You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Gentleness is a Virtue Too' tag.
Lean woman, near eighty, with the weight of wisdom and the lightness of humility seeming almost to carry her, themselves. This is one of the great moments of my life, seeing a great woman from a near distance, hearing her with my own ears. I have not outlived her yet, and will never, I know. And she loves Hafiz. Of course, of course. Here is one she didn’t read, but I read. It’s from her newest collection, Thirst, from a poem called “More Beautiful Than the Honey Locust Tree are the Words of the Lord”:
7.
I had such a longing for virtue, for company.
I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear.
I wanted to read and serve, to touch the altar linen.
Instead I went back to the woods where not a single tree
turns its face away.
Instead I prayed, oh Lord, let me be something
useful and unpretentious.
Even the chimney swift sings.
Even the cobblestones have a task to do, and do it well.
Lord, let me be a flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.
Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone
brave and kind, whose name I will never know.
There’s a lot to be said and learned and unlearned about forgiveness, how it doesn’t necessarily mean reconciliation but necessarily means some sort of recovery of equilibrium. in oneself. I need to learn what it means and how to do it. I think Jesus may have some things to say about it, things to do about it. I’m ready for it I think. you look around and relationships are splintering beyond any control, you hear the tough fibers cracking like gunshots in the still air and watch the building you built leaning and falling into the ground with the calmness of a dream … I don’t know whether it’s as final as all that, I don’t know that what feels like a tree dying is just one larger lower branch shearing down the trunk as it goes, I don’t know that what’s diseased should be kept alive at all costs. you feel you need to start over, sometimes, from where you are now.
Last night as Marshall, Natalie, Matt and I were leaving the Mexican restaurant in Maryville, a little white-haired old lady with white capris and a floweredy shirt was leaving and fell on her hands and knees on the grass. She’d obviously been drinking too much and laughed it off as she kind of weaved toward the parking lot by herself, and it didn’t hit me until I noticed Matt and Natalie watching her intently that she was walking toward a van with keys in her hand … we walked out together toward her and Matt came up to her just as she was getting ready to close her car door and asked her if she was alright, if she needed someone to drive her home. Embarrassed as hell, laughing, patting her hair, “it’s these shoes” and “oh I’ll be fine!” as she smiled and waved, closed her door and drove away. I have brave friends, and I hope she was alright and just embarrassed enough not to do it again,but you don’t know. you don’t know how it ends, when someone says “no, thank you” and closes the door. you don’t know what happens after.
I’ve read this today: Art is the only way to run away without leaving home (Twyla Tharp). I’ve painted and missed a meeting and been living here in my house all evening, from the sun going down to the moon coming up. I dream all day every day of what it would be like to be making art again, to be living at home in beautiful dresses again and saying what I think out loud. As soon as things let up a little, I’m going to get my little factory together and become an artist. As soon as I can run away a little in my soul, I’m going to, and maybe other people will be inspired to run away, too, looking at what I make. I’m thinking of things like photographs with too much light, or too little, with lots of velvety shadows or pale, husk-dry reflections. (Yes I’ve been looking around on Tumblr again … and they’re all 18 year-old girls, the ones with these photoblogs of the mysteries of life. Strange.)
I’m thinking about quilts, small ones, ones made of the dear pants I’ve just had to retire and all the outlines in my head of boats, birds, wheels, branches, all things passe and lovely because they still mean things to me, things I will write about while I’m sewing and think and think about even after. I’m thinking about oil pastels, all the color laid on so thick, and how a rich red one would look on the walls of the Blue Garrett. I’m so lonely today, not sad, just so alone and I’m used to it … I just forgot I was, for a while. I feel like I’m walking around so lightly in this dress that I’ve worn for two weeks, like it was made for me, and all the things that were so overwhelming this morning are gone for now because … what can one do, really, to avert disaster at 11:02 at night? And what can one do to avert disaster, anyway?
It’s a strange mix, today, of being aware and being unaware of God. I think it’s been a failure, overall, because I’ve worried so much, and worried some more. I can never tell where a healthy honesty of emotion runs over into an unhealthy disbelief or wallowing. Well, actually, I can. Just not today. But it must mean something that tonight is so still and peaceful, at least it’s still, and I’m not crying anymore. Oh, I have to go for my first six-month check-up at Dr. McDonald’s in two weeks (got the appointment reminder in the mail today), and that’s one reason I was worrying. I opened it and started to cry, because, I don’t know? What if they ask me something about my job (and I get kicked out of the program), or the appointment is expensive, or I have another cyst? Nothing can be averted at 11:09 at night, though, and nothing can be averted. God is holding this in his hand I must believe.
Where is my Mark Jarman book, To the Green Man? “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” Everyone in the world is flying to Wales for the Green Man Festival and I am at home worrying and pale. But it does feel pretty good to write everything down. Some color is coming back. I know I need God more than I need anything, and that he is here.
One more thing is that I miss Marshall, who is still hiking the A.T. with his brother. I thought he was coming back today, and at noon or something he sent a text that said (wait, I will find it, I must find it, you will love it): “Im hikin w Taylor n Virginia on the A.T. We just had lunch at 5,000 ft. Lunch today was peperjack cheese, summer sausage, whiskey, and a camel lite for desert” (sic). At the time I thought that sounded delish, except for the camel lite, but now I realize my brain was adding some kind of bread or crackers in there … you see there is none. Maybe the whiskey stood in well enough for the carbs. So, he’s having fun. Glad for that, for all that fun, for the fun that is happening out there, somewhere, “n Virginia.” I seem to be very happy about that, that fun. I appear, even now, to be smiling, oh whatever it’s a grimace damn why do people get to have fun WITHOUT MEEEEE, why. I hope they sprain their ankles, all four. I hope everyone will be miserable until I start having fun.
I guess I need to stop blogging and go to bed.
Today, well, right now as a matter of fact, I am eating grapes and a pita with cheddar melted on it and throwing Patrick off the table for the fourth time in as many minutes. How would he like it if I walked all over his kitchen table with no shoes on. I ask. Not him, because he will not learn English.
Today is another day filled with things like dropping off a resume, depositing a check, writing a check, mailing a check, writing letters, finishing a book. It’s raining, has been all morning since I’ve been cognizant, and it blows through cold. It’s another one of those days that is necessarily a progression of miscellaneous pieces, but that I want to be connected by a single idea. Lived against the background of a single song. I’m measuring my life by pieces, now, smaller and smaller, but I can’t give up on a single connecting strand, sinewy, tougher.
The vent in the floor is blowing the leaves of my small dark houseplant against the strings of the guitar set in the corner, playing mostly an E flat but sometimes a C. It’s like the chimes I grew up listening to on windy days, brass tubes strung with clear plastic string in a circle, clattering, or singing, or clattering, or singing. There’s a connecting strand, here, hearing the central heat making music. These chance sounds I would almost rather listen to than anything else.
I finished Cold Mountain by Frazier this morning, and was surprised. I want to be stronger. And so, I will be. I will look back and see miles, I will look forward and see miles, too. I will learn what suffering has to teach, and there’s a lot of joy, there.
