The Year Brought Teachers; The Year Brought Friends.

Another year passes us by, and within each of its seasons, I found there were encounters that captivated; lessons learned; people and things loved, floating adrift, only to be found again.

There were leaps and bounds along with cross-legged stay-still-where-you-are's. There were words and pictures, stories and silence, falsehoods and truths. There were fingers, toes, tears, laughter. There were promises and plans, some broken, some seen through. There were cups of tea we drank, and there were trees at which we stared, many mesmerized. There were stars and a blood moon. There were gusts of wind and warm breezes. There was blue, like the sky beneath which we all spent our days; there was green that fell to orange, and brown that fell to empty, and empty that was cloaked by white, snow that is, the fruit of winter; then there was yellow… yellow, yellow, like the sun and flowers. 

There were meetings with friends, old and new. There were meetings with strangers. There were, it seems, meetings with fate too. There was both solemnity and elation. There was what-to-do-now and ah-yes-that’s-just-what-I’ve-been-seeking.

 Then there was happiness for another year's arrival.

A cheerful New Year to everyone!

On Old Shawls and Wabi-Sabi

Illustration of Owl by Ernest Shepard

“Kanga was down below trying the things on, and calling out to Owl, ‘You won’t want this dirty old dish-cloth any more, will you, and what about this carpet, it’s all in holes,’ and Owl was calling back indignantly, ‘Of course I do! It’s just a question of arranging furniture properly, and it isn’t a dish-cloth, it’s my shawl.’”

Recent days have found me reading Benjamin Hoff’s The Te of Piglet. While quite a lovely book in countless ways, I do have one other point of interest to raise here (admittedly a rambling, but nonetheless worthwhile, I think).

Towards the end of the book, the above scene from the Pooh tales is recounted, this is to say, the scene where Owl is moving his belongings from one home to another. Hoff notes that Owl and the state of his dwelling place and belongings are perhaps analogous to the dilapidation of modern society.

I derived from the story something different than this. To the contrary, I was decidedly delighted and captivated by the quip. Why? Perhaps it is simply because I find the image of Owl in a tattered shawl to be an endearing one. But perhaps it is because this one little statement, “it isn’t a dish-cloth, it’s my shawl” evokes what to me is a very Taoist ideal: wabi-sabi, which is variably defined as something along the lines of “the beauty inherent in imperfection.”

Who is to say a shabby, shaggy shawl isn’t even more desirable than one that is still crisp and new? After all, its holes are reflective of its wear and usefulness through the days and years of one’s life. Oftentimes, articles of clothing become even softer with wear. Why turn in the old and threadbare’s trustiness for something new, so long as it still serves its purpose well enough? Furthermore, why not acknowledge that we often recognize a sweet charm anyway in that which has been an earnest part of days gone by?

So may such standards be swept away once again by the delight of tattered dish-cloth shawls.

Image obtained from https://alteredbits.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/blog-hop-and-book-review-give-away-wabi-sabi-art-workshop-by-serena-barton/

Of This and Other Worlds (A Dose of Observation and Optimism)

Summer Greenery in Brooklyn, New York

We often describe experiences that fill us with awe as “other-worldly.”

The layers of golden orange in the sky, the feeling of vast love for other people that washes upon us at the most unexpected of moments, the reflection of the moon in a lake and the ripples that blur together the murkiness of the water and the clarity of the heavens. All of these things, we often remark, it is as though they are of another time and place.

But these things, we would do well to remember, are our world. They do exist all around us; we are even engulfed in them. 

So though our troubles are many and great, may we sometimes pause and remember that beauty still exists, and love’s forms are all around us.

Oranges in Spain

Flora in Massachusetts

On Love

Life is wrought with mysteries; you have long been mine.

Here I avow only that circles do not cease, and neither does defenseless love, of which we are all so often victims.  

And I have wondered, futile though this wondering may be, why; how; still?

I grant this is elusive, yet l pursue it with fervor, nonetheless.

And I now know this:

It seems I loved you after all, still do.

"Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be." ~Rumi

On (Un)Originality

Image from http://celebriot.com/dean-inge-quotes.

