“know then that the body is merely a garment. go seek the wearer, not the cloak.” (rumi)
and the babycat chair – cloaked in snow – shielded all from the view of its real soul. its new trapping hides its decrepit wickered weave. one would not know not to sit – certainly not to sit back – with snow covering this seat, this chairback. the babycat chair’s garment of white belies what is truly there.
and yet, this chair – the other day – seated a squirrel or two. as i watched out the window, they took turns sitting, munching on something i could not identify, comfortable squatting on this handy seat.
i – like you – have known plenty of people who have cloaked themselves in all the trends, who have kept up in fashion, who dress for the time and continually refresh their wardrobe. indeed, they look fabulous and, like just wearing the right couture, their vehicles and homes and sundries are all cloaked in that same shiny wrap. with some, it might be hard to gauge what is truly inside, what soul is silent, what soul is loud. we may not know but we are entranced by the packaging, the masking, the shell – that which is superficial, evanescent, transient.
the spirit of the babycat chair carries on, with or without snow. its aging – like the aging of barney-the-old-piano in our backyard – lifts up the unchanging truth that aging is not negotiable.
we – inside our cloaks – whatever they might be – transcend the broken wicker of what we put on to cover who we are. like the babycat chair – but exponentially – the spirit of what we mean, what we have meant, remains.
what do we each choose that to be, individually, in community, in this world?
planted in a barnwood planter – one that is split in half where the top half balances on the bottom half – I have been tending this mint all summer. we have used it in suntea all through these months. it’s made a few appearances in quinoa tabouli. and then.
then – all of a sudden – it went dormant. the stems were leggy and leafless. it seemed done. i snipped it all back, tossing the dried stems behind the potting stand, and i resolved to buy mint for the remainder of the suntea season. and then.
then – all of sudden – there it was. a few new sprigs and a few more. yesterday, i picked mint for the fresh jug of tea and took a few pictures of the new lush green leaves.
petsitter ann had told us to beware – that the mint would take over the garden were we to plant it in the ground. so we heeded her advice and chose this planter instead. i’ve already decided it will be the mint planter again next year. because we will surely need mint again next year.
we’ll need it so that we can watch its zealous growth – bursting from the very beginning, right out of the nursery pot.
we’ll need it for our cool tea, for our tabouli, for the zucchini parmesan pasta dish.
we’ll need it to gauge the hot sun and the water levels of our other plants – it responds to changes in weather and moisture, giving us good indicators for tending our other herbs as well.
we’ll need it to watch firsthand something that, well, just isn’t very fussy about stuff.
and we’ll need it to remind ourselves of the regenerative power of spirit – that even if something seems passé, even if something seems dried-up – done – out-of-season – even if something seems downright irrelevant – there is still an ever-lit pilot light.
it’s not just because i am prone to motion sickness; it is magical to look out the window at the earth passing below us. and now, the window next to me looked cracked, as tiny droplets skirted across. so much to look at in lieu of staring at a tablet or screen.
i am the geek taking pictures out the window of the plane – as if it was my first time flying.
but i don’t care. i take pictures anyway.
a few days ago i spent over two hours on the phone with an old friend i hadn’t spoken with for – if i’m remembering correctly – over four decades. in that strange way that you can pick up where you left off – despite the fact that there are blanks spanning decades – it felt like we had just danced the night away together, laughing and talking, at one of the discos on long island… just like we did back in the day.
she and i met at college and were instantly friends. i was pretty naive back then, but she had a savvy i could draw from and we had many adventures together.
it was a joy to be on the phone together again – i remember hours tethered to the wall, making plans or discussing crushes. this time i wandered around the house, chatting and trying to picture her now – after so much life had gone by.
and i heard my voice change. suddenly, there it was. the new york accent, back. it doesn’t take much – i am impressionable with others’ voices. the kiddos used to know when i had just talked to my nashville producer – i’d be drawling afterwards. so, long island came roaring back and we interrupted each other with abandon, punctuating our conversation with much laughter.
and there was this. this candor i remember, a not-beating-around-the-bush-ness – a bluntness – an assertiveness – that is visceral for me. i could feel it bubbling up, cracking through my learned midwest reservedness, my keeping-the-peace-ness.
