to sit in the dark. to watch the flicker of flame on the yard torches. to stare into the bonfire. to listen to the crickets. to feel cool air brush your face. to walk barefoot in dewy-damp grass. to slowly swirl, in time to music, in time to your heartbeat, in time to deep breaths.
we all need a break.
instead of a mind racing-against-itself in the middle of the night, we need a dance with slow. we need a dance of hope. we need a dance of release.
do you remember how to slow dance…in the middle of the night?
even in the bleakest of times, even in the dark. the tiniest pinprick of light through an inky sky will remind us of the trillions of stars that are always there.
this world will never be the same. we need to ponder, we need to dream, we need to imagine:
a better place, a more fair place, a place that is based on equity and equality, kindness and compassion. a place that assumes virtue and intends the same. a place that protects its peoples, that encourages individuals to care for each other. a place that doesn’t incite rancor, celebrate the weapons of violence, or create enmity and spite. a place where the downtrodden are lifted up and those with excess are generous. a place where inhabitants don’t self-aggrandize or strategize to find ways for more-more-more, ways that take from those with less, ways that undermine those in need. a place that doesn’t normalize language of vitriol, hatred, and antagonism. a place where all races are equivalent, all genders are respected, all ethnicities are indistinguishably included. a place where the environment counts and sustaining it beyond our own time on this good earth is a priority. a place that recognizes the sacred in the out-of-doors, the borrowing of this dirt, this water, this air for the short span of time we are here. a place where we are always seeking ways to better life for each other, to enhance daily living, health, happiness. a place of truth. a place of goodness.
yes. this world needs your good imagination. or we will never get there.
quiet. we walk in quiet most of the time. even our longer hikes are quiet. it is a time of rest for us, rest from the noise of the rest of life, the noise of worry and angst, the noise of dispute, the noise of too much bad news, the noise of chaos. we listen to the birds and our footfalls on the trail. we listen to the wind and the sound of creatures rustling in the underbrush. the quiet calms us; the quiet lifts the cellophane from the magic slate cardboard, it shakes the etch-a-sketch and takes it all back to zero, back to start, back to a rainwashed driveway waiting to be chalked all over again.
having run out of everest, k2 and annapurna footage we are watching appalachian trail and pacific crest trail and john muir trail videos these days. on our own treks locally we decide which one of these to take, listing the specific merits of each. make no mistake, these are serious treks. the AT is 2190 miles from georgia to maine. the PCT is 2653 miles from the border of mexico to the border of canada. the JMT, joining with the PCT some of the way, is 211 miles through the sierras, high elevation pass after pass. clearly, the training needed would be intense. but, as we envision this extended trekking, we are drawn to the quiet. the noise of this world has become raucous and the woods and the mountains seem to beckon with absolution, with grace, with rejuvenation.
there used to be a button on the cassette player that you could push that would quicken the pace of the tape to the end: fast forward. it would seem these trails, this quiet, like sleep, would fast forward through the dark and bring you to the light once again. these trails – this quiet – remind you that next comes.
and so, the noise of the day will cease. and you can listen to the sound of your footfall on a new day, ready to be chalked.
an empty canvas. a roadtrip with no predetermined destination. where do you go from here, davidrobinson?
an empty staff. a roadtrip with no predetermined destination. where do you go from here, kerrisherwood?
artists’ journeys, rife with intersections, foist decision-making upon us in our quest to create. simply starting is sometimes an uphill challenge. the questions are never easily answered. the value of what we are doing is never really clear. or is it – the value assigned to what we are doing is never really clear?
we have a daily decision, a choice to “begin anywhere” (john cage) and speak to the world around us and what we see through artists’ eyes. we write, we paint, we compose. we either create or we step away from the canvas, the staff paper, the qwerty keyboard. we know that nothing we do will change the world. we know that everything we do, like you, will change the world.
where do we go from here?
last night anderson cooper’s chyron read, “meanwhile, back in the real world.” the real world. a world fraught with chaos, trembling with the fever of a pandemic and the disease of racism. we, as people, turn to the sages of old for words of wisdom. we turn to art for honest displays of emotion. we turn to music for expressions of pain and hope, grief, despair, love, action, change, fear, questions.
questions like – where do we go from here?
