SUBURBAN SPIRITUALITY: THINK INSIDE THE BOX

Trivial Pursuit was my specialty. Even if I didn't have a clue, I could sway my team with such confidence we'd use my answer.  (sound like the makings of a lawyer? recipe for a lawyer: take 27 parts b.s., add 42 million parts confidence, plus 2 parts intellect.)

My favorite answer lately, to any question, on any topic, to any audience "I DON'T KNOW."

A rainbow spread across the suburban rooftops just before 8 p.m. last night. We could see the two ends, brightly glowing. Resplendent. Ava dropped from the tree she'd been shaking, dangling, clinging, climbing, hugging, leaves rustling at her quick departure. The boys turned from their moving bundle scuffle of kicking, punching, grabbing, squeezing, cheeks flushed, eyeballs sideways, teeth snaggled. 

We stared. Awed by the glowing splendor.  (Incidentally, I now associate rainbows with chick-fil-a as a sort of entry in my mental thesauras, under antonyms.)

Leif gave god a ride on his bicycle, through suburbia, around 8 p.m. two nights before.  "Mom! MOM! MOOOOMMMMMM!!!! Come look a praying mantis on my bike!" My reluctance overcome by his urgence, I followed his excited voice to the backyard. There, on the handlebars, a green mantis, stared at us, still as silence. (Once, Leif told me "Mom, it's impossible to do nothing."... As he stood perfectly still, not breathing, not blinking, not speaking...heavy outbreath..."See! Did you see that? Even just now I was doing something, standing. see? it's impossible to do nothing.")

We gazed at its compelling serenity.

The African Bushman say the mantis is god incarnate, a divine messenger. "the voice of the infinite in the small." When it appears, it will "show one the way."  (Once, on a tick infested, mosquito buzzing, wild, hardly tamed, acre of yard in the arkansas country side, my friend and I trapped by the pitch black of night at the other end of the property from the house, wondered how to hoof it home. Grabbing my hand, she exclaimed in her unworried home turf confidence "Follow me I know the way!"...we sprang forward, high stepping, gingerly...squealing...immediately crashing into a large brush pile and falling flat on our faces. )

A lady bug landed on my hand, on my suburban stoop, crawled busily across the ridges of my fingerprints, up my arm, doubling back down, to the tip of my pinky and flew away with her crunchy delicate wings.  They say the ladybug will whisper your name in your true love's ear...(note: do not be the aphid. ladybugs devour pesky little aphids to infinite nothingness with quick overwhelming force. sweet little ladies.)

"What will you do next?"...pause, trying to develop a suitable answer..." hmmmm...(this keeps the listener in suspense, waiting for the revelation)...head slightly cocked to the right...I dunno.. (the answer feels new everytime).

REGULAR DOCKET

Courtrooms are for stone face stares. short sentences. legal precedent.objectivity equitable maxims. counsel approaches the bench (the term used for where the judge sits) "your honor before i withdraw from this case i'd like to apologize for the defendant's girlfriend who said some very awful things about you in the hallway just before we came inside. I just wanted to let you know out of respect for our longstanding and meaningful friendship."  

Courtrooms are for donkey heads, rabbit grins, rooster cock walks, circus music, monkey back scratchin'.  coughing. lying. riding an acid trip. not for actually beating your significant other, but for building the tension that will undoubtedly result in a beating, "she earned it." 

Me in the Courtroom

Once an old crumudgeon male attorney interrupted an old female attorney ( whose monologues left listeners swimming the backstroke slowly down a meandering stream, just waiting waiting, swimming, coughing, yawning, scratching, swimming, swimming, til the point, if any ever was made), "shutup" he'd say. repeatedly. every time she began to speak. the hearing unfolded. [ find "objection" insert "shutup". 17 replacements made.]   

Judge, "I know there's some law on that point somewhere. I just don't know what it is."

Curvy stretches of smooth road, on the hillside, from the courthouse to the home, are for driving a bugatti. "Mom, noone in Arkansas has a bugatti. and noone ever will." 

