Thanksgiving in Oregon

Oregon is cold and grey, with some intermittent moments of sun accompanied by damp chilling temps ... it is winter here, for sure, and once again the family gathers for Thanksgiving.  In a large house in the Oregon suburbs four (or is it five?) generations from two sides of the family mingle, cook, watch television, take walks, play cards, take showers, do more cooking, and play with the terminally cute schipperkee puppy called Tugboat, and the noise/energy level rises and falls, but mostly rises.
We prepared a beautiful and very generous turkey dinner, complete with several kinds of potatoes, roasted root veggies, green beans, succulent shimmering cranberry sauce, and we ate with great appreciation.  Good red wine abounded.  The talk was light, but I think the hearts were full:  of appreciation, each in our own way, for being alive, being with people who care about us, for having the abundance....  Daughter #2 whose home we inhabited made four pies.   Pie making is something she truly loves and is proud of.  Lemon, Pumpkin, Chocolate candy, Apple.  They were quite something -- a parade of pies!  This may be the only time I eat dessert, and I must -- to honor the heartful effort she put forth.
Journeyed to Portland yesterday to visit the art museum, a pristine bright, light space filled with art old and new.  The contemporary collection feels pretty significant, and my heart warmed to see some painters I knew well.  Looking at art makes me SO happy.  I feel complete.  As though this too is enough, just the way it is...  The kids tagged along of course, and occasionally related to the work on the walls.  Mostly I think they just loved walking through the spaciousness of the museum, feeling the freedom of that spaciousness.  I saw my desire to teach my family arise and I kept it as quiet as I could.  I know so much more than they do, and part of me wants to impart all that knowledge, and then, too, I have to realize that they may not need or want that information.  Knowing about art has been essential to me, from the time my mother dashed off to art school, and subsequently filled our environment with her dashing, brave abstract paintings...  It was a survival thing this relating to art.
Lunch at an upscale boisterous Peruvian restaurant in the Pearl district was a foodie's adventure.  Lots of small plates and succulent flavors, from paella to ceviche to seafood wontons and avocado stuffed with crab (oh so good!).  We ate and we ate and finished, of course, with dessert:  three kinds of creme brulee, some chocolate extravaganza, a shortbread cookie sandwiched over a rich caramel.   Then out into the chilly streets to explore this warehouse district turned upscale artsy neighborhood.  It was getting darker (our lunch had been a long and late one!) and colder by the moment, and while I wanted to relish the character of the brick buildings and interesting storefronts, ducking inside was a relief.  Cargo -- a funny eclectic store that seems like a maverick cousin of Cost Plus, and much more daring.  A sprawling warehouse of kooky, enticing, imaginative goods.  I wondered:  could one do ALL one's Christmas shopping there??
Last night we played poker, while others watched some strange sci-fi movie with very loud sound effects.  I realized in the midst of all that how sensitive I am to sound.  It's the living alone, I guess.  There was movie sound, shrieking of children sound, chips on the table sound, miscellaneous interchange at the table, occasionally the high pitched bark of Tugboat when the children screamed at their movie.  It felt like physical assault at times, and I tried very hard to roll with it, but at times I found myself reacting before I could stop myself.  When I got in my car late into the evening to motor to my very quiet motel by the river, I relished the silence - I turned the radio off, and just drove...   I LOVE quiet.
Since earlier in this visit I had finished my knitted scarf project, I had little to occupy myself with as we sat around the family room with the giant TV screen showing a movie that seemed meaningless to me.  I wondered about conversation, and why there was so little of it.  Just another moment of many where I realized what a different world I inhabit from the rest of my family.  Sitting there feeling separate, and much of the time being at ease in that separateness.... There were times when I wished I was more a part of their world or they of mine, but then I remember how impossible that really is.  And, in fact, it is NOT what we really want.  Aren't our wonderful unique differences what help us to appreciate, respect, and treasure one another?  Unconditional love is born out of that acceptance and maybe even gratitude as well!  We are all separate AND connected.  And as long as we don't expect (or crave) respect and adoration, we can simply roll with what comes in this ever changing dynamic of family...
When I return to my sleepy little house in SF, I know I will feel twinges of loneliness -- really alone once again, and in this season of darkness and the dying off of things, this season which invites melancholy no matter who you are with  (or not with!).  The 20th anniversary of my mother's death is December 1, and I will try to mark it in some ritualistic way, so the sadness doesn't envelope me, but rather so I can invoke and honor a life that gave me life.  For twenty years now I have been the matriarch in this family!  And I can't help but wonder :  how long will this continue?  Ah yes, death and dying are with me, with us, now.  BUT, I am just now reminded of the Pablo Neruda quote that Jack K. loves to offer up on retreat:  "You can pick all the flowers, but you can't stop the spring."  That sounds pretty beautiful to me right now.
May all beings find peace, joy,  light ... and the inevitable spring

