The Blur...A Disconcerting Miracle

Suddenly, my Andrew Harvey book, with his name authoritatively carved in capital letters across the bottom, turned into “When Harry Met Sally.” Don’t know how that happened. Just looked across the pile on my office coffee table, with its candles and coasters and camera and cashews, remotes and mouse pad and chocolate covered raisins, and there, amidst the twine and tape, (maybe it was the HA) “When Harry Met Sally” suddenly appeared, clear as day, and I thought, What’s that doing there?

Everything has broken down or run out, as if from over-use. My mouse is shot. I pulled the thumbdrive thingy that makes the mouse work without a cord out of its port so that I could plug in the camera, and the insides fell out. Both printers are out of ink. Even the furnace blinked off two times in the past week.

The last few days are a blur of socializing. Now Henry is sick. Rain is predicted and the chance, afterwards, of freezing rain and you might as well say it: just plain ice. Donny is contemplating getting some of the four feet of snow off the roof before the rains come and I’m contemplating getting out to the cabin before the ice.

Mary and I were wanting to get together, to have friend time in that way that normalizes life in these periods when you don’t know what day it is. She’d e-mailed me saying, “I think after the holidays no one is quite themselves.” I replied, “Yikes, is that ever true.”

But neither of us had a quiet house in which to get together. Her husband had the week off of work, and my daughter and grandson the week off of school.

But there was the cabin. So, using the broom handle like a cane, I took myself out there, Mary in the lead with the coffee pot. I hadn’t planned to even attempt it until Donny headed out to feed the birds. Then I said, “Hey, while you’re out there, see if you think I can get to the cabin without slipping, and if you do, turn on the heater, please.”

I’m feeling a little more like myself now but I don’t discount the blur. That there are days on which “When Harry Met Sally” replaces Andrew Harvey, Tuesday feels like Sunday, and normal life is distant, is still a miracle. Disconcerting, but a miracle.

A Christmas Message

Set your compass to what is brilliant in you. Don’t worry about where you’ve been or where you’re going. Just find and follow the brilliance.

Remember the brilliance of the new moon. The brilliance of a star that shines in a clear dark sky. Be clear. It is time. Let yourself shine now with brilliance --. Head in that direction. Follow the star.

Don’t look for the brilliance of a distant guiding light, but follow the brilliance in yourself, the shining part of you.

Walk with brilliance out of the haze.

Snow

I was heading over to my mom's to help her make the meatballs for the annual Christmas spaghetti (she's Italian), when I realized that as long as I had my camera in my bag, I might as well take a few pictures of the snow.

I don't have much to say about it. I just know that for those who don't get this kind of snow it's a bit of a marvel, so I thought I'd share. It's hard to put it in perspective though. Half the world (my friend in Vietnam heard of it), know of the snow collapsing the Metro Dome and as many of the spectacle of the Vikings football players sliding on the ice of Gopher Stadium. All the world knows that Minnesota has had snow.

It's funny to be the focus of attention in this way. Like the photos of the snow, it's the kind of thing where you need to have your visuals stand in contrast. Here's the big fish. Here's the guy's hand holding the big fish. You can't tell a big fish is a big fish unless you take one of those photos like in the movies, where they show the guy who was kidnapped with the current day's date on the newspaper. Okay, that wasn't a photo of him taken last June.

So many things are like that -- comparison providing the defining features.

As Christmas draws near, I imagine what the world would be like without comparison. Would it be less known? More clear? Less harsh. More gentle?

Off the path

When I wrote the poem I posted a week ago, the one that ends on there being no more paths…there were no more paths. That was the reality after all the snow and I was okay with that in my own way. I’m one of those people who get excited about the idea of forging my own path, at least in the sense of going beyond where paths have previously led.

Then I drove by my neighborhood park where there are several paths and trails – a main one that is paved, level, out in the open – and a half dozen or so that zigzag up hills, into ravines, and are narrow enough swaths through the trees that you can get the feel of being alone in the world, and where there hasn’t been a bit of path clearing since the first minor shows.

Suddenly…there out my car window…were paths, and ones that are, at least momentarily, almost manicured. Along the paved path, white walls have arisen on either side – not the lumpy mess of shoveled sidewalks but a clean and compact wall left and right.

I haven’t walked the snow-walled paths yet. I was so surprised when I saw them that I laughed out loud. “Just when I was thinking there are no more paths!” This one was so striking! There it was, the one and only path. The clear path. The clean path. There was really no other choice available, no way without heavy hip boots or snowshoes to get off the beaten path at all.

This still cracks me up because, of course, I wasn’t thinking about metaphorical paths when I started the poem. I was thinking literally of all the paths the snow had obliterated, including the one to my cabin, but especially those at my park.

The malls, I have heard, have pavement heaters, giant things that clear their parking lots so shoppers aren’t inconvenienced, and the maximum number of vehicles can still deliver them to somewhere near the door.

Now I’m perfectly aware that some of the very things that I like to complain about are conveniences that I’m happy to use. Freeways are a great example. When the city streets are still treacherous with parked cars plowed in, plows making second swipes, cars spinning their wheels and gliding through stop signs, pedestrians and children and school buses…the freeways are readied, faster than any other routes, for safe traffic. I’m happy that there are plows. I’m really happy that there are paths through difficult times, however they come.

But I’m also happy with those things that stop it all once in a while – like blizzards – and unplowed paths. And I get thrilled by where writing even the most mediocre poem takes me into the path of my feelings, that thrill at “being alone in the world” that makes me tremble, that “stepping off the path” feeling that makes me feel inspired and curious and happy, and most of all to want more of it. Oh, how I’d like to live in that place! How glad I am that I do now and again.

Longing and Armistice

At this time next week – Christmas morning.

I was looking back yesterday, remembering dissimilar things about the year just passed. How Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize about this time last year, and that it’s been about the same time since they put the street light in that shines it’s bright green and red circles all the way through the woods and into our yard. I wonder what I’ll remember next year about this year.

Maybe I’ll remember the snow.

I spend my time looking out at the cabin. It sounds almost like a joke to not dare walk out there because of frozen shoulder, but it’s the way it is. You don’t realize how much your arms balance and catch you until a time like this and then you become so aware about how all the “parts” of the body work together in mysterious ways.

Donny’s been plowing too much to spend time shoveling a path to the cabin and even with it, I don’t know that I’d make the voyage. It feels like crossing an ocean of snow about now. I asked him if there wasn’t something I could use – something like a push lawnmower that would drop sand ahead of me while I lean on it.

I’m mainly content with looking out at the cabin, but some days I pine for it. My cabin season ended so abruptly I didn’t even clean her out, there’s a few things I wish were here rather than there, and I wish she were all clean and tidy for the next time I get out there.

One of my favorite views of her is through the dining room window where the Christmas tree lights from inside reflect against the outdoor scene. It makes me think of all those songs and movies that croon over being “home for Christmas.” I’m not sure why, but for me, (and it must be true for many as these songs are so popular) the sentiments speak to a longing that’s not necessarily about going back to a childhood home, or returning from one side of the world to another, or even being with family. I’d guess the feelings they arouse are about a yearning for a peaceful place …one in the world but not of it.

