy and fulfilled and inspired. They helped me realize that I don’t just have to depend on myself and I don’t have to do everything myself. They have helped me realize that they love me for who I am just as I love them for who they are, unconditionally. They have helped me realize that new friends or old friends are just simply that: friends. People who are in your life. Who stretch out their arms to hug you or give you their ear to listen. People who will give advice or take it as needed. People who see you at your best and at your worst but most often think that you are at your best, and you them. It is a lovely thought to think that life is changing, that new friends will appear in this life, and that they will be this way, too. That no matter what changes life throws at us, there are a few amazing people that we wander into, and who change our lives by making them that much richer. Each of us as individuals fundamentally change those people we connect with, and all of those connections contribute to the richness of this life.  And no matter what bad things are happening, or how fast this life passes before us, the friendships and the people are the ones who are there to share this crazy trip with us. And that means that none of us are alone, but always surrounded by a beautiful, strong but silky web of people who love us.

I have a daydream quite frequently lately. The daydream takes place at dusk, and the sun is setting behind the bare trees. The light is golden near the sun itself but the rest of the air is crisp, winter blue. The blue you see and feel and know that snow or ice is coming. I am sitting at my front window and there are candles on the windowsill, adding a warm orange glow to the blue outside. Sitting in the window, looking down and out at my quiet little street. Sitting and looking, out and above at trees and fog and birds and clouds. Looking down to discover someone waiting for me to see them, standing there with their hands outstretched, saying hello.

The Devil Made Me Do It

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Leonard Cohen was once interviewed on the radio about the meaning of his song, “Chelsea Hotel #2”. In that interview, he was asked who the song was about, and he answered, “Janis Joplin”. Later, he said he had no idea why he had said that, and that “the Devil made me do it”.

A Very Weathered Stop Sign

Sorry for the long absence: I traveled across the country again and now am sitting in oh so sunny Southern California, recovering from a nasty case of sunstroke. Turns out that I no longer have the magical heat tolerance that becomes an inherent part of life in central Texas. Turns out that a year and a bit of life in the Northeast makes you into a delicate, cool weather flower.

Red Flowers on the Highway

I have been mulling over the idea of Risky Business for the last few days: how we handle risk assessment in our lives and what we do about it. How do we know how to manage risk, especially in affairs of the heart and the guiding decisions that effect what we do with our time. I had breakfast the other day with an old friend and we got to talking about the dark spots inside your heart and how navigating them can be oh so difficult. Sometimes you fall in love with a person who seems like your ideal on the Earth only to find out flaws within them that make continuing the relationship a high-risk situation where your heart is most definitely on the line. Making the decision to say: this risk is too high is one that is immeasurably difficult when one is already in love. In other ways, managing risk in your life can lead to beautiful things like friends being supportive of your decisions and strangers coming out of the woodwork to surprise you by helping. New friends can drive around new towns in their truck and tell people what a great person you are, while old friends may completely cut you off because they cannot deal with the darkness of your heart, or your inherent vulnerability.

There are so many planes here that the sky is striped

Sabotage, that pesky action when you see what you should do, what you can do, and instead do the thing that will intentionally bring about a negative result, or at least an ending, is a funny aspect of our emotional life. You may ask yourself: why would anyone assess the risks of a given situation and choose to destroy it on purpose? But yet, people do all the time. I am never sure, in cases of emotional sabotage, whether it is an unfair test or simply a way to guarantee a result in a world where paths ahead are inherently unclear. In my life, I take risks and put my feet upon the path, but for others, the risk of happiness or sadness, of fulfillment or disappointment, is too high and therefore, they create a way to know what will happen by destroying the possibilities. Fear is such a foul emotional state; so difficult to keep at bay, but yet, the opposite of love, the opposite of what I would hope the purpose to life truly is.

I went to one of my favorite people the other day for some Cranial Sacral Therapy and I told him that, lately, I have been very afraid of people and their capacity to hurt one another. He told me, “But Patience! The only thing to fear is fear itself!” And he is right, of course.

A Golden Afternoon

This decision of mine to not return to teaching, to forge ahead and become a jeweler, artist and writer instead of what I have created for myself as a sure path of security and stability in this uncertain world, was a huge risk. I can calculate the obvious risks to situations very well: I consider myself to be self-reliant and analytical in many respects. These skills have contributed to my successes but also to my failures: to the sadnesses and disappointments that have coloured some of the time over the last four years. I know now that I will always be ok, but I also know now that just because I can see the path ahead and have a plan on how to do something, that unless I really think it will lead to  happiness or at least contentment, that I don’t need to take those risks to prove something to myself or others. The place where I consistently fail, or at least mis-judge, are the more secreted risks, the skeletons in the closet. I consistently look for the best in people, and ignore or potentialize their best qualities to a point of blissful ignorance that results in my pain or disappointment.