“this used to be me,” i thought.
i – admittedly – have a whole bunch of leftover newyorkness in me. but much of it has been tempered by life in places outside of the northeast. it is pretty much necessary for survival – and for friendships outside of a place left behind, where conversation is more open, more sharing, more – well – raw.
it didn’t take much time to crack through to that place, shifting to this-doesn’t-need-to-be-polite, to this-doesn’t-need-to-be-filtered. i jumped back into a conversation where we – without words – assumed the other was a mature adult, sharing intimate details and what-could-feel-like risky stories with each other, instead of accommodating the other’s comfort level.
it was incredibly refreshing.
when i got off the phone i realized that i missed this. the cracked veneer – the truth of life – minus the filtering, minus the concern about judgment, minus storytelling sans the sordid details, the guts, the ugly as well as the pretty.
i missed the real-real. i missed the interrupting. i missed the accent. i missed the new yorker in me.
i shared snippets of our call with d, laughing at my slowly-shifting-back voice. i felt different.
“i’m no mary poppins,” my girlfriend said on the phone.
aware that i was thinking about how the midwest might feel about admitting one was not at-every-moment ‘too good to be true’, i proudly answered, “nope. neither am i.”
those cracks. the kintsugi. damaged and filled with tears and laughter, hopes and dreams and disappointments. truths and failings and forgiveness and grace.
and always at least one little spot that is not perfect, that is left open – where spirit can enter.
you CAN feel it. there is hope in the air. there is light. there is possibility.
i – for one – am very, very, very tired of the darkness we have seen over the last decade. i am weary of the name-calling, the maga bastardizing of the honor of running for or being president, the hook-line-and-sinker of people who are in the trickle-down of mean-spiritedness, of incoherent narcissism, of a vector heading to autocracy.
i can feel the light and i am standing in it, proudly.
last saturday night i had an event that seemed in every way to be a heart event. for a half hour – in the wee hours of the night – i struggled with intense pain, wondering if there was a way that i could lessen it, wondering what to do. though i don’t necessarily feel 65, i know that i am 65 and so i was frightened.
we went to the ER to make sure this was not an emergency and, gratefully, the tests all came out fine. the mystery will be one for my personal physician and i to solve. but there is a learning – as always – here.
there is way too much darkness. in the middle of saturday night, while laying in bed thinking about life itself, i knew that the lesson presenting itself – the wisdom repeating itself – was none too small.
we have one opportunity to live this life. we can either live it ugly or live it with as much goodness as we can muster. we can greet each dawn with hope and light and generous possibility or we can perpetuate the dark of night, starless and with evil in our hearts.
i can feel it – this new hope surging through our nation. i can feel the energy, the light, a wide-open future full of wonder and blessed by simply breathing.
this trickle-down – of freedom and good intention – is contagious. the joy of the harris/walz campaign – the humanity of the harris/walz campaign – the spirit of the harris/walz campaign is washing over us.
and for that – and for sunday morning and each morning since – i am grateful.
“and the spirit fills the darkness of the heavens it fills the endless yearning of the soul it lives within a star too far to dream of it lives within each part and is the whole it’s the fire and the wings that fly us home…”
and soon afterward, the sky was softer. and soon afterward, the clouds billowed like bubbles stacking up on a bubble-wand after gently blowing, finally releasing, floating off. and soon afterward, it softened to pink and pale lavender. and soon afterward, one single bird winged its way across the sky, blurring in flight.
and the shift in the universe brought a little bit of healing, a little bit of perspective. it eased the darkpain, the yearning for something different. it connected the dots from earth’s ground to the stars-so-distant. it lit hope and a freedom that had been elusive.
and afterward, my heart flew me home. back to steady. back, but with wings. for next.
