The Flame Tree

The Flame Tree Branches Out

Dear Readers, 

I've recently started to collaborate on a new blog with an artist.  The artist does the art; and I do the writing. I will still be writing here in my occasional way, but please meander sometime over to Little Shoes that Rhyme:

www.littleshoesthatrhyme.typepad.com

It's not Johnny Cash reading the entire New Testament or anything (which I recently downloaded and am amazed by), but who knows it might help get you through the day.

*

(Click here and search for Johnny Cash Reading the New Testament)

A mid-afternoon memory

When we lived in Kenya, we lived in a cottage. The front door of the cottage, two French doors actually, opened directly into the living room. There was no entry way or place for shoes. When visiting or arriving people opened the French doors, they said Hello!?? to find us, or Hi! if we were sitting right there or, if the person was Bradley---who often drove our car and did the complicated Kenyan errands like paying the electric bill and finding peanut butter hours before an intercontinental flight----he would knock twice politely then step in and start chatting.

One afternoon, the baby, who was really a baby then, fell asleep while I was nursing him in the living room, and I didn't want to wake him so I didn't move. I just sat there on the couch looking out the window as he slept, thinking: This is really boring and slightly tedious but someday, when this baby is going off to college or getting married or being a solider and marching off to war, when I am weeping for this grown brave man, I will remember this moment and yearn for it. 

So I continued to sit there. Then I remembered that Bradley was to return soon, and he would knock and walk in, and wake the baby! Without upsetting the baby, I reached for my phone, and texted with my one free hand to Bradley to approach quietly when he returned because the baby was asleep. 

A while later, still sitting there on the couch with the sleeping baby and the view out the window and the afternoon in Africa, I heard a peculiar sound in the front drive. The gravel crunching, but otherwise silence. I couldn't turn my head enough to see----I couldn't quite turn my head enough, but I felt something approaching my vision, I couldn't turn my head enough---- until into view came the creeping car, its engine off its gears in neutral, being pushed into the driveway, every so silently, by Bradley.

Upheaval --- gift from the Sea

"I have not simply made the piece to be destroyed by the sea. The work has been given to the sea as a gift. And the sea has taken the work and made more of it than I could ever have hoped for. 

And I think that if I could see in that way, as an understanding... those things that happen to us in life that change our lives, that cause upheavals and shock.... [trails off, pauses, sighs] ... I cant explain that..."

Andy Goldsworthy, from the film Rivers & Tides (2000), discussing his art pictured above.

Part of the Beauty of Being Here

1. On sunny warm days, the Norwegians come out wearing hardly anything and they lounge around reading the paper and drinking coffee from a thermos, or they sit against a barn with their faces to the sun and eyes closed, or they lie on the rocky beach like basking seals.

2. Part of the beauty of being here is that I understand nothing going on around me. My husband's family speaks perfect English, but naturally they speak Norwegian to each other, and it's in the little comments and slights and nudges that any family's drama lies. And here, I know none of it. There is no strife or bitterness or irritation or exasperation in this family! It's all just happy people speaking a sing-songy Muppet language.

3. There is thunder and rain at night. The days are crisp, already autumnal---the slightest, dusky-summer nostalgia feeling crept in last week. One of the sister's left yesterday for school. The trees whoooosh in the wind. The wind through the forest sounds like ocean waves crashing. The shadows lengthen. I have a familiar feeling that I should be somewhere getting ready for something, and I'm not.

4. Children here run down hills, ride tractors, feed pigs apples from the trees, chase barn cats, climb ladders, scratch their knees, search for trolls, get scared of bugs, eat ice cream, pick raspberries, weed gardens, cut grass, pester the dog, get barked at by the dog, go to town, eat fish, and don't  (we feel obliged to remind them) know how lucky they are.

5. A month, I am here to remind you, can be a very long time. That's good news when you're 41 years old with two small children living in New York City and always saying, Where does the time go Where does the time go Where does it go?

becoming home

Yesterday, I went out for a long walk after the children were asleep. I took a left at the end of the drive and went up the hill and through the little patch of woods at the top of the hill. I passed the bathtub half full of murky summer rain, and wondered again why it was there, and continued along the farm road, thinking about the Midwest, and England, and Kenya and Tanzania and Rwanda, and Normandy, and how this walk reminded me one way or another of all those places----Tanzania without the people; Normandy without the cows; the Midwest without the pick-up trucks, etc.

I came to the intersection and took a left and passed another farm, and wondered why they had cut the trees in the woods over there, and when, and remembered the time we bought ice cream that time when the girl was just a baby. I wondered about winter on these farms, and I wondered if I would ever write again; if I even wanted to; and if not, what I would do with my life instead. Tiny little frogs stood still in the road and how I wanted to pick up each one and toss it into the tall, safe grass. It would take all night to do that, and when I finished I would have to turn around and begin again, because they keep coming and coming and coming. Is there something Biblical about tiny frogs swarming before the deluge? O but they are sweet----I want to take one home and shellack it and perch it on a shelf forever---and I hate seeing the unfortunate smudge they leave on the road. They must be very dumb. They sit on the pavement all evening, frozen next to their squished comrades, and they don't even leap away when I try to scare them into the grass.

