Sitting at the dining room table, listening to the Sunday sermon, playing Solitaire, Mr. Darcy’s low growl draws my attention to the window. There he was- a Great Blue Heron standing on the edge of the little fish pond with at least one of my largest goldfish in its deadly beak, bright orange, the only color in the winter gray morning. I make sure I’m muted, race to the door and fling it open shouting and waving my arms. The heron doesn’t drop the fish- oh lord, are there two of them in his beak? Little troubled, the bird opens his massive wings and lazily takes to the sky. He leaves his calling card- the floating white film of his excrement on the surface of the pond. The other fish are in clear sight at the bottom of the pond, unmoving and undisturbed by the sudden attack. The winter makes them stupid and slow. There they wait to be plucked out of the water and there is little I can do about it. I have tried many things. The herons keep coming and I keep shouting and waving my arms and sometimes I cry. Why do I care so much?
The heron will always eat fish. And I will always hate it.
When I finish teaching my Sunday school classes, I try again. I always do, even knowing what I know. I try again. I haul out the pinwheels, the sparkling string, the tomato cages. The cages- four of them- are turned upside down and placed in various spots around the pond, their leg prongs pointed to the sky. The pinwheels are pushed into the ground around the perimeter and the string is stretched taut from one to the other, crisscrossing the pond. Perhaps when there is wind, the whirling pinwheels will be enough to discourage the Vikings from landing. Perhaps the fish will seek refuge in the tomato cages, the heron unable to penetrate the geometry of wire angles. Perhaps the strings will entangle the intrepid pillagers unconcerned by the other defenses.
It looks ridiculous, of course. A sad little circus trying to look brave and hearty. It’s all I can do, so I do it. The fish come under my protection, being here in my pond. I am the caretaker here and those winter fuddled fish, orange as traffic cones, are not fair game. There are creeks and a mighty river not a half mile away. There, it is natural that herons should hunt and feed, here, it is pure theft. Tiny murders are still murders after all.
Does anybody ask the fish? This just now occurs to me. I assume that they don’t wish to be skewered and swallowed. Perhaps it is all for nothing and they care far less than I do. And just how many have I taken under my protection, looked after with care and tenderness, that didn’t want to be there? Never asked to be there? I know at least one. Perhaps you’re reading this now. Yes, you nod your head, there was at least one.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Writing | Tags: 2020, Fountain Pens, New beginnings, Waterman Pens, Writing
Notes from my journal
A new journal, a new journal cover, and a new pen. Or at least a different pen. I am at a sudden loss. I feel unmoored and adrift. My beloved Waterman fountain pen is no more, after decades of service. It was not in great shape. The cap was cracked, held together with super glue. The clip on it had been bent and was loosening. A while back, Waterman, in Paris, offered to fix the cap for me if I could find the original receipt or certificate, but I could not find it. And I could not stand the idea of shipping it off and being without it for so long. So I kept it. It was not in great shape, I admit it. Still, I thought I would be writing with it the rest of my life. Then a new journal was delivered and I went upstairs to gather my pen, the journal I was just finishing and my glasses (I retrace my steps, replay this moment over and over in my mind). Coming down the steps, my pen flew out of the temporary case it was in for safety (my black leather pen holder has disappeared somewhere in the house in the last month and I cannot, cannot find it- was this a sign, a portent I should have seen coming?) The pen flew out of that velveteen pouch, hit a step that knocked the cap clean off, then went into a perfect swan dive onto the tile of the kitchen floor below bending that gorgeous 14k gold nib back like eyelashes. It was a trajectory that would be impossible to recreate. Honestly, it felt like the hand of God smote that pen out of my hands.
My heart stumbled when I saw what had happened to the nib. I did try to bend it back but it was clearly never going to write again. There’s no going back, only going forward. But it hurts. That pen has been my constant companion since 1998. It‘s been everywhere with me, all around the United States, to Canada, Europe, Asia, Central America and South America. It’s helped me navigate both joy and grief. It’s what I write with. Plays, poems, journals, papers, essays, notes, letters, lesson plans, stories. My Waterman fountain pen with the gold nib. It was a tremendous expense when I bought it for myself at the start of my life as a solitary, after my divorce from Patrick. I knew I was embarking on an independent life, a new journey, though I didn’t know at the time that it would, in fact, be a solitary one. The pen was a gift to myself, one I saved for, bought from an ancient pen store on Jewelers Row in Chicago. I do not believe it is still in business.
The death of this pen seems to be a portent, all of a piece with these tumultuous times. Nothing is the same for any of us this year, either personally or nationally. The old ways of doing things have been completely disrupted. I am making the choice not to mourn its loss- the pen, the old way of living and working, the old way of seeing the world. It is a new beginning for me. I think. While I am as solitary as ever, I am more connected in friendship with others than I have been in years. I seem to be extending myself to others in ways I haven’t had the energy for in a long time. I feel a generosity of spirit in myself that I have long missed. I am learning to value and respect myself, even to love my Self in ways I don’t think I ever have before. Belief in my work is growing, as a teacher, as a writer, as an artist. Perhaps it’s only right that I lay my dear workhorse friend to rest and take up a new pen with which to explore the gifts of these troubled times.
