Window Seat To Wonder

It’s been raining for eight days, maybe more.  Our morning yoga teacher offered the meditation: please, notice the cloudiness - then let it go.  It’s good to remember how much clouds affect the mind.  And here, maybe more.  Boulderites are used to 300 sunny days a year.  We are eight days into clouds - residents feel worry.  The woman next to me in class lives in Scotland.  She shrugs, says, “Everyday is like this.”  Another woman adds, “Yes, but this rain makes us nervous for floods.”

Rightly so, the Boulder Floods of September 2013 are fresh in mind for some.  Parts of the city are still in repair, with much evidence of the devastation around the hiking trails.  After two years, some pathways remain completely closed off.  There is evidence of post-traumatic environmental stress.  A good reminder: we are so intimate with where we are.  I left Boulder at the end of August 2013, and feel gratitude for having been able to land safely home.   I’m also lucky to be able to return, each time I gather something more.  Traveling, especially returning to places over consecutive years re-kindles my interest in psycho-environmentalism.   How place shines through, intermingles with person. 

I would describe today as a Pacific Northwest day, a foggy San Francisco moment, a non-humid Indiana summer pre-dawn (after evening storm).  It makes me feel contemplative, dreamy, like I might want to take a boat trip to a small island.  The Flatirons, regular ruddy totems, are obscured in something of a foggy blur. I don’t mind the effect on my mind, as long as I remember it won’t always be like this.  It frees my moment up to consider life past conditions, while enjoying the trip of the time.

Alas, with no boat at hand, nor waters to travel on...I content myself with a latte and window seat to wonder.

Allison - PGM

Nate of Las Vegas Part III

“Sir, Mr. Roger sir…, may I ask, before we turn for home…, what’s with these rules of non-visitation…. It really seems unethical….

Nate continued with eloquence,

“With all the news around town, around the world really, of the new construction…, surely you allow curious visitors get a taste of the place…. What’s the meaning of sharing the news when there is no reciprocity?   Surely, with your rank here, Roger, you do have the power to make and enforce decisions like this…, don’t you?”

Roger’s posture changed immediately.  He puffed up, becoming twice as large.   Nate hit his spot--power.  Roger had taken a hit.  His eyes opened wide.  Nate remained calm, and continued….

“I would think a man entrusted to guard this entire property would have the power to choose who could and could not visit the school.”

Roger stoutly defended.

“Listen…, Saturdays are our visiting days, and that is the time when guided tours are available.” 

Roger looked like he was going to shake a fist at us.

Nate leaned quickly into me, grinning, he knew something I didn’t.  I was enthralled and betwixt.  Captive in company with someone who argued persistently about something he didn’t really care about, just to engage.  I felt like I was being shown something behind the scenes of the human drama through Nate.  And, I wasn’t even sure if Nate’s story about the construction was true.   Then I wondered how Nate would have even known about the construction or the building.  Seeing as though he thought it was a castle a few minutes ago....  Or was he playing me too?  Maybe he knew I’d be a person willing to go see a castle, but less willing to go see a school. 

I followed Nate’s eyes.   He looked back to Roger and locked with his gaze, direct.  He purposely hung in the silence for a few extra moments before saying,

“Well, great, today is Saturday, so…, let’s go”

Roger’s irritation was beginning to break through.  I was certain he was either going to get angry and swing at us, or break down.  It also crossed my mind that he might call back-up security to escort us away.

“Look,” he said through clenched teeth, “the students are on break, and so are the guides, so there are no tours today…. I - am – the - only - one - here.”

There was a very long pause and no one moved.  I felt like we were playing chess.   I felt myself beginning to lose patience, as the three of us exchanged stares in the thick silence.  The center of my forehead was getting hot and I started to tap my foot.

“Do you two understand me?”

Roger spoke solid.

“I - am – the – only – one - here.”

I was getting ready to speak, when Nate cut in.

“Well, certainly then the school entrusts you with the power to allow two curious and distant travelers….”

