“the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.” (a. solzhenitsyn)
it isn’t without hesitation that i speak now of september 11, 2001. eighteen years ago today. both yesterday and an eternity ago.
there is a dividing line that is the place of before and after. in many ways, this date, september 11, 2001, marks that line. a time when, before which, we innocently and trustingly got on airplanes to fly to destinations we anticipated with great joy. a time when, before which, it didn’t occur to us to be wary in crowded places, to know how to exit, to navigate fear, let alone terror. a dividing line.
but the truth of it is, there has always been good and evil. the division has always existed. history demonstrates that evil – in all its iterations, big and small – rears up like a wild stallion, flailing at goodness, rejecting compromise.
and when i look around, at the world, at our country, at this little island microcosm, i see that our collective hearts have not learned. it saddens me to know that as my children continue to grow, adults in 2019, this has not changed.
solzhenitsyn’s quote continues: “And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”
i pray that this ‘small bridgehead of good’ will cross the dividing line and, like a snowball rolling downhill across a field of white, will grow…eventually bigger than any iteration of evil. it’s our only hope.
we are living the contrast principle. the elementary-school-workbook-page-which-one-doesn’t-fit principle. that can actually serve you well or it can be the bane of your existence. i’ll allow you to decide which one you think it is for us.
we are not from here. we do not have roots that go back a generation, two or three generations, seven generations. we weren’t born here, nor have we been coming here for decades on vacation. this is a new place for us. we chose to come here. and we came here out of great and positive intention.
when i first saw the ad for the position we ultimately accepted, we got excited and were instantly full of ideas and possibility. with our backgrounds, our education, our professional experiences, it seemed a perfect fit. with our artistry, our passion, our zeal, our energy, our ability to facilitate positive change, it seemed a perfect fit. but that assumes a “fit” and it assumes trust and it assumes the best of the contrast principle.
we work to create relationship, to mend the crevasse between arts organizations and between groups of people, to structure and build community and let the arts rise. we brainstorm and read and study – new initiatives, data of the past, stories of success and stories of failure. we strive to re-commit each day, choosing to step past the rifts, past the dysfunction, past the you-don’t-belong-here-ness of it all.
because we did choose it. we chose to be the daisy in the field of black-eyed-susans. we chose to be the new in the old. we chose the contrast principle. it would just be nice for it to be a tad bit easier.
when packages arrive here, you get either a phone call or a text from the ferry dock. you are told that a package will be arriving and that you can pick it up after 4:45 at the ferry dock office. it’s pretty exciting, especially when you don’t know what it is. you arrive, curious. if you are in the back room of the dock office, you are likely surrounded by amazon prime boxes, because amazon prime is definitely a thing here on island. with a $53 round trip ferry price tag for the two of us to go shopping off-island, paying zero for delivery on items you can’t buy here anyway makes total sense.
last week we got a call. it was the thursday of a for-various-reasons-really-rotten couple of weeks. david had been having high fevers for over a week and we had to go off-island to a clinic for some bloodwork, which eventually revealed that he picked up lyme disease in the previous weeks here. exhausted and shocked, we attempted to stay patient and treat his painful, confusing and somewhat scary symptoms while we waited for those results. jen and brad knew we were waiting and they knew we were having some heftily trying days.
we left for the ferry dock at 4:30, our pace slow, watching for the sweet leggy deer that wander into the road. david went in to get the package. he came out with a big box, from wine.com, with the words: “fact: your day just got kind of awesome.” six bottles of our favorite friday-night-potluck wine were inside with a note of love. you can bet that as early that evening as was acceptable, we opened one of those and toasted our dear dear friends and our gratitude for them. kind of awesome.
