Monthly Archives: January 2018

Why Walk–an Alphabet

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I just returned home from an hour-long walk with my newly-retired husband, Eric. It’s a beautiful winter day–cold but sunshiney with little dark-eyed juncos hopping about beneath the bare-branched bushes and brambles.

Yes, I said newly-retired. My husband and I are navigating this new course hand-in-hand as well as alone. I’m taking on more regular writing work to sustain us in this new venture while he enjoys the freedom to follow his own creative pursuits while doing a bit more laundry, vacuuming, and grocery shopping.

We’re taking walks, watching movies, and spending a lot more time in conversation. He’s there when I wake up in the morning which is kinda nice and kinda weird. It’s a lesson in never-ending, always-changing swirl of the world. Everything changes and everything stays the same–who said that?

(I actually looked it up and the saying goes–the more things change, the more they stay the same, and it’s attributed to a French dude by the name of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr writing in 1849)

Anyway, all of this to say I’ve been so busy negotiating this retirement deal that I’ve already broken my promise to write everyfreakingweek here at the 49th Year. There is; however, something to say for failing early. It’s liberating. I can see that the sky didn’t fall, the earth didn’t open up a big sink-hole and swallow me, the roof didn’t cave. I’m still here, dammit, and I can write a blog post this week EVEN IF I didn’t write one last week.

So there, committee!

***

I’ve been walking daily, thousands of steps–thanks Fitbit–for years. My writing life could take a tip from my walking life, so today I’m answering this question.

WHY WALK?

ASS–I walk for my ass–my biggest (and maybe most hardworking) body part. I walk to use it and I walk to reduce it.

BE–There is no better way to simply be, than to take a walk in your world.

CATS–I like these crazy creatures, and love to watch a stray cat skulk across a lawn or dart under a bush.

DARK-EYED JUNCOS–These little gray sparrows show up in Olney every winter and hop about until spring.

EMPATHY–Walk every day, and you will deepen your capacity to experience the vast wonder and mystery of the natural world.

FLICKERS–this list is bird-heavy, but if you ever scare one of these largish woodpeckers from the ground, you’ll gasp at the beautiful patterns on her wings.

GREEN/BLUE MOMENTS–My favorite author, the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal delightfully dubbed those moments when you look up at the blue sky through green leaves, green/blue moments. If it’s gray today, you can look through a gallery of these moments at textbookamykr.com.

HOUSES AT NIGHT–There is something intriguing and comforting about warm light shining through the window of a house on a dark night–if you see people moving about, all the better.

ICE CREAM–Stop in at your local ice cream parlor for a sweet treat on a hot day, and lick the ice cream off your fingers all the way home.

JOURNEY–If nothing else, walking illuminates the well-trod truth that the journey is more important than the destination.

KILLDEER–Memorize this bird with its black-banded neck running across a newly shorn cornfield.

LOVE–the green spring grass, the white streaky skies, the puddles and pine needles and Cardinals against the sticking snow, one leaf turning and falling and twisting in a slight breeze, the tap and slap of feet against wet concrete, the slurp and gurgle of an overflowing creek.

MISCHIEF–Keep your eyes on the squirrels.

NUMBING, NOTICING, and OBLIGATION–Walking aids in our obligation to notice the natural world. We only come alive when we begin to truly notice.

PLACE–I’ve been walking around the same block since I was 14 years old. What was it old Jean-Baptiste Karr said–the more things change, the more they stay the same.

QUIET–Except for the birds.

RHYTHM–Breathe, Step, Pause, Notice, Repeat.

SYCAMORE TREES–White branches against a blue or gray sky.

TREE TRUNKS–at eye level, gnarled or smooth or flaking away like paper, white, dark brown, covered in moss or lichen, cracked and oozing, struck by lightening, glistening in rain and bending in wind.

UNDER–rocks, branches, piles of leaves, clear-as-a-window ice, mown grass, wind-blown cattails.

VINES–twining around and dancing together to the very tops of trees.

WIND–breath for the trees’ songs.

X–look up, you’ll see one.

YELLOW–black-eyed susans and wisteria and dandelions and feverfew. Tickseed and goldenrod and Gingko leaves like gold coins in the fall. Daisies and moonbeam coreopsis and fennel and zoysiagrass and sunshine flickering through heavy clouds.

ZIGGING, ZAGGING, ZIPPING, ZITHERING–hummingbirds.