I felt my head spin and my heart leap into my throat as a laugh.    Surprised at this expression, I tried to contain this by coughing and covering my mouth.   But my laugh spilled around the edges.  None of us could keep gesturing anymore.  Nate didn’t even finish his sentence before the three of us began to laugh in unison.  No one knew who was laughing at what or why.

 “Alright you two hop on, for the tour!”

Roger’s angry face turned to a smile and he whisked his arms toward the jeep.

I was amazed.  The vanishing of the power play caused me to step back before forward.  Nate swung open the door and offered me the front seat, and jumped in the back.  Roger went up front and started the jeep.

“So where are you two from?”

I took a breath in to tell the truth…, and Nate chimed in,

“Argentina.”

Roger either didn’t care, or believed us, and drove through the security gate up the hill towards the main entrance.   I looked back at Nate from the mirror on the window visor.  He was smiling into the sky with his head bobbing back and forth.  He floated there in the mirror like every day of his life was like this, a wandering mystery of chance happenings all folded into laughter.  I was unsure right then if he was really a person at all.  Maybe he was a figment of my imagination, or maybe the sun was getting to me.  I did only have a few hours of sleep; I am at a high desert altitude.  This is the Land of Enchantment, after all. I looked back through the mirror until he recognized I was staring at him and he puffed his cheeks out and waved.  I smiled back.

Roger parked the jeep in the turnaround in front of the main entrance and we jumped out.  He led us up the marble stairs, unlocked the cavernous doors and escorted us into the main lobby.   The interior was massive, cathedral ceilings with glass chandeliers, ornate bric-a-brac on ever surface.  Roger closed the door behind us and pointed to the dining hall.  He walked in front of us and opened the dining hall doors.  We stepped through into another room twice as large, with blown class chandeliers and a black and white checkered floor.  The dining hall was filled with fine sturdy medieval-looking tables.  Roger walked us around the room, chatting with Nate the entire time.  He led us out of the dining hall, across the main entrance and into the “historical collection room,” a place with floor-to-ceiling books and portraits of important men.

I tuned in and out to Roger and Nate’s specific chatter, I only took note of the quality of their interaction.  Nate decided to milk Roger for all he was worth, pelting him with question after question about specific historical details of the construction of the building, and Roger was delighted.  It was as if he’d been waiting for someone to ask him so many questions about this place, which he knew everything about.  They became very close, very fast.  It was starting to feel as if I was watching old friends chatting, walking arm in arm, room to room.  I lingered behind them for a while, and then scooted out an open door on the balcony to get some space.   I stared for long time into the desert.   I stood, taking slow breaths of dry pinion and heat.  What was I doing here?  How did I get here?

I thought about going with the flow, and accepting the gifts of the universe.  I looked into the mountains and asked what I was supposed to understand from this.

I heard the balcony door close with a creak.  Nate came up behind me, and put a hand on my shoulder.  I turned around to face him and squinted. He smiled and turned away from me to Roger,

“And my wife here …. she’s one who likes to linger in beauty.”

Nate turned from Roger to face me again, still smiling,

“Isn’t that right dear?”

End Part III
Allison Distler

Nate of Las Vegas Part II

I was still there when he came back and handed me the book, “Magic” by William Goldman. 

United World College/Montezuma Castle

“Do you know it?”

“Nope,” I said.

I turned the hard cover book over in between my hands and read a few words, unable to get a clear idea of the story before Nate began to navigate.  He sat back in his seat and pointed out over the dashboard.

“Okay so I think there is a dirt road on the side of town that takes us to the castle, I’ll lead you there.”

I drove, he talked…and talked, and in between words, he pointed to things.

“Jake is training me to be a boxer, been living in my tent there in front of that mountain.  In exchange, for his teaching I get odd jobs in town to make a little money.  But sometimes I don’t make money..or I spend it all…I’d really like to be saving for that cabin.. but Jake…well right now he makes sure my basic needs are taken care of.”

We drove deeper up the dusty moutain pass.

