You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Moment-Made-Eternity' tag.
“Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!” (28).
…
“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them” (33-34).
…
“Sex is difficult; yes. But they are difficult things that were laid upon us; almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious. … Men have made even eating into something else: want on the one hand, excess upon the other have obscured the distinctness of this necessity, and all the deep, simple urgencies in which life renews itself have become similarly obscured. But the individual…can remind himself that all beauty in animals and plants is a quiet enduring form of love and desire, and he can see animals, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and increasing and growing not out of physical delight, not out of physical suffering, [but] bending to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain and more powerful than will and withstanding” (34-36).
This morning as I opened my front door to charge off into the day, I saw two cardboard boxes on our welcome mat, no names or signs, but filled with food. One box had a half gallon of orange juice, a pint of half & half, a lb of strawberries, a pint of Green’s Amber Ale, a huge bag of lentils, smaller bags of pumpkin seeds, almonds and cashews, a box of Annie’s macaroni mix, two boxes of Luna’s and Lärabar energy bars, a can of coconut milk, two lbs of basmati rice, what seems to be about two/three lbs of “Farmer’s Cheese,” and single cans of garbanzo beans, great northern beans, cannellini, kidney beans, salad beans and “soup beans.” The other box held bags of eight Pink Lady apples, seven yellow onions, ten new potatoes, two honeycrisp apples, one green pear and two red pears and a smallish orange gourd of some sort.
This at a time when I needed it. Yesterday I was thinking about how it felt impossible to eat well, because stocking up a pantry is expensive at the outset, and about all I have right now is flour. So someone brings all this food, and my first impulse is to run around the neighborhood asking “did you bring this?” Because a) I don’t deserve it, and b) I feel a tiny nudge of outrage when I’d prepared myself to be overlooked and suddenly it’s obvious that I am noticed. Isn’t it strange that I can be upset with God at allowing me to be poor and then upset when it becomes clear that all my wanderings are only inside His garden.
I put it all on the couch with a sign for Claire and Brittany (“Girls! Look!!”) and left the house, crossing the street in a river of golden air. After all our rain, the piercingly blue mornings are visiting us in East Tennessee and as I got to my car I noticed it was covered in tiny white fuzzy aphids. In dry seasons of the soul, every grace seems stranger than possible, but when I am awakening I am not surprised to find that living flakes of snow have slept on my car all night long. I am not surprised to find their legs and backs like ice crystals and like cotton.
Walking downtown, then, from free parking in the Old City up to Coffee & Chocolate, I pass an old man combing his long beard and another man who nods and says “what’s happenin’ sister.”
You look back on past days with nostalgia, realizing that a certain year in which you pinched and scraped, or cried a lot, maybe every night, was the year you went the most places and lived the most deeply. You remember it and wish you’d realized its depth of color at the time. This morning, walking down Gay Street, I did this. It was partly the fall morning, partly all the colors and the extravagant gift on the doorstep, partly the moving toward grad school and partly having Marshall as a dearest friend, all this, wading through it like I’d escaped the mental hospital and was wandering through a Narnian wood. Via wardrobe. I believe in wardrobes, you know.
If I can start expecting the world to be closed to me and then get a huge box of clothes in the mail from KG & Emily, boxes of food on the doorstep, a free bus ticket to Nashville to see Mary Oliver & my Great Friends, letters and checks here and there from unexpected quarters at unexpected times, then it seems I will have to keep turning. And by turning, I mean turning on my axis or on my stem, following my new understanding of the working of the universe like I am turning my leaves to the sun. Turning as in turning into the person that is turning into the right kind of person, the kind that is able to expect miracles every day, and is not surprised to find them, not surprised to have to wait for them either because of the certainty that they are there, the certainty that I will find them if they are ready to be found.
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.
This is me, Marshall and Matt stopping at the coffee shop in Asheville that is a red double-decker bus. I’m getting Marshall because he was awkward for the camera.
The Dripolator has moved since the last time I was here, and this is the new digs. Well, actually, I guess this is mostly me and Natalie. Marshall takes lots of covert shots, which is hard to do when your camera is the size of an oven.
The next day Jaden had a birthday party ***correction: un-birthday party*** and there was watermelon. This is me being awkward for the camera while trying to take care of this extraordinary treat (watermelon).
