musings

It is impossible to stand at the feet of a mountain, untrembling.
But departure will do no good. The path,
catastrophic, claustrophobic as it is,
nevertheless begs us forward.
Look how it curls, a bent and beckoning finger, into the deeper woods.
Look how its ragged, ruthless stones resemble guideposts.
Don’t leave now.
Fold your shoulders under the brambles. The grazing will
make a mark and that will tell you how close
your own body is willing to come. This is no small thing.
This is the beginning
of everything.
You can find comfort in the most improbable places.
Don’t leave now.
Consider the possibility that you are already home.
Make a web of yourself.
It is here that the feast will fall.

– Maya Stein

Consider the possibility that I am already home.  This is the beginning of everything.  These words fall somewhere deep inside of me, beyond the realm of logic and intellect.  They quench some thirst I cannot articulate, some longing for home that I’ve circled around many times, here and elsewhere.

The path is, often, catastrophic and claustrophobic for me, intimidating and too-close at the same time, full of perils imagined and not.  And yet onward I walk, sometimes frustrated by a sense that I’m going in circles rather than moving forward, trying to accept the cycles of my life, to embrace all that is not at all linear about this life of the spirit.  I’m growing ever more certain that the central lesson is, at least for me, acceptance.  Yielding to what is, and to what is not, and to what will never be.  Leaning into the truth of my life even as I mourn those things that are not as I imagined them.

What if home was, all along, right here?  What if it is something I carried inside myself, all these years?  All of this searching, this sometimes frantic scrabbling, trying on of various hats and identities and shapes … all of it was for naught.  It was here all along, the jewel I sought so desperately.  But of course it was not for naught, I see that, of course I do: all of that effort helped bring me here.  Helped to bring me home.  And another thing I know for sure is that that effort and searching is not over now.  It will go on, and on, in the looping circular patterns that are at once inspiring and agonizing, full of the grandeur and terror of this world we live in.  Circling a mountain that is so majestic that it is impossible to stand untrembling.

I have been thinking about stillness a lot lately.  What is means to be still.  Still in mind, still in body, still in spirit.  Still as in not moving, but also as in continuing.  Stillness, in the not-moving sense is not my natural state.  I talk fast, I move fast, I even drive fast.  I’ve written before of my history of frantic restlessness, of my almost tragic inability to slow down and be inside my life.  I’m changing these patterns, albeit slowly, oh so creakingly slowly.  But I am not a still person by nature.  I don’t sit still and my mind doesn’t stay still.

What I know now is that the constant motion and busy-ness is a way of avoiding the pain and the grandeur of right here.  But it’s also, genuinely, a response to a life full of demands.  It occurred to me, during my quiet August break, that there will always be somewhere else to be. The light on my blackberry will always blink red. The pages of my manuscript will always be there waiting for my eyes and my pen.  There will always be laundry to fold, errands to run, childrens’ needs to respond to, the phone ringing, emails piling up in my multiple email boxes.  There will not be a moment, ever, when being still, being here, is the default and the easy choice.  It will always require an active decision, and the turning away from things that are needed of me.

The challenge is to be still despite that. To be here anyway.  To choose stillness.

I thought of Rebecca’s beautiful description of an encounter with a dragonfly.  Her long, still moments in the water, when the dragonfly landed on her body and stayed, were nothing short of holy.  And it is clear that the dragonfly chose to land on her precisely because she was already being so still.  When we are still we are open to receive the sacred, to see the divinity in our lives.

And so as we hurtle headfirst into the busy, fuller-than-full month of September, I am reminded, again, of the need to actively commit to stillness.  Reminded that I will always have to choose it over other obligations, many of which are completely valid in their claims on me.  And I must still, over and over, be still.  Still choose stillness.

Still.

“Another person is like a geode lined with hidden glittering.” – Catherine Newman

I believe this to be true.  I believe this with all my might.  I’ve been privileged enough to have gazed at this glittering, in awe, inside another person.