“find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.”(jonathan livingston seagull – richard bach)
because it feels like the past, the present and the future all at once and – here – it all wraps around your heart.
we are both john denver fans. not the ridiculous push-to-the-front-of-the-crowd-for-a-signature type. just the quiet, eternally-grateful type. he has inspired us. he has inspired me. he made the simple melodic gesture a visceral thing. he elevated folksy messaging and storytelling; he reinforced the beauty of a lack of adornment. simplicity.
and when we stand in this beautiful place – designed to honor him, his composing and songwriting, his vision of the world – we are standing in and with his spirit. and you can feel it.
we slowly walkabout, arm in arm. we hum the songs chiseled into granite boulders. we stand immersed, pondering, in front of quotes of john muir and leonardo da vinci and helen keller and rachel carson and jacques cousteau.
“we’re standing at the crossing, where day and night divide. it takes all of your heart to keep the light alive. and the darkness seems so endless until the dawn arrives. we’ll hold the spark between us and keep the light alive.” (“keep the light alive” by lowen & navarro, 1995)
it would seem that we arrive at this place each and every year to see light infinity. there, beckoning, gesturing to us or quietly waiting. the days have run into each other. the successes, the joys, the learnings, the disappointments, the issues, the slights, the worries, anger, hurt, promises kept, promises broken, the new, the old, humanness … all gathered in the place of the light.
the flame reminds us of the spark of love into that which is around us. the flame reminds us of the frailty – just a breeze away from extinguishing. we invest too much in the each-day and not enough in the big-picture. we know that.
the light gives us a little nudge. again. a reminder to allow it. grace, acceptance, forgiveness, hope, love do not cease nor do they choose only one wick, one candle. they continue on. and on. lighting. every one. every where.
we just need intend to allow the light. infinity.
allow the light is all the call implores. allow the light to flood the heart, to flow the veins, to fill the space that craves. allow the light is all. the light is all.
and just like that, in a sliver of a moment, columbus became a star in a constellation of galactic proportion. he joins with all who have gone before, souls of people-loving-people and surrounds us in the wind as we move about our days.
i won’t forget the day my dad died. though i saw him hours before, i didn’t know it would be that very night. the axis tilted and the news came.
same with david. i know he won’t forget. his last visit with his dad was months earlier and, in his latest days, columbus had taken a path where memories escape into the atmosphere and he was simply in the moment or in a moment of his imagination. we held vigil, as we all do in those last somewhat-expected days. and then, we woke on friday and just knew. the axis titled and the news came.
there have been three fathers in my life – generationally-speaking. my sweet dad, erling, ever-present-poppo-chain on our wrists, was a quiet steady force in my life, always encouraging, undaunted by the hardships of his life and a loving champion for his family. and marvin. the father of our children’s father, marvin was delightfully positive and simple, hardworking and a mush for those he loved. and columbus, whose perspective is easily that which louis armstrong sang about in “what a wonderful world”. each, men who would tear up when beloveds were leaving. strength in honest hearts.
all – stars in the constellation. all – love in the wind.
and now, now that the earth has regained just a little center, though never to be absolutely balanced again, i imagine columbus sitting with my sweet poppo and marvin too. talking shop, telling stories, assigning the breeze on which those they love will find them, shining in a night sky.
the old radiator in my studio was its home for years. i picked it up at a wholesale show…an old fencepost with equestrian leather…i couldn’t resist. it was perfect next to my piano. shh. quiet. ponder. dream.
it’s outside on the back deck now, really for the same reasons. shh. quiet. ponder. dream. it reminds us to take those moments and just be.
in the middle of the night last night we talked for a few hours. it was a big discussion…about life, about existence. we agreed that life is merely about those rare and outstandingly idyllic moments – a collection you might store in a little special box or place in photographs-in-the-round for a viewmaster – ready, at any time, for you to look at, review, be reminded of, hold close. not usually the gigantic stuff, but the slides of tiny, even silent, markers, instants you recognize as mica.
we had another water episode a few days ago. it seems the theme this summer. once again, drains in the basement yielded water instead of no water. a really lovely young man from the sewer-drain company came; it was their second time in just over a month. the tree roots they had cleared likely had left behind another piece. it doesn’t matter. he cleared it out and we moved on. it wasn’t without a ton of unexpected work…clearing all of david’s paintings out of the space to protect them, moving any and every thing out of the way of the water and allowing room for the technician to work without feeling nervous about anything around him. after he left and we cleaned everything up it was back to quiet.
