Sharon Charde's Blog, page 6

MAY IS THE CRUELEST MONTH

I was going to tell you about the great Zoom re-creation of my women’s writing group last Sunday, when seven of us joined for the day to express in words the many feelings and thoughts prompted by poems I shared, but I’m not going to do that.

     I debated writing about the powerful virtual mindfulness retreat I sat (in front of my computer) last week, given by renowned meditation teachers Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzburg to 2300 others all over the world. I thought I’d quote Ajahn Chah, Thai meditation master, who said “Anything that is irritating you is your teacher,” thinking it a rich source of reflection for the constant challenge, destabilization and disruption we are all feeling daily—but I just couldn’t get there.

     Because, as my son’s beloved teacher said many years ago, introducing me to a group of students at the Trinity College/Rome campus where Geoff spent his junior year abroad, “T. S. Eliot was wrong. The cruelest month is not April, but May, the month Sharon’s son Geoff died from a late night fall from the wall along the Tiber River.”

     May has again arrived, and the torment of remembering him, his death, his life, has hijacked my mind and heart. 

OUTLIVING HIM

                       for Geoffrey

His ghost blooms with the lilacs--
nothing takes away May’s missing him,
not the bluebirds his father’s enticed
at last to our backyard
not the ravenous red tulips
or the luminous acres of lawn.
He brings death to the newly born.

It’s not that I forget him in winter.
but winter’s flowers are underground,
sheltered by hard earth--
not the outrageous bursts of spring
I cannot hide from.

His death day sounds its arrival
with dogwood and daffodils
while I, now gray haired and lined,
survive at winter’s edge
unwilling still to outlive him.

(Four Trees Down from Ponte Sisto, 2006, Dallas Community Poets Press)

    The anniversary of his death is this Saturday, May 9, the day before Mother’s Day, a day always for me, of tangled emotions. Those of you who have lost people in your life you’ve deeply loved will recognize the memorial surprises of unexpected choking sobs, of darkening moods, of sudden sore throats, chills or headaches that arrive with unerring precision during these anniversary weeks.

     It’s been thirty-three years since my son died alone on that dark night in Rome, his death still an unsolved mystery, and the raw chasm of grief it left still surges unannounced. Struggling to find the words for ideas I’d thought to write about this week, deleting everything I began, I realized that his death was my story, that honoring his memory was the only way to get something on the page.

     Just this morning, someone I hadn’t seen or spoken to in years asked the question that always comes when someone hears that death has punctured one’s life. It’s such a complex question for me to answer that ten years ago I wrote this poem:

 

     THE STORY

we’re sitting around a table eating lasagna, or walking down a dirt road in Virginia, maybe in a dusty country store crammed with jams and tee shirts and vitamins, or possibly in the back seat of a taxi in New York or a hotel conference room or next to each other on a plane—when the question comes---how many children do you have and I tell the person that I have two but one is dead and see the look I already know I will see---a kind of blanching—a pulling away or maybe back from what they hadn’t wanted to hear and my god I hadn’t wanted to hear it either but now it’s like this unlit candle I carry around never knowing who will have the match and then they say how did your son die—of course you don’t have to say if you don’t want to-- and of course I don’t want to but I do want to and I tell them the story—a little bit—he fell fifty feet from a wall in Rome but then of course they will think  it was suicide---which of course is not true--if I don’t tell the rest of the story—how thrilled he was to be a student in Rome—his asthma—the dinner with John—the paparazzi—the branch in his hand—and their eyes are so kind now---they are so full of happiness that their own children are alive—and then they want to know how long ago and I tell them it’s been twenty three years already—he’s been dead longer than he was alive—only twenty one I tell them—although he really wasn’t quite twenty one but it’s easier to say he was and sometimes like today I start to sob surprising myself and causing the other person to back away or hug me and try to comfort me and it doesn’t do any good really because the hole is so big and there’s no way to fill it my god I have tried and tried and will probably try forever and then the conversation turns to what someone’s husband does---what book they are reading—maybe what school their child goes to—because after all we are all trying to tell our stories aren’t we—and I smile and listen and all these candles are burning inside me and even though it’s been so long—you should be over it—I don’t know how to put them out—

New Delta Review, Vol. 27, 2010

 

     I’ve written and written about his death. Six collections of poetry, and now I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, my memoir about how I’ve survived it by working as a volunteer poetry teacher at a facility for delinquent girls, despite the fact that that was never my intention in beginning the ten-year program I describe in the upcoming book (Mango Publishing, June 16, 2020). “Writing is a way to transform trauma,” I told the girls—a way to get the inchoate, the unbearable, gone from where it can daily eat you alive, a way to reach and connect with others who’ve suffered in similar ways. I brought them to classrooms, cafes, galleries, The Hotchkiss School, and our yearly poetry festivals, where their passionate, powerful voices reached and affected so many. I hope you’ll all read my book so you can hear those voices too. They are rich and strong and brave. Geoff would have loved them, sensitive creative artist that he was.