Every day just gets a little shorter, don’t you think? Take a look around you and you’ll see just what I mean People got to come together, not just out of fear
Where do we go Where do we go Where do we go from here?
Try to find a better place but soon it’s all the same What once you thought was a paradise is not just what it seemed The more I look around, I find, the more I have to fear
Where do we go Where do we go Where do we go from here?
I know it’s hard for you to Change your way of life I know it’s hard for you to do The world is full of people Dying to be free So if you don’t, my friend There’s no life for you No world for me
Let’s all get together soon, before it is too late Forget about the past and let your feelings fade away If you do I’m sure you’ll see, the end is not yet near
Where do we go Where do we go Where do we go from here?
the chaos of irato. a passage of angry, passionate. a symphony of irate engaging us, challenging us, buckling us under in its fervor.
“take a break,” earth-the-breathless-conductor would admonish. “hold and rest,” earth-the-counselor would encourage. “slow down. be deliberate,” earth-the-sage would advise. caesura. fermata. lento.
acknowledging the rage. listening. resting in the questions. conscious mindful steps. measured decisive action. slowly leading the way with goodness.
i suspect mother earth, in its mother-earth-wisdom, would hear the symphony as transition. the space between before and after. a time of growth and change and every possible note, every possible emotion.
we listen, as earthlings, imperfect-in-every-way, and we get lost. to live in irato is uncomfortable. a cliffhanger.
but mother earth smiles. after all, she knows all about suspense and the big bang and butterflies.
chaos (physics): ‘behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions’
we were at a meeting up north this summer when mona said this, “even chaos has boundaries.” i jotted it down because it felt relevant. in the midst of a contentious situation we were trying to keep our ‘do what’s best for the organization’ hats on, trying to believe that there, indeed, would be an end to the chaos. committed to a peaceful forward-advancing plan, we kept both hands on the hats, guarding against a wave, a treacherous wave of onto-the-band-wagon-jumping, the aligning of two camps on different shores offering nothing of good import for the organization.
but there is a fine, fine line. an infinitesimal line of crossover – where one tiny change, one more jenga block, one more pick-up stick, one more stone in the cairn, tilts the seesaw and chaos reigns.
we face, today, a seesaw of the greatest sensitivity. like refraction, light passing through various mediums, the bend in light is dependent on the medium. the slightest change in density yields change.
clearly, we must be sensitive. the light we refract, our response, will determine what the next person has to work with. if we refract less light and more darkness, darkness will exist, will be pervasive. and darkness, in the way of chaos, sussing out change and a hole in the dam, will become exponential. where is critical mass, when the seesaw collapses, the cairn falls?
we must be sensitive. we must be responsible. we must respond in integrity, despite everything around us, despite the doubters, despite the rhetoric, despite the cavalierness, despite the political dogfight, despite the positioning of that ever-present caste ladder, doing what is best for each of us, for all of us. what i do affects you.
in our own worlds, for ourselves, for all, we can strive not to pull the wrong jenga block or move the wrong pick-up stick. choose your cairn-stones with care.
pax: the kiss of peace (latin); peace (ecclesiastical latin)
“pax,” he wrote to me. years ago, in a chaotic, somewhat scary time of my life, the word “pax” was an end-goal, security in an insecure world, the warmest blanket on a bitter cold day. it doesn’t just happen. there are people around us, some epicentered and some peripherally, who create a place where we can find this peace, even momentarily. their stalwart stance, their steadiness brings us back off the brink of angst. the smallest iota of peace, like a mustard seed, grows until we can balance back on our own feet, strong enough to walk on…with leaps or even baby steps.
this painting makes me think of one of those people in my own life. a dear deeply-valued friend, his help and his accessibility helped me deal with someone else’s craziness unfortunately directed at me. he was the lighthouse in that storm for me. he helped me feel safer so that i could find peace in the chaos.
for various reasons, we don’t always realize when we are someone else’s rock. we don’t feel central, we don’t feel involved, we don’t feel informed. but there are times we don’t know – times we plant ourselves into someone’s life and nurture them, even in the tiniest of ways – times we may never know how much what we said or what we did counted. times of giving peace to someone else, one of life’s most essential elements.