This is how it goes: I am infinitely indebted to my predecessors, my contemporaries, and the world's potentialities. Any word I could possibly form, any phrase, any story, any thought, is inevitably derived from some previous source. Thus originality ceases as a concept and is replaced quite simply, or quite complexly, by an amalgamation of various prior and present encounters. Write, speak, create not because you are saying, speaking, creating something new, but instead because you are compelled to put pen to paper, words to air, intrigue to life. This is all that we can hope to do.

On Not Writing

Those who have read my blog in the past may note that this post follows a quite extensive period of time during which I did not share any writing. Here, I break the spell, but only to muse on what I have learned during this time.

For quite awhile I believed writing was an essential part of who I am as a person. To separate myself from the pursuit of writing even temporarily, it seemed, was to separate myself from my own essence. Like many individuals who find that they are seemingly unable to express themselves artistically or verbally in the way they used to (or quite as prolifically in the way they used to), I felt that I had wavered in my own worth. To not be able to do the thing that is my very heart and passion, that must be a shortcoming or something over which to worry. But this, I have learned, is simply not true. For I am, at the end of the day, more than the words I write. I, and everyone else who lives, is also someone who is occupied with complexities of existence, curiosity towards people and surroundings, striving for that which lies ahead and reflecting on that which rests in our past. We are metaphysical and material; we are tension and dogged certainty.

To speak to and understand others, to walk outside by the moonlight, to read about ideas, to think without having to express, to lay down and dream, to have a crowded or empty mind, these are all endeavors equally important to that of writing. They develop something different within us and make us certain of the other pieces of our life.

I have learned, am learning, the toughest lesson of all: that I was not intended to experience only the one certain thing of my life, but rather many that I do not yet know.

My Thoughts on Writing (So Far, That Is)

Image from http://celebriot.com/william-styron-quotes/quote-9357

Listless, fickle, uncertain: I have often described myself this way. As I grew up, each year would stretch out before me, the bearer of new pursuits. But I would shudder after realizing once again that this or that preoccupation wasn’t my calling, for it didn’t end with a pounding in my head or the inexplicable need to go further. Thus I would leave without giving the matter too much thought.

Writing was different. I tried to leave it behind; I couldn’t.

In the middle of walking away towards something else, I’d become enamored with blank pages in front of me and the tremendous way they seduced me into telling my secrets, learning once again what I knew, and searching earnestly for what I had yet to learn.

Even still, there are occasional (perhaps more frequent than I care to admit) stretches of time when I think about leaving, about putting down the pen. But these hardly last. I feel their bitterness and recognize their temporal nature before allowing them to deceive me too significantly. These weeks are merely lapses, for I soon remember that while great loves may be veiled from us for a period of time, they are rarely, if ever, diminished.

Indeed, I have wondered before whether "the writer" is writing's star-crossed lover, for writing is and perhaps alway will be a terrible and unforgiving undertaking for them. In the end, though, it will also be incessantly their own. Thus the writer may be afflicted and morose at times; that can be granted. But they are also the happiest person to walk the earth. When words come well, bliss is found, and the frustrations inevitably subside as they are melded into the halfway-remembered, rose-tinged history of the archetypal romanticized process.

And so I, and many others I am certain, find a pen once more in spite of all else and succumb to the lure of words.

For Emily

The beginning...

On the eve of yet more miles between us, I ponder this matter: that not all are so lucky to have a friend who will love them in spite of every flaw, listen to them as if they have just spoken the finest words the world has heard, and most importantly, remind them in the midst of difficulty that there is still good in the world, for you, my friend, are the unfailing good.

How funny it is to think about, that we have now been known to one another for more than eighteen years. My whole life, you have been the person who I have looked to for enduring understanding, patience, and compassion. Your intellect and curiosity have brought me to crave and seek the unknown, and your inherent goodness has proven to be both my refuge and a never ending lesson, the ultimate lesson that is, one which has demonstrated that though we can be many things in this world, perhaps most important is to be someone who cares for all others.