     For a minute, I let myself think, what, who would he be today, at almost 54? Would he have a wife, children, cousins for my grandsons, be the brother whose death didn’t make Matthew an only child? Would he have followed his creative dreams, or had his tender soul squashed by the harshness of today’s world? But I don’t go far with these thoughts, which always lead to painful dead ends.

     Instead, I bring to mind the words I spent a year searching for, to have inscribed on his gravestone, carved deep into rough Westerly granite.

And think not you can direct the course of love
for love, if it finds you worthy, will direct your course.

                                                                         Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

     I draw in afresh the comfort and wisdom of those words, their rightness radiant when I found them at last. They remind me again that love, my love for him, for my living son’s family, for my husband, for the girls, for all of you, and this hurting world we’re inhabiting now, keeps directing the course of my life.    

    But all those candles are still burning inside of me….

May 6, 2020

TRUE CONFESSIONS

   I was walking Stella, my dog, who we’ve trained to sit when a car goes by. This one stopped. It was my neighbor, going for a drive to get out of the house.

   “I just read your blog,” she said. “It’s so depressing. Can’t you write a happy one next time? Something inspirational?

   I thought, but didn’t say, that’s not my style. How many times have I heard people say things like that to me? Just a recent email from an old friend declared, “I have read your poetry and wondered at your gift for writing. It is wonderful to read but so full of sadness. I look for the hope! “

   Another (now former) friend dismissed our relationship by saying “You’re too sad for me.” That was in the years after our son Geoff died. Laden with the heavy coat of grief, what could I be but sad?

    People at my poetry readings always look serious, stricken. And they often come up to me to tell their own painful stories, sometimes thanking me for putting into words feelings that for them had been inchoate. What I write about, often grief, loss, and lately, aging, I think, is real. Close to the bone. Since my growing-up years were filled with secrets, “don’t talk-about-its,” hypocritical religious dictums, pretense and outright lies, I have come to want only truth for myself and those around me.

   And truth can be sticky, sometimes unpleasant, gritty, at times frightening—but to me, a beautiful shining thing.

    My upcoming memoir, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent, is another attempt to not only to speak the truth of my life for myself but for the at-risk girls I taught, sharing their stories of rape, drug abuse, incest, neglect and truancy, our communal journeys to transform the truths of our experience into art. Many readers will want to find hope, defined as a dream, prayer, or wish for change from what is and has been to what could be, in our stories. But what I want them to see is that simply accepting things as they are, is what brings the peace to me that perhaps hope has given to them. Yes, positively changed circumstances may come to some, but not because of wishing or dreaming or praying. Awareness gained from reflection and experience, hard choices made, help and support from caring friends and mentors, are what power the small transformations. We can definitely evolve.

   So, writing the “inspirational” is not exactly what I’m all about. 

   But here’s a nugget of light I can offer in these tangled times. Because truth is not always hard and sad. The reality is that most of us are struggling most of the time, some so very much more than others. But pieces of light can and do bounce into our current lives and certainly are present in mine. I know I am incredibly fortunate right now, not to have young children or a job with daily responsibilities. Or no job at all, or a business that’s shuttered. Or the virus itself, or anyone I know sick with it.  I have financial stability, a home and gardens I love, a caring and supportive husband, a black Lab puppy we adore. 

   I am surrounded with trees and fields, lovely walkable roads and forest paths.

I have health and energy, zoom yoga classes, contacts with friends far and near.

   But, because everything in life is faceted, I have discovered that –when I’m not reading the New York Times or Washington Post, that is—I am really liking this sheltering in place. Though an extrovert who loves and needs social interaction, I’ve also learned to deeply cherish my solitude. It’s absolutely what a writer needs, and I have often run from it in former “normal” days—“doing” rather than “being.”

   I love being up here in my book-filled study, messy with random piles of papers, poems that need revision, my “altar” of prized and comforting objects collected over the years, a cozy couch that I almost never settle into for reading the books piled around it. I love sitting at the computer, writing these words.

