Partings

THE CLOUD

As a free person I can always come and go,
Not caught in ideas of is and is not.
Not caught in ideas of being and non-being
Let your steps be leisurely.
Waxing or waning the moon is always the moon
The wind is still flying. Can you feel it my dear?
Bringing the rain from afar to nourish the nearby cloud
Drops of sunshine fall from on high to earth below
And the lap of earth touches the clear vault of the sky.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

This is M.  And that is me, looking like the unfortunate result of Harry Potter having a one-night stand with a chipmunk (I knew I wasn't meant for academia after my first run-in with the black robe).  I was trying not to cry in this picture, which is pretty much true of every single photo taken of me (and there were many) at Tuesday's graduation.  It is humbling when a beautiful, beaming  just-graduated young woman is comforting ME, telling ME to dry my tears.

This senior class, now beyond the world of "senior", starts at the bottom rungs of the hierarchy again in the fall.  And we sent them off with all of the regalia that befits this rite of passage.  In my case, this included a fair dose of tears and a little bit of my heart fluttering away with white dresses, flyaway hair, and bright smiles that held hope, confidence and excitement about the journey ahead.  I can't say that my heart feels completely OK at the moment. I'm not good at goodbyes, and I'm awfully good at getting misty. A lethal combination after grading exams, writing and proofing comments, and general end-of-school edginess which proved to be the Perfect Storm. Every girl with whom I had even the slightest connection made me cry, and MOST of the pictures the girls have so lovingly (ahem) posted on Facebook are heartwarming but decidedly NOT flattering.  And that is okay.

The class of 2010 sort of stole my heart from the moment I met them. I was a new and nervous teacher who basically relied on instinct and internal pep-talks to get through my first year of standing in front of a bevy of girls and trying to impart knowledge about that most dreaded of subjects: history.  I shouldn't have worried as much as I did. They are intelligent, spirited, hilariously funny, courageous - in sum, full of character and compassion.  They are my cup of tea.  And I spent my first year of teaching doing a happy dance over the fact that I advised and taught such wonderfully vibrant young women.

I didn't teach M. as a freshman, but she often stored her lacrosse bag in my classroom, always asking hesitantly - kind of skittishly - before she deposited her gear on my floor with a half-smile, half-grimace expression that is so quintessentially hers.  As a sophomore, she was in my European Civilization class, and within a few classes of watching her and interacting with her, I knew that she was different from the rest of the girls.  Unlike so many of her peers, who with good reason, don protective layers that shield their hearts and their hurts, M. has a heart that permits itself to be hurt and allows others in, with little cautionary tape defining her borders. Beyond that, she is just plain funny. In one class, she assiduously typed what I was saying verbatim (this was her habit, actually), and when in the next class, I prompted the girls to recall a specific fact about Versailles, she calmly opened her notes and proceeded to read what I had said...again, word for word, perfectly capturing my intonations and speech patterns. Have I mentioned that dignity is not something you should overly privilege as a teacher?  Apparently, I wax poetic when I talk about fountains and art (go figure)...and we all remember that class to this day. 

It is no mystery that being a teenage girl is pretty difficult at times, and that pressure from your peers can cause your brain to take a temporary leave...until the age of 22 or so.  This is not some great secret. M. struggled with honoring her enviable moral compass while keeping her friendships intact.  She did so with such integrity, and I often wondered how she maintained her smile...I noticed and I hurt for her when it went missing - deeply. Despite the fact that she is a star athlete and has oodles of friends, she was very lonely a lot of the time. She loves her friends. She is a loyal friend.  She can empathize with anyone about anything, and she can validate the smallest hurt and the greatest heartache. She can put into words what others cannot. She owns her mistakes and she questions EVERYTHING.

And she sees the things in people that others cavalierly overlook.  She would chalk this up to the fact that two of her senses are diminished: she can't taste or smell.  As a result, she notices things around her that pass the rest of us by...her observations go well beyond the superficial; while her peers are sniffing one another's hair, she is noticing the way their eyes close when they laugh, and how her history teacher folds her legs beneath her when she sits and talks to her class. She would be an excellent therapist, because she so quickly picks up on a fleeting facial expression that, with complete accuracy, reflects how a person is feeling on any given day.  I chalk it up to M. being acutely aware of the wonderful symphony of many hearts struggling to find safety, solace, happiness, and love - and part of it may be the sensory thing - but a huge part of it is her own huge heart.

