Author Archives: Robin Crow

October 10, 2016

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There’s a foul wind blowing across the land–
Hold on to your good nature, my friends.

I felt it keenly this weekend, and all day Saturday the phrase, “a foul wind is blowing” kept repeating in my head, even as I walked through the woods. The peaceful woods, where I go every chance I get to wash myself clean of the things I pick up that I wish I hadn’t. A foul wind is blowing, a foul wind is blowing…an evil spell that has affected us all. The id of humanity has woken and is running amok. A meanness is in the air–has been building for years but it seems to have crescendoed in the past few months, dragging even the most mild-mannered, careful people into its maelstrom.

Other thoughts were tracing themselves in my head this weekend, too, though. The first-year burdock that had grown almost exactly in the middle of the path–spindly and beaten down but still there, spreading its leaves–made me think of the random nature of life. A burdock growing here is stepped on and struggles to survive, while a burdock sown a few feet over, off the path, thrives. No blame can be attached to the burdock on the path–it was born where it was born, and according to the law of nature does its best to live. No blame. Just the luck of the draw. The spindly burdock isn’t inferior, and the thriving burdock isn’t superior.

The thing is, science is finding that plants are part of a complex network, and will help one another through that network, sending out nutrients and warnings about danger, and even killing off invading plants. So I’m thinking about all this and talking to my husband, saying that since all of life is connected, it stands to reason that humans are part of this network just as much as trees and plants–except we’ve been doing our best to destroy it instead of participating in the give and take. And Bob says, “Yeah, how strange it would be if I got a cut on my hand and the cells around it said, ‘Oh well, too bad. Tough luck. You’re on your own.’ Then my hand got infected and became gangrenous and I had to amputate it.” (Well, he didn’t say anything about gangrene and amputation, but I like the effect.)

So the thought of “no blame” attached to those who are sown in difficult places–such as ghettos, or Syria–and the thought of the network of life–how the refusal to participate in the give and take of life breaks the network–came together in my head alongside the “a foul wind is blowing” mantra and produced the little almost-rhyme couplet above.

A foul wind is blowing across the land–
Hold on to your good nature, my friends.

It is time for a full-on War of Love. This war has been building for a very long time, too–you can read about it in the poetry of Walt Whitman and Homer, the prose of Maya Angelou and Emerson, the fiction of Philip Pullman and George Eliot; you can hear it in the music of Beethoven, the Beatles, the Wood Brothers; see it in the art of Van Gogh and O’Keefe; study it in the scholarship of Joseph Campbell, laugh and gasp in pain and love and horror, swimming in it being transformed by it with Sherman Alexie or Leslie Marmon Silko. Of course this is just a taste, a taste of all the voices of humanity that have, over centuries, sung their souls for Thee Old Cause, the War of Love.

Don’t expect it to be easy, but take a step and another. Get through a moment and another, always turning toward love. Go home and be kind. Listen to your children when they talk. Watch them when they play. Cook wholesome, real food. Take care of yourself, love yourself, and love this beautiful world. Go outside and behold the beauty of sky, trees, wind, sun. Turn off the TV, throw away the fashion magazines and gossip rags and read again–really read. Read those you can trust and discard the rest. You’ll know who you can trust because it will nourish your soul. It will strengthen your bond with the goodness in yourself and others. Love may be roused to anger but it never counsels hatred. Ever.

For Father’s Day

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My Dad

My dad making an awesome veggie quiche.

A few weeks ago I attended the Eastern New York Association of College & Research Libraries conference, and the vendors there were many. Perhaps you know the deal: you walk up and pretend to be interested in their product, and they shower you with swag. I am very uncomfortable with these exchanges, so I avoid them as a rule–even though Thomson-Reuters had a really neat canvas tote that I kept glancing at with a certain amount of desire. But no tote is worth what to me feels demeaning to both myself and the sales reps.

However, in my travels to and from the various talks and poster presentations, I kept passing a white-haired gentleman who looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, and my heart felt a tug whenever I passed. I smiled and said hello to him each time, and once he gave me one of the coveted bonus raffle tickets. Toward the end of the day I finally went over to speak with him, not because I was interested in his product or wanted swag, but because he looked so out of place and I know that feeling very well.