   But most of all, I love having the burden of choice lifted from my shoulders. I love having no options, though many of you have heard me say how important having options is to me. That was then. But right now, those options don’t exist for anyone; they’ve been suspended by the coronavirus restrictions. I don’t have to fret that others are doing more exciting things than I am. I don’t have to decide whether to go to that lecture or reading, what play to see in the city, what museum or restaurant to grace with my presence, what workshop or residency to apply to, what country to visit next. (Although I fully realize what privileged choices these were). 

   I don’t have doctor or dentist appointments, my hair is long grown past its last cut and my toes are unpolished. I don’t have to pack for yet another trip.

   Right now, I don’t have “conflict about conflict,” a condition that has been an encumbrance all my life. I first heard this term used by Padraig O’ Tuama at a workshop with Marie Howe in Ireland a few years ago. It was the perfect description for how I’ve felt so much of the time and I was actually thrilled to have words to put to that feeling. I get wrapped up in “Shall I do this?” Shall I do that?” “Which choice is better?” Which is possible?”  “What if?” And on and on, driven through the thorny, dizzying, thickets of determining which options to select in a myriad of situations-- large, small, and in-between.

   I think some of you can relate.

    So now I am relieved of decision-making, with the exception of what to have for dinner or lunch, what time of the day to take a walk with my husband and Stella, what wonderful book to read (I’m now in the middle of “Our Revolution,” by Honor Moore, about her relationship with her late mother—it’s terrific!), how many hours to spend writing and reading. The only present demands on me involve marketing for my memoir, setting up virtual readings for it and writing these blog posts, all pleasurable pastimes. What I wear or how I look doesn’t matter; I take delight in the small domestic chores I do each day. 

  So, here’s that nugget of light : I feel joy and relief in being forced to accept things as they are. Again. I never would have imagined I could have, in this tragic and unbalancing situation we are all in now.

   I don’t know if that’s inspiring to you, but it surely is to me.

“PERFECTIONISM IS THE SCARIEST WORD I KNOW”

This sentence, a quote from Kathleen Norris, who writes movingly in many books of grappling with perfectionism and her spiritual journey, was to be the title of one of the sections in my upcoming memoir, I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, about my similar struggles. But I had to cut it when my editor suggested that three sections would work better than the five I’d originally had. As usual, she was correct.

But its personal resonance has never left me; this morning during a very challenging zoom yoga class with a new teacher, its noisy dictates blared back to me as I struggled to get the unfamiliar poses exactly right. As I write this I of course see what a ridiculous expectation that was—almost as ridiculous as thinking I can find a way to flawlessly execute the test this coronavirus siege presents me with.

And then the digital copy of my memoir arrived, with a raft of technological bells and whistles like a new language I had to learn, plus a design element that felt wrong to me. It’s the last time I’ll get to go through the whole thing and I’m afraid I’ll mess it up, having to utilize these unfamiliar and confusing tools to make corrections. But at least it’s a project with a beginning, middle and end, unlike the pandemic we are living through.

I can cope with that. My zeal for getting things right will be a plus in that endeavor.

But how does a perfectionist deal with the upheaval that’s happening now in our world? I guess the first challenge is clear:  to strive not to be a perfectionist. According to a recent article in the New York Times, I could use this time to become non-productive. Non-productive! I think doing nothing might be harder for me to master than the technical tasks I have to figure out to review my book. As soon as I wake up in the morning I make a mental list of the tasks for the day. Time to do laundry, change the sheets, clean out the vegetable drawers, respond to and delete hundreds of emails, do yoga, get my ten thousand steps, text my grandsons, revise poems from residency, review the book, write this blog.

There are always more things to do than can fit into one day.

I think I should have a routine that I stick to, and don’t get “tossed away” by news alerts, a writer friend’s new book that arrived in the mail that I’d just love to begin reading, Facebook and Instagram posts, the political jokes and junk mail that crowd my inbox, invitations to buy new clothes I’d have no place to wear, yet another Trump insanity. But I do—get tossed away, I mean. I read the posts. I order a new Everlane sweater. I get caught in outrage at how this selfish, deranged, narcissistic president is using what should be a time to reassure the country with truth and comfort to blather and bluster about being number one on Facebook, how his ratings are better than those of “The Bachelor” (whatever that is), and how governors should suck up to him if they want PPE.  

