On the way home from Minnesota we drove the river road. We pulled over several times to gape with awe at the Mississippi River. We marveled at the bluffs and searched the sky for eagles.
It was more than a scenic choice. It was an intentional return to our origin story. When we packed up my life in Seattle and moved it to Wisconsin, we entered the state through the river road. Kerri wanted it to be the portal to my new home. We stopped in the little town of Stockholm just as we had eleven years ago. We visited the same shop that caught our eye on that day in the past. The shop has since passed on to the owner’s daughter. She’s making it her own. She told us that the metal sculptors we’d admired, the reason we originally stopped, were retiring. It was getting too hard for their hands to do the work.
Just beyond Stockholm we pulled off the road to get some photos of Farmer Don’s place. Tripper-Dog-Dog-Dog’s birthplace. We hoped there’d still be a sign for “Aussie Pups” so we could stop and tell Farmer Don how much we love our Dogga. There was no sign and it looked as if the farm had changed owners. The driveway into the farm and the white fences were the same. We took photos. We sat in the car and recounted the story of the day we got a dog when we didn’t mean to get a dog. We whispered a quiet “thank you” to Farmer Don.
We pulled off the road a few minutes later to get another view of the Mississippi River. Timeless. I imagined I heard the voice of the river. It was akin to the low rumble of a didgeridoo.
The stores have changed hands. Old buildings are restored and new shops are constructed. Farmer Don is most likely no longer with us. He was older and not in good health that day in the past, when he needed to find a good home for a puppy that no one wanted, and two strangers driving a Budget truck saw his sign and decided to stop. I suspect he knew that stop would change their lives.
The names on the political signs lining the outskirts of the villages are different. We are different after eleven years. So much life, or so it seems. So much water under the bridge. A blink of an eye to the river.
The opportunity to return and relish our origin story. To travel through time. For us it was as simple as taking a drive along the road runs beside the mighty river.
It’s not that we are inept or anti-tech. We are not. We are mostly savvy and can generally figure things out. When we can’t, we have a 12 year-old cultural-informant on standby who can guide us through the maze of complexity.
One of the promises of technology is to make our lives easier. Often that is true. Often it is not. I have found that being inundated in a 24/7 firehose of information with multiple competing channels, services and choices and changes and updates, password-password-do-you-remember-the-password, resets, google searches for clues, revamps and rolling technological improvements…life is not easier. Too much is too much. Too fast is too fast. And, let’s face it, much of what is out there is noise. It’s impossible to fill the belly of a 24/7 hungry ghost with brain-or-heart-nutritional substance.
We don’t watch much tv. But, when we do, we don’t want to spend an hour scanning or searching or retrieving or updating the app. I confess to fondly recalling the days of three channels, an on-and-off switch and a remote with a single button. I also like the feel of turning pages in a book and have been eye-rolled a time or two for saying it.
Here’s the bottom line: I have limited time on this earth and don’t want to lose it looking for something to watch.
Pre-Covid we regularly had dinner parties or hosted gatherings of Kerri’s choirs and ukulele band. Each week the big dining room table was piled high with food and drink. People crowded into the kitchen and living room. People spilled out onto the deck.
Now, we use the dining room table when we have large projects that require space for organization. We use it as a staging ground when we’re preparing for a trip. Covid ushered in an era of reclusion and the necessity for space and quiet.
Last weekend we had a surprise large project to assemble. Tons of paper to sort. As Kerri prepared the plan I headed to the dining room to clear the table. I stopped in my tracks with what I found there. The table was covered with rocks. There were several gallon size ziplock bags with painted rocks and rocks ready to be painted. Mostly, there were paper towels spread like islands across the table surface, each populated by dozens of hagstones. Odin Stones. Adder stones. Magical stones of many names, all sizes, from tiny bead-size to fist-size rocks, each with a naturally eroded hole. The power of water working on earth.
I hadn’t realized that we’d collected so many. We’d inadvertently converted our dining room into a hagstone sanctuary, an epicenter of ancient folk magic: nature’s talisman of healing, protection and wisdom. I laughed. Apparently we could use a bit of ancient protection. I certainly could use a healthy dose of wisdom. I considered laying on the table, body across the bumpy stones and saying, “I’m ready! Do your stuff!”
We bumbled onto the secluded beach a few months ago. The power of the lake is palpable. The beach is a festival of wave-polished rocks and treasured hagstones. The gulls circle and chase. The portal to the beach requires crawling through trees recently burned. Fire. Air. Water. Earth. People have created whimsical structures, crude altars and twisted sculpture from the driftwood.