I turned around. The setting sun was bright on the horizon. A car passed, eerily slow. There was a fire burning by the side of a barn, and the smell reminded me of rural Tanzania. I passed the bathtub and entered the grove at the top of the hill and began to descend. There was M.'s family house up ahead on the right. It seemed quiet and still; the generations teeming within----the siblings and spouses and children and grandchildren and dogs---were not evident from here. Way up ahead on the road the Landrover was approaching: BestePapa and Little Sister returning from Oslo. I watched it approach, "I know that car," I thought, "But they won't recognize me from there." I walked and walked and they drove and drove and we were still quite far apart when they reached the driveway and, to my surprise, the horn sounded. Two arms came out of the car windows waving. "They know me!" I thought, and I waved back madly, madly, and they continued up the driveway and I continued walking, home.

Norway

Baaker, 9pm. 

It's late in the evening and the sky is light and soft and gentle. Before I spent time here in the summer, I thought the weirdness of the day's eternal light would unsettle me. But actually, it's lovely and relaxing. The day's unspooling lasts for hours---one is never tired, never rushed.

We are here for the month. I haven't written in a long time. The children are asleep in the next room; M. is around, he's been obsessed with emptying the barn. BestePapa and an older grandson are in the back woods making a sound that I thought was a clumsy deer in the brush until I heard a male voice speak. They must be cutting or clearing or something.  There's always a project of that nature going on, some chore that seems to have survival at its very core.

New York feels a million miles away, almost like it never happened.

April was a journey back

There was something about last month---oh you vicious little April---that reminded me of an overland trip I took years ago from Boston to a remote village in Guatemala. There were many diversions on that journey, it grew increasingly hot and humid, I didn't really know where I was going, or why I was going there. It had a lot of texture, that journey. I set off in a car with a boyfriend. After crossing several weeks, and much varied landscape and personal drama, I arrived, by bus without the boyfriend, at a little pension in the remote village in time for lunch.

There were mattresses in the bright, hot courtyard; many cats lounged on the mattresses. I was the only foreigner in town. The bus had ascended out of Quetzaltinango and was soon passing pine trees, which felt sadly familiar to me, alone on that bus. After lunch I started walking out of town. I followed a dirt road up a formidable hill. I reached the top and looked down at the valley. Across the valley, someone was playing a Simon and Garfunkel song on the marimbas. I came all this way to hear Simon and Garfunkel? I wondered. I stood at the top of the hill looking at the life and the beauty in the valley, thought about some things, then turned around; descended the hill to the pension with the cats; spent the night; and the next morning began my return trip back to Boston.

It's shame that flight has obliterated the slow, thoughtful arc of travel from one place to another. It was such a shock to deplane in tropical back-water Uganda, for example, having lifted off a Newark tarmac less than 24 hours previous. It took weeks to adjust to the brutal change in temperature and disposition. But the feeling of arrival in Central America, having never lifted off the earth----well, there was no feeling of arrival, really. More a continuous series of steps, without beginning or end. Yes, the gradual shifting of climate, and human disposition and style and even language---never feeling totally severed from the folks back home---feeling the connection of it all, is really something worth knowing.

And that was April, the journey from one land to another, without having ever left the ground. We embarked with the best intentions. The solemn beauty of Holy Week. We painted eggs! and watched the seals at the zoo. And received flowers and the most decorous party hats. Many cupcakes. Many circuses---elephants danced and humans did flips on wire. We crossed hill and dale. It was overcast. It was so windy it was painful to walk up the street. It became very dark. I couldn't see anything. Everyone was very sad until one day we arrived at the street where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Gorgeous. It went from freezing rain to sweltering heat wave. A man in a booth told our fortunes for a quarter. We were very tired of traveling. Everyone was speaking a different language, that was disorienting. The horses seemed perhaps a bit abused. The tigers in the cages---don't they make you sad? Don't you long for a prehistoric time when tigers reigned free? And the children from China and West Africa doing contortions--they're smiling, but something feels off. And then it was raining again, and the umbrellas were gone where we had left them, and more disturbing the three year old boy was not in his bed. There he is, asleep on the bathroom floor! Will this month ever end? Will we ever arrive? With all the ladies lunches and blood donations and picnics in the park---with the mad woman tossing plates of lettuce---and it is still sweltering. A tank filled with sharks, beach sand on the apartment floor, sunburns. Perhaps it is July? Did I miss something? Did I actually not get out of bed, were the cherry blossoms all a dream?

And then, my word, May Day arrives. Make a wish. Make a list. Shhh listen,----is that a Simon and Garfunkel song playing in the park? Think some thoughts. We made it, destination-less. Turn around. Start the journey home.

Celestial Music

by Louise Gluck

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks
    to god,
she thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth, she's unusually competent.
 Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling
    over it.
I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to
    oppose vitality.
But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
according to nature. For my sake she intervened,
brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across
    the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else
    explains
my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries
    her head in the pillow
so as to not see, the child who tells herself
that light causes sadness---
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person---
In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
on the same road, except it's winter now;
she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial
    music:
look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height---
then I'm afraid for her; I see her
caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth---

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact
that we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar
    doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something
    beautiful, an image
capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the
    composition
fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering---
it's this stillness that we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings

(Above, "4am flowers," thanks Gib)

Telling the Story

One for the writers.

"Telling the Story" means, in this series I'm writing on faith, how our stories intersect with the Gospel. But that task is beyond me, so I'll just write what I know.

Creating something from nothing:
1. Write what you know.

I just glanced at the digital clock on my computer. It read 11:11 and I made a wish. I won't tell you the wish---it won't come true if I tell you!---but I will suggest that it had something to do with  pleading and begging for help in the effort of creating something from nothing. It's the same wish I've made for the last 100 years.
 