“You know, ever since my car broke down here in Las Vegas I’d always wanted to go to this castle, I’m glad I met you.”

“Thanks… I mean… I couldn’t pass it up.”

I was serious and joking.  I couldn’t pass it up. It was as if it was happening all by itself, besides my driving I wasn’t sure what I was doing.  I let my mind wander, I thought,

How odd that people seem to end up and stay wherever their car breaks down in the southwest.

Nate wasn’t my first encounter on this trip.  I’d also met a young couple in a broken RV who decided to convert it to a semi-permanent camp home.  And I remembered the several families I found living in campers in an Oklahoma.

I thought about this urge to migrate, to be somewhere other than planted.  Images raced through my mind, panning for gold, rushing to California, attempting to make it all the way west and not quite getting there.  I thought about this spark of desire to be free, so much that the only answer is to get in the car and drive.  You follow nothing but the impetus to go and see, and wherever the car stopped, that’s where you were.  And that’s that.  I wondered if that was what was happening to me.  I wondered if I was going to end up marooned in a 500 person town somewhere in the desert.  At least, there’d be others.

The dirt road made way to a narrow paved drive.  We approached the drive and passed through an open gate.  I looked around, suddenly there was green.  We had come from a dusty mountain pass to a landscaped lawn. 

After the gate was a sign,

“Warning, no unauthorized visitors.”   

And then a small placard, 

“Welcome to the World School.”

“Well, let’s go in…park here.”

He pointed to a spot just beyond the warning sign. 

“Do you think we should park somewhere less noticeable?”  I said.

And then added, “did you see the sign?”

“That sign is not for us, it is for other people.”

Nate unbuckled his belt and twisted around to look in the back seat.  He picked up a shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head.   The shirt smelled like body odor and had a smudged charcoal stain on the front.   It’d been worn for several road days in a row.   He sat back down and thought for a second and looked at himself in the side view mirror.

“This won’t do, we’ll need to be more official….we need glasses.”

I leaned over and opened the glove box.  He pulled out a pair of fake reading glasses and gigantic gold glam rock sunglasses.  He put on the sunglasses, and threw the reading glasses to me. 

“Wear these… now, we are ready…come on.”

I stared at Nate.  He looked like a drunk tourist in a woman’s t-shirt.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Come on…let’s goo oo.” He said, looking funny at me.

He added a couple of “o’s” to the end of his sentence and laughed.  He had so much ease in his gesture I was drawn into following him.  What’s the worst that could happen?

Ten steps away from the car, a security jeep pulls up.  The man looks at us up and down once and says simply,

“No.” 

He was a stout, unwaivering middle aged man, with a name tag,

“Roger.”

I wanted to leave, immediately, but I hesitated.  I saw Nate’s upper lip curl into a private smile.  He looked to me and nodded.  It was a movement that kept me quiet and curious, one that said, we’re gonna play.

In an instant, Nate, drew the corners of his mouth down and softened his brow.  His face was fluid and fast.  I took this to mean follow, and like suit I fell disappointed.  I imagined myself as someone who felt confused and hurt.

 “Oh…please…I’ve heard so much about this place and we have traveled so far…”

Roger shook his head, slow and solemnly. 

Nate persisted,

“At least you might reveal more about the new construction on this building…you must understand…we’ve traveled…so far.”

Roger stopped shaking his head, and stared at Nate.  Nate gazed back with pleading, please eyes.

“I’m gonna to ask you two to leave immediately.”

I was ready to go.  I felt my body turning.  My head was back in the car.  Nate was not quite ready to go.

 Allison Distler

The Traveling Journal

The Traveling Journal

Iona                                                                                       

May 13, 2012

 

Someone said the weather is very passionate today. Aye, that it is, wind and rain, wave erasing wave. I like dramatic weather, as long as no one gets hurt, so I don’t think it’s the weather that’s causing me to feel unsettled, not sure what it is. I feel like the heron gull, totally controlled by the wind, buffeted this way and that, not able to make headway, find direction, not really able to focus. I want to be like the guillemot, who sees her target beneath the water, dislocates her shoulders, locking her wings against her body, she dives like a needle between the waves, spears her prey and heads for the surface. As they say in Scotland, done and dusted. 