Less Light, More Dark ...

The air is cooler, and the darkness is more upon us now, as the winter season makes its presence known.  This is the time of year that my old melancholia tries to nudge its way back into my life, with a free-form anxiety coming along for the ride.  I have realized that the amount of solitary time I spend is directly related to the tenacity of my dark spirits...
But this weekend I had a chance to spend time at the beach interacting with visitors coming to Salmon Creek for their "art walk," and the change in momentum is clear.  To the prevailing enthusiasm about my art (my eclectic, eccentric necklaces), I feel myself becoming animated, attending to my words, actually liking what I hear.  I feel authentic and solid in those moments.  In keeping with the ever changing nature of things, these weekend days went from grey and drizzling to bright and sunny (today), and you can feel that "nip" in the air, which is invigorating.  I go to bed listening to the roar of the ocean, and wake up to the beginnings of bird conversations, and in moving about my little house I pay close attention to the minutiae of life ... the warmth of the teacup in my hand, the ivory keys of my piano under my fingers, the smell of some exotic new soap in my bathroom, my cat posing on the windowsill in the sun ... all this and more, when I'm not ruminating about our terminal human journey.  Impermanence is with me through all my waking moments it seems, and there are many times I have a hard time opening my heart to it.
Have been reviewing my photographs recently in preparation for doing a photo show, and that has been a gratifying process : to view one's own work with objectivity and respect.  I see a thread in the work : the spiritual character of our human existence.  As I look at the Burmese children with their wide open smiles, the Bhutanese monk proudly gazing at my camera, the Balinese couple with their hands raised in prayer ... I realize the need we all have for the divine realm, that place where we are all together as members of the human family, and there is no separation, no judgment.  Which leads me to wonder whether I should move out of my hermit self, reach out more to the world, offer more of myself to life, much like I have this weekend with the art enthusiasts... Connection is a lifeline.  It vibrates.  Solitariness can be retreat -- ever so still;  one's line of sight becomes so much narrower the more time one spends alone.
Yes, now that there is in fact more darkness (the season for hibernation!), and, yes, the 20th anniversary of my mother's death, I will take some steps outward.  And I will see perhaps that I am not as alone as I believed I was.

Magpie's Beads Returns!

My website which I've been shepherding along over many months now is officially launched!  And it is quite beautiful, thoroughly personal, and a tad brainy (lots of information on beads and bead history).
The artist profile casts me as an eternal traveler, one who has been shaped in every way by all the faraway places I've visited.  To me beads are in and of themselves carriers of human history, uniting all peoples because of trade, and because of the commonality of human vision and imagination....
Take a look and see what you think!  And, I must confess I have crossed over that line that I once refused to tread:  I have created a website that actually sells the art.  I am an internet merchant!
You can find my treasures at:  www.magpiesbeads@yahoo.com