I recently watched a wonderful talk by Amy Tan entitled, Where does creativity hide? She has good, solid, methodical advice. How do we create, you wonder? How, out of nothing, does something come? By miracles, she says. And God's will, serendipity, luck, fate, coincidence, and accidents.

2. Miracles and God's will.

Last week I was walking.

There were a whole lot of stories and words and thoughts and ideas and justifications and explanations and memories and concerns going through my mind when I came, after an hour of walking, to the wall along the rocky cove.

I stopped and for a moment the stories, words, thoughts, ideas, justifications, explanations, memories and concerns stopped too. Along the top of the wall there was a series of stone sculptures. Each with its own message: very simple and quirky and harmonious and gentle. (The sculptures are pictured here). It had the startling effect of coming upon a cave painting after crossing a desert alone for five years. Suddenly there was a message. Here was language, someone whispering to me. Here was language at its most startling and perfect.

It was language and it was telling me to please be quiet and, for once, just listen.

3. Listen.

A friend writes: courage. It takes courage. Most of the world, I believe, does not like the messy dark enclaves of creation---the birthing, the drama, the agony. Most of the world is perfectly happy to sequester the imagination away and be done with it. (My son is three and has, we are discovering, quite an imagination. This is a mother's dream, you think. But even I have noted certain unexpected  emotions within. Yesterday, as usual dressed as a pirate in silk Chinese Pajamas and a big black hat, carrying a piece of cardboard he found on the street and claiming it was his fish, with pink-painted  fingernails, my son flopped down in the sand under the slide among all the Upper East Side carefully-dressed children and lay there supine, singing. I thought, Where will this go? Will he have a life of rejection for his outlandish ways? Would it not be easier, I thought even then, to be a banker in a suit?)

The messy dark enclaves of creation; courage. Why did I go to Africa? I've been wondering lately. Partly because of this: here is a place on earth where the realm of imagination has not yet been banished. Here, because it is dark at night, and because people without education believe in spirits, and because people without medicine must pray desperately to God---here the imagination still roams. It can be quite scary and spooky and exhilarating and dangerous. 

4. Courage

Annie Ernaux writes of her jealousy of another woman in her book The Possession: "This woman filled my head, my chest, and my gut; she was always with me, she took control of my emotions. At the same time, her omnipresence gave my life a new intensity. It produced stirrings that I had never felt before, release a kind of energy, powers of imagination I didn't know I had; it held me in a state of constant feverish activity.
    "I was, in both sense of the word, possessed.

    "This state kept my daily troubles and cares at bay. In a way, it placed me outside the grip of life's usual mediocrity..."

We have felt this way, in one way or another: an intensity of feeling, a possession. It can be anger or pain or joy. The intensity brings us outside the grip of life's usual mediocrity.

Outside the grip of life's usual mediocrity. It is ultimately irresponsible, and can be an addictive way to live. It is ultimately destructive, but sometimes necessary too.

5. Possession

There is such imbalance in the world. The weather is disturbed. Tons of money is going to war and not so much is going to education. People can't connect, despite so much technology that connects us. You know the rote: it's always something. Maybe, like the Navajo, we can restore some harmony and balance by chanting the world back to health. Maybe to find balance we need more space for darkness, imagination, contemplation, and, ironically, wildness.

6. Balance

I just made all of this up, but it came out pretty good.

Thoughts on Forgiveness

Here are some of the thoughts I had this morning, just between us, just for fun:

• You are a fool to think you're a writer; you kind of suck. You have barely broken the surface of this book and it's been six months. You should be done by now! Mozart, if he were you, and if he were a writer, would have been done by now. You space-out too much, just write the thing, goddammit, and stop being so precious.
• Why so mean? Can't you be nice, always, constantly, like a saint would be? Can't you be like one of those rosy winged angels in a painting, even when it's 9pm and the kids are still awake and calling for you and the apartment is a mess and there's a mouse in the kitchen and you just want to read The New Yorker? Why can't you be a rosy, winged angel, hovering over your children with infinite patience and joy, even then?
• If you had any discipline at all, you would go to the 6:30am yoga practice.
• You should run a marathon, by the way.
• You wasted yesterday.
• Why don't you wear make-up? And you should buy some perfume because you smell a little like wet wool. Your kids are going to remember you as as coffee breath and bad hair and the smell of wet wool, is that how you want to be remembered?

It's noon. I am at the library. It's the perfect day because the room isn't full and the people here aren't rustle-y. There is a pink folder next to me with some UN work, and a purple folder with writing. "All morning, I did the work I love." I just exchanged emails with my brother. I can't believe I have two brothers who are so capable and tall and funny and cool. I can't believe they still love me after all the crap I've done and said in this life. I can't believe that this morning, Liv, about to trot off to school with her father, came upstairs instead and into the bathroom where I was in the shower and said: "Mom? I want another kiss goodbye." I can't believe how pretty she looked in her pink tights and new dress, and I can't believe how loving and generous her father is to us all, despite all the crap I have done and said.

There is a grey sky out the window. The wild gorgeous exhilarating snow storm of Monday seems a long time ago. It's warmish today, almost tropical warm, like Bermuda feels before a storm. When I was 16 or so, I spent a week in Bermuda with my older cousin who was studying oceanography there. I haven't been to Bermuda since, but certain weather always reminds me of it. My cousin was a complicated inspiration to her younger cousins---she lived a very warm and colorful life, ambitious, alternative, even sultry. A sultry life. She pushed boundaries, she blew down any restricting walls. She never heard when someone said, "You can't do that." She was not afraid. The world was her familiar; the oceans were just paths to cross. She died of cancer five years ago, and left her husband and three beautiful daughters, and we miss her every day.

