My favorite Smack-Dab cartoons are drawn directly from our conversations. This one happened verbatim. We howled when Siri replaced our “wilty” with “wealthy”. I’m shallow enough to admit that I hope to someday experience the challenge of being un-hire-aable because I am too wealthy. “We’d hire you Mr. Robinson but you’re too stinking rich”.
I’m already familiar with the wilty part.
This is, perhaps, the only time I will suggest that you keep your comments to yourself. Unless, of course, you have suggestions about making me too wealthy to hire. In that case, bring it on!
We have been slow to reenter life at home. We were only gone for a few days but it feels like months. There is life before the farmhouse and life after. The time away serves as a hard line of distinction. And, because there is now a before, we are finding our reentry a bit disorienting. Nothing is the same yet everything is the same. Unrecognizable because it is familiar.
We are moving slow. We are noise averse. We are reticent to go to the store or drive on a busy road. Too much stimulus fries our wires. It’s as if we are walking through the life we know – we knew – as witnesses. There is a silent accounting: what stays, what we will let go.
Transformation is like that. Snakes shed old skin. Trees drop their leaves. People clean their closets. Letting go creates necessary space for a new rhythm and new rhythms emerge slowly over time.
Sitting on the back deck this morning, the air was still and warm. The birds were singing, the chippies foraged beneath the feeder for discarded seed, Kerri said, “This is the level of sound that I can tolerate right now.” I nodded.
Long ago, when I facilitated retreats, on the last day someone would usually ask, “How do we take what we’ve learned back into our normal lives?” They were changed by their experiences at the retreat but the circumstance of their daily lives remained unaltered. The real question was “How do I bring this feeling of openness and expansion from the protection of the retreat center to the squeeze and turmoil of the realities of life?” There isn’t a single answer to the question. In fact, there isn’t an answer. There’s a practice. There are decisions. What might fall off the list of to-dos? Spaciousness is not magic. Openness is often the result of generosity-to-self. One must slow down to see and hear and taste. Touch takes time. Positive thought takes intention and letting go of grudges. Forgiveness is a choice made again and again and again.
The first day back we walked our trail. We talked of the changes we want to make. The clearing of old baggage. Making space. Kerri stopped to photograph the honeysuckle. I took a deep breath of the sweet fragrance. Nothing more. Nothing less.
After several weeks with its face to the wall, I turned the painting around to see it with fresh eyes. “OMG!” I thought. “This needs some serious work!” It’s too tight in some places, not finished in others, and it’s missing an all important element. The florals are rock hard and the dog – part of the original composition – is nowhere to be found. What was I thinking!
I’m a bit too famous for painting over paintings. It’s a habit that evokes finger-wagging from friends. Kerri has been known to fling herself between me and a painting that I put on the easel-chopping-block. “I hate it!” I cry.
“Touch it and I’ll break your fingers,” she quietly threatens. I like my fingers so I relent.
Actually, she’s provided me with the perfect response to gallery-goers when they ask the ubiquitous question, “How do you know when a painting is done?”
In the past I’d say something amorphous like, “It’s not something you know; it’s something you feel.” Intuition. Gut feeling. Artistic argle-bargle.
Now, my perfect reply is definitive and goes like this: “Oh, it’s easy! I know it’s complete when my wife threatens to break my fingers.” She might look like a delicate columbine-flower but watch out.
It’s a conversation stopper but the real fun comes when I add, “She’ll break the fingers of anyone who doesn’t appreciate my work.”
I turn and walk away as they debate asking the obvious next question: Is she here?
Years ago Tom gave me a bit of career-advice that I’m still trying to take: “Unlike most people,” he ominously said, “your path will never be about plugging into life. Rather, you must find how life can best plug into you.”
Joyce, a healer and mystic, got that look in her eyes, and told me that I was never going to pursue a single profession. Mine-to-do was to see into hearts; mine was to guide people to their truths.
These days, their words ring loudly in my ears. In the past 24 weeks, since the start-up collapsed, I’ve applied to over 100 positions. Each morning I open my email and find the latest thanks-but-no-thanks. And, each morning I ask myself the same question: How do I – this time – once again – at this stage in my life – find how life might plug into me? I’ve received plenty of ideas-for-jobs and more than a heaping spoonful of advice. “Seeing into hearts” and “Guiding people to their truths” is not stellar resume fodder, even when it includes owning businesses and fixing businesses and coaching people all over the world and painting paintings and directing plays and repairing broken theatre companies. Those “ways” feel finished.
I’m working very hard to find ways to plug into life.
It was a great relief to unplug from the fruitless pursuit for a few days. To gather with my family, to say good-bye to my dad, to eat and drink and play at a farmhouse that will forever represent the time and place an era ended and a new age began. Sitting on the porch in the morning sun I felt spacious for the first time in many months. Standing in the yard watching the sunset, I was quiet inside. Rooted. Easy.
I hadn’t realized how compressed I’d become. How air-less. The farmhouse served as a gift from my father: take a deep breath. Nothing more. Nothing less. This life is quickly passing. Relax. It will find you.
I stepped into the morning sun and practiced my tai-chi. These words from the Buddha came to mind: “Joyful participation with the sorrows of the world,” The accent is on the word “joyful.”
I am a big believer in happy accidents. Kerri didn’t intend to take this photo. A vibrant shock of red thrust into a field of green. I’m tempted to slap a title on it and enter it into a contemporary photography exhibition.
I’ve read that serendipity, an “unplanned fortunate discovery,…is a common occurrence throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery.” It’s also a common occurrence throughout the history of art. It’s also a common occurrence throughout the history of…history. We have experiences and then we make meaning of them. Not the other way around.
