Sometimes a Great Notion

Friday morning, I took a few pictures on my drive to work, and then from the top of the parking garage across from the Lawrence Arts Center.  If you've never driven up there to watch a sunset or sunrise, you're missing out.  The entire city rolls out around you, waking in the morning, full of life in the evening.  It is peaceful and beautiful and inspiring.

Then, this morning, I realized I just couldn't face church alone.  I love the church I've started attending, but it felt too lonely to head there by myself, so I chose to drive out to Clinton Lake and see God all around me.    After the lake, I found something beautiful for the wall in my bedroom.  You see, sometimes, a great notion is born out of sadness.  It was today: here's proof.

                                                   

I Would Rather the House Burn Down

Being passionate often manifests itself in behaviors that can be seen as alienating, silly, reckless, and--at times--overly sensitive.  Think of a room full of people choking on a cloud of collective embarrassment as someone addresses the crowd with vigor and conviction.  Picture heads lowering, smirks smudging hand-covered mouths as the speaker speaks of something she believes in, watch the way the audience tries not to burst into a laughter born of their own inability to connect with any true feeling.

In a culture increasingly focused on how to hide, the passionate person becomes pariah faster than you can say "There's an app. for that."  Walking down city streets, plugged into iPhones, iPods, mp3s, Blackberries, and any other digitial distraction removes the need to engage, the need to interact with the breathing world because the electronic one is so much more alluring in its safety and obscurity.  As long as we are connecting in the ether--our words and musings made public in tweets and facebook statuses--we never have to tell anyone how we feel...at least, not to face to face.

While there is a case to be made for the digital age, for the broader disemination of information, and for the global conversation that can emerge in such a format, somewhere along the way our heads get buried so far down that we can't hear our own heartbeats anymore.  This burial and heart-deafness results in a disconnect between what we feel and the value of those feelings.  Being passionate becomes synonymous only with being amorous or unstable, but there are actually twelve definitions.

pas·sion   /ˈpæʃən/ Show Spelled[pash-uhn] –noun

1.any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
2.strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor.
3.strong sexual desire; lust.
4.an instance or experience of strong love or sexual desire.
5.a person toward whom one feels strong love or sexual desire.
6.a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything: a passion for music.
7.the object of such a fondness or desire: Accuracy became a passion with him.
8.an outburst of strong emotion or feeling: He suddenly broke into a passion of bitter words.
9.violent anger.
10.the state of being acted upon or affected by something external, esp. something alien to one's nature or one's customary behavior (contrasted with action).
11.(often initial capital letter) Theology.
a.the sufferings of Christ on the cross or His sufferings subsequent to the Last Supper.
b.the narrative of Christ's sufferings as recorded in the Gospels.
12.Archaic. the sufferings of a martyr.

Perhaps the reason we've become so uninterested in passion stems from our move away from letting art articulate the way we feel.  Now, a person's worldview is far more often summed up by a bumper sticker, trucker hat, or novelty t-shirt.  It's not about what artwork you have on the wall so much as it is about which label you brandish across your chest.   

My passion, today, turns my head to Frank O'Hara.  The title of this post comes from his poem "Christmas Card to Grace Hartigan.'  In the last stanza he writes:
"Christmas is the time of cold air
and loud parties and big expense,
but in our hearts flames flicker 
answeringly, as on old-fashioned
trees.  I would rather the house
burn down than our flames go out."

Today, I want all of us to unplug and reconnect with the things we take for granted.  I want us to pull our heads up from the sand and listen.  I want our steps to match the rhythm of our beating hearts and I want us to stop being embarrassed by the things we feel and embrace them, shout them from rooftops, proclaim to all who can hear that our passion is real, viable, beautiful, and going nowhere.

What Bitter Road It's Traveled

from Sweetness, Stephen Dunn

"...Often a sweetness comes

as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,

  then returns to its dark 

source.  As for me, I don't care

where it's been, or what bitter road

  it's traveled

to come so far, to taste so good."

*****

Each day, I try to remind myself that there's a finite amount of time allotted to grief, to sadness, to pain.  At some point--and it's different for everyone--the window opens, the dull air is replaced by fresh breezes, and what was once all you could see becomes memory.  The landscape of tragedy is replaced by the blank canvas of possibility upon which all manner of dreams can become reality. 

I don't mean to suggest these coming dreams are always pleasant.  They are often, in fact, more painful to bring to life than we could have imagined when we first conjured them, our twitching lids sleep-painting them, our own nocturnal and cerebral Lascaux.  Far easier to sit swirling in what Dunn calls 'its dark source'; living in bitterness means not ever having to try something new, not ever having to force change, not ever having to be an advocate for yourself, allowing others to dictate not only who and what you are but also who and what you can be.

