“symbolizes wisdom, intuition, and the ability to see beyond deception or hidden truths.” (google)
it was on our way back on an out-and-back trail. we had already had the good fortune of hiking in the sun, our shadows falling on reedy marshes and fallowed underbrush of the forest, deer crossing our path.
the trail was muddy. i was watching where i was stepping.
and there it was.
a solitary feather.
a search told us it was an owl feather.
though there are resemblances to hawk feathers, i’m not minding the idea of going with owl – particularly since the symbolism is timely.
so, let’s go with that. (of course, i do welcome any birder’s opinions on this.)
we left it there, on the trail.
but we carried with us the good news of its symbolism, the wisdom, intuition and ability to discern truth. heaven knows we all sure need that right now.
in these times of unbelievable chaos, unbridled deception and grift, rank, depraved cruelty, a country being unconscionably deceived by its appallingly incompetent leaders, we are certain to need to stand in earnest wisdom with clear-eyed views of what is real versus what is propagandized or outright lying. we need to move with grace through all these challenges, protected against vast negative energy, step by step toward transformation and renewal in our country.
maybe we should all carry a virtual owl feather in our back pockets as we walk through these days.
so we are in the habit of celebrating. not just the big stuff.
particularly in this time – when all the world is in chaos, when we all have no idea what horrific thing will happen next, when there is so much trepidation about losing this country’s very democracy, we – now – celebrate the little stuff as well. and, as you can tell by this photograph, we -big-time – know what we’re doing when it comes to celebrations.
we know that most people choose to, well, maybe go out to dinner as a celebration, or maybe go away on a trip or to an event of some sort, maybe go shopping and splurge on a purchase of something long-awaited for.
we tend to be a little lower-key than all that. but even our most modest celebrations are still celebrations.
it doesn’t take much. in our zeal, we hiked two loops of our river trail. though suddenly exhausted from the toll that anticipation takes on adrenaline, happy kept us going, step by step. breathing the fresh air and feeling the sun – warm enough to take off our jackets – was its own cause for joy.
yes…on this particular day – last week, i might point out – we were beyond excited. our celebration was actually quite thrilling and filled our hearts.
and so we splurged on a $2.79 bag of munchos (on sale at woodman’s) and poured two glasses of wine. we pulled two adirondack chairs from the garage and sat in the 50-plus-degree-sun out on the patio and clinked. when the clouds covered the sun and the wind picked up we went inside, to sit at the bistro table by the window in our sunroom. with dogga on the rug at our feet, we lit a new gift, a soy candle in beautiful cut glass.
and we settled into festivity.
“enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” (robert brault)
it was his birthday this weekend. he turned 65, a big-deal-birthday. my sweet momma always paid special attention to those big-deal-birthdays – especially the ones that were divisible by 5.
we had plans for friday – particularly because his actual birthday falls on busy valentine’s day – it just figures he is a valentine’s day baby! we were going to go to the milwaukee art museum and then to the public market, to sit at the counter and lunch on divine gumbo.
dogga woke us up early, not feeling well.
and that changed everything.
for this man – this man full of heart – whose very heart aligns with mine – with whom i have mutually – side by side – endured all matters of life for years now – decided he’d rather stick close to home, to be by our dogga so we can keep an eye on him and love on him.
in years hence, it will never matter to either of us whether we went to the art museum on friday, nor will it matter if we had gumbo that exact day. what will matter is that we let our love of our beloved dogga lead us and we prioritized with him in mind.
and this is just one of the reasons i know that “i don’t care about any words on the map besides you are here.”
some stuff just doesn’t matter. and where we spend time together is one of them, for anywhere on the map together – is home together.
i grant you – yes – that we would love to tool about the country – heck, the world – and explore and hike and photograph and write and paint and play music and create joy as we go. we’d love to immerse in places near and far – and feel the actual place, its actual culture, its energy, its gifts – for all places have innumerable gifts to offer.
but at this moment in time, we are happy – content – to be home in our old house, to be sharing our home with each other, to be sharing our home with our old dogga.
there will be other moments. there will be other places to see. there will be maps-with-words and plans and adventures.
right now here – with each other – is the most important place ever.
i tore out the page from the stio catalog because the words spoke to me: “chase bliss”.