The Life and Legend of Sheridan R. Jones, by Joseph Hilko

The Life and Legend of Sheridan R. Jones, by Joseph Hilko

So we talked for a while about books, and we both agreed that hard-copy books are superior to electronic books. Then he started talking about his thirteen-year-old daughter and her smartphone. He said she has it with her constantly, that it is an addiction. When he was that age, he said, he was fishing, scouting, camping. Now all kids ever do is stay indoors with their electronic gadgets. I said yes, I had very much the same kind of childhood–Girl Scouts, camping, and even fishing. The man brightened and said, you went fishing? So I had to qualify and say, My dad used to be an avid fisherman and took me with him often. We talked for a bit longer about the sad state of childhood these days, and when I made my move to go he told me to wait a moment. He walked across the aisle to another display, grabbed a book and some literature, and came back to sit down. He opened the book and signed and dated it, then gave it to me. The Life and Legend of Sheridan R. Jones: America’s Pioneering Outdoor Writer and His Search for the Perfect Fishing Lure. Sure enough, when I opened it and started leafing through, there was a picture of this man, younger, with his little daughter holding two great big fish.

Since this conversation I have thought a lot about my father and the gifts he gave me while I was growing up. We disagree on many things, and sometimes drive each other crazy, but my dad gave me some priceless gifts that have allowed me to weather even the deadliest storms in my life.

Nature. I’ll list this one first because it is the greatest, most life-sustaining gift ever given to me, by anyone. Throughout my childhood, until I was 15 or so, vacation meant camping. And not just camping but traveling to different places, to see America and Canada. I’ll admit that many of these trips involved a great deal of fishing, which I did not particularly

First Fish

Me and my first fish.

enjoy, but camping was the best. My brothers and I got a new place to roam around in and explore, new kids to meet (sometimes), and to sleep in our own tents. My dad did things like carving out steps in the dirt using his camp shovel so that we could get into the camper easily. I loved stuff like that–it made me feel that his imagination was strong, and mine was, too. But it wasn’t just camping–during my formative years, from 6 to 14, we lived in places where I had easy access to nature and the freedom to go out in it anytime, for as long as I liked. In Houston, Texas, I rode my bike until it was a part of my being and it would never throw me off no matter how dangerous the stunt. I caught chameleons and watched them change color. I caught snakes and wrapped them around my neck to scare my mom. I dug clay in the front yard and made pots to bake in the sun. Later, in New York, while I endured a daily onslaught of bullying at school for three and a half years, a rock by a babbling brook in the woods was my safe place. I sat there for hours, while the nature around me planted ideas of fairy kingdoms that blossomed in my mind and enabled me to save one small spark of soul life for another time, in a future I could not imagine, away from the torment. And as an adult nature continues to nourish my spirit, continues to save me. I know that as long as I can behold the beauty of trees, sky, water, I will be OK.

Music. In 1974, when I was six years old, my father was moved temporarily to Chicago for his job. My parents took this opportunity to drive around the country, seeing sites such as the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky and the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, visiting my mom’s college friends in Delaware and Boston, and camping everywhere before finally arriving at our destination. The radio was on the whole time we were in the car, probably to keep their sanity up front from the bickering that came from the back. But since we were on the move, they had to keep searching for radio stations, and I got to hear all of the music FM and AM had to offer. Which, in 1974, was pretty damned good. Music became a big part of my life and continues to be–and it has saved my life/sanity many times.

Connection with strangers. With all the traveling around we did, I got to see how my father interacted with people we didn’t know. My father would talk with anyone. He started up conversations, and he never shied away from a conversation started by another person. This drove my mother crazy, but I liked it. I liked my dad, the guy who smiled and chatted and felt good talking with people he didn’t know. When we broke down once and had to go to a garage to get the station wagon fixed, he climbed under the car with the mechanic to help out. That was my dad, and I was proud of him. It took me a long time to come out of my shell after my disastrous teen years, but slowly I, too, have learned the joys of talking with strangers. We humans exchange love in many ways, and this is one of them. I am grateful to appreciate that.

