simple wisdom

if i am not for myself, who is?
if i am for myself alone, what am i?
and if not now, when?


-------------
a quote from episode 13 of the tobolowsky files. it has been clinging to me since i heard it today. if i am not for myself...

a little piece

i see that i am a little piece of a big, big universe, and that makes it right. 


hushpuppy from beasts of the southern wild

part of the metamorphosis

one of my closest friends gave me these words today:


nat, you've returned to yourself. i hear it in your voice. you're there again.

and then i asked her how long it had been since me and i, this truest true part of me and the soft machine she animates, were last seen together in such harmony, and her reply was:

months. probably before europe.


and it's true, it has been months.

months.

but for the past three days, no matter how much or little sleep i have gotten, no matter what the pressures or stress of the day, i have woken up with a bit of sunshine pouring through me like a waterfall as i find each day charmed in its own way. and today, while out for two hours on a run along alki beach, i received more waves, more smiles and nods, more high fives {for the record, first high fives during a run ever} and thumbs up from strangers in those ten miles than i think i have ever received in over a year of running. it felt like i was in a mentos commercial or something. seriously. i was almost weirded out by it but my heart was too happy and full to do anything but radiate. except maybe in my mile-9-i-haven't-been-running-enough-lead-legs phase, but then that's when i looked up just in time to see the high five offerings coming my way. my heart was lifted again.

a few weeks ago a friend typed out these simple words to me on skype: are you happy? and in all that welled up in response to those three small words, i realized i have long felt alienated from the grounded sense of wellbeing i used to carry with me pretty much always, and even farther away from that extra bit of beauty and joy that goes along with happiness. but today, now, here, i would love to get that question again.

am i happy?

yes.

yes, i am.

what is it about the nature of happiness...that it came when i was least expecting it. maybe it's a mistake to expect happiness to be a product of the high moments of our lives, maybe it's more like movie music, invisible until a beautiful theme arises from nowhere and surrounds you unexpectedly. like love at first sight. maybe part of its charm is that it takes you by surprise. or maybe it's part of the metamorphosis. another clue that you're on the right path, even when that path is just a walk around the block on a lovely night.

episode 47 of the tobolowsky files.

sleepwalk with me

sleepwalk with me is mike birbiglia's new film. i saw it thanks to SIFF tonight {seattle international film festival} and i spent half the film cringing, half the film laughing, and half the film nearly in tears {yes, that's three halves, it was that good}. it hits a little too close to home on so many fronts: facing failure as an artist, what success looks like as an artist {and more importantly, how it's linked to speaking your own truth truth}, relationships, facing even more failure...i could go on.

but i think what is lingering longest about the film was how it didn't end all tidy and wrapped up in a bow but open, in transition, not fixed or perfect but simply on the right path or at least closer to it. and i am beginning to realize that is all we can really ask for.

i know this probably is a bit tangential, but it brings to mind a quote from the tobolowsky files {which i have been meaning to write about since they came on my radar last fall – it's a podcast by stephen tobolowsky filled with entertaining stories that are the vehicle for little gems of wisdom and prose like the one i'm about to give you}:

relationships are the battleground where we fight for what version of ourselves we become: honest or deceptive, independent or lazy. they reflect all of our potential and all of our weaknesses at the same time. like schroedinger's cat, our relationships are the rarefied super-position where we are all things at once. once you fall in love, you are in the box and your story begins. you never know how you'll react to fortune or jealousy or children. you never know until you open up the box. when you start a relationship, you always have ideas about how the other person will broaden your horizon and lift you up, but truthfully a relationship will always redefine itself around the level of its greatest weakness.

episode 48.

sleepwalk with me.
or just plain walk with me.

nomad nights 144 to 146

i am in a new place – in so many ways. 

tonight, physically, it's a new bed. i get to spend a few days in the apartment of one of my best friends while she's off wedding dress shopping in texas. i get to be in the wedding. a bridesmaid for the first time. i am beyond honored, beyond excited, beyond happy for the two of them and the fact that i got to witness their story unfold from day one. from the moment before zero when she didn't even know who he was nor who he would become. just a housemate with niiiiiiice arms arriving from michigan.

and i am grateful for a few nights in her bed. an empty apartment. space i can stretch out and be alone in with all this dearly bought free time. i want to attempt to put into words some of the flurry rushing through my head as i turn the page to the end of the chapter that was proof.

too much for tonight.

i'll leave you with a quote from a new addiction: the tobolowsky files. a podcast on life, love, and the entertainment industry as told by character actor stephen tobolowsky. more on him later, but this particular bit jumped out at me today in regards to my own story:


even though my life was speeding ahead of me, i had fallen back into the moment before zero once more. the moment that redefines everything you are and everything you do. i was at the beginning of a new act one. it took me 38 years to understand that in life you only tell the story, you don't write it.

episode 43.