Julian of Norwich, medieval anchorite, has been something like a dear friend for more than five years, now. I discovered her while reading a neighboring Margery Kempe excerpt in a Norton Anthology and I still remember the urgency and eternity of that moment, much like the moment I was listening to an Innocence Mission song and realized that it was a G. M. Hopkins poem. Julian: late at night leaning over the desk in my dorm room, underlining every “all shall be most well,” copying passages into my journal; Innocence Mission: Carla’s “Befriended” on Carla’s stereo & me running across the white-carpeted room to turn it up. Marriages of these loves of mine are things that make the beauty of living hard to believe, in spite of everything.
This morning I pulled out this little magenta paperback, “Daily Readings with Julian of Norwich,” and took it with me on a walk. With some tea. I slept later than I wanted to, and the weight of my life — the sense of it no less than the confusion — seemed very heavy and I wanted to hear just one word, one secret that would be alongside. I read this: “He lays upon every one he longs to bring into his bliss something that is no blame in his sight, but for which they are blamed and despised in this world — scorned, mocked and cast out. He does this to offset the harm they should otherwise have from the pomp and vainglory of this earthly life, and to make their road to him easier” (55).
The language is archaic, but the idea here, that there are heavy things we’re carrying that God brought/allowed in order to “make our road to him easier,” this is unarchaic, this is a piece of eternity. I was walking on a bridge when I read this and am reading it still, in my mind, and the hours are passing. I think she means self-contempt every bit as much as other sorts, and the idea that I’m my own outcast more often than anyone else’s informs my understanding of it, too: for this reason (making the road to God easier) I’m allowed a propensity toward self-accusation. Isn’t that amazing. And it does make my road to him easier,
which road, for me, is desperate persistence. Sometimes desperation without persistence, sometimes persistence without desperation: God is kind to people who don’t know to be desperate and don’t care to be persistent. Me being in both categories. And having known that kindness. Just a thought that I had when I was writing an email to you, Katie.
I’ve started to daydream again about journals, after a long drought, and you’ll never guess what. Yes, I am indeed resurrecting the Grey Goose … partly because Marshall just read A Severe Mercy for the first time and we visited the Vanauken’s church in Virginia a couple of weekends ago, and partly because I saw the category “Grey Goose Journals” in my Etsy shop so sadly empty and I realized it did not have to be sadly empty. I’ve been inspired by Chloe’s sister’s fabric pieced birds … and think I’m going to try and piece these birds, which I found on the very first page of Google images: “grey goose bird.” This will the be the first book I’ve done as art in a while … I’m so, so excited. It will have to be expensive because I’m not sure I’ll want to sell it.
The problem here is durability. If I were gluing these pieces to a canvas board, all’s well; since I have to sew them to a book, which is at least meant to be opened, closed, crammed, thrown, hit, kissed & caressed, I have to come up with some fairly practical methods which will more than likely cramp my style. You can lift your glass and toast me, here. It will be an endeavour. In fact, please lift your glasses, please call me and take me out for a glass, let’s all have a glass.
I want to update, especially since I just wandered over to the “blog stats” and saw there was a spike in views, lately, but I have no idea what to say. Except that I feel like I always do after something very big or strange happens, like I don’t have thoughts yet, only these currents of things vaporous or translucent enough to almost be missed, which of course stills me like a pointing blue-tick hound at their slight shapes, slight colors, slight movements. I mean I point, innnerly, or am moving forward like the squirrels I always see, always, through my window in the backyard, heading somewhere in starts and stops, every pause strung tight enough to snap the next step like a rubber band, or something, geez. I mean … what in the world? I went with M to Max Patch last night and Asheville was lighting up the horizons, damn city, all the way around, and shooting stars, a few. I’m moving in the direction of something I’ve not really seen before, I think, not seen with my own eyes, or the eyes of my own heart. Stops and starts, mostly stops, but also starting and maybe a better image is the robin, moving instead with long pauses and short running steps, looking, always incredulous. I kept saying “slight” up there but mean it in the way your neice’s wrist is slight, which is like a matchstick and like a hand sqeezing your heart, when she moves in a certain way, in a certain light, and looks at you. Hm. Something perhaps like that.
1.
Day 113 of My Life as an Unemployed Person dawned lovely (I only know this because it was clear and piercing when I woke up, late, to the nice but repetitive song of a bird in one of the many trees overshadowing our backyard), it dawned lovely and I didn’t get out of the house and on my way till noon, after conferring at length with myself, my closet (which is a cupboard, currently), and my mirror (in that order) on proper attire, unlocked my bike, and was off! to Coffee & Chocolate.
