Saxapahaw on a rainy day

Saxapahaw is trying to stay still and obliging to the river's rhythm, despite encroachment of hipness, new construction, highway regurgitation of the american lust for sameness and convenience.  Today I see its colors; warm gray/taupe, yellow/orange early fall greens against evertrue evergreens and tinges of burnt siena.  The Haw water is inky warm black/brown as it welcomes the light gray misty rain, heavying the air that is reminscent of the just ending summer's humidity.  Warm rain has double parked over North Carolina from mountains to coast today and is in no rush to move down the road.  After days of dry heat and summer's last fling with grass and leaves, a smudging of low smoky clouds are here and I interpret their message to say "slow down."  So I drove myself to Carrboro for a concert and a drink.

Aging makes me pine for revisiting what I know to bring happiness, like the sound of music from familiar people. Linford Detweiler and Karin Berquist caught my ear at a time of deep questioning.  Music is so powerful and can move us towards light and darkness.  I've used music like a drug before.  Swilling it down and pouring its gasoline on a fire that often needed to be extinquished, but instead, the music helped keep it going.  Over the Rhine's music was part of the cocktail I used years ago.  I saw them perform live last night again.  There has been a long hiatus between us. I have gotten healthier, and they have changed too.  But to hear some of those old familiar lyrics and the same golden honey sounds of their in-love selves still crooning adoringly to each other, tapped my recovering self and challenged my heart.  It tapped into deep longing - the hunger that had me asking questions as the music dripped over me:  is it too late for me to have the life I want;  what is the life I want;  what will I do with the love I want to share with someone in this life;  who will I share my deep joy and deep sorrow with;  how will I get to the picture I have in my mind's heart of a life that is simple and deep - one of gratitude and one that I can share with others who need respite and a place to tell their stories - a place for their stories to be heard?  

The old songs played and I choked back tears.  I was in the throws of love back when they were singing those songs - the in-love addiction that has you flailing around like a fish on a hook.  You know how much better it will feel when that hook is removed, but that bait is so sweet.  And I'm joyful that I've been released....but I remember the euphoria too.  I remember too much - hands, neck, eyes, voice, mouth, promises, breath and sleep.

And then they played this song:  

Just shy of Breakin’ Down

There’s a bend in the road that I have found

Called home

Take a left at loneliness

There’s a place to find forgiveness

Called home

With clouds adrift across the sky

Like heaven’s laundry hung to dry

You slowly feel it all will be revealed

Where evening shadows come to fall

On the awful and the beautiful

Every wound you feel that needs to heal

And silence yearns to hear herself

Some long lost memory rings a bell

Called home

Old pre-Civil War brick house

Standin’ tall and straight somehow

Called home

Mailbox full of weariness

And a word of hard won happiness

Called home

Leave behind your Sunday best

You know we couldn’t care a less

Out here we’ve learned to leave the edges wild

And stories they get passed around

And laughter – it gets handed down

Read it in the lines around a smile

Our bodies’ motion comes to rest

When we are at last

Called home

A year ago today...

So the sun came up again today.  The first I saw of the sky was indigo blue, with a ribbon of first gold light.  I read my tribute to Klondike from a year ago, and remembered that the sun came up "pink and gold" on the day that I had to meet the impossible task of saying goodbye.  I sat here at the desk and waited for
today's pink and gold, and it has come.  The dogs huddled around me in what truly seemed like a "knowing" way this morning...Harold looking at me intently and Maggie resting her paw on my leg, and we watched January 9, 2015 dawn, pink and gold, and recalled a year ago.  I don't know how I got out of bed that day knowing what was to unfold.  It seemed impossible to say goodbye to that dog.  

What does it even mean that a year has gone by?  Years used to see like giant spans of time.  Now they seem like some sort of short interval that I wish I would take a lot longer.  They all said it would be like this as you age, this time speeding up thing.  

