Ren Powell's Blog, page 32

“She’s Just Upset”

This morning there was an oystercatcher preening on a rock at the edge of the lake. On cue to prove me wrong about writing the other day that they are never there. I get things wrong often. And I am actually very “okay” with that. It means that I allow my world view to morph with new information. That’s a good thing. It is something that I try to cultivate.

It is a balance though, isn’t it? To stand by one’s experience and knowledge, and stay open to the possibility of everything you know being wrong – without letting it break your self-confidence or question your sanity, sometimes.

This morning I noticed that the second grove heading out along the lake was noisy with songbirds. I’ve never thought before how that stretch is silent in the winter, the crows pretty much keeping to the first grove, closer to town. I’ve been running this stretch most days for six years now. Still getting to know the place.

E. is still much more observant than I am. Noticing a missing bench. A still squirrel in the tree. Sometimes I’m envious. A little ashamed to be too lost in my thoughts some mornings.

I suppose what we know is always filtered through our thoughts. I have a lot of tangled thoughts, so maybe that’s why I take in such random pieces of the world. On the other hand, E. can also be mistaken. A quiet squirrel might be just a broken branch. We can all be mistaken, probably because there is an irresistible drive to make sense of the world that can overshadow everything. Every pocket of doubt.

We see what we want to see. Rationalize what we see to fit our current paradigm. Sometimes this can be devastating. Sometimes, it is just a way to silence people and keep our personal status quo. Prejudices. Biases. With an entire spectrum of consequences.

I would love to go back and study sociology just to write a book about the current trend in our culture of diagnosing one another. Signaling compassion while effectively dismissing a person’s point, if not their point of view entirely. What used to be the misogynist phrase, “Oh, she’s just upset” is now “Oh, they’re just triggered.” The jargon of pseudo-psychology makes the patronizing seem more acceptable.

I think the reason I find this fascinating is that it forces me to look at some of my own coping strategies. I’ve written before about how if a stranger is rude to me, I tell myself a story: they were just diagnosed with cancer, or they are just on their way back from visiting their parent with Alzheimer’s – that kind of thing. It’s not like I am wishing anything will happen to them, it is just a way to force myself to step back and not take things personally – emotionally. But I am not totally convinced it is the most ethical way to do this. It feels like cheating.

And there have been situations with individual students who have been “difficult” for whatever reason. On a couple of occasions, I have “diagnosed” an undiagnosed student in my mind so that I can step back and not take things personally – emotionally. And I am even more concerned about whether this is an okay thing to do.

Shouldn’t I be able to step back without mentally framing the situation in a way that is comfortable because it fits nicely with my existing worldview? That is hardly being compassionate, or flexible, or open to change. It is imposing my existing ideas on everyone else – whether they know it or not.

It is easier though.

I have always liked the serenity prayer – but am thinking: grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can…

But how about: God, grant me the wisdom and the courage to change myself.

there is a strange dust
on the white skirts of the rocks
where the lake’s pulled back
winter’s cast-offs oddly dry
exposed abandoned lovers

Audio Digest, Week 19

A Morning Page of Little Consequence

The rain has stopped. And the birds are singing. Chirping actually, so not the usual blackbirds. Someday I will learn them all. I wish there were an app that would identify birds based on a recording. I am assuming they are sparrows. The fat little bullies who dare to vie with the magpies for the seeds in our feeder.

Now – as though I summoned them – there is an entire chorus coming from the neighbor’s yard. Crows and gulls, and even a blackbird.

I wonder what birds think of the rain.

It’s a cotton morning. White and gauzy. And I’m looking forward to running on the trail where everything will be wet and bright by contrast. As much as I long for sunshine, sometimes I believe the world is far more beautiful in the context of weather. The shocking greens under slate skies, the oranges that shine through the fog. The world seems richer. More interesting. Even the sounds seem different. I wonder if they are actually? If humidity affects sound waves? I’ll make a note to look it up.

I try to remind myself of this when things are difficult. To look around and notice the details, the softness that is more present when the weather moves in. The way moments can resonate when snagged by the gauzy air.

Tomorrow I want to drive into town and run the old trail where I used to count frogs this time of year. 40. 50. I know it is a strange kind of activity – but it is life-affirming. I feel that if the frogs are surviving there’s hope.

We occasionally see a frog here on the morning run, but I think the lake has too many algae for them to really thrive. The run-off from the farms is intense, and the cleansing ponds help, but not enough. The swans don’t seem to mind. I think there are a few fish in the lake, and I know that eels have survived in the water even when the algae was so thick it was life-threatening to people. Something always survives.