It is difficult to say what a parent gives to his or her child, but because I took the time to talk with a stranger at that library conference in May, it became clear to me that these three gifts, for sure, my dad gave to me. Big, beautiful gifts. Thank you Dad. I love you.

Family camping, 1976

My brothers and me with my dad, camping, 1976.

I Wish I Knew Joe

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September 26, 2010, a bit before midnight, day before the 6th anniversary of CS’s death and two days after leaving the job.

I am sitting on the porch with the few crickets left singing outside in the cool night, peaceful, after listening to all the cut conversations from Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten. I am so glad to be here…this little ramshackle house in Albany, NY, United States of America, Earth. I’m a person among many persons in an overcrowded world of persons and not nearly enough wilderness ~ but a lot of wilderness if you count our minds.

(God, that man’s hands. Have you ever really looked at hands? They are stars. They are magnificent and improbable and so fine. Like faces they have beauty that transcends any conventional beauty if you really LOOK.)

Look. There is beauty all around. What can you do? Smile at strangers. Bring some comfort. I am indebted to Joe Strummer and The Clash for giving me back my anger and my joy, my self-respect, my strength. I don’t know where I am going. I don’t know what will happen, but I am free. And I always could have been, if I had looked. Jumping into the next thing isn’t always the right path. Beware. Hold yourself steady and really look.

“Anger can be power—don’t you know that you can use it?”

Something I saw  when I was very young and resisted the gray life ahead, but when I got older it tore me apart because I finally bought into the notion that being free was something that could be attained by playing the game, by fitting in where I had no real connection.

Of course, you make connections….You make them wherever you are, to try to make a place feel like home even when you are screaming “Let me out!!” You can tell yourself all kinds of stories about duty and love and giving the benefit of the doubt—doubting your SELF all the time while you sicken and die trying to fit a mold.

And there are approximate fits. Where you think you could bear spending most of your waking hours, giving your soul for a fistful of dollars and dreaming of retirement when you will really be able to do what you want—but of course we’ve seen that story played out a hundred different ways, or maybe just one or two. People who no longer have any lodestar because they gave it up to work for IBM or some other sure bet, security and lifelessness in exchange for life, juice, adventure, reality. Enough money for a house, car, kids, and maybe a diamond or two at Christmas. (Filthy diamonds ripped out of the earth by people who have been enslaved by the diamond industry.)

It’s all connected. It’s all connected. The sparkle and the filth. And if you are on one side then you are most assuredly on the other. So what’s the middle ground? Where am I going? Where do I want to be? I wish I knew Joe.

Thing is, it’s all connected. The net of gems is cast out upon the universe and one strummer on six strings can reach millions of people and change the lives of many more than that. Ripple effect. Your smile today can make a great difference in a moment that will be remembered by one and maybe felt by many others who will never see you or know of your existence. Because you make one person feel better for one moment.

So in a way I do know Joe, because he has given of himself and that ripples out to me ~ those ripples found me as I was drowning and lifted me up, not just enough to get air but enough to see. To look around and know I was not where I wanted to be. And then gave me the courage to think that I could have the audacity to leave.

No one, none of us, is a saint. And who ever said our heroes must be? I’d rather learn face to face from a bum than at the feet of a holy roller.

I am grateful to be here on this porch in the cool night air, looking at the layers of peeling paint on a window that went out of production 80 years ago. I am grateful for The Clash, and Joe Strummer, and all those people who spoke about him in that movie. I am grateful for September, the month of endings and beginnings. I am grateful for the freedom to write into the night.

Incident at 5th and Main

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Actually, it was at Thacher Park Road and Indian Ledge Road, but 5th and Main sounded more newsy. And this is Human Nation News–something I’ve been neglecting because I sort of lost my vision, and I sort of felt it was too big and unfocused.

Right now, I just want to tell a story about my drive up to Thacher Park this morning. I do this every Saturday and Sunday, usually in the morning but sometimes late afternoon, and I do it to escape from the pressures of day-to-day life. These  pressures include at least 80 minutes of commute every weekday on the Adirondack Northway–Interstate 87 for those who like numbers. It isn’t for the faint of heart, or if you are you’d better be in the right-hand lane and hope someone who can’t pass on the left to their liking doesn’t barrel down on your ass.