Kitchens floors are for dancing. Dancing is for pulling out every move that you ever learned in any sport you ever tried. Tae kwon do. Boxing-"geez. mom. you look like you're ready to spar someone." Cheerleading tryouts for the team you never made, confirmed by your teensy daughter's observation "mom. you could never be a cheerleader."  rock climbing, add a little jump rope, the robot, salsa lessons, swing dancing. Move every muscle in your body. Channel the spirit of a house cat, leap and land. If your neck isnt sore later, did you miss the 90's?  You have hit peak performance when the once staring in disbelief children, blinking. watching. blinking. have found other more normal activities. 

You have cleared the room-success!  

"to the windows, to the wall, the sweat goes down my balls..."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcxLPkUS8_4

OH BACH, DEBUSSY IS CHANGING ME

Key facts change the story. 

I've taken issue with Debussy, his meandering ways of composing. How anti intellectual of me.  But Bach has been my rock and roll session, inspiring my attitude, style, and language.  It's predictable, yes, but not quite classical-lite Mozart.  Layered and layered with sound and rhythms, countermelodies. Upswings so high I can touch god's fingertips. And it is finished when it ends.  The lingering feelings-satisfaction.  

bach in outerspace

Skyping with my dad today: "I played Bach for you on my recorder (I was taking a college music class) before you were born. I knew only one song. I played it over and over and over and over..."  Dad on a recorder. ha! Same dad who talks of lungs collapsing at a certain altitude. Shit, Mary, i won't die in a nursing home. Find me instead an old man, passed out in the  mountains from climbing too high.

Aha! The meaning of life, with a passing comment suddenly made clear. Had he played  Debussy and maybe different songs every day, I might be an artist, who could float into the clouds without needing a conclusion. I could have run long distances slowly with no need for a pace, a finish line, a prize at the end. I could have enjoyed a relationship effortlessly, let it unfold for its own sake, not needing definition.

"I am a lawyer, it's my rebellion to my artist family," my tag line before this summer, was started by forces outside of me. Rock and roll defined an age group. Gave kids a sense of belonging, even when feeling alone. Bach, you've made me lonely.  Debussy come rescue me.

Give me order. Give me intellectual depth. Give me artistic beauty. I'll get to them in life in that order, unclip the cams, strap em to my belt. Amass, don't abandon. Unless it's wasting too much time. Then, leave the stuck ones behind. 

Climb on. 

FAIL

Failure is best discussed in retrospect. Some great life lesson learned. Some new direction revealed after falling, falling, falling, groundless to the rock solid bottom.  Take J.K Rowling: 

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."  – J. K. Rowling, Harvard commencement address, 2008

Who wants to say, while it's happening: my legs hurt, like hell, because for years I've been coddled (hardly, but kind of when contrasted to physical labor) in the courtroom, and now I'm assisting a caterer.

Smiling while sucking at waiting tables was my specialty. That was me at 19. Made great tips, though. Forgot every order as soon as I turned away from the table toward the kitchen, to self: was it NO mustard? Or NO mayonnaise? hmmmm. Guess I'll leave off both and add stoby's sauce (a kind of mixture of the two)" 

Smiling, smiling a lot, I presented random compilations remotely resembling what had actually been requested.  Working breakfast, I'd show up before 7, having only a few hours of sleep. At 17, 18, 19, Friday nights are NOT for sleeping. My legs, at the knees, ached by shift's end.

A degree and a child later, I stood all day as a teacher. Spanish teacher in a private school in Houston, TX. Legs ached hard by day's end. (So did my soul, and my bored mind.)

Yesterday, 2 degrees later, 3 children later, a law license later, many years later, many things later (Just later. way LATER)I stood not even all day grating cheese, dicing tomatos, mincing jalapenos, mixing, stirring, tossing...melted a block of butter. grated a block of cheese.  My friend, a budding entrepeneur caterer, prepared for a party. I was her assistant. 

The yin and yang. For years, I've been sitting at a desk,  hunkered back, eyes glazing from computer glow, brain aching from reading, reconstructing, critically analyzing, creating, editing...words and words and words...for years now. Years. Mind achy by day's, week's end. Emotional energy spent.