Right now I am writing with a pen I bought at the Crescent Hill Fourth of July fair a couple of years ago. It’s a fountain pen made by a local craftsman. It’s heavier than my Waterman, though the weight is not unpleasant. The nib is finer, and though gold in color, is not gold in fact. It’s marked “iridium German nib” but a little research reveals that to be a false claim too, like the gold color. It’s a steel nib, made in Asia, and it scrapes on the surface of the paper, not like the smooth effortless flow of the Waterman. But it will do for a while. A great deal has been lost these last four years, and this current year is one for the history books. My heart, like so many hearts, has been heavy, yet somehow I feel lighter tonight. My beloved pen is gone but I can feel there is a gift barreling down on me and I will accept it with joy when it comes. The right pen will come to me and I will feel that I am meant to have it. What’s more, it will be a gift of love.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering, Writing | Tags: Breonna Taylor, drawing, Flowers, meditation, Protest, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, solace, The Great Circle
Monday evening, September 21st 2020
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died a few days ago and like so many, I’ve been battling the waves of darkness that threaten to pull me under. It’s a truly awful time. I am not alone in feeling that our democracy is in real peril. I have taken it for granted all my life. I believed our system of checks and balances so carefully constructed and time tested that it could withstand anything, anyone. But I am wrong. The constellation of evil, the triumvirate of greed, bigotry and ignorance that is holding sway in positions of power, is sweeping all balance away. Every day we grow sicker, angrier, more divided as a nation.
I cannot write of it anymore this evening. I remind myself to breathe. I make myself look around, see where I am, see the goodness that is all around me. It’s grown dark. I sat outside in the dying light drawing until I couldn’t see my marks anymore. A clear cool night, the insects sing and bats take to the sky. The hummingbirds have not all left yet, but soon. Inside now, I sit in my dad’s leather armchair, the one he bought when we lived in the grand old house on Cherokee Parkway. I remember it was a big purchase, a long considered one because of the expense. It has a matching leather ottoman too. He bought it for the library where he could sit and read his papers, his endless line of Civil War books, Lonesome Dove. He was an infamously slow reader but a steady one. Dedicated. He always said that his reading was ruined when he took Evelyn Wood’s speed reading course in college. It took him two years to finish Lonesome Dove, but he kept at it. It makes me happy sitting in his chair, the worse for wear, the better for memories.
Drawing brings comfort, especially the land drawings. It was my friend Reba Rye who first showed me it was possible to gather up things around you with which to draw. You needn’t be dependent on what you can buy in a store. Such a simple idea and yet it was a revelation to me. You can take leaves and petals, press and pull them across the paper. Charcoal from fires, red dirt, certain rocks are good too. Lately I’ve been gathering plants on my evening walks- flowers that grow in the alleys, leaves along the railroad tracks. Sometimes I surreptitiously pull off the heads of flowers that grow on the edges of my neighbors’ yards and slide them into my pockets. I only take them if they won’t be missed, if they are drooping and ready to fall, part of a profusion of cosmos, sunflower or crepe myrtle. I’ve some to know which flowers and leaves make the best color, (weeds are the most generous green). Rose of Sharon and day lilies are too watery , they ruin the paper. Zinnias are too dry. You can only make marks with your thumbnail scraping an imprinted line. Roses are wonderful, and cosmos and sunflowers. Black eyed susans are terrific because you can draw with the hard brown head of the flower as well as the yellow petals. Poke weed berries are amazing- such a dark purple stain. You have to be careful or it will take over the page. I love the leaves of the hearty begonia because one side is green while the underside is red and you can do a beautiful blend with it.
When I get home from gathering, I lay my palette on a table. It’s hard to put into words why it is so satisfying to draw with this gathered beauty, to see their color transferred from petal to page. I draw imagined landscapes with the landscape itself and I am completely absorbed by it. It is a deep meditation that allows me to rest. I take my ink pens to define the shapes, add shading perhaps, shapes of its own. I don’t think, I let the color lead the pens. It’s another layer to the meditation, another part of the labyrinth. I may leave the drawing for days before coming back to it with the pens or to add more color. It feels effortless. It’s a conversation I’m having with myself, with the land, with being, simply being. There is no argument.
It is fully night and I need to turn my thoughts to bed, the book I am reading before sleep, the rest, the dreams that will come whether I want them to or not. The school where I teach is gearing up to have students back in the building for the first time in over six months, in a wildly different school day as we try to keep everyone safely distanced. There is much craziness to navigate involving the simultaneous teaching of students in the room, on video to different pods of the same grade level and students opting to stay at home on Zoom. I cannot begin to describe it all tonight. If I try, I’ll never fall asleep. If I check the news on Twitter, I’ll never fall asleep either. Better to move the pen across the page. Better to finish the landscape drawing. Better to read the words of a generous soul written long long ago. I am simply being tonight. Tonight I will not argument with myself.
This is the solace I have been seeking as of late.
