The Things That I Didn’t Know

Posted on April 8, 2021 by pacienciapaciencia

“we felt the lonely beauty of the evening, the immense roaring silence of the wind, the tenuousness of our tie to all below. there was a hint of fear, not for our lives, not of a vast unknown which pressed in upon us. a fleeting feeling of disappointment- that after all those dreams and questions this was only a mountain top- gave way to suspicion that maybe there was something more, something beyond the three dimensional form of the moment. if only it could be perceived.”
― Thomas F. Hornbein

On Valentines Day weekend, the sky fell.

I grew up on an island in Maine, and am somewhat used to very intense winter storms that cut the power for days and dump huge amounts of snow. I am not used to seeing this happen in Texas, though, and never really extrapolated out the potential impacts of a huge winter storm on the houses, people, and infrastructure of a state that isn’t prepared for a storm like this in any way. In Maine, everyone has auxiliary heat, usually in the form of a woodstove, pellet stove or Rinnai heater.

I went to HEB on Friday and purchased all the food and drink I thought we would need til the next Thursday, just in case something strange happened. I knew there was a possibility that almost nothing happened: it is quite common to have snow predicted and then either none or a very negligible amount falls, Texans flip out, and it melts by 1pm.

On Friday, I texted with friends and made dinner and waited for the storm to begin to roll in. It began to get colder and colder, and then on Sunday night I watched snow blow all over my property, blowing sideways and swirling all around the house, the windows, and settling into crevices. On Monday, we woke up to a landscape covered with white snow and blue shadows, grey skies and freezing cold temperatures.

Little did we know what was about to happen to our friends and neighbors, locally and statewide. By the end of the day, about half the people we knew had no power, and almost all of us had limited or no water. By the next day, we had no water at all, and remained that way for almost four days.

Here I sit, two weeks later, on a day that is 73 and sunny. I spent part of last week listening to people testify at the State House in Austin and blame each other for all the problems that caused the ice storm. I heard very few solutions, but many people quit, and windmills were made some sort of strange fall-guy, although that was attempted and then laughed out of the room. Everyone knows that Texas runs on oil and gas. It turns out that the fault lies in the natural gas sector, a not-well-known and not-well-regulated section of the Texas economy: the 9th largest in the world.

In other words, the sky fell and no one seems to be willing to set it to rights. In fact, earlier this week, the governor sought to “set Texas free” and remove his own mask mandate and declare that every business in Texas can reopen with full capacity, at the owners’ discretion.

Meanwhile, COVID continues to wend and weave its way through our lives, having claimed 44,656 lives as of this writing, or about 8.6% of the total deaths in the United States. One state, one of 50, representing almost 10% of total deaths.

Texas state government, if we can even really call it that anymore, is problematic at best. Seemingly cut off from the human aspects of governance, Governor Abbott et al demonstrate consistently a lack of care or thoughtfulness to the people of the state. Rather, they demonstrate consistently an intense focus on the liberty and the movement of almighty dollars into the state. I could even say that a laser focus on maximizing profit while minimizing regulation and taxation could be their re-election tagline.

I consider myself a thoughtful person who practices mindfulness meditation several times each day and reminds myself of the truth of the impermanence of our lives. I am at peace with my own mortality, and have been since my near-death illness that occurred when I was 18 years old. I understand that the only constant is change, and that, in truth, nothing is guaranteed in our lives except a very few things, none of which are very exciting.

But.

Despite my mindfulness practice, my understanding of impermanence and my attempts at maintaining equanimity, I held some assumptions that I really thought were truths, until the sky fell two weeks ago. These truths hinge on assumptions about the strength of our infrastructure, the ability of leaders to lead and communicate clearly to their constituents, that people understand the rhythms of the environment around them and can wisely respond to them, and that those same leaders care enough about those who cannot do those things to tell them what to do, or at least that they care about their suffering.

Texas is an odd place, made odder still by current social trends away from government as governance toward government as a space for well-greased palms between officials and corporations. Texas’ economy is booming, but it almost always is, and it almost always ignores the needs of the people whose work drive the strength of its economy. As a model for the rest of the country or the world, I would hope its problems are obvious. Remembering the robber barons of the late 19th century is easy when you realize that the folks most responsible for the ice storm debacle of 2021, the natural gas industry, has been mute and hardly touched by people who would call themselves legislators.

Texas is a beautiful place, and I love its heart and soul. As I walk around my property, I see bluebonnets and Texas Maximilian sunflowers and I see the fierce sun that soon will become so powerful as to feel overwhelming at different parts of the day.