Feet Crawling Around on Big Rocks

So how do we manage risk in our lives in order to keep growing and changing while managing the fear of failure, the fear of others’ capacities to affect us?

One of the greatest thing about traveling for long distances over quite a bit of time is the moments of moving from place to place when you are forced to, usually, sit in one place or another for quite a bit of time and either read a book, knit a shawl, or write page after page, noting as much that has happened as possible in the gridded pages of a Decomposition Book. During these times, I keep finding that ideas bubble up from deep inside my mind to the surface and are understandable. I find that I am intensely creatively inspired by this time, and actually have the mental space and physical time to write things down, to take notes, sort out ideas and concepts.

Maybe the risk of time off is that you spend a lot of time inside your mind, especially if you are lucky enough to travel from place to place alone. But the opportunity afforded to create artwork, take photographs, write, simply just look around while walking, is a priceless benefit of taking the risk of being true to yourself.

Oh Desert…Vazquez Rocks

I sometimes, a lot of times, take huge risks. My family always jokes that I don’t know the meaning to the word no, and I personally believe that if you want to do something, you just should go out and do it and see what happens. For the most part, the risks that I have taken have been hugely beneficial to making me the person I am today. I believe in risk-taking, following your heart or being true to yourself, or however you want to phrase it: the idea is still the same. Calculate your risk, make your choice, live with the results hoping that they are good. Some people look at me and see a woman in a whirlwind, one that has been spinning now for four years, and is just now slowing down.

Southern California Sky

Some of us, all of us at one point or another, get stuck in gilded prisons of our own making. We let the fear of the risks associated with a decision overwhelm the realities of it. Some people stop in their tracks and don’t make dangerous decisions. Some of us create a test of failure. Some of us abandon, and some of us destroy intentionally. Whatever type of wall we put up serves a certain, individual purpose. However, these walls are dangerous when they keep good people out, or bad people coming back through the same gate. The problem is that at a certain age, these cages are easy to disguise and only appear from time to time, betraying the fears, the insecurities and the stubbornness that comes with a sizeable chunk of time on the planet.

Sunstroke

Lately, I am very confused by many decisions that people make, especially in terms of daily happiness and love. We all make mistakes, we all learn every day, at least I hope we do. We all repeat our mistakes over and over again, until we actually can see them like other people do. We deny our role in the breaking apart of people or life path. We beat ourselves up for mistakes made instead of saying: that mistake happened and now it is time to learn from it and move on. We sometimes choose to surround ourselves with people who can hurt or spread their disappointment to others, and then think that we can fix them with our love, when we know clearly that the only person who can change you is you, yourself.

Desert Canyon

Risk is taking leaps out into the world, knowing all we do and more importantly, all we don’t.

The Passage of Time in a Place

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‘YOUR eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.’
And then She:
‘Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!’
Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
‘Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.’
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.
‘Ah, do not mourn,’ he said,
‘That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell.’

 – Ephemera by W.B. Yeats, 1865-1939

For the last few days, I have been walking the two and a half miles from my friend’s house to the jewelry studio and realizing that the quiet time that walking gives me is what is giving structure to my day and to my thoughts. If I don’t walk a long distance, I feel like my day is incomplete.

The other day I went to one of my favorite coffee shops for lunch with a friend. We had amazing salads served by a super cute waitress who looked like Julianne Moore, and I was completely overwhelmed by the experience, simply because of the sheer amount of people who were so uniquely dressed, so funky, so cool.

The culture of Austin encourages uniqueness of spirit and clothing, and the young people here go all out. This is definitely where I get my own sense of style:  having grown up in a city where I was encouraged to be myself. One of the strengths of this city, I think, is its encouragement of people being themselves and not worrying what others think. This makes it a very young city, which is a good and a bad thing. The Peter Pan quality of Austin, or in other descriptive turns of phrase, the Velvet Coffin Effect, is one of the main reasons why I moved away from the city a year and a half ago. But, it sure is nice to visit and see  amazing people and realize how exciting it is to be in a place where there is so much to do.

That being said, however, I find myself overwhelmed by the intense action of this city. I used to find it very laid back, and on this trip I am actually finding it to be incredibly busy, colorful, loud and not the place that I remember it.  I know that, when I lived here, I had a home and a job and all the things that ground your life, but, I think that you gain a sense of perspective once you leave a place and return to it as a visitor. Returning to Austin with eyes wide open after a year of Philadelphia, New York and Maine, has shown me that while I truly love this city and the fact that it helped me cultivate and create my personality from a girl of eighteen to a woman of thirty, that I was right to have moved away.