I no longer say to my husband, “How can this be happening?” because I know why. He (Trump, not my husband) is incapable of doing anything else than what he’s doing. But my outrage persists, fed by the daily information overload. By the death tallies that could be less if he had acted sooner. By the governors having to flatter and cajole this man-child to get the help their states need.  By the lines of Wisconsin residents risking their lives to vote and the Republican courts that forced them to do so.

A good perfectionist should either turn it off, or master it all, right? And definitely not be angry about it so much.

I stay angry and don’t do either, stuck in the paradox of needing to know what is happening, and wanting to push it all away.

And I’m angry that I’m angry. A perfectionist shouldn’t be. I should be calm and centered and clear, using meditation and yoga, a mind and heart balanced by those practices. I should wholeheartedly be wishing health, peace and happiness to all beings, including Trump and his toadies, words I mouth in my morning meditation. I should be more unselfish, more grateful at my good fortune in the face of so many suffering.

Notice all the shoulds?

So what else can I do to get through this time in a faultless way? I want to help somehow; I long to do some volunteer work, so I look at Connecticut’s website listing possibilities, of which there are many. But people over sixty, and I am well over that age, are not wanted. Too risky for us to be out in the world. I have no sewing skills to make masks, so contributing money to food banks, Planned Parenthood, artist relief funds, and Democratic campaigns will have to take the place of volunteering.

But it just doesn’t seem like enough.

When I was quarantined for fourteen days, I knew exactly what to do. I made the recommended Clorox/water solution and sprayed everything down with it. I opened the toaster oven, refrigerator and microwave with a paper towel in my hand, turned on the faucets that way too. I tried not to pet our dog or get within six feet of my husband. We even ate six feet apart, and I cloroxed our napkin rings after meals, leaving him to put the dishes in the dishwasher. I washed my hands so much my skin was raw. I only left the house to go for a walk each day. We slept in separate beds.

A perfectionist loves rules, and there were so many to follow. It was easier to feel okay about each day. I was doing something. I had control. 

Ha. 

Here it comes again, another FGO (f….ing growth opportunity if you don’t know that wonderful phrase). Of course I didn’t have control, of course I never do, I never have. Isn’t this pandemic teaching me that again? Sure, it helps to have order in my life, dishes put away, a pot of fragrant soup on the stove, sweaters stacked neatly on closet shelves, today’s emails answered or deleted. Sure, it’s okay to feel okay.

For today.

For tomorrow, the unknown. Yes, when I let myself think about it, I’m scared of getting the virus, of not being able to breathe and maybe having to choose between a ventilator or just high-flow oxygen, the newest Sophie’s choice. Of there not being a hospital bed. Of my husband or my son getting it. Of them dying. Of me dying.

 What does this perfectionist do about those thoughts?

She goes for a walk, which is what I’m going to do right now, rain or no rain.

GATHERING THE MIND

Nine days in quarantine. Instead of sitting here in my Lakeville study, I’d be on my way home from Ucross today, stopping off in Denver to see old friends, hugging them both long and hard, getting together with their families, going out to dinner at the fun restaurant they’d chosen. Wow. How things have changed in the world, in such a short time. Those plans were scrapped several weeks ago, and as I’ve already written, I came back early and have been keeping “social distance” from my husband and also in quarantine here, in case I got infected in my travels.

I feel physically healthy, really great, actually, which I’m thankful for. Five more days until we can begin interacting in a more normal way. How strange it’s been not to sleep together as we have for fifty-five years, not to hug in the morning, or snuggle together watching the NewsHour or a movie—we saw “Just Mercy” the other night and I can’t recommend it more highly. How critical it has become to be conscious of the importance of this distancing, conscious in each present moment. To my regret, I’ve been growing even more aware of how I act unconsciously, out of habit, much of the time.

It’s hard to stay that awake.

To be continually aware of all my thoughts, desires, motivations, anxieties, movements, regrets and denial takes a lot of work. And more work still, to prohibit them from hijacking my mind and heart.  How much easier it has become to resist that work, now that I’m in a less perfect psychic environment. Since the inspiration of Wyoming’s vast landscape and the simple bliss of Ucross’s nurturance are now absent from my life, I’m stabbing at stability, restless and distracted, trying to fend off my desire to keep looking at emails, news alerts, making lists, cleaning out the pantry, taking the dog for another walk. Fury at Trump, his resistance to and inability to manage this crisis, the desire to blame someone for what is happening, the nose drive that the stock market and our retirement portfolios have taken, worry about my son and his family and distress over the sure-to-be postponed launches for my upcoming book, have put me into meltdown mode. My husband and I argue about something whose significance I can’t even remember

Leaving the present moment, I surrender to the temptation of imagining future scenarios, none having a positive aura.