 

 

 

 

Living in Questions

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I didn’t watch The Golden Globes this year, so it wasn’t until a few days following that I viewed Oprah Winfrey’s magnificent speech. I’m not going to get into the “Oprah for President” whirlwind–at least not yet, but I do want to focus on her momentous contention: “What I know for sure is speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.”

You would think that, as a writer, this wouldn’t hit me as hard as it does, or seem as subversive or revolutionary, so I ponder it for a bit, and it dawns on me–well, sure, I believe that speaking YOUR truth is a powerful tool, but MY truth. Well, that’s another story. It’s why writing has been so damned difficult this past year.

I’m an overthinker, folks, and I’ve got a loud and rambunctious committee, and they’ve been loud, rowdy, and a smidgeon mean the last year.

When I sit down to write they say things like: so what? or who cares? or who do you think you are? or quit whiney-assing around? or give it a rest already!

It’s hard to believe that MY truth is a powerful tool. But here’s one thing I know for sure–the committee doesn’t waste its time when nothing is at stake.

***

I’ve been reading two books since the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one–Nina Riggs’ The Bright Hour and Ursula K. Le Guin’s aptly titled No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters.

In The Bright Hour, Nina Riggs contemplates what it is to live while dying. Her friend, Ginny who is also dying of metastatic breast cancer explains it pretty well when she writes to Riggs that

“living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope
over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease
is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss,
only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more
—sometimes the wind is blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.”

After reading this, I dog-eared the page so I could come back to it because I agree with Ginny that we are always on that tightrope. If illness is a constant reminder, then a lack of illness can obscure how tenuous our foot path is. I’ve written here before about my daughter, Peanut’s diagnosis and subsequent crash course in living with Type 1 Diabetes, and I believe that the ever-present undercurrent of shakiness was the first and maybe most important lesson for me.

Sunday night, after finishing The Bright Hour, and bawling my red and tired eyes out, I turned to Le Guin’s No Time to Spare, a delightful romp through the sharp and sometimes cranky mind of the prolific Ursula K. Le Guin. In her 80s, Le Guin is forthright and opinionated in these essays that were first published on her late-in-life blog.

I turned to Le Guin because I needed a little aid in processing the complicated and pressing questions I had. How could I be hopeful and distraught at the same time? Can grief be mitigated by hope? Does grief deepen hope? What the hell?

These are good questions. All of ’em.

In the introduction to No Time to Spare, Karen Joy Fowler reminds us that “for a seeker, the answer is less important than what the seeker does with the answer.” I might add that perhaps questions are even more important than answers.

And speaking of questions–the January 2018 issue of O Magazine seeks to bring questioning to the forefront of life by dubbing 2018 The Year of Big Questions. No, I’m still not getting on the Oprah for President bus, but I admit to being a huge fan of O Magazine. And I love the questioning call-to-action. The editors write,

“Every momentous exploration, pivotal social movement, ingenious invention, and soul-stirring journey began because someone asked a question: How can we change things? Where does this lead? What’s possible? What’s next? In mind, heart, and spirit, human beings are compelled to seek answers.”

We’re hardwired to question. What a fucking relief, right, and I’m determined to run with this in 2018. I’m going to use my voice, speak my truth, and ask a shit-ton of questions. I’m making a New Year’s resolution a couple weeks late, but this blog is one place I’m going to be brave.

***

 

So back to those tears and those two wonderful books. It’s a bit strange. You see, I don’t cry a lot these days even though the the political climate of our country this past year has provided ample reasons. Maybe I’ve been stunned tearless.

Oh sure I dropped a few tears when I watched my granddaughter, Beauty, push into the world back in July. And I choked up when Peanut’s friend, Meg, got married over Christmas break. But mostly, I am dry-eyed during even the saddest movies and the most devastating books. Sometimes I scrunch my face up and hold my breath a little in an attempt to conjure up some tears; after all, I’ve cried on a dime, at the drop of a hat, without reason and gratuitously my entire life. My kids look to me for the tears they expect, and I feel like I’m letting everyone down when I can’t produce them.

The spontaneous and unexpected crying when I finished The Bright Hour surprised me. After all, I knew the book had been published posthumously. So why the waterworks?

Le Guin has an answer for me, for all of us. She writes, “A book that makes me cry the way music can or tragedy can—deep tears, the tears that come of accepting as my own grief the grief there is in the world—must have something of greatness about it.”

Yes, that’s what The Bright Hour did. It’s honesty and deep questioning made me “accept as my own grief, the grief there is in the world.” To do this, to accept the world’s grief is a calling.

And a gift.