First World/Third World Beginnings

We’ve traveled from Indiana to Belize to meet up with our oldest daughter, who has been on a kind of post-college walk-about in Central America for the past 4 months. 

This cross-cultural opportunity is sorely limited given our four-day stay. Frustrating—yet moving toward acceptance, we've known in advance the rush that will be this breeze-by trip.  I feel the tug of the unfamiliar and a keen awareness of our white American privilege as we move through Belize City’s narrow pot-holed streets. It’s a roiling chaos of old taxi vans, golf carts, bicycles, walking people, locals, tourists, backpackers. There are street dogs, and decaying dirty-white, pink, green, and aquamarine colonial buildings –all mixed up with leaning shacks, garbage heaps, lines strung with drying laundry. The whole busy scene infused with the scent of frying chicken, fish, diesel fumes, and coconut scented sun screen.  Languages: English, Creole, Spanish, holler and chatter all around.

Honestly, with all these new stimuli swirling around us, and noting the pungent life-force of this other world, I am more than anything else in the simple joy and ache of reuniting as a family. Our oldest waits for us with her backpack and ukulele leaning up against a café table near the water taxi that will take us to a gleaming beach resort.  She runs with outstretched arms to embrace her father, sister, and me. She is tanned, clear-eyed, full of stories and quite fully grounded and confident in her experience of living the moment and working her way around Guatemala, Honduras, and after this break with us, the rest of Central America.  

We enter a kind of dream of palm trees, iguanas, white sand, and the industry of service to our every need.  This is provided by men and women who leave their homes along the pot -holed streets each morning before the sun rises, to run our water taxis, make our breakfasts, pour our Belikin beers, and ask again and again, “You doing well Mam? Can I get you anything?”   

My daughters, husband and I accept these attentions awkwardly, being the Midwesterners we are and more accustomed to self-serve vacations, and I speak for myself alone here when I say I’m never fully able to embrace the illusion of this extravagance as I watch a brown skinned man whose name I never learn, rake up the daily detritus of plastic bottles, sandals, and many wheelbarrows full of trash that wash up every morning on our white Belizean beach.

We hang out and mostly listen, mesmerized and sometimes drop-jawed as our daughters talk about their recent adventures. Our younger daughter spent time this fall interning at a couple of southwest side Chicago schools and has recently had her own walk beyond the veil of her sheltered upbringing.  They’ve become independent young women.  They understand things about third worlds we still do not.   We are following them now, hanging on their words and experiences in states of vicarious thrill and awe.  How did they become so fearless?  How did we let them go?

We snorkel a reef, paddle around in an ocean kayak, and enjoy the warm wind blowing our hair back in  wordless rides across the shimmering water from one site to another. We laugh and drink beer together.  Together again, but in a brand new way.

Time comes when we all must part ways. Our oldest by chicken bus and water ferry south, to Guatemala and the hostel she’ll be working at for a couple of weeks. My husband, younger daughter and I by taxi and plane back to the snowy states and the beginning of another year of school and work in the American Midwest.

I think of my 23 year old daughter waiting alone on a dock for Mimo, the ferryman between Punta Gorda, Belize and Livingston, Guatemala.  She’s told us he captains an uncertain boat, and describes the comedy of his banging, thrashing, waving and cursing over his puttering engine and his less-then punctual schedule day to day.

I think of the sun going down and worry about her waiting in the dark as if she were a young child.   For a moment, I must again let go of my desperate, weeping urge to accompany her across the dark water.  Time has long passed since I’ve been able to see her safely to the other shore.    And yet the primal urge to be in the boat with her—to keep us all together never leaves me. 

Looking down through the clouds from the airplane, I sift through a mix of feeling as we leave the balmy, complicated cocktail umbrella land of tourists and the hard working poor.   We flew here didn’t we? Intangible things make the world go round, keep the human race alive and more boats afloat than foundering.   These invisible things guide each of us in mysterious ways on our respective paths through life.    I must trust the wind under these wings, the skill of the pilot, the functioning power of these engines.  I will trust that we’ll all land safely and surely be together again soon.  