I sit for a half-hour of meditation and experience my mind’s similarity to a toddler with ADHD, the thoughts and fears and memories it holds colliding into a tangle of unbalancing dissonance.

How uncomfortable this is.

“The mind likes to be gathered,” I say in an afternoon conversation with my artist grandson, newly and precipitously returned to the family nest from his college spring semester. I remind him that art –whether writing, drawing, photography or music—is a way of achieving that, of transforming the trauma we are all feeling now into something concrete, separate from the spinning uncertainties our minds so willingly create.

He, fellow creator, wholly agrees.

And, as often happens to me in conversation, drawing thoughts from the hazy realms of my own head to join with another’s, I find the ease I seek for my own mind’s pain, and maybe some for his as well. I want to sit down with that toddler, give her crayons and paper, a cup of hot chocolate, a big hug.

Despite my grief over losing the residency haven where it was so much easier to write and read uninterrupted for days on end, I determine to bridge the crevasse I’ve fallen into at home with pen and notebook, computer, and the gathered mind that they and I can create together.

Despite the fact that I just don’t feel the flow that Wyoming’s spaciousness offered me daily, despite the sure reality that I will relapse and struggle for self-forgiveness, I’ll keep going.

It’s what I do best.

                                 ***************

We’re in this together. So let’s all try to do what we do best, whatever it is for each of us. There are many arts—cooking, teaching, gardening, caring for children, practicing yoga, dance, or tai chi, singing, science, sports, caring for the many sickened by this virus, plain, ordinary kindness—maybe it’s a time to think about what we’re good at, do more of that, and give ourselves credit for those talents.

Just getting through these days trying to be conscious of our fear, frustration, confusion, guilt, and sadness-- accepting things as they are, not as we wish they would be-- is itself an art we can all try to practice.

I welcome your responses and have loved the ones I’ve gotten. Thank you for reading.

.FLATTENING THE CURVE

Spinning from news too intense, too constant, to absorb, I reach for the keyboard, the notebook, to ground myself. But instead of writing, I look out at the cottonwoods, the patches of snow on the sagebrush, the distant mountains. How I will miss this place, where I’ve felt found again—pieces of myself at last gathered into a bouquet of balance.

I’ve spent my days living simply. I inhabit just two rooms, one with a bed and a sink, a small assortment of clothes and toiletries, another with the stack of books I’ve brought from home, my computer, piles of pads and notebooks filled with recent writing practice from which I draw image and inspiration. It’s a cozy studio with a couch, a leather chair and two desks, a door leading out to a deck. Nearby is another building called The Schoolhouse in which our brilliant chef is now busy making the exquisite dinner she serves us each night where the small and congenial group of us (three visual artists, a composer, a sculptor, two playwrights and Chris and I, the two writers), come together to discuss our day’s experience. It also contains a large and comfortable gathering space, in which we can convene for readings and connection.

But sadly, there will be no reading by me, as all of us have to leave on Wednesday. Just Chris, whose other residencies have been canceled, will remain, as he has no home to go. Renting an apartment in a nearby town has been his interim solution. I worry he’ll end up there for months.

 So on Wednesday morning we’ll get into the Suburban with our luggage and Tracey will drive us to the small one-gate Sheridan airport. United will fly us to Denver, and then a few hours later, I’ll board a plane to Hartford. At midnight, my husband will be there to meet me, but we won’t be able to kiss and hug after nearly three weeks of separation (social distancing), and will both wear masks for the trip home.

Of course, I’m worried. We’ve been calling each day as the crisis has escalated, and writing back and forth frequently, as my flight home has had to be changed twice. Though the Denver airport isn’t one of the hubs that’s been so crowded, it will still be full of people. I’ve been planning to wear the surgical gloves he’s sending me (I bought gloves and masks months ago) but they may not reach here until after I’ve left.

I write of my concern. He responds:

You will be ok; you are really good and innovative in crises; worst case scenario of no glove arrival - wear the winter gloves you brought 

I hope I will be okay. I hope I will be innovative in this crisis. I hope I get the gloves in time. I am glad he thinks that I will be able to rise to the occasion. I hope I can manage to carry back some of the peace I’ve felt in this protected space. I hope I can keep my heart open and feel compassion for my fellow travelers, all of whom will be anxious too.