Why is it so hard to forgive yourself? I know there are a million layers to peel back on the subject of forgiveness, and that the more one thinks about it the more complicated and convoluted and scary and serious and stony it becomes. saying that, I know---well, I think I know---that I forgive others, but until I wrote that list just now, I hadn't realized how little I forgive myself.

To forgive loosens constrictions. Forgiveness is really flying. Forgiveness is not all squinched up, drinking poison in a room without windows. There is no fear after forgiveness and no people to hate, and there are no walls and there is just oceans to cross when you live with forgiveness. Live with it.



Helen Frankenthaler, Southern Exposure (2005)

Another Thought

Praying
by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Thoughts on Prayer

It is Tuesday morning and cold, cold, cold. Wind whips down the avenues, my hair is frozen. My eyes all watery. And it is almost March, so no one wears their winter hat and there are sandals in the store windows and bikinis too. That funny thing about people acting like spring, even when it is still clearly winter. I went to college in Maine and we were always wearing t-shirts and drinking beer on the porch on Saturday afternoons in late February, even though there were great swaths of snow still burning up the lawn; and some would even take an ice-y leap into the frozen ocean probably to be cool and impress the girls. And it was cool and did impress the girls. Because that, I suppose, was an act of faith.

Spring returns every year. I have not been here for the last seven years to witness it, but they say it is so. The crocus pokes its little yellow head out of the ground, through the layer of dead leaves still mulching from last fall. Forsythia bloom. I remember it certainly from childhood. We are acutely aware of spring in New England because it comes one month later than it would if it were polite. It is a late guest. That one month of waiting---February, even into March---is the tough one. Though the days are growing lighter, they are still pretty dark. Bleak. Salty highways, bare black trees; last week the stroller hit a bump on the curb and tipped forward and over, caught by the ridiculous wind. Haakon fell out. My coat was flapping and my scarf was all twisted and my hat was over my eyes and the wind was disorienting and cars were going by. I couldn't reach him. His blue magic wand rolled into the street. He panicked about the wand. The wind was so strong I couldn't gather it all up. A man who was pushing a rack of dry cleaning stopped to help. The rack of dry cleaning started to roll off. I had scratched my knee in the melee. I felt like the worst mother, like a pretend mother who didn't even know how to push a stroller. I really wanted to cry, but Haakon was crying and it was so windy and awful, and racks of dry cleaning were rolling down Park Ave and my stupid Russian hat was covering my eyes, so I couldn't even cry.

That, ladies and gentleman, is late winter.

So what is prayer? Prayer is spring. Prayer is when the darkness and bleakness and harshness of winter is cleared away, if only for a moment. Who doesn't hear the crocus groan itself out of the cold damp earth? Who doesn't hear the first returning birds rejoice? Listen: that is prayer. They say you can pray when you are driving your car or feeding the kids lunch, But I don't 100 percent believe it. I think it deserves and rewards to clear a little space for prayer. A house of worship is fine because it is already done: the candles, the lack of distraction, the peace and divine. But you can light a candle in your bedroom and take three minutes there too.

And here is what I'm beginning to learn. Praying is not always asking, or negotiating, impressing, begging or whatever we do in our usual conversations. There is a part of prayer that is this: listening. You can ask and negotiate, but don't forget to listen. Sometimes, not always but sometimes, it's amazing what you hear. If you give it the time and space, the world will guide you. Prayer is cleaning a space. And it's opening the window and listening for spring. Hm, yes. Yes, prayer taking a moment to listen for spring.

The sketch, "Purple Crocus - Sun Reaching" is by Alice Kelsey, whose work can be accessed here.

Thoughts on Worship

Lately---I can't remember what triggered it---but lately, I've been thinking about worship. There is something about the word 'worship'---along with words such as devotion, prayer, repose---that I adore. They are beautiful words that haven't yet been worn thin by overuse.

Up until recently, I thought of worship as an act---a supplication, a bowing down to. I also thought of it as something that I didn't do. I'm not very a passionate or supplicant type----I do not throw myself down before altars or make pilgrimages or set up shrines. To worship, I thought, one had to sort of clear away a big, scared space: temporal space such as time away from obligation and distraction. Or literal space such as an ancient cathedral or a snowfield at dusk; a silent shoreline; a mountain, magnificent in the still afternoon heat of an African savanna. 

But here is something: worship, I am realizing, is not always so sweeping and intense. It is sometimes but not always. Worship can be little: a gesture---a gesture and another and another that becomes a series and then a lifetime of gestures. What you worship is simply (but not always) what you think about a lot, what you dwell on. I'm not sure, I might be making this up. But anyway, this is what is interesting to me. 

Here is David Foster Wallace's thoughts on the subject, from a commencement address he made to Kenyon College in May 2005 (two years before he would, sadly, commit suicide):

There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect---being seen as smart---you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

"Worship," one minister recently shared with me, "means creating a space for God." Insert your God there: "JC or Allah or YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess"; or your money, your lover, your ambitions or desire for power. It is a rather simple exercise, actually.

Worship means creating a space for God. I like that.

The photo "Checking the ice on Flagstaff Lake" is another by Lizzie McGhee, who definitely worships the good things.