So begins another year.

BLR for the Poplar Grove Muse

Photo Credit: Kristin Noelle Hubbard

A Prayer for Light

We gather to pray for the return of the light. Teetering on the thin edge of light, entering fully into the darkness, there is no way out but through. Each year, we wrestle with this unwilled descent into shadow, each alone with it, facing down our individual darknesses.

And yet, we can, and we do, gather to pray for the return of light, for lightness of heart, for the luminescence of a full-throated summer sun, for a light spirit treading lightly in the world.

We cherish and trim our candles, and hold them high in the darkness. In this hearth-keeping, this light-kindling, we feel a long connection with women down through the ages who have worked, mightily, to do the same for the ones they love, and for themselves. And the light does not, did not, illuminate only—no, it throws off warmth as well, to thaw the deep chill and unfreeze the mind.

I wish so fervently to nourish an illuminating, warming life force in myself, to fan it into a bright flame, letting it penetrate all my being and all my doing, and then to project it bravely beyond myself. I pray for the return of the light, in my world and in the world.

Mary for the Poplar Grove Muse 
from Our Solstice Sampler, December 19, 2013

Take the 10/10/10 challenge

Fresh off the winds of November, widely known in writing circles as National Novel Writing Month or NANOWRIMO, or writing a 50,000 word novel in a month, I would like to present readers and writers with a new challenge. Please consider taking the 10/10/10 challenge: read 10 books, in each of 10 genres in 10 months from January 1st to October 31st.You should read genres that you do not normally read.  That would be 10 books a month for 100 books by the end of the challenge period.

I read an interesting essay as November began this year. The writer opined that while we were all so busy writing bad novels, there was a lot of great reading to be done and maybe we shouldn't waste our time writing bad fiction when we could become better writers simply by reading more.  We need to read more. She then introduced me to 10/10/10.

I gave up on NANOWRIMO several years ago. I just couldn't get excited about churning out really bad prose any more, and after reading this essay I am sure it was the right choice. Now I am intrigued by reading 100 books next year. I am an avid reader and my best reading record so far is 52 books in a year--a book a week. So this challenge seems daunting, but the spirit of it is simply to stretch beyond one's normal reading preferences to read things one would not normally read. And maybe, just maybe, to learn something about writing and the world.

So join me--in reading some new books in the new year. The first one on my list is a book of short stories by Nobel Prize winner Alice Monro.  What is the first new book on your list?

 Amy for the PGM.

Logophile

I am a lifelong Logophile, a lover of words.  Words have been my friends for as long as I can remember. Before I learned to read I remember watching my mother, lost in reading her paperbacks and my dad being totally engrossed in his newspaper. I couldn’t wait to find out what that was all about

As I was growing up, I’m sure my family thought I was lying on my bed reading. But I was actually in England in a haunted mansion, or in Egypt excavating the tombs and reading hieroglyphics, or following Mowgli and Baloo through the jungle.  Words transported me to someplace else, which was exactly where I needed to be.

 I love the way words wrap themselves around your ears and touch your soul.Words spoken or written have the power to heal, wound, inspire and incite.  They change our world. Adolph Hitler used words to incite a whole country to commit atrocities that went against their very nature.  Randy Pausch inspired people to face death with grace and positivity, but to also live life to the fullest in his book The Last Lecture.  Jane Austen made young girls everywhere believe that true love was possible even if the odds were against them. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle turned us into amateur sleuths after reading Sherlock Holmes. Social media, through Tweeting and Facebook connected people who were determined to overthrow a corrupt leader in Egypt. 

Words matter. As is evidenced in our schools with all the bullying that is going on today. I remember my mother never allowing anyone to call me “Red”. She didn’t want me to be diminished by a nickname that only spoke to the color of my hair and not who I really was. In grade school some boys would say to me, “I’d rather be dead than red on the head”. This gave me permission to chase them around the playground and show them how weak they were in the running department.