Alas, your adventure awaits you, and more days, more years, will soon come and go. But for my part, I will always be here to lend an ear and all my care. Finally, my dear friend, thank you for showing me what it means for two souls to exist in such harmony. 

The world awaits you as it always has, and more than anything, please remember what I know to be true: that you will continue to change the world for the better, simply by living in accordance with your matchless nature.

"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams." ~Henry David Thoreau

... and there is no end.

On Passion

From http://inspirably.com/quotes/by-jazley-faith/lack-of-passion-is-fatal

I used to dream of greatness, and among my several longings was the wish for my words to be remembered.

Then, as I began to write more regularly and came to live for the thrill words fed me, I came to understand that greatness did not satisfy the heart of what I was after, for greatness may not last, and it is up to others to attribute any confused measure of "the esteemed" to our work. Even more, I resolved that the shifting tides of the world's fads and now-and-then-fascinations could not truly fulfill what I knew I craved, for it was not the recognition that I truly hoped, but the fervor of the written.

Yes, it was passion, immense passion that cannot be tempered. Passion that comes from our soul and is unconcerned with the judgment of others. Passion that exists not so others can analyze or scrutinize it, but rather because it demands to exist. It exists naturally. Indeed, the writer often does not choose to articulate; they are instead drawn to do so by a strange and familiar compulsion with which they live.

Finally, I realized, “Ah, this is it. All this time, passion is what I truly have sought.” And when I realized this, the greatness for which I used to long, in all its temporality and feigned grandiosity, subsided at once.

For I finally knew there are greater things of which to dream.

Pondering: Lessons from the Great Blue Heron

Photo from http://www.freeclipartnow.com/animals/birds/herons/Great-Blue-Heron.jpg.html

The great blue heron embodied my every longing.

Unconcerned by that which engulfed him, he swept quickly and with ease over the water, readying himself to land wherever he felt so drawn. As I marveled over nature’s artistry and the beauty of his feathers, I felt the sudden urge to memorize everything about this creature with whose presence I’d been graced. But alas, I could only watch with awe and wish so acutely that time would stand still, even if only for this one limited eternity in my ever more feverish life, with him the teacher, and me the student.

Indeed, the great blue heron embodied my every longing, and though the moment passed by as all moments do, I find myself sitting now and thinking, so resoundingly, “The world does have wonder after all.”

Daily Pondering

“Animals do speak, but very few people know how to listen.”

A calf raised for veal (Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sandi1214/2131871828)

I write here about this statement because it is perhaps the very essence of the conflict between humans and animals. It seems even revelatory when initially read due to our longstanding acceptance that a lack of speech can be equated with a lack of ability to express one’s nuanced thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The statement however, upon further consideration, is not particularly surprising or groundbreaking insofar as it only acknowledges what we must admit to be true, namely that animal exploiters are largely anthropocentric, and thus prone to such misconceptions as the common one contending that animals cannot communicate with us. But how faulty this is. In eyes, in whimpers, in growls, in stares, in touch, in silence, animals tell us all that we need to know. Will we listen? The answer to that question, it can be guaranteed, will partially determine whether we are benevolent, or whether we have chosen the side of ill dispositions.

The haunting reality that is veal farms (Image from https://rantingsfromavirtualsoapbox.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/veal-crates-and-plastic-hutches/)

On Explanations

We must continue to hope that one day our animal friends may know what it means to be free.

As I packed my final boxes one Monday afternoon, preparing for my move from a summer in Brooklyn back to college in the Berkshires, a friend and I conversed over the matter of the determination of advocates and activists. How is it that one person feels the urgency of a cause so deeply, and is thus compelled to live their life in pursuit of the rectification of that one single wrong, while another person turns away and cares little to naught about the very same evil?

Stephen King once wrote that, “the battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.” This, I believe, does also beg the question at hand: What ultimately destines us to one or the other side in this epic battle? Is it a cosmic force, chance, a deliberate choice, a compulsion, or something altogether distinct from any of these?

Who truly knows the answer to this question? I have searched in vain for quite awhile now. Tired of the absence of any substantive, satisfying, or at all convincing answer, we began musing on the array of possibilities that nevertheless must exist. That’s when it came to me.