One for the writers

Jeanette Winterson, discussing her book Weight, a retelling of the myth of Atlas and Hercules:

I have written this personal story in the First Person, indeed almost all of my work is written in the First Person, and this leads to questions of autobiography.

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

Right now, human beings as a mass, have a gruesome appetite for what they call ‘real’, whether it’s Reality TV or the kind of plodding fiction that only works as low-grade documentary, or at the better end, the factual programmes and biographies and ‘true life’ accounts that occupy the space where imagination used to sit.

Such a phenomenon points to a terror of the inner life, of the sublime, of the poetic, of the non-material, of the contemplative.

(For more about Jeanette Winterson and her work click here: jeanette winterson)

To Survive in the Universe

Last Friday afternoon, with nothing to do and even less to lose, the babe (who is almost three) and I had a date at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was wearing his pirate outfit---little, blue silk, Chinese shirt-and-pant pajamas that were a gift from friends who lived there. He carried his pirate flag, a white napkin attached to a wooden spoon by an elastic band---an item with which he does not separate. And so in the spirit of his warrior ways, I took him to the Arms & Armor Collection. Can you imagine? Life-size men on life-size horses---covered top to bottom in intricately etched steel armor complete with jaunty bursts of feathers atop the helmets---march down the center of the hall. Glass cases bristle with swords of gold, sabers studded with diamonds and gems, daggers embedded with rubies, the hunting guns of kings, and even two Flintlock pistols of Empress Catherine the Great. We were impressed. We were, the babe and I agreed, also relieved that the ancient Japanese warriors, spooky and ogre-like, were safely contained behind glass walls---and would not, we reassured each other repeatedly, even come into our rooms at night.

Though many of the pieces displayed were intended for tournament, you can't help but imagine the armor-clad mannequins coming to life and making that crunching, horsey-clomping sound as they clump-clump across great sweeping fields to attack, by hand, the enemy---defending their women,  their honor, their country and their Queen.

My little Bubba, in his sweet embroidered Chinese pajamas, the napkin of his wooden spoon flag dragging behind him, was in awe, and I was thinking of him later that night as M. and I took a cab home from the Israeli film Dancing with Bashir. In the cab, coming home from the film, I was not in awe of battle anymore. I was slumped, heartbroken in a way I have started experience in glancing moments: for what if someday, (it is very possible) my son is taken off to war?

The film is animated---a collage of interviews with those who were young soldiers in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Their stories and dreams come alive in animation as they talk. But these are not boasting accounts; their voices are detached, weary and defeated. The film is drenched in a sort of golden-yellow. It's sad. In the recollections, the young men hide in their tanks, swim all night to  escape the enemy, or dance with machine guns firing through the urban streets. Something about the film's animation, perhaps, makes the young soldiers seem so... accessible, so personal---just young guys (regardless of heritage or nationality) trying to process the horror of the atrocities happening around (and sometimes because of) them.

My heart was still a bit heavy on Saturday at the Museum of Natural History. The babe---no longer a babe really, but a little boy, isn't he?---was still carrying his wooden-spoon pirate flag, and was delighted by the Butterfly Conservatory. He was impressed by the magnificent blue whale hovering over the Hall of Ocean Life. But it was bordering on nap time when we went to the Cosmic Collisions film at the planetarium, and when the first meteor sailed across the dome above us, he declared he was ready to go. I took him out and pushed him in the stroller up and down the ramp that wraps around the planetarium so he could fall asleep.

We went up and we went down and we went up again along a pathway (I soon realized) that was guiding us along cosmic evolution since the beginning of time 13 billion years ago. I had to keep the rhythm of the stroller moving, so I could only read a sentence here and there, and the quasars caught my eye. "Newborn galaxies" I read, and passed by and read again, and passed by and read again.  "Newborn galaxies," I thought. How sweet.

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet," says Steven Hawking.* Oh theoretical physicists, how I share your concern! And just how many accidents can befall life on a single planet? The answer, if you are a mother, is: quite a few. A chill can become pneumonia; a dispute can become a war that can demand my son's life; a meteor (as if there wasn't enough to worry about) could land in Central Park tomorrow. The web page (not Hawking) continues:

The Universe is enormous, and people are incredibly insignificant in the infinite space, full of unknown dangers. From this point of view, all our mutual rivalries appear at least ridiculous.

Well (and now I must end this rambling, where-am-I-going-with-this? tune)... well, there's that. From another point of view---say from the perspective of a newborn galaxy, for example---these warriors and wars, these rivalries and fears... appear, at least, ridiculous.

* From "To Survive in the Universe", a rather unexpected catagory on the website www.sky-map.org.

The Month of Light

I had this great idea for how I would survive my first January back in the States (after seven luscious green-infused-with-red-flowers Januarys in East Africa): that I would defy reality and experience instead A Month of Light. It happened like this. At the end of December I realized I had 20 yoga classes remaining to complete by the February 1st expiration date. I had done ten classes in two months; now I would have to do 20 in one month. Interesting how that happens. Meanwhile, the church I recently started to attend, St. James, offers a seven-week series---a group that meets to explore and experience the way of Christian faith as we understand it and live it at St. James’ today. The meetings started the first weekend of January, I had signed up a while back.

I admit that I was intimidated by the idea of 20 yoga classes in 30 days; and no one would argue that it might be hard to give up lazy Sunday mornings for eight weeks. But I turned my fear into power: this situation, I thought, would be a Great Opportunity. I would immerse myself in faith, variations on prayer and peace and light and contemplation and beauty and wonder. I would capture it, shape it, paragraph it up to you, Dear Reader, and we could all bask in the anecdotes and insights----the shards---cast from this great light together. I would change my life.

