Ruin

She sits with herself since the attack, with no work to do but fall apart. At first she raged and writhed with her losses. The fire burst on her and tore at her, hungry and drunk on its own power. The heat quickly undressed her. Flames careened down her halls, banging on doors and smashing windows with fists. The door to the stairs was heavy, thick metal and glass built to withstand this very battle. “Keep this door shut against fire” engraved on a plate. Live in this neighborhood, you best have a plan. Fire seethed and roiled in place for a time, building its strength to just blow this shit up.

Someone was watching. And did the right thing. 

Firefighters arrived on the scene bearing the weapon that trumps fire. They went to war and eventually won.

Then they all left.

Conversations were had. Some laden with grief. Others voiced the reality. No money. We leave it.

Laid nearly bare, stinking and scorched she stands alone.

For a time there are others who arrive almost daily. Scavengers ripping out fixtures and fittings and furniture. They need them, want them, and she doesn’t. No matter.

This is what happens. The natural order of things that have fallen, by choice or by chance or divine intervention.

Attacked. Abandoned. Stripped by the scavengers. Falling silent. So very slowly crumbling and peeling backwards in time. If you look closely beauty arises. Light shines on darkness.

Darkness gives way revealing galaxies floating in the black of decay.

It all falls to ruin. It has to.

Sarro's Balloon

When I am paying attention to only the notion of paying attention, and nothing else, I am always always stunned by what rolls out of the ether to rest at my feet, my ears, my heart, my soul. On days when I risk cracking open the door in the floor, risk being knocked flat by the tsunami of the collective beating, breaking, elating hearts of this world, I am transformed. Not without cost.

Yesterday I drove to my parents' house alone. An hour and a half along familiar roads from suburb to the lake country where I grew up. From day-to-day familiar territory to the places that have always known me. And I was listening to this little piece of radio - mesmerizing art of sound called Sarro's Balloon. As the story ended and I exhaled the extra breath I was holding - letting just enough come and go while listening to stay alive - I glanced to the shoulder of the road to see exactly what I had been thinking about without thinking. A white cross with the artificial flowers and other icons that have come to be familiar on roadsides where a life has been lost.

I was driving on this road with my husband the day after Christmas. Returning home, having left our daughter to hang out with her cousin. My sister would take this same road to deliver her to me later - a handoff in a restaurant parking lot. Convenient. Logistics designed to maximize my time on a busy busy day. In that small slice of saved time, a family lost control of their car on this very pavement, this very spot, and their little boy died. My sister was late to our meeting, the road closed between us for some unknown reason.

The radio story, the moment, the place. The door in the floor ripped off it's hinges. I pulled over and had a much needed cry. Hey Dad. There's this little boy, just arrived. I didn't know him but he has people near our people. Maybe you could teach him to fish. I bet he'd like that.

Listen to Sarro's Balloon at http://www.atomsmotion.com/uploads/amv32.mp3

Writing Madeline

My grandmother's teacup. An in-progress gel transfer of a poem written by her sister, my great aunt Madeline. A lit candle. A starting point for journaling from my dear friend and storycatcher, Christina and my heart breaks open to the story that is living deep in me, a little crack. A peek in. The story, for now, I am writing for me. The process it feels right to share here, for everyone, or no one to see.

Serendipity. A treasure hunt. For years pieces have been given to me to arrive at this moment of taking up this endeavor. The chance to lead women's conversation circles around legacy. The glory of working for two men who believe that journaling and reflection as a group is a core process for running a good business. An April ice storm. An unlikely job interview that led me to a paper school and a new world of melding photographs to paper and paper to binding, the creation of the very container for story, itself a form of meditation. The discovery of Madeline's poems in the raft of papers passed on to me by the family keeper of these things. And the way I couldn't deny she was somehow speaking to me as I rubbed soft paper pulp from the image of her words until they reappeared under the tips of my fingers. The aching wounds I feel compelled to heal that can't be traced to my own blessed life. A call to weave all of these art forms into one that is uniquely mine. An invitation.

I begin. 

Christina suggests I start with dialogue. A written conversation with Madeline. Have fun, she advises. I quickly create a signature, a set of pages sewn together, to hold all that we have to say. I pull out pictures of Madeline, and the partly rubbed off transfer of one of her poems, "If I Could Choose". I feel drawn to working on the transfer, rub more of the dried paper remnants from the surface with a bit of warm water. Invite Madeline to visit with me. I fill one of my grandmother's teacups with warm water and start to rub the surface. "Try the other hand" I remember from journaling therapist Kathy Adams' advice. As I switch to my left I feel the paper differently. I am required to slow down and work deliberately to find my way. A switch happens inside me too, a lower gear engages. 

After a while I notice that one line of the poem lies smooth as tumbled stone at my touch. A sign in image transfer that it is done. "Where Science Long to Dream,".  I move to sit down with my journal, and capture this line, and a question. "Why Me?". . . . . . . I can see Madeline, a moment in time that I borrow from a photograph. She is in the background, unaware, posing languidly against a tree. She turns toward me and answers me and I write it down. Then I write and she speaks. We both do. An hour later and I am wrung out. Exhausted. Elated. Intrigued.