One of the things I love most about my calling is that I get to learn from so many amazing individuals on a daily basis.  I've come to the conclusion that if a teacher doesn't learn as much (if not more) than her students, perhaps a different career is in order.  And I have learned so much from M. about friendships, about endurance, about the importance of levity in the classroom (I need only mention Lionel Ritchie), and the gift of an ongoing conversation that spanned three years and will hopefully continue a lifetime.  It is hard to place a value on the impression an individual (or an entire class) can make on your heart, because over time, that impression takes a different shape.  It changes in the same way that a handprint in concrete does once it dries. And people walk on it.  And leaves gather in its crevices. Moss creeps in and changes its texture. And a child takes sidewalk chalk to it and temporarily declares it to be a different color.  M. would appreciate this notion because despite our differences (i.e. the thought of me holding a lacrosse stick should fill you with dread), we think about the world similarly. Oftentimes, our slightly slanted view of the world is captured through the same rainbow prism, and when the light passes through, it is somehow comforting to know that someone else understands. So I know that she will understand what Thich Nhat Hanh meant when he wrote so beautifully, in such simple prose:  "And the lap of the earth touches the clear vault of the sky."

So, M., may your steps be leisurely.  May you always come and go.  May the lap of the earth always provide a soft landing. And may ideas of "is" and "is not" never cloud the clarity your perfect vision.

Mama Mia

Today is Mother's Day, a time for celebrating one of the most difficult jobs anyone could possibly have and the many women who, in the process, open their hearts entire gulfs wider than most do to offer their vulnerability, their wisdom, and their love to someone they will worry about for the rest of their lives. I am not yet a mother, but I spend a fair bit of time thinking about what kind of mother I will be.

And I hope that I am able to approximate a small percentage of my mother's talent at being Mom. 

When I was a child, I used to lie in bed at night and vividly imagine a scenario wherein parents were nominated for "Best Parents Award" by their children.  In my reverie, I gave a speech, extolling the virtues of my parents and the many reasons why they should win the award.  As fantasies often play out, my parents won. I was PROUD to have such loving parents; the fantasy (still a vivid memory) is testimony to that pride. 

So much of this is thanks to the woman who took me to my gymnastics and ballet lessons, who walked the long oyster-shell lane to meet my school bus each day, and the woman who agreed to play adult Wendy to my childhood appearance in our school production of Peter Pan.  And of course the woman who, with epic consistency, can butcher the words to almost any song but remain beautifully in tune while enthusiastically singing along to the radio in the car.  Seriously - other drivers waiting at a red light have been distracted by my mother's ardent devotion to the 80's love ballad and watched with a combination of humor and fascination as she earnestly belted out Celine Dion, nailing every fourth or fifth word... maybe....on a good day.  Really, there is so much to love in someone with so many talents.

My mother was a full time mom for most of our childhood, and while she made it look easy at the time, she worked incredibly hard to bring us stability, routine, and a sense of self from the moment we were born.  She did so many things RIGHT, from instinct and from what she knew was best for her daughters, all of us very distinct individuals with sometimes very different needs.  Television was permitted on very rare occasions, and not only did I learn to read at an early age, but as a result it was (and still remains) my favorite past-time. While most children feasted on bologna sandwiches at lunch, my lunchbox was packed with healthy foods like raisins and whole wheat bread (this was rather forward-thinking when I was a child).  She believed in "less is more" and so although we had scheduled activities as children, we also had free time, a luxury that few of today's children seem to enjoy.  Naps were permitted, reading outside for a couple of hours was encouraged and writing poetry in the middle of the night (while not completely endorsed) was deemed alright because it was a creative outlet. In sum, my parents agreed that they would not shape us to be something we were not.  We were permitted to be ourselves, another novel concept on the brink of extinction among too many parents today.

My mother did hold us to certain standards though, and for that I am eternally grateful to both of my parents.  The Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them done unto you"), to which she often refers, was the guiding principle of my parents' parenting and our sense of what is right and what is wrong.  We were taught to treat others with unwavering kindness and the benefit of the doubt.  We were counseled not to judge others, and to be open to all cultures, faiths, and lifestyles.  Rudeness was anathema.  A sense of entitlement of any kind was viewed as shallow and selfish.  The absence of compassion in our interactions with others was simply not tolerated.  At a very early age, I was taught the basic principle of kindness that both of my parents embody to this day. Thank goodness for this.  Thank goodness that my parents' standards embrace moral courage and character, and that my mother patiently explained these things with love and hope for our bright futures.