we exercised down there again yesterday. it’s a peaceful place, even though it is a basement. being surrounded by the muse of david’s time at his easel brings a certain life to it. i imagine he wishes this little sign was in his studio, but there is a hush nonetheless, even without the sign.
our studios – places where time fills in the gaps between noise.
in the middle of existential questions about my wrist and hand, a screeching halt to occupational therapy imposed by the insurance company (don’t get me started), questions and the after-effects of betrayal, a silencing of my professional work, i have not sat there much. i enter to allow in light and fresh air, gaze at my piano and walk out. another silent day.
each morning, for at least a week, as i have sat with pillows propped sipping coffee, the window beside me wide open, i have been visited by a chipmunk. it sits atop the fence post across the driveway right opposite the window and looks in, chirping. i named him ‘sunny’ as it is often that the sun is just reaching that fencepost as he sits and the first time he was bathed in rays of light as he held his spot and said whatever he was saying to me in chipmunk i could not understand.
today, in the quiet of the morning, sun not even yet beginning to stream in the window, sunny was out there, chirping to wake us. i called out the window to him a good morning greeting. we chirped back and forth a bit before he left, satisfied he had awakened me. i watch for him now each day as the sun starts to rise.
three times in a twenty-four hour period over the last weekend i heard or saw the words “everything will be ok”: once written, once spoken and the third time bob marley sang it in the woods as we hiked the river trail.
sunday as we sat at the table on the deck in waning light a not-oft-seen hummingbird came directly over and hovered right in front of me. a couple days later as i stood on the deck, david watching, a monarch butterfly flew over to me and circled less than a foot above my head. and sunny, a chipmunk on a fence post, greeting me each day.
i guess that sometimes the universe is quietly whispering, “it’ll be ok. everything will be ok. shh.”
i hope there is chocolate ganache cake and asti spumante. today is my sweet momma’s 100th birthday and, wherever she is roaming in that other plane of existence, i want there to be an enormous celebration of this day she was born back in 1921. there is not a moment i don’t miss her. there is not a moment that i am unaware of her presence.
the dining room table is piled with all kinds of finnish glassware and etched crystal and scandinavian birchwood as i empty bins that have been packed for years. i carefully unwrap the end-of-roll-clean-newsprint that layers between these and i’m immediately reminiscent. every here and there there is a tiny note, written by my mom, to explain the origins of this vase or that kissing-couple-wine-stopper. i have many questions and know that they will now go unanswered. i find myself researching and researching, a google-fest of information about these items, some of which have no story i can access.
i am drawn to pieces and carefully clean them. we poured chilled white wine into a pair of chunky goblets, ittala ultima thule glass designed by tapio wirkkala, inspired by melting ice in lapland. yesterday i made strawberry rose sangria and poured it into glasses from a heavy crystal etched pitcher, which i remember was a gift to my parents early in their marriage. the other day we had happy hour snacks out on the deck, olives and crackers and goat cheese on hand-painted japanese china, a post-world-war-two-origin lost to me, served on a glass mid-century hazel atlas boopie berwick party platter (which is actually called a ‘smoke and snack tray’ but i can’t bring myself to call it that.)
the history gathers in our dining room and i can almost feel the cheers of my momma and my dad, my grandmother mama dear and grandfather gramps. they encourage my googling and they also encourage me to sort through and find the things that really resonate with me. i can hear my momma telling me, “pass it on to someone” or “sell it!” as i unpack more bins of things, things, things that would otherwise remain packed. although i still abide by the unspoken ‘beaky rule’ to saaave new things for a bit before using them, keeping all these things packed in bins for years, no, decades – unused – is silliness and it is rewarding time spent opening it all up, seeing what’s there, going through, incorporating these jewels into our daily life. i know that is making my momma smile.
today we will lift our glasses to my momma, our beaky, and celebrate her. her spirit and spunk live on. her stink eye penetrating look, her raised eyebrow “oh?”, her ‘write-a-lettuh’, her sisu, her new-yorkishness. her kindness, her storytelling, her love.
today i will light a candle and gently ring the delicate glass bell she and my dad received as a wedding gift and i will be grateful that this day – 100 years ago – my momma was born on this earth. for that, this world is better.
reverse threading 