Like my favorite author, Anthony Bourdain, has said - "Maybe that's enlightenment enough, to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity, perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am and unwise and how far I have yet to go." So, here I am. Going. I say things with less certainty than I did when I was younger. I actually just say less (on this blog). This space has morphed into more of my own collection of other people's words. I think that's because I haven't known what to say and have been worried about the permanence of my words on this page. But I will try to flush it out a bit more here, recognizing that it will change, it is temporary but today it's all I've got. And when I look back on reflections I wrote when I was married (happy reflections), I don't cringe even though I'm now divorced. In fact, I'm glad they are there. I was happy. We were happy! Until we weren't. It wasn't untrue. Nothing has been untrue, even if it changes.
So, why do I write. This blog has been a steady friend. It's the only word that I can use to describe it. It explains why my posting is sometimes erratic, like any friend, it has a time and a place. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But it has been here for me. Receiving whatever it is that I've needed to give and sometimes, many times, offering me an answer. I haven't overdone it. I never wanted it to have an unauthentic tone. Its my space with no deadline and no "point". I don't edit it, I don't overthink anything. It's a scratchpad, raw, here, ME in this medium.
One day J will read it. My hope is it helps him understand his mother. Flawed but trying. Always, always trying.
I'm setting out on a new chapter. One without someone who meant something to me but who's time and place has shifted out of sync with mine. This is part of the journey of life. The excitement, when we allow ourselves to see it that way, is the fresh page. Everything changes you if you're willing to let it. You take something. You leave something behind. You are never the same. You are different. You are better.
When I was in British Columbia, I kept thinking of Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese. It played in my mind like a prayer. It was my teacher. The summary of the lesson -- that I don't have to be anything but me. Finding forgiveness for my mistakes, shortcomings, quirkiness. Seeking strength to always strive to be better.... and learning to love myself in the same unconditional way that I manage to love others.
Today it's Blackwater Woods that echos in my bones. A new prayer: equally beautiful, equally critical. These words will walk with me into the next dark room. I go there full of faith and in anticipation of the magic it undoubtedly will offer.
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
