Ships Passing in the Night

Work has been crazy (and not in a good way), and I've had a head cold, so my brain hasn't figured out which way it's going. On the plus side, there are just two more months until retirement. 

A Sea that Never Freezes

We shall deal here with humble things, things not usually granted earnest consideration or at least not valued for their historical import. But no more in history than in painting is it the impressiveness of the subject that matters. The sun is mirrored even in a coffee spoon. . . .modest things of daily life, they accumulate into forces acting upon whoever moves within the orbit of our civilization
.— Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (1948)

This winter, and even into spring, saw storms that had the city and most of the surrounding small towns come to a grinding halt.  Wind chills in the minus 20s and heavy, drifting, and blowing snow resulted in travel suspension within parts of the Midwest except for emergency vehicles and those seeking shelter. Out in the small towns, there was little movement, but those hardy souls wouldn't let frostbite and politicians tell them what to do.

We have another round of storms forecast today, and I have the blinds and what curtains we have closed against the cold. Since the house is atop a walkout basement with windows above the ground level,  the huge windows on the south side of the house that look out onto the Spruce trees only have some antique lace, making for a lovely view but not maintaining the home's warmth.  Even with the little heater next to the desk, the chill eddy of cold licks in at my skin as I go to get a warmer sweater and some thicker wool socks.

One needs to be prepared for such things. A few days ago, it was in the 70s before plunging again, another sleight of hand from the greatest of magicians, Mother Nature; Machiavellian's stroke on the part of that foe, a new battle towards which it channels ancient wounds, inflicting its grievance upon the land. It will likely arrive to do battle when you least expect it when the prolonged blow of the dark and ice sinks through the skull and lays its claim deep on the bones of the winter landscape. It will not be a day and night safe for man or beast.

Other than the sound of my husband puttering in the basement as he took a vacation today to do some home repairs, it's intensely quiet. No birds, no clattering of cars starting up. Just the sound of the incessant wind, a long, broad hum, as if through wires. There is little noise or movement, but the whine of shop equipment, maybe a half block away, is the sound sticking to the cold air as if snow on a branch. Then, the sound of a bell, a wedding scheduled for that day in the corner church.

It's funny; I'm perfectly fine, holing up at home for days with nothing but books, a kitchen, and some tools.  But tell me I can't drive to the store or run to the library, and I suddenly get cabin fever, peering out the window every so often, like a bird from a cage that fidgets with feathered annoyance.

I also noticed something else, something a little nicer.  My knee does not hurt.  After the fall that tore out my meniscus and the resultant surgery and physical therapy, my knee hurt even years later.  After six months, it was bearable, but there was always a twinge,  much worse in cold weather.  Now, 15 years post-injury, after adopting a serious military-style weight/boxing/cardio program,  I sit here and realize it doesn't hurt.

It's not the pain that bothered me, I've dealt with pain.  It was being unable to run, jump, and MOVE quickly and without effort. It was crutches, then a cane, then just walking with a bit of a limp when the air pressure dropped and it ached.  It was sliding back in time, back to when I wasn't confident in my physical abilities when I was just a skinny, quiet little kid who was picked last for dodgeball because, frankly, I'd rather be inside reading a book than the teacher would think was inappropriate for someone my age.

It wasn't the pain, it wasn't an injury hat in the grand scheme of things, wasn't very serious.  I realized at this point that what is dire profundity to the very young is usually just "been there done that" to those of us in middle age, which is still preferable to the six-foot deep and eighteen-foot square reality that faces us all eventually.

No,  it wasn't torn and missing cartilaginous tissue and the wobbly feeling I had every time I tried to use that leg.  It was losing a foothold I'd stretched so far and hard for. It was realizing that we treat our bodies with a sense of entitlement we may eschew in other things as if breath was some plaything given to us just for our own pleasure. I look down on the small scars as if speaking to them. You will let me run, you will let me climb, you will let me explore and make mistakes and play. Now, I can't walk up a flight of stairs. When our body fails us, it's like a personal betrayal.

It's much as if seeing a beloved old building each and every day, an old church perhaps, the stones so sturdy that time had not displaced it, could not ever displace it, not all of time could have.  Then, one day, you drive on past, and it's simply gone, razed, and replaced by a shabbily built storefront that won't withstand a good wind.