the most important tupperware – the pieces that i will likely save forever and ever – are the sippy cups with lids and the brightly colored small everything-in-a-bowl-bowls that The Girl and The Boy used when they were little. years into college, The Girl came home, went directly to the cabinet, took out a sippy cup, went to a drawer below, pulled out a lid, poured some juice into the cup, attached the lid and announced, laughing, “i don’t want to adult anymore.” if it were that easy to avoid, i suspect all of us would be using sippy cups fairly often. but oh…those sippy cups and those bowls. a trove of little-kid-memories, a rainbow of cups and bowls waiting for maybe the next generation.
my sister sold tupperware. well, at least that’s what i remember. she also sold mary kay products, so i wonder if i am getting confused. nevertheless, she has more tupperware than anyone i know, so i suspect i am right about her long-ago-sales-effort. as a result, i have tupperware that spans the years…clearish-white picnic-size salt and pepper shakers, an iceberg lettuce keeper, orange canisters in the closet, tools that zip the peel off oranges, section and core an apple, cut around the pith of a grapefruit, make gravy-making easier, things with lids that store other things. my hands can still feel working the push-button on the top of the decanter my sweet momma always used for iced tea.
this room – at the school days antique mall – appealed to both of us. all the tupperware was organized by color. it made it interesting and easy to be around. it felt less haphazard and more intentional. it made us want to look at it. there is another booth that we both cannot even think about entering; it is a chaos of piled articles, none of which stand out from the mess. the organization was something that, i’m quite sure, took some time, but it paid off. the investment in effort to make it appealing, the deliberate intention to be ordered made this booth more worthy of time spent. i appreciated that. it wasn’t lost on me that this organizing philosophy of tupperware could apply to most anything. taking one’s time, baby step by baby step, clean and organized and with a well-intentioned end goal in mind leads to an outcome far better than what any chaos could yield. hmmm. where else could that apply…..
i’m thinking that anyone who has ever wanted vintage tupperware or needs to replace a piece of their own collection will find it in this place. and, because of the neat, clean orderliness, they will purchase it, trusting the integrity of the piece in the sale. it’s much harder to think about purchasing a piece from the piled mess in a far corner of another room in the building. were i to want something specific to actually be able to use, i would not look for it there.
regardless, i have enough tupperware. all i really need is those sippy cups and those plastic bowls.
2. these are actual chairs selling in an actual barn at an actual farm where actual people go for an actual sale.
3. this is chaos to me (and maybe you), treasures to the owner.
4. i could only stare at this for a few minutes before i got uncomfortable. i felt like i had literally crawled inside the commotion-filled-clinging-onto-everything-psyche of someone who hoarded everything. it was just moments before i had to breathlessly leave the room.
5. the swedish death cleanse is not a bad idea. (from the book the gentle art of swedish death cleaning(margareta magnusson) “a charming, practical, and unsentimental approach to putting a home in order while reflecting on the tiny joys that make up a long life.”) clearing out all unnecessary items. putting things in order. learning to let go. sounds lofty. but, heck, we can try it.
6. so we’ve started purging, baby-step-by-baby-step. #purgingsoourchildrendon’thaveto #lessismore #notaseasyasitlooks #wholooksinthebasementstorageroomanyway #thready-nesshasitsdrawbacks #thedeathcleansemightbeoverrated #meh,atleastourhousedoesn’tlooklikethisphoto #we’lltryagaintomorrow
with the ad-campaign-delivery of beautiful jennifer garner, what’s in YOUR basement?
it was the first. the very first butterfly of this season. we both stopped to watch it as it freely flitted around the path in front of us. it felt like another harbinger of spring; maybe it’s really here. a few minutes later we stopped and sat for a few minutes. we didn’t talk; we just listened to the woods. the rest was soft and rejuvenating. the quiet was punctuated by birds and chipmunks. even a raccoon came out to wander. we got back up, ready for more hiking.
i distinctly remember a day i sat in the front yard. it was summer and, just like chicken marsala in this chicken nugget, there was a butterfly that came to light on my hand. it circled around and came back, landing on my knee, my foot. it felt like a message to me, a reinforcement to quietly sit in the sun.
this world is full of chaos and confusion, deadlines and worries. looking at the furrows lining people’s brows, it is obvious that we don’t take enough time to just rest, just sit, just soak in new energy, just let butterflies lead the way. good things will come.
reverse threading 