Tuesday September 22nd. Walking the dogs before dawn, I see my old friend Orion in the sky and I know that the season is turning. It’s the turning I hold in my mind as I drive my daughter to her job at sunrise. My city is about to explode. Today is the day that Kentucky’s Attorney General announces whether or not there will be charges filed against the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor. The downtown has been boarded up again, troops have been called in to surround federal buildings. Businesses have announced they are closed today. The courthouse is closed today. Everyone expects that it will be announced that there are no charges being filed. Everyone expects there to be a violent collective protest in response. The city holds its breath this morning. So much pain, anger, anxiety, fear everywhere we turn. On the drive with my daughter we are quiet for different reasons. She is still half asleep, facing her long day only a moment at a time. I am thinking about the sky, the changing light, what I wrote last night, what we are facing today. I know now what I am seeking when I put petal to paper, I know what it is that I love. It’s being part of the great circle for a moment, where creator and creation are one. The energy of the sun brought the flowers and trees into being. The art I make from them becomes part of the circle, my impulse to create makes me part of the circle too. The earth spins on its axis as it circles the sun in a solar system that travels as one of millions or more in a galaxy that circles with numberless others within the ever expanding mind of God. The act of drawing (drawing out what? Beauty? The essence of a moment?) helps me step out of human time, that loud clockwork affair, and into God’s time. That which remains when all the clocks are broken, when there are no verdicts to return. I am not powerless there. There, I am home.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Uncategorized, Writing | Tags: Hindman Settlement School, pandemic, Writing, Zoom
We have all of us felt it, all of us lucky ones.
We have felt that thing that happens when you cross over the little bridge spanning the creek. The creek. Troublesome Creek.
It’s a homecoming.
Interruptions INTERruptions IntERRUPTIONS
As soon as I almost (almost) get the thoughts into the corral, I’m texted by my daughter who needs me to come downstairs immediately to zoom in with the therapist who is helping her to dig herself up and out of the eating disorder vortex that has sucked her in during the pandemic lockdown. And so I go and just like that my thoughts, feelings and words gallop off in three different directions.
When you cross Troublesome, those interruptions stay home. They have to go to great lengths to track you down.
Troublesome Creek runs through Hindman, the seat of Knott County in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. It is the home of the Hindman Settlement School, founded in 1902 by May Stone and Katherine Pettit. It was the first rural settlement school in the United states and is one of the few remaining. Its programs have changed over the years, but its mission has not: Honor the past, improve the present, and plan for the future of Central Appalachia. They have dyslexia programs for children, parents and educators, a burgeoning foodways program that is revitalizing agriculture in Appalachia and many cultural heritage programs, one of which is the Appalachian Writers Workshop. For 45 years it has been both incubator and life raft for writers with ties to Appalachia.
The last week in July, we lucky ones get to cross the bridge and spend a week in this place that has been held sacred for generations. Every year I reflect on what it is that transforms a place into sacred ground. It is a collective project undertaken by all who come. Everyone who crosses that bridge is there to teach or learn or to somehow support the work that is being done there. Minds and hearts are bent on exploring, discovering, sharing, expressing, supporting, celebrating. There is tremendous joy in such company. This joy creates a light that shines in the day to reveal hidden paths and glows through the night to heal the soul. It sounds hyperbolic written here, but anyone who has been will tell you that this is so. The busy-ness of our everyday life cannot reach us for a blessed while. Us! What happiness to be an us, to be a we not a me. In this company we do not need to explain or defend ourselves. We do not need to hide.
This Year of the Plagues or Year of the Great Reckoning, Hindman was online.
Enormous collective sigh.
Collective mourning, too, of all that we would lose:
-The rituals of arriving, claiming your bunk, finding your roommates.
-The Welcome lecture that never fails to mention snakes.
-Hugging old friends, catching up in a heartbeat.
-Three delicious meals a day magically appearing just when you need them, eaten in lively togetherness. (Never underestimate how far this goes in setting the muse free)
-Dishwashing duty with old friends and new friends and literary heroes.
-The sparkle of dew on the morning spider webs spanning the footbridge to class.
-Staying up late talking in groups, talking in pairs, singing in circles, at the Gathering Place, on porches, up in the open air chapel on the hillside by the graves of James Still and Elizabeth Watts, passing moonshine in jars until far too late.
-Negotiating sleep in the bunkbeds, being reminded of what it is to snore.
-The revelation of the participants readings, hearing a poem by your new dishwashing friend that makes you gasp, then cry, then laugh again, leaving you full of wonder.
-Laughing at Robert Gipe’s masterful introductions in the evening readings, performance events unto themselves.
-More revelations as the instructors read their work. Damn, they can write, words so evocative and well-aimed that they can split a tree in two.
-Feeling that time has stopped as you sit in your workshop class, finding facets in your own work you didn’t know were there, like that reoccurring dream you have of finding new skylit rooms in your house.
-Hiking the loop up behind the highest cabin, looking for the box turtles that always tell you the same thing: you already have everything you need. Just write.
-Listening to the keynote speaker after an unforgettable Appalachian feast. Such as Nikki Giovanni beginning her talk with “The penis is in trouble y’all”. And the glory of Dorothy Allison’s thunder and lightning, her gentle rain and the sun coming out, her benediction shooting us from the cannon: ‘Now get the fuck out of here and write!’
-Partaking of holy communion in the ritual reading of Jim Wayne Miller’s “The Brier Sermon”, a poem that exhorts us: ‘You must be born again`.
And we are, every year.
We wondered, I wondered, each of us wondered- would any of this survive the 2020 Pandemic edition?
