Different Kind of Quiet

The stillness of my house on the day of her return to school. Deep. Abiding. Nourishing. Lonely. Full of the pull of what is possible and the inertia of the possibility of doing nothing. A pilgrimage of sorts.

The Great Turning by Mark Nepo

I have returned to this cabin year after

year. To sit before this very window and

wait for the same trees to sway when no

one’s looking. As if this year, I might

listen better and hear more.

Something in us wants to make a

pilgrimage of everything. As if there is

always more. Always some stretch of wonder

we turn away from at the last second. Because

we can’t hold our breath any longer. Because

we can’t keep awake long enough. Because

we can hold our heart like a hand over

the open flame of truth only so long.

And so, we must go back.

Somehow, in God’s time, what we need

is just beyond what we can manage. And

what is fleeting to the eye and lasting to the

soul calls to us while we sleep. It waits

beneath the noise for our return.

It doesn’t matter where we return to.

Any opening will do. A cold snowy morn

off the old highway. Or a patch of heather

bending to a yellow wind. Or the shimmering

sea along the coast of your eyes which I have

always known but never seen until today.

Something in us wants to return

without repeating, the way the earth

turns on a fire no one can see.

A Lesson in Grace and Beauty

My daughter and her classmates, a merry band of 12, competed in the Pentathalon Games yesterday. They tested their will, their strength and their form against the standards of excellence set forth in Ancient Greece. The dawning days of man reflecting the heavens by recognizing that what lies with the gods, strength, speed, endurance and truth, beauty and grace, lives in us too. They spent a glorious day moving with their City States - Athens, Sparta, Delphi among them - showcasing their powers in six events.

Claire's team drew discus as their first event. Her best, she knew, and everyone said. Her form flawless when she could get out of her head. Coach, who earns his title in every best sense of this word, stood by her and helped her stay light and loose as the tension of waiting grew. 

Her performance was transcendent. Fluid and strong. The disk floating between her fingertips as if made of light, rather than 500 grams of dense rubber, today's answer to lead. You could see it on her face. She'd never done better. She was filled with all that is possible, ever was and could be. A moment inscribed forever on her eleventh year heart.

This day is truly something you should see. Every single child, a god and goddess, focused, determined, playful and one. 100 fractals of perfection sprinkled like wildflowers across a grassy field. At the end of the day, crowns are awarded, golden mantles woven from branches of willow trees. Two each per team for every event. The first for Strength and Truth, the second for Grace and Beauty. Four of the classmates won crowns for discus, each one of them deserving for their amazing performances. I would not have wanted to be a judge forced to rate and choose. Claire was not among them.

When the last crown was placed on these god-children's heads, every one of her classmates had one, every one but Claire. Let me say this again. Every single child in her class, together since kindergarten, as close as siblings, had a crown but her. An unprecedented event. I held my breath and ached inside as I watched her struggle with jealousy, sadness, rage and despair. For awhile it engulfed her, swallowed her up. Threatened to overtake all that was good about this monumental day, dull her brightness for a good long while. But she fought. And her friends stood with her, wouldn't let her drown.

This photograph is taken less than an hour after the last crown was bestowed on a silky head. I think you know which one she is. Her strength and truth, grace and beauty winning out over darkness. What more could one ask?

Writing Madeline Part 4

There is a disturbing tension, redrawing a life. I set out innocently to write my way into the unknown terrain of my great aunt Madeline. With a curiosity that had become an insistent invitation, bubbling up at a moment in time when I was more than interested to see if I could, I took up this endeavor to Write Madeline. From a few photographs, a poem, a bit of family lore plus some need in me I sit in the soup of knowing I am taking great creative license with a very real life. The question comes up, would I want this done to me?

If all history is revisionist, which it can't help but be, given the nature of how we think and the tenuousness of memory, then what is the harm? Doesn't it help to draw from the past? To make sense of it, let it speak to you, tutor you across time about who you could be? Another question comes up. Is it fear or love, that drives my desire to take thousands of photographs, and write and make art? To be, or to not be forgotten. 

I think it's good to do, documenting my life I mean. But maybe not too much. I think I would like to leave for my great grandsomeone the thrill and hard labor of mucking around in the mystery.  

Writing Madeline Part 3

Margaret showed up to join the telling of the women in her family. Madeline's older sister who died in her parents arms at the age of three. This is what she said to me:

I fill in spaces.

Some light and some dark, the faces of being.

Angel and spook, evil and good.

Maybe it is jarring to you,

"not right at all" you say,

to think of a dead little girl as evil.

Like being possessed.

It's not really that way.

How do I explain.

It is the place in between where I exist.

For Mummy and Daddy on their darkest day,

I fill in the great chasm

to the sunshine that feels to them

so awfully far away.

My presence holds sway.

Whispers them nearer,

'til they can see the light again,

and leap toward it's warmth.

If they pause in between,

keep very still

I am present with them, one being.

Pure love.

Time stops and we are together again.

Writing Madeline Part 2

"Madeline, I'm here. Tell me about that day." At the appointment I set with myself to meet Madeline and begin to hear what she has to say, this is the way I begin. I have always been drawn to this picture of all those in my collection. My great grandmother, Florence in the foreground. Madeline posing, as if she is the one the camera is focused on, against this great tree. 

I think on this day something happened. Madeline, and maybe others too, entered into what Christina calls the "Spiral of Experience". A happening that eventually took her deep into her own story. A shift that shook her out of a dream.

 

I asked her who she was on that day. And with a bit of self-consciousness at first, "is this her voice, or mine", "this is silly, what am I doing", Madeline appeared. I dutifully put her to page. When I thought I was done, she was finished enough for now, Florence, Flossie once, asked to be heard. A mother watching her child become a woman, and worrying as mothers do. How she held her, this pretty one, the next one she would lose. 

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.