Sabbath112

This morning inches of water stand in the field from the rain yesterday. The sun attempts to come from behind the clouds and the temperature is cooler than yesterday. I wished for my gloves. My shoes and socks were saturated in minutes. Then I wished for rain boots. A tidal creek surrounds this field. Interestingly, I no longer long for the ocean as I was did. I used to imagine as I stood on the bank of the Lafayette River that it flowed to the Elizabeth and it flowed to the mouth of the Chesapeake and then to the Atlantic. Always I wanted the spell of salt, the smell too. Now I live on a thin slice of land seven miles wide. My creek leads directly to the Bay. On the other side of the seven is the Atlantic. Here you are either Bay Side or Sea Side. The longing also was satisfied by living near oceanfront for more than five years or so. Waves out my front door. Always the scent of sea, salt spray. Sand in everything. Even with that longing diminished, it was a lonely time. Always walking alone. Always looking for treasure, alone. Eating meals on the walkway to the beach alone. But now years later, I have companions: a sweet dog and an even sweeter man. A good man with a big heart. Not perfect but pure as he can be. And my children and grandchildren far away. A last longing to be near them. And this very next week my oldest child relocates from Ohio to West Coast, San Francisco, the bay area to be near her brother. They eventually will live a mere 45 minutes away from each other. To live near family that is now my longing. Although it satisfies another longing that they will be together. That they can help each other. They can be teachers to one another.

In this small town where where I live my husband is a minister at a local church. It is not unusual for me to experience a dinner, a church service, a town gathering where two or three generations of the same family are present. Occasionally, there might be four generations sitting together or throughout the sanctuary. I feel such joy for those families. But when I return home, in the quiet of my house, with photographs surrounding me, I grieve for my loved ones. And it’s not as if I am not connected, we are: often daily phone calls, occasionally face time, emails, and frequent texts, pictures of Facebook. The latest text from my son: It was a good time. You were missed. No. It’s the physicality of presence I long for: looking into my son’s eyes, sitting with my daughter while we read different books at the kitchen table, an impromptu dance at a favorite piece of music, gently touching one of their cheeks. And my grandchildren curling up in my lap to read a book or share an important story about the day. Bedtime, the singing of our special song that on my last trip I discovered they actually knew the words. No there’s no cure for this longing other than physical presence. Nothing.

Now both children will be on West Coast time. That requires some adjustment. And I have my next visit planned in two months. That helps somewhat to have a date, the ticket bought and paid for. It definitely seems melodramatic but reading Havel’s  Letters to Olga helps keep things in perspective. He is writing his beloved letters from prison. Letters that must go through systems of censorship. It seems he is always longing for news of her, a long letter. He is always asking for more letters. He speaks of her unvarnished manner. He pleads with her to write more. Reveal more.

I regard connections with family my highest priority. My expression of love, my highest calling. Everyday. I believe they know they are loved. I certainly feel their love. Yet, I long for the exchange that doesn’t require words. I long to look in their eyes for what I might miss in a phone conversation, something that only eyes, not words can say.

Meanwhile, I live my life and they live theirs, all rich with activity and responsibility. I look up the weather in San Anselmo. I imagine walking with the kids to the yogurt shop.What flavors will they choose. Eating the chinese salad from Comforts for lunch. I imagine hiking at Point Reys or Crissy Field. Eating breakfast at The Grove, browsing for books at Books, Inc. across the street. Stopping for a quick cup of coffee.

On Saturday they will be together. Today at King’s Street United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio, the minister and church will give my daughter a blessing for her to go on her way. And I give her a blessings  for being brave and having the courage to make her own way and follow her dream. She is following her brother as he once followed her to Chicago. Both are brave and dear. My son and his family embraces and welcomes her in the truesest sense of hospitality of the desert mothers and fathers. My heart rejoices in the fact my family will live near one another for the first time in a very long. They need each other so. May the reveal in the comfort of loved ones nearby. Family.

Lucie Brock-Broido

Lucie Brock-Broido

Sabbath 115

Not even an inch of snow but enough for a glare to blind my eyes when driving or I should say racing to get The New York TImes from the local gas station. I’m late by 10 minutes, just enough time for them to sell completely out. One left. Yes! Then, I drive straight to the field beside the old Onancock School. It’s bitter cold but our puppy, Dozer and I have begun a daily tradition of ball throwing and catching so that later I might have an hour to write, read or think. Today, he wants to eat the snow and not catch the ball. And he is distracted by a pile of pine branches that he runs and jumps around with. We play for a good 45 minutes until I am doing most of the fetching after hurling the ball down the field and back countless times.

And now I find I am that writer writing about her dog. It is one of the many ways my life has changed in the last years: newly married, living in a small rural town, sitting for breakfast most mornings, waking early, not to read or write but to play ball. This minute I’m waiting for Dozer to take a nap , but he is emptying shells from the basket by the front door. I’m tired already, I think he must be too. Finally he walks upstairs and settles on his bed surrounded by squeaky toys, chews, and my husband’s soft shirt he wore yesterday. I dare not peak around the corner. Now I feel I can’t move or he will stir. So I have my tea and I am at my desk. My husband left for the church a few hours ago. He preaches twice today. Once at 8:30 and then again at 11:00. Two congregations. And recently a third on Saturday night.

He takes the early shift with Dozer. First outside then in to make coffee, then for a walk down Market Street to North, turning around at King. On Sundays when I enter the kitchen there is usually a book open on the table: a devotional, the Bible, or a text. I can’t imagine how his preparation has changed since the house is now populated. We both have a preference for the monastic but here we are in what seems like a house full after living alone for a time. 