She has always held herself to very high standards as a parent.  From the earliest reaches of my memory, birthday cakes were a big deal.  On the year of my fifth birthday, my mother, seven months pregnant with my younger sister (and thus donning TWO birthday hats) painstakingly made me a Wonder Woman birthday cake. Hours before the party, I leaned too far into the cake while inspecting it and fell into the golden lasso. All too familiar with my lack of grace, she sighed and redecorated the cake.  And then played host to some twenty-odd five year olds who jumped off the deck into her impatiens, swung upside down from the bars on the swingset, and wreaked general havoc.  It's a wonder my sister wasn't born early. It's a wonder too that my mother didn't go postal. But pictures of her from that day depict a beaming, beautifully pregnant MOTHER, whose love for her daughter was forever a cause for joyfully picking up those rose-colored glasses and seeing things through the eyes of a child.

As we grew up and away, I watched my mother grow too.  She went back to school, and became a nurse, graduating a mere few days after my graduation from college.  She has spent her whole life - at home and at work- caring for others, something she does exceedingly well.  Her patients may as well be her children; she is not afraid to correct a doctor, question a dosage or advocate for more immediate care.  Now a grandmother to three, she still makes cakes, including the Emerald City, Dora the Explorer, brown sugar pound cake, train cakes at Christmas, and even desserts that avoid dairy and wheat.  She attends recitals and she pulls out my old books for my niece.  She is never tired of loving. 

When I left my husband, when I was diagnosed with Lupus, and whenever I need an ear, my mother has always been at my side.  She hasn't judged me.  She has picked me up and put me back together again so many times and in so many ways.  She has gone to doctors with me and I've seen her brow furrow with concern when I cough or seem stiff from joint pain.  But she puts a smile on her face, brings me a glass of water, and reminds me to take my fish oil.  She has watched as I fall in and out of love again, and she has cried with me as I sometimes struggled to find my equilibrium. When I succeed at some small thing, she exclaims, "Well, hot damn!" and when I tease her (which is frequent), she laughs until she cries. What a gift it is to have someone always there to hold your hand and soften the blow when you fall.  She planted dahlias for my wedding at my parents' home last summer, tending to each blossom with all the love she feels for her three daughters.  With her bell-like laugh that can erupt at any moment, she has shared the gift of laughter with me, and has taught me that laughter is medicine, a tonic for the soul.  She has told me to "buck up" when I needed some tough love and a gentle reminder of how blessed and beautiful my life is.

In so many ways, she has made it so. 

The shopping cart

Damn you, internet. Damn you for forcing me to confront one of my secret obsessions-hobbies-"issues":  the online shopping cart in spring time. Anyone who is an avid gardener can empathize with the heart-wrenching pangs that the spring garden catalog induces in one. It is lethal.  It is cruel. And for the past decade or so, it has been online.  

I love springtime so much that at the age of ten, I wrote a poem about it.  And drew illustrations with pastels of flowers, tree branches, robins' nests (the latter has a prominent, if somewhat overly saccharine role in the poem).  I love it so much that I confess to being one of those annoying individuals who exclaims at every lavender sunrise, every weeping cherry, every new sign of life in my garden.  Hyperbole, you've met your maker.  And she happens to love to garden.


Now that I once again have my own garden, I devote a sizable portion of my mental energy to thinking about it.  It is a living, breathing thing, my garden - and I can easily lose at least 20 minutes of a morning staring at a single euphorbia and wondering if it shouldn't be a little to the left. And oh look!  It has another set of bracts! How brilliant. I  should have ordered a few more...and I need something blue (caryopteris? baptisia?) to off-set the lime green...and crikey, there's that spot there that practically weeps for a mock orange.  Should it be a double or single blossom?  And if I get a mock orange, maybe I should just throw in some of those gorgeous near-black pansies edged in white...