Today, talking to three of the brightest people I know about Linda Loman (Death of a Salesman) and--tangentially--whether or not anyone can actually have a personal definition of self or if self is always defined by others, it occurred to me that I cling to my own definition of self so intently because I have never liked the definition of myself that I have been given by others.  Which means I have never liked my read on what I believe others' definition of me to be, but in that room, talking with those three people, I realized that my self as refracted/reflected through them is actually exactly the version I have always hoped to be. 


One of them, youthful and exuberant and full of the energy of just beginning to see how powerful one person can be in the world, is a reminder of that same spirit in me--the part of me that hopes every day for a little miracle to occur in the lives of those around me so I may be lucky enough to share in it.  


Another represents a loyalty to friends I admire and seek to emulate at every turn; his passion and desire to serve and support, love and listen, is as beautiful as it is painful in that I suspect there are days when he does not say all he wants to, holding himself back so his views don't detract from what his friends need to discover for themselves.  


And the third practices patience in the same methodical and focused way master violinists practice bow techniques.  The long strides of his calm barely stress the taut strings at all, the rosin of resolve and reserve pepper his collar as he waits and listens, offering his full attention to the person at hand in a way that never makes the object of his gaze wonder if he is with her because, in fact, he always is.  He is a lighthouse, and I am eternally undeserving and grateful.

These three people, today, helped me see that though the road until now may have been paved with bitter visions from the past, I am now at place where those surrounding me are purveyors and perpetrators of beauty and their presence in my life has made the travel so much sweeter.

Sinatra Advises George Michael

At the age of 27, after the monster success of his first solo album, "Faith," George Michael became introspective.  It's hard to imagine this man as anything other than in your face, anything other than a fame seeking pop sensation, anything other than a guy with a penchant for illicit rendezvous in public places.  But, in 1990, George was a kid still reeeling from a fame that didn't quite fit him right. 

Thanks to Letters of Note, a blog you should all read intently, we are all able to view the advice Michael received from a very unlikely source: Frank Sinatra.  The chairman's main point is that Michael shouldn't be complaining, that fame is fleeting and that those lucky enough to have it should "thank the good Lord every morning when he wakes up to have all that he has."

I find it hilarious that Sinatra concerned himself with Michael's crisis of conscience.  It makes me wonder if Old Blue Eyes saw something of himself in the former Wham-er, which led me to imagine Frank dancing around to "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" in a full tux, drink in one hand, smoke in the other, images of Angie Dickinson dancing in his head. 

I would love to say that I wrote a fantastic poem that capitalizes on the juxtaposition of age and youth, of old school glamour and new school glam, that posits Frank's uber-masculinity against the faux-macho of Michael (as he presented himself in his tight jeans and leather jacket in the video for "Faith"), but I didn't.  I tried, but it just didn't happen.  Maybe because I wanted to write it too badly, maybe because there's not enough raw material there, or maybe--and I'm leaning towards this one--maybe I couldn't write it because the situation itself is already too poetic to be sculpted into anything else.

In the Bathtub with Robert Bly

I've never read much Robert Bly.  I recognize a few titles but couldn't tell you much about the man or his work.  But today I found myself sharing my bath time with him.  It's a rainy day in Kansas, cold for May, and I have spent it--mostly--alone.  Lunch with a good friend and then the bookstore where I picked up Bly, Amichai, Ferlinghetti, and most of the rest of the day has been in the company of Mad Men.  It's a series that entertains as much as it horrifies.  Are we really so awful, we lonely humans?  I suppose the answer is yes, but I so wish it wasn't.  


Anyway, Robert and I shared the bath together and this poem stopped me.  There in the steam, as alone really as a person can get, these words made me feel less lonely.


People Like Us--for James Wright
----Robert Bly


There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and
     people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely , and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul
And greatness has a defender, and even in death
     you're safe

I Am Never Afraid of What I Know

Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty, put those words, "I am never afraid of what I know," into the mouth of her protagonist.  I found them this morning when I was digging through a great old book I picked up at some library closeout sale, Topeka's I think.  The book is "The Quotable Woman," edited by Elaine Partnow, copyright 1978.  The quotations range from "1800--on" according to the cover though it occurs to me that the 'on' on the cover couldn't be less 'on' since it has a stopping point.

I pulled that book off the shelf to help me with something that is crippling me lately: fear.   I know that being ruled by fear is akin to lying down and giving up, but some days the shaking just won't stop. My horizon keeps shifting like last night's storm-adled sky.  Milky green light breaks to clouds and rain, turns bright whitish, and then becomes the most surreal blue, like the foreground in Dali's Galatea of the Spheres.   I feel like the woman in this picture lately, the whole of myself comprised of spheres, some overlapping and some disconnected but, without even one of them, my picture wouldn't be complete.  There are pieces missing, to be sure, but I hope the view is still worth seeing.