~nomad nate, writing from eastlake neighborhood, seattle, washington.

never let me go

a movie hasn't broken my heart like this in a while. i still can't make sense of it all--or not in a way that doesn't simply contain spoilers. but it was flawless. nothing wasted. so many perfect moments. so deep and powerful and churning i never even spent a second being envious of the actors lucky enough to tell such an incredible, elegant and heartbreakingly beautiful story.

it makes me think of my friend and her time in india--how the caste system has relegated individuals to living in houses made of cardboard and tarps and no one is even asking whether or not it's humane. it makes me think of true love. missed connections. made connections. requiting the unrequited. it makes me long, which connects me to be-longing. it makes me think of art and how it's the evidence of a soul--my soul. it makes me ask if i am living my life enough. if i am grateful enough for how much freedom i've been given.

and it makes me want to go out, buy the dvd and watch it on repeat at least twice in a row.

and of all the myriad thoughts, emotions, responses, words i have rustling around in response, what i most want to give you i can't seem to find. it's a quiet long shot of the two main characters sitting together in silence on the bridge. they've just said to each other {roughly}:

we should go.

yes.

and then the camera slowly pulls away leaving you to watch them still sitting there not moving and not saying anything either.

the image was taken away and turned into the movie poster of the two running down said bridge which is completely contrary to what the movie is about and even the way their story is told. {bah! advertising decisions.}

anyway, i leave you with these two images {a much more appropriate movie poster is pictured above}: two movie stills that embody some of the spirit of the movie that lingers with me still. but you should go see it and discover it for yourself.

white

white: it's the color i'm breathing into these days. white running jacket that will keep people from running over me on my night runs. white curve hugging tank top i wear under flowing t-shirts, around the house on warmer days and to the occasional yoga class. white beaded calvin klein shirt that i almost didn't take off the rack because my dad told me as a kid it wasn't my color. and yet, i was surprised to note, now it is. with darkened hair and pale skin, the white brings out the creams i can't seem to remember are there. i only think of my skin as bad, despite the words i've been given. and despite the fact that the connection between white and my skin tones was a random meandering of my writing tonight, my friend lindsey jo was the first to expose me both to the glories of the color white as well as reflect back to me the quality of my skin. what's the connection here? maybe merely the circuitous ramblings of an overtired mind.

............................................................................

a few words on white from two books that haunt me:

markus zusak's the book thief {that is narrated by death}

first up is something white. of the blinding kind.

some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a color and all of that tired sort of nonsense. well, i'm here to tell you that it is. white is without question a color, and personally, i don't think you want to argue with me.

* * * A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT * * *
please, be calm, despite that previous threat.
i am all bluster--
i am not violent.
i am not malicious.
i am a result.

yes, it was white.

it felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. trees wore blankets of ice.

as you might expect, someone had died.

............................................................................

janet winterson's the stone gods:

there is a white that contains all the colours of the world but this white was its mockery. this was the white at the end of the world when nothing is left, not the past, not the present and, most fearful of all, not the future. there was no future in this bleached and boiled place. nothing, not wild, not strange, not tiny, not vile, no good thing, no bad, could begin life again here. the world was a white-out.

shasta & aslan

i was in the middle of rearranging the furniture to take in all the new finds of the day when, in the middle of sweeping, i was caught red-handed with a thought i knew i to be impossible to fulfill: the desire i find rustling around in me to understand someone else's story. almost immediately this passage was called to mind and since i have referenced it once before on this post, i thought i would put it here in full. for me and perhaps for you.

so here you are, my sweeping stopped mid-stroke to give you a portion of a horse and his boy by c.s. lewis:

and being very tired and having nothing inside him, he felt so sorry for himself that the tears rolled down his cheeks.

what put a stop to all this was a sudden fright. shasta discovered that someone or somebody was walking beside him. it was pitch dark and he could see nothing. and the Thing (or Person) was going so quietly that he could hardly hear any footfalls. what he could hear was breathing. his invisible companion seemed to breathe on a very large scale, and shasta got the impression that it was a very large creature. and he had come to notice this breathing so gradually that he had really no idea how long it had been there. it was a horrible shock.

it darted into his mind that he had heard long ago that there were giants in these northern countries. he bit his lip in terror. but now that he really had something to cry about, he stopped crying.

the Thing (unless it was a Person) went on beside him so very quietly that shasta began to hope he had only imagined it. but just as he was becoming quite sure of it, there suddenly came a deep, rich sigh out of the darkness beside him. that couldn't be imagination! anyway, he had felt the hot breath of that sigh on his chilly left hand.

if the horse had been any good--or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse--he would have risked everything on a break away and a wild gallop. but he knew he couldn't make that horse gallop. so he went on at a walking pace and the unseen companion walked and breathed beside him. at last he could bear it no longer.

"who are you?" he said, scarcely above a whisper.