We’ve returned a few times to comb the beach for the miracle stones with holes made from years and years of their dance with water. A feather on the stone. Time disappears as we slowly walk the beach, heads down, sensing as much as looking for the rare hagstones.
According to tradition, only good things can pass through the hole in the stone, made magic by the watercarver. Our growing collection, a prayer-pile or incantation cairn. Good things.
I will, someday soon, lay on the beach after dipping into the cold Lake Michigan water, warm myself in the sun, and feel the large hole that life has worn through me, myself now a magic hagstone. Grateful, I will think, “Only good things. I’m ready. Let’s do it.”
“The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.” ~ Alan Watts
The ferns have returned. Last week they were sharp tendrils poking through the leaves and earth; little green aliens. A mere seven days later, they are over three feet tall, fern-flags unfurling.
Driving to our trail we saw a turtle crossing the road. Kerri whipped a u-turn and I jumped out of the car, picked it up, expedited its journey, moving it from the pavement to the grass. There’s something special about the turtles. Throughout March and April, while walking on our trail, we’d cross the bridge over the Des Plaines River, and look for the turtles’ return. The turtle in the road was our first sighting of the season. Later, on the bridge over the river, we saw a dozen. “They’re back!” she said and smiled.
Lately we’re given to walking the same trail. We’ve seen it change through several seasons. We followed our loop last week and I swear, this week, it’s an entirely different trail. The trees are flowering. The trillium are showing their purple.
I used to wonder how Emily Dickinson thrived looking at the same garden for years and years. How did she write such beautiful poetry with such a small window to the world? Now I know that her world was enormous and my question was too small.
“There will be days that you know you simply cannot win. The best thing to do when you find that you are standing in a no-win situation, is to vigorously wave your white flag and surrender to your fate as gracefully as possible.” ~ Quinn (not an exact quote)
“To keep your mouth closed and say nothing is trouble for sure. To say anything in this moment – anything at all – is the road to tribulation. There is only one thing to do. Feign a slipped disk. Crumple to the ground in desperate pain. Seek theatrical escape!” ~ the only advice my inner Confucius offered in my moment of need.
“This world is crazy. It makes no sense.” ~ Sterling Brown, This Is Us.
Perhaps the most useful and profound lesson I’ve learned happened under the water. I was doing my first night dive. I was scared. I was not yet a confident diver. As we descended the world became inky black. All I could see was where I pointed my light.
It was that simple. I can see where I point my light. That’s it. And, more to the point, I choose where I point my light. I have the capacity to choose what I see. I can…and have…chosen to focus on hardship and lack. I can…and have…chosen to focus on what I love. On any given day my focus bounces full spectrum between complaint and appreciation. And then I remember: it’s my light, where do I want to aim it?
There’s a second aspect of the lesson. My focus is a beam. My light is not all encompassing. Each of us looks at life through a soda straw. None of us has the big picture. That’s why the commons is so important. In order to know what to do, we need to bring our many perspectives together to approximate something close to a full picture. Rather than fight about disparate points of view – who is right – it’s more useful to try and assemble all of those differing views, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, into a bigger picture. No one wins when the pieces refuse to interlink.
With two broken wrists the cello became impossible to play. It has sat in her studio, the case unopened, since her fall over two years ago. I remember the day we bought it. We were early in our relationship, not yet married. I knew she was having cello dreams. We went to the music store for some other purpose, I can’t remember. The cello was sitting in the corner. She sat. She began to play. It was a perfect fit. And, although we could not afford it, we also could not leave it behind. It was a perfect fit.
Our lives these past two years have been a descent into dark water. We’ve worked hard to shine our light at our good fortune in a dark and inky landscape. As we make our way back to the surface, we are cleaning out. Taking stock. “The cello needs to be played,” she said, deciding to sell it. “I’ll never be able to play it, now.” She took photographs of her cello. Sent out a message through the network.
At the end of the day she showed me the photo. Edges. The view from inside the empty cello case, looking out. A slice of the world visible outside the case.
What’s “out there” is rarely clear. We see a small slice. It tickles our curiosity. The cello dream moves on making space for…? Who knows? We can’t see that far. In the meantime, we keep our eyes and hearts uplifted as we slowly kick our way back to the surface.