In the true story out of WWI (1914), when the soldiers spontaneously called an armistice for Christmas, that longing for home is quelled by a bit of peace and good will in such an extraordinary way. The British soldiers were in trenches filled with water and mud, about 80 yards from the enemy Germans. Here’s one letter from that time:

You need not have pitied us on Christmas day; I have seldom spent a more entertaining one despite the curious conditions. We were in the trenches and the Germans began to make merry on Christmas Eve shouting at us to come out and meet them. They sang songs (very well); our men answered by singingWho were you with last night? and of course, Tipperary (very badly). I was horrified at discovering some of our men had actually gone out imbued more with the idea of seeing the German trenches than anything else; they met halfway and there ensued the giving of cigarettes and receiving of cigars and they arranged (the private soldiers of one army and the private soldiers of the other) a 48 hours armistice. It was all most irregular but the Peninsular and other wars will furnish many such exploits; eventually both sides were induced to their respective trenches but the enemy sang all night and during my watch they played Home Sweet Home and God Save the King at 2.30am. It was rather wonderful: the night was clear, cold and frosty and across to our lines at this unusually miserable hour of need came the sound of such tunes very well played, especially by a man with a cornet who is probably well known. Christmas day was very misty and out came these Germans to wish us “a happy day”; we went out told them we were at war with them and that really they must play the game and pretend to fight; they went back but again attempted to come towards us so we fired over their heads; they fired a shot back to show they understood and the rest of the day passed quietly in this part of the line, but in others a deal of fraternising went on. So there you are; all this talk of hate, all this firing at each other that has raged since the beginning of the war quelled and stayed by the magic of Christmas. Indeed one German said “But you are of the same religion as us and today is the day of peace! It is really a great triumph for the church. It is a great hope for future peace when two great nations hating each other as foes have seldom hated, one side vowing eternal hate and vengeance and setting their venom to music, should on Christmas day and for all that the word implies, lay down their arms, exchange smokes and wish each other happiness.

(from http://www.christmastruce.co.uk/article.html Christmas Truce 1914)

In 2001, Aaron Shepard wrote “The Christmas Truce” for Australia’s “School Magazine” (April). It’s a fictional letter created out of the many actual ones. He ends the letter this way:

“One cannot help imagine what would happen if the spirit shown here were caught by the nations of the world. Of course, disputes must always arise. But what if our leaders were to offer well wishes in place of warnings? Songs in place of slurs? Presents in place of reprisals? Would not all war end at once?
All nations say they want peace. Yet on this Christmas morning, I wonder if we want it quite enough.”

Not here yet?

Is it snow or sky?





And winter isn’t even here yet

This is said in mid-December
after a blizzard
in Minnesota

Things get finished up
and begun
on timetables that do not belong
to seasons not your own

Quick quick slow slow
who is to say
quick or slow
when the snow lies flat around the swing set
and ski jumps the slide and
casts irregular shadows
and lays across the yard some more
with the tree limbs mirrored in it and one star overhead

What is there
that is not yet here
when there are no trails left to walk?

The Blizzards of '91 and 2010

I don’t know what date it is lately until I type it. But I know it’s Saturday, exactly two weeks before Christmas. Mia and I were going to go Christmas shopping today but we got snowed in by the worst blizzard since 1991’s Halloween blizzard. We were talking about it and Mia said that she couldn’t believe we took them out in that.

I said, “Wasn’t it the most fun Halloween ever?”

“Yeah, for us,” she said. “But what about for you?”

If I fretted over it at the time I sure don’t remember it. We weren’t driving. We walked from our house up toward Cherokee Park and there was a feel of such camaraderie from everyone we ran into – as if we are feeling like a bunch of fools and at the same time like hardy mid-westerners.

Today, I haven’t been out. Donny decided to give it a try and got stuck at the end of the driveway going out and coming back both. There’s about three feet of snow outside our door (and everyone else’s) and I think he plowed just about the whole street in whatever little vehicle he has – which has no cab.

Five hours later, I’m so tired from baking that I can hardly make it to my room to sit down, and Donny comes in frozen, saying he’s not sure he’s going to make it downstairs to the shower.

We are at that age where we don’t know our limits until they’re suddenly confronting us. “Okay, can’t take another step.” It sounds dumber when the activity is baking, but nonetheless it’s the fact of the matter.

Like the sky dropping all this snow on us, we don’t know when to quit and it’s not quite as fun as the blizzard of ’91, which was, even though it seems impossible, nearly 20 years ago.

It’s okay though. Mia and Angie helped. It didn’t start out real smooth but the more tired we got and the more things went wrong the more fun it was.

That was really the beauty of the blizzard of ’91 too. It was just plain wrong to get a foot of snow on Halloween. You can get giddy with that kind of thing.

The gift of shared experience

Have been making bread machine bread for a week or so. The first one – Henry said it was the best bread he ever had – then what could I do? He’s also loved decorating and tells me how pretty things look. He’s so excited about Christmas – the tree, the lights, the little fawn that sits on the wine table beside a ceramic tree with a garland of snow. He dances around in his excitement.

I know it’s the season to be jolly, but for some reason that felt like cellular memory as it began, I dug out the writing I did during my dad’s illness and death. I say cellular memory because it was as if my body just did it without me thinking about it. And then some of the first scenes, being as I was re-reading the tales of October and November days in October and November, were eerily the same. Like the nice fall giving way quickly to winter and a bright sunny day that followed when the trees had gone bare from the wind and all the leaves were piled against the curbs and rustled and stirred and followed my car along as I drove.

We had a notebook going during Dad’s final days – one of those where people can sign in like a guest book and write notes. Initially I wanted to record the gifts people brought, thinking I’d do thank you notes, which I never did. Later it became a way to let the other shifts know what had gone on during the day. I typed it up after Dad died because it was so amazing to me – all the people who had visited and the short comments they left. Some of it boring as peas but other parts sweet, and as a whole it became one of those treasures that says more than the individual parts.

It’s like when I was a kid and we’d get Christmas cards by the dozens and tape them over the archway that separated the living room from the hallway. My Uncle Jack and Aunt June always sent one that listed each family member: Jack, June, Judy, Jeff, Jill, Joy, JoEllen, Jan, and Jackie. I memorized that list of names as if it was a ditty. It never left me. My mom, who sees the cousins rarely, will ask, “Which one is that?” and I never hesitate.

There’s things like that in the notebook.

Dad died in 2007 and in 2008 I put the notebook and my journal entries of the same period together. I don’t know if I ever had a real purpose in mind for it. It was likely just part of processing my grief. But I got that call back to it a month or so ago and started thinking of giving it to family for Christmas, and then maybe sharing it as a book. But I began to question who, other than family (if even them) would want to read it.

Anne Lamott wanted to write a funny book about cancer because there wasn’t one when she needed it. You wouldn’t think of a thing like that unless you needed it. I wrote about my life with my dad as it happened because I needed to.

William Stafford has said that his writing style is his plight as a human being. That’s the way it is for some of us.

I don’t know why you’d want to read anything on death and dying before it shows up in your life, or how you could read anything during the experience, which only leaves “after.” Here it is for me, almost four years later, and I don’t know why I’m doing it and keep wanting to put it away, and can’t quite. I can tell it affects my mood and I don’t honestly need a darn thing extra to affect my mood and yet it’s kind of like Henry and the bread. Once you get started you can’t stop.

But again it struck me today, as it did when I was writing The Given Self, that the full immersion into the experience of death and dying (no matter that it comes with meds and bedpans and nebulizers and family fights) is about the closest thing to spiritual experience that I’ve ever come across. It came of thinking of sharing and deciding there’s no way anyone could read something like this compilation while in the midst of the experience.

Hospice workers give you things like short verses of poems, scripture, or prayer. You might be able to read that much, focus that long. There’s no comfort that can be had (at least not for long) from anything that comes apart from the experience. A smile from your loved one is comfort. A moment of peace in your day is comfort. Meds coming on time is comfort. It all feels like emotional overload but there’s so much more going on, such a rich depth of feeling, such profound change.

So it’s after – after – when you want to know what hit you. It’s after, when you feel the let down from that immersion, that fully focused presence of experience. It’s afterwards that you begin the decompression and maybe want some kind of company.

I couldn’t read as I received A Course of Love. Couldn’t hardly read anything else when I first discovered A Course in Miracles either. It’s that total immersion that can let you know that so much more is going on. And in the same way as after a death – that’s when I, at least, needed the companionship, the people with a similar experience to talk it over with, or just some feeling of solidarity of the type that says, “This is what it’s like.”

I don’t know what I’d do without friends and authors and correspondence from people who share their experience. Sharing our experience can be a gift…and I guess you have to trust that somewhere within yourself you’ll know when the time is right to give it.

Freezing, frozen, thawing

Here's a photo of me with my short hair, taken with my artist friend Dan. I was wincing a bit from putting my arm around him!