I still don’t know what I don’t know, and I am still shocked at the fact that we will, again, ignore the chinks in the armor of our state, at the request of the corporations who run it. I will hope, however, that we find ways to know more about how to help one another, and build our communities one neighborhood at a time. After all, while the state government was fighting and blaming as many people as they could, communities pulled together and filled in the spaces that should be filled by government. Late-stage capitalism is a wild ride, isn’t it?

The Road Back

The car is heavy with children
tugged back from summer,
swept out of their laughing beach,
swept out while a persistent rumour
tells them nothing ends.
Today we fret and pull
on wheels, ignore our regular loss
of time, count cows and others
while the sun moves over
like an old albatross
we must not count nor kill.
There is no word for time.
Today we will
not think to number another summer
or watch its white bird into the ground
Today, all cars,
all fathers, all mothers, all
children and lovers will
have to forget
about that thing in the sky,
going around
like a persistent rumour
that will get us yet.
― Anne Sexton

Freedom & Forgiveness

Posted on June 15, 2016 by pacienciapaciencia

Veil Nebula

It has been three months, give or take, since I wrote My Story on this blog and went through the experience of processing that event from twenty years ago. Still, it mystifies me that we can hold memories and experiences in our hearts and minds for so long and not be able to see them clearly until through a process of heart-work and attention, can achieve a moment of clarity, seeing ourselves as we truly are. While it feels like a very heavy weight has been lifted from my perception of myself in my life, it is still a great mystery to me: why do we hold secrets from ourselves and others and why are we afraid of vulnerability?

I may never know the answers to those questions, and it may be that part of my journey on the Earth is to explore those ideas with myself and others. I feel a shift happening in my course of work on the Earth; I still feel that teaching is my purpose, but I am wondering if it is time to start teaching in a different way, forum, or circumstance. I am choosing not to worry too much about it and let it all unfold.

Since I started writing here, almost four years ago, so much has changed and so little has stayed the same: many moves, changes of fortune and circumstance, friends, love, and discoveries. Thinking of the person I was when I wrote that first post from Maine, when I had just ridden the park loop bus around Acadia and had decided to stay and live in Maine, I am happy for her, and happy for me. So much processing over so little time coupled with so many beautiful and sometimes heart-wrenching experiences. I think of ice skating, and watching the first snowstorm of my life fall outside my windows whilst watching every episode of Six Feet Under. I think of drying flowers on my porch, en masse, and later drying so many more flowers in the ante-room of my studio at the Tool Barn, both projects related to sharing beauty with other people. I think of the Halloween parade in Northeast Harbor, and Dan’s barn, Lisa’s cabin on Cranberry Island, and Sam’s small paradise on Islesford. I think of the one room schoolhouse on Islesford that I almost taught within, and the many wonderful girls I met this past year. I think of giant fish made out of paper, and sculptures made out of junk, and the woman I taught at Haystack who built her broken back out of brass and copper. I think of all the people that I met, and how much I miss them. I think of all the people I love here in Austin, and how much I missed them.

Life is like a seesaw in so many ways: most of the time we are aiming toward a peaceful level of equilibrium, but life’s many feathers of fortune fall on either side, shifting us slowly (or quickly) up and down. It is a matter of balance, as it is constantly shifting out of balance. Like the seesaw, it’s all about riding along, moving upwards and downwards, watching the trees and bushes blur, smiling at the person across from you, and trying not to bump your butt too hard if the other one jumps off, or if you push too hard and end up thumping against the ground.

Be Honest

Posted on February 10, 2016 by pacienciapaciencia

What a loaded phrase.

What a practice. Can we, any of us, be truly honest with ourselves and with others?

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” – Virginia Woolf

Lately, I have been trying this out: this idea of being myself. I now understand that who we are, or what is important to us, is shifting almost constantly and therefore, our expressions of such self will also shift and change. For most of my young life, I felt like I should portray myself in one way, and hide everything else. I think I learned this from my mother, and from growing up in an immigrant family where success means everything and feelings are swept under the rug, or into the corners of coat closets.

