there are great white trillium all over the woods now. beautiful big blooms lighting up the underbrush, making the forest brilliant. they precede the may apples and have more pizazz than the maroon prairie trillium. they get our attention.
it’s not easy to capture a good photograph of great white trillium. not because they are elusive or shy, but because they reflect back sunlight and the images tend to be somewhat blurry, details burned out into flat white. i felt fortunate with this photograph. even the specks of pollen off the yellow pistils are visible.
and then i noticed it. the shadow. the tiny dandelion next to the trillium was casting a shadow onto the delicate petal.
when i first noticed – further down the trail – i thought that i had missed my shot – that the interrupted petal somehow blemished the photograph.
the more i studied it, the more i realized how very lucky i had been – to capture the very moment in the sun’s angle that this little dandelion made a distinct shadow on its neighboring wildflower.
sometimes we don’t realize how imperfection is simply perfect.
what looks like wreckage is that which welcomes grace, how a broken road reveals the right path, how organic surpasses the staged, how cobbled-together – all the moments of bliss and the moments we think are shadowed with ruin – our lives really are, how imperfection is actually perfect.
what we thought was the wrong shot is – in reality – the right shot.
but here – on the coast of lake michigan – with very specific circumstances – we are socked in with fog. it rolled in on cloudy waves. it lingers in the trees and hangs over the street. it brings with it a damp cold – much different than a couple miles inland. the lakefront is its own weather system.
it was a foggy morning, soupy and grey. we put on extra layers. we left to hike one of our favorite river trails. it was sunny there – so much so that we were shedding those extra layers of clothing.
and, then, on that same day in the early evening, we watched the advection fog stake claim to the neighborhood again, just as it had done that morning and for the past mornings.
all the same day.
and so we sat in the quiet of the fog as it surrounded us, our home, our ‘hood.
and, just as we didn’t know what the people in the sun were doing, neither did they know we were sitting in a blanket of dense fog.
we don’t know what we don’t know.
but isn’t it our job – as humans living in nation-wide community with each other – to seek knowledge of the other? of others’ circumstances?
are we culpable for an awareness of other-ness?
if i am on the lakefront and you are inland, do i care about you, do you care about me?
is there a line – somewhere between the lake and inland or in this country – that divides the needs of the people? is there a line – somewhere between the north and the south, the east and the west – that divides the needs of the people? is there a line – of race, of ethnicity, of orientation, of birth circumstance, social ladder-climbing, status, society’s trappings – that divides the needs of the people? is there a line – somewhere between the haves and the have-nots or the have-it-alls and the have-nothings – that divides the needs of the people?
where is compassion? a sense of decency? of humanity?
there is – apparently – no line that is too low for what is happening in this country now.
how is it that people – real people – mean so little to this administration?
and i think about those people – humans – who are cheering this on. i wonder how they have been seduced.
have they read the bills, the laws, the executive orders, the project, the intentions?
do they realize that this is decimating our country – the same country that is their country?
do they even give a second to wondering how all this cruelty, greed, destruction, moral corruption is “great”?
is their lack of concern because it does not directly impact them…yet? do they even know if it does?
is their state of great glee because it’s sunny where they are right now?
do they know that weather systems are not static, that they travel and affect communities at will, that it could be them next?
how can they linger in their cold dense fog – oblivious and unconcerned?
there are about 200 seeds in a single dandelion fluff. even in the gentlest of breezes, the dandelion field scatters everywhere – seeding, seeding – more dandelions, more dandelion fields.
oh, the mayhem.
88 keys.
the clusters of piano keys that might be in any piece of music. consider just a three-note composition. in the simplest of equations, assuming once the first choice is made you must move on to the second choice and then the third choice, one has 88 keys to choose from x 88 keys to choose from x 88 keys to choose from – merely 681,472 options for any given composer on any given day working to write just the first three notes of a melodic gesture.
oh, the mayhem.
choices.
for the painter and a canvas, a writer and a pad, a dancer and a wood floor, a potter and blocks of clay, a blogger and a computer keyboard.
it – the imperative to mayhem – calls us. to make something out of it all. to birth something out of the raw materials, to use our tools to create, to choose direction, to express artistic vision – what we see or hear or feel – a passion – that might – or might not – touch others.
there is no guarantee, no real proverbial “if you build it, they will come”. it doesn’t just happen that way. it is an imperative nonetheless.
the imperative to show up, to engage in the mayhem.
i’ve done much of my composing in-between other things, stealing time – minutes even – to write something – anything, something that might be universally understood, something that gives air to a thought, an emotion – something in my internal or external world. scraps of melodies, bass line roots, ideas only until i might make them airborne.
mayhem steals my imagination and lifts it past the stuff-of-the-day. it pokes and prods me, not allowing for passivity, foisting ideas and snippets of muse upon me.
it’s a bazillion seeds in a dandelion meadow, a bazillion pianos, a bazillion pencils and pads, a bazillion brushes and a bazillion paint pots.
