Irony

I’ve been meaning to write about J.D. Salinger since I saw notice of his death on the front page of my daily paper a few days ago. Even though I sometimes hate to admit that I’m affected by the same things that others of my generation are, I must admit to being one of the many influenced by Salinger.

Catcher in the Rye, which I discovered at some point in my 13th year, felt like re-learning how to read. I went with this new discovery with an ache in my chest for more, leaving behind my teen novels about girls and horses, even though Salinger's other books did not appeal to me in the same way.

I’d discovered “literature” and went on to read those others whose voices caused a cord in me to vibrate like a tuning fork. Still, there remained something unique about Holden Caufield, his voice, and its affect on me.

“With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice, its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve…. Reading “Catcher” used to be an essential rite of passage….”

I can still remember insisting that my son, who was a reader, read “Catcher,” and reading it aloud to my daughters, none of whom had the same visceral response that I did. I was forever changed.

One thing about the article struck me strangely though – and it was about Salinger’s use of irony. It said he was a master of it. For all my long love-affair with “Catcher” I never thought of it as ironic. I’m sure I didn’t know the meaning of the word when I first read it, and I still find it a little confusing.

Catcher in the Rye, like many of my favorite reads, wasn’t then, and isn’t now, a book that I remember for its content. I remember it for it getting inside of me, sort of in the same way I got inside of Holden Caulfield (and maybe Salinger), and for what it did to me. It did something like lighting a fire – perhaps the fire of my discontent. I’m no longer sure, although I agree with the idea that it had a sympathetic understanding of adolescence, which I’m sure I craved. Caulfield was the first literary character I identified with. He seemed like me instead of like someone I would want to, but never could, be like.

And so I guess I can believe he introduced me to irony, because all of this is as clear as mud. Why do you love someone who gets you all riled up and agitated? Maybe because at the same time, you get calmed down and breathe a sigh of relief.

The rest of the article was about Salinger’s reclusiveness. Is that another irony?

Whatever. I tip my hat to the guy. He spoke to me.

Quote from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 7A, "J.D. Salinger 1919-2010, Literary master ... and mystery," 1-29-10.

Not frozen into position

Donny was wondering last night if he ought to get on the roof and try to get the snow off before the rain that was predicted. I said, “Why? Because the rain makes the snow heavier?” He looked at me like I was dense for just a second and then said, “Can you imagine all that snow turned to ice? It could collapse the roof.” He didn’t get on the roof and I went to bed early again, in my clothes, first to play with Henry because, if we did it once, we have to do it the same way again, and then stayed for being too sweetly heavily groggily comfortable to get back up.

I can’t tell, this morning, what’s going on on the roof, but the hand rail going down the back stairs is more than glazed with ice. It’s got a thick layer. The snow on the ground sparkles and looks compact and heavy. My old guy had a young one out to his house last week chopping icicles. He has a friend for every job. He thinks ahead. That’s not a trait we have much of around here.

I’ve got two things sort of running through my consciousness this morning: an appreciation of my own languor and my appreciation for the old guy and the traits he had that were so like Dad’s. Dad didn’t have as much of the thinking ahead, although he did a little, but he had the friends for every job.

When I had to give my old guy a ride in my car the other day I said I wanted to go out and clean it up a little first and he laughed and told me how he’d gotten a ride in the icicle kid’s car and how the passenger door wouldn’t open and so he had to climb over the driver’s seat and all the pop cans on the floor. That’s the kind of friends my dad had too. Young guys with beat up cars and old farmer guys with know-how and beat up but sturdy equipment – plows and tractors and the like. With the both of them there’s this sort of independence and vulnerability that runs hand-in-hand and I wish I could say what makes it so endearing and what it is exactly that makes you feel it, because, like with Dad, you know it’s not just you. It’s almost like a sort of loyalty that gets birthed from it so that the friendships are many and they’re strong and healthy.