"one who has waited long for you to speak," said the Thing. its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.

"are you a giant?" asked shasta.

"you might call me a giant," said the Large Voice. "but i am not like the creatures you call giants."

"i can't see you at all," said shasta, after staring very hard. then (for an even more terrible idea had come into his head) he said, almost in a scream, "you're not--not something dead, are you? oh please--please do go away. what harm have i ever done you? oh, i am the unluckiest person in the world."

once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face. "there," it said, "that is not the breath of a ghost. tell me your sorrows."

shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. and then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in tashbaan and about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. and he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded aravis. and also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.

"i do not call you unfortunate," said the Large Voice.

"don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?" said shasta.

"there was only one lion," said the Voice.

"what on earth do you mean? i've just told you there were at least two the first night, and--"

"there was only one: but he was swift of foot."

"how do you know?"

"i was the lion." and as shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. "i was the lion who forced you to join with aravis. i was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. i was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. i was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach king lune in time. and i was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."

"then it was you who wounded aravis?"

"it was i."

"but what for?"

"child," said the Voice, "i am telling you your story, not hers. i tell no-one any story but his own."

"who are you?" asked shasta.

"myself," said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again "myself," loud and clear and gay: and then the third time "myself," whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.

closure

i have a confession to make. one that many of the social networking generation is guilty of:

i, nathania tenwolde, confess that every couple of months, in a fit of restlessness or boredom, i'd google my ex.

and not just any ex, but the big ex, and really, the only one that matters in terms of ex-ness {all the rest of the ones worth mentioning i am proud to say are still great friends}. and even after a rather dull pull on the first, and second, and fifth googles or facebook searches, i still found myself prodding at the bruise, looking for something long after i have stopped looking for or even wanting anything from him.

and last night, somewhere around midnight, i finally found it. it wasn't the recently updated relationship status that confirmed what he told me a year ago, but rather the anniversary date of his relationship with his current girlfriend, which was something he never EVER could come clean on. because, you see, that anniversary date lands during the time we were still together. in fact, just a mere day or so after we ended our last clear and connected phone call with the standard, and at least on my part authentic, i love you's.

what's more, that was the weekend everything fell apart and he changed pretty much overnight {after not returning any emails or phone calls for a few days--later justified because he had been traveling}. and in the unnecessarily long and drawn out disintegration of the relationship, he did absolutely everything but admit to what had really happened. i even asked point blank: did you sleep with someone. to which he responded {after a one...two...beat pause}. "no." that was a long pause before you answered. {slight pause} "what do you mean?" i mean, if you asked ME if i had slept with someone, i wouldn't have to pause and think of the answer. i could just say, no.

a year later he still threw out some rigmarole about this reason and that reason that it didn't work out, but even then i saw how clearly they were sad little excuses that danced to a tired little tune trying to distract me from the real reason that was hulking silently in the corner. something i could always sense, but wasn't allowed to see.

but i closed that book long ago and walked on, in large part knowing i should be happy i didn't end up with him but haunted by my own inability to understand exactly what had gone so wrong. as much as i knew that no one makes such an abrupt shift without something changing, particularly if that something is in the shape of a female in the bed next to you and more effortlessly enjoyed than the one a hemisphere away, but i couldn't be sure i wasn't fabricating his guilt at my own need to make some sense out of it all.

so after a good night's rest i woke up today finally free of the burden i had carried for two and a half years. free of guilt for the ugly, drawn out nature of the break-up, free of the frustrations of not being able to trust my own instincts about what had happened, free of any remaining daydreams about ending up together. because while all he had to do was say i've met someone else {with maybe even an "i'm sorry for cheating on you" thrown in there for good measure}, i blamed myself for holding on too tightly, for trying too hard, for being too needy, etc {trust me the list goes on too far}...now i can finally give him back his fair share, both for the infidelity and for the lies afterward. and whatever you can say about attraction, you have a choice to move forward with it or a choice to be loyal, even if loyalty is extended merely to the point of ending things openly and honorably, neither of which was done here.*

shortly after finding out the one thing i've been looking for, i was able to cheerfully block him on facebook and be fine with never hearing his name again for the rest of my life.

free at last, free at last. god, almighty, i am free at last.