Accident N87 Exit 4-5

Image from the Times Union. Photo: Skip Dickstein

After commuting thus every day for over a year, and three days a week for 2.5 years before that, I have “had it” with being herded by aggressive drivers, being passed on the right (sometimes being passed on the right and left simultaneously–a tactic I call flanking), and watching cars weave over lane boundaries while their drivers text or eat complicated meals involving spoons or forks. I have had it with fatal crashes that send the rest of us lucky blokes who weren’t killed off the Northway and into congestion that delays arrival time by hours. I have had it with spending 80 minutes of my life every day just to get to work and home again, but I’m grateful I have a job. That’s what I’m supposed to say, and it is true, but….

Anyway, I back up to the end of my driveway this morning and nothing is going by on our usually very busy street–that is, until I actually get to the end of the driveway and all of a sudden there are three cars perfectly spaced so I have to wait what seems a long time just to back out and get going. And once I do get going, immediately it seems a big black truck is on my tail. I’m driving my usual 5 mph over the speed limit in a 30 mph zone, but it isn’t fast enough for this one and he’s right on my ass. I do my best to relax and simply drive, listen to music, enjoy the ride to the woods, but that big truck in my rearview mirror takes its toll. Precious life energy spent realigning myself away from a habitual feeling of being herded wherever I go.

These are winding roads, and I will pull over and invite people to pass when it is viable, but sometimes it is not. Today it was not. Finally the truck turns and I am free of the hulking presence behind me. I get through Voorheesville and on to 85A nicely. Just as I like it–dog with her head out the window, me singing to Badfinger or Mike Doughty, or Courtney Barnett or Ana Egge or oh, lots of things. Life is good, and then I see a motorcycle coming up fast from behind. He slows when he gets near and doesn’t ride up my ass, but I know I’m going slower than he wants to go. My 5 mph rule is too conservative for this busy world I know but I like driving slow, especially in the country and especially in the morning–the animals still are out on the pavement and it is hazardous to their welfare to drive fast in the country in the morning.

I pass a man jogging with his jogging stroller, making a sweeping arc into the other lane to avoid crowding them, and the motorcycle does the same. I slow and swerve to avoid hitting an already dead skunk. Turn onto 85 and lose the motorcycle for a while on the steep ascent, but then he’s back and my Fit just ain’t cutting it up to 55 on that hill. I turn on to Thacher Park Road and he does the same. I sigh and tell myself I’ll lose him when I turn on Indian Ledge, my secret winding long-cut to Thacher, but when I put my turn signal on I look in the mirror and see his go on, too. At this point, this instant, I lose my patience and pull over to the side of the road. He is still behind me because there are two cars coming the opposite direction and we have to wait before we can turn. When they pass he still waits behind me. I look at him in my sideview mirror: he’s an old-school motorcyclist–the way I imagined Robert Pirsig while reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He’s got a no-frills helmet, a brown leather jacket, and jeans. His motorcycle is just a motorcycle–not a crotch rocket or other overblown thing. He’s a guy out to enjoy the morning and I am angry and motion angrily for him to go-on-ahead-what-are-you-waiting-for? He looks at me, calmly nods, and does just that, and suddenly I am crying, knowing he meant no offense or even to make me drive faster than I wanted to drive. Just a man out enjoying the morning, as I had wanted to do before I let all the baggage I carry drag me down.

Hear ye, fellow traveler: Thank you for your gentle response to my anger today, for popping the boil of my day-to-day pressure and giving me a glimpse into my own insanity in this insane world. I’ll try to do better next time.

In the Gym

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It all started when I met Walt Whitman in the gym. I was stretching my legs and had been for some time when he spoke. “Looks as though those legs of yours could do just about anything, now.” He was right. I’d been stretching like I was going to run a marathon, but here I was, all alone in this gym, with an old man watching me and making comments. “Why aren’t you out doing a poetry reading or something?” I asked him, and he said he was tired of people complaining when he put pauses where they didn’t want them. He said it was his poetry, so he could read it like sweaters falling off of hangers if he wanted, right? Then he looked around with an air of resignation and said that maybe he wasn’t in the right business. Maybe he should be a guidance counselor instead.

