from the alpine heath

I had thought I would write about the grieving process and how we know little about the consequences and changes caused by loss, except as we look back. I have not been able to do so, perhaps later in a poem. At the end of this blog entry, I do have a poem by Vladimir Nabokov about the loss of youth.

 My youth was spent in the dream of government service in the State Department. In the summer of 1963, I was so privileged to have a summer internship at the new Peace Corps in Washington, D.C. I could see the White House across Lafayette Square from my borrowed office. Washington seemed filled with excitement and hope. It was Camelot. My boss was the President’s brother-in-law. Twice, I was awe-struck to be in the presence of the President. I shook hands with two of his brothers. Truly, it was an awesome experience for a young man from the Rockies. I was filled with hope that fall as I passed the Foreign Service exam and saw my life on the trajectory that I had dreamed, so supported by my family. It was not to be.

The 50^th anniversary commemorations of President Kennedy’s assassination brought days of reflection on my part. November 22,1963 was chilly in Boulder, but the sun was shining. I remember walking across campus to lunch at home with my friends. The phone was ringing when I opened the door. A political friend was on the phone with the unbelievable news. Everyone was in shock. No emotion. No talking. We had Campbell’s Tomato Soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. We ate in silence. At such moments, every detail remains etched.

I knew at that moment my life had changed for ever. The day remained mostly in silence, just a constant droning of the radio, as college students we did not have t.v. I have little remembrance of what was being said, just the unending drone. Late in the day, I finally found a church, Roman Catholic, with the doors open. This bereft, not very religious young man sat alone in the back pew near statues of saints I knew little about, near quietly weeping elderly women and realized I could not cry. And, truly my life had changed forever.

We So Firmly Believed

We so firmly believed in the linkage of life,

but now I’ve looked back ─ and it is astonishing

to what a degree you, my youth,

seem in tints not mine, in traits not real.

If one probes it, it’s rather like a wave’s haze

between me and you, between shallow and sinking,

or else I see telegraph poles and you from the back

as right into the sunset you ride your half-racer.

You’ve long ceased to be I. You’re an outline – the hero

of any first chapter; yet how long we believed

that there was no break in the way from the damp dell

to the alpine heath.

                                    Vladimir Nabokov

long shadows of November

Our seasons here, a Mediterranean climate mid-way between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle, are more defined by light than by drastic weather changes. Many trees are coming into bud, fewer have lost their leaves. The grasses turn from golden to green with the first rains. But, it is really the light that marks time.

The long shadows of November, the sun barely edging over the southern hills in the City ─ a time to contemplate the coming darkness of full winter. I treasure each season, although the slanted light of late autumn or early spring seem especially wonderful to me. November light signals the slowness of winter, March light tells the coming wonder of spring.

Days are becoming short, the light even more precious when it is so limited. A time for interior repose and assessment.

without irritable reaching

So often our friends are openings into wisdom. Recently, I had afternoon tea (really old fashioned) with a dear and insightful friend. We treasure these times for the conversation, or sometimes we read  to one another poetry that we have found meaningful. This day was just meandering around our lives and how we perceive the end of life, and what is after this life. We talked about the thin veil to seeing that seems to be getting thinner with such incredible new knowledge of the universe. What are our personal connections between scientific learning and religious or philosophical thoughts and mores? How do we connect this past with now? Do we?

Does it matter? All questions, little resolve.

I thought of this as I was standing on the upper level of the San Francisco Art Institute recently. This sixties-modern building in early morning could have been Thebes or even Petra, with philosophers and seers debating meaning. And, yet, hundreds of generations later we are still left with mysteries that don’t yet respond to reason.

“Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason — “

                                                    John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends

a good life

Over the past few days, my nephew (a writer) and I had an email exchange about the books in our lives....far too many in my house....he has a 'to read' stack two-feet high in his. But, all in all, its a good life when we have books. 

I do love this photo of two dear little friends some years ago sitting on my lap, 'reading' with me. They are now nearly teens and both read voraciously and write! The book is Too Big, one of the delightful children's books in my collection...and a gift to me from a special friend. 

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. “There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough.........who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life".

                                                  Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I do have to disagree with Annie on "a day spent reading"....I have had so many that were wonderful...maybe indulgent, but definitely "good".

prevailing westerlies

What is the nature of personal space? How people share a sidewalk in my neighborhood, stand in a line at the ATM, or fill a movie theater one by one or two by two: it seems to me that there is no way of predicting how people will relate to one another. Some folks come near, others seek a wider path.

Yesterday, I was walking in Sonoma and saw this wonderfully barren hill, with two oaks bending toward the east because of the prevailing westerlies. They were nearly touching on an isolated hill. How do oaks determine their space?

Do we make space, or come close, due to some prevailing force? Or, maybe it is simply learned. I grew up in a family where touch was limited, each had our own inviolate personal space in the house and alone time was considered precious. I’m not sure I would be very comfortable with the oak on the left in this picture. I will think about that today as I walk down my street, bundled up against the wind from the west.

a perfect identity

I spent a long time with this twisted, aged and yet still growing tree. Hanging on the very edge of a cliff, always reaching westward. Gnarled into an incredible beauty, so unlike the “stately elms”, with a broad canopy of green, that graced our street in my childhood Denver. One icy winter day, I was privileged to give a ride home from a community UNESCO meeting to a stunningly beautiful woman. She had a tattoo on her left arm. A holocaust survivor. As she contemplated the winter scene, she said to me, or to the universe: “See how each tree in winter has its own perfect identity. You can’t see that in summer.”

Somehow, because of her, I see that identity in this tree. I wish that I had a photo of those winter trees, or the bristlecone and gnarled sequoias that I have seen. I do have a clear, visual remembrance, though.

A wonderful poem, by a very fine poet about "trees".

Hard Night

          by Christian Wiman

What words or harder gift

does the light require of me

carving from the dark

this difficult tree?

What place or farther peace

do I almost see

emerging from the night

and heart of me?

The sky whitens, goes on and on.

Fields wrinkle into rows

of cotton, go on and on.

Night like a fling of crows

disperses and is gone

What song, what home,

what calm or one clarity

can I not quite come to,

never quite see:

this field, this sky, this tree.

From: www.poets.org

thinking about Matthew

Another kind of fence

On a sunny California day, October 7^, 1998, I was so stunned by a news report of the savage attack on Matthew Shepard in Wyoming that I had to pull to the side of the freeway and gather my thoughts. I know the plains. I was raised in a ranching family from NE Colorado. I knew the kinds of secrets that could precipitate a hate crime.

The memory of a young boy left hanging on a prairie fence post for eighteen hours still sears my soul. He died on October 12th. What can one do to change such a world? His mother and father have devoted their lives to bringing a message of hope and peace to other outsiders like Matthew. And, being from the plains, I know that his killers were outsiders, too. That is one of the legacies of that part of the West.

My greatest wish is that in someway, somewhere, sometime, I have been able to give witness to nonviolence and perhaps someone has foregone learned hate.

Thoughts of the plains attitudes, the long and terribly lonely roads and the need to escape have been motivators of much of my poetry. My poem about Matthew’s death written from a note taken that day on a freeway remains one of the most potent for me, though so imperfect.

 wind : Matthew Shepard

wind-seared fragment of a boy

if only I were able to hang with you

on the Laramie fence post

a son of the prairie, like you

I longed to escape its desolation

but just moved on

life holds less now

knowing that you were

martyred on that split rail

none, none, no virus, violence

or loss of self

marks my quest

no martyrdom beyond the common:

a wearying howl

of an old-man wind