So, the book.  I went looking for quotations about fear from women strong enough to put into words just how ridiculous fear is.  Words have always helped me before and, in an effort to quell the quake, these are the words helping me through today.

Simone de Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity": In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

Margaret Oliphant, "A Little Pilgrim": I, too, am afraid; but it is better to suffer more and to excape than to suffer less and to remain.

Elenaro Roosevelt as quoted in the NY Times on 10/12/54: You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every expereince in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

Gale Wilhelm, "We Too Are Drifting": I'm going to turn on the light and we'll be two people in a room looking at each other wondering why on earth they were afraid of the dark.

These lines are helping me today with what it is I don't know.  As the title of this post suggests, what I know is not something I fear.  But today it is the dark recesses of the unknown that haunt me.  The hallways without light, the empty rooms without lamps, the mornings without sun.  I used to think strength meant never letting people know you were scared or hurting.  Today I know that isn't strength, that's defensiveness, that is real fear: being too afraid to tell the truth. 

So, today I tell the truth.  Today I am afraid...but check with me tomorrow.  The sky may have cleared by then.

The Angel in the Marble

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

"In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”

--Michaelangelo

This morning the winds shake the trees in my neighbors' yards, branches ruffle and shake like an animal wagging itself awake.  I half expect some ancient green bear to rise and start stalking its way back to the home it's been missing all these months during hibernation.  

These trees and their suggestion of dormancy lead me to question ways we isolate ourselves.  The walls we build.  Not just the marble walls of Michaelangelo's statuary, but the intangible walls we erect to protect ourselves from one another.  Are we not, as he wrote, ourselves perfect in attitude and action?  Certainly there are those who misstep, but if we 'hew away the rough walls,'  aren't we likely to see the lovely apparition--the angel in the marble--within each other and ourselves?

I have two friends, men I love, each one a master at building walls.   One blocks himself in against the cold of rejection, the fear of being less than for people he loves.  The angel in him is evident to all, his heart pure, spirit giving, soul true.  We have walked and talked the world to weariness over the past ten years.  I see the trees shaking and know he, too, is waking up, processing the what ifs around him and trying to stay standing.  Today I wish him verticality, the trick of uprightness, one foot in front of the other until you don't have to think about it anymore and what has been a constant concern simply becomes what is.

My second friend finds himself in a labyrinth of his own creation, one with simple, beautiful gifts around some corners and heartbreaking sadness at the dead ends of others.  Would that I were Ariadne, I could smuggle him the clew, let him unwind himself from the maze until he reached all the way back to the beginning and could map it anew, find perspective, start again.  He doesn't believe the angel exists in him, but I promise it does. I have seen it often and it is stunning.  A blindingly beautiful white light that shines on all who are lucky enough to be near him.  Today I wish him sure-footedness, deep breaths in the darkness, familiar patterns and grooves in the walls beneath his searching hands so that he can slowly start to feel his way home.

***

It is mother's day and the woman I am lucky enough to have been born to gave me a great gift years ago: she allowed me to be completely comfortable with who I am, to believe that what I want is right, to know that my dreams and hopes are as valid and necessary as anyone elses. My mother showed me that my own happiness ensures the happiness of the people around me because, if they truly love me, they want nothing more than for me to be happy.  I am blessed that she is my mother and today, in celebration of her, I am trying to pass on her greatest gift which is the knowledge that we all matter.  We all deserve to be happy, and we are all here to help each other become, as Michaelangelo said, revealed.

A Color of the Sky

From Anne Sexton's The Sun:

Now I am utterly given.

I am your daughter, your sweet-meat,

your priest, your mouth and your bird

and I will tell them all stories of you

until I am laid away forever,

a thin gray banner.

Until last summer, I spent bright days inside.  I loved the sun as a kid, but years of working during daylight hours (and fear of skin cancer, sunburn, etc.) kept me out of that bright light. Then, a year ago, I became involved with the Lawrence Arts Center and worked there during a lot of daylight hours.  I started to feel the itch to recharge, to lay in the heat--covered in spray on sunblock--soaking up sun, sweating, blood throbbing in my veins.  Sometimes at a friends' apartment complex pool, sometimes at the swimming beach at Clinton Lake, sometimes in my back yard with ice water to sprinkle myself if I got hot.  

It is that time of year again and I am feeling the itch, the need to lie in the heat, to soak up what I can, to feel exhausted from the complete stillness of sun worship.  Yesterday I played with my dog outside and when she tired I sat to read...which led to a thirty minute solar nap that felt better than other thirty minutes of sleep I've had in recent months.

