Stream of Consciousness

Easy Instructions for Any and Every Writer

                                                                                      

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
                —Mary Oliver

Current of Life

                                                   

And so, for the first time in my life perhaps I took the lamp, and went down to my inmost self. But as I moved further and further from the conventional certainties, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me... and when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came—arising I know not whence—the current which I dare to call my life.

—Teilhard de Chardin

A Day Like Any Other Summer Day

It's almost sultry here in Oregon as I type these words, sitting outside listening to the temple bells make their music to my ears. I'm alone this week with J. down in Corvallis. And I'm thinking more about Cynthia, and how much I've missed her wise e-mail counsel and conversation and daily updates. It's a week since she's been gone. 

 Cynthia and I met in a community chorus in Corvallis. The serendipity of two altos ending up standing next to one another to sing everything from Agnus Dei to songs of Bob Marley and the musical, Hair, became an eleven-year friendship of ladies lunches and art house movies and book swapping and even passing along my New Yorker subscription on a regular basis. Whenever we met, we had interesting, surprising conversations that left me with more food for thought. A smart and wise writer, she regularly wrote letters to the editor about what mattered to her—the environment, alternative health care options, peace and justice. She tended our cats and watered our flowers when we travelled out of town. She didn’t have much money—including no car and a subsidized apartment in low-income housing—but she lived one of the richest lives I have ever seen, splendid in its emotional generosity, its good humor, its peaceful and exuberant grace. She was making art—cards and letters to send her wide circle of friends—until the week before the tumors that had spread to her brain laid her so low she could no longer get out of  bed.

In this week since Cynthia’s leave-taking of this earth, I have fumbled around a lot. Words I’ve used include rattled. Shaken. Out-of-sorts. In spite of knowing for months that her end was near, and her death very much conscious and by conscious choice. I suppose some of this is that, in spite of my own middling middle age, I am not yet ready to face mortality, the finality that is both the blessing and blessed curse of our humanity, in the way my dying friend joyfully was.

Yesterday afternoon at the Sunday Parkways event in Alberta Park, there was a gospel choir. All women, all filled with song and praise and the holy. From their first notes, I could do nothing but weep. The group's leader, Prophetess Gloria, hugged me afterwards. You could feel the power of her faith coursing through her after that hour of glorious hosannas. I felt grateful for the music, its soulfulness, but also the reminder that too often I forget what is under my nose, ripe for my picking, ever eager for embrace. And that something as life-changing and profound as a true friendship can begin simply because two people end up standing next to one another to sing alto in a community chorus, just for fun.

Sunset

                                                    

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

—Henry David Thoreau

Last night, I dreamed of being on the ferry from Mukilteo to Whidbey Island in Washington. It was crowded with people, what I imagine it might feel like to travel in steerage, and the weight of all the passengers made the ferry ride so low that it almost seemed as if we would take on water and perhaps start to sink. But we made it to shore and disembarked and the crowds dispersed and there were plants and trees and sand and a quiet road to walk to wherever it is we were trying to go.

A dear friend died last evening. This has been coming for a while as she chose not to be treated any longer for the cancer which had spread to her brain. She embraced—there is no other word for it—the experience of leaving this world with joy and curiosity. Thanks to a loving and hard-working circle of family and friends, she was able to stay at home, and die at home in peace, in a bed that we gave her (along with my infamous pink Ithaca couch!) a number of years back when she first moved into her apartment. Even though I wasn't able to be there in person, I'd like to think I was there, holding her metaphoric hand, having a final conversation or ladies lunch, and, of course, wishing her godspeed and well.

She was far from afraid as she crossed over on the ferry to whatever is next. Welcoming the whole journey, really. Not concerned about the waves, the wind, the tides, the choppy water, what she might find on the other shore. I have so much to learn from her example. I suppose we all do.

July 3rd...Summer in the City?

Sun, heat, sultry, for this part of the world. I'm back from travel to the Northeastern United States. Best part was the Jean Shin exhibit in D.C. There's no place like home, that's for sure. I did get to see the Shepherd Fairey Barack Obama HOPE poster while in our nation's capital as well, at the National Portrait Gallery. This is the first photograph I ever took with my teenager cell phone. Kind of sucks but hey, you had to be there. And I was and that was the image-making device I had.