winter, warm and humble

Then came old January wrapped well in many weeds to keep the cold away

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Cold weather tends to bring out the hibernation in some of us. I happen to subscribe to this tendency, and do not apologize. Nothing seems more apt when the wind howls at the door than to curl up with a good book, snuggled deep in the blankets, the better to doze when the inclination takes us.

“I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door”

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 

barefoot on the earth

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. --Desiderata


"It all seemed to good to be true.  Hither and thither he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, among the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting --everything happy, progressive, and occupied. ...He thought his happiness was complete..."  --Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

In Romancing the Ordinary, Sarah ban Breathnach reminds us of the spiritual connection that may be made in the simple act of removing one's shoes and walking about with our feet "'in touch' with the sacred."  It shames me to admit I worry when my children run about barefoot because I worry too much about cuts and scrapes.  Naturally they ignore me; I'm glad, for as much as I adore shoes, I prefer the feel of my toes on the bare hardwood floors of my home and the coolness of the grass beneath them as I'm hanging out the laundry.

We never touch but at points.  --Emerson 

Physical touch literally reconnects us with what matters.  When we are feeling scattered and stretched too thin, finding something tactile beneath our feet is calming and helps us to find our ground, so to speak.  Remove your shoes and whether inside or out, and walk about your Universe, so that your soul learns not to fear its weakness, by grasping the strength to be found in the Sphere:  small, humble, silent affirmations that touch you.

Humility and a Secure Future

Reading "God Never Blinks." Regina Brett has so much to offer to a world down on its luck, seemingly running out of time, with so much to worry about. With plans scattered like so many specks of dust to places invisible, it's much too easy to forget our basis for faith, and how to reach out and hold on to what has kept us going in the past. Taking one more step forward sometimes feels too damned hard, and hardly worth it. After all, why wake up to one more day of struggle? Isn't it better to just roll over and hit the snooze button? "Forget about life for awhile"?

Why yes, actually. Sometimes that's exactly what we should do.



Life of Agony reminds us exactly what it's like to be worn out and in dire need of escape, maybe with a bit more of an edge than Billy Joel did, but the message is the same. Sometimes we do need to just get it all out in order to forget how bad it all is. And that's okay. But after that, there's something else that's the spiritual and emotional equivalent of clearing the air so we can breathe again.

It's called forgiveness.

Ms. Brett has a bumper sticker that says, "God Bless the Whole World. No Exceptions." She goes on to tell us "Forgive Everybody Everything." I can vouch for the goodness in that. There is nothing anyone's done to me that's worth the spiritual and emotional turmoil of holding a grudge. Nobody's worth eating up my liver over. Nobody gets to be that powerful over me and my life, and as far as I know, nobody really wants to be.

This is not to say nobody's mistreated me. Far from it. Like a lot of people, I'm one of the "walking wounded." But you know what? That just means I've learned a few things. It doesn't mean anyone owes me anything. That honor belongs to - you guessed it - just me.

For about five minutes, it does me good to get angry and rant and spout out all the venom and bile that some peoples' actions incite. But after that, it's good to just put all that away and move on, looking around to see the good things that are still surrounding my world and reminding me that it's never too late to put down that burden and step forward into the light. In fact, if I don't, it's just going to get heavier and heavier the longer I forget to do so.

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. At first that sounds harsh, but once you let go of what you wanted the past to be, you can start changing the present and create a better future," Ms. Brett writes in Lesson 28. Well, duh. Why didn't I figure that out already? Sometimes we need people to point out the obvious, so we can clear the smudges from our eyes and actually see what we're looking at. You can't move beyond something, or stop being a victim, until you stop calling yourself a loser, and take back your own power over situations. Forgive, and then forget. Choose life, and remove yourself from that pain. Put it down. Let it go.

Here's a gem of real value, and I'm putting it here where I'll remember to come back and read it from time to time:

Humility is perpetual quietness of heart.
It is to have no trouble.
It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.
It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble.
--Dr. Bob, co-founder of AA and the Twelve-Step Program

Well then. Today is my lucky day. Yours, too! Go out there and forgive somebody. And then treat yourself to a big slice of that pie called Life. There's very little you can do that will more strongly ensure control of your own destiny. And what's more secure than that?

"That Day is Coming"

Awhile back I found this article fascinating and thought-provoking. It doesn't actually even have a title, but it attends to the subject of out-or-not-out gay actors with sobering insight.

Gay Actors in the Film Industry - A History Lesson

After you've read that, hop on over to the LA Weekly News and read this amazing interview and article with Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman, who assists gay performers who want to come out to do so in a sane and effective way.