Giving Up House Decorating

How long does it really take to feather your nest, before it's ready to live in?
Woke up this morning remembering a line in a conversation with a good friend yesterday, and it went like this:  it's time to stop decorating my house and start living in it.  We were driving along the sunny Sonoma coast on our way to lunch, and the statement seemed picture perfect -- metaphoric and quite true to life at the same time.
I have been hauling all kinds of beautiful and useful things up to the beach house each time I make the journey, and then lovingly arranging them once I get there.  Then I sit back and smile happily at my ability to adorn my environment with some pizzazz!    Turns out I haven't been really LIVING in the Bodega Bay house, as much as dressing it up.  With a new laptop sitting on a brand new cherry wood desk in front of a window that opens to the creek and the magnificent wildlife, I have my working set up all ready.  And do I sit down to write, or work on my photos?  No.  Not yet.....
I have been also helping to decorate my new website - to be launched in the near future - and watching as this virtual space becomes more and more interesting, and lovely to look at.  The perky, very smart web designer is responsible for teasing out some of my quirky uniqueness, and it has been a fun journey doing this collaboration with her, and feeling inspired by the creative work I have done with beads over the years.  But, I am still decorating the house, as opposed to working in it.  I am not actively working on new pieces, claiming that I have no proper work space.  Is this a cop out?  When will I stop worrying about the particulars of the website's "look" and get down to business of making art?

Getting out to the beach with two dear friends this weekend opened up the door to DOING rather than planning and envisioning.  We sat about and knitted and talked and worked and talked, and I felt that wonderful satisfaction of creating some THING in the world -- in this instance a kooky colorful baby hat for a friend's newborn.  And as the conversations unfolded, and the life stories popped up, I realized I want to tell stories.  It is an integral part of who I am, and I want to offer  this to the world in some tangible form.  And then there's always that romantic notion of handing down one's own peculiar wisdom to future generations who might easily forget they had a remarkable great great grandmother who dared to cut her hair and smoke in the 20's, who studied classical piano, and became a liberal thinker and intellectual though she had been raised in the deep south.  Yes, stories are good.  Not only are they a gift to those who don't know, but to ourselves who find ourselves in them at every turn.
Decorating the house is like creating the beginning of a story, laying out the landscape for the narrative, and it is pretty easy to do.   If you keep returning to this, you are not moving your story forward, but you're like the writer friend of mine who when trying his hand at book reviewing spent all of one long night perfecting the first paragraph of his piece on Hunter Thompson, because in his view getting this paragraph to be "right" was essential to launch the work.  I saw that as wheel spinning then, and now I fully understand that as I continually rearrange art, place rugs, move objects in my sweet little house, trying to get the project perfectly completed.   And let's not forget the security and comfort in all this spinning...  The catch is that I believe perfection and "just right" to be illusory.   Just as I believe in the wonderful mysteries revealed through doing the work!
There are so many stories to tell and beautiful necklaces to make and photographs to print, and it is time.  Summon up some trust and faith, breathe, and begin...

