corrugated metal. i have a thing about it. i have a thing about texture. and a thing about capturing texture on film. i love design and white space and fonts, simplicity and the challenge of balance. this image started with the side of a building against clean snow. i felt (and still feel) connected to this building and what it represented, so its texture is beautiful to me; the image both inspires and saddens me. an experiment in contrast and point of view, it may be hard for a viewer to discern what the original pure image might have been. manipulating it, changing what the viewer would see is simply an orchestration of color and space, light and dark, angle and edge, point and counterpoint (melody) lines. skewing it changes the emotional response; although it remains fundamentally the same, it becomes something slightly different and is seen through a different lens. it’s all a matter of perspective.
how we look at anything. how we see anything. how the pieces come together, how we view them, how we sort, how we sometimes have to let go. it’s all a matter of perspective.
i remember thinking that this would be easy to write about when i jotted it down. in your right mind. ptom and i had discussion about being in your right mind; michael gerson had written part of a column about being in right mind….surely i would have something of depth to say.
now that this is sitting right in front of me, i find that it’s not so easy to articulate. or maybe it’s territory that feels too revealing, too human.
the moments when calm finally comes after the storm of anger and you are -again- in your right mind. the moments of blind dire panic of imagined-worst-case-scenario when your right mind eludes you and something else takes over until the adrenalin rush eases up and you can see again. the moments when absolute white-knuckled-fear precedes the back-to-your-right-mindedness. the moments of really bad choices and the post-choice-angst you feel, the remorse for a period of time you weren’t in your right mind.
and then there are the times when you know…you can feel everything align and you, in your right mind, are able to make a decision, to be rational, to be measured in good intention. your right mind is calm, cool, collected, more at peace with the reality around you. your right mind is accepting, forgiving, altruistic in empathy and goodness, benevolent and generous. your right mind is reasonable.
i have known, at least after-the-fact, the times i wasn’t in my right mind. they are times for which i, impossibly, wish a do-over, a chance to make all well. times that range the spectrum from angry words spoken to life decisions made without, well, my right mind.
i suppose ptom is right. you recognize the moments you leave your right mind. you ask for forgiveness. from others, from yourself. and you move on, a little wiser and maybe more capable of steeling yourself against being somehow out of your right mind. and michael gerson is also right. he said, “…in our right minds, we know that life is not a farce but a pilgimage…” “..in our right minds, we know that hope can grow within us…” “…in our right minds, we know that love is at the heart of all things….”
we are in our right mind; we are not in our right mind. we live life on the roller coaster of right-mindedness, for we are human and we sometimes are, in the complexities of the moments we live, incapable of mindedness. so we make mistakes. we learn. we grow. and we try again.
for “…we learn that we are neither devils nor divines.” (maya angelou)
“sometimes it takes longer to understand and appreciate what is around you.” (liner notes)
it’s the ah-ha! you feel when you realize that it’s ALL about perspective and even this moment will soon disappear into vapid space. yet this very moment is the one that counts. we simply can’t waste it. there’s no time to not appreciate it, no time to throw it away while yearning for the next.
i have come to realize this over and over and over, through loss, through mistakes, through absolute joy, through reminders spoken, seen, felt on an excruciating gut level. we are all repeated students of this lesson, for we are all human. we are all human, for we are all students of this lesson.
on an everest documentary we watched the other day there was this quote: “it’s not that life is so short. it’s that death is so long.” if that doesn’t make you spring into action – noticing life – i’m not sure what will.
there truly is nothing as powerful a game-changer as touch. the touch of your lips to the tiny fingers of an infant, the touch of your ailing parent’s hand in yours, the touch of an embrace by a beloved. when you are yearning to be held, to hold – waiting – and the moment comes, the briefest of hugs, the slightest brush of fingers against your cheek, the feather kiss on the top of your head, the swept-up entwine…all capture the attention of every nerve ending and of your heart, and you sigh, at last. surely all will be well. you are not alone in this vast universe.