I had my doubts. For one thing, there would be no journey. There wouldn’t be planning, packing, securing the household for my absence, loading up the car and pulling away. There wouldn’t be the long drive from the flatlands, to rolling farms, to foothills and off the highway into the mountains. I wouldn’t see my cell service come and go, pass the signs for Frozen, Typo, Flat, Mary, Dice, Pigeonroost, Rowdy and Dwarf. I wouldn’t rejoice when I finally get WMMT on the dial, wouldn’t feel my heart quicken when I got to Hazard, frown and shake my head as I passed the Lost Mountain, smile the rest of the way up the Daniel Boone Parkway, still refusing to call it Hal Rogers, positively sing as I take that turn past Yoder’s, down the big hill into Hindman, turning left onto the James Still Highway at the Midee Mart and right again over the bridge spanning Troublesome. And there I am, looking for a parking space and scanning the porch at May Stone- who is already sitting there rocking away, waving as the cars pull in?
Clicking on a Zoom link is a poor substitute.
And yet- it was there after all. The Hindman Heart. I felt it pounding as I clicked on the links. My friends and teachers were there and new folks too. Their talent and courage and generosity touched me even as I sat curled up in the armchair by the writing window with my cat Dr. Wilson. We had our classes, the daily participants readings, the evening readings. We had nightly Zoom hangouts with conversation and music, the evening beverage of your choice. My young friend Clayton started a Zoom breakfast club that quite frankly was the highlight of the week for me, coming closest to the pleasure of sitting down and sharing a meal together. I hadn’t realized how much I needed company. We even had suggested attire for each day- formal wear one day, western wear the next and so on until we had a bona fide spirit week. Again, I hadn’t realized how much I needed play.
For the first time this year, Zoom felt homey to me, a comfort. This is miraculous, because after teaching online all spring and having my second job online as well, I have come close to flinging my small screen overseer into the fish pond on many occasions. Sure there are ways that the virtual workshop might be improved if, god forbid, it has to be online again next year, but the school did an amazing thing in building a platform that could support the spirit of the workshop in this grand online experiment. We even managed a reading of The Brier Sermon.
“They say people can go blind gradually.
They say people can go deaf gradually.
Lose the sense of taste little by little.
They forget the shapes of leaves on trees,
forget the sound of the creek running,
the world just blurs, grows silent.
They forget the taste of coffee and all their food.
Now what would it be like if that sight were given back?
If they heard the creek running again, or a crow call?
If suddenly they could taste their food again?
Something is restored to them, a richness.
They’ve found something they didn’t even know they’d lost.
They’re born again to sights and sounds and tastes.
Oh, you must be born again.”
Were we born again? Here I leave the we and go back to just me.
Rebirth? No. But I have been given enough gas to get to the nearest service station. And I am learning how to create the space my own work requires so that I don’t lose my mind once and for all. Some folks were able to go off and get a hotel room or arrange things so that they had utter privacy as they engaged in the virtual workshop, others continued to work and fulfill family obligations while attending, most tried some sort of compromise between the two. When the children hollered ‘Mom! The dogs got into the garbage and it’s all over the house and they’re throwing up everywhere’, they hollered back down the stairs ‘I’m not here, I’m at Hindman!’ Those people are my heroes. But damn it’s hard to set those boundaries. For me there is tremendous mental resistance and guilt. I’m up against my own fundamental belief that my work is not nearly so important as working the jobs that pay the bills and tending to those I love.
If I don’t fight for the time, I won’t get it. No one else is going to hold that sacred space for me the way Hindman does one week out of the year. I have to hold it sacred myself.
At the beginning of the summer all sorts of little IED’s exploded in my road. Exhausted and depressed from the online school semester, there was the discovery that my daughter had successfully hidden the resurgence of her eating disorder, the failure of a class at college and the subsequent loss of financial aid for the coming year. She was in big trouble, all hands on deck. Weeks were spent wrangling her back into an Intensive Outpatient Program, having to play the villain to get her to eat again, and appealing the financial aid decision based on her learning differences, the pandemic and her mental health. Then there was the pain I felt in not being able to help my mother and her own pandemic isolation because I was spending so much time putting out the fires at my house. I watched my plans for writing retreat further and further down the calendar.
One night in mid-June, I felt particularly low. To distract and amuse myself, I pulled up the Randonautica app, an oracle adventure designed by quantum physicists. Set an intention, (you don’t enter it, you just think it), keep this in mind as you click on the app requesting a destination that is generated through random quantum calculations that I cannot even begin to understand. I have had remarkable experiences doing this, the interconnectedness of thought and manifestation on full display. My intention: Giving myself permission to write. I got a location that took me to this newish house on Rudy Lane, not far from my mother where I had spent the evening. It was a large house that appeared to be empty. I pulled into the circular drive but felt like I was trespassing, so I pulled out again, drove a little ways off and stopped the car to write my report in the app as being not meaningful. You win some, you lose some. I wrote ‘Just an empty house, maybe I’m missing something’. I decided to ask for a second location, I used my same intention with a great deal more mental intensity “to give myself permission to write, to make the space for it without guilt”. It seemed to take longer than usual to get a destination point. Then there it was- the exact same location I was given before. This had never happened before. I was stunned. Clearly I had missed something.