--------
an eloquent example of the situation as illustrated in the movie closer:

dan: i fell in love with her, alice.
alice: oh, as if you had no choice? there's a moment, there's always a moment, "i can do this, i can give into this, or i can resist it", and i don't know when your moment was, but i bet you there was one.

a few words

i just finished the unbearable lightness of being which left me feeling pretty hollow inside. so much static on the line between the characters without ever enough resolution. i read this right after reading his book ignorance so i think i was oversaturated with his particular style of dysfunctional relationships. i do love the ideas he explores about our associations with lightness and heaviness and how the latter seems a burden on one hand but can also become ballast against the terrifyingly empty existence of lightness.

i wish i'd marked out some of kundera's words of the above, but the only passage i marked from the rest was one that related to my own life as i turn more directly toward my own goals:

the goals we pursue are always veiled. a girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. the boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. the thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us. sabina was unaware of the goal that lay behind her longing...


and now i have turned next to one of my favorite authors, marilynne robinson, and i confidently say "favorite" after having only read one novel in full and 24 pages of the next. she makes the ephemeral peer out shyly but oh so elegantly from the page and i can never get enough of it. {you can read my posts about housekeeping here and here}

from gilead:

"what have i done? what does it mean?" that was a question that came to me often, not because i felt less than certain i had done something that did mean something, but because no matter how much i thought and read and prayed, i felt outside the mystery of it.

notes from the introduction

i'm done the introduction of the poetics of space and it's far denser than the first few pages of the book, thankfully.

as i gear up to research a grant to allow me to travel to {remember}, photograph {take} and write {create} in my hometown of bayou la batre, alabama, i am becoming clearer on my purpose in going down there through bachelard's words.

a few moments that stand out from the introduction:

not only our memories, but the things we have forgotten are "housed." our soul is an abode. and by remembering "houses" and "rooms," we learn to "abide" within ourselves...[the houses] are in us as much as we are in them.

on whatever theoretical horizon we examine it, the house image would appaer to have become the topography of our intimate being.

art, then, is an increase of life, a sort of competition of surprises that stimulates our consciousness and keeps it from becoming somnolent.


and that's what i have for now.

resonance and reverberation

i have started a bit of heavy reading. reading that requires my full attention and often a re-read of a paragraph here and there. the book is the poetics of space by gaston bachelard initially recommended to me in november 2008 by the most influential mentor of my academic career. it only took me nine months to go about finding it at one of my local bookstore haunts {purchased 8.05.09 - twice sold tales} and another five months to move it to the top of my towering pile of books to read. i probably would have procrastinated a little longer {another three to four months} but it's been staring me down these past few weeks after the pile took a topple and all my neglected intentions to improve my mind and understanding of poetic imagination sulked at me any time i passed.

the final push to pick up the book came from an entirely different direction. in the process of an exam i took this week {which is something i will go into more at a later time}, i took a personality test which was fairly unsurprising and accurate for the most part. there was one moment however, where the psychologist* defined me as someone who is less driven toward specific goals and more invested in the things along the way. i know i'm losing a little specificity here that she had when she initially said it, but the point is essentially the same and in fact, articulates a major point of dissatisfaction i have with my life:

i have big dreams. i have big ambitions. i have big goals. and underlying it all is a certainty about the kind of life i will live, the role that creativity will have, and the scope to which my work will reach. and for some reason, despite all of this reason-defying confidence that patiently rides out each storm of fears and hits to the self-confidence, i never seem to get anywhere. i don't actually go in the direction i have so clearly envisioned for myself.

and so, since thursday i have been asking myself again and again and again how exactly have i held myself up? i have prayed to the part of me that has seemed to dig it's heels into the ground and keep me static in this place of relative risk-free comfort. i have thanked it. i have forgiven it. i have loved it.

but now i am done and i find myself believing that this is the year. for what? i'm not so sure yet, but i am saturated in questions of how to move forward and how to remain authentic to the part of me that delights in finishing another knitting, sewing, painting, bookbinding, blogging, {insert any/all of the other creative interests i pursuit}, project without diluting my energy so much i don't move on the big things i want to do.

so, how do i start to make work that matters, not just fun hobby-ish sorts of projects here and there?

skip back to tonight and i'm exhausted from a non-stop day beginning at 9am and day number six of work. all i can think of is the desire to take time for myself and all i can come up with is a bath. so, i scooped up committed by elizabeth gilbert {of the eat pray love fame}, which is the more predictable comfort/bath read and then also grabbed the poetics of space on my way to my tropical smelling bubbles and hot water.

and i started slugging. and slugging and slugging. and immediately the critical voice that always seems to have a lot to say whenever i read anything academic suddenly perched on my shoulder to scoff at my efforts {aside: this voice was a major problem in the 2nd half of my college career. it was absolutely certain i was in over my head and couldn't come up with meaningful interpretations, ect}.

gradually meaning started to sink into my bath-addled, overworked and under-slept brain and things started to stand out with stunning clarity and my mind would sit up and take notice and sense would suddenly come easily from the convoluted and contorted sentence structure.

the moment i really took notice was when he defined the ideas of resonance and reverberation. resonance, particularly as a response to something expressive or beautiful, is a term very familiar to me. i even have a label in my blog for posts that particularly address moments when i am so moved i feel as though i'm a tuning fork freshly struck. it's a familiar and sought after experience of my life. it's a moment of living on the edge, but it's most always in appreciation of someone else's work. here, he describes the step after the resonance:

the resonances are dispersed on the different planes of our life in the world, while the repercussions invite us to give greater depth to our own existence. in the resonance we hear the poem, in the reverberations we speak it, it is our own. the reverberations bring about a change of being. it is as though the poet's being were our being...this is an impression all impassioned poetry-lovers know well: the poem possess us entirely.