the high ceiling at husby’s invited some creative decorating. twenty years ago, at some point in time after their renovation, the staff and clientele starting throwing money at the ceiling tiles. there are specific instructions for this, which include tacks and quarters and precise folding, but the end result is a ceiling full of paper currency – a virtual piggy bank of resources that are donated to local causes in sister bay, wisconsin. seeing the bills on the ceiling and the posted list of good causes just makes you want to throw money. encouraging others to throw money, continuing the twenty-year-old tradition is generosity. it turns their vision out.
as the season of lent starts, many people will, for reasons they may not even be able to articulate, “give up” something, a sort of faux-fasting. back in the day when i was a young teenager, and maybe even now, it was something of a contest…who could give up the most interesting thing, the hardest thing, the easiest thing, who could boast louder. that all seems antithetical to the point. way back, giving up lima beans would not count; giving up candy counted. i haven’t often participated in this. i’ve just tried, successfully and unsuccessfully, to moderate at all times.
yesterday or maybe the day before i saw a post about giving for this period of time. in an effort to raise consciousness about austerity, the suggestion was made to each day give a THING away, something you do not use but someone else would value having, or something you know, even though you sometimes use it, would be vital for someone else. that way, at the end of this period of 40 days there would be 40 THINGS that you have put aside to give away, a contribution to others who need the things you are easily (or actually not so easily) able to donate. giving clothing or shoes or backpacks or kitchen gear or blankets, things that pare down your own concentric circles of stuff and grace another’s life with something he or she needs. turning your vision out.
today i will take out two laundry baskets for us – as a start for this new practice. this makes more sense to me than giving up candy. as a personal practice in everyday life and honoring this life i was given, i should always be giving up anything in excess that isn’t good for me, lifestyle choices as opposed to a diet choice or a lent choice. as a new ritual practice for these six weeks however, gathering things for others will illustrate how someone else might be benefited by my lent. it’s not just about me. it is turning my vision out.
the ice-breaking bow of our ferry made its way across “death’s door”, the strait that connects lake michigan and green bay. the windchill below zero, you could hear the hardy vessel crunching its way through the ice. it was other-worldy. no one else on the ferry appeared to be as enchanted with it as we were; clearly, they were big-I islanders, unmoved by this half-hour jaunt across frigid waters to washington island. unfamiliar vs familiar equals enthralling vs mundane. it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from.
when i moved to wisconsin 30 years ago (kicking and screaming at the time) i stood in the pasta aisle of the grocery store – a local piggly wiggly. there was no mueller’s pasta. none. the brand i had grown up with on long island, the brand i found in florida publix grocery stores…it was not here in wisconsin. i felt instantly lost, instantly homesick. i sensed people moving around my frozen-in-the-spot-trying-not-to-cry body; they were choosing boxes of spaghetti and penne with no problem. for me, it was a telling moment. it was an indicator of change, despite its seeming insignificance. standing in that aisle i can tell you it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from. (*for an update on this incident, please see below.)
the ferry docked on the tiny island, a mere 35 square miles. we disembarked and met our friends. they drove us around, on snow-covered roads, through canopies of trees, past glimpses of water between the pines, their limbs bowing to the snow. at one point they said we could go to the house if we were bored. “no,” we answered. how could we be bored, we wondered. the quiet, the stillness, the solitude was compelling. it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from.
it was quieter on the ferry ride back with fewer people. we were just as enthralled. the ice pieces broken by the bow skittered along the ice plate on top of the water. lines cracked through the sheet, paths drawn by nature’s etch-a-sketch. some large slabs of ice raised skyward. we looked at each other and quietly let out a breath. we couldn’t imagine how this trip across open water could ever become run-of-the-mill. but around us were people who acted like it was piggly wiggly brand pasta and they were in the aisle racing to get to the next aisle. it’s all how you look at it. and where you start from.