What I’m contemplating, lately, is that if I believe this about others, I might have to believe that it is also be true of me.  Right?  The last few nights, lying in bed before I fall asleep, I have seen a twinkling behind my eyelids.  I can’t describe it other than that – but I’m wondering if it’s the hidden glittering winking at me.  On the rare occasions that I let myself lean into a wave of trust, I can imagine that there is a whole universe sparkling inside of me.  An expansive space, a black sky speckled with constellations whose forms I don’t yet know how to read.

I have only seen passing glimpses of this world, and, frankly, only recently.  Why has it taken me so long to see it?  I suspect that it’s because to do so I need to squeeze my eyes closed, need to to firmly shut out all outside input, advice, and approval.  I have to go dark, as I wrote about in January.  While I’m drawn to this, like the reverse of a moth to a flame, it remains hard for me.

I wonder why all that is within me is pressing on the insides of my eyelids right now, trying to get my attention.  I guess it makes sense: this has been a tumultuous time, limned with a lingering shadow of farewell that I still don’t quite understand.  Perhaps all of that transition and letting go is making room for something burrowed within me that hasn’t had the space – or time, or courage, or what? – to come forth before.  Perhaps all of this is just the fundamental not-knowing of midlife sinking in, the beginning, at last, of my accepting that my home is inside the questions and not the answers.  Maybe I’m finally getting comfortable in my own skin, and my body is beginning to offer up deeply-buried messages.

I don’t know.

I do know that I’ve glimpsed a planetarium sky that I want to study, to watch, to learn by heart.  I want to live there.

Photograph is by my talented friend Meghan, who has brought a group of creative women together as a Tribe.  I am deeply honored to be included, and while I missed the first retreat in June, I’m looking forward to 2012 in Oregon.  It is exceptionally rare for me to like a photograph of me, and I like this one.  Thank you, Meghan!

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. – Socrates

We were visiting friends at the beach this past week, and at one point I was with Grace in the ocean. Despite the heat of the day, the water was cold, and we were standing right at the edge of the waves’ breaking, tip-toeing in slowly. Suddenly a really big wave came and Grace was standing in just the wrong place. She was tumbled over and thrashed around in the whitewater. When she came up, spluttering, her hair and her bathing suit were both full of small rocks. She was breathless, surprised, somewhere between gigglingly startled and authentically afraid.

This was just one more time when the ocean provided me with a metaphor. I know I’m neither alone nor original in finding meaning in the waves, the water, the tide, the undertow. But it is to these images and sounds, to the salty bite of the ocean air, the snapping of halyards against masts, the caw-caw-cawing of seagulls soaring above that my mind most often returns. I am the child of sailors, who grew up mostly on the coast, and this runs through my veins as surely as does my affection for scientific inquiry and my East Greenwich Eldredge blood, so perhaps this instinct is innate.

For some reason I feel a connection between the image of my daughter, tossed in a wave breaking on shore, and that quote by Socrates. I’ve been in my own version of whitewater lately: feeling confused, a bit lost, unsteady. And I wonder if part of that is because I haven’t even begun to define my terms, the terms by which I want to live my life, by which I want to exist in the world. I am fairly sure that awareness of such a need is progress for me. I suspect that for years I just assumed some general universal terms applied to me. Terms that were, importantly, set by someone else.

No more.

I’m going to set my own terms now.

I am not sure how, or when, because right now I’m still a bit upside down in the whitewater, unable to see for sea spray in my eyes, and waiting for the water to drain out of my ears so that I can hear clearly. But at least I know I need to. I know the terms I want to live my life by start with compassion and empathy and kindness, and that they include a deep need to honor the reality, savage and beautiful as it is, of my life.

Maybe that’s what writing is for me. Just as my lifetime love of cornflower blue was, all along, guiding me to my son’s eyes, maybe my words, in the convoluted, slow-to-be-revealed wisdom that I must trust is there somewhere, are taking me to the place where I will know how it is I want to engage with the world. How is it I want to live my life.

A repost from exactly a year ago, because I am still, or again, or always, in this place.  Also, for my oldest friend Ethan, whose birthday it is today, and whose choice to live life on his terms is something I’ve always deeply admired.
(picture is from this year)