(When I was in first grade, my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Boardley, had a teacher's aid stand by my desk and tap on my shoulder when I daydreamed out the window. I'm just saying: I come by this naturally)


There is much left to be done in my garden, and the spring of 2010 is devoted to the front beds.  Easy-peasy, one might think. But I've done a half a dozen variations of what the front beds (which now, on May 2nd, boast a rampant case of morning glory and very little else) should look like.  I have performance anxiety when it comes to the front beds. Plain and simple.  After all, they are the first things one greets when approaching our house.  Do I go all architectural?  Colorful? English cottage garden? Japanese Zen?  Monochrome?  


Paralysis.


To date, I have roughly $2300 of plants in different "carts" - none of which, mind you, are a) the perfect front bed combo, b) affordable, and c) thus, not so much a reality. Fortunately, I collect seeds from my plants each year.  And I love to divide iris. And 
the unthinkable happened: I found a kind of hosta that I actually like and it happens to have really taken a liking to my garden.  So the front beds will be cobbled together with pieces of what is already here - a generative process, actually.  Which in its own way, is much more satisfying than the shopping cart.

Making it down the mountain

Today is my first full day of a week in Park City, Utah. Park City is known foremost for its top-rate skiing, which to those of you who know me AT ALL, at least invites a bit of mirthful incredulity. "Paige? Skiing?"  I know.  I know.  At the age of thirty-five, I can do a split. I can ice skate, and I can run stadiums better than most lacrosse players.  Skiing?  Ha.  

And then there was the whole debate over what constitutes a vacation. I recognize that even sitting here as I am in a lovely hotel, I am rather spoiled to bring this to the table.  That said, after a very long year at work with ongoing challenges, and as a hothouse flower in the truest sense of the word (I kid you not. I am like one of those heat/humidity loving banana plants. I love hothouses. Steam rooms. HEAT. Bring it on.), spending my break in more cold doing something for which I have a cool and distant appreciation - well. It didn't seem very vacation-like to me. And seeing as I am bunny-slope-bound, and Alex speaks the language of quadruple-black-diamond-with-zigzags-and-exclamation-points, it didn't seem to involve to a whole lot of "couple bonding" which I admit, I want and need.  And to be fair, my admittedly narrow definition of this does not involve watching me careen down a mountainside for days on end.


And sometimes the truth is in the challenges, and in learning to work through them with the balance, respect, and acceptance that they deserve.

One of the things that I am "working on" is confronting my self-doubt with a little more determination and a little less "meh". When I face scenarios with which I have a tenuous sense of enjoyment at best, I tend to be a little bit of a stick-in-the-mud.  This is a difficult personality trait, I recognize...when it comes to tending the soul of another, caring for someone, or trying most new things, I am perfectly fine.  You can also count on me to try almost any kind of food on the planet, so long as it doesn't involve American cheese. When it comes to anything involving snow, skis, heavy boots, and poles - none of which feel at all like extensions of my body - trepidation takes hold like a lamprey. It isn't fun for me, and it isn't fun for my husband, who in his expert-skier mindset understandably has a difficult time understanding my stubborn difficulty with negotiating so much equipment while careening down a mountain. Quickly.

This morning we went skiing for the first time together with our dear friends, Dominic and Eliza.  Eliza used to race - so, umm, she's really good.  Dominic is an expert rock climber and an improving skier. He's also one of the best cheerleaders I have ever met. I wanted to high five him when I fell down for the twentieth time and he was right there, saying "Good job, Paige!" and meaning it.  Before we set out though, panic set in.  The boots - they felt like concrete blocks.  The skis had me tripping over myself like a new-born colt. This had man-down written all over it. And I admit it - I panicked. "Take me OFF this mountain," I muttered under my breath, completely aware of all of the skiers on the mountain who in my mind, were stopping to watch the free entertainment wobbling, sliding, and slipping with all the knock-kneed grace of a giraffe. The first run down felt like an eternity, and I had sudden sympathy for my students when I charge them with completing a new assignment that I expect in two days - an eternity of effort, focus, and pushing bounds to many of them.

The second run, which Eliza patiently guided me down, took less time. I fell, laughed, got up again, had a few brief moments of euphoric disillusionment during which time I imagined myself winning Olympic gold - it was awesome.  And then I would fall again. And ski lifts - why are ski lifts so darned difficult? I can never gauge when to jump. Alex was good at explaining this, but I am really bad at following directions with any consistency, I find. It was a lesson in finding patience with myself, with my co-skiers, with the mountain, and with the ski equipment, which I secretly wanted to hurl off the nearest cliff.