a few days ago we spent some significant time in the emergency room. i told the youngish doctor there that i could count the number of times in my entire life that i had been to the emergency room, likely on two hands. i do not take going there lightly and i trust that the brilliant minds gathered there – in that tiny ecosystem – will help me…not only in my pain and confusion, but in my fear as well.
i told him this because he kept cutting me off mid-sentence as i was trying to explain my symptoms and as i was trying to ask him questions. he acted as if i was undermining his authority. i was simply being a patient. the more he stopped me from talking, the more i knew i needed to advocate for myself. i told him that the first step in empathy is listening, to which he defended himself by telling me he had spent more time with me than anyone else, including “the guy in the next room who died and came back.” wow. we are not talking equivalencies here. we are simply talking good bedside/doctor-patient communication.
the moments when i felt inordinate and unexplained constant pain that i hadn’t ever experienced before were frightening. all i wanted to do on that gurney was try to understand it, treat it, feel normal and go home.
it’s now the next day, friday, a bit before this blog posts. i am sipping coffee. i can hear the birds outside near the feeder, black-capped chickadees, cardinals. i am grateful for the quilt, the dogga at my feet, d next to me. i am cautiously checking in on how i am feeling and giving thanks for much less pain, and – hopefully – an end to the crisis.
though not ready to spring out from under the covers, i am ready to chase bliss.
no joke.
it doesn’t have to be grandiose. it doesn’t have to cost money or require dedication beyond what i am capable of giving right now.
but bliss nonetheless.
i just downloaded a new book for us to read together. this is bliss.
we will fill the bird feeder again today and put seed on barney and the potting stand. this is bliss.
we will watch the flurries fall. this is bliss.
we are making dinner tonight for 20, a day late. this is bliss.
i’ll have a phone call with a beloved old friend this weekend. this is bliss.
next week we will gather with our dear friends to start watching the entirety of the seinfeld show together. this is bliss.
we plan to make irish guinness stew for the up-north-gang in our stew-agogo early in the week. this is bliss.
we will wander about in our old house, cleaning and cleaning out. this is bliss.
we will bundle up and traipse out onto our favorite trail. this is bliss.
have a little text exchange with the girl and the boy. this is bliss.
lay on the floor and hug dogga. this is bliss.
listen to george, mike oldfield, john denver, james taylor, arvo. bliss.
watch the olympics. bliss.
dance in the kitchen with d. bliss.
dream aloud plans for a little bit later. bliss.
breathe. bliss.
it’s not decadent. it’s not complicated. it’s different for everyone, everywhere, i know.
but in a world that is fraught, a world that seems to be listing toward the ruthless, the uncaring, the oppressive, the tyrannical – a harsh world – it doesn’t seem to be overstating that bliss becomes even more imperative than it already was.
to recognize it, to seek it, to freaking – and whole-heartedly – chase it.
why wouldn’t nature – in all its magnificent glory – wonder what in the hell is going on?
why wouldn’t nature – in its most minuscule and its most vast – its most discreet and its most deafening – stare down humanity, shocked at the impunity?
why wouldn’t nature – in its chugging-chugging ability to keep on keeping on – shake its head as the people, living within its generosity, destroy it?
why wouldn’t nature – working around its infinite challenges to maintain a healthy and centered balance – be infuriated at so many unresolved conflicts, so much bigotry, so much extremist agenda?
why wouldn’t nature – in its symbiotic synergy – be aghast at such lack of cooperation, such disregard to interdependence?
why wouldn’t nature – in its innate ability to BE love – drown in tears of devastated sadness?
“this is our moment … to meet a whole lot of hate with a whole lot of love.” (minneapolis mayor jacob frey)
truth be told – as far as i’m concerned – it is never NOT the moment.
i am horrified to see footage of the minneapolis neighborhoods under siege, horrified that – in these days in this country – homeland security is taking over the homeland and decimating any security people might feel, horrified to think about the actual people walking those streets, living in those conditions, horrified at the violence, horrified at the lies. our daughter went to the university of minnesota. she loved the university and minnesota, both. though i must say that i am grateful she graduated long ago and is not now in those terrifying conditions, i am heartbroken and enraged for those who are.