I have yet to see a duckling this year. But I am still hoping. I know they’re there.

last year’s cygnets
are dusted still with the browns
of innocence

Ascension

It’s a holiday. So I slept in an extra hour before coming to work. Or rather, to sit at my desk at work while the students rehearse their final productions. The coffee machine is down. The alarm keeps announcing there are intruders in the building. And I can’t seem to settle into writing.

There are days like these. Where I seem to be standing beside myself. And moving this shell around the house, or through the streets. Or in the corridors here. Puppet fingers on the keyboard. When people say that they can’t “get it together” this is what I think of. Feeling out of it. Out of sync with myself.

And I know that this means I should get my body on the mat. I should run through a flow and meditate. Pull myself together. Yoga – literally. Yoking the mind and the body.

But here I sit at the desk in this enormous building alone on the third floor behind a series of locked glass doors and alarm sensors. The day having run away from me, I find myself clenching my jaw. Fighting a ridiculous urge to chase the hours down and do them over again. I wish I were an animator. I’d like to draw this. On a light blue background.

Actually, I taught myself Flash way back when, when the iPad came out and killed Flash almost instantly. I had to redesign my entire doctorate plans, which had centered around an animated book. I should have pushed on really. I think it was then that I got the bug to make books by hand. I have always been a woman of one extreme or the other. All those hours and nothing to show for it. Gone in an instant instead of falling apart with the dignity of old vellum and leather.

This week I have been paying close attention to my emotions. Anger, shame, and the relationship between the two. Regret, anger, shame, and the relationships among the three. And fear. Always fear. There is an upside to standing beside yourself sometimes.

I am trying to change my perspective and think of all this living as I would a single experience of skydiving. Or whatever it is that makes a person feel frightened – and very much alive. I am very much alive these days.

Just not in a way that looks good on Instagram.

what cannot not be
and cannot be considered
what will startle you
then hide so well you wonder
if death is just a bad dream

Coming Back to Gratitude

“Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” – I have repeated this phrase so often, written it so often, that it is completely removed from its origin Beloved. Maybe not removed, but it has spilled over and is my own personal truth.

I have Reynaud’s, which means a couple of times a month my feet or my hands turn white, then – warming – turn black briefly. And it hurts. The circulation beginning again, blood pushing into constricted spaces, hurts.

Today I am lurching around the house after this morning’s run. My Achilles is stiff, clenched, and doesn’t want to play. But I’ve been here before, and in a week or so it will be alright again.

So far into spring now that even at 6 am we’ve missed the sunrise. If I run before writing in the mornings, I think we can catch another week of pink skies before running at sunrise becomes an unreasonable idea.

This year it makes me sad to think about having missed a season. A spring. Orange mornings and noticing the gradual increase of bird song. I am not whipping myself for being ill, but I can count the number of springs I may have left. It is easy to get snagged by the fear. To get stuck among the losses, and moving forward takes a surprising amount of effort. It’s almost painful.

I don’t want to waste another spring.

Because of my Achilles I stopped for a minute among the trees. I tried to notice each distinct bird. The tits are easy to identify. So are the mourning doves, and the blackbirds of course. But others are strangers. Something is making a ratcheting kind of ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. I wonder: do swans make any sounds other than hissing?

I’ve never seen oystercatchers along the lake. They stay over in the ponds at the park near the skateboarding ramps. I have no idea why. And I only hear the lapwings there in the evenings when I can’t see them.

E. and I have been talking about moving again. And there is a part of my longing to move into the woods somewhere. I think the desire began in my childhood, with fairy tales and forests, with candied houses and witches that could be shoved into ovens and be done with. Snow white could talk to the animals. Wild birds would land on her finger and she would sing.

Disney filled a Las Vegas kid’s head with entirely unreasonable hopes.

I found a place, actually. Not a candied house, but a house near a lake, surrounded by trees. But far from public transportation. I would need to buy a car. I would need to drive a car daily. So, I guess we’re not moving yet. Sometimes I forget that this location, this house was a compromise and that I am happy here.

For now – for the next 15 years until I can retire – I will catch what I can of birdsong and be grateful for it. When I give Leonard his morning treat and, instead of running off to fold himself in under the coffee table, he leans his head against my thigh and stares up at me, I’ll pretend he’s singing.

green hearts between trees
white bells above the green hearts
call to the cuckoo –
sour apple flowing from
thin stems to quench her thirst

Longing for Warmth

Yesterday was the first morning this year that we’ve had a southern wind. Soft. Not the cutting cold that blows in from the North Sea. It was such a grey, dull morning that I would have missed it had E. not pointed it out.