The Secret Lives of Queer Leading Men

Quote from the article:
The publicist hasn’t brought out an A-list, gay male actor — yet. But Bragman says that day is coming, and after the first superstar decides to reveal himself, a fundamental shift in American acceptance of gay leading men may not be far behind. He’s currently working with a famous musician who’s still closeted from the public, but who will come out next year. And the manager of one major movie star approached Bragman a year ago and asked about his client’s possibly going public, but the actor still refuses to pull the trigger.

“I felt a little frustrated with that superstar,” Bragman says in reflection, “because it had to be ‘handled.’ ”

I have a lot to think about these days. Seriously, there has to be a way to engender support for honesty. There just has to.

I hope you all are well and happy out there. Think about this with me, won't you?

The Fox Goes Out on a Chilly Night

Polanski freed from jail.

Not to clutter up the internet with more words when others have said it better, just want to say I agree with this post, and the subsequent comments are worthwhile reading.



Pic links to Awards Daily's list of signatories and mentions ONTD's impertinent discussion. Image ganked from here, also worthwhile reading.

The Fox
The fox went out on a chilly night
and he prayed for the moon to give him light
For he'd many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town-o
Source: traditional

No one, in the song, really cared about the chickens, because the hungry pups were so cute. And everyone knows that predators survive on victims, it's the way of the world, the natural order of things. Circle of life, all that.

And everyone feels for the fox who got away, and goes to ground with his prize unpunished, even celebrated for this accomplishment. He lives to steal another day. I guess it's really no wonder some idiots out there confuse this with the basic value of art, or something.

There is, of course, a difference.

The fox steals food in order to survive. Roman Polanski steals innocence and dignity for his own self-gratification. Steals? Yes, steals. Present tense. He's stealing it as we speak, because everyone who reads and understands the root of this story and then looks at his smugly unapologetic face will come away from the experience a little smaller, a little less hopeful, maybe even a little more desperate. It makes us feel sick to know how the system failed here. To say nothing of the victims of his past, who every day have to pick up and go on without the innocence and dignity that he tore out of them to satisfy a manipulative desire for erotic power.

Ugh. Spare us from those artists who would seek to paint this with an equally manipulative and selfish brush, and who thus share equally in stripping humanity of its innocence and dignity. This leaves us all as the children of Dickens, Ignorance and Want, with the same certainty of ultimate emptiness... which, in effect, robs us of the Art, as well. As we watch this year's latest incarnation of A Christmas Carol, we might be thinking about that.

Carry On

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely...” --Emerson

Veritas

Men hate passion, any great passion. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

I defy the tyranny of precedent. Clara Barton.

I am faced with an exposition of the most ridiculous kind. It is almost as if, by turning round and round upon myself, within myself, I am finding out the true nature of the world at large. Fie! It is an old shoe, a bastard, losing daily whatever dignity it has gained at its own behest. I am well to be rid of it.

The world itself is an oasis that draws us out of ourselves, to interact and play nicely with our neighbors. I am all about community, of course. Enjoying friends and family is one of the greatest joys on earth. And here is the rub, see. An oasis is only that which stands out in the middle of the wasteland, providing nourishment and the opportunity for rest for weary travelers. An oasis! Yes, there I’ll be bound.

And miss the boat entirely, of course.

Why linger at an oasis? Why settle, why drink, why sleep? If life is a journey, hadn’t we better get on with it? Saddle up the camels, do something, for heaven’s sake. Or if life is a banquet, should we at least find a place that has good food? God. Get me away from these mongrels, who do nothing more than clasp and smile and make us all feel so damned good.

Take me somewhere I can hear myself think. I have work to do.

I am a promethean, which means I take my work seriously not as art, but of the fact of its usefulness, probably more so than many. It is the work itself that is the point, and nothing that comes after. And I have no opinion at all on whether or not the work is successful, only that it is good, and says what I want it to say. Otherwise, why do it? Why produce, unless to express oneself? If I were going to express another’s opinion, or mimic another’s work, what reason would I have to exist? I do honor by the fact of my existence in bringing my own view to the forefront. Which, I realize, is basically what Ayn Rand said, in billions and billions of words.

That being said, too often the world itself gets in the way. Why? Because I am shy, introspective, and withdrawn by nature. I listen too often to others and quiet my voice. I write what people want to hear, I know pleasant turns of phrase, am witty, clever, and so I am quite repugnant to myself. I mimic so well the acclaimed voices. Eventually I must stop, it will be my undoing. The roar in my ears does not go away when I lift my hands from the keyboard to cover them. I shout at those nearby; I am shouting at myself. Only when I write does my real voice speak. You will almost never hear it from my lips. That is the way of things, perhaps it makes me who I am. I no longer apologize for being several things at once, I am who I am. That cannot change, or who would be me? What of worth would I have to offer; again, why else should I exist?

