Discerning and Clearing

Last night, we went to hear Chanticleer, an all-male vocal group that many of you have heard of.  They performed in the new atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  By the way, anyone who hasn’t seen this most astounding change at the Art Museum will be amazed, when standing within it, that he or she is still in Cleveland.  Or rather, congratulations Cleveland on a truly outstanding renovation!!  The atrium and other renovations at the Art Museum now invite art and song from across the globe.  Needless to say, Chanticleer, singing without instruments in the atrium to a sold out crowd, was one of the most spectacular events I’ve been to lately.  Their voices are so clear and crisp—we were completely mesmerized.  And I have to tell you, I didn’t think much could get past Priscilla Queen of the Desert: the Musical.  I ask you, what could be better than fabulously sung 70’s and 80’s music done in full drag???  We were howling and dancing in the aisles.  Run do not walk if it is anywhere near you.  I think it might even be better than the movie (if you haven’t seen it, find it. 1994)

Ok, now that I’ve done my morning pages within my blog, I can get on to other things.  After having low platelets as I described previously, I got a few week reprieve from chemo and decided to join dear friends in St. Simon Island, Georgia.  Mrs. Friend has been coming to this part of the world (Sea Island and St. Simon Island) all her life to spend summers in her family home here.  While this home on Sea Island has been sold and a major upscale renovation has occurred to the now very fancy Sea Island resort, nearby St. Simon Island remains a wonderfully low-key, family-oriented, gorgeous-beach-containing place.  Our friends have been asking us to visit for all of our married years (that’s when we met them, and ok, that’s about 26 years now).  Guess what?  I finally made it.

In the short 3 full days I had there, we had many adventures and time to be with each other and talk while greeting the sun every morning with a prayer and a walk on the beach (ok, does it get any better than that?), a simple, delicious meal made by our own hands, and an outing or two.  I was delighted to see Mrs. Friend in her element.  She grew up here and in Atlanta, and she somehow knew everyone and their sister, barber, waiter, and friends.  The deep, deep connections just kept coming.  I’ll stop soon, but we had one set of experiences I want to talk about.  Mrs. Friend had met a woman (B) at a wedding in Atlanta, who had a farm for abused horses on St. Simon Island.  My first morning, Mrs. Friend called B and said that we’d like to come and visit the farm.  After getting lost (ahem, Mr. friend) on a beautiful tract of land with those incredible live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, we found the place. 

Now I may not be able to write this as perfectly as this happened, but we got out of the car and were greeted by B’s daughter N.  Mrs. Friend told her of all the connections she had with B, and N, who we will talk more about, found her parents and within moments, these deep southern connections were discussed, laughed about and we were treated like family and given a most remarkable tour.  Over time, the farm has acquired 17 horses who have either been abused, abandoned, or literally deposited on their doorstep.  The farm is also home to 16 cats, as many dogs, some chickens, and a particularly hilarious sheep named Tounces who followed us around the whole time awaiting a head scratch.  After all that writing, what I really found so remarkable about this place were the people, and the clear-as-daylight calling they each had for this work. 

I was especially struck by the daughter, N, who has a fine arts degree from Columbia, etc, but who has come back to this little island in Georgia where her parents and her roots are.  Her ancestors were big plantation owners right here on St. Simon’s with slaves and the whole bit.  She clearly feels that she is in the place where she was meant to be, working with her parents, and using her gifts with people and animals to create this incredible farm.  She had recently helped the farm become a 501C3 nonprofit organization, and as she described how she would like to reach out to children and have the farm be a living classroom, etc.  if I didn’t know better, I would have said she was glowing.  Not only that, we met her again at dinner, where she earns some cash doing the books.  Dinner is another great story, but suffice it to say that we had dinner with a couple who were connected to both the Friends and N and B, and to the black waiter who sang spirituals at our table (amazing).  But N was now spending time with her friend the waiter, whose people had been slaves on N’s family’s plantation, and they were thinking about writing, filming, or doing something with their intermingled stories. 

When you see someone doing exactly what they were put on earth to do, you can’t help but notice.  I noticed.  A lot.  Clearly money was not a goal here, but the money to support the farm and N’s projects will come because the energy, creativity, and excitement just flow from her and from the whole place; it was incredibly infectious.  I think the Friends and I would have stayed on the farm until someone declared us missing, if we hadn’t had to move on to another adventure. 