*(the rest of the story) i called my sweet momma when i returned home from ‘the pig’ as they say. she answered and i instantly recounted my no-mueller’s-pasta story, i’m quite sure teary in the telling, yearning for the home we had left. four days later the UPS truck pulled up at the end of the driveway and the driver lugged a very large box to the front door. in it i found every shape and size of pasta available…all made by mueller’s. moms are wise beyond words sometimes. by the time i finished using the boxes-in-the-box, the unfamiliar had begun to be familiar. the crisis (yes, fundamentally not a physical crisis, but definitely an emotional one) was over.
it drives them nuts, i’m sure, but i still write or say “triple always” to my children. a redundancy of course, the “triple” emphasizes the “always”… an unnecessary modifier that says “eternally”…. i love you eternally.
there is a boeing commercial we see often. in it, the narrator is stating steps of preparation for flight, counting down. then she says, “guidance is eternal.” that’s what i have heard every time. until one time i asked d why he thought she said that. he responded that she was actually stating, “guidance is internal,” which clearly makes more sense in the aviation world.
i had to listen more closely the next time to hear “eternal” as “internal”. i did discern the difference, but i still, each time it airs, hear “guidance is eternal” anyway, and maybe that’s a good thing. it serves as a reminder from an unlikely source, a sort of subliminal message, perhaps, at a time i need it. an absolute when looking to the universe for answers to unsolved questions, small eddies of confusion, sorting and attempts at balance, at level positivity, seeking wisdom from those who are beloved but on another plane.
the guidance is there. waiting. it is internal AND it is eternal. triple always.
“…the other end of the process of living through uncertainty…” (liner notes)
sometimes when we drive along third avenue, right around the corner from our house, the fog totally obscures lake michigan. you would never know it was even there. you can’t see where the shoreline is, you can’t see the expanse of lake. further down the road, you can’t see the beach, the waves, the jetty. it is as if, for this time, the lake and the sky are one; neither exist and both exist.
this duality, this co-existence…is what this piece is about. the presence of clarity and the presence of haze. when i read my liner notes this morning, i sighed. i wrote them in 1997 – (a shocking) twenty-two years ago. i was 38. i must have thought there was an “end” to uncertainty then. and, at the time, i must have interpreted the fog, the mist, in a somewhat negative way, as something to get “through”, relief at the other end.
and then the fog lifts over the lake and there is differentiation of planes. the sky becomes sky; the lake becomes lake. until the next fog rolls in.
this month i will turn 60. it takes me a few seconds for that to sink in each time i think about it. were i to re-record this piece now, i would slow it down. i would linger in the fog a little longer, not so afraid of it, of its mystery. i’m still learning to embrace the fog, still learning to watch for the sky when it lifts, still learning that both can co-exist: clarity and uncertainty. nothing is really clear in life. nothing is absolute. we keep stepping. it is truly all a little foggy. i now think it’s supposed to be that way.
in this great mystery of the circle of life, i can think of no better prayer, no better mind-heart-talk, no better statement of living, than these words. there is no partisan leaning, no self-serving ask, no specific request of a higher being. just words to aid the step-step-step of life…words to accompany a walk on this good earth in wonder, in love, in light.
this great mystery, pointedly mysterious in moments high above canyons, on shores where waves crash upon the beach, in the hues of a new day stretching as far as you can see, in the million stars reaching further than you can imagine…a mystery of existence…the question why-am-i-here looking for an answer.
the answer of this great mystery? never one thing. the answer is found in hospital rooms and hands joined in hope, in gales of laughter shared with loved ones, the highest joy moments in one’s life, the lowest crushing moments in one’s life, holding a newborn baby, embracing a failing parent, hearing the voice of one’s grown child, walking side-by-side with another on a path, the about-faces and circular confusion on those paths, love at its best, love at its worst.
in every corner of the globe are people living this mystery. each of these people breathe in and breathe out in the same way. it is part of this great mystery that this breath is even possible. if we can breathe in light, in strength, in love, in peace, in wonder, as one family, we will have embraced the prayer. the mystery will continue to be.
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.