<!–My middle school gym, in fact. The very worst possible gym.–>

This was a dream I had after transcribing everything I’d ever written (that I still had) into what turned out to be a 500-page Word document.  The transcribing was actually a very good exercise: it taught me that even though I thought I quit writing I actually had been writing all along–only in the form of letters, dreams, papers (for the English degree), and fits and starts, constipated-but-earnest bits in many notebooks over the years. I was no George Eliot, but I was a writer.

These were good things to learn. The problem was, I started to think that this 500-page monster in a box (<3) was actually a book. A publishable book. It’s a dear document to me, and has many seeds and even flowerings, but god help the person who delves there alone and unaided by my memories and personal interest.

Besides letting me know he was a bit exasperated with me, what ol’ Walt was saying was, I had long been ready to go out and actually write. On purpose. In the open. Making time for it and not letting anyone or anything interfere with that time. Not bitchy (unless necessary)–just protective. I kept stretching my legs though, thinking about writing but not doing it. Immersing myself in snippets but never making them into anything.

And you know, that’s OK. I could enjoy my writing as a little hobby I dabble in but never get too serious about, and the absence of my voice would not make the Universe cease. Living life well and having loving interactions with people: cooking good food, drinking wine, enjoying a movie or a play or a concert, taking care of business, and going on this way day after day, year after year–these are all very good things and a life thus lived is a good life. But I’ve fought  through isolation that was some times impenetrable by humans, most times no human wanted to penetrate. Time spent unable to connect in a meaningful way with anyone in my life. Luckily, I found connection through other aspects of life: nature, animals, stories, poems, music, movies, art…

The marks left by others have saved me, and because I desire to communicate my experiences and see how they fit in with the larger picture –into life and humanity and what we’re doing here– I feel the responsibility to leave marks, too. Just in case these words bring even one person succor or light or direction or any of the numberless ways we humans make meaning to sustain ourselves on the journey.

∞ ∞ ∞

Walt Whitman saved me, right at the point where all the work I’d been doing underground was ready to come out and show its pale green face to the sun.

I was a 22-year-old mother, grocery cashier, wife of a warehouse worker barely getting by in a cheap, cat-piss smelling apartment when I saw Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. Robin Williams was funny–a lovably and even adorably clueless Mork–but in DPS he became this teacher who had honey on his tongue and made you want to truly find out what it is to live your life. I believed him, and every bit of that movie. Afterward, I thought I remembered we had a book of Whitman on the shelf, went to look and found it. When I took it out the binding opened to “On the Beach at Night Alone,” and I stood there reading it, transfixed. It is very difficult to tell you what that did to me, reading it the first time, without telling you a whole lot of other things too. So I’ll have to suffice with…it validated a view of the world I’d experienced, but before that moment almost nowhere else had I found evidence others had also experienced it that way. I’d lucked across a paragraph or so in a Carl Jung book, but other than that, I knew nothing yet of the vast and rich conversation that has been going on for 30,000 years give or take a few.

Whitman was my constant companion from then on, for at least six months. I took him everywhere–even in my pocket at work, to be pulled out for every ten-minute break. My fear–the ever-present social phobia–subsided for the time. This all started in April, and the following January I was registering for classes at Broome Community College–standing on that gym floor covered in blue-taped lines and arrows, a voice in my head telling me the fuck up, me the mental patient, me the ragamuffin delinquent daughter I should leave before I throw up. Then one of my soon-to-be professors came up to me and looked at the classes I wanted.

Transformations of Myth Through Time

The class he thought he was teaching.

He said, “I think I’m teaching that one,” pointing to a class listed on the paper, which was just weird enough to jolt me out of my fear, and then he showed me the line I needed. I got through, got my classes, and didn’t throw up even once. Turns out literature, not psychology, was what I needed. Stories and poems, myths, and my professors up there, leading the conversation. I loved the conversation, hungered for it, and semester by semester came back to humanity–my own and the human spirit that contains all.

So Whitman, and Robin Williams, saved my life. Along with a whole lot of others who decided to tell their stories when they could easily have kept them to themselves.

Now, since October or so, I’ve shyly been voyaging out, writing in the open. Put something out there, then run and hide. Put something out there again, run and hide. But it’s OK. It’s OK to take it slow, I tell myself, stretching some more. I’m figuring this out.