yes, yes and yes. i am no stranger to this phenomena of becoming more alive through art. and while bachelard uses the word poem, of course any means of creativity can bear the poetic image. so what next? what does one do with this heightened sense of aliveness?

needless to say, the reverberation, in spite of its derivative name, has a simple phenomenological nature in the domain of poetic imagination. for it involves bringing about a veritable awakening of poetic creation, even in the soul of the reader, through the reverberations of a single poetic image. by its novelty, a poetic image sets in motion the entire linguistic mechanism. the poetic image places us at the origin of the speaking being.

through this reverberation, but going immediately beyond all psychology or psychoanalysis, we feel a poetic power rising naively within us. after the original reverberation, we are able to experience resonances, sentimental repercussion, reminders of our past. but the image has touched the depths before it stirs the surface...it takes root in us. it has been given us by another, but we begin to have the impression that we could have created it, that we should have created it. it becomes a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what it expresses; in other words, it is at once a becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being. here expression creates being.

for the past decade or so i have been infatuated with the process of resonance without being able to necessarily articulate the reality of reverberating. by articulating the process in which i take in all that inspires me from sorbet colored sunsets to the symphony to thom yorke, and then, the crucial bit of transformation, i now feel as though i know where to direction my energy: the reverberation portion of this transformative process.

i'm still a little hazy on the questions that i want to ask myself beyond: what do i do with it beyond collecting these experiences of resonance/reverberation like baubles on a charm bracelet? how do i in turn, create work that will turn around and inspire me and others? how do i make art that is lasting, and not necessarily for a wider audience, but for me? not just something to pass off as yet another hand-made gift {not that i think they lack value, just not a value i want to build my life's work around}.

so, that's all my deep thoughts for tonight.



*no, nothing to be worried about here, folks, i promise. :)

sharing a wall with the sky

my time here with the studio and the golden dome is coming to a close. after much heartache, two halves of a sleeping pill and a little black cloud that followed me around for exactly five days {a la eeyore}, we've put the security deposit down on the new place. my space has not so gently assured me it's time to move on, upgrade, and widen my field of view and so for the first time in days my spirit is resting quietly finally knowing we get the keys on the other side of this holiday weekend.

not so coincidentally my life is picking up in several areas at once and i feel myself going through a transition pretty well summed up in the metaphor of transitioning from the studio to the one bedroom. externally i'm leaving my little private haven of a studio with its peaceful view of an ivy colored brick wall and the many shades of blue washing across my lovely church dome. the new space is a floor higher, twice as big with extra closets to organize and share and the view across the six windows moves from a little peek of mount rainier to the south and then a sweeping view of the city, sound and olympic mountains. internally, i feel like i'm leaving an intense time of self-examination and personal growth. the distance i have covered hashing myself out in the meisner course is equivalent to lightyears of travel in the personal development dimension of the universe and it's time for me to open. open. open.

i've been very slowly moving my way through the book the soul's code by james hillman. as this is a psychology book, it's a little on the dense side, so i find a lot of benefit in simmering over the things i've read for a few days. the current quote rattling around in my brain is:

restless inquiry is not the only kind of knowing, self-examination not the only kind of awareness. appreciation of an image, your life story as studded with images since early childhood, and a deepening into them slows the restlessness of inquiry, laying to rest the fever and the fret of finding out.

i'm still putting together what this means for me in the coming months of living at the granada four blocks away, but i want to call foward a time of rest, a time of admiring the view and a time of seeing the bigger images of my life and letting them stand out in their beauty. i've been working so hard to get to the results of my art that i've missed out on the joy and life i take in making art. one step at a time, nathania. and breathe.

so, here's to our new place, where the sky and mountains will press up against our windows and our bodies will lean back in return.

......................................................

i only have the image from the new place
that was posted earlier this week.
while i wait for more, i thought i would honor the dome
and all it's glory before we part ways.
i do still have a project in mind involving the dome
i want to photograph it once or twice an hour throughout one day.
but the days left are numbered. i need to hop to it.

housekeeping as a tall girl

i wanted to give this tiny part of housekeeping its own space
to acknowledge the surprise and recognition that coursed through me when i first read, and then promptly underlined, these two lines around one theme.

i have yet to find anyone who could articulate so precisely what i have felt growing up as a tall girl. robinson's understanding of the tall girl predicament was packaged up in just two little sentences almost hidden amongst the sweeping imagery that made up her story.

my posture was intended not so much to conceal as to acknowledge and apologize for my increasingly excessive height.

even though most, though not all of my tall girl slouch has straightened itself out, i still have enough conveniently bad posture to reduce my height, looks, and grace by about two notches. and even as i become mindful of my posture and try to stand tall {as so many lovely people in my life encourage me to do}, i constantly get in the way of myself and quickly reduce it down again.