Coffee & Chocolate may be my favorite Knoxville coffee shop, partly because its windows look out on monstrous Bradford pears, maples and dogwoods (which several trees are collectively called “Krutch Park”), partly because I don’t see anyone I know (or have met) here and that reminds me of some of my most intensely good hours, at coffee shops in Nashville. I grew up, to a certain extent, in Nashville, where I lived solitary much of the time, and would jump on my bike when I needed to get away and be alone and go to a coffee shop. Whether Fido or J-J’s, I opened the door flushed and flustered from the ride, stepped in and became ensconced in a private garden of thoughts and wonderings. Once they even played The Innocence Mission for an hour at J-J’s.
As a child, I would go lose myself in the woods, or take a walk down silent country streets, sky tall and branches, always everywhere, like personal ambulatories. When I was in Nashville for school, I didn’t venture into unknown country … or rarely, at least. So Fido, Bongo Java, J-J’s — each came home in me and I knew them and their different personalities. Since moving back to Knoxville I’ve ignorantly despaired of finding coffee places to come home to and then actually had the guts to call them and see what they were doing, and now we hang out and this one, Coffee & Chocolate, on the corner of Market Square, far enough away from both it and Gay Street, glass cases of enormous haystacks, truffles, gourmet s’mores, Nipples of Venus, I love. Even the baristas here seem a safe distance from Gay Street, Market Square, even the Old City, which I’m more thankful for all the time.
So here I am, a cool spring day, with so much to think about, so much to process. The wind is ruffling everyone so rowdily, but they’re all so full of light they don’t mind. Spring is here, and if we don’t hope for rebirths and resurrections, then what on earth? So we do. And besides, the trees are throwing petals at our feet.
2.
Day 113 is unfolding almost without creases, hour by hour. As I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum (which I left at Marshall’s last night and am absolutely wroth that I’m not reading the last twenty pages of right now) I see something coming through the shadowy back of yet another page of my palimpsest heart. Which is the point, and I feel very conflicted at times about finding myself coming round to an author’s point (thank you Foucault), but I can’t argue with this. This book has to do with wit, of course, but also memory, or what may happen when the complex and badly-repaired soul is shown an actual event, when the memory and thousand intricate adjustments of the years have written a subjective history over it. And the subjective histories are so important, no matter how different from the Actual Events of our living (which are…?) … how shocking, how dizzying to see blooming from behind the outlines of a lost memory. Why is there so much grief, there? Are all lost memories waiting to be called, are all lost moments, lost people? This idea in Behind the Scenes of a metaphysical Lost-and-Found at the back of eternity is compelling for the same reason Hopkins’ promise in the Leaden & Golden Echo is (“kept far with fonder a care”). And I don’t need to explain that, to anyone.
Somehow I’ve lost memories of my childhood, and high school is losing itself like days, except by bunches, months at a time. All the time my sister and I could have had together, stolen or lost and my pages of Nashville memories with her are being inexorably written over, letter by letter, I can’t stop it. Where are the years I missed of little sisters, growing up? Why are memories of grandparents only coming through at edges, indecipherable, incapable of being made into words? Where is Grace Hoomes?
And I say the words in my head, “Why does life have to be about loss,” but then I know that it’s not about loss—it is loss; it’s about recovery. I believe this so firmly I feel like Nike of Samothrace (plus head and arms) for the blink of an eye. The drawing of a breath, beating of the heart. If there’s something that’s about food, it’s hunger, and I’m compelled.
3.
Now I’m reading Mark Jarman’s Epistles again. What is my writing style? I read Atkinson (Mitford, etc.) and write with a terse British clip … Jarman and I lengthen sentences with commas and saturated nouns … Woolf and I try to make long swathes of silk that change into water and back into silk.
1.
Today, instead of taking I-40 into the city
I felt my bones and the knots behind
my eyes, saw the sun near setting,
and exited onto highway 129. I couldn’t
leave the sun near setting anymore,
today. So instead of going home I drove
away from the city and went wherever
the warm wind boxing my ears and the
sun said, which was through Alcoa,
through Maryville, through Townsend,
to the mountains.
2.
I’m wondering why I haven’t
done this before, because
it’s taking my inmost secret box out
and opening it,
by the water. Red anklestraps blushing
by the water, the Little River
coolly moving on, its crowds
streaming by the green firs
and still-bare maples, poplars,
sycamores,
some birches.
3.
Lord, give me a thought
to think.
4.
I want to be old
already,
dry and breaking and able
to immensely
laugh
at the change of light
with evening, the change
of riverbanks
with rivers.
There must be someone some
where with the peace
of a river, whose mouth
is this wide, laugh
is this loud,
whose banks are piles
of the fractured body and
whose body
is supple
and runs with light.