“may i be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.” (mary oliver)
it was astounding. we were on a hike and heard a crack in the woods. we looked to our left – where the sound had come from – and watched a towering tree fall onto the forest floor. powerful. humbling. just stunning to witness.
naturally, we looked it up – is there meaning to being the sole persons witness to a tree falling in the woods?
in what would seem narrative written for the moment, these words: transformation, renewal, release, resilience, cycles of life, interconnectedness, impermanence.
we sat – later – on our deck – and talked about these words.
the experience of something so rare fell right in line with another experience we had this week. for the first time while hiking, we encountered a bobcat. the big cat was on the trail and watched as we approached. it didn’t take too long before it glided into the underbrush, over toward the river. but it left us just as stunned. such an elusive creature.
and…at a time when looking for meaning in what is going on around us seems so difficult…we wondered, is there any? we found that our very rare bobcat sighting was a reminder to acclimate to shifting circumstances, to embrace change, seize new opportunities, to thrive though all that is ever-unfolding.
now, that’s two stunning events in less than a week. i might say we are paying attention. we have been present to the rare; we pay homage.
so as we carry on here – doing the best we can to be tiny nails – to make a tiny difference, our theme song is one of adaptation. in variations on the theme we do what we can to seek new beginnings, to shore up our inner strength, to be useful, to be aware of the profound impermanence of it all.
we pass a certain house on our way to a favorite hiking trail. it is clearly a hoarding house. there is stuff everywhere and if the garage door is open – even just a bit – you can see that the hoarding continues in the garage – piles and piles of things and things and things. it’s creepy. and you can feel it as you pass by. you feel the suffocating feeling of too-much-stuff.
i once knew someone who was a hoarder. he was unable to transcend it and so his house had tiny pathways to move from one room to another. all the rest of the space was filled with books and magazines and newspapers. there were piles on every step leading to the second floor – so much so that there was no way – anymore – to get there. the second floor was essentially blocked off forever – or, at least, until someone might clean it all out. i found it disturbing to be at his house, smothered by high piles on every side of me and no place that was even near empty or calm or welcoming a sit-down. it only took one visit to convince me that i would never return. i could not breathe. there was no space.
in both of these cases – and in a farm out in the county that we’ve visited with a variation on the same theme – we were privy to – inside – a sickness of the person whose home was emitting hoarding frequencies.
THIS is how i feel about this country now. we are walking – all of us – inside the administration’s sickness. there are few places to breathe, few ways to sit down outside of the enveloping dismal cloud of narcissism and revenge and selfish cruelty. there is little calm; instead, chaos reigns.
is this what authoritarianism feels like? is this what an autocracy feels like? is this what fascism feels like?
they are hoarding away our country, with little access to its democracy, its freedoms, its decency, its humanity.
we need the junkman to come and clean it all out – toting enough dumpsters for all their project agenda – a nation-sized mr.clean to wipe it all down, trash the filthy intentions, clear a path with space and air and possibility.
we need recognize this for what it is – truly – and we need to transcend the sickness. or breathing will become impossible.
one of my favorite mother’s day cards came from david last year. we make all our cards for each other and on his he drew me, looking at a starry sky. there are two arrows pointing at individual stars and inside he wrote, “for the two times you wished upon a star.”
the wisps of miracles-of-all-kinds floating about the galaxy – the ones that became my children – have my everlasting gratitude.
for i have learned of the infinite spectrum that is motherhood. the triumphs and the failings, the angst and the bliss, the hugs and the pushaways, the unconditional love that somehow birthed an extra heart when each child was born – gracing me with whole hearts for each of them and with a heart to do the rest of the work, the heavy lifting of living.
in a world that is full of galactic nonsense, the real essence becomes more and more clear to me: each wisp of intense beauty, tiny nuances of time passing, the dust that is me – in a river full of stardust.
we prep and we wait. two of our friends wait as well – all of us ready to text as soon as we see one. it’s a vigil for the tiny hummingbird.
this year we were the first. the hummingbird surprised us as we adirondack-chair-sat outside. it was morning and the sun was brilliant. we were quiet as the day began to warm up. and then, suddenly, it was there.
there is something infinitely touching about that first tiny hummer. something that gives you pause.
we love our birds – all of them. we consider our birdbath one of our finest outdoor purchases. watching a black-capped chickadee or a house sparrow perch on its side and dip its head to drink, or a robin fully immersed, splashing around…it is joyous to know you have contributed in a tiny way to their precarious lives. it’s much the same with our feeders – it’s all just a reminder that we are in this same big world together.
and then the hummingbird shows up. and, after once, it remembers, just like the news spreads through other birds about the clean water birdbath or the feeders in the backyard.
and then, though invisible, there is a connection.
it was always there.
we transcend that which binds us to the pragmatic, the stuff of our lives. and we sit – watchfully – as we wait for the hummingbird’s return to the feeder. or the chickadee’s entry and exit into the birdhouse. or the cardinals – walter and irma – at the flat-based house feeder. or the sparrows dustbathing where dogga had dug. we just wait.
these are the moments. and the ones before slip away as the ones to come linger in the air. we just sit – untethered to either – our wings resting.
i have always been drawn to notebooks. composition books, spiral notebooks, journals, graph paper pads, legal pads, pa-pads – really, i guess, any kind of bound group of paper. blank paper.