I didn't get to spend too much time out today, but I did catch the sunset as it happened, and these pictures show it in order.  And these stanzas in this poem, which I stumbled across today, also fits.

Two stanzas from A Color of the Sky, Tony Hoagland

   What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

   What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

   What I thought was an injustice
                                             turned out to be a color of the sky.

   ...so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

   It’s been doing that all week:

   making beauty,

   and throwing it away,

  and making more.

Re-Public

Following in the fine footsteps of Amanda and WCP, I've decided to share some of my own oldies but goodies.  God help us all.


I have always liked clothes.  I am as happy in a thrift store as I am in some fancy label driven shop, but regardless of the locale, I'm there for the touching, trying on, playing dress up and pretending in it.  I love putting something on and seeing how it changes me, who I could be, what the things I wear say about who I am.  I have long believed that the people who don't at least attempt to put themselves together are sending a pretty clear message that they don't care about themselves enough to try.  I've had a few people tell me they just don't care what other people think, that's why they adhere to a devil may care policy when it comes to dressing, but my response is always this: I don't care what others think, either.  I dress for me.  These ridiculously archived photos speak to that. 

This first one is me in the only pageant I ever did, a baby beauty contest at teh age of two.  Note the stylin' strawberry bikini top and cut offs.  I was too shy to mount the stage that day, but I've been making up for that fear ever since.  And yeah, that awesomely bearded man who would be at home in any bluegrass/rockabilly band today would be dad.  How badass is he, I mean, really?

I have a print of this one in my classroom.  Note the one piece jumpsuit here that gets reincarnated ten years later in the fourth photo.  I love this picture because 1) my mom is in it and she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, 2) she'd never let herself be photographed in a ratty t-shirt and cut offs these days, and 3) let's face it: I'm looking pretty cute.

After my little brother was born and we both reached the age of the magic bowl haircut, we were often photographed together as all adorable tots are.  We were little blonde beams of light, happily hyper and surrounded by a community of people who loved us.  Unlike a lot of our friends, our grandparents were not only still alive when we were little, but they lived in the same town we did, my paternal grandmother in fact lived next door.  So we grew up charmed, complete with Rockwellian holidays that often meant fifteen to thirty of us out ant Nanny and Grandad's house, great aunts and uncles, second cousins, a cornucopia of family.  This is us in a clothes made by my grandmother: my dress matches the shirt under that rocking vest/pants ensemble of my brothers.

This would be circa 1988.  I am 12, and yes, that is a one-piece pink and lavender plaid shorts jumpsuit monstrosity.  I cannot tell you how much I love that this picture still exists, if only to prove that quasi-mullets should never NEVER be permed.

This one, the best, is last because it best sums up who I thought I was at sixteen.  Yep.  Sixteen.  I look about forty,  but really, all that blonde hair was mine--no dye--just a little help from lemon juice and sunlight.  That's a floral sundress that in the winter I would wear with a black suit jacket and my Docs but here, I think, I've got on some strange slip on sandals that turned my feet black but looked really good.  This picture was taken in the Green Room at the Salina Community Theatre during a summer workshop...can't you just see the "I'm gonna be a star" oozing off of me?  Good grief.

Oh to Be a Pear Tree--Any Tree in Bloom

The title of this post come from Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Janie, the protagonist, is sixteen and realizing her power as a woman for the first time.  It's a sexual awakening for her and, for the reader, it's the beginning of seeing the heart of what Janie wants: to be bursting with life, beautiful, bright, and free.


I am not Janie, and I'm fairly certain my awakening days are over.  At any rate, though I am not her, today I want what Janie wants:  to see life all around me: beautiful, bright, free.


So I planted flowers, shrubs, and yes, Janie, a tree.  In bloom.  A friend and I bought cuttings at a church Plant sale this morning, the red flowers around the tree are from there--I don't know what they're called.  I bought the lobelia at a big box store I am ashamed (but too poor not) to shop at.

New hanging baskets for the porch--impatiens--and I moved the table and Adirondack chairs out front.  They've been on the back patio because I don't usually want to associate with my neighbors, but I'm
trying to get over that.  Just because I'm sitting out there doesn't mean I have to talk to them, right?

I planted two Sweetspire Merlot bushes and two bunches of Blue Moon Viola in front of the fence, threw down some seeds in the backyard: Sunflowers in the Northwest corner of the back yard, Lavender Sage, Forget Me Nots, Poppies, and Zinnias by the house, we'll see what comes up in a few weeks.  

And finally: a Prairiefire Crab Tree.  Gorgeoous.  I looked at it this morning, thought about it all day, then bought and planted it this afternoon. When I look out my bedroom window from now on, I'll see something beautiful that I put in the ground.

I don't know how you spent your day, but I hope you have something equally gorgeous to show for it.