Two Tables

Happy Valentines Day!!

Happy Valentines Day!!, originally uploaded by Darwin Bell on Flickr.com.

I've been wondering what I'd write about, what would pull me out of my literary torpor--and this image by my Flickr friend Darwin Bell did it.

I am a fan of hearts, both emotional and physical, and in fact try to live guided by the clarity of "the diamond in the eye of the heart." To remind myself I wear a white gold ring with a diamond in the center on my "wedding finger"--third finger left hand--even though I have only married my own heart.

My heart has been tender lately, a little on the achey side. If I were plotting the story of my life, I'd be pondering the open book that is the last major section. At 65 I need to learn to lay skillful offerings at the altar of Janus, as I look back at a past that delivered disappointments on the order of the proverbial elephant that demands to be eaten and as I stay open to a future that can still offer solid satisfactions and surely some pleasant surprises.

Staying in more than usual because of the rainy weather hasn't helped my heart. When I stay in too long, I get over-frugal with my own energy and don't venture out to the new places that excite my eye. I don't meet the strangers I so enjoy, and too often I pull back from deepening with the people already in my life. "They're too busy," I say. "I had him to dinner once; I don't know if he'd want to come back." Or I don't issue the invitation to the new acquaintance whose friendliness is already giving me so much pleasure. "Better leave well enough alone," I mutter to myself.

But Darwin's tincture of pink may be just the restorative I need right now. Accessible, imperfect, actual, off-center, it invites one in, says, "Come closer, you don't have to be afraid of me."

Things Are Looking Up

Firsts

(Some people have asked why this picture with this particular musing. If I say my friend Deb is fully alive, you'll understand at the end.)

I hadn't known what I would write about first here, what would summon my heart, what would be the first cracked twig or bruised moss on the forest floor to show me my direction this writing year. Firsts are important, and contain unfoldings.

And somehow I wind up at an online article about the recent Kennedy Center arts honorees, among whom was Bruce Springsteen. Bruuce. Who can't be 60 and who is.
Who wears his medal and ribbon almost as comfortably as a t-shirt and jeans.

And a YouTube video of him singing "Born To Run" in Turin, full of concert energy and heart and heat and joy. My eyes filled with tears and my tight, beleaguered heart let go into celebration, even as I asked, even as I wondered, "What could I have done if I had had my health? How large could I have been?"

I watched the crowd, surely swayed with them to the rhythm that held us all, knew myself to be smiling at the same time a cry was torn from me. Tears fell, as I went from video to video, from city to city, exulting in watching a supremely talented good man enact the magic that transmuted the art of performance into love given and received. I looked at the faces in the audiences. Each one beaming, a brighter than normal icon of its normal visage through which clearly shone a light that both reflects and attracts. I remember Iraneaus, the fourth-century Greek father who is noted for having said that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. May glimpsing and limning the glory that I just partook of and witnessed call me onward during this new year.

Location Envy

"10 Knots," originally uploaded by G a r r y on Flickr.com.

No, I did not take this photograph--and it typifies an extreme instance of a chronic, low-grade malady I usually battle with better than fair results: "Location Envy," otherwise known as "I don't have a car and there are only so many places I can get to in my power wheelchair."

I know the areas around my apartment building, my church, my HMO, my therapist's office, to and from our little downtown. I'll swear there's nothing left to see or photograph--but I take my camera anyway and sometimes, not always, I'm proven wrong and there's the stuff of magic there in front of me. But winter is settling in here in Northern California, which means more rain and generally cooler temperatures. I'll be staying inside more and won't be outside wandering around so much, a prospect I don't welcome with glee.

I can--and will--set about honing my skills inside, working on macros and interior abstracts, trying as William Blake would put it "to see Heaven in a grain of sand," but damn, I'd like to be able to take my camera to the wide vistas, both metaphoric and actual, that call my heart.

Birthday Eve

On the eve of my birthday I think about my family and remember the past, particularly my parents. I am older now than they were on the nights that comprise this memory and this image.

The City of Childhood: I

in the summer we lay at night

on blankets in my grandmother's yard

in the dark night filled

with stars stars and fireflies

night sounds of breezes and passing cars

long shadows on the lawn

we lay there

my mother my father and I

with my grandmother

and some of the men

who rented rooms

we lay there on the grass

on blankets and old quilts

resting there between the earth

and the night sky

the sky dark and solemn

bejeweled with stars

caught and held then as now

by the slow silent spin

of time and love

Anybody Home?

I keep coming back to this picture, and I don't get any where with it. I've finally figured out that I don't know if I'm on the outside trying to get an answer or inside deciding whether or not to respond. Am I the resident or the guest, the owner or the interloper in my own life?

I feel like the gestalt drawing: looked at one way it's a beautiful young girl, looked at another way it's a wizened old crone.

Increasingly, I'm noticing where change is sneaking up on me.

In a week I turn 65, which brings in its wake a life review and a preview of the life I'm likely to have in the time I have left. I have to accept that the life I have is the life I have and that "I'll live single all the days of my life." The dream that someday I would be someone's beloved has been hard to let go of. Now mostly it's a dull mute ache, and I truly do value the genuine affection of the people I know and who cherish me. As I realize, somewhat to my surprise, that I have even deeper yearnings--to speak forth what I see and know and am shown--"It's not the same" is a whispered truth I have no will to deny.

I've become vegetarian. The decision not to eat beef, pork, or poultry was almost effortless once I learned something about the factory farming of aminals; I'm having more difficulty fine-tuning what's right for me in terms of fish, dairy, and eggs. My instinct is to give up fish and eggs because how they are made available to us in this society still depends on creature suffering. We'll see.

I'm watching two special friends deal with the effects of aging on their health and mobility. My favorite (and only living) aunt is in very poor health, and I realize how much I'll miss her when she goes. I realize how much I'll miss my friends as their mobility becomes more circumscribed--and know that it's also myself I'll miss as the yet-unknown effects of aging take their toll on my already difficult (not necessarily "bad," mind you, but difficult) circumstances.

"Knock-knock." "Who's there?" "Change." "Change who?" "That's up to you."

Whether it is or it isn't up to me, I'm home and I'm going to answer the door.