I did a quick search to confirm that the house was indeed empty- it had been sold only three days before. I went back, parked the car and went to the back of the house where the destination beacon blinked. There was a creek running right behind the house with steep banks shored up in places by caged rock to fight the erosion. The creek was nearly dry, (leap minnow, leap), but evidence was everywhere that it could be wild. It could be, well, troublesome. Of course. That’s where I give myself permission to write. That’s where I give myself permission to think only of myself. It was very green behind that house, thickly shaded by trees on the banks, the light beautiful as it faded. I quite forgot that I was in the middle of Louisville. There was a soggy deck off the back of the house that looked right over the creek. I walked up on it and then saw that there was a wooden footbridge across the creek, where the property expanded into an open field. I crossed the bridge. Permission to write. I need to cross Troublesome Creek here at home.
And that is what I am learning to do. It’s a struggle to override decades of programming. The virtual week at Hindman has given me the fuel to power on. I must cross Troublesome Creek for a time every day, speaking firmly into my own ear- You have nothing to feel guilty about, nothing to fear. Waste and lose no more time, poet. You must be born again.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Faith, Teaching | Tags: #HealthyatHome, #TeamKentucky, Covid-19, Easter, Quarantine, resurrection, spring
I heard the owl at 3am , softly calling somewhere outside my window- ‘Rise love, the world is here.’ I sat for a long time, leaning on the windowsill listening.
Like everyone, my little world has been upended. The carefully constructed fortresses of daily life were just castles made of sand after all. The lesson plans, the plays in rehearsal, the assessments, meetings, celebrations have all melted away. And I’m fine with that, more than fine, my heart swells with relief. There are concerns, there are hazards- worries over exposure, each decision to engage with the world outside my garden is fraught with dire consequences. How do I protect my daughter and my mother from both exposure and the depression of isolation? My daughter’s mental health balances on the edge of a dinner fork even on good days. Her eating disorder has been rallying strength, as has the urge to self harm. Some of these days have been hard indeed. I too must be careful not to fall down my own rabbit hole as I stare too long at the computer screen on some days, as all my teaching and work has moved to the virtual world.
But there is joy too, such joy! Time uninterrupted to meditate on beauty, earth’s unfailing dedication to life on full display as spring pushes up through the nurturing dark and blooms all around me. My heart sings with my good luck to live here in Her garden. Along with flower and leaf, the frogs have made it through the winter and now sun themselves on the rocks at the edge of the little pond. Bats have returned to the sky. Birds of every kind are busy courting and building their nests. I hear the owl every night now, calling me back to myself. I am being given both courage and time to tend to my own work, the secret work of my heart made manifest in the stories I am writing and the art I make.
I tend the garden yes, but the garden also tends me.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering | Tags: Cats, joy, Losing a beloved pet
It’s been pressing on me a month now. The loss of this sweet soul. Life barrels on, this last month especially, but he is never far from my mind. I came home late afternoon that Monday and opened the patio door to the cats as always, only there were only two. Oh no, I said out loud. I remember saying that out loud, I remember feeling my heart sink. I gave my Dashiel call, watching for him to fly down the hill as he always did, but there was nothing. I fed the others, walked the dogs in the darkness, calling and looking, calling and looking. I felt pulled towards the neighbor’s large yard, kept feeling like I was just on the edge of hearing Dash’s little voice. I strained to hear it. Nothing. The weather was turning awful, the temperature was plummeting, the rain was turning to ice and snow. Around the neighbor I went, calling. Front and back of the house. I went out again in my bathrobe, calling. I set out boxes with blankets in them in case Dashiel came to the door in the middle of the night and needed to keep warm. Several times through the night I got up and checked- was he there? Not in the night, not in the morning, not when I snuck home from school during my planning period so I could look in the daylight, not when I got home from school. Still I felt drawn to the neighbor’s large yard, thought I heard Dash calling from there. I texted my neighbor and sent him a picture, asking if he had seen him. The neighbor called right away. He was sorry, oh so sorry. He didn’t know it was my cat. Early in the morning on that Monday, my neighbor found Dash lying dead in the middle of their yard, being sniffed by their massive dog Tiny, a Great Pyrenees. Not mauled, just dead. My neighbor had one of his workers take the body out to their farm to be buried, he said. He didn’t know it was my cat. Dash had shed the collar I tried to make him wear. My neighbor was so very sorry.
Dash came to us, my daughter and I, in the early summer of 2017. I had just finished another bruising, punishing school year teaching theater in a school that used people up. It was a dreadful year for reasons both personal and national. I prayed and meditated for change within and without and it came in the form of a new place to teach, a place that I cherish. I needed to do some healing that summer. I needed rest and recharging and remembering who I was. I needed to get ready for a new incarnation. But the summer took a couple of turns. The first turn came when my friend Connie called and asked if I would consider fostering three kittens that she didn’t have room for but who urgently needed a home. I knew of one them already- a black kitten that other friends had seen being tossed out the window of a moving car in front of their house. My friends fished it out of the bushes where it had run to hide, but they couldn’t keep it because they were leaving on an extended road trip the very next day. So they called our mutual friend Connie, the animal rescue saint who works with the Shamrock Foundation to find homes for dogs and cats. The other two kittens were brothers, lured out of a derelict empty house in the Portland neighborhood. They were quite young and appeared to be all alone. Connie’s ark was full, over full I have no doubt, so she called me. How can anyone say no to kittens?