'my, you both look nice!' sylvie said as we passed, but, as i always did when attention was drawn to my appearance, i felt very tall.

yes, the pity compliment, i tell myself, because how could my life's equivalent to this compliment be true in the face of my height and breadth? because, insult to injury: not only am i six foot, but i am not the slim-boned six foot that would be at home on a runway, or described as willowy. my medium-boned structure gives me some optimism {as i could be the dreaded 'big boned'}, but only on good days.

and the final crux, that has been nagging at me for the past six and a half months is:

i really notice {and worse: judge} my height around my lover. i feel the distance my eyes and shoulders stand above his as feet, even though they are {only!} inches. and while comparative sizes are easier to ignore lying down, the noise my mind makes when we're standing next to each other, or my thigh runs parallel to his is starting to quiet down, but only because i'm getting used to the shock of her words and not because she's run out of mean things to say.

in turn, i have found i hate the hate i have for my height and move towards self-reconciliation at what too often feels like a glacial pace.

housekeeping

i recently finished the book housekeeping by marilynne robinson, and wanted to make a little space here to display some of the passages that made me melt into raptures only finely wrought prose can generate.

a few notes on people and setting to put the below in context (no spoilers, really, so read away with no fear). the book is narrated by ruth, who's mother dies early in the book so she and her sister are raised in their grandmother's house by their aunt, sylvie. the story takes place in the town of fingerbone, idaho, and in this first passage the town has been flooded.

.............................

every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy. so shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves, and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on. so, fingerbone, or such relics of it as showed above the mirroring waters, seemed fragments of the quotidian held up to our wondering attention, offered somehow as proof of their own significance. but then suddenly the lake and the river broke open and the water slid away from the land, and fingerbone was left stripped and blackened and warped and awash in mud.

.............................

for need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. to crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. for when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? and here again is a foreshadowing--the world will be made whole. for to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. so whatever we may lose, every craving gives it back to us again. though we may dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.

.............................

i knew why sylie felt there were children in the woods. i felt so, too, though i did not think so. i sat on the log pelting my shoe, because i knew that if i turned however quickly to look behind me the consciousness behind me would not still be there, and would only come closer when i turned away again. even if it spoke just at my ear, as it seemed often at the point of doing, when i turned there would be nothing there. in that way it was persistent and teasing and ungentle, the way half-wild, lonely children are. this was something lucille and i together would ignore, and i had been avoiding the shore all that fall, because when i was by myself and obviously lonely, too, the teasing would be much more difficult to disregard. having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. you simply say, "here are the perimeters of our attention. if you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. if you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it." anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire. i had been, so to speak, turned out of house now long enough to have observed this in myself. now there was neither threshold nor sill between me and these cold, solitary children who almost breathed against my cheek and almost touched my hair.

.............................

if i could see my mother, it would not have to be her eyes, her hair. i would not need to touch her sleeve. there was no more the stoop of her high shoulders. the lake had taken that, i knew. it was so very long since the dark had swum her hair, and there was nothing more to dream of, but often she almost slipped through any door i saw from the side of my eye, and it was she, and not changed, and not perished. she was a music i no longer heard, that rang in my mind, itself and nothing else, lost to all sense, but not perished, not perished.

.............................

my own tabby aslan

i always know i am my most wound up about life when i am awake between the hours of 3am and 6am for any prolong period of time. right now it's half past 5 and i've been up for the last hour at least, watching the room slide from one shade of grey to another, getting lighter in slow increments.

and wiley has turned into a far better bed partner than i possibly could have imagined at 1am.

the nocturnal roof residents of this house have been skittering loudly in front of my windows all morning {the ostensible reason for being awake}. they have been so noisome, in fact, that i have even sat up several times to make sure they haven't pushed open the unlatched window in the process of making some daring, nihm-like burglary for a power-cord, the flesh on my slightly exposed toes or perhaps my newly dyed hair. but every time i became certain the noises were actually in the room, as opposed to safely above or outside it, wiley has loyally started purring away, reminding me i'm not alone and even giving the impression she'd defend the sanctity of my bed {and dangerously exposed scalp and toes} with a well timed hiss or two if we were indeed invaded.

and as 15 minutes of early morning wakefulness have become 45, and 45 in turn deferred to 90, my mind has wandered back several times to a conversation i had with my dearling friend, sheree, a few weekends ago. we were taking an urban hike from my house to the lake {and, no, hike is not casually used here--do you know how many hills are between my place and lake washington?}. along the vein of live and let live that was the theme of that part of our day's conversation, she recalled a section from c.s. lewis's the horse and his boy. she only needed to say a word or two, not even a complete sentence, before i knew exactly what portion she was referring to in this novel i haven't read in probably 15 years.