My body opens in the warmth. My spine centers itself. Or probably more accurately, my chest – my heart – stops retreating from the world. Huddling.

When I first moved to Norway I thought it odd that so many people considered it a human right to vacation in the south of Europe each year. I thought it was Marie Antoinette-like, that there were articles in the paper about how children whose families couldn’t afford it were impoverished. I still think that, but I do understand now that beyond the privilege is a physical longing for warmth that overrides the intellect. The body thinks, “Me, me, me.” It thinks survival. The cold is a predator. A trial by ice.

There’s a legend that Norwegians would leave a newborn in the snow overnight. If it lived they would take it home again.

There are winter Norwegians and summer Norwegians. The huddling, cold, keep-to-yourself, hide-in-your-den Norwegians, and the “Come join us for a beer” Norwegians. And usually, the winter has condensed them so much it can take a beer to pry them open. Or a hike in the wilderness – in a southern wind.

By February every year I am so contracted I am almost stone. I become obsessed with thoughts of the Mediterranean. I dream of safaris in the Serengeti and treks through humid rain forests in Peru.

Where I live is not that cold, really. But for someone from southern California, from Nevada, and Texas? It is cold enough to feel like death. No. It’s more than that. It’s a matter of association.

When I moved from the States to Norway, I landed among war monuments, war ruins like old Nazi bunkers, trenches, and cannon fortifications. History lives here in the landscape not just in my grandfather’s memory or in books. Death lives here. When I arrived I got pregnant – a risky, precarious pregnancy. I spent 5 months in the hospital. Alone.

Death hovers here. The shift in geography coincided with a shift in my comprehension. Mortality. Legacy. Grandfather died while I was here, so far away. Among his memories.

The world was always a threatening place, but more fairy tale than newspaper articles. Consequences were romanticized – a child anticipating an earthquake, or a hurricane, with the distance of innocence.

Now I long for the warmer climates with the same distance of innocence. I know that. Death is everywhere that there is life. So I settle for the mild warmth of the southern wind.

geese arrive as long-
necked, v-shaped patterns over-
head, black against sky

“All the Things”

I’m not a silver linings kind of gal. Not a “look on the bright side” person. Not because I insist on wallowing, but that I believe I need to allow myself to accept what is hard, or unpleasant or destructive, for what it is – honestly. I need to see this “thing” for what it is and acknowledge the real consequences.

It seems to me that looking for bright sides is gaslighting oneself. A kind of emotional sleight of hand. That said, life is full of “things”. Dark things and bright things. And sometimes it does help to keep the nourishing things in view while dealing with the things that can kill us.

I remember seeing a drawing a few years ago of a dark tangle of lines inside a small circle. It represented grief. The image was followed by a larger circle with the same size dark tangle of lines inside. The idea being that grief doesn’t get smaller, but that life goes on and becomes fuller, and the grief takes up less space in our lives.

I am no expert on grief, but this makes sense to me. And I see no reason why it wouldn’t help to look around and make my life larger in the present. To make my circle of awareness larger.

These past months have been fluid in terms of hours and activities. My tight schedule raveled and my tasks haphazardly completed – if they’ve been completed. It has felt like a working vacation. Which is neither work nor vacation. And now this new grief that spills over everything.

It’s time to tidy up. To put things in order. I can’t wipe away the trauma, that is not my trauma, that is my trauma. But I can gather all the things and put them in their place. I can’t stick grief on a shelf and turn the dark side to the wall. It is there. But there is more here.

It’s 5:30 now. The dog has been out to pee, and E. has put on his running clothes. The blackbirds are singing in the driveway and the sun is trying hard to shine through the mist. I’ve opened the small greenhouse doors. The kale has already bolted into bright yellow flowers, and the strawberries have resurrected on their own and the white blossoms are begging for bees.

Maybe this year I’ll get berries?

I know I can’t control the chaos of life. The world is random and changing. But I can create systems through which to view it. It seems to me that is a basic human instinct. Even if it is a bit like herding cats, as they say.