It’s Tuesday morning and things are back to “normal.” Thanksgiving “week” with its days off and school closures and feasting is over. Angie, who’s in school Tuesday through Saturday is off for her day, Henry for his. I’m beginning mine without having to go out into the cold – a big deal because it pretty much rained all day yesterday before we got a little slow and I’m being really careful about slipping these days.

My shoulder, they say, is freezing.

I hate to claim it and say “I have frozen shoulder” but frozen shoulder is the name of the condition that’s making me extremely cautious about slipping these days. I slipped a week ago Sunday and the pain, as I tried to catch myself, was unbelievable and the spasms went on and on.

I’ve had one physical therapy appointment and will have another today. I was thrilled with the first one, basically because I was told, in a descriptive way, what’s going on.

I’d been to an ortho guy for a consult and an x-ray, and then, two months later for an MRI. I’d seen my internist twice, ounce to have him pronounce me as having fibromyalgia after looking at me for five minutes and touching a few tender spots, and the second time for a physical because I didn’t want to accept that “I have” fibromyalgia” either, and in none of those appointments did I ever hear a single description of frozen shoulder.

Now, what I liked about the description that I got from my physical therapist was this sort of relief I felt right away. I’d already cut my hair because I was finding it too hard to braid and, if you’ve ever had long hair, you know you can’t have it flying loose all the time. I’d already gone out and bought a few button up and a few zip up tops because I couldn’t get things on and off my head without causing myself anticipatory anxiety even before the actual pain came.

I was a little proud of myself for these proactive steps. I’ve had long hair for nearly 30 years and to cut it so that I’d be more comfortable was the kind of taking care of myself action I haven’t always done. I bought the tops after standing in front of a display of gloves and hats I was thinking of buying for Henry and deciding his mom could buy them and I’d get myself something that didn’t make dressing torture.

But it wasn’t until I saw the physical therapist that I quit thinking of myself as a “big baby.” That’s when I found that this freezing business (the first of three stages that also include frozen and thawing) really is extremely painful and that it can hurt to cut your own meat. You can see where the “big baby” thing came from when you start feeling like you can’t dress yourself or eat your dinner without assistance.

I’d had a friend tell me a little about his own experience with this shoulder problem but he didn’t tell me in advance of my being diagnosed how painful it was going to be. Afterwards he said it was one of the most painful things he’d ever experienced, and that too was a relief.

It’s the relief, I suppose, that people get from support groups.

It’s one way of looking at what I attempted to offer in The Given Self, a type of support group for spiritual people who haven’t had too many confide in them about the confusion that enormous inner changes can bring.

I find myself looking for the description everywhere lately. I don’t want the step-by-step or the instruction or the “after you’ve moved through it” knowledge. I want the inside scoop of what it’s like to be “in it.”

I don’t often write up to that challenge but it’s the writing I like to do when my shoulder isn’t causing even typing to be difficult.

I always look at physical stuff in broader ways and the physical therapist helped there too. As usual, the condition comes from the body trying to protect itself. My upper back muscles apparently weren’t strong enough so my body started creating scar tissue to bind things together (or some such thing). In a less physical sense I imagine things like “shouldering” too much worry, and I imagine it as a call to quit – to quit with the worrying and with the tendency to overdo. It becomes an example of the kindness of the universe, everything working together to take you where you need to be, even if you’d rather it didn’t while you’re in it.

In thanks for art

A news story motivated me last week.

It was another story from that world my family and I entered twelve years ago as we worked our coffee shop on University Avenue. The avenue is aptly named the “central corridor” between St. Paul and Minneapolis and in lieu of the “central corridor light rail” that is about to begin construction, a building that housed some of our favorite artists from that five-year sojourn, has been sold. The new owners, with an eye toward the future, plan to develop market-rate apartments. The artists, who considered themselves part of a casual co-op, and part of a community that has dotted the former industrial warehouses with studios, particularly near the area of University and Raymond, are being displaced.

Dan Mackerman, who has been housed there twenty years and who was one of our most popular regulars, told the reporter that he remembered when there used to be two coffee shops (among other businesses). I felt sure that memory referred in part to us, and took it personally. It made me want to say, “Thanks, Dan, for remembering us,” and to feel this catch in my chest, the kind you feel when a casual acquaintance like him is about to disappear after years of enjoying that feeling that you knew where he was – no matter that you never stopped by to visit or planned to.

My cousin Nina visited from Louisiana one year while we were still in business. Mia and I were working the shop. Angie had moved into an apartment over an art gallery a half block up on Raymond and worked there as a part-time receptionist while going to school. My cousin thought we were all “living the life,” that we were sort of bohemian I suppose. We took her to visit the building now condemned to this new fate – the building all the locals call the C and E building, and to see Dan. I was afraid we might be a bother but he was as gracious a host as someone who might have invited us into his living room. He was in his element, just being himself.

Dan did sculpting too and he’d come into the coffee shop a real mess – as dirty as a construction worker at times. Finally I asked him why and he pulled out the Harry Potter head he was carrying from under his arm. He was sculpting a show for a Dayton’s (or Macy’s…or Marshall Field’s) Christmas display – the kind that attract crowds who walk through this enchantment on their way to visiting Santa Claus.

I used to pine over the idea of being like those “small artists” I came to know from the C and E building. They were simply doing what they loved to do and making a small living from it (the reason I called them “small artists”).

There’s something you have, an aura you have about you when you’re doing what you love to do and you even have a little of it when you’ve taken the risk of it and it hasn’t turned out as you’d hoped. (As Cher says, “Mistakes are vastly underrated.”) When you take the risk of expressing yourself, in whatever way moves you, you give yourself a chance to be your own person at the same time that you can find yourself blending into a community of some like folks, so that you are – (even us in our coffee shop) supporting an alternative way of life.

There was, being surrounded by artists, an element of something like surprise. I’ve not been in too many places like it – because it wasn’t just the artists who were unique and surprising but most everyone who came in the door, as if the area bred folks who weren’t so on a schedule that they still had time for the kind of conversation that makes for interesting exchanges and the feeling of a common bond.

Being at the shop was like living in the world in a way I’d never experienced when I was taken care of by a boss and a payroll and was kept, quite literally, sequestered away from the environmental/political/social effects you feel when you’re making your own way.

There are those who say creativity on demand is as much of a grind as anything else, and I suppose they’re right, but it’s a different grind, and that’s what shows. You see it in the eyes. It’s kind of a look that says, “I’d rather be who I am and be poor than live any other way. You can’t do anything to me worse than I’d do to myself by not living my life this way.”

The article included a notice that the artists were having their last open house. I went to see Dan. He’s superbly talented. (www.danmackerman.com) He was so funny. He talked in this ordinary way (when we were conversing) of such profound things, and then ended on the note that the key to being an artist is low overhead.

I talked with Bob Donsker, who is doing a photographic collection of abandoned buildings in the Twin Cities and thinking of a coffee table book. There’s such a story there – full of pathos and history and insight.

I told Dean Lucker, who recognized me (and didn’t…Where do I know you from?) that I thought of him and them as “small artists.” He said, “Then you got it long before I did, but that’s what we are.” He started in his direction, (mechanical art) he said, by taking apart toys as a child – none of them his own. I love hearing that kind of thing.

I guess the main thing certain people, and even areas of town can give you, (until they get sold-out anyway) is a glimpse of another way. I know I shouldn’t romanticize it…like the people did who thought we were “living the life” when we owned the shop, but I still do, and there’s a reason for it. Someone has to keep up the lost art of alternative and artful living.

People who give off that aura of simply being who they are, have figured out a few secrets. Like “low overhead” some of them are practical. But those aren’t the ones that help you keep your dreams and not feel undone by your difficulties. It’s just them; just the people; the individuals. They’re the ones who remind you of what is possible and who keep a certain style of living from ceasing to be.

On this day after Thanksgiving, I’m thankful to all artists everywhere, and especially to these local ones.

A Western Way

John’s gospel is the most Western. John had Greek and Roman influences and the others Middle Eastern. In John’s Gospel – Jesus is always in charge. He doesn’t show weaknesses. In the others, a more human side is shown.

It’s like this reminder – there is a Western way.