just as horrified as i am as i think about our son in chicago – walking the streets where this country’s government rabidly storms around, terrorizing anyone who falls in their particular we-hate-you list.
just as horrified as i am to think about family members who live scattered about this country who continue to cheer on and revel in the insanity and vileness of this administration, the brutality of the actions taken against real live people.
just as horrified as i am to think about relatives in finland, in norway, in spain, in the uk, anywhere in this world under the sun – people living in other countries, countries that are finding themselves targets of the abuse of this country – OUR country – who are astonished by the power-hungry attempts at changing the world order – with the potential of forever-devastation, at eliminating any peace that might exist between nations.
just as horrified as i am to think about my parents, both of whom now occupy a different plane of existence, both of whom i am certain are disgusted with the hideous regime at the helm of a country whose democracy for which they fought.
what in the absolute hell?
if you are one of those people who believe that hate – this kind of hate, any kind of hate – is the foundation upon which you build your house, please do not contact me again. you have lost perspective. you have lost the whole point of living.
it is a raw clay plate dating back to the 1940s. signed by the artist in 1947, four years after my parents married, two years after world war II ended. the painting depicts a scene that i would guess most of us might yearn for: idyllic, quiet, a dirt driveway to land next to a lake, a house, a barn, aspen trees. really simple. really beautiful.
along the bottom edge of this plate – its paint peeling from lack of firing finish – is what appears the artist’s monogram logo and the number 47, clearly the year this decorative plate was completed.
and therein is the problem.
for there will never – in our lifetime – be a number more burdened by foul memories. there will never be a number that has caused more pain, more divisiveness, more rifts, more sadistic cruelty, more self-serving agenda-ized policy that undermines the potential goodness of this country, even in the context of the greater global world.
that number – i wish it was not on this plate.
just like i erase the word “great” every time i write it. just like the word “tremendous”, the word “ballroom”, the acronym “maga”, the word “woke”, the words “better than anyone else”, the word “fraud”, the word “pardon”. just like red hats. just like the american flag. just like the thought of congress or the supreme court. just like alternative facts and people talking over, talking over, talking over others asking questions. i wonder how i might ask others if they want frozen water in their glasses without using the word “ice”. i wonder how we will fare in the future with so much ptsd on our plates.
there will be fallout from all this. and much of it will cause a great number of people in this country much long-term angst. not withstanding actual suffering of people far and wide, we will suffer the use of words, the turn of phrase, the sight of the white house, viewing the vast footage taken at the nation’s capitol on january 6, 2021. we will suffer the stripping of rights, the stripping of conscience, the stripping of truth, the stripping of sheer morality, the stripping of democracy. we will shudder to hear recordings of certain voices; we will turn away from the video of people’s faces twisted – contorted – by hatred, vitriol, bigotry.
we will need time to heal. we will need quiet to heal.
it was after a photo shoot – for pictures with which to list it for sale – that i discovered it.
this old rocking chair had been with him for decades. his studio chair, he bought it in a colorado mountain town and it traipsed along with him, re-homing down south, to los angeles, to seattle. it was one of the few items – outside of paintings – that made the cut when we moved him here in a budget truck.
when it arrived here it became a studio chair once again, tucked into his basement studio next to the rocking chair in which i rocked my babies.
but now, in the process of cleaning out and going through, he has decided it has run its course. this beautiful chair needs restoring. caning is missing and, if someone rathers finished over organic, it needs sanding and some good varnish. with really good bones and a decade of life-patina, it’s ready to move on.
we brought it upstairs for the shoot and i took photos of each angle and turned leg. doing research on mission style rockers like this i came across where to find identifying information. so i went back out into the living room to look more closely.
and there it was.
the word “wisconsin”.
to say i was a bit stunned would be an understatement.
diving into it, i discovered that this chair was made by the wisconsin chair company in port washington – just up the lakefront from us sometime around the early 1900s.
this chair – after a century of domestic travel – had come home.
i asked him if he wanted to keep it – knowing this new detail of the chair’s history. he said it was still time for the chair to move on, to be loved into renewal.
i’m wondering if this rocking chair had anything to do with david finding home – after a lifetime of living other places. if this chair somehow had strong enough ties to this place that it created the circumstances in which we met. if this chair had a gravitational pull back to wisconsin so strong that it brought david here, instead of the reverse. if this rocking chair brought him home.