I sat here in this spot fifteen years ago, during another storm, crutches up against the wall, the curtains drawn, as the pain in my body drove for an instant upon me, the thorns of slain flowers.  On that day, I wished to be anywhere but sitting in intense pain. The sky was spilling snow, the only light there was laying low to the ground as if held down by the wind itself, unable to rise and move away. It was a day in which I could only sit immobile as the wind howled, dreaming of an Arctic landscape, of a sea that never freezes, and a forever green landscape.

It's easy to throw a pity party, and I was on the verge on that day I was in a motorized scooter in WalMart, one place I swore I would never be.  But in that exact moment, as Partner in Grime smiled down at me, having been with me without fail since I got hurt, canceling his whole Christmas to get me home and tend to me, I realized all I had. I also learned that by putting the small end of the crutch out in front of me like a knight's lance, I could knock the Billy Bass out of the cart of the guy with no teeth.  Oh, sorry, accident, really. SCORE!

I am who I am through hurt, pain, and failures, and because of them,

Because of that, I know what is important. And that is all the endurance of which the mind is capable, of which the flesh has an appetite. That has kept me going on nights when all I could do was sit and hold a small faded photo, eyes tightly shut, as if the light was diminished by its own grief, leaving only a lone huddled shadow upon the wall, pale and fading. That kept me going when fate swiped a paw at me, and I swiped back harder, EPR's steady, left hand tight on the yoke, planting that aircraft on a piece of hard ground as small as my fear.

I get up from my chair and open the curtains up.  I'll have a higher heat bill, but for now, I want to look out and up.  I look at the sun I've not seen in two days as the fierce wind hollowed the remaining light out of the sky, the light now holding a quality beyond heat and illumination.   In the distance, the sound of a church bell, a deliberate note blowing free, like snow from a winter branch. Somewhere within, a priest lifts the Host in a series of shimmering gleams like warm rain that falls from the sky as vows are spoken, and what is broken is healed.
 - Brigid

March 17 2024 Ireland

Ireland.  The land is rugged and it is raw, morning breaking with a crash of spray against a sea cliff, days stretching longer than the beaches that lie quietly in wait for a footstep to make an impression on them.

There in the sand were small bits of history, small stones, a piece of bone that appeared to have been carved, and a perfect, pristine shell that was both delicate and strong. Water and history, two elements of life that draw me in deeply; draw me back to such places. Part of my childhood was spent on the shores of a body of water in the West, where we stayed in a little cabin with a view of the water years before Californians discovered it and developers took over the place, building vast condos that blocked out the sun.

My brother and I would get up while it was still dark and march down to the water's edge, hoping to get there to see the dawn explode over the water. I could spend hours there, just watching the way the water shaped itself around the rocks and me, the gentle waves moving against the shore, like breathing. In the bright, cold water, there would be all sorts of strange creatures, all sorts of mysteries.

We'd wade along the edges, gingerly looking while not harming anything that was there, hoping to find a prehistoric shell to take home, knowing that at some time, all of the land where our family homesteaded had once been part of this ocean.  We occasionally found bits and pieces of things, some strange, some so very familiar.

Many of you have seen a sand dollar. They're commonly sold in souvenir stores. But what you see is only the remaining skeleton of a living sea creature. When living, the sand dollar is covered with fine hair-like cilia covering tiny, soft, and almost purple spines. But the remaining shell is beautiful, fragile, and white. The essential essence of what this creature was.

We'd come home at the end of an adventure, our pockets full of small rocks, shells, and artifacts of the day. I felt somehow at home with these tiny bits of the ancient land, though I felt as if I was living in an alien world in the small eddy currents of their homes, among creatures that were so different from me; somehow, I knew I belonged there. At night, we'd build a fire and sit and listen to the lapping of the waves; dreams of my future filled my head. The sound of the water, growing and swelling in rhythm to my heartbeat, accompanies the laughing and roasted marshmallows, the joys of a night on the water under open stars.