Perhaps those who speak for animals, when so many others remain silent among the animals’ harrowing reality, perhaps these individuals speak because they know. Maybe it could be that there is a memory in their soul from a life they used to know, a life of their past. Maybe those who speak were once the siblings and friends of the myriad animals who are subjugated on farms, in laboratories, in rings, in tanks and cages, on stages, in concrete and grass, in planes and cars and boxes and bags, in any and all conceivable places. Because they once knew and experienced, they understand and speak out for all of the wrongs to be amended, to be remedied how they can.

Let this proposed idea be called unlikely, naïve, idealistic, fallacious. Let it be mocked. Let it be disproven. But when you are conscious of a world of suffering made to be irrelevant, we begin to "tell ourselves stories in order to live" as Joan Didion once phrased it.

For the world to cease to commit animal cruelty in its many fashions and learn the happiness and peace that is unconditional compassion… that is my greatest wish.

On the Artistic Nature of Writing

Photo found at http://www.goodfon.su/wallpaper/polotno-kraska-mazki.html

Writing must be viewed as an art. Just as any natural-born visual artist, someone who is destined to write feels a stirring within them self now and again to create. Side stepping the obligations we admittedly possess to our visually oriented counterparts, it is not untrue to assert that those who have quietly moved a pen across paper have been some of the loudest people to exist in all of time. In their minds there dance decibels unknown to most, and in their reserved and polite surface manner, there is a delectable and unapologetic tinge of the profane. They are often learning to be altogether unconcerned with the mingling of their work and the moving of social eyes and lips, and one of their favorite phrases to realize in action is “bar none.” Indeed, at the end of the day, ink on paper is of little difference than pastels on canvas. Both begin as nothing, are found to be inconclusive when in their middle stages, and at their completion are either criticized or praised. And perhaps most importantly, when the process has concluded, the master of the art will look upon the reviews and scoff delightedly and irreverently. Their work was not intended for the inevitable machine of rants and raves, no. Their work was always theirs.

Photo found at http://lylim.net/2011/12/14/observations-on-keeping-a-journal-1/

Nostalgia: Laughing Spells

I remember sitting in the corner and laughing uncontrollably and feeling all the better for it.

It was bubble tea night. 9:30 pm had come and gone and the line was out the door of the dining hall, which had the strangely appealing aura of a nineteen sixties summer camp dwelling. After sitting in front of a computer screen for the undertaking of far too many essays that I both loved and hated to write, I’d gone to see the end of semester dance concert. Afterwards, word got around that bubble tea would be served in the dining hall that night, and so I, like just about everyone else on campus, departed my dorm room to join some friends for the almost-end-of-the-school-year festivity.

I was later told that I was staggering in an intoxicated fashion down the hill towards the dining hall. In all earnestness, I’ve never touched drugs or alcohol, though I’ve heard on more than one occasion that I’ve acted, or rather, existed, as though under the influence the majority of my days. ("People don't realize that's it's possible to be so happy when sober," I've been told.) But I can swear that I only stumbled as I did out of awe over the stars. In the midst of the Berkshires with few buildings to cloud the sky and an open field that was given the name Siberia, one of my fondest memories of my college is and always will be the impeccable view of the night sky. Something in the stars taught me how to live a more erratically balanced life. I am forever grateful to them (the stars) for that.

I remember hearing my name called out by my friend further forward in the line, but it must not have quite registered as I resolved to stay absorbed in my own world in the tail of the line. Once inside, I found them at a corner table and alternated between listening to the conversation and laughing to myself. This was only one of my many inexplicable and mystifying spells of knowing bemusement (Note to readers: I am aware that I write in contradictions. Sometimes they seem more honest to me than any other sort of phrasing).

Since leaving college I’ve had these moments of delirious euphoria on a few occasions, and they are always when I feel the most like myself. I wonder what caused them to start and why I believe that they are so strongly at the heart of my essence. Perhaps it is their fading that worries me the most. In the meantime, I wait with bated breath for the onset of another moment of clarity through the medium of laughter. After all, laughter is the best medicine.