The word vagina can titillate a room full of women who were born with one when they were asked to ponder, “What was my vagina doing in 1988?”

Sometimes our own words can come back to bite us in the butt, for instance, when we make statements like  I would never…

We begin learning at a very early age how to be effective communicators with our words and how we use them.  My son learned early on that whining got him nowhere. 

Everyday I receive A. Word. A. Day  from: https://www.google.com/#q=wordsmith+anagram

I’m still learning.

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

A Past Life Remembered

She was an elderly woman to have such a young child.  This child had been born at the very end of her childbearing possibility.  She was a poor, Tibetan widow.  He husband had died a few months before the birth of this last child.  Her other children were adults with families of their own to care for.  She could not ask them to take on responsibility for this damaged child.  He had been born with a cleft lip and he was also very slow to develop.  She knew that his mind would never develop normally and he would be unable to make his own way in the world.  She was sick.  She knew she was very sick and soon to die.  She thought about how to ensure this sweet child’s survival.  He was sweet.  His spirit was whole and bright in a damaged body and mind.

She decided at last to take this young boy to the monastery.  She knew that he would be allowed to live there and be of some use to the monks.  He could perform simple tasks.  He wanted to be helpful.  The sweetness of his spirit would surely be recognized by the monks.

She explained to him, over and over, that he would live with the monks when she went to rebirth and that they would certainly be together again in another life and that she would hold him, warm in her love, for all of his life.  She wasn’t sure how much he understood, but she knew that he was certain of her love and that he took that fully into his heart.

She and the boy traveled for two days to reach the monastery.  It took her to the limit of her endurance.  But she had to see him safe before she could let go of this life and this sick, painful body.  She explained her situation to the Abbot of the monastery and kissed her son goodbye.

When his mother left, the boy was shown the long stone hallways, lit with candles.  He was given a little cot in a small alcove off the kitchen.  He was to help the cook in any way that he was asked.  He liked to set the tables with bowls and spoons for each of the monks.  He loved using the broom and the mop to clean the stone floors after each meal.  He was rarely spoken to.  But some monks looked deep into his eyes and smiled at the light inside him.  He loved this more than anything else in his life.  He felt seen and known in those small moments and it filled his heart with the love that he had known from his mother.  Other monks refused to meet his eyes.  They ignored him as if he were an inanimate object.  That made him feel so alone.  He tried to engage those monks, but they avoided looking at him.

One of the happiest moments of his life happened one summer day when he was helping an old, wrinkled, bent monk who was working in the garden.  He was helping weed the vegetables as he had been shown to do.  The old gardener picked a ripe, red globe from a vine and held it out to him.  As he reached to take the offered gift, the old gardener smiled at him and looked so deeply into his eyes that it warmed his heart completely.  He felt the joy of being seen and known for the goodness that he was.  He felt happy to be alive in this moment.  He held that moment in his memory and he remembered it at nights before he fell asleep and relived the joy and warmth of the smile and the recognition he felt from the old gardener.

He lived for many years in the monastery.  He did the simple tasks he was assigned and took satisfaction in being a useful member of the community.  He especially enjoyed hearing the monks chanting and it brought a feeling of ease and peace to him.

 
At the end of his life, he was lying on a cot in a small, stone cell.  It was dark night, but there were candles all around the room.  Two monks were with him and they chanted beside him for a long time.  At last, he felt the light of his life force being pulled up and out the top of his head.  It felt so blissful.  It was the best thing he had ever experienced—the light being drawn up and out into the universe.  This life was over.

Veda for the Poplar Grove Muse

See-Saw

A sky so empty it’s full.

And my now-grown child’s long-ago question from the back seat of a mini-van: how can you feel something you can’t touch?