Well the Month of Light has not been a total failure, but was thwarted, as I mark the second week of family illness----here in bed, surrounded by mountains of tissue and glasses of orange juice and bottles of Advil and pools of resentment. Yoga is a distant dream. My faith---any sort of faith---is lame and weak. I am not feeling the Light, or the inspiration---or the anything good.

I'm irritated and totally annoyed, snappy and regretful: I am indeed the opposite of how I set out to be.

Someone more entrenched in the subject of faith---a monk or a yoga teacher, among many others---would naturally interpret this experience more intuitively and wisely than I. But as I begin to emerge from this irritation of illness, I am going to accept this month as a lesson. And the lesson is: I can not (the world is telling me) simply clear my calender and postpone all commitments and obligations to begin a Life of Faith. I can't just schedule in a Month of Light at my convenience (especially during this most dark of months, and one particularly plagued with GERM-Y germs). Life, in other words, gets in the way of ... Life.

Maybe that's why---for me---faith (in what? In God. And what is God? The beauty of the world.  But what of suffering, does God just ignore those pockets? ... ) begins with seeing God and beauty in the minutiae of our daily errands and pursuits. Like a how a poet lives, unveiling tiny moments of peace. Like how this little cup of tea with its spoon next to my bed last night had such a simple, glorious way about it.

Well, it's not a Month of Light, but it's a start.

Ode to Updike

I am so sad to learn of the death of John Updike today. I knew this day would come, and I've been dreading it. And now it's here, and the feeling is worse than I had anticipated.

I grew up in a small New England town next to Mr. Updike's small New England town. Much of what he wrote personally resonated with me----the essay about the commuter train to Boston, the girl in the AP story who everyone claimed was their sister. His characters were often so familiar----his scenes so famliar----that I turned to his books during lonely times in Africa. When I finished my thesis for Columbia, my gift to myself was his book, In the Beauty of the Lilies. That was the sweetest gift I've given to myself, come to think of it. I loved him so much that I even forgave him that weird habit he had of describing the slightly sagging flesh of women's upper arms and knees...

The moments I actually saw him were magnificent. At the country club dining room one Saturday--he must have been playing golf. This was ten years ago. I remember his ears mostly, they were sort of glowing red in the afternoon summer WASP-y light.

And Christmas several years ago, after the Christmas Eve church service. His wife was in charge of something or other, and had brought a basket of individually wrapped cookies to hand out to the congregration as we left. It's a tiny church in our neighborhood, Mr. Updike didn't attend often. His wife---one of those compact, efficient wives he so often rendered in words----had hooked the basket of cookies over his bent elbow and (I imagine) instructed him to stand there. He did it with a combination of humilidity and amusement, standing outside the door in the icey New England cold, holding his Easter basket of Christmas cookies. He was rather shy standing there---too shy to push the cookies on people, so you had to be brave to go up and take one. Then he smiled nicely, and even apologetically, as if to suggest he wasn't really the best man for the job, but he was trying his best.

(The image is of John Updike. See http://www.illoz.com/arichardallen/)

The Endless Starting Over

It is sort of hard to comprehend---to really, fully believe---that last year on this day we were----due to The Violence and the looting and the burning and the strife and the anger and the frustration and the sadness over Kenya's rigged elections----restricted to our neighborhood and homes. The Kenyans were rioting, the slums were burning, rumors of  a coup, war and genocide were rife. Everyone had an opinion, but no one knew anything for sure. I was at home making coffee and wondering, just wondering, what it would feel like to skin our pet rabbit for soup, as the few remaining open stores were quickly running out of provisions and all in-roads to Nairobi were blocked. I was not fearing for my life, no. We felt assured that, should it come to the worst, the UN would evacuate us. (Though that in itself was a source of stress---the ever-predicament of expats working in an emergency: for what would become of our Kenyan friends and staff?)

It did not come to the worst. Within six weeks, the Violence and looting and burning and strife---perhaps less so the anger and frustration---had been quelled, and normal life resumed. We did not eat the rabbit. We did even go hungry, or have to defend ourselves against marauding gangs of youth. Many people did, however. Many Kenyans died, and many more were displaced from their homes and regions, and it was horrible and awful; the waves it created will continue to crash across the country now and for years to come, no doubt. But, on the surface at least, daily life resumed---those pyramids of tomatoes at the markets were built, those matatus driving recklessly careened past, those streets lined with Kenyans continually walking somewhere were filled.

Perhaps new growth has sprouted from the embers of so much violence, I don't know. When I was in Rwanda four years after its genocide, I was struck by the Rwandans ability to move on. But it was not necessarily a noble or courageous move: dwelling on past injustice is a luxury that people who live in survival mode simply can not afford. In Uganda, I sensed the same. Repress the past, bury the dead, the abuses, the thefts and lies. Bury them deep, rise up again, and move on. "The endless sweeping of debris. The endlesss starting over" I wrote at the time.

It is snowing this morning in New York City. We live here now. The year was a year of transition---the first six months packing up, giving away, letting go, retreating, pulling back, saying goodbye. There was a pause, a lull, it lasted a few days or a week. And then the second six months: a resurgance, a moving forward and accumulating, introducing, building, growing outward...