There is a lot of evidence that the Western way is passing. What is the way coming? A friend recently quoted a new book (“Frequency”) as saying the information age is passing and the intuition age is here. A Course of Love says it’s time for the way of the heart (which is also an intuitive knowing). I’ve seen time and again that the clarity is never in the details. When I go there, it’s because I think I can manage them, and that if I don’t, they’ll manage me.

Yet the more I get away from managing and being in charge, the more I find myself drifting into the new.

And the more I (and we) drift into the new, the more our human side is revealed.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Snow...and the trees drop their arms

Had a peculiar day yesterday with the nice fall giving way to the first big snow, one so heavy that it downed power lines and we were without electricity for most of the day. It’s amazing how one such day shows you how addicted you are to the usual. I kept turning on lights, putting my coffee in the microwave, even bagels in the toaster. I had Henry all day and he had to have asked at least a dozen times for me to turn on the TV.

So it was a day of full engagement. I knew the day with Henry was coming…just not the shape of it. We played dinosaurs and cleaned out some cabinets – the ones under the china closet. They had enough interesting stuff in them that he enjoyed that for a while. I’d forgotten what was in there and little of it was precious. I let him un-box a Japanese tea set with a bunch of little cups, and play with those little appetizer/butter knives that come in a boxed set with Christmas trees for handles (all the while wondering where these things came from and what to do with them). I did a few reduction things like take the four crystal glasses that were still good out of a big box and throw away the box and the chipped glasses, sniffed sachet that had been in there forever and threw it away, and I found candles for the latter part of the day.

Donny was out shoveling and plowing and helping neighbors who had no heat. I envy him his usefulness sometimes. He’s such a “can do” guy.

We were in the middle of making chicken and dumplings with the cabin’s lantern sitting on the stove when the power came back on.

Around me today – outside the cabin – there are bangs and thumps, thwacks and great whooshes, as the heavy snow drops and branches shift. It comes down on the cabin’s roof like the foot steps of bears, and snow showers pass by the windows. The clumps that hit the ground make plopping noises, and holes in the surrounding snow.

Power lines and tree limbs come down with nothing more than the weight of little crystals of snow all piled on at one time.

I feel solidarity with my trees as they go through this enforced dropping of their arms and the release of weight that is too heavy a burden for them to carry.

Crossword puzzles and the coming of light

I do the crossword puzzle most mornings. This morning I got stumped on the name of the “Star Trek” doctor. All I could think of was “Bones.” An hour later I revisited the question and “McCoy” flashed right into my brain. This happens all the time. It’s why doing the crossword puzzle delights me. So many mornings I start out thinking, ‘Oh this is a hard one.’ I can’t get it started. But almost invariably, if I keep going back to it, the old light bulb comes on over my head, one answer leads to the next, and at some point while doing it this way – basically five minutes at a time, it gets completed.

I’m really fascinated with the creative process and how I see it mirroring spiritual practice. This morning, the crossword strikes me as similar too. If you don’t try to figure it out, if you wait, if you keep going back…the light comes on.

A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love

A Tale of Four Books and a Few Friends

I missed a visit from a Course of Love reader who was visiting Minnesota just recently. I did so for a lot of reasons. One of them is that I’ve been in one of my hermit moods and, when I’m in a hermit mood, I’m not as diligent as usual about checking my e-mail.

Sometimes the hermit mood comes on in a way that is simply a call to honor my nature – as if I’m in need of my time for my very soul. At other times, it is caused by an urge to create. There are too, such times that come for me feeling low, or stressed. But really, in the end, they’re all kind of the same thing.

This man I missed visiting with sounded very interesting, and wrote me after getting back home to Maine, that he wanted to ask me about what it was like to hear God the way I had. He also told me about the way in which he heard God in his own life.

I wrote him back, and as part of my reply said that he might want to watch this video I’d just put up.

(Click on "up" to view.)

This isn’t one of my cabin videos. For a long while now I’ve been thinking about doing something to reach out to ACIM readership. Every time I put action with that thought though, what I created did not turn out as I wanted it to. I would sound as if I was trying to be convincing about the value of A Course of Love. That kind of thing (someone trying to convince me of the merits of their book or course) never is effective for me, so I kept abandoning whatever work I did.

Then the other day I had this idea.

This is the thing…for me. The “God thing” feels like an idea, or an intuition, or an inspiration. Like a different way of knowing. So I had this idea of doing this video as a “Tale of four books and a few friends,” and I starting running around the house with my camera photographing my stacks of books and thinking of my dearest friends, writers and otherwise.

I had barely completed the video when I decided I had to have this signed edition of a William Stafford book that I became certain I needed as I photographed Stafford’s powerful old face on the cover of “Early Morning” (one of my favorite books, written, actually, by William’s son Kim). The blurb about the autographed book said that he’d signed it to “an Irish Lass,” which is something I could qualify as.

Why this kind of thing is such a big thrill to me…who knows…but I got the book (published in 1990, Stafford is dead now), yesterday, and was enamored by holding in my hands something this hero of mine had once held. His signature is the scratchy signature of a man nearing the end of life, and I found it just so dear.

It’s a book on writing and, I swear, the way he writes about the dawning of the idea, and the thread you must follow, and the way a poem (he’s a poet) makes you FEEL, as if it touches you and calls for a response even if you don’t understand and particularly for that reason at times…it all was more descriptive of what I felt “hearing the Course” and what I’d suggest is, for me, like “hearing God” than anything I’ve written myself.

And strangely enough, it made me feel more pleased with my little video, and to want to share it with you, and to invite you to let me know if it is as welcoming (or not) as I hoped it would be.

It’s one of those things that isn’t exactly about anything in a direct way, and because of that, I hope it may speak with the kind of voice from which a person might hear whatever it is that might be awaited by her or his heart.

The title is A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love: A Tale of Four Books and a Few Friends.

Here's the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wATWoztD7vw

Underdog...and not

The ground is getting hard beneath my feet, baseball season is over for the Twins, and the season is nearly over for the year.

I have to get one last baseball idea into the mix.

I’ve been meaning, ever since the Twins lost so handily to the Yankees (again), to write about it, and how the newspaper was full of it…but not in the same way it was when the Twins lost to the Yankees (or simply lost) in post-season play in years past.

In years past, the Twins have always been the underdog. The Twins had one of the lowest budgets in baseball…and they had to play in the worst stadium in the majors…the awful Metrodome.

This year that changed. The new outdoor stadium, Target Field opened and came with high expectations. Joe Mauer got the largest contract anyone on the team ever got. Jim Thome was added as a power hitter. It was a great season and we won the division, as we have for several years. And then…went down without a fight.

The guys had no spit, no fire. They seemed to have no drive at the end. It was almost as if they gave up before they played. They were, after all, playing the unbeatable Yankees.

Even for all that being true, I was surprised by what I read. And I was surprised by Tom Powers, a regular sports columnist, that he mentioned A. J. Perzinski. A.J. was replaced by Joe Mauer and now plays for the White Sox. A.J. is a character. I always liked him, but he’s such a character that he’s about the only guy who comes to the plate in Minnesota and gets booed. He gets booed because he’s not always nice. We’ve got a thing in Minnesota called “Minnesota nice.” And the Twins organization has had a thing, for a long time, of getting rid of the characters. Oh, we’ve had a few bigger than life guys, but always in that “nice” way.

But the main thing that surprised me, because it was true and I hadn’t really seen it, was that we’re not the underdogs anymore. The team’s not underpaid and under-housed. The fans aren’t holding low expectations.

I’m finally writing about it because when I was watching the Rangers beat the Yankees one of the commentators said, “You can’t hope a pitch; you’ve got to convict a pitch.”

This all spoke to me, the way baseball often does, creating some kind of a metaphor for my life.

Oh, how I identified with the underdog Twins. Them and me. That’s what we were: the underdogs.

Things change. Times change. And the thing about me is that I’m slow. I’m slow to see the changes that actually happen as they happen. Something has to spark me to notice. Maybe this is true for all of us. Maybe it’s the way it happens. You have some inner change take place and then a month or year later, something calls your attention in that direction and you say, “Gosh, I’m not like that anymore. When did that happen?”