we have wonderful friends at home. we consider ourselves very fortunate. 20 was just up here for a couple days, replenishing groceries for us, sitting and talking and having the kind of conversation only people who have known each other for years have. it was kind of awesome. the up-north-gang is coming this week and we can’t wait. they will bring snacks and laughter, hugs and listening ears, perspective and big heart. they asked for a list ahead of time, of things we might need that we don’t have access to. our days with them will be kind of awesome. back at home, our friends help take care of our home, assisting us from afar. michele and john mow our lawn, loan their bike to my girl, ask how they can help. linda and jim make us food and pour generous glasses of wine at the drop of a hat. dan brings a new dehumidifier. kind of awesome. there are too many people to list. there are too many people to thank. which is, in and of itself, kind of awesome.
today, with a deeply sombered heart, i am aware of a young woman who is losing her grasp on life. with the thinnest of thread she clings, struggling against a plethora of sudden medical emergencies. i don’t know the whole story. i just know that this young woman, with a huge life force, may be moving on to a different plane of existence. and it very well might be today. today. i think about that. today. toDAY.
every day we have the opportunity to help make someone’s day kind of awesome. we can choose that or we can choose to perpetuate something different. we can gift someone with kind words, kind deeds, or we can be, well, rotten. we can ignore people’s hearts or we can tend to them.
it’s the second time this week i have quoted john denver. surrender. sweet surrender.
this painting in david’s HELD IN GRACE series is called SURRENDER NOW.
giving it over, surrendering, relenting, succumbing, relinquishing. all synonyms with slightly different connotations, slightly different surrenders. within yesterday’s grey-ness and vulnerability, surrendering seems most obvious, most necessary. the letting-go-of-control-and-trusting is difficult. the barricades between you and surrendering a fortress of spider-webbed resistance. we tend to fight surrendering. we tend to forget that we will be held within that yielding.
columbus turns 86 today. somehow, in his ever-joyous soul, he is surrendering to a changing journey. somehow, he is gracefully surrendering to the anguishes of dementia that slowly, but surely, take over. he laughs. he is quiet. he tells stories. he has forgotten stories. he doesn’t remember things. he remembers things. he knows how to do tasks he has done for years. he has no recollection of how to perform tasks nor does he recognize the familiar around him. he doesn’t remember us. he remembers us. we hug him and he surrenders to the tears he feels when we leave. he is held. by his wife jeanne, by his children and his family, by his friends, by those who love him. he is held. his surrender, whether intentional and thought-out or simply reactional grace, is like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air.
grey/gray rarely has such a line of demarcation, rarely has distinctive texture such as in this picture beyond our littlehouse yard. grey is simply gray. it is the zone of not right/not wrong. it is the living in-between-ness of doing life this way/that way. it is the space of not-knowing, asking questions, learning, being vulnerable. it can be uncomfortable. but it is necessary.
the most growing i have done has been in the grey zones. the times when i did not know, the times i made mistakes, the times choices were confusing, the times devastated by life events, the times moving forward meant tiny baby step by baby step, the times i was vulnerable.
i would add we can never know, or even approximate, what someone else is feeling without being unguarded ourselves. we can never know the unanswered questions, the struggles, the amorphous-ness of life without the grey. we can never create without the grey – for an artist languishes in grey, if for no other reason than to seek the color within himself.
it’s not often i see something and don’t think of a song to go with it. whether it is a pre-existing song or one i make up on a dime, i want to just break out into song, spontaneously. it’s a by-product of the trade.
the eagle that makes its way across our yard, zig-zagging across the bay, is no less inspiring. depending on the day, i hear the steve miller band singing “fly like an eagle…to the sea” or john denver’s “i am an eagle, i live in high country…”
if a song doesn’t occur to me rising out of the recesses of my brain i’ll make one up. ask jen and brad about ‘the butterfly song’ or ‘sitting in the sun’ or ‘bigotry’, just for instances. mary kay and i have had conversations about making up songs on the fly…in the car…in the shower….walking in the woods. these are not – you might be surprised – serious compositions that may make the cut for the next album. these are just meaningful-in-the-moment songs that you belt out and, mostly, promptly forget.
as the eagle passes over our heads, i am amazed to see it in ‘real life’. i pause and steve miller fights with john denver for attention in my head. i hush them both and just listen to the waves and the silence of this majestic creature catching the wind.