  A week ago last year was full.  We said goodbye to my dear Uncle Luke a year ago yesterday, on Dad's 85th birthday.  That was, and is, surreal.  He was really my one uncle who I knew and loved, and who loved me.  My Mother's only brother, I was the first baby "GG" ever held.   I really had bet on him always being "out" there as someone who would have my back if times got really tough.  Now he's been gone a year too.  

Dad turned 86 yesterday.  He's a handsome, funny, sometimes curmudgeonly, loving, loyal, independent person.  There are still so many stories I don't know about him.  A book with many chapters - and many untold I'm sure.  I feel so grateful that we live nearby each other, that he is having time now with my adult and almost adult children, and me at this stage of my life.  

Happy birthday Dad.  

I miss you Luke.

I think of you everyday Klondike.

Morning has broken.

Writing moments...early January 2014

Why is it that time seems to be suspended, on a different speed, during what we call the holidays?  It is slower (for me anyway) or, maybe it's that moments come into clearer focus than they usually do.  For the last several holiday times of year, there seems to be a wider space for seeing things better.  I battle with "frantic" more that I'd like to admit and for reasons that I'm sure if I listed them would seem so unnecessary - so neurotic.  But during the holidays...or as I'm saying this year...the time of darkness...I accept what I experience as a gift of being able to see better.  I thought of one of those moments this morning.  It was at the new downtown independent bookstore, which in and of itself is a gift (it is sort of like when the Green Bean opened downtown - a confluence of community minded people gathering and dipping toes into new conversations).  I was there for a book reading by Ann Raper, a former Guilford trustee and now author of "A Quaker Courtship" about letters written between her grandparents.  But the clearest moment was seeing my neighbor and Guilford colleague there.  She lives just a few short blocks away but we never really see each other except for the random yoga class or outing.  We talked and caught up for a few moments and it was like I was getting yet another chance to connect with an interesting, smart, educator/neighbor/friend.  Nothing monumental was discussed, but the discussion was monumental.  The connection was rich.  And now I may have tea with her today, right here in our very neighborhood.  

Why monumental?  Because there are opportunities all around.  I think I see clearly, but my seeing is veiled with my preconceptions, my drive to check off my to do list, and to get to the next place, so much so that I rush past the jewels right in front of me.  And then there are the holidays...time slows down.  No matter your orientation, there is a sense of waiting.  We rush towards commitments, dinners, gifts, travel, and more, but, aren't we all waiting for ...the light?  The literal last days of long darkness and the movement towards more light, longer "days..." new possibilities.  Even though we don't experience actual darkness, and have forgotten/never known it's benefits, we are living in the pattern of the sun.  We sense the darkness increasing, and hope for the trend to shift once again towards light.  This communal experience, perhaps, is the gift of a slower speed.  We hunker down together, we look around, and there we are all.  I see you.  

I relish this "dark" time.  So much in me wants to slow down, nest, hibernate - even though nothing is actually stopping me from doing this at other times of the year. No, that's not really true.  I can't stop contemplating some thoughts on darkness and how we don't really get it anymore - ever.   No time where the "human agenda" fades away...when it used to be nightly.  Maybe that keeps me from finding that habitual quieting of the mind, heart, breath.  And now, it's not communal either.  We have to seek and choose our own "dark" if we dare.  This gift that I get of an extended "work" break in higher education...one where we are all pausing as community for a couple of weeks...is rare and delicious.  With it comes this beautiful chance to live in a slower speed.  A chance to better "see" who is in front of you, and what is around you.  A chance to pay attention to the chatter inside, and then greet it with arms of lovingkindness.  My insides have felt like a pin ball machine with thoughts and lists and shoulds and wants, regrets, joys, fears, questions bouncing randomly off my walls.  It's not pretty and often leaves me panting shallow breaths.  But as the dark quiets the surroundings, and the sun is scarce, there is time to "see" what's bouncing off my internal walls.  With a "lightness" I observe it all, and things actually start to quiet down.  I can see my surroundings.  I can hear the dogs breathing and the heat fan in my house starting and stopping.  The clock ticks and chimes.  There is really a now - not just a regrettable or lost past and an impossible future.  I see me better.  I hope I see you better.