Somewhere in the last year, or maybe the last month – I don’t really know – I quit being the underdog. I quit on the inside anyway. My actions haven’t quite caught up yet. I’m still doing the Minnesota nice thing, and I’m still hoping and not playing with conviction. But now that I’ve seen it, I’m ready for my actions to catch up.

Oomph...actually

Henry’s always trying out new words and one of his newest is “actually.”

He asked about his yogurt this morning, “Do you think this is cherry or strawberry?” and then he answered himself, “Actually, I think it is cherry.”

“Actually” sounds so funny coming from him – like in that movie, “Love actually.” Maybe he’s got a little British flavor to the way he says it. It’s a redundant word and I actually like redundant words. They give flavor, like spice to a hot-dish. Nothing fancy, just a dash of something that makes for a little oomph.

I’ve been lacking in oomph lately but it’s started coming back.

I’ve gotten this idea, living next to the freeway as I do, of the freeway as metaphor for the busy life. For a while now, I’ve been taking pictures of the freeway fence – the sunrise against the fence, the afternoon shadows against the fence – that kind of thing, and I came up with this idea of doing a video with these images and thoughts on the busy life.

Then one morning, I had a ladder up against the fence, and was standing on it taking pictures, when the light came on in the bathroom window, signaling that Angie was awake. I thought how peculiar she’d find it, if she were to look out the window, and see me up on a ladder hanging, in the just-after-sunrise hour, over the fence, with my camera.

It made me smile, and I thought – this is the way I’m like my dad, a thought that filled me with pleasure.

My dad was a character, even an eccentric character. I’ve said it all before. He was particularly this way later in life when he became what I call a gentleman farmer. Who knows what those two words together mean – and yet – they call up a certain image: a farmer, but not completely of the earth; not too rustic; not so earthy that he couldn’t also be charming; not so practical that he was tied to neat rows and a productive yield. Not so homespun that he couldn’t get all dressed up and go out on the town polka dancing and kissing ladies’ hands.

I saw an old friend/arm chair cousin of his this summer. I was telling him how I had this one picture of dad when he was the boy, and he had the kindest look on his face. I said, “Even then, he had that kindness.”

Marty said, “Oh, that Joe, he was a tricky one. He had his wild days.” He was saying, “Don’t fool yourself. Joe was more than nice.” He was more than nice, more than a dad, more than a farmer, more than a gentleman. He was no saint. He was a character.

As I thought of Angie catching me on the ladder, I thought how neat it would be if she delighted in my quirky ways. And then I thought, ‘Maybe she will; maybe she won’t. She might…someday. She might not.’ And then I thought that it’s enough, more than enough, actually, if I can delight in myself.

When you're feeling low...

The first edition of The Dialogues.


I have this one friend who, whenever she doesn’t hear from me for a while, checks out my blog. Then she e-mails me and says, “I can’t tell where you’re at.”

I realize that sometimes the blog allows me to just write some little oddity, like the one I last posted about the push lawn mower. That kind of writing relaxes me. It’s like looking at the small stuff. What my friend sees, I suppose, is that “smallness” … too small a picture to tell her what’s going on with me.

I wrote, in The Given Self, about the wisdom that is there right within our hard times. How our hard times aren’t just a bridge to better times. That there’s something deeper in them…something, maybe, for our souls. My own writing prompts me not to hide out, to go ahead and be vulnerable, to seek wisdom (of any sort at all) in what I'm going through...for me...maybe for you too.

I’ve been having a hard time lately.

There. I’ve said it. Do you think poorly of me? Have I become lower in your estimation of me?

I doubt it.

It’s tough, when you’re feeling frazzled and frayed, depressed, or even “not on the top of the world,” to be public about it. It’s so bizarre – all the things that run through your mind – the sort of loop it gets on when you’re feeling low, and how you can get yourself real confused about that. Wonder if you you’re really missing the mark, need to do whatever it takes to get still…or whether there might be something there that you need to listen to.

When you listen, I feel at least, you begin to get clues to how you need to move. But I’ll admit: it’s a different kind of listening.

Here’s one that really got to me. I wasn’t at home, and didn’t have any books with me, and suddenly remembered that I had my old copy of The Dialogues in the trunk of my car. I don’t know how many of you have that version. It’s white, and it has a painting called “Flood of Compassion” on the front. It was the first edition of The Dialogues and I designed it all myself. It’s smaller than the “blue books”…like a trade edition paperback. I’d decided not to put the numbers on the paragraphs or to make it look like the other books, because I felt it was so different. This one, this third volume of A Course of Love, just wasn’t the same. By then we were to be done with studying. What did we need numbers for? By then, it was personal, equal, a dialogue. I didn’t want it to look heavy and scholarly.

Anyway, I went out and got it.

I wrote an introduction in it, and when I went to bed that night I read it. It was the weirdest thing. It sounded like something I could have written now, even though I’d written it eight years ago.

Next morning, I’m reading how my favorite editorialist, Leonard Pitts, is about to turn 53. He’s writing on the first, second and third arcs of life. He claims the first to be finding yourself and getting your education, the second the rat race, and that the third is for “having some fun, trying something new, for being of service, and for doing some of those things you always said you’d do, someday.”

It reminded me of what I was writing at 47 but the arcs would look a little different in that I’d put “finding yourself” in the third arc. I'd written about the change of life during menopause as described by Christiane Northrup:

“Many of the changes she was describing as menopausal mirrored the changes I’d been feeling as a result of The Dialogues. Northrup spoke of menopause as a transformation, as a giving up of illusions, as a crossroads where an old way and a new way merge and must be chosen between, and as a rekindling of youthful fire, spirit, and creative drive.

“She also spoke of menopause as a time marked by impatience and intolerance with “life as usual.” As a forty-seven year old woman, I suddenly became aware that my body, along with my brain, my mind, my heart, and my soul, were all undergoing similar transformations. It was no wonder that my experience of The Dialogues felt so total and all encompassing, as if there wasn’t a corner of my life or psyche that had not only been touched but rewired.”

Change. Transitions. Irritability. I didn’t know whether to see an old pattern, to feel as if I was stuck and hadn’t changed in years, or to feel as if I’d gotten something I needed. But that was my mind talking. My heart felt comforted.

These are the things that can bring me joy when I’m low. Getting up to close the window and spotting a bright crescent moon in the dark 4 a.m. sky, finding an editorial that mirrors my thoughts, reading something surprising.

Then I was on-line, researching something, and found this amazing little paragraph in a blog that I can’t remember how the heck I got to:

House of Prayer Blog

I’ve been thinking about our spiritual work…. There seems to be a kind of shift going on amongst us. A movement into the depths is the way it feels. I know it means letting go of pet beliefs and even "orthodox" ones sometimes. This is often expressed, however, by uneasiness or discontent. This reminds me of what Jesus said about us becoming “as little children” in order to enter into the Kingdom of God. I suspect this is also what Meister Eckhart means when he emphatically teaches that IF we are to come to an experiential knowledge of God, then we also have to come to a place of “unknowing.” How does one do this? How do we go back when we’ve come so far? How do we become “little” again? How do we “unlearn” when we’ve spent so much of our lives seeking intellectually, believing rationally, and holding tightly to our so called “truths”? It feels to me that this is what is being experienced by many of us. We just don’t know things the way we once did. We are no longer clinging so tightly to our belief systems and entrenched positions. There’s a loosening of sorts; a release from the moorings of security. We’re launching out into deeper, unknown waters. And we’re also feeling the cost of that . . . “coming to an unknowing” place.

Ward Bauman, House of Prayer Blog, Episcopal House of Prayer

"Feeling the cost of that." Feeling the "unease and the discontent."

I call this kind of thing intuitive listening, sort of going where you’re led. Getting reminded of what you know. There’s nothing quite like it to make you feel gifted and heard – as if a power greater than your own, or a bigger ear, is listening and even answering.