Everyone in our group is so excited to be here, rushing around outside in gale force winds, happy ducks in a blustery puddle. I seem to be quite content to sit here in the sunroom at the Argyll Hotel and stare at the constantly changing water.  I don’t feel like writing or being productive. It’s been a hard winter and I think my body is telling me to Sit Down for Pete’s sake. Don’t feel guilty. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to be constantly productive. I’m finding it hard to stop the momentum of the last nine months. I’ve spent nearly every day coordinating this writing retreat on Iona, sort of like a gestation period. I’ve given birth, the baby is healthy and now it’s time to let it thrive on its own. 

When I get home, I will start organizing my move toward retirement, so maybe my brain, body and gut are telling me I had better rest up while I have the chance.

My world has changed forever with the losses death created this winter. I need to stop minimizing that and not move out of the grief too quickly. Iona is just the place for that. She lifts her veil and removes all boundaries, requiring you to be who you truly are, where you truly are. So I’m just going to sit here for however long it takes and let Iona work her magic. Give her time. Give her time.

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

Journeys

Journeys

The holidays are a time of journeys for many of us. Fortunately, I only have a two hour journey to reach my dad and step mom’s house. I have been blessed with another chance to spend Christmas Eve with them in their cozy home that has the true spirit of Christmas in it every day of the year. My son is on duty this Christmas, so I will journey to my life-long friend Sharon’s house on Christmas Day and spend the day with her and her family. I love her family and I am grateful to be a part of that family. There will be lots of food and laughter. It’s a day I treasure.

As my thoughts turn to journeys, I think of our WWfaC winter retreat at St. Mary of the Woods in January. I love the coziness that wintry canvas provides, a warm place to reflect and write with no worldly distractions.

The journey that is really on my mind is the journey WWfaC is taking to the Isle of Iona in May 2012. We are holding a writing retreat on that amazing island off the west coast of Scotland, but it is more than just an opportunity to write in a foreign country. For me, it is a journey that eases my soul. Beth Lodge-Rigal has asked those of us who are attending to begin a journal about this trip, so this is my beginning of that process.  We will travel by planes, trains, ferries and coaches.  I have made this journey many times and each time I experience an internal change as I gaze out the windows of these various conveyances and watch the changing landscape and light. The metamorphosis is beginning.

As soon as I settle on the train for the three hour journey from Glasgow to Oban I can feel my muscles begin to release the internal stresses of every day life. There is happy chatter on the train as it begins it assent into the highlands.  When I step off the train in Oban, the sea air clears my head as I breathe in its freshness. And the sounds and sights of this Victorian seaport envelope me and my transformation toward peacefulness is nearly complete. This country is a place where I’m utterly at home and content.

When I board the huge ferry to the Isle of Mull on the next leg of my journey, I climb to the top deck, weather permitting, and let the salty wind blow the last of the cobwebs from my heart and spirit. The gulls' cries as they follow the ferry welcome me and my fellow travelers.

By the time my feet touch the ground in Craignure on the Isle of Mull, my step is lighter and I practically bounce to the waiting coach to take that beautiful journey across Mull and one last ferry ride to that little gem of Iona in the glittering bay. I smile. I’m home. I’m home.

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

Costa Rica

I was not one of those children, unlike my son, who was ever fascinated by creatures from theinsect world. While I’ve never been one of those who run screaming from a cockroach or spider,I have generally preferred to encounter them dead rather than alive. And I’ve absolutely never cared about their eating habits, mandibles, exoskeletons, number of legs or whether they eat their mate after sex (although I have wondered why that one is called a praying mantis?). Insects have just always been there, a category of minor annoyances and low interest in the background of life. This peripheral concern became one of life’s most pressing issues when I packed up my three children and ex-husband to live in Costa Rica for a year. Not only do the insects and spiders simply demand attention by their sheer number and variety, it’s just damn hard to ignore a dinner plate-sized, orange-knee tarantula strolling through your living room.