But patience has never been my strong suit. And I remember that hope is expectation, and not living in the moment, so I will have to reread all my Buddhist books, especially Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart and do lots of sitting meditation, to help me accept that this is the way it is right now and hoping it will be different is just causing double suffering.

He tells me this morning that we may be staying home in isolation for two months. Two months! But we must join the national effort to “flatten the curve,” that is to mitigate social interactions as much as possible, even in our own household, especially at our ages. It will be hard, as changing one’s ingrained habits of behavior always is.

But my first reaction was “You mean I can’t get my hair cut?” Really!

I am fastidious about my hair, getting it styled every 6 weeks at least, and it will have been six weeks when I get home. Of course I had an appointment scheduled for two days after my arrival.

“I’ve always loved you in long hair,” he says, laughing. But I don’t think it’s funny, imagining my unruly, inelegant locks two months from now. Until I catch myself and begin to take in how the crisis in the outside world will affect us, what a tiny challenge this is. The things we take for granted—food shopping, dinners with friends, movies out, yoga and tai chi classes, trips to see our son and his family, our grandsons at college, doctor and dentist appointments, shopping, travel abroad, and yes, haircuts—will end.

Will the assets we are living on hold out in this terrifying economic environment? I haven’t thought this far, although the Dow has had its worst day in history and as retirees, we depend on our investments. I decide to put this thinking out of my mind.

Will one or both of us get sick with COVID-19? We are in that age group, though both healthy, older people have compromised immune systems. And where would we go to get tested, hospitalized? We have only a very small hospital in our nearby rural town.

I decide to put that thought out of my mind as well. 

But maybe the enforced isolation could be a positive experience? It’s possible. I can read the accumulated pile of New Yorkers curling their pages in the basket by the couch, make some curried lentil soup and veggie burgers, take long walks with Stella our dog, in the woods near our house, and better yet, create a residency in my own home. I have a beautiful study with a door that closes, and when the books I’ve had here for inspiration arrive by UPS, I’ll just spread then out as I have here, get out my pads and notebooks and dig in, furious with inspiration and drive, instead of frustration and deprivation.

That’s actually sounding pretty good to me.

Now if only I can get home safely.

PERSPECTIVE

I’ve been here before. When our son died suddenly and shockingly in an accident thirty-two years ago, the ground shifted, the air smelled gray, there was no sun in the sky. Things that had once seemed so important ceased to exist a world that had shrunk to the size of a snow globe. Eating, sleeping, interacting with others became robotic endeavors; desire to do anything but grieve my lost boy, go to his grave and talk to him, stay close to my husband and older son and those who had known him, his friends, our families—all dissipated. We no longer wanted to go anywhere or socialize outside our home.

The world as we had known it had spun loose from its axis; the center no longer held.

And so it is today. People are reassessing all that they’ve taken for granted in their daily lives. Habits of behavior, routines and classes, schedules, jobs, school attendance, travel, sporting events, socializing, all are being challenged. Financial markets are tumbling and fear is infecting the whole world as we all face our own possible deaths and losses from COVID-19. Minute by minute, alerts pop up on my phone, emails on this computer, closings, warnings, excoriations of our loathsome president and his inexcusably incompetent handling of this health pandemic.

We have lived in a world where the real “fake news” is that everything will be okay, a world of denial in which we can feel a false sense of safety, in which we can believe bad things happen to other people, in which we choose not to believe that anything can happen, at any time, and it will, and it has. That despite all current reliable information to the contrary, all will be well. That the stock markets, our 401K’s and retirement income, the government and political situation, our health, our livelihoods, our churches, schools and social lives will all return to “normal.”

Though it’s not end times or Armageddon, as many religions are warning, we are being thrown into a brand-new place. Reactivity seems to be the rampant response. A friend just told me about being shown his neighbor’s newly retrofitted closet, filled with toilet paper, biohazard suits and masks, surgical gloves, first aid supplies, food for months, gallons of Purell, and even weapons, including two swords, a machete and knives, even a crossbow pistol. “They are intelligent people, liberal Democrats” he says, “They have master’s degrees from Yale. How could they think they will need all this stuff?”

And there are the responses from Fox News watchers, at the other extreme, saying it doesn’t even exist, or that they’ve had it, it was mild, and no big deal. VP Pence states that “Politicians shake hands, that’s what people in our field do,” defending the childishly oppositional actions of our president, who publicly pumps the hands of donors and world leaders, when the CDC and other health experts are telling us physical touch is a way to transmit this awful virus.