All in all, two and a half hours in, and I was done. I do enjoy aspects of skiing - in small doses. Like aspic. But I am not a skier. I can approximate good cheer and I can wear cute ski clothes and feel all sporty, but in truth, it's a bit of a paper-thin veneer.  Tomorrow, I'll get back on the slopes, and I will ski for a few hours, and I'm sure I will improve. Slightly.

But then, I'll want to read. And maybe nap. Or sit by a fire. Or find a cool art gallery. Or decide where we should eat dinner. And shed my ski-bunny pretensions for who I truly am: an apres-skier.  I am trying to make peace now with maybe not being someone who can be labeled "a skier" and instead trying to reach another place entirely. Perhaps making it down the mountain means confronting the things that one simply will NOT excel in, and finding simple happiness in this alone.  Perhaps it also means working on that always-challenging but ever-rewarding balancing act with a partner, when we together stare a situation in the face head-on and say "Okay. So we want different things at this moment. And let's figure out how to make both people happy."


This week, we will make it down the mountain.  And we might take different trails. Perhaps what matters is that we share in the spills, physical and figurative. And also that we recognize that we DO share common interests: hiking a mountain, for instance. Give me Maine, New Hampshire, the Alps, and I will want to reach the summit. It's the ups and downs that make things interesting, and make things worthwhile.  


On our shuttle back to our hotel today, one of our favorite songs came on the radio. And I looked at Alex, this man I married for all of our shared loves and for all of our differences, and I thought to myself "there is nowhere I would rather be."

Do-Re-Mi redux

Now this just makes me really, really happy:

Do-Re-Mi, train station - the anti-anger agent

Seriously, I am not sure how anyone can watch this and not smile a little wider. As a lover of public spaces, and as someone who could happily watch The Sound of Music on repeat, I fought tears (and lost) when I saw this for the first time.   Strangers!  Dancing together!  In a beautiful Belgian train station!  What could be better?!

For some, better might be this...

Spanish Market, Opera

Who doesn't enjoy an aria or two while purchasing sausages and tomatoes?  Why not have champagne while doing so?  What's wrong with waltzing in the middle of a bustling market? And why not find so many different ways to fall in love?


If every lunch had a little impromptu Verdi, and if every commute was set to the tune of a little Julie Andrews, the world would be a better place. We must find reason to dance and sing sometimes. Thank goodness some people realize this.  Thank goodness that there are those for whom spontaneity is something too beautiful to pass by. To weep at something heavenly is a very good thing indeed.

On bravery and on Brian

"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change." -RFK (via Brian Kinsella)

I think that bravery and moral courage are wrapped in all sorts of packages.  It is important to me to make a mental note when I witness or experience acts of bravery that defy our sometimes watered-down use of the word. In a previous post, I made mention of what it is (for me) to be humbled, and I suppose the two go hand in hand. I admit to having a short fuse when it comes to people who are so enamored of their own activities that they don't allow the actions and deeds of others to sit with them a while and push them to reconsider the cost/benefits of their self-absorption.  Maybe this is why I dislike Twitter and why increasingly, I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook.  Are we spending too much time "on the grid" and waxing poetic about those beautiful and poignant moments that delineate our protective bubble?  Could we instead be just doing instead of documenting? Maybe there's a balance.  

Take my friend Brian. Brian is not afraid to burst a bubble, if it means that we have a deeper appreciation for life and for the people whose lives are not as gilded as our own. I met Brian in 2004, when he was an undergraduate student at Hopkins. He was in ROTC; I was a graduate student in the history of art. Brian worked at The Wine Source, an amazing wine-beer-spirits-cheese store in Baltimore where my two graduate school friends Heather and Jen also worked to make extra money.  Our $13,000 annual stipend only went so far, after all.  Side note: Heather and Jen both met their husbands at the Wine Source. I love that.  Social outings included "the guys from the Source"  - a welcome reprieve from grad school socializing which invariably centered around discussions of Panofsky, Donatello, and what Bernini was really up to in his Ecstasy of St. Theresa. As scintillating as these discussions were (and still are), I couldn't help but feel that all of this intellectual banter wasn't really all that illuminating after all, and I often found my inner dialogue wondering just how much I should care about whether the latest Rembrandt attribution was correct.  Why not just love the painting for being what it is - something that none of us participating in the conversation could ever possess the talent or the agency to sign our names to?