as we walked yesterday we were aware of how many butterflies were around us. flying, flitting, dining on nectar-filled wildflowers, they swirled around us and seemed to be going along, hiking with us. these amazing monarch butterflies during the summer breeding season will only live weeks. some will live a bit longer, migrating south to mexico when fall tips the tree-green of leaves to fiery reds and yellows and oranges.
i remember a day sitting in an adirondack chair in our front yard at home. many years ago now, it was mid-july, a sunny and warm day. stunningly, as i sat there a monarch butterfly flew past, close to my chair. it wasn’t but a few moments later that it landed on my knee. gently opening its fragile wings, it basked in the sunlight as i basked in its beauty. it was in no hurry to leave its perch on my knee and i was in no hurry to move. it seemed unconcerned about next. it seemed unconcerned about quantity of time. it was present in now. and now seemed enough. time seemed to stand still, my breathing slowed down, my worry forgotten as i watched this tiny creature drink in this very sun-moment.
“the butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” (rabindranath tagore)
time and again we are reminded of this: that every single moment counts. time and again we forget.
wishing you a day of monarch-inspired moments…drinking in the sun, gently fluttering your wings and flying unfettered.
it is against the odds that this tree clings to rock and doesn’t topple into the lake with a great splash and float away. instead it stubbornly holds on, a steadfast intention. the rock, the basso ostinato.
at a time when holding steadfast seems mightily important, i wonder about the questions we have been asked. will you stay? will you leave? will you love it here? in the midst of all the infighting, are you going to give up? will you hold on?
the answers may not be directly related to the actual intent of those questions.
will we hold on? yes, we will hold on. we will hold steadfast to our integrity. we will hold steadfast to the reasons we came here in the first place. to make a difference, to bring ideas and change, to apply that which we have learned, studied, experienced over at least 80 combined years of work, higher education and profession. to be honest and transparent and collaborative. to try and instill a sense of working together into a community divided by narratives too numerous to list.
will we hold on? yes, we will hold on. we will hold steadfast to our belief that people should be kind to each other, that people should not work around others nor should they undermine others, that people should instead lift each other up, not drive stakes into another.
will we hold on? yes, we will hold on. steadfastly. to honoring art, the driving force behind this initiative. to honoring creativity and the blossoming of beauty and wisdom, staunch tenets of artistry.
will we hold on? yes, we will hold on. steadfastly. to believing all is possible.
but, in answer to the real intent of the question asked us….will we hold on?
we will not hold on if others cannot join us in what is real, what is truth, what is most important. we will not hold on in the fire of pettiness or shameful self-serving underhandedness. we will not hold on, holding still while others take turns throwing rocks at us, at the real goals of this place, if those are indeed about art.
the answer to the question is not up to us. we can either cling to the rock, holding steadfast or we can topple, with a refreshing splash, into the lake and float away.
download HOLDING STEADFAST from BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL on iTUNES or CDBaby
i honestly (get the pun?) don’t think i need to say anything else about this. in light of everything, the subject(s) seems/seem most obvious to me.
(FLAWED CARTOON was drawn and created by david and our dear friend 20. their cartoons were timely, profound and, mostly, very very funny. the pig push puppet is a part of my push puppet collection, which, i am sure, you never imagined me having.)
some of you will think i am ‘bewildered, confused, perturbed, disconcerted’. some of you will think i am ‘not disconcerted’, that i am ‘unperturbed’. wow. how would you know? particularly if i only say, “i am nonplussed by this.” language! it’s nonplussing.
context is everything. it is the arrows pointing to clarity. it is the measure of the meaning of someone’s words. it is the scale of importance given to a statement. it is the framework within which to assess, to understand.
to be in a mature conversation, a mature communication, we seek out context, a fair understanding given the circumstances around a statement. we look for truth and transparency in words spoken to us, searching for a place we can meet on common ground and really talk. we provide context to others to clarify our point, to clear-stream muddy waters and avoid misunderstanding. context is everything. indeed.
but for right now, i will just say i am nonplussed.
reverse threading 