You know, I grew up on a peninsula surrounded by ocean. In the summers, the sound of ocean tides rushing up and retreating back entered the screened windows on every side of the house. Many years later, when I was giving birth to my son---an 11 pound bubba, if ever there was---my mind carried itself to the beach down the road from this childhood home, where it dwelled quite peacefully as the body raged and heaved. And so there my mind lingered---miles away from the gurney and beeps and monitors of birth---in the still cove where we used to gather sanddollars at low tide. (I confess, the image of a moon snail was hovering around as well.) The endless expanse of shallow water when the tide was low was a like a moon-scape of exploration for us children. The waves were tiny, protected by the cove; the sea was never threatening or intimidating here. And then the tide would begin to rise, to the knees, the thighs, the waist---soon up against the stone wall along the back of the beach as the whole end of the beach submerged under the tide and disappeared. We took the rowboat out, the water was deep. People water-skied past. And the baby was born, one creature became two. The nurses marveled at his Bubba-ness. A new life! A new life, a new tide----the endless sweeping of debris, the endless starting over.

Today, out the window of library where I'm writing, snow flurries fall and lift and fall again against the brick building across the street. It is beautiful and perfect. I miss my friends in Kenya with a longing and aching that is hard to explain; I miss my life there terribly. But my daughter has adjusted to her new school; my son has accepted the sensation of snow when it falls on his nose. We are moving on, a new life! The library is quiet today, two other women are working in this room. There is an unspoken respect among us: three souls in a library on New Year's Eve morning. If asked to define my perfect moment, it may as well be this one.

Happy New Year, dear readers. May 2009 be a fine year for you. Love, Emilie.

(The above image is by Blue Mcdonnell, an artist working in Europe. Additional prints and images can be seen on his website:  http://www.bluemcdonnell.com )

The Length of a Day

Waking every day, it is pretty much the same. Murky first-thoughts scan through a checklist: family ok... health ok... weather fine... president-elect promising----it is all fine and it comes with great relief. Gratitude and relief. The day begins. But then, the mind (waking now) like an inch worm seeking its next little stretch forward, prods, prods---and finally lands---ah yes, something is off. Something is not right. What was that tarnished thing.... That thing... Oh right, the argument.

Over nothing, naturally. But there nonetheless, taking up space, hovering from the previous evening. Lurking. A snag in an otherwise smooth mood, and a vague tension will fill the morning. It is very rare, maybe it happens three times a year. It is vague and rare, but excruciating. We both hate it. We tru to act natural for the sake of the children.

What was it about, now I can't even remember. And more demanding matters dominate the agenda by breakfast: the birthday party, the gift we must find by noon when we will meet the others at Grand Central to take the train out of town. A train! A real train! As if the excitement of a birthday party isn't enough, we stir up the children with this.

In the shower, I work on ways to make it not my fault. It doesn't work. There is no way around it, I was wrong. I am wrong. I am to blame. I dress, and take the girl out to find a present.

It is freezing, but we love passing the pine trees that lean against the Armory waiting for a home. The streets are quiet this freezing Saturday morning, the world feels exclusive and so does the drug store. The staff, usually indifferent and invisible, are actually giddy. We are the only customers until an elegant old man comes in too. A woman setting up a perfume sample table says to another staff who is hovering by the display, "Don't touch the goods, baby. Don't touch the goods." He laughs. Someone helps us with a ladder to reach the box of red Christmas balls. You can't believe how cheap everything is! The girl is old enough to explore alone and looks for birthday cards while I pile up decorations. Christmas lights $3! Ribbon galore $5!

Her little gloved hand in mine, walking home. I want to hold this little hand forever. She is leaping and skipping and talking non-stop. I want her to have a birthday party every weekend. Oh how I want her to be this happy, always. But that would not be natural, and so for now I share in her delight for this one party---while one sinister finger of the mind still pokes, Why did I say such a thing? Will he ever forgive me?

There were stretches of time in Kenya when we attended a birthday party every weekend. We would almost grow tired of them. I even had the audacity to decline a few. Not so here. We are still strangers in this new city; maybe even lonely, if we didn't have each other. But we do, we do have each other! We are not lonely. This is a miracle to me every day---my current New York life always informed by my past New York life when I lived here a decade ago, when I was invited to parties but always, always alone. This is our first birthday since we left Kenya six months ago. The girl spends an hour wrapping the gift, decorating it meticulously, writing a long letter in the card and then wondering what more she can do.

Lunch is not hectic. We have time---we shouldplan to leave by 11:30. The babe is asleep---the perfectly planned nap. The father is reading upstairs. I am the temperamental one in the family; I am the creator of moods and drama here. I don't' know what to do when someone else is annoyed. I don't know what to do. How does one apologize? Have you tried it lately? My God, it is so hard.

I try. It comes out scratchy and awkward, but it is sincere. And he---the most amazing husband---is forgiving. The day takes off now. It is a careening forward time---wake the babe, gather the gift, the coats hats gloves scarves, potties everyone! Potties! Yes! Yes! We're taking the train! Now put on your shoes. Let's go, we're late!

How is it possible that I spend the whole morning preparing, and we are still late getting out the door? We take a taxi instead of walking. "It's all the things that have to be done at the last minute," my daughter's friend's father reminds me. "The dressing, potty, all that stuff. It all has to be done last-minute, no matter how you prepare." It's the obvious that I miss, but anyway we've made it: we're all together on the train. The parents I have never met, five little children dressed for a party. The Japanese grandmother. We are all here, the gift, the snacks, the lunch for the babe. So why do I have only one ticket? How is it possible that I lost a ticket between the ticket booth and the train?