For now…

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I had a forceful intuition this morning that came on with all the common sense of a parent making the decision to change her child’s poopy diapers–they’re dirty, change ’em–or put her child to bed–he’s really freaking tired and needs to go to sleep so I’ll put him to bed, even if he’s screaming. What prompted this forceful intuition (wait for it…) was a questionnaire sent to me by the Democratic Party. This questionnaire, among other things, wanted to know whether I agreed with several of President Obama’s plans, including:

  • a plan to take executive action on issues that Republicans refuse to bring to a vote, such as immigration,
  • a plan to increase the minimum wage,
  • a plan to make it possible for more American workers to earn sick time and family leave,
  • a plan to close the wage gap and ensure women receive equal pay,
  • a plan to close tax loopholes and to simplify the tax code so that corporations and the ultra-wealthy will pay their fair share,
  • a plan that will allow American workers to gain the modern job skills necessary to compete in the global economy,
  • a plan to reduce carbon pollution, accelerate the development of clean energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and invest in sustainable and resilient infrastructure projects to prepare for the effects of climate change, and
  • a plan to provide a community college education to any American who is willing to work for it.

Well, sure, I said to myself. I agree with all of these things–except maybe the one to prepare for the effects of climate change, because I’d damned well rather reverse the effects of climate change instead. But it is good to be prudent and prepare for all eventualities I suppose, and our infrastructure is in any case in dire need of attention. So yes, I agree in theory with all of these things, but what exactly are these plans–what do they really say and how does Obama propose to carry them out? I was discussing this with my dear mate when the intuition bubbled up out of me: What actually needs to happen is to call a complete halt to anything but the absolute necessary functions of human life on this planet. Call a halt to production of unnecessary goods, call a halt to polluting, call a halt to everything but the bare minimum necessary to sustain humanity–then figure this the fuck out.

First, help Nepal get back on its feet, clean up the war zones, feed all the people and make sure everyone has clean water and adequate shelter. Get everyone–everyone— to the point of level two at least of Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs. That gives everyone at least the level of safety to work from.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Source: WikiPedia (Yes, I know, I really should donate. I will donate.)

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Source: WikiPedia (Yes, I know, I really should donate. I will donate.)

Then we can figure out what to do about the massive mess we have made on Planet Earth, the only home we have in the vast reaches of space. It’s time to change the poopy diapers. It’s time to put overtired children to bed and be the adults.

Because otherwise this is all too slow. It’s too damned slow and government is made up of people who are in the business of trying to maintain the status quo as much as possible so as not to ruffle the feathers of those who keep them in office by giving them campaign contributions. In this state of affairs change is glacial, and we end up watching a bad, neverending football game in which the Republicans gain ground, then lose it to the Dems, who lose it to the Republicans, and back and forth ad nauseum. If indeed Obama has plans for these things, which I hope he does, he will never realize them in this system as it stands. All it is is more talk, when what we need is positive action.

Action that can be taken only by the people. If we wait around for government or, god forbid, corporations, to do what is necessary and right, we and our children and grandchildren will be living in a much more severe nightmare than the current one, and it will be our own fault. But it is so easy to be lulled into doing nothing, for we have been raised, like cattle on a CAFO, to be corn-fed, docile, unthinking, and powerless. Twelve years sitting in school, preparing to “earn a living” in a society that dispenses ever-decreasing returns to those who support it. We are conditioned to be afraid and conformist, and most of us are too tired at the end of each day for much more than a highball (or choose your poison) and a televised something or other.

But this isn’t what we are alive to do and be. The other night, on my way to see Night of the Iguana at the Albany Civic Theater with my two grown sons, I drove by a community garden in the middle of the city. It was a lovely, warm evening and people of all ages were out, talking to each other and digging in the earth. It felt so right to be with my funny, intelligent sons on our way to community theater, passing by community gardeners. It felt true and right, and nourishing.