This is not about heart alone. This is about the combining of mind and heart, and I swear that once in a while, when your heart is feeling in the dumps, your mind can shed a little light on why this is so. You might not want to hear it, but it’s there…rattling around amidst the rubble.

You’ve got to do something else then, to start the movement, and that is, for me, the hardest piece to find when I’m low, and that's what I was feeling tonight when this arrived in my e-mail in-box:

Come to me all you who labor and are burdened
and I will give you rest.
-Matthew 11: 28

"Rest refers to interior quiet, tranquility, peace, rootedness
of being one with the Divine Presence.

Rest is our reassurance at the deepest level that everything is okay.
The ultimate freedom is to rest in God in suffering, as well as in joy.
God was just as present to Jesus on the cross, as on the mountain of the
Transfiguration."

-Thomas Keating, Reawakenings

Sometimes, when you’re low, you’ve just got to rest. Message received.

When push comes to shove

I’ve been taking new routes on my forays about town lately. Well, they’re really not drives about town; they’re short treks around the neighborhood running errands for my elderly companion or, just recently, driving to my friend’s where I’m house sitting.

It maybe grew out of one part irritation in the beginning.

You know how you go to make a right turn on a red light and the street is so narrow you can’t get around the people going straight or making lefts? I had this great idea of taking the side street a block before the light and then turning more easily onto the street that was my destination. In this case, I was turning on Haskell, a very low-traffic neighborhoody-looking street with a small white house on the corner. The house is for sale. It also has a short white picket fence and a narrow white garage. Everything white – not a dot of trim painted green or black. I got kind of enamored by the little house and then noticed another all-white house down the way where even the steps and cinder blocks were painted white. It was another small, older home and I was, in a word, charmed by this short block I began to take toward the major intersection and thoroughfare of Robert Street.

Generally, I’d get to the corner of Robert and Haskell and make a right-hand turn onto the busier street, but today, there was no traffic in either direction, so I scooted across Robert and continued on Haskell.

The reason, generally, that these small side-streets aren’t taken, is that there’s a stop sign on every corner. But today I drove slowly and savored the new view. It was almost as if I’d entered a small town. I noticed the names of the streets at each stop sign and began to enjoy the flavor of the corner at Winslow and the one at Bidwell.

Just before the street dead-ended at Charlton, I saw a skinny elderly man setting his push lawnmower on the curb with a Free sign on it.

I’ve wanted a push lawnmower for a long time. Don’t ask me why.

I drove on by and continued to my friend’s house, fed the cats, did the litter, and wiped up a few anxiety messes on the floor. I walked through the downstairs and then went up, where I had spent two days this week taking a nap on her loveseat while meaning to read in the peace and quiet of an empty house.

I’d slept as if drugged. I kept trying to keep my eyes open and appreciate my chance to read undisturbed, but my body simply would not cooperate. It was a woozy sleep that felt tremendously deep even though I felt as if I’d been wakeful enough to keep trying to open my eyes. But today was the first time I’d been by in the early part of day, (it’s my day off), and I ended up passing on the couch and its invitation to sleep if not read.

I headed home.

I had already driven past Haskell as I started off going my more usual route on auto-pilot, when I started thinking about that push lawnmower and doubled back.

From the opposite side of the street I saw it had mint green handlebars and a yellow blade. I kept straining to see how rusty the blade was, and finally got out of the car. On closer observation, the yellow blades were speckled with orange spots of rust and I turned around, even though I could see grass in the blades and a narrow swath where the man had cut a little as a demonstration. I got back in my car, but I hesitated.

Haven’t you always wanted one, I asked myself? The Free sign, written on a piece of typing paper, and taped between the handlebars with their black rubber grips, waved in the breeze. The sun shown. I told myself that Donny would call it a piece of junk, look at me over his glasses, and ask me when I was going to cut the grass. I asked myself, “Do you really plan to cut the grass?”

Then I got out of the car as if it was inevitable. I mouthed a thank you toward the windows where I imagined the old man watching, then wheeled the thing across the street. Already in love with it, I hefted it into the back of the Cruiser and the grass fell from the blades. Some maneuvering was required before I could get the trunk to close. The Free sign, hanging from the handlebars, waved jauntily over the back seat.

When I got home I forgot it was there and didn’t take it out until coming home with Henry later in the afternoon with the handlebars resting not too far from his head in his car seat. I told him he could help Grandpa cut the grass and he was eager. Grandpa came out the door as I took it from the trunk and seeing the sign asked, “Where did you get that for free? These sell for $75.” The neighbor, Mr. Mooney was out, and he said, “I might have to get one of those.” I wasn’t totally sure if they were kidding me or not as Henry and I attempted to push the thing. We weren’t doing so good. Donny got behind the bars and made a visible path, like shoveling through the snow. Then it started to rain and we left the poor old girl there in the grass. Tomorrow I’ll find her a home in the garage.

I never did tell him I got my push mower on Haskell Street.

Tellers of Time

Went to a church festival yesterday. Any of you do that? Or remember them? Raffles, games of chance, bake sales, a familiar face or two from the past? I bought an Oliver Towne book circa 1958 for me and six books for Henry (most on fish – “Finding Nemo” instilled an avid interest); small yellow and orange rooster salt and pepper shakers; a choir boy figurine, and a necklace. At $2.00, the vintage necklace was the most expensive item. My mom was with me. She bought a paperback or two and a glass shoe for her shoe collection.

We bid on a few items at the silent auction, with numbers 13 and 14. I bought her the taco dinner because her birthday’s this week. Father walked through, smiling; the deacon cut in front of me in the taco line; the one old friend I ran into waited a few people behind me and the woman between us joined in our conversation.

Here in St. Paul, there are fall festivals (at least two at a time) every weekend for six weeks or so. It’s a very Catholic city and most, but not all, are hosted by Catholic churches. There was a full-page spread on them in the paper last week. My sister-in-law said she was disappointed she’d miss the one associated with her grade school, because she could give the kids money to go play the games and just stand and talk to one old friend after another.

The Saturday night crowd that Mom and I encountered last night is not what the Sunday crowd will be today and the crowd today will not be what it was a few years ago, at least not at my inner-city parish where music played in an almost deserted parking lot, few took advantage of the brats and beer, and cop cars dotted the curbs. The last newsletter bore testimony to the change with a picture on the front that challenged readers to guess what year it was taken. One of those giant bubbles where kids jump amongst colored balls was in the parking lot and it teamed with people. Mainly by the hairstyles of the women I’d guess it was from the 70’s. I’m at that age when that doesn’t seem all that long ago.

It was a beautiful night with a half a moon wavering in the cloudy sky and it got me reminiscing about changes. A few years ago I was all for such things ending. Okay, it wasn’t a few years ago, it was in the 80’s when I felt overly involved in festivals at my husband’s church and thought to myself that all of us volunteering would be better off to just give money.

But you become aware, through such events, of the changes in atmosphere and culture and climate that you can miss much more easily without them. It’s not all dismal. There’s a sweetness to the pie booth with only four pretty sad looking pies set out, and the garage-sale nature of the stuffed animals awaiting kids, and the memories of the desire to win the bike or the doll being raffled and the way the impressions of your youth stay with you.

Likewise in church, the nature of the sermons change. A week or so ago I wondered what I was missing in the news when Father spoke of how communion is the right of everyone. I wondered what ornery cleric was refusing communion to a politician known to be pro-abortion, or to obvious gays.

And likewise in books.

The Oliver Towne book, a collection of the stories written in the “Oliver Towne” column of the St. Paul Dispatch between 1954 and 1958 feels familiar even though I’ve only seen the yellowed copies stuck in the photo albums and cook books (where all clippings seem to eventually end up) of mothers and grandmothers around town. I opened to a page where Oliver cleared up the mystery of my side of town, know as the West Side, being not west but south, and how it came to be called that because of old steamboat captains for whom, he said, there were only two directions – the west bank and the east bank – of a river.

So there you are, living on a side of town called “west” all your life, only giving it a little thought when an occasional visitor from Minneapolis asks “What’s “west” about it?” and then you find out that it was steamboat captains who were the source of this name that is a lie to us (directionally speaking) and a truth to them.