This morning I’m off for a run. The mourning dove (I swear) is calling now from the railway’s overhead line.

a slug on a tree stump
and her world is as soft as
ice cream on your tongue

Audio Digest, Week 18

The Songs of Ghosts

Last night I sat upstairs in the studio and tried to read. But the refrigerator E.’s daughter used when she used the upstairs space as an apartment was humming. I’m not sure humming is the right word. At first I thought someone was playing music downstairs. Or outside. I would have sworn I could almost catch the lyrics. Ghost-like and insubstantial, but definitely present. I began to wonder about the dosage of my medication.

How rarely I sit in the quiet now. There’s always a podcast playing, or a video open in another tab on the computer. The last book of poetry I read, I read here in the bibliotekette* where I am used to the ambient sounds. The birds in the driveway, occasionally the neighbors footsteps on the gravel, Leonard’s claws on the wood flooring in the entrance hall, or his rumbling when he is sleeping at my feet, chasing dream-hares.

Even on runs lately, E. chatters. Which is a good thing. He makes dad jokes. Keeps it light. But I miss the quiet. We have done well this past year with home offices. At least for the most part. Our frustrations haven’t been with each other. He’s been longing to get back to the office. To play squash regularly again. He’s an extrovert, if such distinctions exist.

I experience social activities as work. Even when I enjoy them. Even when the connections and the moments are worth the work. So I am struggling now to understand how I can possibly be craving more quiet under the circumstances of this past year. Especially when I have had too much time to wrestle with ghosts.

But I believe that I’ve been distracting myself with project after project at a breakneck speed. Circumstances at work are such that I should be free most days. Nothing pressing on a to-do list. A standing above the tree line kind of feeling.

My best friend took me up a 14-pointer in Colorado a few years ago. After about an hour we were quiet. It was meditative. I paid attention to my breathing. To the calm thoughts that passed through my mind. To my physical body, checking for altitude sickness.

Above the tree line, above the snow. Stones and wind, and a little bit of vertigo. It was exhilarating. Coming down I told her I felt like I’d had a glass of wine. Or two. Her teenage son was with us and he was giggling: “Me, too.”

I really would like to climb a mountain now. A really high mountain.

But I think about the refrigerator and its ghost music, and I wonder if what I need is to sit upstairs in the studio and listen. To breath. To pay attention to my body, check for any sickness caused by a sudden shift in circumstances. To make out the lyrics. To write them down.

There’s more than one form of meditation.

the wind on the peak
crowds your ears and you are one
claimed by the air
and the stones beneath your feet
have never felt less certain

*bibliotekette is not a real word. Bibliotek is Norwegian for library, but this room is small. Hence: -ette.

Imperfect and Wonderful

I don’t walk in a week what I would run on a single morning before 7 am a year ago. I don’t recognize myself. Yoga is difficult and, although I still have my balance, I have lost flexibility. But I am healthy, and maybe it is okay not to recognize myself on occasion. Maybe that’s a sign of clarity and plasticity. Things change and I can choose what I want to take up again, and what I can walk away from.

Run toward again.

We’re back to digital school for a few days. So close to the end of the term, and I feel like I’ve accomplished little in terms of teaching. It’s been an exceptional year and I have been unsteady at times, but I have also been able to be there when people needed someone to be there. There is teaching in that: in my obvious imperfections and my obvious acceptance of them. I will not apologize for my life. I will not negate any part of myself.

The funny things is that I’ve noticed no one else cares. I can only assume that I was never fooling anyone by myself, or that … no one actually cares.

Which is a good thing. I think.

In the last couple days, I have understood – really understood – how random the moving bits of the world are. All these things/events/collisions we rationalize with a cause and effect we think we can chart and judge. We chart and judge to keep what’s frightening at arm’s length. If they brought it on themselves, we are safe. None of us are safe. The people we love are not safe. And that is too hard to accept.

No act, no action
is a promise, though every
action is a prayer

I’ve been wondering why we are so hard on ourselves. Why we – as they say – internalize the boundaries and standards other people set for us. I was thinking about strict religious communities that whip themselves with an eye toward a heaven. But agnostics and atheists, too. Do we fence our lives in according to our stories? The books, the films, the lessons taught in narratives: cause and effect. How to earn the “reward”. Use the right toothpaste, wear the right brand of yoga pants, sleep with the right people. Are we all trying to be good enough to earn the gold star?

Maybe it’s just me.

That’s why I do this: write these little missives. I’m reaching in order to feel securely connected to in the world. That’s my long view. And it’s become clearer than ever lately that this reaching is absurd. It’s trying to overcome the human condition.

People can fall away from us not matter how good all of us are. We, too, will fall away because all of our connections are both imperfect and wonderful.