I love naming things. It’s a compulsion, an act of creation or more accurately, of recognition. Clearly the kitten tossed from the window of the car barreling down Story Avenue needed to be called Story. He certainly had one. Sleek, black, three to four weeks older than the brothers, Story was loving from the start. The brothers looked nothing alike, but they held their heads exactly the same when listening to interesting sounds. One brother was black with tiny flecks of light hairs, short haired and the smallest of all of them, the most timid too. He was called Speck. The last was our dearest boy. Fluffy, gray and taupe tabby markings, I suspected he would turn out to be a long haired cat. He was the one who pioneered hiding up inside the box springs of my daughter’s bed, to her horror. He was the one who darted to the door first when I came through to feed them. He was called Dash, short for Dashiel.
The kittens lived in J’s room until the stink from their litter box proved too powerful for her super smeller nose. They were moved to the TV room, shut away from the dogs and the other cats, who were none too pleased at this unpleasant development. And then the kittens were moved to my room (further alarming the resident cats) when the summer took its second, even stranger turn. Amos, a neighbor whose family I only knew casually from small talks in front of their apartment when I walked my dogs, came to talk to me, begging for immediate help. He and his family were being forced out of their apartment by a landlord who no longer wished to deal with them. People from his church were helping to secure another apartment for them, but it wasn’t ready yet. He showed me a worn manila file folder full of letters, receipts, contracts. He, his wife Patricia and their five year old daughter are from Nigeria and had only been in this country a short time. Amos is enrolled at the Southern Baptist Seminary, an institution I admittedly respect very little. His dream is to return to Nigeria in an evangelical capacity to bring the word and also community planning and stability to rural areas where there is so much turmoil and suffering. They live very modestly, unable to work much on student visas. They are supported by their meager savings and by the generosity of the church they joined in the US, their sponsors. Amos came to me to ask for shelter, a place to live until this new apartment was ready in a few days. My head swirled, the ground tilted, of course I said yes, how could I do otherwise? Still, I installed a lock on my daughter’s bedroom door, more to keep little Precious from being too much in there than from any other danger, but better safe. Amos and his family moved into the TV room and the kittens moved to my room.
It was only to have been for three days or so but it stretched into six weeks. This is a whole story unto itself, needing its own time and space in the telling of it. In short, the family slowly took over the house- the downstairs bathroom that had been my daughter’s was now theirs, the kitchen became Patricia’s domain, the house was permeated by the smells of the oily fish and meat stews she made which turned my vegetarian stomach, but hardest was the daily witnessing of the parenting philosophy at work on Precious who was never played with, never read to, never cuddled. There were a lot of tears. My daughter and I both did what we could to help Precious, and it seemed that her parents were relieved for us to play the role of her caregiver, but again, that is another story. We ceded ground. My daughter retreated to her room and then her friend’s houses and then went on their family vacations with them. I retreated to my room upstairs, eating there, spending time with the kittens. I shuttled them to their vet appointments, the Snip Clinic, played with them, fed them, slept with them. Dashiel fell in love with Mr. Darcy, the dog rescued by Connie who found a home with us in 2011. And Mr. D loved him back. I found homes for Speck and Story- Story went to the friends who rescued him in the first place and Speck went to a friend I had taught with. But I knew I could not be parted from Dashiel.
What was it about him that made it unthinkable to give him up? Perhaps it was his own insistence that he belonged. This was his home and we were his tribe. From the beginning, Dashiell adored Mr. Darcy, another refugee from Portland. While the other cats shied away from the dogs, Dash ran to them, especially Darcy. Dash would climb into the dog bed and knead Darcy’s stomach as Darcy looked up to me helplessly- What do I do about this? He bore it patiently. Over and over, Dashiel curled up and slept with him, tucked into Darcy’s curves.
Story went to his new home, Speck too and eventually Amos and his family left for their long awaited apartment, finally ready. Dashiel remained, expanded his domain to the whole house. Is there anything more delightful than a kitten exploring their world? It is a gift the young give the old- the chance to remember what a miracle the world really is, the chance to remember joy and feel it again.
Looking back I was always worried and fearful for him. Always it seemed he needed extra protection. He had a couple of viruses that required emergency trips to the vet- he sneezed, he ran fevers, he was lethargic. Then he was suddenly limping, his back end giving him trouble- had he fallen down the basement stairs? No one knew. Then he rebounded. I tried hard to keep him an indoor cat and succeeded for over a year. Dashiel always charged towards any life in the house. He tried to play with the older cats, ambushed them, ambushed the dogs, ambushed us, played with Darcy, tried to engage Johnny, our other dog. The other cats, who go freely in and outside, bore him no love. Piper Rose would have none of it and required a private place in which to eat her meals. But Henry gave in and accepted Dash as a playmate. So when Henry went out, and there is no keeping Henry in, Dashiel would try to go too. I did my best to block him, retrieving him when I wasn’t quick enough. Eventually I lost the battle. He went in and out with the others. Such joy was his! He quickly proved his prowess as a hunter and as an explorer. He did what the other two cats never managed- he found a way to get on the roof and reenter the house through second story windows. And when I had to set a live trap in the attic to catch the possums and raccoons coming in through a hole under the eaves, he managed to find that same hole, get in and get himself trapped, baited by his own cat food. Oh how that made me laugh.