My ten year old son watched a scorpion walk across the floor the first night we arrived in Monteverde and later wet the bed for the first time in his life. But he quickly learned the need to shake out his shoes and clothes before getting dressed, how to pull back the bedcovers all the way to make sure he was the only one going to sleep there each night, how to redirect the shower head away from the specimens occasionally hanging out on the shower wall. While their menacing look never endeared themselves to his truly insect-loving heart, he did develop an appreciation for those huge momma scorpions that carry dozens of little babies on their backs.

My initial response to the surrounding infestations was to buy the largest can of bug spray I could find at the supermercado. For the first few weeks, I poisoned us all with my attempts to kill any insect big enough to make noise (mere appearance alone didn’t merit death by spray), which unfortunately meant that some undeserving katydids quite unfairly died before I learned who was what. It was so unnerving to look up while taking a bath, such a spot of vulnerability, and see all those legs and antennae marching my way.

After a few katydids and deserving scorpions perished, I gave up entirely on bug spray. We learned to co-exist, even if uneasily from our point of view. I, for one, always wore socks to bed. I made ceaseless attempts to create obstacles to the relentless columns of ants after returning home one night to find one line of ants walking across the courtyard, under the front door (homes are quite porous there), across the living room, into the kitchen and up the cabinets to the bag of bread into which they’d chewed a hole. A parallel line of ants were making the reverse trip with bits of white bread bobbing on their backs. We eventually trained these ants to enter by the back door and take their nourishment from the compost we left beside it. Amazingly we would find an empty bowl every morning that had been full of food scraps the night before. The number of ants required to complete this task remains truly incomprehensible.

The first time we saw the tarantula provided great entertainment to the young Tica babysitter we’d hired for our young daughters. As we screamed and jumped on the sofa, Maria just laughed and got a broom to gently sweep this spider out the door. The female tarantula and I became old friends when I discovered her nest next to our house. I took many pictures of her climbing around the walls to send to disbelieving friends and family back home. When one friend, a true entymologist, visited that fall, I commented as we were all eating breakfast that I sure hoped she could see this spider…who was already sitting on top of the Barbie coloring book in the corner next to the kitchen table. As friendly as we all were with one another by this time, that still felt a little presumptuous to me.

Alongside the army ants and scorpions, the insect world of Costa Rica also offered breathtaking beauty for our admiration and appreciation. Iridescent (maybe salad plate-sized) blue morpho butterflies would accompany our walks through the forest, alongside numerous other mariposas of all colors and sizes. At night pale green luna moths would flutter at our windows, drawn to our light.

The insects were only one aspect of this multi-layered, incredibly difficult and wonderful experience of living far from home and all that was familiar and known. There’s also a chapter on the rats in the ceiling, the posotes (these are not small mammals!) in the courtyard, the monkeys dancing on the roof and peering in our windows as if we were the ones in the zoo. And another chapter, perhaps a book, on the deepening realization that our daughter’s developmental delays weren’t attributable to her parents’ divorce or the logistics of being a twin. My son maintains that so far this was the best year of his life. I return every chance I get, having found surprising peace among the many unassuming members of the insect world.

--Catherine for the Popular Grove Muse

Ahh Italia!

In anticipation of a recent trip to Italy, Family and friends loaded me up with books and sight seeing suggestions—most of which I left behind in Indiana in my disorganized rush to take off and travel light. Instead, I carried 30-year-old memories of a journey I’d taken through Italy as a 19 year old student vagabond. Those memories still vividly conjured first real-life viewings of masterworks of art, the shame-by-association with ugly Americans abroad, the cheap wine, the crusty bread and cheese eaten in San Marco Square, and all those pigeons that dawdled at our feet then flew up around us. Back then, it was train stations, hostels, lingering hours on street corners with other students, buskers, backpackers, and bad-asses with big hearts. I was open wide to everything!