Creativity has been the theme of my trip to Austin: I have spent much of my time here working on jewelry at my old studio off South Congress. There are few places in the world that I love more than this studio. The studio is in an old building above an antique shop called Uncommon Objects, and I have been working there for about five years.  I find the space itself inspiring and welcoming, and every time I go inside, my mind starts working on overdrive to make make make and to dream of one day having my own studio that is filled with a million inspiring objects.

Is clutter and collection a part of the creative process?

It definitely seems to be; all my friends, myself included, who are intensely creative are magpies of a sort. We collect, display and learn about many different things. Our houses are filled with tiny trinkets and artworks, seemingly random objects that hold an amazing beauty and inspire the process of making new things. I cannot tell you the joy I get from wandering through junk shops, looking through piles of old photographs, or installing a new treasure into a corner or shelf of my home simply for the joy of looking upon it.

For me, home is a place to decorate as if it were a living museum, dedicated to the beauty of strange objects. Home is an art work, one that is never completed.

About six months ago, after years of massive upheavals, I decided to fundamentally change my life and take this year off to reflect. Making that decision was a scary one, but just now I am beginning to feel that I am on the right course.

My Cross Country Tour has been very disruptive to me and makes me feel, sometimes,  like I am falling off track or something, but I am learning to just go with it and let it flow. Every moment I am thinking and learning about myself and what I want to be doing with my time. I am trying to pay attention to everything that I see, taking note of trees and flowers, rocks and houses, people, cars , animals, stores. I am trying to let go of controlling my thinking so that, especially as I walk, the thoughts that are important bubble up into my conscious brain and realizations are then made.

Today’s post rambles around a bit: I think this is the problem I am having here is that there is so much going on that everything is distracting. But perhaps this leg of the journey, these moments, are opportunities to be in the present and experience what is going on around me. To not over-think, just to be for a little while, watch and listen, create some beautiful objects, remember and think forward to two weeks from now, when I will have a home of my own again.

“Whatever it was, the image that stopped you, the one on which you
came to grief, projecting it over & over on empty walls.

Now to give up the temptations of the projector; to see instead the
web of cracks filtering across the plaster.

To read there the map of the future, the roads radiating from the
initial split, the filaments thrown out from that impasse.

To reread the instructions on your palm; to find there how the
lifeline, broken, keeps its direction.

To read the etched rays of the bullet-hole left years ago in the
glass; to know in every distortion of the light what fracture is.

To put the prism in your pocket, the thin glass lens, the map
of the inner city, the little book with gridded pages.

To pull yourself up by your own roots; to eat the last meal in
your old neighborhood.”

Shooting Script by Adrienne Rich

What Trees Teach Us About Belonging And Life

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Seal Harbor Beach

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

– Herman Hesse – Trees: Reflections and Poems, 1984

 

I miss Maine. If any of you out there reading are my neighbors, say hello to the trees, the air, the water, the rocks and the wind. Walk a while for me. Watch the birds and say good morning to the days. I will be home soon. 

Age & Aging

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The Dream Garden – A Glass Mosaic Mural by Maxfield Parrish & Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1915

I left Maine six days ago to start this journey across the country.  It feels so far away: like I am drifting. Me and my purple suitcase are attached together, detached from all other things. I feel as if I am floating through time and space, tethered only by the places in which I sleep at night, and the writings here and in my paper-and-pen journal.
As I have been traveling these last six days, I have realized a few things. The first is that I need stability and my own place to live. I moved out of my old house in the middle of May, and since then have been staying with friends and family or house sitting. At first, this was an adventure that I was ready for. I sold all my belongings save the 12 boxes of prized possessions, and was thrilled by feeling freer and lighter than I had for years. I still feel free and light but my understanding of what that means has changed from a relative position vis-a-vis possessions to desiring lightness inside my heart and mind. Part of that is the attempt to cultivate a sense of peace within myself that has nothing to do with objects: just being observant of the passing of time and place around me. However, it has come to my attention that I am ready to have keys again. I have no idea where I put my keys as it has been so many months since I have needed to use one. I am ready to settle into my winter house and create a little, temporary home there and reflect on the changing seasons and my new place.

Maxfield Parrish lived in rural Vermont in a beautiful house.

He loved theatre, and often staged beautiful plays at his home that starred his friends and family.