But what an amazing lesson!  So that is what it looks and feels like to be doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing.  Funny, I look at my little artist group, and I see the same flow of energy and excitement.  Art saves, no doubt about it, and it also helps us get closer to recognizing what we were meant to be doing in the world; it reveals.  Art helps us discern.

I am slowly realizing that this blog feels entirely right to me; it energizes me and helps me move through the world.   I think I was meant to share my stories and encourage people to read poetry.  I know doctoring was in the “meant” pile for me too, but as my life has shifted around this disease, I needed to shift as well. I loved the Dean thing too, I really did, and it felt right for so long, as I helped students along their way.  But as I have had to shift again leaving the Deaning behind, I feel clearer about  and closer to that complete feeling of rightness, of what I am meant to do (or maybe there are several things we are meant to do in our lifetimes).  Truthfully, I’ve been pushed to change due to health issues, but each change, no matter how hard, has helped me get clearer and clearer.

But I feel a bit naked these days as I work to figure out a schedule for this new phase of my life.  I’m trying to learn how to hold some cleared space for myself, to make a clearing to be present in, while the crazy world goes on around me.  As Mark Nepo says, “it’s like taking the path of our aloneness deep enough into the woods so we can reach that unspoiled clearing.”  I have to accept that some days I’m just not going to feel great or get anything done, while other days I want to fix, clean, and do everything in sight instead of holding space for me.  I won’t ever be perfect at balancing the forests and the clearings in my life, but even a little clearing of time and space goes a long way.  So, I’m trying to get to that clearing every day by writing, doing art, and reading poetry (and really great fantasy/sci fi novels).  How lucky am I? 

I am on to chemo tomorrow, week 2, round 4.  I feel good, but can’t always tell where those slippery little platelets are going to be, so we shall see.  Had another scan this week to help us untangle my weird left-sided neurological symptoms that don’t seem to be explained by the small right-sided tumor I had.  All those right-sided symptoms are much better after radiation, and that is good.  So now we wait. 

In the meantime, let’s get to some poetry.  I love the idea of a clearing.  A friend sent me the Martha Postlewaite poem, and I love it.  I also like how the other two poets  (love them both) use the image of a clearing to distill their longing or to recognize how to live on earth….see what you think.  And go clear “the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently”, and see what happens.

Clearing (Martha Postlewaite)

Do not try to save

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself

to this world

so worthy of rescue.

A Clearing (Denise Levertov)

What lies at the end of enticing

country driveways, curving

off among trees?  Often only

a car graveyard, a house-trailer,

a trashy bungalow.  But this one,

for once, brings you

through the shade of its green tunnel

to a paradise of cedars,

of lawns mown but not too closely,

of iris, moss, fern, rivers of stone rounded

by sea or stream,

of a wooden unassertive large windowed house.

The big trees enclose

an expanse of sky, trees and sky

together protect the clearing.

One is sheltered here

from the assaultive world

as if escaped from it, and yet

once arrived, is given (oneself

and others being a part of that world)

a generous welcome.

            It’s paradise

as a paradigm for how

to live on earth,

how to be private and open

quiet and richly eloquent.

Everything man-made here

was truly made by the hands

of those who live here, of those

who live with what they have made.

It took time, and is growing still

because it’s alive.

It is paradise, and paradise

is a kind of poem; it has

a poem’s characteristics:

inspiration; starting with the given;

unexpected harmonies; revelations.

It’s rare among

the worlds one finds

at the end of enticing driveways.

The Clearing (Jane Kenyon)

The dog and I push through the ring

of dripping junipers

to enter the open space high on the hill

where I let him off the leash.

He vaults, snuffling, between tufts of moss;

twigs snap beneath his weight; he rolls

and rubs his jowls on the aromatic earth;

his pink tongue lolls.

I look for sticks of proper heft

to throw for him, while he sits, prim

and earnest in his love, if it is love.

All night a soaking rain, and now the hill

exhales relief, and the fragrance

of warm earth. . . . The sedges

have grown an inch since yesterday,

and ferns unfurled, and even if they try

the lilacs by the barn can’t

keep from opening today.

I longed for spring’s thousand tender greens,

and the white-throated sparrow’s call

that borders on rudeness. Do you know—

since you went away

all I can do

is wait for you to come back to me.