This time, I went to celebrate having turned 50. I traveled solo with old friends there to meet me in Florence. I had some money in my pocket, a cool black “euro bag” that defies criminal mischief, newly-purchased, ultra-light wick-away undergarments and summer wear, an English/Italian dictionary, a journal I made by slapping a postcard of a very Italian-looking doorway on to the cover of a Mead composition book, and a sense of pure openness to where each day might take me. Most of that 19 year old me came along for the ride this time. She was happy for access to a few expendable Euros and the promise of more luxurious digs upon arrival. I was happy for her fresh eyes and open heart.

I passed through Indy, Newark, Rome, Florence, and , with my travelling companions, through the Chianti region, Siena, to an Umbrian Country House on the hill near the village of Grutti. There, we sat one night on a tiny patio outside the only cantina in town alongside 40 village men and boys who ate gelato and smoked cigarettes watching Italy play world cup soccer. In the mornings, l marveled at the quality of light that shone on ancient hill-top towns in the distance; that moved with the clouds across the rolling green, wheat, and olive-groved countryside, the enormous rabbits I mistook for small deer leaping in the meadow below the house, and at my own sense of belonging in a place so far from my home.

We spent one memorable day with Monika Iris in an 8 person passenger van, taking us to see her friends all over the Chianti region south of Florence. Eleanore’s 500 year old olive farm and family villa (Mona Lisa was a “neighbor” and guest in this house way back when!), Fernando’s small 5 acre winery in Montefiorelle. 84 year old Lena’s Bar for late afternoon coffee.
Throughout the day, Monika wove her philosophy of life through the narrative of our nine hour journey. “We go with the flow here”, she said. “Good can come from the unexpected –or, not everything bad comes to harm. Take your time. Respect food, nourish your body, and support your local butcher, bread maker, your vintner”. To my inquisitive friends and I, who had a hard time resisting the urge to pepper her with personal questions, Monika steered us back to the moment, suggesting without saying it, that we Americans have a curious need for back- story or quick intimacy which is not necessarily the Italian way. Look out the window, for god’s sake. Don’t miss what’s right in front of you! At one point as we were making small talk, she said “Italians don’t ask what they’re not interested in.” Note to self: Bless your guides and consider heeding their guidance.

We did and saw many things at a slower pace over 10 days. We lazed in the intoxicating scent of jasmine, scotch broom, lavender, and rosemary. We felt perfect weather on our skin, managed the markets and shop exchanges with friendliness and humor. We leaned against cool Etruscan walls in the heat of the day, walked cobblestone alleyways worn smooth over thousands of years. Thousands.

We made tiny cups of coffee. We ate gloriously fresh food, drank wine free of sulfites, traversed the awkward territory of language, then fell happily to trying to play that music while our Italian brethren joyfully applauded our halting, gesturing efforts. Goodwill abounded! One Chef in an out- of- the- way Umbrian restaurant kissed my hand at the end of one memorable meal for my efforts to roll with the language. Another time, our waitress abandoned her service of us in frustration when we mis-ordered and mistakenly sent the wrong dish back.
Not all bad comes to harm. We learned that next time we’d keep the food to take home. Either way, we paid for the extra meal and apologized to the extra friendly management then tried to let it go.

I return to Indiana on fire to learn Italian. The pure pleasure of hearing it spoken, the serious music of it, won’t leave me. I return restored, wiser and younger at heart, sweetened back to myself and my faith in the goodness of the world. I feel my presence back home potently and with gratitude. I return having learned something by being around people who live the moment, go with the flow and don’t sweat the small stuff. I’m reading MORE about Italy now that I’ve returned than I did in preparation for or during the trip. I find this reading in light of having experienced more meaningful somehow. Thanks to all who shared their resources with me and now don’t mind my holing up with them just a little while longer.

BLR –for the Poplar Grove Muse