“…nothing really worthwhile can be owned. There is life. There is love. There is grace. But we can neither create nor possess a state of any of these. These visitors breathe through us, with us and in us the more we keep ourselves open.” ~ Declan Donnellan
Barney, the piano, was set to go to the junkyard. His soundboard was broken after years of being stored in a basement in a boiler room. We convinced the junkyard man to bring Barney to our house. We set up a stone foundation so he wouldn’t sink into the garden. In a move worthy of the Three Stooges, we rolled him across the grass until he came to rest in his new home, our backyard.
Over the years we’ve watched Barney age into gorgeousness. His veneer blistered and rolled. Pieces fell off. The superficial white covering on his keys mostly flaked away. His truth exposed by the sun and the rain and the snow, is more lovely than the facade he once maintained. His wood bleaches and cracks, the grain swirls like a rip tide. His nails and screws rust, the color pops in elegant contrast to his otherwise grey and green-moss tones.
Over time, the flowers and grasses have grown around and through his pedals. Each summer the green tendrils reach for his keys. He has become home and haven to chipmunks and squirrels. The birds sit on his lid and rest or sing. Dogga investigates the community living in and around Barney at least once every day. He is, in his slow march toward dust, a welcome sanctuary to all living things.
Unlike many of the human examples in my life, Barney has opened with age. He is akin to our dear H, who died not so long ago, a man who opened and opened and opened the older he became. Like Barney, a gorgeous spirit grown more gorgeous with age. Curious about life and engaged with its mystery to the very end. H was a study of opening to his experiences rather than resisting the changes.
This year I have wrestled with staying open. My veneer wrinkles, my truth is revealed by the circles I have made around the sun. I have, many days, felt like my soundboard was cracked, the purpose that I was built for ruined by life next to the boiler. And then I listen to the absurdity of my words. The purpose. Singular. Ridiculous. I am reminded of what H knew and Barney trumpets to me each and every day: in an open heart, purpose is never fixed. It is a fluid thing. It is a moving target, not a possession or plaque to be hung on my wall of respect. It is a home to chipmunks, a resting spot for birds. It is how I address myself to the world of mysteries, how I avail myself to the experiences that wash through me and over me each and every day. It is how I make breakfast for Kerri. It is how I sit with DogDog when he searches the house for his missing BabyCat. It is in my choice to say Yes or No to the wonders of this world.
Posted on September 30, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative
Years ago, Doug said to me, “The problem with you is that you want things to make sense.” He was right. I did want the world to make sense. I still do.
However, I have over these many years come to recognize that what makes sense to me need not make sense to others. Doug might have well said to me that my sense-making was not lining up with the sense-making of others. For instance, I want education to be about stoking curiosity in hearts and minds rather than a brain-numbing passionless pursuit to pass standardized tests. High scores are lousy indicators of learning. No sense.
As a student I almost died sitting in a desk. I had to move to think. I still do. Kerri and I hold meetings by hiking trails. Here on Island our neighbors say, “You two are dedicated walkers!” Little do they know – little would they understand – that our walks are work sessions.
Our time here on Island has reinforced one of my favorite studies of things-that-don’t-make-sense-to-me: most people say they desire change but rebel vehemently against it when it arrives. It is a theme of my life, perhaps the organizing principle of my career, to be hired as an agent of change only to be met by a wild tsunami of resistance. White knuckles holding on to what is known, all the while screaming for a new path. It’s crazy.
I used to wonder why they hired me. Now, I’ve come to recognize white knuckle resistance as a phase. It’s messy but it is a necessary step to letting go.
It takes a sturdy ship and plenty of provisions to comfortably set sail for the edge. Most folks like a map and road snacks before they can settle into the car and hit the road to seek adventure. Change processes are like that. Paradoxical. Nonsensical. Just plain crazy.
“So much life lived this week,” Heidi said to Kerri. Yes. So much.
It is, of course, true every week. Some weeks it is simply more apparent. The happenings seem bigger. A wedding. A graduation. A passing. A new job. A birth. A week of life.
Last week? A walk on the beach. Both children under the same roof; something that has not happened in years. Travel to another state. Staying present with my dad for those moments when he’d forgotten who I was. Staying present with my mom as a wave of fear washed over her. A job lost. Taking his keys and truck away. The deep gratitude of sleeping in my own bed, even for a night. So much life lived.
I have taught myself, in my waking moments, to think, “Make this day a discovery.” I have given too many weeks of my life away, too many days, too many hours, too many minutes, believing that I knew what was going to happen. Dulling myself. Blinding myself to so much life happening. ‘Discover the day’ is a much better approach than ‘Get through the day.’ The truth: none of us really know what is going to happen.
The Direction of Intention 