Today, having left Bloomington for the northern shores of Lake Michigan, I creep to the edges of things. Seeking rest, my mind wanders busily off and comes back.  I look up, look down the curved stretch of beach and in a dizzying moment of exposure to the elements, think it’s a teeter- totter world. 

Another word for teeter-totter is see-saw -- an Anglican version of the French,  ci-ca, literally translated, as This-That.

On a playground of my youth, we spent recess on long red boards across from one another. We learned to move up and down on a fulcrum, pushed with our legs, felt in our bellies the effects of weight and effort.  Physics before there were formulas.

Push too hard for a thrill, and you get bucked into the air.  Step off before your partner is ready, you send them hard to the ground.  We learned the power of plummeting, of holding on, of scootching by inches to find the perfect balancing point; the this and that of collaboration, cooperation, trust.

These lessons continue well into adulthood.  I know I’m not alone in a quest for the right balance of things, and though I cannot exactly achieve that balance often, I can feel it every once in a great while.

I cannot touch the emptiness of this sky, yet as I listen to wind across the water, as I take in a great emptiness above me cupped in the flaming colors of autumn, the blue lake stretching to the horizon and a smaller version of me contained therein, I feel the comfort of containment.  With very little effort, I feel a momentary weightlessness.  Here, so small in the large world with forces of nature in their own moment of unforced perfection, I FEEL what I cannot touch. The bigger thing.   Held in the Mystery.  A direct line of connection to the empty sky above. 

There’s an equilibrium to this.  A balance of empty and full.  Getting away from my daily routine helps.   I see it.  Next week I’ll need to remember that I saw it today.  

See-Saw.  Teeter-Totter.  Most days, and the whole rest of my life is an up and down ride. My longer-term stability depends on the moments I listen to the wind, feel without touching the real gift of emptiness and look for signs that remind me ultimately that there are instances, however rare, of perfect balance, if only we look and listen and feel our way into them.   


BLR  for the Poplar Grove Muse 

When someone else's finger goes inside your nose

When someone else's finger goes inside your nose, it leaves a permanent impression.

Catherine stood over me with her latex glove pointer finger inside my right nostril.


"I never force the nose work," she says "I just wait for it to open."

I could hear the clock ticking, feel her finger sliding deeper into my nostril.  I wondered if she would reach something painful, or sweetly discomforting.  Her finger just kept going in.  I imagined  her finding my brain up in there.  When it didn't go any further she just stopped.  At some point I opened my mouth to breathe out.

I'd always been taught that a finger in the nose is not a polite gesture, but I've found Rolfing is not much concerned with politeness.

Since June, I've been receiving the Rolfing 10 series as part of the initiation or prerequisite to attend the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration in Boulder, CO.  Flash back to my first session, undressed taking laps around the table.  Laying curious, asking..."are you pulling on my intestines?"  Yes, she was.

"If you like the nose work you're a natural Rolfer." 

Catherine slid her finger out of one nostril and into the other.  I giggled.

Rolfing is a form of bodywork and way of seeing that works with the human form in gravity.  And the form is worked directly on through connective tissue.  Its been around more than 50 years and many people that I talk to have either received some Rolfing or knows someone who has.  It's been interesting to navigate the stories of people who have received the work.  Some people I'd talked with in the beginning reported pain or aversion, that it felt like too much.  I've never felt it to be the case in any session, even when the Rolfer did have my intestines.  Curious what feels like pain to some.

It's hard to communicate the essence of a fundamental change while in it.  I feel like a vitally different person, and it feels wild that I appear as the same person I was to anyone.  The loudness of my voice has changed, I can feel my legs, and differentiate the vertebrae of my low back.  My morning walks feel like I have taken awareness into a whole new person's form.

It occurs to me that I will soon be putting my fingers in other people's nostrils.  And in other people's mouths.  I will soon be looking at the human form in a new way and using my fists and elbows to work and move flesh, and tissue.  I will be putting my hand in people's armpits and backsides.

And I can't wait!

Allison