The rocky, rugged coast of Northern Island took me back there, the rush of the water an affirmation of what draws me to search and discover. It takes me back to the taste of salt on my lips, that of rain or tears, only the years remember. The water rushes, then waits, as I do, moving in, retreating, watching, still waiting. Remembering everything past, hoping for everything good in the future, in a bone-deep calm that belies the deep ache in my muscles as I climb up a trail that leads to cliffs hundreds of feet above.

There at the top, a view, an expanse that is as untouched and unchanged as what drove me here in the first place. There's few other people, the rest taking the bus back the short distance, just a couple of us, strangers but kindred spirits, not speaking, simply looking outward. The others don't dare the height, the edge, not with the wind that day, but we do, not feeling the fear until afterward, only feeling alive, on the wind, the smell, and the taste of the longing to simply be here.

On my last trip to Ireland, while overseas for a professional speaking engagement (with a free weekend to play tourist), I took an afternoon off to visit the Trinity College Library. Specifically, I wanted to look at the Book of Kells, which is hundreds of years old. It is in a massive hall, watched over by the white busts of philosophers.

There in the dizzying array of centuries of thought how very close I felt to them, and I wondered what they would think of us today. People so different yet not so much. Priests, wanton victims, lovers, students. A flock of beleaguered human beings rushing through life with little more than spare words of text, our lives left, not to handwritten words that flow from veins that open within us, but to small snippets of meaningless text, words thrown out into the electronic atmosphere without thought to discourse or what meaning they leave in their wake.

Then, the Book of Kells, painstakingly recorded in colors of the earth, was preserved for 1200 years. I stood transfixed by their vision, which in their Latin told me nothing but that someone of great faith had been here and recorded his heart, a message that, though I could not translate accurately, I could never fail to understand.

Too soon, the trip was over, and it was time to go home. I will make the trek up above the sea one last time before my flight back to the States is set to leave. I will return to a happy dog and the friend who watched him.  I'll try and recreate some of the dishes I dined on there in historic inns, there in a quiet kitchen, a calendar on the wall, on the counter perhaps a bit of loose tea spilled, a pen and a journal by the window. The house holds its traces of me, assuming I will come back and, if not, that at least I would be remembered by those who share my table,  even if not related by blood.

But for now, a few more hours, a few more artifacts of time I stole from the past, flirting with the ancients, rugged rocks, the smell of peat and coal, a land brushed with snow, burnished with the traces of those that went before. Traces that say remember me; remember this, for in it you will find yourself and leave a piece of your heart behind.

There, on top of a sea green cliff, I will throw out a rock to watch it splash down far below, as above, I watch above from a strong, yet fragile, light shell that houses this old soul. The rock flies through the hindrance of the deepest sleep, through the stiff fabric of the wind, into the warm sea.

It's only a rock, only a bit of artifact of the past that holds in it, not the prolonged burden of time that too many embrace as they age, but the bright colored fluent movement of youth, the dancing heels of those days of risk and glory.  Perhaps the days of my youth are gone, as is the rock,  yet the feel of its absoluteness remains in my hands, in me, long after the wind goes silent.

Too, too soon, it is time to head back. Clouds kiss the top of the hills, the rocks knitting up the small tendrils of fog into shawls that drape us as we hike on down. Layers and layers, the sea cliffs lie. Down, descending through those layers of clouds, layers and layers of memory. Memories of many miles walked upon such shores, from that first sound of a wave in my childhood to this, the span seems endless.

Till we meet again Ireland, Thar gach ni eile.

Views From a Deer Stand

The rain hangs like sheets, whipped by the wind, the air as sodden as fabric. I can't see 100 yards, but I don't need to. I might be treading water today but won't be hunting.

Deer camp in a rain storm. The deer aren't moving now. and neither will I. It came up quickly, things in the high country don't meander in slowly. One minute the sky was a pale grey blue, a tuft of cotton building up against the peak. The next, all if that water just emptied out of that gentle hue, sluicing from the sky as I rushed for shelter, too far from the camp to get under real cover.

So I sat and waited. It's easier when you're not alone.

Last year the deer hunt weather was perfect, clear, and cold in the morning. We'd crawl out of our sleeping bags in the dark and didn't get in again until almost dark, putting together the evening's libations. There wasn't a TV in sight, no computer, no cell phones. We played board games and told stories of a hunt in Africa, of love and children, and just how many bowls of venison chili we could eat without exploding.