I know things, things that I left out of the most recent work. I am a miner of the soul; I will go and put them back in. It was wrong to take them out –I am happy now that someone pointed it out to me. As if to say, “Why did you not –“ and “It would have been better if you had –“ when all along I truly believed no one would have understood had I done so. I am glad to put them back. They will complete the work as I originally envisioned. I sigh a deep sigh of completion, and gratitude.

This past week was a vacation for me and the children. We went home to the mountains, to the blue sky and clear air of Virginia. We visited post-card towns and had tea & cakes with the vicar –okay, he was imaginary, but we had them outside on the lawn behind the library not fifteen feet from where I first made out with the father of one of them when I was about thirteen years old –and no I did not mention it! That would have been gross. To continue painting the pastoral scene, we shopped and walked and took miles of pictures. We bought fabric at Schoolhouse Fabrics to make new fall dresses for the girls & me, and a cool grey shirt for my son. We lived and breathed and sang and tromped down to Asheville to take in Biltmore and the highlands in all their pre-fall glory. And about halfway through it, while walking along atop a century-old rock wall in Rocky Mount, Virginia, my youngest said to me, “Mommy, it feels like we are in a movie.”

And I said to her, “That is passion, dearest.”

“What’s passion? I thought what happened to Christ was The Passion.”

“Yeah, that’s passion, too. Passion is when you love something so hard it becomes real.”
She giggled, skipping ahead. “Oh, I get it. Like how I love my turtles when I talk to them.”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Get me down, Mommy.”

I held out my arms to her and she jumped, landing neatly on the cracked sidewalk. “I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.” And hugged her tight.

She walked on ahead of me, and eventually climbed back up to walk along the top of the wall. “It still feels like we are in a movie,” she said presently.

“That is good, I’m glad.”

“I like it.”

“You should. In fact, that is the best. You should feel that way every single day. Don’t ever lose that feeling, OK? Don’t settle for anything less.”

“Really? ‘Cause I don’t feel this way hardly ever.”

“You hold onto it. It makes you strong. Don’t ever lose it.” And I laughed with her.


The work will be a beacon, when it is finished. Again. This I know. And yes, it is all about me. I am the only one left to tell. It is my mind, my entrance upon the world’s stage. I gather up the bits of straw from the threshing floor – the fleeting bits that fall from my fingers in the times when I must compulsively be writing something about passion, for the voices will not stop – and toss them skyward. They fall on happy faces who lick their lips and feed upon them, devouring the little bits of my heart I’d sewn in so carefully. I am happy to do that, their happiness makes me smile.

But there will be more in the morning. So watch, and see. It is practicum for the larger work, it flexes my working muscles and makes me concentrate on plot and character and making something totally imagined real.

Soon I must leave the oasis. It is discipline, yet it is too much in the world. When I have completed it, it will be time for surgery on the original work. The one that has followed me around for the better part of two decades. That has received two lovely long letters of encouragement from now two editors who press me to add voices to it, find an agent, and submit to, as one put it, “a larger publisher with a more literary (quieter, less pop-fiction-readership-oriented) audience.” This is the work that defines my vision of experience and reality between the perfectly imperfect man and woman. That rocks my boat. That frustrates me no end because I just don’t want to give up and feel all the things working in this mine field makes me feel. And so I take the coward’s way out, and try to make it a popular read. I got what I deserved.

I received the go-ahead to basically be true to myself, my vision, and write what I know. What good does it do within me, when it is obvious that the work would be so much better with it out?
And so I will do. That accomplishment will give me the peace I affirm is the only true peace, in the end. That is the point of my existence.

For nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere
--John Donne, Aire and Angels

four tenets from a wise woman

Meditations for today:

Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do.

The surest test of discipline is its absence.

I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay.

I have an almost complete disregard of precedent and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done... I defy the tyranny of precedent. I cannot afford the luxury of a closed mind. I go for anything new that might improve the past. --Clara Barton

When I need reminding that we have come some distance from overwhelming public stupidity, I look at the war women waged in the nineteenth century to regain some of what they had lost in the late eighteenth: respect, purpose, and the ability to have some input, for good or aught, into the direction of society. In doing so they eventually went beyond what they had achieved before, and gained sufferage, some semblance of their own economic worth, and at least some recognition of their ability to contribute to the betterment of the world. So we do not give up, we do press on, and march in time to the need of our day.