I was talking to one of my own friends the other day and she was saying how disagreement has never made her disloyal – she’s not going to abandon anybody because they disagree. She was saying it with this surprise that anyone would think that way and yet it’s been a kind of theme I’ve seen. If you disagree your loyalty is questioned…which in a way is like a questioning of your character that makes you feel kind of lousy. “Don’t you know me?”

Maybe it’s all running through my mind because I feel as if I’ve been disloyal to the old guy. I have this yen in me to be dedicated to whatever I’m doing and yet there’s always been a feel of tension between what I’d like to do and what I can do…acceptance of my limits.

That’s the hidden joy in going to sleep with my clothes on (something I’ve done twice in a week after not having done it twice in the last ten years). I’m kind of proud of it – as if finally – I’m not frozen into this position of the way I “should” do things.

Stepping outside

I’m getting the best view of the cabin’s lighted tree this morning…better than any I got during the holiday season. I guess that means it’s time to go get it. Give it a rest for another year. I’ve thought of bringing it in a few times but the snow’s been so deep in the yard that I just plain didn’t want to find my high boots or get my ankles wet.

But what’s getting me about it is how good the tree looks. Why? And why does that small light over the kitchen sink illuminate the yard one morning and not another? They’re not only questions of the way I see. Today, you wouldn’t know the light over the kitchen sink is on. It’s a hazy morning with a touch of pink in the sky and the yard is uniformly quiet, devoid of light.

The feel of morning is one of resting, as if the day is caught before it begins.

I’ve not been resting much physically, but I guess my mind has been resting in its own way, with a sort of freedom from what, for a while, had become the usual thoughts of a particular time. Now the unusual has arisen. I’m going to leave my elderly gentleman and his fields and begin caring for a family member. It is such a personal and private matter, that writing about it more than this feels unseemly. Let’s just say there’s been a break in the usual and a new direction has arisen. It is a restful change in attention – this chance to devote myself to the needs of someone I love. There’s a quiet stillness to it.

It’s been such a break from “the usual” that I didn’t even realize it was Martin Luther King day on Monday until there wasn’t any mail delivery. I’d been away from the TV and the newspaper. Yesterday, mid-morning, I saw the front-page article about a march that took place in relation to it. I generally am happy about those times when I’m not living by the calendar. They feel more natural; the calendar too often a kind of dictator. But the article made me wish I’d been there. The marching banner said:

“The Fierce Urgency of Now.”

There are all kinds of meanings to that phrase and one must surely be about getting away from trivialities long enough to feel the quiet sense of rightness about your own actions in your own now. One of the women marchers said, “I’m so glad to be here. It’s a part of history – it feels like stepping outside myself. It’s thrilling.”

Wow. What a great way to describe it: “stepping outside myself.” Sometimes the actions or the feelings of a day or hour like that become those of a life fully engaged.

The speaker for the King day events, the civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, said, “Don’t diminish Martin into some glorified social worker. He was a nonviolent revolutionary.”

He also spoke of moving beyond ceremony to sacrament. He said, “Ceremony is putting the ring on her finger at the wedding. Sacrament is ringing her life with love and joy everyday.” Sacrament is an outward manifestation of an inner reality. I know when I feel it. I hope you do too. I hope we all begin to recognize the days when we feel that aligning of the inner and the outer, no matter how it comes. It gives us stillness…even in the midst of revolution.

The article’s title read: "A March, A Message, A Mission. Across the Twin Cities, civic leaders exhort people to everyday action in the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr." Written by John Brewer and Maria Reeve, St. Paul Pioneer Press, pp 1 and 4.

Beans and Rest

I’ve been in a writing slump. Like a batting slump, a writing slump doesn’t mean I’m not writing. It doesn’t even mean that I’m not having moments of being “into it.” Okay, minutes of being into it. Sixty here, sixty there. Then a sort of dullness. Part of it is probably the launch of The Given Self. A lull after that storm it is to get a book out…the kind that’s followed with one of those periods when you feel stagnant and you try to remember it is natural. You’ve got to have a rest in the way fields need to be rested – rested or rotated, or both. All right – enough corn in this field – let’s plant beans this year.