Waiting out the wet and the dark is easier when you have friends. You can play cards or always do that shadow puppet thing on the tent wall ("Hey, that looks like a Grizzly head - Holy *&#* grab the rifle!). You can laugh and hoist those small, thick glasses of heavy amber that you never appreciated when you were 20, but hunters sip with reverent communion.
 

But when you're alone, it is different. Time drapes across your senses, the water and the wind drowning out more than the hunt, but that heightened state of awareness that is the first kiss of perception. Then comes the rain, and you settle back, knowing nothing is going to happen soon, no matter how much you wish for it. Anticipation is the best part of anything and the rain only wets the desire to see that which waits for you.

Stay put or leave, the decision quivers there as I sit under a poncho, trying to look more like a rock and less like a lightning rod. The water washes the landscape bright, trembling with heat, and the branches lie like gifts on the forest floor, a place both pagan and serene. With a splash of light, the late afternoon sun breaks free, warming me. Sun rays dance on that small piece of skin peeking beneath the camo, such a small space of flesh, evocative of all lost nights and transcended delights, flowing there like honey in sunlight.

 

Should I stay or should I go?

Despite the tales to the contrary, deer do move in the rain. Not the torrential downpour, but in that quiet trickle that is the end of a violent argument between cloud and sky, the deer will move, sometimes becoming less wary, figuring you are in someplace near the fire instead of creeping on sodden leaves to spring. Like men, deer seek comfort, seeking out cool havens in the hot weather and snug shelter when the cold is brutal. They don't like blustery winds, but in this gentle rain on the storm's backside, they will be out if only I am patient.

 

But it won't be an easy hunt, for their reluctance to come out and play in the rain is not about discomfort. The deer's most effective defense mechanisms, the ears, and the nose, are less than effective in the rain. Your movements are muffled when everything is wet, the scent is washed out, and you are not carrying well. They will be in the thickest cover they can find, that big buck relying on his eyesight to see you hunting him. But the playing field is more leveled, as you aren't going to hear him unless he is equipped with a Brinks alarm that will go off as he bolts.

There's a reason many hunters just chose to wait it out in camp. You're not going to climb into a blind and wait for him to come out to see what the rain brought; you will seek what you want. You're going to stalk, in slow, methodical, and deliberate movement, that which you desire. I think about these things as I wait.

Still I hesitate, waiting for some sign, waiting for a sound from the woods, like music moving, the sound of deer creeping past my camp, the cry of a jay startled by their presence, the sound a cloistered bell in the woods. The others had already gone home as I waited, pacing their fleeing shadows because to not wait was to admit that I had made the wrong choice in being here in the first place.

Just a few more minutes, as the sky clears. I will wait, but not too long, knowing that to wait is often to lose. Time and tide wait for no man or woman; sometimes, as you sit in quiet comfort of what you think is yours to keep, it slips away from you. One moment, you're just sitting, listening to the voice of the woods, the Cicada sound of the earth spinning in space, thinking that although you have no wish to change things, all is right in the world. But someone else is watching you, contemplating that moment when you must act or remain forever silent, and you don't. You don't even notice they're gone, only the fading smell of sweet musk in the air, writhing like cold smoke in their wake.

In that hesitation of inattention, you're left with nothing but the breathing of darkness and the cold surrounding it. Nothing behind or ahead of you but the heavy heartbeat of silence you never conceived of there in the systole of a summer night. A moment in which, as the song by Hinder says, you "shoulda woulda coulda," but it's too late to act.

As a raindrop drips from a tree branch, I touch my tongue to my lips, tasting sweet salt. I've waited long enough, and I gather my things, creeping from my sheltered spot, firearm in hand, out into the drawn green shades of approaching sunset. The air has gone cold, the wind stroking with a touch that's neither caress nor dismissal. Under my gear, a murmur of silk, breath a panting whisper. If I stay here, I'll have nothing but cold and empty hands.

I stand slowly, walking out gingerly, looking and stopping. Which way is the wind coming from? How would they have gone? I move steadily out into the shadows, a slow release of silence like protracted desire. Look. Stop. Take a deep breath. Decide. A whole forest is in front of me, and no one is holding me back. The whitetail is out there, and soon, in those woods, the sound of our need will move toward a black powder crescendo, released like a held breath.