He grew into a grand cat with the softest fur I ever felt, so lush and long. He spent a good deal of time grooming. He was fastidious, unlike his adopted brother Henry who really can’t be bothered. Henry wears a collar and tag that reads “I really do have a home” lest some well-meaning person takes him in when he’s out on one of his gallivants, thinking him some poor lost soul. Dash, in contrast, was a dandy through and through. His tail! As grand as a snow leopard’s, he carried it high, his proud flag of dandyism. He slept always on the bottom right corner of my bed on the folded Billy Bragg quilt, and it was a special joy to me to come into the bedroom to find him already there, his front legs stretched far out in front of him, one crossed over the other, as he was want to do. What a prince. He graciously let me stroke and kiss him, breathe in the smell of his fur.
One night he didn’t come back in from the outside and wasn’t there for breakfast in the morning. I had to go to work, but J found him later in the morning hiding under the chest of drawers outside the art room door. She texted me he was fine. But he was not fine. He could barely walk. He huddled under a piece of furniture in my office. He wouldn’t eat. Nothing seemed to be broken but his back end seemed to cause him pain. He had little pieces of bark in his fur. Had he fallen from a tree? Been clipped by a car? Had he been roughed up by a dog? I fed him broth and soupy wet food through an eye dropper. I watched his temperature. After a couple of days he was eating on his own, starting to move around. When he used the litter box I rejoiced. He got better daily. He showed little interest in going outside, until he recovered himself and remembered what was out there. And once again I couldn’t keep him in.
I trained him to come in the house in the evening by feeding him the much coveted wet food that I used to only parse out at breakfast. I would go out on the patio and call him in his special way, high pitched to carry up the hill ‘Dashy! Dashy!’- within seconds I’d here him crashing through the leaves as he flew, and I mean flew, down the hill to the door. I have never had an animal come to me so quickly when called. He was a blur, a streak of cat. No matter how dreadful my day had been, that moment was pure joy- him racing down, me swooping him up to hug and kiss, carrying him in to dinner. Such joy. And now he’s gone.
I fed him breakfast that Monday morning along with the other cats, and when Henry went out, he made a dash for it too. He ran right over into the neighbors, climbed their fence and probably ran to the dog who was running toward him, believing that dog to be his friend. Minutes later I walked right by there with Mr. Darcy and Johnny. In the darkness I saw Tiny over in the middle of his yard bending down to sniff something with interest. He must have something very interesting, I thought to myself, if he is not running to the fence to bark at us as he always does.
Oh Dashiel. I’ve been laboring over this post, been turning it this way and that, over writing, over thinking, trying to get a handle on why the pain of losing you is so very sharp and why it shows no sign of letting up. I guess it’s because there has been much darkness these past few years, navigating financial stress, too many jobs, my daughter’s mental illness, intense loneliness and fear. And there you were, flying down the hill to meet me or waiting there on the end of my bed at the end of long days. You were such a light. It’s your joy I miss, your headlong youthful joy at living. I will be on the lookout for that joy. If I can just keep looking, I will find it again. That was your great gift to me, sweet boy. Thank you.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering, Uncategorized | Tags: INheritance, Junk Pick up, Remembrance
Piled high by the curb were most of my neighbor’s belongings, it seemed, set out ahead of the scheduled junk pick up. Set out for all to see, set out for strangers to pick over what might be wanted. I never knew her name though we spoke often as I passed her house on my daily dog walks. Her pin headed dog was named Sugar. It was a dreadful little dog. Its middle grew and grew while its tiny head seemed to shrink. It snarled and growled from its doorway like a miniature hellhound every time the dogs and I rounded its corner. I lived in dread of the day it would finally burst through the storm door, but that day never came. I could see the signs that my neighbor was failing. And now, there were her things piled high- clothes, family photos, furniture, framed embroidered pictures asking God to bless this little home, all things no one in her family found worthy to keep, the opposite of a burial mound.
My mother has been carefully, methodically, clearing out drawer and closet and shelf. She gifts treasures to us, a little at a time, or gives away to Goodwill or St. Vincent DePaul. She is in good health, but at eighty, she cannot help but think of closure. There will be no pile on the curb for her, none of us could bear that, least of all her. Recently I’ve been gifted boxes of postcards, written over a hundred years ago to my Great-Grandmother and her daughter, my grandmother. I’ve sorted and put them in an album to pour over at odds times, wondering about the hand that wrote them, the hand that received them. To whom will I gift them? Will I have the forethought to do it before I am gone?
I hope to be like Callie Rudy, who was closer to God than anyone I’ve known, full of twinkle and strength and patience. She lived her life in service to others and when she died at eighty-three, they found she had boxed up and labeled all her things so they would find their way to whom they were meant for. Not a thing left undone. She was found in her backyard one morning, after her final act of taking out the garbage.
Filed under: Art of the Day, memory memorabilia re-membering, Teaching | Tags: energy systems, gratitude, hearth fires, october, teachers, the laws of thermodynamics
You do not know this, Mr. van Tine, but I think of you every time I light October’s first fire. The morning’s temperature has at last fallen enough to warrant the season’s first hearth fire. It is a holy event, a rite really. I build it carefully- newspaper saved from last year, kindling I gathered from the yard throughout the summer, logs that have been waiting in the wood pile a long time for their turn at transformation. I build the layers, the easiest to burn at the bottom, and strike the match. It never ceases to be a wonder, how flame springs into being and takes over paper, pinecone, twig, branch and log. How flame has no mass and yet I can see it. How it releases energy from the sun that trees have converted over decades to trunk and limb and leaf. I stare into the flames and think of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, yes I do, Mr. van Tine.