it all represents a beginning. “begin anywhere,” john cage urges on a piece in my studio.
but sometimes there is a paralysis. sometimes there is something – some quirk – that stops me from starting – it stops me from putting pencil or pen to the first page. i feel this very big responsibility to the new blank paper. sometimes it feels like what i might write, compose, jot down may not be worthy of the first pristine sheet in a new paper vessel that could – ultimately – contain hundreds of writings, compositions, jottings. i haven’t yet gotten over that.
and so i dig out old spirals that my children used in elementary school – with wide rule lines – or high school – with college rule lines. their names are on the front and i can – delightedly – still find scribblings inside the notebooks. lab results or math problems, vocabulary words or drawings or paragraphs of tiny stories they were creating – it’s all thready for me and so this stack of old spirals and folders speak to my heart – in so many ways. i can easily write in these.
but there are those really delicious new books, new pads, new journals. and i glance at them, wondering when i might think that anything i might pencil in them would be worthy of their newness.
just staring at the beach was zen-full. it was quiet. almost pristine.
the beach had been combed – stunning horizontal lines – raked, perfectly clean but for a few sets of footprints walking – along the horizontal and taking the hypotenuse to the water.
the orderliness was just a tiny bit interrupted. and the orderliness was waiting for more disorderly. the disorderly would mean people – walking and running, children playing and building castles in the sand, seagulls clamming, dogs digging, sand flying.
even as i write this, i think about pulling out one of the brand new notebooks. taking my ever-present mechanical pencil to the first page (or maybe the second – to leave the first page clean and blank).
it makes me think that maybe the disorderly – the walking, running, building, digging, sand-flying – might actually be the real joy.
it makes me think i just might walk the hypotenuse across the college-ruled page. and wreak a little havoc on some clean paper.
“sometimes it can feel like you’re never doing enough. but to touch the life of even just one animal or one person can help heal the world.” (hellen rescue centre)
the golden rule is a relatively simple concept. basic moral compass stuff. “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” universal. ethical. compassionate. conscious.
it would seem that we each – in this world – would feel an imperative to strive for the best we can do, with these words as a north star. it would seem that we would wish to lead with goodness.
and we are surrounded by real people who do just that. people who reach to others, sharing abundance with those in need, caring for those in despair, giving a hand to those who feel forgotten. we have been the recipients of this sort of care and we are grateful – not only for the aid of wisdom or resources we have received, but for the reminder of what it means to be human in a world of humans.
in turn, we try – best as we can – to be helpers. to lift spirits and, as we can, to lift the circumstances of people who have been less fortunate. we try to live thinking about others, treating others, as we would want them thinking about or treating us.
as artists we are entrusted with the creating of work that might somehow touch the world – change it – if even only the tiniest morsel of a bit. we write many words a day, never knowing if anyone will read these words, never knowing if any of the words make any kind of difference. we do it anyway. we paint, we compose, we take photographs. we just never know where any of it – all of it – might reach. and every now and then – out of the blue – someone we do not know, someone we will likely never meet will let us know that something has touched them, something has moved them, something has made them think or question or linger. and we know that the concentric circle has widened, the ripple has rippled. even a little bit.
as humans we are entrusted with short lives of being humane. we have every opportunity to show care and concern, to reach across differences, to offer kindness and love to others – people or animals. every single time we do even one small act we know that it impacts the world, that there are cells out there vibrating with the frequency of grace.
our presence in and with life – life itself – grants us the ability to appreciate it, to live into living. we know that – in the very end – all will fall away. and what will be left are the heart impressions we have made on others and they on us.
even if we have touched one person or one animal – in our tiny time here – we have healed a morsel of hurt in the world.
it doesn’t seem like that hard of a concept. it doesn’t seem that hard of a job.
in the end of ends, isn’t it the only thing that matters?
it’s a simple concept: a community of people who support each other.
it should be every family, every friend-group, every organized community, every town, every city, every state, this nation.
we watch thru-hikers on videos. carl – in the middle of the hot desert section of his PCT thru-hike – was gifted a bottle of cold water. his words were write-down-worthy: “people are beautiful.”
like carl, thru-hikers criss-cross the country – and other countries – on long trails, carrying all they need in backpacks, stopping in towns to resupply, to eat prepared food, to rest. people come from all over to support these hikers, planting trail magic in their path, driving them from point a to point b, aiding them in whatever they need. there is never any hesitation. the community extends love and support to each other – no matter what.
anything less is missing the point.
to be human is have precious little time on this earth. that kind of mortality, that kind of flawed-ness, that kind of capability to love – makes one question why anyone would wish to be anything less than generous or kind. it makes one question why anyone would exclude anyone else, why inclusion of all humans is not paramount. it makes one question why anyone would be cruel to others, to populations of others. it makes one wonder why anyone would waste time and energy on agendas of hatred. it makes one question what in the hell is going on in the administration of this country and why so many people – humans – are ok with it.
the state of this country belies the definition, the very concept of humanity: the human race; human beings collectively/compassionate, sympathetic, or generous behavior or disposition – the quality of state of being humane/the totality of human beings: the human race.
reverse threading 