I see a fresh scrape. I light a match and blow it out to test the wind. It blazes like a dying star, drowning in the shadow of my passing as I disappear into the trees.
 - Brigid

Binding Us Together

"Everything worth meaning is made up of so many small parts, its moments, its words, its acts, the skin and bone, and the nucleus within us that contains its own fire somewhere deep inside. We're our own walking fate, and we're our own little miracles, the atoms from which we're made, not so different from the atoms of the earth, the air, the water, all of us formed from that blazing nucleus of the stars - Heaven, binding us together."

- The Book of Barkley by L.B. Johnson

Things We Dream Of

The house I grew up in wasn't huge. There was only one bathroom with a shower, which required an early morning schedule worthy of a battle commander. There was also just one other smaller bath with a sink and a toilet off the garage, where we could come in and clean up after we tinkered with tools and cars.

I had my own room, being the only girl in the family, with a window that looked out onto an apple tree that since has been cut down. I climbed out of that window more than once, dropping into the darkness on the ground in silence. Not to sneak and party or any other mischief the older kids were up to, but to simply get out of the house, out into the outdoors, sitting on the grass out back, watching the stars on those nights when I was restless. I'd think of things that I'd dream of if only I could sleep. A small, tidy home and shop of my own someday, a good man, a big dog, and all the popcorn I could eat.

But as life renews itself, so do dreams. Living with just Barkley in a humongous house full of expensive things I had to work doubly hard to pay for, coming home late to the one that patiently waited, something dawned on me one night. My dog Barkley didn't care where we lived, what we owned, or who would judge us for that.  All he knew was unbridled living in the moment and following your heart. He appreciated the things that held no form, that bore no name, the glint of sun off of a pond, a walk in the woods, one last look at the night sky as the stars finally faded. As we walked and Barkley went into full point on a plastic deer in someone's yard in that old subdivision, I thought about how he was also pointing me to the things that matter in life - loyalty, devotion, and love without strings attached.

So I sold it at a loss, with the market tanking, but I didn't care. I wanted a life where I still worked hard, but work wasn't what defined me. I wanted a home, a house that looked less like a magazine and more like a life. I wanted the sort of place my Dad would smoke a pipe in, with high wooden beams, old tools, and a place to use them. I wanted a house for a writer, a retreat for the dreamer.

People say that as we grow we change.. I don't see it quite that way, but rather that we become what we always were but have changed, molded, or kept hidden to satisfy others. Changing our true nature to fit some preconceived notion of how the happy, successful person would live or with whom. With the changes in my life, with each friendship I've made and maintained over time, people more like myself and less like who I was expected to spend time with, I'd become more true to myself. It's as if with each change, whether with loss or with happiness, with challenge, with new friends and new discoveries, the layers peel away like the thin skin of an onion, exposing nerve endings to the chill air, awakening something that lay dormant for too long.

With that in mind, I loaded up that car with what I could carry, my dog in the backseat. I was happy to be where I was, with whatever changes came. We wandered, he and I, until we found what was for us: home.

When I showed a professional associate the picture for the place that would finally become home with my husband, I was met with, "You're going to LIVE there? It's so small!!  If I had your income, I'd be buying one of those big houses on the lake. Where are you going to shop? What are your neighbors going to think".

I don't care what the neighbors think. I quit changing who I was to conform to society a long time ago, a foreigner to the immutable laws that TV and greed seem to have placed upon people. I simply wanted to come home, grab a tennis ball, and go play with my dog in the yard. I didn't want to come home to a huge cavernous dwelling where I rattled around with the stranger I was becoming, heaving and sighing with the work of keeping that life up, uttering the sounds of someone engaged in a battle without arms.

During my first summer here, the air was still warm with life and need. I looked around; I looked down at small things, green plants enduring in hard ground to find light and air, like stars amidst a night sky. I looked up straight into the sun, and for that brief moment, when I must turn away, I could see a pure, clear circle illuminating everything. I saw my shadow, and that of a black Lab, with a shape that was us, yet didn't define us, simply a form, in this place in time, following what was truly within us, wherever we went.