I’ve got my rotation. My beans. A change not only in my writing life but my working life. A new period.

I’ve got the yen for rest too, and I’m going with it.

It was cold in the house last night. Henry bursts into my sunroom and says (as he does frequently), “Umma, where are our cats?” I say, “I don’t know. Do you want to find them?”

Last night the hunt led to my bedroom where we found Simeon on the bed. I told Henry I was cold and got under the covers. I never got back up. We read and played telephone. Then he carried in his whole box of dinosaurs. Then he examined everything on my dresser.

“What’s this Umma?” My glasses are off, so I say, “Bring it over.”

“Those are some rocks you gave me Henry.”

He puts those back. Brings the next items: a rosary, a wallet, a finger puppet.

He examines a tin box of his grandpa’s. Taking things out. Naming them. Putting them back in.

His mom comes to get him about 9:00. I turn out the light and fall right to sleep.

I get up early, still in yesterday’s clothes, and come out to my room where the shades are still drawn against the bitter cold of a week ago. It’s not so cold anymore. I think, ‘Maybe I’m not feeling inspired because I can’t see out.’ I pull the cord and raise the heavy weave on a fog of pre-dawn non-light; the air full of the change of snow meeting warm air.

Living and Dying

Oh, man. Human beings are so heartbreaking. So dear. So capable of taking all stupid “head” thoughts from your mind and plunging you like an anvil into a bucket, sort of a drop-kick without you knowing what hit you. You just get so touched by the way people want to live, especially when they’re facing the end of life, whether certain or probable. Whether it’s in Haiti or closer to Home, it is personally wrenching. You want each one to have a peaceful end…and middle…and beginning.

It feels more personal closer to home, but when you are wondering about end-of-life issues and a tragedy on the scale of that taking place in Haiti is going on at the same time, you can’t help but feel a connection. It almost makes you feel as if all the things you deal with in a safe and sane environment – all the decisions and planning for end of life –it almost makes them seem a little senseless. Death comes when it comes, and in the way it comes, with few of us having any choice in the matter…by which I mean that the way it goes when you’ve planned for it, no matter how carefully, isn’t usually the way it ends up.

The other night I had to go out for an appointment in the evening, which is fairly rare for me. The roads had been bad a few days before but it had warmed up a little and the snow had been cleared. I drove to my appointment without incident. On the way home, going over a bridge, I hit a patch of black ice. My car floated out of one lane and into the next. There was no feeling of swerving, just a smooth, and totally uncontrollable drift. It happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to panic. I didn’t at least, jerk the wheel or do any of those things you can do to make it worse. Luckily, it happened at a time of day when the traffic wasn’t thick. The person behind me in the next lane honked, kept her/his distance, and in a moment I was able to return to my lane…heart pounding…but otherwise unscathed.

Later, I got to noticing how people talked – how “the city” should keep the roads clear. I started thinking about how we get to expect that everything that inconveniences us; that every danger; that every freak of nature; can somehow be controlled by good planning and implementation of sound measures.

And then something happens that is unexpected. Katrina happens. Haiti happens.

I’d been wondering if you can transition into readiness for death while you’re still hopeful for life, and seeing the difference in that period of “fighting” and the one that comes of acceptance – whether the acceptance is because of a diagnosis; because something in you makes you too tired for the struggle; because there’s no hope of help coming; or because a greater peace has been bestowed. But the general thing about acceptance is that it’s about something that’s bigger than you…bigger than your will or your determination or your resources.

It all swirls around with the poignancy of loving people individually and collectively, as they live and as they die. Sometimes the focus is on how you die. Sometimes that focus brings attention to how you live. Sometimes it brings basic human dignity to the forefront – for the living and the dying – .

What I didn't know I was missing

How does a self-described contemplative end up becoming a blogger and connecting through Face Book?