It is strange and pertinent to me this morning where you can find tellers of the times and the truth, and how even the truth, given your view of it, and your language, and the way you interact with it…changes.

Small puddles and Big characters

These are the only photos I've taken recently that made me think of the beautiful in the ugly (besides the dozens I've posted of the freeway fence). I was just going to do the one, but Alec is famous for his "people" photography and so, in that spirit, you also get this one of me, taken on a cool day in the cabin in my hoodie.

My favorite photographer, Alec Soth, was on the front page of the paper Sunday. Not the "Sunday Life" section that is devoted to books, music, art and entertainment, but the Front Page. I guess he’s now the most sought after American photographer, the equivalent, the article said, to “an art rock star.” I was beaming with pride over having discovered him before he was all the rage, and felt as if I knew him when. His studio is just a bit up from where we had our coffee shop, and…gosh…it must be five years ago now when I wanted to use one of his photographs in a presentation I was giving and actually exchanged e-mails with him. He was so gracious.

I felt such a thrill of discovery and delight to find him in the first place and then again to see him on my front page. And that’s before I read the article, which reminded me of what drew me to him in the first place, which was a previous article and the words he spoke as much as his art.

I wasn’t having the greatest day when I found this article. I’ve been feeling so stuck in a puddle and as if I want to be swimming in a bigger pond. Actually, I seem to go back and forth – looking at the small things in my own back yard as if they are amazingly beautiful and significant – and then pining over feeling fenced in. In other words, it’s not all about the broader picture, but sometimes capturing the small picture, like the small truths, takes you toward bigger stories and finds you wanting to spread your wings.

And then you read about a guy you feel you kind of know.

I saw him give a talk at the Walker Art Center about five years ago, and he set my whole vision of how I wanted to give talks in a new direction because I’d seen something that excited me. I’d seen this way that you get out of “teaching” by simply talking about your process, which for me, with him, was like listening to somebody tell what it was like to climb the mountain from his own experience. I was so utterly fascinated and inspired!

Here’s two of the things I remember from that previous encounter with him. He talked about finding “the beauty in ugliness” and about “the isolation we’re sharing.” Can’t you just see why I’d love him?

What he says in this article about photography itself (which seemed to have little to do with the previous article I read or the talk he gave), was again speaking to me.

“Photography is the opposite of living in the moment. It’s trying to preserve, capture a moment. The act of doing it can be like that, but there’s something desperate about wanting to hold it, and there’s something about being in the world but out of it simultaneously. It’s a big psychological disorder. If I’m good at it, it’s because I can really sink my teeth into that disorder. It suits my character.”

Then he says, “But I’m not proud of that – I’d much rather be a yoga master.”

It’s kind of a joke, but I felt as if I “got” it. Most of the creative stuff I do feels like a psychological disorder. I got (at least in my own way) everything he was saying, and that’s one of the best experiences of life to a person of my character.

A final quote that also resonates with me is this: “I’m interested in weaving an arc – giving things shape and meaning and making connections. Giving people a place to imagine things.”

Oh, yes, yes. What a lovely man. How glad I am to live in that same world…because I do, I really do. In our own small-puddle ways, don’t we all?

St. Paul Pioneer Press, “Art Sensation,” Amy Carlson Gustafson, 10A, 9-12-2010.

New Videos and Small Truths

I really like this Minnesota writer Kevin Kling. His was one of the websites I looked at before developing mine (for The Given Self, www.thegivenself.com). His is kind of whimsical and silly, like he is (in a profound way) and that’s terribly difficult if not impossible to achieve in your work if you’ve got a serious bent (as I do), and just as hard to achieve in a website if it’s not there in your work.

Anyway, he moved from writing, to being on Minnesota Public Radio, to participating in an off-beat theatre venture that goes on here every summer called “The Fringe Festival.”

There’s a way certain people can be a little like “secret mentors” to you, and he’s one of mine. Him and Steve Almond have got that silly obsessiveness that I find profound. Others of my secret mentors are merely profound.

When I saw an article about Kling recently I felt hopeful that doing photography and video might make me a little more playful, and I experimented a little with playfulness here. I call it having some serious fun. (It’s the best I can do for now.)

(Click on the underlined word to go to the video.)

A few weeks ago, Dominic Papatola, who writes a “culture” column I also like reading, reviewed Kling’s Fringe performance:

“It’s difficult not to bifurcate Kling’s work along the fault line of the 2001 motorcycle accident that nearly cost him his life. His pre-crash stories were personal in the sense that they were first-person accounts, but they also spoke to the more universal foibles of Minnesotans and of humanity. After the accident, Kling’s work took a more contemplative and introspective turn, as he delved into realms of spirituality, able-bodiness and the natural world.

Both bodies of work were well-written and well-told, but they sometimes seemed to be the efforts of two different artists. …

Five years ago, he was talking about the difference between the disabilities one is born with and the disabilities acquired on a life journey. In this show, Kling observes that, “some gifts we’re born with; others we find during our life.”

Papatola concludes: “And though Kling retains that essential piece of the kid’s goofy giddiness that propels many of his stories, he’s rediscovered a way to embrace the ambiguities of an adult life.”

Well….

Maybe that’s where my challenge has been…with embracing the ambiguities of adult life. I talk of something similar here as “small truths.”


Maybe meeting that challenge is what turns disabilities into gifts and most importantly (probably) lightens your heart…makes you light-hearted and not so serious. There are times I feel that’s the alchemy of the spiritual path…the blessing of a life well lived…and yet, I don’t know.

Since starting this experimentation with video I did a personal movie of Henry’s spring and summer. I could see things in the people I captured that I hadn’t seen before. I began to understand my friend Mary’s fascination with video for seeing the way a person’s heart can speak to you in a look when you’re moving slowly, frame by frame.

The whole gist of why I did the “seriously fun” video was wanting to be honest somehow about what I’d seen in myself as I’ve done these things. I am light and serious and peaceful and confused…and not one of those images is my “true self.” That doesn’t mean I’m being false or that I am incapable of being true. It’s more like viewing a moment-by-moment or at least week-by-week exploration of various encounters with life and the feelings and movement they produce.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, “Kevin Kling does it again,” by Dominic P. Papatola. 9-13-2010, 9A.

Joy

Fahrenheat, the friendly little heater



The only picture I could find with a glimpse of the cabin's peak



The winter ceiling

Donny put up Styrofoam to seal off the cabin peak yesterday. I stood under him and handed screws. I think it’s made a difference. We were losing heat through the top.

Man, all these things going on are such metaphors. Everything rising to a peak and going through the top.

I can report with joy about sealing off the leak. The energy drain is leaving. I didn’t want to do it. I liked my peak(s). I wanted heat without losing the heights. Now it seems that life is about keeping the heat closer to the ground.

I’ve switched back to the desk today. It fits my body better than the table. I can feel it already. I’m once again gazing out at the Mooney pines. Just a spot of rooftop keeps the family abode in view. The freeway fence is off to the side, dull anyway this morning without the sun. We slept in and the sun is already high in the sky, the earth standing still.

Donny’s making breakfast. He says, “You’re going out?”

I say, “It’s my morning practice.”

Words are getting put on things never before uttered.

What’s important to you? Heat in the cabin.

It has begun. The Fahrenheat’s days are numbered. Next there will be a furnace. I have declared myself. This is what’s important to me. I am claiming my life.

Joy. Joy.

Pumped up

Oh hell, who cares about anything else? I’m inspired again this morning! Oh, the long dearth through which I’ve sat so impatiently. I’m already feeling it in the kitchen, as I begin making pancakes, see there isn’t any milk, and then chuckle about why I’d be making pancakes anyway on a day when no one’s around. Next I’m eyeing the paper and start reading it. I don’t have to rush to get my time because, as far as I know, there will not be anyone home ALL DAY. Then I read about the Twin’s latest win that came from a pitcher making his major league debut. I love debut games. Love debut stories of any kind.

Matt Fox left in the sixth inning after giving up a run-scoring single that tied the game. He was upset and he slammed his glove around.