A Quiet and Serious Sunday

Have been peering out my murky windows at the ocean, the beach-line shrouded in grey -- (this is northern California in the summer, after all) -- and have been watching the movement of my mind, realizing that I'm torn between restlessness (you must get out there and walk on the beach, after all!), and listlessness and apathy (it sure feels good to just sit and bear witness to all the Labor Day visitors hanging out, to the egrets swooping in, the kayakers bobbing about, to just BE in this moment).  Being alone allows me to do exactly what I feel like doing anytime, and there are moments when that freedom is difficult, when I feel I become quite static.  The do list is long:  walk, knit, play the piano, make jewelry, do some writing for my website, clean up the house a bit, appreciate my abundant garden.  The NOT to do list is short.  Just breathe and sit and become aware of yourself.  When you plunge into the doing, the time races by, and at the end of the day you feel as though you've accomplished something...  But you have simply passed another day, another tiny piece of your life which is shortening gradually each day.  If you choose to sit, the minutes and the hours stretch slowly before you, and you may even feel as though you're not functioning, as though you are instead floating in water, carried along by its energy - or the energy of passing phenomena (and hours).
I have been thinking about mortality a lot, and wondering how much time is left for me to wrestle with these things.  The fragility brought on by the accident has forced me to realize that we have very finite and yet mysterious life span, and that in the blink of an eye, every single thing can (and will) change.  Just in the last few days I heard news of accidental death, and the onset of a fatal disease, and I know more will be coming my way...  My 100 year old ex mother in law's ashes will be be laid to rest next week in Illinois and my daughters will go to join family and take part in this eternal ritual.  Putting to rest...  I told daughter #2 that we do this for ourselves, and that it is a good thing, for it allows us to move on with our lives in the realm of the living; when I say things like that I hear my teacher's brain kick into gear, issuing information that I think is useful.. As I remember looking down on my own mother's gravestone many years ago, I wished for relief and a lightening of the grief load.  But in my life since (and I suspect in many others), I have been continually saying goodbye to this troubled woman I spent my childhood with and even loved.  So, the rituals of funeral and memorial are just the beginning of the farewell process.   There's truth and there are the stories we tell ourselves...  In order to persuade my kid to travel to take part in an event she seemed to dread I had to put on my know- it -all hat.  This will be good for you, I imply.  Being a part of family is a good thing, I assure her, though I know how very painful finding your true place there often is.
The mood is sober, the images and subjects traveling through my mind are dark and sad, except when I see the pair of egrets swooping down to land in Salmon Creek.  Except when I sit at the piano and play a Goldberg Variation... or eat a perfectly sweet summer tomato ...  Life is this shimmering thing we have for a while, amazing to behold, and also such a lot of work to stay conscious for.  Next week I will return to hospice work after over two months away playing the part of a hospice patient myself.  I will put myself in the position of actively helping the residents, and I will remember again the extraordinary beauty of our human existence.  That we have life at all is such a phenomenal thing, and to reach out and love others -- by sitting, by doing, by talking -- is an opportunity that is unspeakably unique.   Touching love is touching the very thing that sustains all beings, no matter where we live, what language we speak, how we look, or how old we are....
And maybe now, a little walk along the creek.  I need to get closer to the ocean's roar.

Hunkering Down with Grief

Grief and sadness have been my (private) companions for some time, going back even before my life was forever altered by a car in my neighborhood.   But since I was forced to inhabit this place of extreme helplessness, I have felt myself hovering over my vulnerability and pain, wrapping myself around this so as not to burden others.  Not a wise course of action to be sure, but one that feels familiar.  I am tired of reminding people of my difficulties, my needs, my pain and loneliness.  So, what does this look like?  When I'm not out in the world carrying on normal conversations, performing common everyday tasks, I am at home in my refuge of a house, wrapping myself up in the beauty that is here, the comfort of my two cats, and the escapism of movie watching and working with my beads.  There is an antisocial element here that feels slightly off to me.  Do I not want to see people, and reach out to those I love?  Yes, and then again, maybe not as much as I thought.  It looks like I want to be with my melancholy and not have to justify this to anyone.  But then this sorrow seems to grow like a seductive weed inside me...  feeding on itself... I have the distinct feeling that something in my life has changed forever, and that I have left behind some wide open, spontaneous and carefree terrain for good.  Old age and death are certainly more vivid in my life's view.  There are psychologists who would agree that this self-focus is normal in someone who has suffered a trauma to their mind and body, and I would like to let myself off the hook as easily as that -- but I can't.
A woman to whom I was related long ago died last week, and I have been ruminating all week about this death, and the meaning of this loss to my children who have not really lost anyone very close to them.  A sobering conversation on the phone today with my older child reminded me that I couldn't address her loss, that I had failed her in a way that would normally be objectionable to me.  There were no words to explain this, I found, and I felt very sad indeed.  I had stayed turned inward at a time when I should have pushed myself out of my bubble and reached out to this young woman who lost one of the most meaningful family members in her life.  Why, why?  I wondered at the conclusion of the phone call.  Self-absorption yes, but perhaps there is something else here.  Was there a lurking resentment in me  that my oldest trusted her grandmother and her grandmother's vision sometimes more than she did that of her own parents?  And would that all be called up in the remembering we would do as we spoke about her grandmother?  There were many times when I imagined that my own feisty eccentricity drove her to find comfort elsewhere, and that she trusted her grandmother's stoicism and conservatism more than she did my messy inconsistency.   I know that I often felt unequal to this formidable mother in law, unequal and then contracted in my resentment.  But, over time we happily found ways to engage each other with kindness and respect -- we forged an amicable (perhaps not completely loving) relationship in the midst of the family landscape.  And I could let go of some of the judgment that had been rained down on me.  My eldest daughter has been a firm task master with me the way her grandmother was, and even now I sometimes wonder if I ever will measure up to her ideal.  I have tried and tried, and then again, I have stopped trying, hoping to be accepted and loved for myself, just the way I am... and just the way I am sure that I love her.
Families are so complicated.  We have such needs, dreams, and expectations of the good life together.  We all want the comfort of loving relations:  the kind attention, compassionate words, the presence of those who truly know us ...  And despite our desire for these really reasonable things, we thwart ourselves, moving often in the opposite direction from that which we want.  Moving inward may have its benefits (reflection leading to insight, or privacy in times of great duress just a few that occur to me), but it can also take us away from connection, and the happiness that emerges from this closeness.  I behaved lately much as the turtle or the snail, pulling myself inside my shell in an effort to somehow protect myself.... but protect myself against what, I wonder?  I need to take a page from the Buddha's wisdom, I think, and ask what the intentions and effects of this choice are.  If I wish to continue a life of non-harming, then the path is clear; it is the path that leads outward to others, to compassion and understanding, and love  This shell of mine must be discarded until such a time as it is truly needed.