Musing On Bliss

Seen on the desk at a local bookstore

Flowers on my street

How can bliss be defined?

For me, it is one foot on the other with sandals beneath, or looking out my window to see a single light on in the apartment across the way (someone else is still awake and thinking too). It is waking up to a day of freedom and adventure, and it is that day’s end, one that’s been long and brought happiness. It is laughing without bounds, to myself or to someone else. It is any kind of love that isn’t turned on its side. It is smiling to a stranger and them smiling back. It is happy surprises: fluffy dogs in shops, street side proclamations of wisdom, unexpected flowers and other notations of beauty, and the fond memories one carries everywhere. It is contented sleepiness put to rest and the hope for another full and bright day to come. It is feeling that things are forgivable.

And finally, bliss, I believe, is being able to walk in the world and see something, anything, worth loving.

Share beauty with everyone

Words of wisdom

Came across this masterpiece on the sidewalk outside my apartment building

Writing: The Great Love and Lie

Image from http://dianaludwig.com/illus/wnwg9.html

Few things in this world frighten me so immensely as the reality of how it is all too easy to lie to ourselves, and to believe our lies so adamantly. Even when it comes to our greatest desires for our lives, we often fail to recognize the truth, even when it is one of the most important recognitions we could possibly make.

These days, I wake up each morning with a new lie weighing heavily on my mind. They’re uncovered in my dreams, in sleeplessness, in tears, in sighs of relief, and in the renewed promise of the early morning hours.

One of the biggest lies I have told myself is that I can be a truly fulfilled and happy person without writing as the central focus of my life. But as tears streamed down my face first in bed and then in such mundane places as the aisles of the grocery store, the palpability of my great lie became evident. Writing was always, has always been, a part of my very being. It compels me to live a more honest and meaningful existence. It makes sense when nothing else does. It is my great solace, and my great ardor.

But you can only kid yourself about such things as this for so long before you remember what is true. It isn’t anyone who’s heart rate speeds up after reading a good sentence, or who wakes each day to look at the Ernest Hemingway quote pasted up on the wall:

Image from http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/hemingway-quotes-inspire-blogging-writing/

This is, and I believe always will be, true for me. I will never be anything quite as much as I am a writer. And so long as a life of artificial and half-hearted pursuits is not the sort which I long to live, I have found that I must learn to do those things that call out to me (and still whisper to me when I've strayed). Indeed, my only option, it seems, is to hold desperately onto those enduring passions that are so sweetly rare, because when we are lucky enough to find something that means the world to us, that is an occasion that perhaps most begs us to quit our lies and surrender to self-confessed truths.

It is infrequently that I feel I am in such a position to offer advice. However, let this post convey one thing to all readers: If there is something that you love like nothing else in the world, something that keeps you up at night, something that seems like the most genuine pursuit you could possibly undertake, then you must go after it if you can. Not all are so lucky to have the opportunity to pursue the things they love, but if you are, do so humbly and graciously, and always feel a resounding love for that truth you tell to yourself and to the world.

            

One Day

Late morning light

Morning: I woke just like any other day, to the sound of an alarm and that minute measure of dimmed light that falls through the torn curtain over my window. In paisley underwear, I adjusted to my surroundings and departed from the dreamland of the night. Remnants of sleep stayed in my eyes as reality commenced once again and the hours stretched out ahead of me. I felt better after a cup of tea.

Early afternoon: I walked the now-familiar path to the grocery market that is two subway stops and a walk away from my apartment. Rounding the corner to the last straight away, I smiled as I always do when I see the street’s people sitting on stoops, lazily conversing with one another or talking on the phone, or the elderly woman who leans over her windowsill, just watching as the younger generations pass by below. A mother grabbed the hand of her toddler child, and I passed my favorite car in Brooklyn, a worn blue Volkswagen van that’s always parked on the right side of the street. I picked up some groceries and then trailed back, seeing much of the same as I mimicked the walk there. A blonde haired boy walked ahead of me, and we rounded the corner in the unity of strangeness back onto the main street where all is less intimate and affable.