Conversations with Brian, on the other hand, consistently pushed me to shed my pretensions and the widely-held belief that intellectual might held great moral merit. His perspective on the world - at the time, an intriguing combination of naivete and wisdom - challenged me to embrace my moral courage and what little bravery I felt I had at such a watershed moment in my life. He also taught me one of my most valuable lessons: do what you are. Don't say what you are and expect the Ganges to rise up to greet you. It has more important souls to tend to.

A New Jersey boy, Brian speaks with a slight New Jersey accent that reminds me so much of so many childhoods spent on the Jersey shore with my family. Brian used more product in his hair than I ever have, and he was always a perfect bronzed tan - even in February. His teeth are white as innocence.  I found this so charming and endearing.  He was a body builder for a time, and he shaved his entire body of all hair.  He once showed me photographs from bodybuilding competitions, and I remember being amazed by what people choose to do with their bodies.  Brian was in a fraternity, SAE, and he was the soul of his fraternity house.  He was a shameless flirt, but rarely dated, because he is particular.   He also had NO time, given the number of jobs he worked: the Wine Source, an internship at the Secret Service, his obligations to ROTC, among other part-time commitments.  I am not a fan of sororities and fraternities, though I respect and understand the appeal they have to some.  In my estimation, spending time in the gym pumping iron couldn't be more boring.  And tanning beds make you smell weird.  But Brian and I got along like a house on fire.  We were instant friends, built from a shared locus of honesty, mutual respect, and the unspoken acknowledgment that we had a whole lot to learn from one another.


Despite his busy schedule, Brian always had time to come by my office in the library.  He frequently left me notes, and I still have one he wrote me that is truly one of the kindest letters I have ever received.  He made me watch The Ring, and I will forever curse him for falling asleep 15 minutes into the film, while I sat perched on the edge of my couch, stiff and trembling with terror.  He challenged me to make fun of myself at a point in my life when I had a very hard time doing so.  He hated compliments, and whenever I would thank him for carrying armfuls of art history books for me, or checking in on me after I had a medical procedure, he would shrug it off, "No, no, no, P.  That's nothin'," he would say.  He was a friend -  a real friend.  I needed this in a member of the opposite sex - even if it was an undergrad with whom, on the surface, I had very little in common. 

Baltimore is a place for hard-knocks lessons, though - even Hopkins undergrads are not immune to its breezy callousness.  The back door to the SAE fraternity house where Brian lived was left open one warm April night in 2004, while Brian slept because he had to be up early for work and his housemates finally dozed off after a typical evening of revelry.  Brian awoke in his first-floor room to the sound of his housemate screaming from the living room, and he ran out to discover his friend pleading "Help me," covered in blood from being stabbed by an intruder.  "So much blood, P," he later told me.

Brian knows how to save lives.  This is what he was trained to do and this is what he does now.  He held the wound together with both hands, and yelled for his housemates to help him. No one heard. One girl, who stayed over at the fraternity that night, heard the screams and was too afraid to do anything. Brian doesn't blame her, because his heart is just that big and forgiving.  His friend died the next day from multiple stab wounds.  Brian spoke at the memorial service, and I listened to his voice cracking and quivering as he mourned the loss of a brother - someone he couldn't save.


I worried for a time that Brian's understandable anger and sense of helplessness might wipe away that amber warmth that he shared with such consistent altruism and sincerity.  I worried that he would become jaded, and that his heart, which is so very open to the world, would close.  I worried that he would find the nearest corner, and reside THERE, with his back against the wall.  But Brian doesn't have time for such things. He also doesn't have it in his make-up to be an Atlas to his own heartache, when he has bigger loads to carry:

 

Brian in Haiti, 2010

After graduating from Hopkins, Brian started active duty, first in Europe.  "P!" he wrote, "I finally understand what the big deal about Renaissance art is!!!" Brian was stationed in Italy and in Germany, before spending over a year in the thick of our current war with Iraq.  When I heard he was being stationed there, it was from a simple post on facebook, and then a short letter. No fanfare. No "pray for me."  My heart sort of sat in stunned panic for a good day after I learned he was going, because part of me didn't know that Brian would survive (despite the fact that of anyone I know, Brian could survive almost anything). He doesn't believe in "think before you leap" when it comes to helping people, and my overactive imagination had scenarios of Brian taking bullets for others on rerun.  He could very well have medals of honor galore, and I wouldn't know about it. He doesn't boast of his meteoric rise in the military, of the many things he has done to, in small but significant ways, make our world a little bit better. He just does it.  He does not agree with this war, but he went. That takes moral courage, bravery, and a strong stomach to boot. 