Finally silence. A satisfying silence. It’s been several weeks since I’ve attempted a poem. Yesterday because we are in the season of Lent and we were talking about being in the desert for 40 days, I said not writing poems was my desert. Not having  a line ready. Not hunting for a word I desperately need, just the right word. Not struggling with a title that illuminates. Not walking in and out of my study to add or remove a comma. Not feeling compeled to look for that poem I’m reminded of by the writing. And then in the looking, discovering a poem long forgotten, one that I lived with and loved for days at a time. Not coming across an old manuscript of a friend, now dead for several years. Not rereading a poem about my mother dying or my son in Aspen or the blooming of the neighbor’s cherry tree. My landscape is so changed. And my desert is an empty February folder, no new poems this month thus far.

When Lucie Brock-Broido was my teacher, she sent me a typed poem about the time she went 1000 days without writing: This is the mourning dish of salt / Outside my door, a cup of quarantine, saucerless, a sign / That one inside has been taken down / by grieving, ill tongue-tied will, or simple illness, ? Yet trouble came. / I have found electricity in mere ambition, / If nothing else, yet to make myself sick on it, / A spectacle of marveling & discontent…The dark drape closed over the alter… That I had quit / The quiet velvet cult of it, / Yet trouble came. When Trouble In Mind was published in 2004 It was obvious she had begun again. As I know I will. Perhaps even tomorrow when I follow writing time written in my notebook. For some writers I suppose it is understood. It’s what they do. For me, I have to mark the time. Cross it out. Write it down. Aways measuring it against the ongoing list of musts in the small black notebook I carry everywhere: unfinished business. But today the unfinished buisness is poem making, determined not to spend 40 days in that desert. Determined to have papers in the folder. 

 

Sabbath 111

This morning the temperature reads 25 degrees at around six when I am riding to get The New York Times. I must drive a few miles to a local gas station and hope that I’m not late. Home delivery not possible. I arrive and there are three papers left. I’ve asked the attendant to hold a paper, but it’s against policy. I’ve asked that they order more papers, to no avail. Now I’m back home and have spent the best of two hours running after the dog. So I  won’t have time for the paper most likely until later in the afternoon. Already, I have received a few emails from friends recommending articles along with the appropriate links. I really want to wait, be surprised. Hold the paper in my hands, newspaper ink on hands. 

When I opened my study door to sit at my desk, light flowed into the dark hall. This is the room with good light, all day. East and south exposure. Warming and welcoming. Right now my study has piles of paper for each project and assignment I am working on: poems, correspondence, calendars, valentines, folders with web designs, research on Yoga Nidra, bios for a client’s web site, print outs with travel plans for March.  Odd stationary, and pens and pencils. Books on various subjects stacked around the room, organized by category on table and chairs. The printer permanently “on.” I think if I could just spend a day, a whole day in my study. Finally, the dog is chewing one of his sticks in the next room. I can hear hhim. Right now he is okay with the separation. I’m hoping he’ll nap soon after his morning escapades.

For me, Sunday mornings settle. I’m remembering my heart’s desire. I’m reading Mark Doty’s little book on description: He writes, For the writer out to evoke the texture of experience, beauty is simply accuracy, to come as close as we can to what seems to be real. And I’m searching for the right poem for this moment. I pick up one book after another, Shaugnessy, Bly. I picked up Blanco, opened City of a Hundred Fires and read in his handwriting: Thanks for the conversation and surprise. Turn to the bottom of page 27: open hands—/ broad and veined and still, / and still waiting. And I’m still waiting for a new poem to take form. I have a title, perhaps even a first line. I’m waiting.  Can I convey a truth, a beauty? 

 

Sabbath #111

Still cold and small flakes floating , occasionally. Seemingly one, then another. Thinking about the singular voice still and beginning a season of letter writing without the pressure of imprisonment like Havel in his Letters To Olga. This week already I wrote Dear Diana, Dear Emma. And mailed several others. Dear Kathy. I’m eager for correspondence. Something about the writing life. And  I find quite by accident the American Academy of Poets featured letter writing on their poster for National Poetry Month in April inspired by Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke. It is a slow endeavor, letter writing. Finding the right paper, ink, stamps. I’m partial to G. LALO Mode de Pais, Pastache Green. Each simple card, heavy with one rough, uneven edge. The envelopes, lined with thin white paper, the edges scalloped. Because this stationary is difficult to find, I parcel it out infrequently. I hold back one or two pieces from a lot so I remember what I loved. Last week I wrote my three grandchildren a letter on G. LALO’s The Verge de France note paper with matching envelopes. Pink with brilliant fuchsia lining. I’d be surprised if anyone noticed the paper, especially inside the envelope, even more beautiful than the paper exposed. Always something special to savore, something unseen or seen only when opened, only for the intended. It’s paper to  save, remove and use for a book mark or collage. But in the age of anti clutter I wonder who now has a box for special bits of paper or cards. Yesterday I received a card from Miriam included in her new manuscript: A window, a single bed in a corner, a wood desk with a lamp, one sheet of paper, ink and a pen with the top removed. A blue background. I turn it over: The painting, Dear Ella, pastel by Deborah Dewit Marchant 1994. Printed in Oregon. Of course, the title is Dear Ella. When I choose a direction to study, it most often feels happenstance but then day after day small signs let me know something larger is at stake, at risk. Is it a heightened since of awareness? Being more fully awake? it certainly feels like that winter I walked the beach everyday, walking until I found a treasure. Today my treasure is the small snowflakes which have now stopped completely and a card and it’s the title which arrived in the mail on Friday, sent by a dear friend unknowingly that I had just begun a study of letters and letter writing. I cut the card apart so both the picture and the title can be seen.  Centered  it on my new journal marking my winter season of reading Haval’s Letters to Olga and my own season of writing letters to friends and my beloveds.