The next thing that I have been thinking about is age and aging. Lately, I have been feeling my age. I looked in the mirror yesterday and started making funny faces at myself, as usual, and noticed these large wrinkles that stretch across my forehead. Now, when I am not making funny faces, those wrinkles are invisible. But how often am I not making funny faces? I noticed the permanent wrinkle between my eyebrows. I noticed the grey hair that is everywhere now, especially since I haven’t colored my hair in four months. I notice the way I feel around younger people. I feel like I am counting my experiences with more importance. I feel like I am more contemplative than before, and that I am less likely to try to foist my opinion on to others. I feel like I have learned a lot but also have just lived through a lot. I feel tired and reflective, as if I am spending many hours of each day reaching and looking back into the parts of my life that have been neglected for a long time, trying to suss out meaning where I have usually neglected an analysis.

Louis Comfort Tiffany created new forms of glasswork for this mural. It is the largest glass mural in the world.

One of the things I keep coming back to is the experiential gulf between people. Someone you know and even love can be so similar in age to you but yet have not shared even a handful of the experiences that really carved out the person that you may be at the present moment. That isn’t to say that you can’t share experiences and learn from each other, but I think a sense of perspective may only be created through multiple experiences, good and bad, that provide you with an understanding of what is important, what is doable, what is a waste of time.

The Dream Garden – Detail

I turn 32 on this birthday, this Christmas Eve. When I think about my birthday this year, my dream is to spend it in my little house with a friend or two. I hope to have candles and lamps burning (I hate overhead light especially in the coziness of winter) and to drink a glass or two of wine. I hope that it snows, and that I can watch the snow falling and later, go walking in it when it is dark and everyone is asleep. I hope to walk down to the harbor and look out at the water, at the few boats that will remain in the water at the end of December, and walk home. I hope to have a cozy blanket on my couch and be able to stay there until Christmas is born the next morning. That is what I wish for, nothing more and nothing less.

I do not feel old, far from it. I feel very young most of the time and people tell me almost constantly that they are surprised that I am almost 32. I blame the hair dye, crazy outfits and desire to smile at everyone and everything. People often tell me that they notice my smile first. I count this as a win. When I say that, however, I realize that now I have been on the planet for 1/3 of the time I will get to be here, if I am very lucky. I plan to not leave till I am about 97, as long as I have all my faculties and can walk around and knit. Now that I know that I have been here for 1/3 of my life, and I look at all the experiences that I have had, the hardships endured, the beautiful things that I have seen and felt and appreciate every day, I feel older than some of the people who are around me.

The reality is that I lived life to the absolute fullest until about a month ago, when I decided to stop. When I say lived life to the fullest, I mean running around like the proverbial chicken with her head cut off, running from this to that. Pressured by a desire to succeed, I did. I succeeded, and I did not understand the meaning of the word no. I did everything I could all the time. And that, in a lot of ways, is a great thing. I know my capabilities and strengths and weaknesses and know now that I will always be ok; I will always be able to take care of myself. But I am tired. Tired, tired, tired. I have to stop rushing; there is no rush. All we have is time, granted it passes very quickly, but it is, really, all that we have. Time to stop and think, time to drink tea and eat soup, time to walk and listen to music, time to create beautiful things and tell people that we love having them around.

The Dream Garden – Detail

Since the age of 28, when this process of realization began, I have seen myself rush headlong into many things. I have seen myself make a decision that was absolutely critical to my happiness, despite the social rejection of that decision. I have seen myself take on everything that was thrown at me. I have seen myself adapt and change even when I shouldn’t have. I have seen myself dedicate my life to others while neglecting myself. I have seen myself run, run, run, desperately afraid that I would miss something, or something would miss me, if I didn’t. Desperately afraid that “it” wouldn’t happen, while not even knowing what “it” was.

The Curtis Center at 6th and Walnut in Philadelphia – Home to The Dream Garden

When I got shingles this summer and was forced to stop, I started thinking about age. I started thinking about all the things that I have done and wished I had done, and about all the things that I thought I would have had at this point. And then I realized, wherever you is, there you are. And all of a sudden, all the madness, the running around, began to slow down. The spinning began to slow and eventually stop. Friends helped me with this, helping me understand that I was still rushing around, still making plans where none needed to be made.

The Dream Garden was designed to inspire wonder at nature and a sense of solitude in the viewer.

This tour of my country is so beautiful because I get to see lots of people who I love, I get to do whatever I want to do in some of my favorite cities, and I get to spend some serious time thinking about this and other subjects. By the time I go home in a few weeks, hopefully I will be ready to stretch and unfurl this new me, the one that will be slow and dedicated instead of rushing around scared. The one who will spend time every morning appreciating instead of stressing. The one who will age gracefully, quietly. The one who will not look too far in the future for plans, but try to stay in the present and notice people, places, and things of beauty. I feel like this trip is my last for a while, because the task at hand is to practice being still for a while and watching the world by walking within it, instead of running, driving, and doing all the time.