Myth busting came to mind as soon as I asked myself that question. I’m doing all kinds of things lately that I never thought I’d do…busting, you might say, my own myths. Somewhere along the line I realized that I can try things and then quit if they’re not working, so that’s part of it. I know I’m not making a life-time commitment. That helps with a lot that falls into the category of trying new things.

But the main reason I find myself here is that it’s a medium of the written word. I’ve always known I wouldn’t be a writer if it was a noisy medium. I get worn out by noise. Back when I was first feeling called to solitude, I remember turning off my printer. It sat right next to my computer and I’d never even realized how much noise it made until I turned it off. As the mood of solitude took me over, I found myself walking quietly, and every time I’d put on “real” shoes that made noise it felt tremendously weird. I quit using the automatic ice machine on the refrigerator, and I’d stop the microwave, when warming my coffee, a few seconds before the dinger went off. All those things, that started then – seven years ago now – are still part of my routine, although I do run a heater. I may have mentioned it once or twice. Besides providing heat, it sometimes is useful as white-noise that silences other noises going on in the house…which can feel, to a lover of quiet, like people hovering just outside your door even when that’s not the case.

The other day my son came by to drop something off and then called me to ask where I was. I said, “I was right here – in my room.”

“Didn’t you hear the dog bark?” he asked.

“The dog,” I said, “barks a lot.”

Writing is a medium that lets you begin to ignore the dog barking.

But this whole subject reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to share. It’s about not knowing what you’re missing.

When my life turned in a spiritual direction, it was because I discovered something I didn’t know I was missing. I didn’t think I had the greatest life in the world or that I was the best person on the planet, but I thought I was doing okay. The urges that I’d feel occasionally toward “something more” generally occurred to me as being about wanting the writing life – partially because I loved writing but also because I didn’t want to have the kind of life I got a little suspicious I was heading toward – the one where you work at the same job until retirement because you’ve built up seniority and you’ve got benefits that it makes no sense to give up.

I think of this when I see Henry get so excited by candy or ice cream that he quivers. It’s reminded me that I once felt the same excitement over candy, the thrill of getting to go in what we then called “the milk store” – any little corner store that had penny candy. There was such a store on the corner where my sister and I waited for the city bus to take us home from school, and one day I kicked her good in the knee for not allowing me to go into it. I presume she could see the bus on it’s way to our corner. Despite this memory I still have a wonder about Henry’s love of candy and ice cream. What accounts for it? When you feed a kid healthy things, you can think you’re instilling a love of strawberries that will surmount all desire for chocolate, but this isn’t the case.

A short time ago Henry didn’t have any idea what candy or ice cream was. He couldn’t miss it, because he didn’t know it existed!

That’s how I feel about my movement to spirituality, and the thing I didn’t know I was missing was inside of me, was a feeling of connection, soulfulness, and ease of a certain sort. It didn’t have to do, for me, with life getting any easier, but it had to do with me getting easier with myself. I hadn’t known how uptight I was, how bottled up. You’d think you’d know, but that’s what I’m saying – until spirituality arrives like a release valve, you don’t know that your cork was ready to blow, that you hadn’t taken a deep breath in 20 years, that you were living, at best, a half a life.

This doesn’t really have much of anything to do with blogging or social networking except that, at least for me, there’s a beauty about being able to sit in my quiet room and communicate, and even communicate a few things that I feel need expression.

I can’t begin to tell you how many e-mails have touched my heart and how many real and true friendships, no matter how pathetic it might sound to an older or more jaded ear, have developed because of them.

Face Book is beginning to connect me to a few people I haven’t even had e-mail contact with, and that feels a little weird. I know it’s what the networking is all about – one friend connects you with another who is interested in your work or your general topics – and there it is: an expanded network, a larger connection. I’m not used to it yet and it feels in some ways as impersonal as e-mailing felt when I first took it up. I remember going through a period, during the on-set of my orientation to solitude, when I just didn’t want to use it anymore. Plain old letter writing would suffice if I needed to communicate. I actually sent and received a few handwritten letters in envelopes and it was very lovely. Just seeing a person’s handwriting felt personal.