Once, I saw an educational show that described in great detail, with charts, and graphs, formulas and british accents, how the world would "end" when some stellar body type thing would collide with the earth. There would be no end, really, just a change in shape. The shape of things would change--the oxygen level, the light of the sun, the tilt of the axis, the depth of water. The energy would still exist. I took great comfort in this.

milky way
The Church, Under the Milky Way Tonight  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6nKP10j4s

Chopin's The Awakening helps, describes so well the act of changing course:  

"To succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul...Courageous, ma foi! The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies." 

"Be careful; the stairs and the landings are dark; don't stumble." 

"She stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her. How strange it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how delicious! She felt like a newborn creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known...

she swims out to sea 

"Her arms and legs were growing tired...exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her....the shore was far behind her and her strength was gone." 

Feeling ridiculous, a bit of physical labor for one day, at age 33, kicked my sorry ass. It is good to gain respect for the bulk of my fellow mankind.  Reminded me of a precious children's story, A Chair For My Mother. A grandmother, a mother, and a daughter are saving up to buy a chair to rest in. They are in a new home. All their belongings had burned in a fire. "My mother works as a waitress in the Blue Tile Diner...Sometimes she's so tired she falls asleep while I count the money into piles..."  

Dreamed last night, I did a round off and flip so high it took me seconds to drop. Nailed the landing.



Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Langston Hughes

SAY YES!

"Marry me?".....No!

"Marry me?"....No!

"Marry me?".....No!

I've said no to bad ideas.

Last night the kids asked with bright eyes, eyebrows up, voices slightly raised to that pitch of excitement just short of shouting, "mom can we ride to the grocery in the morning to get donuts?" 

...pause...thinking: get up 30 minutes early, drag the bikes out, carry the bag, spend the money, fuel the sugar rush, another set of dirty laundry, bike wrecks, knee scrapes, hassle, hassle, hassle...."YES! great idea!" 

Sometimes, often maybe, it's good to say YES! especially to good ideas. (Yes, you can dig for worms. Yes, we can make glitter everything. Yes, you can look for spiderman costumes online. Yes, you can climb the tree. Yes, you can take our only loaf of bread to feed the fish in the pond---the fish do in fact eat bread in the pond.  Yes, you can hold the cat. Yes, you can get your feet wet in the fake waterfall.) 

Alarm at 545 (good god what was i thinking?) roll out of bed. "wake up kiddos. time to get donuts."  like kittens unfolding, they stretch, yawn, throw on sweatshirts, tennis shoes, and fall in line sleepy eyed. 

it is still dark outside. "twas the lark and not the nightingale" serenading us through the iron gate from the yard to the sidewalk.

Checking out, Leif to cashier "we rode our bikes here!" Cashier clearly hasn't read any zen books, or had coffee, or enjoyed life in years, poor dear. (also, slightly annoying dear, killjoy...)---"you rode in the dark? that's dangerous. why would you ride bikes in the dark?"  Me, sort of smiling (still hadn't had my morning coffee or read any zen books either), hoping to eradicate the nonsense from my children's ears "there is noone out yet. noone. and by the time we step outside, rosy fingered dawn will greet us."  (p.s. rosy fingered dawn will greet us is a phrase better written than spoken if one is hoping to actually engage in a conversation)

Riding home, Ava exclaims "the sky! mom, look at the pink strips so bright in the sky!" pointing to the east. "the sunset is so pretty" "isn't the sunrise pretty, doll."  

YES! it was good to say YES today. 

Another question from another source that required an answer "Will you at least try?"  Good idea. Yes, I will try.  And maybe I'll be awake when dawn unfolds all its layers of magical sensory charms.

try it

HOME: GETTING OUT

Getting Out by Peter Goff

I know my brother's work when I see it. Even if I don't know which piece is his beforehand. It has his mark all over it. Simple, three dimensional, usually a pointy piece somewhere, airy. Detailed, but so much room for the imagination. Whimsical.  To see his art is to feel my soul leap. He, through his creations, reminds me of childhood.  And childhood was good. Great, even.

chew-drive-comb (Peter Goff 2008)

The man is ingenious. Was so as a child, too. He made a go-cart (that rolled stinkin' fast) out of found materials--wood pieces, ball bearing wheels, string steering device. Flash forward 17 or so years, to his art studio, during his MFA work. Meticulously deconstructed found garbage, perfectly ordered and organized in bins (almost engineer and scientific), waiting to be twisted, tweaked, tuned, poked, and pinned to blank canvas, the white wall, to be recreated into colorful objects, and adored, even the shadows playful and delightful. 