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I have some strange health problems, that probably started when I was sixteen. I inherited a strange genetic immunodeficiency disease, most likely from my father’s side, that is named gammaglobulinemia. It manifests in many ways, mostly in my predilection for infections and constant arthritic-like pain in my hands, wrists, and hips. During my senior year, I had to take a rest cure for almost six months, and spent my days watching movies and eating scrambled eggs, wondering what would happen. During that time, the illness expressed itself in its most intense form to date, but here and there, it pops up, as if to remind me of my own delicate nature. I forget, or shove away, my actual nature almost on a daily basis, as if putting forth a calm and strong and independent persona will chase away the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the sadnesses, the things about myself that I am afraid of.

A few weeks ago, I chose to do something different. I chose to go to a good doctor and to talk to people about how I feel on a daily basis. It is a huge change for me: previous to this, only those closest to me knew about my feelings of being in my body. Very few people know that I experience chronic pain that limits the way my body moves and feels in space. I took a chance recently and spoke about it, and realized, just as a I realized last winter, when I shared my life story with close friends in Maine, that those who care about you don’t hate you when you express weakness, but rather, they see you as more human, more like them. Today I sat in the woodshop and talked about my friends with another friend and talked about how I have an autoimmune illness and that’s why I feel sensitive a lot and have been going to to doctor a lot since the fall. My friend sat there and asked me, “so…your bones hurt all the time?” And I explained it: how my wrists, hands and hips hurt constantly. He told me that it was strange that someone who works with her hands so much has so much pain, and I told him the truth, that activity is one of the only things that helps with it. He said, “well, I suppose you would have given up on it a long time ago if it was the other way around.” I smiled and said, “well, I wouldn’t have been able to give up on it.”

I supposed there are great risks in the opening of the heart. What happens if people lean into you too close and pierce it, sometimes not in an act of malicious vengeance but just peering too close-in? I spoke with a studio-mate the other day about divorce and its long-lasting implications, and about how I feel at peace with it all finally, as if it happened a long time ago, a time I can’t really fully identify with anymore. She told me that her divorce is still taking its toll, ten years later. So we agreed that all of us experience loss, grief, decisions and their implications, in different ways, and no way is wrong or right.

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I feel like being honest and opening my heart, perhaps for the first time, is a great form of risk-taking, but it conversely feels empowering and creates a sense of confidence that I don’t think I have felt before. It’s a feeling as if my old pair of LL Bean shearling boots are on my feet all the time and that my toes are safe and warm inside sheep-y softness. Of course, self-doubt remains. Questions are tossed in my mind that range from: will they like me? What is wrong with me? Why am I so odd?

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I suppose, here, at the age of 35, living in my beautiful little house in Austin, Texas, that I am finally identifying with my special-ness, something that I was afraid of because I grew up in such a way that taught me that expressing my nature was wrong. But now, in baby steps, I am seeing that, what other people have said to me for years, might be true. Maybe I am an okay person.

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Two weeks ago, I was eating a goodbye breakfast at Magnolia with my friend Martha: she was moving to Houston in anticipation of moving to Washington, D.C. One day she will be an ambassador. Anyway, I ran into a friend who I hadn’t seen since I left Austin years ago. This friend and his wife and soon-to-be baby moved into my old house in Hyde Park after it worked out so that I could offer them that little place for the same rent that I had paid. They still live there, and he was very vocal at how thankful they are to have it. His daughter lives there, too. A tight fit in that small house with periwinkle kitchen walls and a veggie garden in the back.

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Carousel

Posted on April 14, 2013 by pacienciapaciencia

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”

– Virginia Woolf

I recognize them by their trucks: the men of the town. Very few women drive trucks, but almost all the men do. Silver F-150s, blue striped GMCs, black and bright green Chevy’s, red construction and demolition Peterbilts. In fact, I live behind a demolition company and walk past their fleet of oversized red trucks every day.

Yesterday, I walked down to the harbor to have lunch and conversation in a truck. It was the blue striped GMC. Its interior was dusty and reflected the country life of its owner: green shotgun shell on the dash, Old Crow Medicine Show music playing from the tape deck, a pack of Marlboros shoved into a cubby hole, an iPhone, a can of Monster, old coats, older boots. The interior was that heavy carpeting of 1980s American cars: the stuff that binds upon itself over time and becomes softer but tangled, stands up from the floors and walls of the truck. As I sat there, I was struck by the memory of my mom’s Oldsmobile station wagon: our childhood car that had the same carpeting all over its interior, and velveteen and vinyl seats.