Wisely, though, most of the country is shutting down—Disney World, St. Patrick’s Day parades, the Boston Marathon and baseball spring training, my grandson’s colleges. My yoga classes, Broadway, public schools in many states, my son’s travel business, air bnb’s —all and many more, are suspending current operations. Self-employed workers are out of luck; those in small businesses are at risk of losing their livelihood. People without insurance may avoid going to get tested, unless the Democratic measures to give it for no cost pass House and Senate. As usual, the wealthy will weather all these with ease, that is unless they get ill. Viruses do not respect income levels.

Perhaps karma (“what goes around comes around”) is showing itself; something has been awry in the world for a long time now, and the consequences of that unbalance are arriving. Perhaps people will wake up to this fact more readily now that their daily lives are profoundly affected.

So perspective is shifting as people begin to see that uncertainty is the norm rather than the atypical. And really, this has always been true. We just choose not to see it. Since Geoff died, I’ve tried to live with what John Keats called “negative capability,” the capacity to hold two opposing concepts at the same time. I think we need to live as though we could die any moment, or that we could live forever. That notion has been hard to take in, harder still to truly believe, but also strangely comforting.

Theory is morphing into reality. I, my husband, many of our friends, all in or seventies and eighties, could die from COVID-19.

So what should my response be? As Mary Pipher, noted writer and psychologist, said in a recent NYT op-ed, “I love the world, but I cannot stay.” I hope I am prepared to leave if I have to. I hope I can accept what may come. In two weeks, when the virus is more virulent, I’ll be getting on two planes, walking through two airports, in order to get to my rural home. I have no illusions that surgical gloves and the facemask I will don, the wipes with which I’ll clean my seat and tray tables, will protect me from COVID-19. But I’ll still use them with the possibility that they may mitigate what of its germs may cling to my body.

I hope I will become kinder rather than more self-protective—or maybe both. I hope some of the wisdom I’ve gained since my son died will support me through the tough times we are living through, that some measure of compassion for myself and others will leaven my days, however many there are left.

And I hope my perspective will once again shrink to only hold what is truly important as long as I am living in this world.

OWLS, OIL AND THE PLACES THAT SCARE ME

I’m trying to write a poem, the task I’ve set myself for each day here, but nothing is coming. There is just too much terror in the air for me to settle into image. Even though I’m away from the East coast here in Wyoming, where the sheer vastness of the land makes me feel that I’m the only person in the world--- like I did yesterday when I climbed through the red mud up to the ridge that overlooked a panoramic mountain range—despite the awe, the cherished solitude, I read of the world’s fearful crashing and taste my own.

I am almost seventy-eight, and though I’m in great health and my immune system is being bolstered by the depth of caring here at Ucross, the delicious food, long nights of sleep, clear crisp air and absence of pressure and distractions I feel constantly when home, I’m in that risk group for coronavirus death and illness being constantly discussed. It’s sobering. At the end of the month I’ll need to travel home, walk through airports, buy food, sit on planes. I’d planned to visit friends in Denver, also my age and even more at risk due to their health issues and residence in a senior community. Now should I do that? And what about my plans to do a workshop with a facility for troubled girls in Sheridan? Is that wise?

I don’t like these conflictual questions, creeping their way into my peaceful existence here, scrubbing away the trance that feeds my creativity and forcing me into facing places that scare me, the places where I have no control, none at all. What foolishness it has been to imagine my reverie would continue,  “the hazardous bliss /before you know what you will miss, “ in the words of poet Ada Limon.

 Hazardous bliss, indeed. I’ve been reading Erosion, Essays of Undoing,  by Terry Tempest Williams, about the assaults on America’s public lands, about the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion and trust. She writes that Wyoming is the largest coal producer in the country, responsible for more than ninety percent of US coal (though I saw a lower percentage-forty—in Wikipedia). And in Gillette, Wyoming, a city an hour and a half from the tranquil place I’m in, there are black open-pit coal mines. In Pavillion, a town of two hundred and fifty, the EPA warned residents in 2011 that they could not drink, bathe in, cook with or farm with their water. No one would say why, but everyone suspected it was contaminated by fracking. I had not realized what a huge fossil fuel state this is, and how dependent on oil and gas revenue.

I guess I’d forgotten about Cheney.