It is this I put forth: not that we should take it upon ourselves to do a great something and change the world, but to do many and sustained small participatory somethings and thereby, seemingly without effort, through the actions of all of us, change the world. Feed those in your reach, be kind, think about whether your actions–what you eat, what you buy, what you do for a living–participate in the harm of other living beings. Change what you can, simplify your life, find out what is essential to you and stay close to that, leaving the rest. What is essential won’t be the same for everyone, and that is good…that helps keep the balance.

If we all, or even a majority, or even 50 percent of us did this, we could stop the runaway train we are on, and give ourselves time to come up with solutions. If we did this, the solutions would likely come about naturally and inevitably, like spring after a long, cold winter.

La Llorona

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Deep in the black velvet ooze
At the bottom of the saltwater cavern,
I found her weeping for her children.

Her weeping makes her monstrous.

Mothers warn their young ones away
And secretly worry
about where choices have led them–
About the salt in their blood.

I see her

Raw fingers raking the sludge,
so long from giving love.
My hands ache and sweat;
I taste my death but cannot look away.

Her hollow eyes focus on me and the time is fulfilled.

I kneel in front of her,
Take her hands to my breast,
And kiss her wide mouth long and full.

8.21.02

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I Stop

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.
~Walt Whitman

[Context: I had run away from home (for a week. yes I did set a time limit. mother of two after all–maybe not the best, but the only one.) because pretty much everything I had built my world on–my belief in what was the right way, who were the right people…the right according to everything I’d been fed and swallowed (or rebelled against and paid for dearly)–had fallen in rubble to the ground. Bad scene but also a chance to pick and choose what you’ll build with this time. If you can survive. (Which you can.)]

 

∞ ∞ ∞

Brand-new, clean notebook. All possibilities exist here. I love paper, and it hardly costs a thing. This 70-page, spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook cost 25¢ at Wal-Mart. It is one of the best-kept secrets of our time.

My feet are speckled with gray, the rim around my toenails black. I have a black smudge on my calf, just below a freckle, which is itself below the scar that is a reminder to me of Albert…nope–can’t remember his last name. Italian. Started with a C. These marks on my calf form a constellation–an anchor, perhaps. Here I sit, on my eldest son’s camp chair, up in the North Country. Sharp Bridge Campground, 40 sites and the cleanest bathroom I’ve ever had the pleasure of using while camping.

I wanted to write a little before doing the dishes, even though it will get dark soon. So much of my life is spent going, doing, or planning on going and doing that I almost never get the chance to just sit and daydream, or notice the activities of the little ones–worms, ants. A giant bug flew into my campsite this afternoon–I heard it rather than saw it at first–a dark humming, more bass than bee, and when I caught the movement that went with the sound I was prepared to get nervous if this creature did not go soon. But then it stopped moving and hovered in the air for a moment; it looked at me and I smiled and said, “Ahh! a hummingbird. Thank you.”

Ugly Duckling

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Now I float upon the cool water,
My webbed feet gently keeping me true
As I breathe and come to.

Here I am upon the calm water~
The ungraceful dance,
Frantic footwork to be what I am not,
Is over.

In the distance swans take flight:
Recognition leaps in my heart
And my wings give a sympathetic shake.

Now, here, I am what I am.
My webbed feet paddle the cool water,
Moving me forward, swift and sure

Until yearning meets with knowing,
And I unfold large, beautiful wings
That carry the drumming of my heart
Across the years and vast deserts I have traveled.

In a moment,
Through a flurry of sun-kissed water,
I am airborne,
Flying to meet my mates.

Sharp Bridge Campsite, August 2002

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It dawns on me that I have a tendency to expect too much from people. More specifically, I expect them to be “better” than I am–more enlightened, more understanding, more generous. I don’t expect this from everybody, but I do tend to expect this from those I admire, and often from those whom I love.

Sharp Bridge Campground

Sharp Bridge Campground in North Hudson, NY. Photo by Michael Lechasseur.

It is the morning after an afternoon and evening of rain. Every patch of sky I see supplies a crisp blue outline for the pine needles way up there. Long streams of sunlight lay upon the ground, flowing and shimmering when a breeze moves the trees. The white pines grow cathedrallike here–columns shooting straight up to the fronds at top. Steam rises from the ground and the trunks. We are all glad for the rain. We all need it deep down and often. And it does make the sunshine so sweet.