And now, on Face Book, it’s the pictures. Some people I’ve written to for a long while, but never seen, suddenly become a little more personal and alive for sharing their faces.

I’m not ruling out that I might, someday, want to turn it all off once again. But as long as I continue to find things I didn’t know I was missing, it works for me.

I don't make New Year's resolutions but...

Photo used under Creative Commons from Noel Zia Lee.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I start a new journal pretty close to January 1 each year. It’s perfect, absolutely perfect to be starting a new journal today. Man. How rarely the internal and external clock match – but mine seems to today.

Work wasn’t bad this morning. Took the old guy to church and then on a long drive to find a place open for breakfast. He had me looking for a stop sign on Hwy 52, which will clue you in to why it was a long drive. In the end, the frustrated moments passed like the truck stop we were trying to find, and in the middle of a work day I got to go to church and hear surprising words attributed to the Pope about the purification of memory. I may have to look that up on the internet as my memory is so bad, but it was about not just remembering, but seeing truly, being truthful, and then letting the past be the past. The exit hymn was “Let Peace Begin With Me.”

Then I get home, the house is empty, and there’s a great editorial by Ellen Goodman, who is retiring.

The transition from one time of life to another is almost all that has filled my life the last month. It’s been a welcome break from dwelling on the daily details and it culminated with last night’s New Year’s Eve celebration where it was clear that the next generation has taken over and that family as it was is a thing of the past.

This realization came with an interesting set of emotions. I was with my husband’s family so I wondered what it felt like to him. We didn’t talk about it and I don’t know that we will. In fact, on the way home, neither of us said a word. I sensed that we were feeling similarly and I might find out; might not; depending on the mood we’re both in when we see each other next. The nicest thing was that, at least to me, coming home with him felt like coming home, like being home to each other.

Having just spent time with my “senior citizen” client, I was impressed by Goodman’s description of senior citizen as a “single demographic name tag that includes those who fought in World War II and those were born in World War II.” (By that description I don’t fit yet, and that’s okay by me.)

But what I really liked was this:

“The phrase that kept running through my head as I considered the next step was: “I’m letting myself go.” Yes I can imagine the response if a tweet came across the screen announcing, “Ellen Goodman has let herself go.” I can see the illustration: out of shape, lazy, slovenly, the very worst things you can whisper about a woman of a certain age.

But I love the idea of reclaiming that phrase. After all, where will you go when you let yourself go? To let this question fill the free space between deadlines in my life has been quite liberating. It suggests the freedom that can fuel this journey.”

Then she describes having begun her column when her daughter was 7 and ending when her grandson turns 7, writing about Gerald Ford and Barack Obama, going from a typwritter to a MacBook, having written through sending her daughter off to college and saying farewell to her mother. In other words, sharing her life as she went about her job. I did that in a different way this morning, and it is fine for now, but I’d like doing it better in writing. As Goodman says, “It has been a great gift to make a living trying to make sense out of the world around me. That is as much a disposition as an occupation.”

I think “trying to make sense out of the world around me” – as well as the world inside of me, my inner space – is my disposition. I don’t know why this has seemed a tricky disposition to have in the spiritual area. As my The Given Self comes out and readers of A Course of Love begin to seek me out a little more, I still wonder about this and my ability to blend what can seem like two different worlds. I still wonder how many people are ready to talk about it all with the same vigor and even reverence, and if, while that’s what I mean to do, I do it.

Last night, strangely enough, made me feel more ready to go for this new life. I’ve been calling this the "second half of my life" for the better part of this year. In fact, The Given Self, begun a year-and-a-half ago, held the stirrings of these second-half feelings. The transition had begun. Now, maybe, it is in full-swing.

Quotes from Ellen Goodman's last column, "Letting go," as seen in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 1-1-2010, 10A.