chew-drive-comb detail

Tonight's show: "Home, a group exhibition consisting of nine artists, all whom have Arkansas roots.  The artists were given one month and asked to make art in their chosen medium based on the word "home." Arkansas Newswire.

the ladder so long

And, see, Pete reminds me of the best of home...I stare at his monochromatic textured pointy roofed house. I am 33 now. 1000 miles away from Pete. He has a family now. Me too. The title so telling. The ladder so long. The home so mobile. 

a gift to me from Pete

* Peter Goff's website: http://www.petergoff.com/isthmus%20H.html 

IMPERMANENCE

The conversation around the household buzzes with anticipation or dread, depending on the hour, of the new school year. School starts Monday.  The weather, by some unexpected mercy of fate, cooperates with the theme of a new year, and is cooler at night, crisper at dawn, and gentler in the afternoons. While we sleep (sometimes. hopefully. on good nights, anyway.) the stars twinkle, fixed.  We rotate imperceptibly, as they move in and out of view.  Summer ends. 

"Impermanence is meeting and parting," I read in a book.  (Impermanence is also hard to spell.) "People have no respect for impermanence."  (ah, yes, the title reveals many things. a rather difficult book to not throw across the room enraged from time to time, with all its zen calmness. your life sucks? stare at the pain of your life and breathe in and out, calmly. and then go watch batman, shove cake into your mouth quickly, repeatedly, drown your sorrows in blue moon, REPEAT, run til you're sweating profusely....NOTE: that part, the part starting with "watch batman" is my addition, and is not found anywhere in the book...then read another chapter...repeat..etc. etc. etc. throw in a mantra to live by...like, for example, "one can be lonely and not be tossed away by it"--Roshi...then quickly toss it away...find it again later in the day, etc. repeat. repeat.)

Sometimes in those hours before sleep gently takes me away from a hell of a day, questions linger heavy in the quiet under the stars: How could I have loved him so much? No, really, how can something so donkey beaten dead now, have been so alive? Have seemed inspired by the stars themselves?

Pablo Neruda:Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: “La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.”

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche esta estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque este sea el ultimo dolor que ella me causa,
y estos sean los ultimos versos que yo le escribo.

~|~

Tonight I can write the saddest lines,

can write, for example: “The night is starry
and the stars in the distance are shivering and blue.”

The night wind wheels in the sky, singing.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this one I held her in my arms,
kissing her over and over beneath the endless sky.

She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think I do not have her, to feel that I have lost her,

to hear the immense night immenser still without her.
The verse falls to the soul like dew to the grass.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her?
The night is starry and she is not with me.

That’s all. In the distance someone is singing, in the distance.
My soul is not at peace, having lost her.

My eyes search for her, as if to bring her closer.
My heart seeks her out, but she is not with me.

The same night is whitening the same trees,
but we are no longer the same people we were.

I no longer love her, true, but how I loved her!
My voice searched the wind that it might touch her ear.

Someone else’s, she’ll be someone else’s, as she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body, and her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true. Then again maybe I do.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this one I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace, having lost her,

even though this will be the last pain she gives me,
and these the last verses that I will write for her.

But, then, I think about a well prepared meal. The preparation, starting with a recipe, then assembling ingredients (hopefully some picked from your backyard, even if just basil. Is bermuda grass edible?)  All the chopping, twisting, spicing, rubbing, boiling, steaming, basting, stirring, heating, cooling, tossing...all ending in a dish, in front of me, you, us, to be greeted. hello delicious. tasted. heeeeelllooooooo deeeeeliciouuuuuuusssss. and devoured greedily to the very last bite.  Impermanence.  All the more reason to savour, cherish, relish the experience.

"When you fall in love, recognize it as impermanence, and let that intensify the preciousness." Hmmmm. Working on it. 

Starting the school year is precious.  Fall is precious. (Mascarpone is precious, with ginger snaps, sliced peaches, cinnamon, drizzled in honey.) Impermanence is precious?