Month: November 2013

The season of darkness

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In a dark time, the eye begins to see. – Roethke

This is the darkest season.  Here in the northeast, with still more than a month to go until the shortest day, we are enfolded in the dark by five.

It’s fair to say that the contrast, interplay, and interrelation between light and dark is one of the central preoccupations of my life.  I’m fascinated by the way one allows the other, the way we need both to live in this world, the fact that light and dark are at once polar opposites and so closely related as to be two sides of the same coin.  When I search my archives for “light” I come up with 33 pages of results.

You might imagine that I have strong emotions about this particular time of the year, these week of deep darkness.

And you would be right.  I used to dread this time.  I can easily recall the physical sensation of gloom and fear that came over me as the days shortened.  And it’s true that in the spring, perhaps around February, I am buoyed when I begin to notice that the days are creeping longer.

But I don’t dread these dark days anymore.  I actually love them.  There’s something deeply reassuring to me about this season.  I’ve written extensively about my attachment to the solstice, and that is surely part of this comfort.  It isn’t hard for me to summon a roomful of candles, and to know how quickly they can dispel the darkness.

There is more going on, though.  I suspect it has something to do with the Roethke quote above, or with Wendell Berry’s lyrical lines which run through my head all the time:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.  To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.

– Wendell Berry

Berry asserts that to really know the dark we have to surrender to it.  We have to let our eyes adjust, which means we must go in without any external light.  And that, in that darkness, there is a beauty that we never imagined.

It’s a short leap from thinking about the darkness out the window to the darkness inside myself.  I am still getting to know the darkness there, learning to gaze into the ragged hole that exists in the center of all of our souls, practicing pushing on the bruise and feeling the wound.  I have often described the feeling of that intense darkness as staring into the sun.  Again, light and dark are so close together as to be inextricable, sliding across each other, both occluding and showcasing as they do so.

Maybe that’s what this life is: an eclipse.

It has only been when I have really let myself lean into that darkness, accept that my deepest wound is the profound sadness of impermanence, that I’ve started seeing the gifts that are there.  As I sink into the way my life actually is, everyday I find unexpected gems buried in the mundane.  Sure, I also cry a lot more.  I grieve and mourn constantly, far more than I imagined possible.

But there’s also beauty here.  Surprising, staggering, serendipitous beauty.  Divinity buried in the drudgery.  Dark feet and dark wings.

Every year I feel more at ease in these dark days, protected, somehow.  I realize now that this is a manifestation of my increased comfort with my own darkness.  I have begun to see.

Two of these paragraphs were originally written and shared in January 2011.  They are even truer now.

Adventures big and small

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It is important to me to share adventures with Grace and Whit.  That’s among the things I want most for them.  I want them to have big adventures, and to see the world.  I also want them to have small adventures.  We did the trapeze a few years ago and learned to fly.  We have volunteered at soup kitchens, had picnics in local parks, and danced on a beach off-season.

This past weekend’s adventure was went rock climbing at Brooklyn Boulders in Somerville.  We tried top-roping, self-belaying, and bouldering.  I was struck by how fearless Grace and Whit were.  Whit struggled on one wall, and what impressed me most was his tenacity; he would not give up.  I kept yelling up that he could come down if he wanted and he finally hollered down that I should stop saying that because he wasn’t coming down until he made it to the top.

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Grace was a natural.  She scaled the wall so quickly and with such ease that our (wonderful) instructor asked me if she’d climbed before.  Um, at a birthday party, maybe once?  She loved it and I could see that climbing took advantage of her natural balance, flexibility, and courage.  It was great to see.

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The scariest experience of the day was coming down from the self-belay wall.  To do that, you had to lean back and trust that the belay rope would catch your weight.  Matt and Whit did that with little drama.  Grace and I hesitated longer.  When she finally made what is effectively a trust fall, she came down gracefully.  I bounced off the wall with significantly less elegance but made it down in one piece.

We had an absolutely marvelous morning.  I loved seeing Grace and Whit be brave, and push themselves, and, literally, climb to the sky.  It felt like exercise, and adventure, and a wonderfully non-competitive, collaborative family experience.

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Brooklyn Boulders is an impressive facility.  There are 25,000 square feet of climbing wall, as well as workspaces, exercise rooms, and free wi-fi.  The spirit of camaraderie that defines the climbing community is tangible in the airy space with soaring ceilings.  I am often dismayed by how negatively competition in kids’ sports (and lives in general) can manifest, and climbing seems like a powerful antidote to that.