A familiar landmark of my Brooklyn life

Mid afternoon: The subway never ceases to make me smile. Families arrange themselves in the cluster of seats that are as close together as they can manage. Couples sleepily hold onto one another, and often fall asleep on the shoulder of their dearly beloved. A man sits alone in the back of the subway car, absorbing the daily news in its black and white print, sometimes good and sometimes that which warrants tears (and other times, both). Adolescent girls group together and alternate between complimenting one another, conversations that seem to take a turn for the somber, and the most commonplace yet happiest laughs on earth. I take all of this in, intoxicated by the all too rare displays of domesticity, intellectual pursuits, and the foreign familiarity of friendships. Sometimes I’m caught in the act of observing my fellow commuters and must make a choice to either avert my gaze towards the most recent advertisement or smile in the way that means our existence for the next few minutes is kindred. I will not question them as the world so often does. I will not wonder if this is an affectation or if their world has become more insincere than they care to admit. I will share in their madness and happiness, even if only until the car doors slide open and we walk out to the world again.

Where I go to go somewhere else

Evening: This is when the lies come. It’s so easy to feign contentment, until it’s not anymore. Sunset can be beautiful, but it is as though I learned in that literature class as well as from my own studies of the world; if there is beauty, there must be an opposite. And at some point we all meet it.

Sunset in Union Square

Night: My tendency towards bedtime comes and goes. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a particular fondness for it, but even I can admit that there is a certain peacefulness and tired relinquishment that cloaks someone in those few moments, however long or short, that pass between waking's malaise and slumber's restfulness. Maybe we will dream tonight and maybe not. Perhaps the strangest thing is that so often we don’t even wonder whether we’ll dream. That, I think, is the mechanistic side of living. There are good things about the night though. Spotting stars and the glow of the moon in its phase for the passing moment can capture a sort of strange hopefulness for the umpteenth time, as we become sanguine once again, echoing the light of those stars and moon above, wondering what tomorrow may bring.

An Introduction

I first read one of my favorite quotes in the front of Michael Lang’s memoir The Road To Woodstock:

 With blustering resonance, these words echoed in my mind long after the first reading, persuading me to do the things I hadn’t thought to do before, pushing me towards the edge of everything unknown, towards the edge of a found sweetness.

Leaving high school and my hometown of Peachtree City, Georgia at the age of sixteen and traveling to the Northeast for early college was among the first marks of my irreverence for those experiences had merely in the name of convention. It was also a tremendous leap, perhaps more unexpected by myself than anyone else. It was a departure from my chronic cautiousness, and it changed my life for the better more than anything else.

Two years and a degree later, I couldn’t convince myself to stay in college in pursuit of a “higher” degree. For all my vast love of learning and my college’s community, I wasn’t quite fulfilled by the idea of staying in school for another two years. Then the opportunity came to spend the summer in Brooklyn as an in-office extension of my magazine internship. My parents would say, “This is your semester away from school to get some real world experience before returning for your Bachelor’s.” And I would agree, until the point where I stopped agreeing and started to know, intuitively, that some other path was waiting for my trek.

Looking back I now recognize that the first path only saw me attempting to triumph through a footslog, trying to fit myself into the role of my magazine internship position. But then one evening when I left the office, I decided to stop forcing myself into a box that I wasn’t meant for… and I never went back.

All the while, I’d continued nurturing my natural passion for vegan food, scouting out new vegan restaurants and bakeries with great frequency,  observing their inner workings and atmosphere, and taking advantage of finally having a kitchen at my disposal. Then it occurred to me that I just might have a love for the culinary arts and for sharing food that promotes good health for the earth, people, and animals. So while I was lost in my internship, I started to become found in the kitchen and in a wonderful little café called Sun In Bloom, where I recently took a job.

So there I was and here I am now and where I will be I cannot know. The “so far” is all I have, all any of us have. The so far holds our memories and our past cares, our used-to-be’s and our maybe’s, our whispers and our screams, our walking and then running to the now. Every day adds new experiences to our “so far.”

This blog captures mine.

Newly graduated from Bard College at Simon's Rock, all smiles as I approached the next part of my life and what it would teach me.