When we were kids, my brother and I would sit in the trunk of the car because there was a rear-facing seat in there and we could stare out the back window of the wagon and pretend we were driving backwards. I don’t think they make those seats anymore; I have a strong attachment to that memory. Houston, Texas, blue Oldsmobile station wagon, my brother giggling, my mother managing us, moving us across that landscape that was so alien to her. Streets of white asphalt that crunched under wheels and feet, dust, pine trees, humidity, intense heat. Pine needles turned golden as they fell off in the summer and fall, pine cone wars with neighbor kids, swimming, popsicles, Jello eggs.

In high school, I spent much time in a town called Porter, Texas, which was about 45 minutes away from where I lived. Porter was home to my boyfriend’s grandmother, which is also where he lived most of the time. She lived on a few acres surrounded by a hurricane fence in an old, stationary trailer with an ornament of an eagle that hung off the pitched front window. In that kitchen I was served mashed potatoes and fried chicken and Kool-Aid and all kinds of other delicious things over about three years. There was a barn, too, and many, many rose bushes everywhere. She loved roses. There was also a large tree with a swing, a dirt road leading to the trailer, and whole lot of nothing else.

Porter, a town outside of Conroe and near Cut-n-Shoot, was in the piney woods of East Texas, on your way to Huntsville. The trees were tall and skinny, and shady. Despite the heat that seems to pervade all those memories, there was a calm in that shade, and I remember them moving in the wind. When it was very rainy, during the monsoons, sometimes, they would pop: literally explode from over-watering. They seemed to pop at different intervals, as if there were places in the trees naturally designed to expand into a large bubble of water and wood pulp. The smell of East Texas was strong, too: pine, and soil, and heat, and sweat. The sounds of trucks driving along the roads, lawnmowers, tractors, dogs barking, chainsaws. Raccoons lived there, in the woods, as well as copperheads and water moccasins in the rivers and streams. The sun streamed everywhere: I have so many patchworked memories of sitting in a patch of sun, on the dirt, on the ground, stirring it into designs with a stick, watching ants, playing with earthworms, drawing spirals and other shapes in the earth. I still do that, today.

I am experiencing a feeling of returning and it is very disorienting to me, as if I have been spinning on a carousel for a long, long time, and it is finally stopping; as if the blur of pictures that you see whilst riding a hobby horse on a carousel are slowing down and coming into focus. This place, the country of coastal Maine, not my town exactly, but the places around it, remind me so much of those country towns of East Texas. The people are similar, they drive the same trucks, they do the same things with their time. There are fir trees here, not pine, but the smells and sights are so similar. Of course, in East Texas there are no beautiful granite formations or islands or the ocean, but the feel is there. It’s as if I have returned after a very, very long time. And I suppose, in some ways, I have. Thirteen years away from your family makes returning scary and challenging: starting anew, again, for the third time in a few years, living in small towns in a place with such a long, long winter. Exploring options, trying to forge a path.

I was speaking with a friend about his new bathtub the other day, and how, when he took his inaugural soak, he was transported back to the bathtub in his parents’ house, a series of memories about forty years old. He said he remembered how it felt to be in the bath, how the walls in the bathroom looked, and the sensation of holding your breath under the water as long as possible. We all did that, didn’t we?

And yesterday’s lunch in the blue GMC, with its carpeting and velveteen-vinyl seats, transported me back to a childhood outside of Houston that, at many moments, I plain forget. I thought I had forgotten so many sights and smells and sounds and memories of growing up in the almost-country of east Texas, and yesterday all these things flooded back: the train track behind my high school where a friend of mine got drunk and passed out on the tracks and was run over, my best friend’s almost El Camino and racing boys in cars in it while smoking cigarettes and jamming to the Rolling Stones, my boyfriend’s 280ZX and sitting on his driveway in the afternoons after school. Driving to Huntsville to sit in the sunken rose gardens at Sam Houston State University, time spent at a strange lake house in Cold Spring when I was weeks away from graduation from high school. Camping in the woods in Nacogdoches, making forts in the woods with neighborhood kids, reading books on a blanket in the front yard and waving to the elderly lady who drove past me in her Cadillac each day.

My parents left Houston about six months after I graduated, and so I never returned there as an adult to have these memories cemented into my mind. Funny how things come flooding back, as you sit talking about nothing in particular, on a cold spring April day, looking at the water move against the dock, in a 1980s beat up pickup truck.

Houston, 1987

Texas Nights

Posted on September 30, 2012 by pacienciapaciencia

Mesquite Root Chandeliers

It rained all day today, and the night was cool and muggy. Texas fall nights, quiet time, knitting with a dog at my feet…

““The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.
It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.”

from Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Paciencia, Paciencia

Have patience, Patience

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