Life in essence, remains the same, even as it changes, these existing things have always been true. It's a small flower, small spots of fresh life, unheard poetry on the hidden side of a planet spinning in space. It's an articulated bark of welcome; it's the wag of a tail. It's darkness, light, and a great thirst to quench before winter's darkness, which is one of permanence, things you can not hold but that fill up empty spaces in life much better than material possessions.

What would we be were we shed of all those material things, of our possessions, our titles, of our names? The things in the forest have no name; they have no earthly riches, yet they still exist; they are still profound in their creation. The creatures of the forest have no titles and survive based on skill and cunning, not their credit limit or the car they drive. The plants grow and thread and seek light, just as man, when shedding that which is unnecessary, sees the light that is often truth.

On the wall of my Dad's shop area was an old picture of a bullfight.  One he bought for the house as a newlywed, which Mom took one look at and sent to the garage. We teased him a lot about it, and just looking at it brought him and my mom to laughter that ended with a kiss and a knowing smile. Yet, in looking at it today, I see the bull not as a shape, with form and depth, a mass of muscle and bone inherent with the capacity to hurt, but simply a creature knowing what it needed and willing to sacrifice so very much to keep it.

Behind his house, where deer once wandered down from the mountains, delicate and untouchable as smoke, leaving only tender footprints in the flower beds to mark their passing, stood a Big Box Mart or two that blotted out what was left of the timber and much of the sun. I remember my Dad watching them cut down the trees, with eyes like pieces of a broken plate, steadfast in his refusal to sell, as most of the neighbors did. This house was his home, a dwelling where he raised his kids and outlived two beloved wives, a place he would only leave when he was ready on his own terms. 

When he finally sold the place, ready for the small comforts and safety of Assisted Living, my bedroom remained just as it was in my youth.  The walls were still yellow, my favorite color, with a few stuffed animals in the corner, a poster on the closet door, and a music stand.

Mom's kitchen was unchanged except for the refrigerator, once covered with childlike artwork, finally laid bare. The wall behind it in the family room that once framed drawings from grade school and ribbons from the science fair was now covered with commendations and more complex ribbons, pictures of airplanes and submarines, and the children of the family, proudly swearing an oath to their country in a solemn moment of choice and service, each and every one of us.

Many of the memories there in his home are happy ones; some are bittersweet.  There are the small ceramic things my Mom made, still carefully dusted years after she was dust herself. There is the teddy bear by my bed, showing the signs of wear from when I came home from the hospital without my daughter and cried myself to sleep in his fur night after night while my Dad listened, helpless in the next room, wanting only for me to be happy again.

When I walked in that last time, those memories remained, though they were dampened by the years, overlaid with other memories of happiness.  As they say, you can't go home again, but we, by our nature, try. It changes, and it doesn't, it's the warmth of a kitchen, a flag flying out front, old tools in the garage and the skills passed on by a Father. It's four walls and new family members who will gather and remember those who are gone.

In those first weeks after Barkley left us, I would step up to my own porch. I desperately wanted to hear the soft "woof" as Barkley waited in the kitchen for me to step in. But I could only walk in, in that utter quiet that was now the house, sensing those who were absent, who inhabited this place but existed now only as ghosts of my past, living on the breath of memory.

I stood outside the door, hearing the hushed wind and hand on the doorknob. I was hesitant to open the door to every memory and more hesitant to leave them behind. I stood there silently, my presence not detected by dogs, forever silent, motionless, trying to blend in with the house, the dark wood, and trees, listening to the living presence of a home, all the lives and love and heartache that went into it, that formed these four walls, that now formed me.

I listened, as a churchgoer does, to chants in ancient languages that no one understands but listens to anyway, the words a peace that flows like water. There was no bark, but that of the trees and the baleful sound of a wind that spoke the name of one departed. I listened for things I'd dreamed of if only I could sleep.

I opened up the door to go on in. I had no words for what I was feeling. I had no name for the quiet that waited inside. But that was OK. There are no words for the shafts of light between the trees, of the unity of earth and roots and small creatures that are born and die as food for the soil. There are no names for the rocks that direct a stream's flow, for the fur and leaves that line an eagle's nest. Yet they are, and always will be. Strong. Necessary. Waiting.

 - Brigid