it was the part of the story where the boy, shasta, meets up with aslan at last. they are walking down a long road shasta had to travel alone and {i think} at a crucial part of the book's events. the image i have maintained is that it was so dark that shasta could barely make out the form of the lion walking along beside him, or perhaps it was so dark he couldn't actually see aslan, but only sensed and intuited that it was him. sheree particularly pointed out the moment where shasta asked a question about his friend, aravis, and aslan gently told him that wasn't part of his story so he needn't be concerned. live and let live.

but the other part we also spoke of that is significant to my own story this night was when shasta asked why aslan hadn't come to him before. aslan gently corrected shasta and said he had traveled with the boy many times in different forms. he was present somehow in guiding shasta to his terrible foster parents, and again while shasta was purchased from them to be a slave for the cruel person who was in the end responsible for jump starting the boy's fate. and finally, aslan was the small cat who spent one long, dark night with shasta out in the dessert when the boy felt the most lonely. my memory also delivers up the image of a lion's roar in the distance that shasta had been afraid of at the time not knowing it was alsan or his gracious minions fending off the desert predators while the aslan-cat also stayed near the boy providing comfort and companionship.

so i've had my own aslan this night in the form of one-eyed wiley watching out for me while asleep, reminding me i'm not alone when i'm awake, and now keeping vigil with me perched precariously on my left shoulder as i write and witness the greys of my room disappear into reds, creams, tabby stripes and blues.

today is going to be pretty rough on three and a half hours of sleep. but it's here and fresh and i really can't argue with it's clear-skied beauty.

the elegance of the hedgehog

before this book gets too far away from me {i finished it around 1:30am saturday morning}, i wanted to pass on a few of my favorite quotes written from the point of view of two different characters.

the twelve year old, paloma:

then when the new zealand players began their haka, i got it. in their midst was this very tall maori player, really young. i'd had my eye on him right from the start, probably because of his height to begin with but the because of the way he was moving. a really odd sort of movement, very fluid but above all very focused, i mean very focused within himself. most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever's around them. at this very moment, as i am writing, constitution the car is going by her tummy dragging close to the floor. this cat has absolutely nothing constructive to do in life and still she is heading toward something, probably an armchair. and you can tell from the way she's moving: she is headed toward. maman just went by in the direction of the front door, she's going out shopping and in fact she already is out, her movement anticipating itself. i don't really know how to explain it, but when we move, we are in a way de-structured by our movement toward something: we are both here and at the same time not here because we're already in the process of going elsewhere, if you see what i mean. to stop de-structuring yourself, you have to stop moving altogether. either you move and you're no longer whole, or you're whole and you can't move. but that player, when i saw him go out onto the field, i coudl tell there was something different about him. i got the impressing he was moving, yes, but by staying in one place...everyone was enthralled by him but no one seemed to know why. yet it became obvious in the haka: he was moving and making the same gestures as the other players...but while the others' gestures went toward their adversaries and the entire stadium who were watching, this player's gestures stayed inside him, stayed focused upon him, and that gave him an unbelievable presence and intensity.

anna karenina being reneé, the other main character's, favorite novel, she referenced a passage about levin out working with his peasants. she described levin's process about learning to wield a scythe to the point of almost detached effortlessness and then wrote the below:

freed from the demands of decision and intention, adrift on some inner sea, we observe our various movements as if they belong to someone else, and yet we admire their involuntary excellence. what other reason might i have for writing this--ridiculous journal of an aging concierge--if the writing did not have something of the art of scything about it? the lines gradually become their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, i witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that i neither knew nor thought i might want to know. this painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certainty but the joy of frank astonishment i follow the pen that is guiding and supporting me. in this way, in full proof and texture of my self, i accede to a self-forgetfulness that borders on ecstasy, to savor the blissful calm of my watching consciousness.

and later:

art is life, playing to other rhythms.

and:

those who feel inspired as i do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them to the very heart of the inessential where, cloaked in everyday attire, this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way.

and finally, one more profound thought from the twelve-year-old:

so here is my profound thought for the day: this is the first time i have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond. that may seem trivial but i think it is profound all the same. we never look beyond our assumptions and, what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. we don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. if we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves, we would go crazy. when my mother offers macaroons from chez ladureé to madame de broglie, she is telling herself her own life story and just nibbling at her own flavor; when papa drinks his coffee and reads his paper, he is contemplating his own reflection in the mirror, as if practicing the coué method or something; when colombe talks about marian's lectures, she is ranting about her own reflection; and when people walk by the concierge, all they see is a void, because she is not of their world.