I tuck our things away and take a long walk in the first hot spring sun, until another day.

Divine Present - Taste of the Past

MMMMummmmmmwanmmmmummynummy. I truly suck at living in the moment. Voice over of the self-help guru that lives in the cave that is my head . . . "so recall a time when you were good at it, what worked for you". Okay, so I suck at being a self-help guru too, cuz isn't that a question that begs you to be in the PAST? Whatever. This started out to be a simple bowing down at the altar of my mother's cookie bars, back to it.

It didn't occur to me until about a year ago to figure out how to recreate the cookie bars of my childhood. The ones we just CRAVED and you couldn't walk by the pan without slicing just a sliver. They are just the recipe for the tollhouse cookies off the chocolate chip bag, but instead of cookies, you put the dough in the pan, sprinkle the chips on TOP and coat the whole mess with some kind of brown sugar meringue concoction that gets brown and melts in your mouth in a sugary haze mixed with the salty, underbaked squish of the cookie part with the chips just being so darn chippy! Good lord. (Excuse me while I take another bite).

The intro course for my on-hiatus Masters was on time.  I loved exploring the idea of time as just that - a conceptual framework that we constructed on top of the natural world and the limited ways in which we experience her wonders. I can just barely grasp this. Barely being generous. Closest I come is when that bite of cookie bar connects me entirely to the present moment of sensual experience and to that same moment of my child self all at once. Mmmmm. Just one more little sliver.

Journaling The InBetween Step 2

I was awakened this morning by a rumbling anxiety in 'my tumbly', as Pooh would say. One I know all too well. Thankfully, a quiet voice in my head said, "you know what to do, you can write your way through this". . . to someplace inbetween.

I pay attention to what the fear is about. Making money. The process and pressure of finding 'real' work. Searches, applications, marketing, interviews, proposals, rejection, NETWORKING, bleah. It definitely feels like the masculine voice nagging at me. I start on that side of my journal. Let it unfurl and flap around a bit...

 

"There has to be something other than the 'old way' doesn't there? Of course there is, but I don't know if I am capable of following the 'new way' to any kind of success..." I circle around to shedding the fear relationship with money. No good is coming of that in the world! Next question. "So what might it look like to 'grab the tiger by the tail' and pull toward me the work that will give me all that I need?" I write in an inward spiral and arrive at my feminine voice. It's relationships stupid, and what is right in front of you. Okay, so I talked nicer to myself, but that is the gist of it. My feminine voice is tired of my bouts with self doubt. "So what is right in front of me?"

I switch to the feminine side of my journal. Turns out I have about 18 amazing opportunities and relationships right in front of me. Where they will lead, I am excited to see. I just hope I don't have to fill out an application.

Two Love Doves Stuck in a Tree

In my last post I invited you to tell a story about who put honey in your heart. I'm ready to tell a bit of mine.

The purest, sweetest honey in my heart comes from what I heard called by a woman eulogizing her mother today, the "silent grace passed from mother to daughter". I know now that I am grown up that not every girl is able to get this from her own mother. And now that I'm grown up I understand that this honeypot of the 'sacred feminine' is not only bottomless, but is also without sides. It doesn't have to come from your own mother. This honey just seeps out to fill any available container. Any available container.

I am blessed with a mother so abundantly full of rich, sticky, honey that those who need some seem to find her. They are my 'adopted' sisters and brothers all over the world. Michelle, and Marianne and Hafsat to name just a few. And most remarkably, I can see the honey flowing into and through my own daughter as it shows up in such interesting and awe inspiring ways. I am most struck today by the ways in which she gives back to me the best in myself.

This photograph is of one of the valentines she gave to my husband and me. With her permission I am sharing it with you. I didn't ask her what it meant to her, the poem she wrote. Yet.

Two love doves stuck in a tree,

if one were to fall out all would be lost.

What it brings up in me has a few layers, I think. The first responds to whatever fear she may be expressing. Mama bears protect their cubs, right? "Oh sweetie, nothing to worry about. Daddy and I will always be together." A promise I strive for, and believe to be true (but avoid overtly making nonetheless). And then I am thunderstruck by the powerful beauty and truth-for-me inviting exploration expressed so simply by a child of eleven. My child. My child, the artist. 

Part of  my truth. If one falls out of the tree, out of love, out of life perhaps, all that you know is lost. Everything is changed by it. 

Stuck in a tree. I was reading in the Oct 2008 issue of The Sun, an article by David Grossman about the stuckness of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. He is able to truly empathize with the humanity and love-centeredness of the people, the families, on each side. What I found to be tragic is the difficulty he witnesses in changing the minds of the people, who are used to the stuckness. People who know how to function in war, and know who they are as misunderstood, oppressed, occupied and people who are used to living with the kind of fear every day I will probably never need to face, even for a minute. Two love doves. Two groups of people who know great love. Stuck in a tree.

If one falls out, of being stuck in the tree. Instead of lost, what else might there be?