Brian is now in Haiti for the next few months.  Having only recently joined us stateside after his time in Iraq, he left immediately after the earthquake. While everyone posted on facebook about where to donate (which is very important), Brian posted simply, "Off to Haiti."  This kind of makes one think twice before boasting about something that doesn't involve saving a life, unloading 50 lb bags of rice, or organizing housing for the so many millions of displaced souls.  We don't have time for our own hubris. We don't have time to give ourselves daily "shout-outs" anymore than our time is wasted if we don't spend a bit of our day leaning into discomfort to help someone who lacks the wherewithal to help themselves. Brian understands this.  He understands that we can write and post and paste links and bemoan all of the ways that the world hemorrhages, and that to truly honor these souls in crisis, one has to help them.  


And I wish I was more like him. 

Sayonara Sylvia Plath - repost from February 11

Yesterday marked the day that Sylvia Plath died.  Of course she wrote The Bell Jar, which I read in eighth grade and loved.  She wrote "Daddy" and "Ariel" and "The Stones"; the latter is a beautiful poem that I could read again and again and again.  And she wrote "Lady Lazarus".  Mercy.  Edgar Allen Poe has nothing on this poem, which is as much about redemption as it is about the darker bits that further shatter Plath's edges -  "the autobiography of fever," she once described it. 

Nothing is more terrifying than listening to Plath read her own poem, which thanks to YouTube, you can do:

Sylvia Plath reads Lady Lazarus

The first time I encountered this piece, I thought of Lady Lazarus as a phoenix, a mental image I have been unable to shake in subsequent revisits.   Perhaps this is why I hear redemption on repeat, especially in the second half of the poem:

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap, 
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

This from someone who gently placed her head on a soft towel in a gas oven, and neatly died in her London flat.  
  

And yesterday, found dead in his home in London, the brilliant, volatile, and bewitching Alexander McQueen, whose designs included marvels such as this:

I've never closely followed the fashion world.  But Alexander McQueen lived on the margins of it, and kind of created his own world in the process, leaning into discomfort to challenge our notions of beauty and really, if you think about it, human nature. I value his ideas about creation and how we fit into it, especially as he explained it to the musician-artist-performer, Bjork:  

"I've done loads of collections based on man and machine and man and nature, but ultimately my work is always in some way directed by nature. It needs to connect with the earth. Things that are processed and reprocessed lose their substance.... I support what you're saying about this connection between man and nature, but it's like you're talking to a brick wall when it comes to the rest of the world. Everyone wants an easier life. I don't think nature fits into most people's concepts of an easier life."  

I love that McQueen is thinking about the locomotion of creating in terms not that far removed from Walter Benjamin's essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."  Anyone who has any interest in modernity and how it bisects with what it means to authentically create something should read this work, which embraces the fact that crises can and do occur when new forms of art are born. The "aura" of a work of art is compromised by our demands to have it, to own it, to claim it as our own. "I am your opus," challenged Plath. What a curse and a blessing. 

Benjamin's essay, certainly read widely in Plath's day (if not as often in our own) is part of the scaffolding for the dialogue that artists such as Plath and McQueen entered.  They did so with an uneasy volatility that is so wretchedly beautiful and ugly all at once.  In many ways, it puts an essential and declarative point on their pain.  You can hear it in Plath's voice, and you can read it in her lines.  You can follow McQueen's twitter and arrive at a silence as still and arresting as stones.  As Plath herself said, “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”

I think Plath would have appreciated McQueen's comments as much as she likely would have dug his butterfly head piece, a nest so strange and beautiful - a miracle, really. I also believe that sometimes there are those who walk on this earth to create and create until there is nothing left that they want - their theatrical comeback refuses to rise again.

In these voices, there is yet redemption.  An easier life, no.  But one worth interrogating these strange angels who trouble us as much as they inspire, yes.  

And lest we forget Descartes, who also died on February 11:  “I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.”

Amen to that.