I suppose we pride ourselves on our capacity “to know” so we forget that all knowledge is the result of a stumble, a discovery found at the far end of curiosity, exploration or an outright mistake. The point of a hypothesis (to borrow a term from Quinn) is to cultivate serendipity. Try it and see what happens.
I’ve been following the conversation in the tech-o-sphere about the sudden blossom of the very lucrative job “phrase engineer.” Human beings attempting through trial and error to learn how best to converse with the technology we’ve created. AI. ChatGpt. The unspoken goals are (not surprisingly) efficient and effective communication. There are now several sites with useful phrases, conversational hints, Youtubes abound with guidance for best ways to ask better questions, quickly eliciting the best result: an answer. It’s glorious and reminds me of old 3rd grade language primers or my high school foreign language class – only more enthusiastic.
I am among the millions who hope beyond hope that someone-out-there bumbles into the secret of effective communication. Perhaps if we discover how to communicate with artificial intelligence there will be a profound blowback and we will, serendipitously, discover the secret of easy communication with each other. Generosity. Empathy. Kindness. How-you-say-what-you-say matters.
“AI, tell me what you see and I will listen with an open mind and heart.” I know, I know. More pie-in-the-sky. But as a dedicated believer in happy accidents, I’m given to think that anything is possible.
A new era dawns./A chapter closes, fresh earth/forwards the story.
Bellaruth Naperstack often ends her meditations with the phrase, “…and so you are.” As cousin Kate guided us through the forgotten cemetery on the other side of town, she led us to the gravesite of my great, great, great, great grandfather and grandmother. The writing on the stone was nearly washed away with time. As Kate read their obituaries, Bellaruth’s phrase popped up in my mind. The summation of a life, punctuated by the survivors. The children and grandchildren. The next generation. And the next and the next.
It took me by surprise, this meditation on life. The phrase popping into my head was not a reference to the end of the lives of distant grandparents, but to me. “These are your people. This is your root.” They lead to me. I am the next chapter, the continuation of the story.
I wasn’t there when our babies picked dandelions for her. It was waaaay before my time. I just know how she felt when they did. Price-less.
It’s one of my favorite parts of our relationship. A dandelion is more valuable than a diamond. A homemade card, a painted rock…a story is most precious of all.
We read together. We walk together. We cook together. We struggle and triumph together. What could be more meaningful than a bouquet of freshly picked dandelions and the memories they bring to mind?
“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.” ~ Rainier Maria Rilke
Kathy Bates has a great line in the movie P.S. I Love You: “The thing to remember is…if we’re all alone, then we’re all together in that, too.”
It’s our aloneness that propels us to reach. Our aloneness can drive us to grab. To hold on with all of our might.
Mothers learn the lesson of letting go. Fathers, too. Children would suffocate otherwise. In time, children must also learn the lesson of letting go of their parents. It’s not an easy lesson. It’s counterintuitive.
Couples learn this lesson if they are lucky. They recognize the line between reaching and clutching. Growth is always a process of opening. Open hands. Open minds. Open hearts. Growing a relationship never comes from controlling it. And, don’t we all know the feeling when a hug lasts a bit too long?
And then there are memories. Slippery devils, they tend to fade. Even in this era of ubiquitous photos, the feel, taste, touch, sound, sight flattens and dims. Three dimensions becomes two. I grab at the memory. My hands close around air. Ephemeral-something.
Tonight I will look into the night sky and make my peace. Alone together. Together alone. I will sit on the porch, grateful beyond words to reach and hold Kerri’s hand. Together in this, too.
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
Today we travel. Family, like salmon swimming upstream to a place of origin. We’ll meet at the farmhouse. We’ll eat dinner. We’ll discuss what to do tomorrow at the inurnment. I think he mostly would have enjoyed our gathering together. Food and laughter. That is the ritual he would have appreciated.
The Great White Trillium produces “a single showy white flower atop a whorl of three leaves.” The flower opens late spring to early summer. Right now. They are abundant on our trail.
Whorl: a pattern of spirals or concentric circles.
Five years ago we strolled with him through the cemetery. He told stories of his friends. We will, I am certain, tell stories about him.
Kerri and I walked our trail on the ten-year-anniversary of our first meeting. We talked about how we’ve changed in the decade since I stepped off the plane. “I’m more connected to the impermanence,” she said. I nodded my head. Me, too.
Impermanence. A short season. Generations, a whorl. Patterns. Concentric circles. We tell stories and then we join the story.
Look closely. There’s a turtle motoring through the water, scooting along the muddy bottom of the river. Turtles always elicit squeaks from Kerri. We watched this shelled-wonder for a long time. There were a few others that caught my attention, heads rising just above the water, floating peacefully in a pose of suspended animation. Turtle tai-chi.
We went to a sound meditation at the Botanical Gardens. Singing bowls and rain sticks. I was transported. I felt as if I was gifted with a turtle-moment: floating in a calm suspended animation. I recognized that feeling of ease and vowed to practice it more often. There’s wisdom in non-motion. Non-resistance. Flow by another name.
We were awake deep in the night. She asked if I could remember the places I’ve lived in my life – specifically the apartments and houses. Mostly she wanted to know if I could remember living-in-them. Making dinner. Doing laundry. How they felt. The sounds and smells. For me, there have been many. Most were creative spaces. Most of my living spaces were also studio spaces. Sacred spaces. Quiet places.
I don’t remember the day-to-day. I remember the place and time that I decided I was going to learn to cook. It was a statement of self-care. It was a decision to make all the world my studio and not just the places where I painted. Moving out from a solid center, joining the world, rather than closing off from the noise. Making peace with my out-of-step-ness. It was a decision to move into the chaotic world, to crawl with abandon and explore the river’s muddy bottom.
The Direction of Intention 