A day pass to Brooklyn Boulders includes access to several yoga classes, the weight rooms, and all the climbing walls.  You could sit in one of a few different work spaces, watching the climbing or working with access to wi-fi.  Every single person we met there was, without exception, friendly and warm and didn’t make us feel like the awkward middle-aged people who didn’t know how to put on their harnesses we are.

We’ll definitely be going back.  Whit wants to do his birthday party there, and Grace is considering climbing on a weekly basis.

For full disclosure, Brooklyn Boulders provided us with a family belay session free of charge.  All opinions here, however, are my own, and the extravagantly positive opinion I have of the facility and staff is completely genuine.

This is what I believe

This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in that forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I must never let mankind put anything over me,
but that I will always try to recognize and submit
to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed.

– DH Lawrence

More things I love

Thanksgiving in Mongolia – When I finished this essay by Ariel Levy for the first time I couldn’t breathe.  It is singularly one of the most powerful pieces of writing I have ever read.  Go.  Read.  Now.

Feelin’ Alive – I love this post, from a new-to-me blog, No Cigarettes, no Bologna.  I laughed out loud when she described her 24 year old outlook on life as “I am going to control all the changes in my life by running 40 miles a week and eating only melon.”  Um, yes.  And then my eyes filled with tears when she wrote “It’s about holding space for both the disappointment and the gratitude.”  Because, also, yes.  Funny and wise.  My very favorite combination.

Good! Busy! Good Busy! – Aidan is an old and dear friend of mine, and I absolutely adored this post.  “It is up to us to live each day fully because we cannot go back. We must open our eyes and notice things.”  Aidan is committed to noticing the gems buried in the grit of her everyday life, and I both admire and relate to this.

Indiana Jones – Whit was Indiana Jones for Halloween, a selection based on nothing other than “that looks cool” (as far as I can tell).  We’ve been watching the movies in the last few weeks (he chose his costume in early October, which triggered the viewing-a-thon).  And I have to say I love Indiana as a role model: an academic who goes on wild adventures, usually wearing a suit and tie.  Whit told me that someone at school, upon hearing his costume, asked who Indiana Jones was.  “An archaeologist,” he responded, and when he told me the story it was clear that what he implied was: an archaeologist is cool.  I think so.

On repeat in my car (the only place I listen to music): Let Her Go by Passenger, Lost In My Mind by The Head and the Heart, and Christmas carols.  Yes.  They have started in full force.

I share these posts about what I’m reading and thinking about approximately monthly.  They are all gathered here.

What are you reading, listening to, thinking about, and loving these days?

You project what you are

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It is a fact that you project what you are. – Norman Vincent Peale

My father’s influence on me is enormous.  I can’t really convey the degree to which his example echoes through my life, though I have tried.  At least once a day, I think of something he said or did or believed or showed me when I was a child.  One thing he said often was that maturity is the ability to see how we are perceived by others.

I think this is true.  And I am sure I am not there yet.  Over and over again, I run into the brick wall of what others perceive and I am often startled by how far it is from reality.  There was the woman on the shuttle, all those years ago (four now!), whose voice still rings in my head.  Hard and self-assured, she called me.  Neither of which I have felt, ever, for even a single moment of my life.

Then there was my disconcerting and uncomfortable experience at BlogHer in 2010.  For some reason people have always projected things onto me.  Other peoples’ inaccurate impressions of and assumptions about me feel terrible.  These rattle around inside my sense of myself, small but granular, spiky, unavoidable.  My porous nature means that I’m extremely open to the input of others, and often I give too much credence to views that may not be based in any kind of fact (or, worse, not come with kind intentions).

There can be such a yawning gulf between what others perceive of us and what we actually intend, feel, and experience.  I’ve written of this lacuna often, a moat filled with monsters: assumption, stereotype, judgment.  Having been on the receiving end of snap judgments that are far from the truth has made me slower to jump to conclusions about others, and more inclined towards empathy.

But this quote by Norman Vincent Peale stopped me in my tracks.  Maybe what I radiate – the energy that has often caused others to perceive me as chilly or aloof – is what I am?  Is that possible?  Even considering that gives me a shiver.  But then I remember: those we know well may see an entirely different light radiating from us than do strangers.  That must matter.

Right?  How do you parse the difference – whether it is infinitessimal or gigantic – between reality and perception?  I have to grow confident in who I am without listening to what others think.  Right?  I thought this was the task I’d been engaged in for the last ten years or more.  I guess what I’m learning is that there is value in knowing what others pick up, and while it may or may not change the core truth of who we are, it is something that we are well served to understand.  Oh, wait.  Maybe this is the maturity that my father was talking about all along?