So ignorance has been bliss, as the saying goes. During the week before I knew these things as well as other painful facts in Williams’ book, I felt magic in the cottonwoods, the hooting great horned owls and white-talied deer outside my window, the sheer magnificence of the wide open space impossible to imagine in my cramped New England village. Of course, I was bound to have my perfect experience bang up against reality, as perfect experiences always do. I try to remember impermanence, the Buddhist teaching that one of the only things we can count on is that everything changes, but when it hits that it’s happening, I’m easily shocked.

And, this gorgeous sanctuary for creativity that I’m currently inhabiting was begun by a man who was the founder of the Apache Corporation, a fifty-billion oil and gas company, Raymond Plank. So money made from a wealthy fossil fuel corporation has been funding this artist’s retreat since 1981. And a research partnership was established between the Ucross foundation, Apache Corporation and prominent scientists from Stanford University, Columbia University, and University of Wyoming to study the impact of coalbed methane development in the

Powder River Basin. Many more positive efforts in this arena have been made in the years since that initiative. 

So perhaps I can hold the owls and the oil both with equanimity. 

Beauty and peace can co-exist with facing dispiriting times, can’t they? Can’t I still feel the innocent magic in my first encounter with this spacious land? Can I feel my way into living in the present moment, as we all need to do all the time. despite the fact that our ingrained habit patterns fight to keep us from doing so?

I’m going to keep trying.

Last night Chris, my fellow writer here, taught me how to play Texas hold’em.. A few of us sat around after dinner, pushing piles of red, white and blue poker chips back and forth, making passes and checks and folds, laughing and feeling the special community that comes from being at an artist’s residency. I learned about straights, flushes, full houses, four-of-a-kinds and the other ways to win chips and make bids, and enjoyed an amateur’s delight at actually being able to play the game. Today I took in the scrumptious sandwich lunch that gets delivered to my door each weekday, and ate it on the sunny deck outside my studio. I read. I printed out my old friend T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” for inspiration.

And now I’m going for another walk amidst the mountains , and get some more red mud on my boots.

The Rewrite

Where to begin? Well, why not with the first prompt I always give my writing groups: “this is the way it is right now?” That’s also the title of the last chapter of my forthcoming memoir, I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent. Since one of my spiritual teachers spoke those words to me at a very troubled time in my life, I have found them immensely comforting.

The way it is for me today is so much better than yesterday, or even the last week, maybe even the last months, a true manifestation of the impermanence my cherished Buddhist dharma teaches. I’ve been so on edge over just about everything—the roller-coaster political situation, the coronavirus and how it will affect the world and our country (and our retirement accounts), challenging travel to Switzerland and out here to Wyoming where I am now, getting my new website set up, and the physical malaise I’ve been struggling to shake.

I knew I was super-stressed, but all the nostrums I attempted to employ simply weren’t working.

And I’d finally finished the second round of edits on I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent a few days before the Switzerland trip. The first round had been a pretty intense rewrite—a restructuring of the whole book, really. What a humbling and learning experience that was. The second involved a complete re-do of the format as well as the addition of an introduction, a foreword, an afterword and acknowledgements. The latter was one of the hardest sections to write. There are simply so many people who have been part of this journey for me to thank, and I was afraid I’d inadvertently leave someone out.

It’s taken the proverbial village to get I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent into the world and my gratitude is great.

I feel an enormous sense of relief at having finished the book project, but also the immense sense of loss and let-down that often follows the fulfillment of an aspiration. For months I’d been living with my own long-ago words and experience as well as my editor’s comments, suggestions and dictates. And before that, with all the attempts to find an interested publisher or an agent—and before that, the years of actual events recounted in the book.

I Am NOT a Juvenile Delinquent  been my life since 1999. I’ll soon be preparing for its birth in June, and its reception after that.

But for right now, I have this gorgeous respite at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. I’m out on a high plateau that’s been here for millenniums, on loan to us by all the Native American tribes who’ve lived here. There are teepee circles to explore, petrified wood and other ancient artifacts to find, long clay road and tracks to hike, delicious meals to eat and new and fascinating people to meet.

In the month I have to live in this oasis, to enter a trance-world filled with the poems of others, and my own as yet unwritten, I’m being allowed to come back to myself once again. Here, I can retreat from all the fear and information overload that’s been infecting me. I feel whole and empty and free. 

 It’s just the solace I need at this junction in my life.

I have the opportunity here to practice the acceptance of what is, that I talk about so much in my book, and I will try to embrace it fully as I have not been doing. I’ll drink from the spring of energy and repair as I walk this new land, read the piles of books I never seem to have time for at home, write new poems, and try to grasp once again that wanting something to be other than what it is causes double anguish.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.