and not to misrepresent, there are also lots of humorous episodes, my favorite including a scene about a slightly misplaced comma, another involving two dogs who almost start humping in the hallway, much to the dismay of their wealthy owners, and several others which i won't spoil. so go buy the book. muriel barbery wrote it and she's a gem.

franny & zooey

i have an odd relationship to this book. a push/pull between feeling ambivalent toward the characters and the style of the narrative while simultaneously being drawn through the story by some intangible force.

my investment in a book's characters is usually the primary force that propels me through a piece and its style of prose, the secondary consideration, but this work had neither really. i mean, j.d. salinger certainly has a singular style, and a prolix vocabulary not to mention a list of literary and religious allusions he refers to left and right.

the description given by the narrator of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom where a substantial portion of the book takes place:

she went over to the medicine cabinet. it was stationed above the washbowl, against the wall. she opened its mirror-faced door and surveyed the congested shelves with the eye--or, rather, the masterly squint--of a dedicated medicine-cabinet gardener. before her in overly luxuriant rows, was a host, so to speak, of golden pharmaceuticals, plus a few technically less indigenous whatnots.

okay so far, right?

but then he continues on to list 42+ items actually inside the medicine cabinet:

the shelves bore iodine, mercurochrome, vitamin capsules, dental floss, aspirin, anacin, bufferin, argyrol, musterole, ex-lax, milk of magnesia, sal hepatica, aspergum, two gillette raors, on schick injecctor razor, two tubes of shaving cream, a bent and somewhat torn snapshot of a fat black-and-white cat asleep on a porch railing, three combs, two hair brushes, a bottle of wildroot hair ointment, a bottle of fitch dandruff remover...

you get the point.

but it's not that i find this completely off-putting or i find salinger a bad writer, it's just that it is not emotionally compelling and never at any point did i feel myself truly connected or even empathetic towards the characters. i wouldn't recognize them on the street if i passed them. i wouldn't call them friends. i wouldn't presume to know what's going on in their heads.

but.

despite this lack {and i say lack here only because this is often the source of the most enjoyment} i found myself unable to put the book down. even at eyelid-drooping 1am after a long day i would tell myself just finish the page and then suddenly catch myself halfway through the next. and the next and then the next. and this didn't just happen once, but repeatedly.

and there were some gems like the passage i wrote about a few weeks {?} ago and:

i'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

and finally the last three pages which i won't quote here and spoil for everyone. but they suddenly gave value to all i had just slugged my way through and drew me in enough to make me want to go back and read it all again. in a new light. with the gentleness i find myself infused with. and finally i really cared about the characters too.

so, after all that, well done j.d.

carnival

lane himself lit a cigarette as the train pulled in. then, like so
many people, who, perhaps, ought to be issued only a very
probational pass to meet trains, he tried to empty his face of all
expression that might quite simply, perhaps even beautifully,
reveal how he felt about the arriving person.
.

...................................

franny & zooey

~j.d. salinger

...................................

.

i was on the bus riding home today and experienced a visceral moment of recall while reading the above passage:

.

alabama.
bayou la batre.
late afternoon waning on towards evening.
the field behind st. margaret's school.
carnival rides suggesting that perhaps it is the yearly blessing of the fleet.
and i am on a ride that circles round
passing a parent rhythmically.
and each time as i come back toward them,
i steel my face so that none of my giddy pleasure is visible.

while i remember distinctly the jittery life of my simple joy
shut away but still vibrating inside my ribcage,
the figure itself switches fluidly between my father and mother
and the ride blurs between a kiddie ride where i am alone
and a ferris wheel crammed with siblings.

at first i found it mildly bothersome
that i couldn't conjure the exact details.
i worried that my mind is confused perhaps,
or uncertain.
{yes, even my stunning memory flails at times,
joining disparate fragments haphazardly
like a four year old's first collage.}

but i've settled that, truer yet, this moment took place more than once.
it evolved from the shyness/shame of riding {and yet still enjoying} the kiddie rides alone
while my siblings are off on the bigger kid rides
to being unable to show any enjoyment whether not i was by myself.
and now i have merely reconstructed/discovered

a centerpiece for this experience--
this need to hide how much fun i was having
because it would make me too vulnerable
even for a parent to see.

i recall considering the fact that they would enjoy my enjoyment
and that i could/should leak a smile or two for their sake,
but if i conceeded, i made sure they saw it was forced.
a lie on top of a lie.
somehow even the possibility of disappointing them
was not enough inducement to risk them seeing a real smile.

the feeling of aloneness in joy
as well as the feeling of holding in joy
i still remember very well:
the unbearable pressure of hiding an explosion inside my chest
while nonchalantly pretending that everything is no big deal.

and now i wonder:
when did i learn how to do this?
and why?

and now i understand:
the simple and transcendent pleasure i will never take for granted of a laugh that is so overpowering it escapes my body and sings loud and clear from my throat.

it amazes me every time.

a mantra

each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious,

one should preserve it.

~anais nin