about this week: there is a peril, it seems, to writing ahead these days. we had decided that this week – the first full week of a new year – we wished to use images of light as our prompts, we wished to linger on the possibility of light, of hope, of goodness. though our blogposts might stray from that as we pen them, it was without constant nod to the constant updating of current events – a mass of indefensible, unconscionable acts. we pondered what to do about these blogposts we had written and decided to keep them. we hope that – whether or not any absence of the happenings of the day, whether or not the chance these written words seem somewhat inane at this moment – you might know that those events – of corruption, illegality, immorality – do not distill or distort our intention – to bring light and hope to this new year – the first days of which bring more insanity and unnerving instability. we are still holding space for light.
and so…
on the coldest of days, in any weather, we have gone down to the beach to dig a big contractor-sized pail of sand. once you have waxed bags, sand is the first thing you need for luminaria.
we’d add a couple cups of grainy sand to each bag and then center a votive candle into it for a flame that would linger for several hours.
for a few years we’d line them up on the sidewalks along our street – on both sides – to bring light in the latest of christmas eve hours, to gather a whole bunch of people together, to celebrate around a couple bonfires in our driveway.
even on the coldest of nights, we loved our new tradition.
until the pandemic.
since then our luminaria have been set up in our backyard, small groups of dear ones or just us watching them glow into the night.
this year – a rainy eve – we lit them inside our house. and we simplified.
waxed bag, glass votive, tea light candle.
no sand.
there was no reason to believe that our luminaria might tip over or blow away. so, we simply didn’t need the sand. we didn’t need anything to weigh down the bags. they were still ever-so-captivating.
in these days now since the holiday we have continued to clean out, to sort, to ponder things to keep, things to no longer hold onto.
each and every thing we donate or sell or discard has made me feel lighter. even the tiniest bric-a-brac that finds its way into the “go” pile has given me reason to celebrate.
space.
more space.
less begets less. it’s invigorating, refreshing, addictive.
each new piece i am pondering ends up on our dining room table. it has become the staging ground for decision-making. it has become the weigh-station…the place to weigh if what is weighing us down holds weight for us.
this will go on for a while. there is much to sort. as you know, thirty-six years in one house – a house with a basement and an attic – means there is a lot tucked in all the nooks and crannies.
but there is time. and in this time during which i am touching all these pieces of the past, i have a chance to touch all the emotions of these times-gone-by as well.
and so, it becomes a time of letting go. letting go of stuff, letting go of unnecessary goopy angst, letting go of emotions that get in the way of greeting the new days of what’s next.
the three luminaria in front of our fireplace stayed lit for a couple hours. without the challenge of the wind, they burned brightly. we turned off the room lights and sat in a living room illuminated only by happy lights and tiny tea light candles.
sinking in under furry throw blankets, we reveled in this place we call home, grateful and cozy.
he asked me as we hiked the river trail on christmas day. it was brisk, but we had warm coats and gloves, turtles and boots so we were cozy enough to be out there for a few hours. “what would you like to see in the new year?” he posed as we rounded the icy bend in the woods.
heidi and i had a phone chat. it wasn’t really long but she told me of a sentiment she received in a holiday greeting card. “may peace gently find you and fall upon your heart.”
we talked about how – instead of going out to seek peace – this wish she had received was one that simply – and gently – graced her with peace. we talked about how feeling peace fall upon you – like the softest snowflakes falling from a winter sky – would impact us.
and so, this.
peace.
in answer to d’s question on the trail, i listed all the things i would like to see resolved in the new year. i listed all the things i would like changed in the new year. i listed all the things i might really want in the new year – to do, to accomplish, to try, to find. i could have also listed things that might make this a better world. i could have also listed things that might bring balance back into people’s lives. i could have also listed things that might make people conscious, compassionate, moral, in their right mind again.
and peace.
there are only two more days left of this year, three if you count today. i wonder what i might do with these days as i approach next year.
i wonder what i might let go of in order to allow space for peace to find me. i wonder what i might reflect on in order to feel peace falling upon my heart. i wonder what i might commit to in order to hold that peace close, to let it simmer and grow.
reverse threading 