I still don’t know much about the 27 year-old pitcher – his history or any of that, but I was bowled over by what coach Ron Gardenhire said about him:

“A lot of young guys in their first start would probably sit back and go, ‘Wow, I’m glad I’m out of there.’ But he was frustrated because he gave up that run and that tells you a little bit about his character and that tells you a little bit about his heart.”

Man. How cool it would be to have a coach like that. To have your frustration seen as character and heart. That frustration that comes of really, really wanting to do your personal best.

Mia, bless her heart, is the reason no one’s home. Angie and Henry spent the night at her place last night, and she’s babysitting there, keeping Henry for the day. She was over yesterday to pick some things up in preparation for the weekend stay, and told me she’d been crabby. I said, “Me too.” I said, “I think you get crabby when things aren’t right in your life and you want to set them right.” She didn’t seem too excited about that observation; thinks her life is going along pretty well at the moment. Maybe it’s just me.

But I let Coach Gardenhire pump me up and I’m not going to fret over the need of it today. Don’t we all need to get pumped once in a while?

I can just imagine how this rookie had to get pumped up for his debut game, how he would have that feeling in him of all the preparation he’d done, and of his own readiness, and how he’d feel he wouldn’t know if he was ready until he did the thing, and then how frustrated he’d feel about giving up that run that got him pulled…not because he failed…but because he’d seen what he could do.

This is what I love about baseball and life (sometimes).

St. Paul Pioneer Press, Fill-in gives Twins a lift. Kelsie Smith, 9-4-2010, 5B.

Book group

Last night I was a guest at my sister’s book group. They read The Given Self. “They” were her friends from high school. I had memories of each one of them and, of the six gathered – Mary Pat, Char, Chris, Barb, Maureen and Janie – five of them had siblings who were friends of mine: a brother who’d car pooled to the U of M with me, a sister who was my first friend (they lived two-doors up), a brother who was in the same school from 5th through 10th grade, a sister who was a best friend for a year or two, and another who I hung out with in the 7th-8th grade years. The one who knew me least (not having a sibling who gave us a little more knowledge of each other), asked for a little of my history and that of the books I speak so much about within The Given Self.

Because of who they were, I began this history from when I was a teen, talking about how much things changed between when they were teens and when I was. I spoke of the difference in the spacing of our family. My two older brothers are ten and twelve years older than me, my sister Susan five years older, and my younger brother eight years younger. I told of how I admired my hippie brother who was graduating from college in the pivotal 1968 while I was graduating from grade school, and how I watched my sister go to a dozen proms, thinking I’d have the same fairytale-like experience. And then how I didn’t have either.

I do think it made a difference. Seeing the whole changing of the culture play out in my brother’s life and my sister sort of missing it and living the version of the teenage years you see on TV. I felt my draws to both but didn’t really want to admit that things like proms held any attraction. I openly coveted my brother’s experience and secretly could have gone in for a little more of my sister’s.

As far as I know, they were all “good girls.” My sister was up for homecoming queen and Janie won the title. You get my drift.

So there I am, the little sister sitting in on the gathering of the big sisters, separated by five years, but feeling pretty comfortable. In a certain sense, having your story “out there” gives you the freedom of not trying to hide anything.

So I spoke of how, by the time I was a teen, dating wasn’t much in style. The free love of the sixties had caught on but the meaning factor separated my brother and his generation from mine, and the innocence factor my sister and me. I spoke of being a rebel in the sense of always wanting to escape expectations and being somewhat adamant about not wanting to fit in.

Later in the evening my sister said, “I don’t know if this book was written for us.”

One of her friends lightly told me, “This is the way we talk,” as they discussed ailments, jobs, lawn-cutting, pets, parents, children and grandchildren. I believe I made a few disparaging remarks about this sort of conversation in the book, but I asked after my old friends and was interested in the details. It was sincere and pleasant conversation and some of the best of it came before we sat down to “discuss the book” as always seems to happen.

One of the women said, “Everything happens for a reason,” and later in the evening I brought that up and said, “Sometimes I feel as if my rebellious nature is my nature for a reason.”

Another of the women said she thought my husband and me were brave to live an alternative kind of life. One nodded her head at certain sentiments as if she shared them. You get a sense sometimes that more could be said but that the “more” is held in check by the group.

Maureen actually told a hilarious story about sitting on an airplane where the most horrid noise was scaring all those in her section and how none of them said anything. “I was thinking,” she said, “that if the plane went down, I was going to be sorry.” She’s a nurse, and went on to speak of the training they get – so often someone, she said, is uneasy or fears a mistake is being made and doesn’t say anything. I knew she “got” the underlying theme (of sorts), the one that’s about stopping with the reticence we have about saying what we really want to say (and living the way we want to live). Giving ourselves that freedom.

When I left, I felt as if the others might be happy to get back to the comfortable conversation.

This was all okay. I didn’t fret over any of it for a minute – not before or after.

The friendship among them was evident. They’ll be there for each other. And the book wasn’t written for them as far as I know. But you never really know, do you?

Walked out to the cabin in the dark tonight. Haven’t been out nearly as much in the evening dark as the morning dark and tonight it was really really dark. Last night, or maybe two nights ago there was full moon and it’s still out there. I can see it from the cabin window. The trees canopy the path pretty good though and the tree tops shield the moon.

With my new video craze I was out taking pictures of the moon the other night – about half to capture the moon and half to record the sound of the crickets. They almost overtake the noise of the freeway. I had to walk out into the thick undergrowth to find a break in the trees where I could find the moon with the camera’s lens. Then, as I was recording, clouds went over the moon and swirled like mist and blurred the round edges and covered her over and then moved on so that she popped back out again. I was so excited – thought I’d really caught something magnificent, but then, being the amateur that I am – I couldn’t focus in on the moon and it looked like a golf ball sitting on a black tarp.

Despite the moon tonight, there’s a different quality to the darkness. I know the path out here like I know Henry’s got his mother’s neck, the neck that used to make me almost weep when she was a little girl – this skinny little neck so fine and fragile. Still, there was a shape at my feet that I paused over as I walked around it…just a dark shape. There wasn’t enough illumination to define the edges of anything. It was a swampy mess of darkness.

There was the place where the tree branches hang low and I walked automatically around that, but still it was odd. Odd when the place you know so well feels suddenly unknown.

I could use the yard light, but I don’t.

What are you afraid of?

I posted two new videos today.

The first is short and different (and different for more reasons than being short!). It's of the "shadow" pictures I've been writing of taking lately. I swear, when I'm feeling rattled, I've been opening this file of "shadows" and doing a slide show. There's something so quieting about them. So that's basically what this is: a slide show called "Light and Shadow."


A new "Hello from the Cabin" (number 8 believe it or not) caused me to want to write a note about the strange segue at the end. I go from talking about taking a year off from “outside help” to talking about reading Melody Beattie on codependency. There was a reason that Melody followed on the “year off” idea that I didn’t say! In talking of care giving, she said that if you’ve been a caregiver for a while you might want to take a year off from giving. That idea felt really good to me and that’s the connection that I didn’t make as I ended the video.

It’s a connection I’m finding hard to make in life too!

Honestly, you could say my whole problem in my family boils down to an inability to say no.

People ask me, “What are you afraid of?” I don’t feel that I’m afraid of anything. Then I might say I don’t want to disappoint the person asking, so I guess you could say I’m afraid of disappointing. I’ve been a mother since I was 18 and meted out a lot of disappointment in those years. I never liked it. It always seemed like life was disappointing enough. Your kid waits all year for the field trip to Valley Fair and then it rains. Or they don’t get invited to the birthday party. Or they’re not as pretty or smart as they’d like to be. Whatever!

But it's more than that because sometimes I really want to say no, and I don't care if my "no" disappoints anyone, and I still don't say it. I guess it’s become such a habit to say “yes” that I’m challenged to break it. You think such things should be easy and can really get to worrying over your psychological health when they aren't.

But a few days ago I told Mia I’d rather not host the party and she invited me to the bar with her and her girlfriends, so I’m getting somewhere slowly, and even giving my adult "kids" a little more room to be understanding. Whew! That feels good.