A Long Life Ends

There's a woman who has been in my life for a very long time  -- some 50 years now -- who died last night.  She would be my mother-in-law if I had remained married, but happily perhaps for her and for myself, we ceased being related in a family way about 20 years ago.  We rarely found ways to accept one another:  I seldom dedicated myself to the minutiae of being a homemaker, and she wouldn't and couldn't accept my untidy, lawless, eclectic self.  She would have been 100 years old this December if she had weathered all the deterioration of her life -- the blindness, deafness, the growing sense of not belonging in this world ... She leaves behind saddened grandchildren, an embittered daughter, and emotionally limited (but adored) son.  She died alone, which seems sadly appropriate, dying as she had lived for so long...  Not comfortable, but appropriate.  Earlier tonight I was hoping that I would have the chance to pay her a visit, to offer some respect for the long journey traveled, and some comfort in this mysterious passage between life and death. I could bring some of my hospice wisdom and compassion, perhaps, and offer it to a woman who knew so little love in her long life.  I could help heal some of the scars left over from our past...  And then a phone call letting me know that she was gone.  Her daughter took the news bravely at the beginning, but then unleashed her sorrow and bitterness that her mother who had apparently never offered her much kindness through her life had died alone.  For her this felt like the cruelest fact of all.   I sit here now in a quiet living room and remember soberly that we all die alone.  And, does having someone there in the end really make a remarkable difference, or ease the way for us?  This is a question I ponder and turn around in my mind continually as I sit at the bedside of the dying.
Watching someone you love and have a history with die is very painful, and it returns us to our own mortality.  We know where we are all going ...
My youngest daughter sat with her grandmother a few days ago and felt huge discomfort and fear.  She had never seen a person so close to death, pale and immobilized, the breath rasping irregularly in the throat, the chill of the body growing .  This death seemed alien and terrifying in the context of her own vital, warm, loving life ...  I heard this and wished I had been able to be at her side.  But, as we all must die alone, so we must allow those we love dearly to have their pain - alone.  Will you sit with me when I'm dying, I asked?  Will you be able to do that which you find so hard to do now?  Yes, she said.  Good, I said, as though I really believed that we have any control over these things!
I will miss this stark, lonely woman who died tonight, a woman who cut me no slack when we were related, and who often armored herself with views and prejudices I couldn't support.  She had a life, a very long one, and I'm sure it was filled with both the joys and the sorrows that I have no knowledge of;   I wish now that she be free of suffering in her continuing journey.  She might have been an "enemy" of sorts in my younger days, but in being that, she was perhaps one of my best teachers, helping me to conjure up both the worst and best of myself.  I am grateful for this.  I am glad she lived.