The father has no answer for that, as the train propels us off into another world. "Look at the buildings! Look at the trees!" The kids, who have not left Manhattan since we moved in September 6th, are watching it pass almost in awe. Had they forgotten this other world existed? This world beyond.

I still live with an oddness that I can't seem to shake. Sometimes it's like a dream-state. I am back home after seven years in Africa. Everyone speaks English, everyone. But I chose my words carefully with the Canadian wife, because she may not understand slang-y English. This is absurd, I know, but I can't seem to loosen my tongue and talk like I do with my husband or sister. The husband attended my high school's rival (how does this come up? O yes, talking about schools for the children). This strikes me as amazing. Shocking! No one has even heard of my school----but no, wait. We are home now, on a commuter train out of Grand Central. And many lawyers in New York will have heard of my high school, or are at least more likely to than an English or Danish acquaintance in Kenya. Greeted at the station, I see we are still in America. There is a paved parking lot and a beautiful late-autumn grey sky. It is a cold day. We are picked up by lawyers driving BMWs. The neighborhood is in America too. I explain to my driver that we have recently moved from seven years in Africa, and the fact that neighborhoods keep happening (not just one, isolated nieghborhood---within our gates) is startling to me. He smiles nicely, but doesn't really get it. Neighborhood after neighborhood; paved roads leading to more paved road; people speaking English to other people speaking English. Everyone like me.

The birthday house is one hundred years old. It smells like the house where I grew up; the stairs are steep and creak. Lots of little rooms connect. The women all sort of look like me and talk like me. But they are lawyers, not like me. This is how my life would be if I lived in America, I think to myself. But I do live in America, and this is my life.

And so the afternoon passes.

It is the perfect party. The children are entertained by an wildlife conservationist. She brings out turtles from Africa, lizards from South America, a duck from New Hampshire. The animals all have stories. The parents lean against the kitchen counters drinking the best wine. (But I wasn't going to drink after last night's little episode. It is wine that can be so vicious---the first glass smoothing the edges of so many little insecurities, the second bringing them back up to bear under a glaring, ruthless light). The corporate lawyers talk about lay-offs. The defense lawyers talk about politics. The... but I lose interest. It's not my language anyway.

It's dark when we go. They have to practically pry us lose. We love these people! These people are who my friends would be if I lived in the States! (And I sigh here, confessing---it's confusing). The hostess---it is her warmth and grace that has made the afternoon so harmonious. Her husband is a generous wine-pourer. Over 20 children and as many parents in this little house, and not one poked-out eye! The way the light fills the little house at this darkening hour reminds me of my childhood home. Outside there is a huge neighborhood pine tree all lit up for Christmas.

The children will fall asleep on the train, I am sure. But they don't. Instead, they play together quietly. I can't stop staring at the four teenagers---two couples---across the aisle. Blond robust suburban girls constantly fiddling with their cell phones; their slumped boyfriends, baseball hats is all I remember. I can't stop staring! This is a world I will someday have to negotiate, from the sidelines. The girl will someday want to take the train into the city for dinner with her friends. She will maybe have a purse like that girl's purse. Do you think those girls have sex with their boyfriends? Oh yes, I think so. The girl facing me senses that I'm staring and I figure out a way to watch her in the reflection of my window. She argues with her mono-syllabic boyfriend. "I pay for everything" she says to him. "And you never even say 'thank you'. But whatever." He just slumps. Who cares, I think to myself. He doesn't care. He's 18 years old and having sex with you. The guy doesn't care about anything else! Where in the world do they find a place to have sex? I wonder. Someday I will tell my daughter to not pay for everything. This train takes forever, but the conductor believed my story about the lost ticket and we didn't have to pay twice.

Then it is gorgeous Christmas-y Grand Central Terminal, laaaaa la la la la la LA la. Then home, then dinner. The children are still a delight! They rush in to tell Agnes about their adventures---trains and snakes and ice-cream cake and Lego's! Our apartment does not have a wine cellar, I now realize. We do not have an hour commute to the city on the train, and we don't have a BMW. I loved the three steps up to the front porch at that birthday house, but I will never be a lawyer. Our life here seems so simple, suddenly. So wonderfully simple.

Personal Improvement Post of the Day

I was intrigued by the following passage in the book I'm reading, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by the novelist Haruki Murakami:

I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing... (page 37)

Coincidentally, a friend sent out the following link, "Are you ready to clean up your life?" I found this questionnaire, or maybe it's more a checklist, a very interesting and simple tool to clean up my act (I'm still sitting among piles from the move). It also sort of sang out as an accompaniment to Murakami's thought:

Click here and check it out: BetterMe Clean Sweep

My yoga teacher mentioned that she was facing some financial stress, and the first thing she did was repay all her debts---little debts, $5 here and there---including paying for the bottled water she had drank at the gym where she sometimes teaches. I guess it's not a natural tendency when one loses a job to suddenly repay all debts. The natural tendency, I believe, would be to hoard with fear. The teacher said something about karma. Ah yes, the gestures with which we honor the world.

It's such an interesting time, as we face financial fear---terror in some cases---economic downturns, failed deals, sober Christmas bonuses, coupled with a renewed hope for our democracy, this optimism and joy with Obama coming in. As we face making do with less financially, we have an opportunity to make do with more spiritually. It's a great time to examine our personal priorities, and clean up our house.

Ok, I promise, I'm getting off the soap box now and will soon return our usual programming.