I remember how my mind was blown in the lessons you taught in 10th grade biology, over forty years ago now Mr. VT, and we are still here! How energy is neither created nor destroyed, how there is a tendency to go from order to disorder, to entropy. This second bit distresses while the first is a comfort. We humans want so much to be assured that something lasts forever, that we, somehow, will last forever. But we have most certainly tipped the balance towards an ever increasing rate of entropy, throwing earth’s whole beautiful system of creation, growth, decay, renewal into jeopardy. The third principle states that systems which use energy best, survive. It is both a personal and a global challenge to keep this in mind. I think of all this Mr. VT, every year I build the first fire. I will not even begin to tell you how often I think of Darwin and the theory of natural selection, how it has driven enormous collaborative art projects and given me much to think about as I follow my solitary paths.
How marvelous is this world! I’m sitting in a rocking chair made of hand bent wood by a Polish Appalachian craftsman, my feet are resting on a wooden stool my uncle, now gone from us, made years ago from a tree on his Indiana farm, warmed by the tree stored energy of the sun in the hand hewn stone fireplace I am so very lucky to live with, and I wonder about love. It too is neither created nor destroyed, or so I believe. It is an energy that can be absorbed, stored and released over and over again. I believe it is possible to live in the uninterrupted flow of love, I have the saint’s ambition to do so. Though I fail again and again, I do keep trying. So say I to the flames this morning.
It is a wonder Mr. van Tine, isn’t it? On mornings like this, I cannot hold the world close enough.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Teaching, Writing | Tags: life of the spirit, making time to write, threshold worlds
It feels like most of the world lives full out sunlight lives. Everything is clear, not that it’s easy, but the edges of everything are solid, the tasks are defined, the consequences are known, the paths are marked, unknown territory can be mapped. The sun comes up and people hurl themselves into the motion of their days. It is assumed that what is seen in the light of day is, in fact, reality. It is assumed that this is the reality that everyone lives in. It is taken for granted that this is just fine with everyone.
I can do it, live in the daylight world. I can make my to-do lists, tick off the tasks one by one. I can line up my ducks and count them, teach my classes, assess the progress, attend the meetings, write the curriculum, send out the emails, gather the supplies, clean up the mess. I can schedule schedule schedule the days, weeks, months. I can parse out my minutes to each allotted task and watch the calendar pages fly away like a murmuration of starlings.
I can do it, I have to do it, but it is exhausting and it chafes because there are other worlds to live in. There are other worlds in which my soul longs to reside. Too long in the sunlight world and my soul cowers, my heart raises its shields. Too long in that solid what-you-see-is-all-that-is world and I lose my way to those other lands.
Perhaps they may be called threshold worlds- the liminal world of dawn and twilight, the world of darkness that is not ruled by our sense of sight. In those threshold worlds, the pulse of the interior life is strong. There are forces at work that cannot be seen but whose effects can, like wind moving through the tree canopy. Beauty is one of those forces. Love is another. Perhaps they are the same thing. All of creation talks and sings songs to itself in the threshold world. Songs of possibility, of transformation and of forgiveness. It goes on whether humans are there to mark it or not. I long to hear this song and I’m always on the lookout for signs that it’s there whether I can hear it or not- the fallen hawk feather, the sighting of a fox in the city, the sudden cool wind that changes everything. I move through the daylight world with my head cocked, listening for creation’s song. It is very hard to hear most days, drowned out by the ticking of our clocks, the alerts, the ringtones. Sometimes the best that I can do is remember- this is not all there is.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Uncategorized, Writing | Tags: Rockefeller, wealth, Williamsburg
At dawn I watch all
the little generals muster
for the morning’s battle.
The fleet of silent carts
line up under the pines,
loaded with their arsenals.
The solemn marshals
(no enlisted on this hallowed ground)
are dressed in battle uniform:
Collared cotton shirt,
short sleeve,
solid pastel,
a loose but tailored cut
designed to cover
prosperous bellies
and tuck neatly
into khaki shorts
belted with monogram
leather or needlepoint,
topped with visor, ball cap
or the occasional
Havana fedora
of the five star veteran among them.
“My ball will go in the hole, gentlemen,
however far away it appears,
despite the trap of sand, water or bunker.
I have the measured strength
and long vision,
the mental steel
and mighty club
to do it.
Mark my words gentlemen,
my ball will penetrate the hole
long before yours.”
Let the generals play.
Perhaps the privates,
lieutenants, sergeants,
and captains will be left
in peace for a time.
Let the generals play.
It is a beautiful day.
Suspicion of wealth is a default setting of mine, yet here I am enjoying immensely what immense wealth has created and afforded- The Williamsburg Inn, Colonial Williamsburg, William and Mary. Eternal thanks to my sister for this glorious weekend together, my first real vacation in years. Wealth can be like the Grandmother Tree in the forest- the biggest and grandest tree that disperses its amassed treasure of nutrients into the roots of everything around it as it slowly declines and passes away.
The Fox at Dawn 