Is it a false quiet, a cold stillness brought on by the deep drop in temperature? Have all the guests left? Is the party over? It had been a weeks-long outdoor festival of aerial dynamics and social clustering, while sharing food and drink. Even a day long with rain had not stopped the revelry– it was simply pure public joy washing over abundance. Walking the perimeter of their social gathering, I am their uninvited guest.
Cedar waxwings, American Robins, Acorn Woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, and Steller’s Jays were just some of the species that were on the long guest list for Southern Oregon’s “Treetop Party of the Decade”. The reason for their convergence was the most prolific Madrone Berry crop of the last ten years.
The flavor of the affair had been almost tropical, a celebration of this fall so lavish with fruit. Floral-adorned invitations had gone out in the spring creating expectation for this Burning Man for birds. Those early evenings had been captivatingly fragrant, with blooms signaling an upcoming autumn stimulated by sweet-berried ferments.
This was the place to see and be seen, and as long as I had assumed the role of voyeur, my presence was tolerated. I observed from the shadows, as they flitted amongst the hosts of the party, Madrone trees whom faced eachother animated in conversation. Sleek star-dressers whose tawny, paper-thin wrapped figures were accessorized with bright orange beads of fruit, draped throughout their shiny green canopy. They stood in svelte groups locked in intimacy, growing in free and full expression, since they no longer shared space with old growth Douglas Fir, Incense Cedar or Ponderosa Pine, who had been taken and sold to sawmills fifty years ago.
By noon, a lighter din returned to the festivities with the sun’s warmth. While eavesdropping on their conversations, I noted the diminished decibel level. It was now evident the high point had been reached the day before. Today most trees were now bare, but gleaning was not over. Party people remained. These were the stragglers undying in their pursuit of a good time, living life to its fullest, knowing the party doesn’t really end till snow gives the “last call”.
I think I’ve been reading too much Albert Camus. I come into times like these, suddenly and without warning, days when I plummet into a place of deep overwhelming despair and disheartening. I come into times like these out of nothing, or perhaps something triggers me—the woman in a wheelchair with twisted limbs and respirator and the family who pushes her with drawn faces and averted eyes. I try to smile, but. Or, I pass a conglomerate of fast food restaurants with their cheap food advertising sickness. Or, I witness another bulldozer digging, unearthing, paving, building another warehouse for some new corporate project, or the urge, our insatiable urge and continual need to make more money at the expense of everything, even people. Or, I go shopping for a simple jacket for my daughter and find everything made in another country, in distant places like Cambodia, Vietnam, Guatemala, where abuse is standard of any kind. Or, I read about the Syrian refugees and cry; or the government shuts down and the national parks close or—the melting glaciers; the chemicals in the ocean; nuclear weapons and to that, nuclear waste; the unkindness of so many people toward one another. I can go on and on. And then of course, I look at the soft and jubilant faces of my children, so purely innocent, so unknowing about what they face as adults. Should I feel guilty having borne them into this world? How do I prepare them for a future that is so frightening even to me? How can I instill in them good values—love of nature, kindness to others, awareness of our actions and the reciprocity that follows? How can I make them good people? How to have hope?
There is a famous poem by Wendell Berry that I go to frequently when I grow disheartened, deflated, overwhelmed with the state of the world. The wisdom of his vision eases my mind. I’ve written it here for you now.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron
feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
So, I went to nature as Berry recommends, as I often do when I am in need of some sort of uplifting, some reason to keep going.
The other evening before the sun disappeared, we took our old Ford to one of the many fields we lease to grow vegetables. We went to harvest broccoli and cabbage for markets the next day. We went together as a family, squeezed into the cab, one seat belt shared for two kids, our hands cold from the coming night. We ate crackers and made jokes. Stopped for deer. We drove slowly because that’s what you do when your two children share the same seatbelt. As my husband cut broccoli down at the other end of the field, my children ran up and down the rows, grazing on their choices—kale, cabbage, kohlrabi. My daughter came to me. Said, “Hold this.” She handed me her leaf and lifted her arms. “I want to fly,” she said and off she went, in a costume of some super hero, the front all dirtied with soil, her rump wet from the ground. “I want to fly,” she yelled to the sky and the sun, it went down then, back behind the trees, and the whole field went gray and fuzzy except for the neon red and blue and bright white of her costume as she ducked behind the truck and disappeared. Our life then, we must be doing something right.
For hope too, I walk. Virginia Woolf used to walk miles each day. I do this too to clear my mind. The other afternoon it was a perfect day for a walk so I did, I walked, but not far, only down the gravel road to our field, which is just brown earth and stubble now, the summer having run its course. I sat in the middle of the field in the bright sun. The sky clear. My neighbor used the table saw across the creek. I picked up my book from the grass, wished my dog would stop its barking. I sat for a long time until after having tried to read, I plunged my hand in the dirt to feel the earth, but why should it matter to you, except that so many days go by without this fortune. What do you touch in a day? A keyboard, a mug, your lover, a child. Go on. Count the things you touch. And to which are the most important? And have you ever really touched the dirt, felt it in its dry crumble, when it coats your fingertips, a fine dusting of particle that makes this whole world?
I think I went to the field for no reason at all except to touch the dirt.
Pomona, I’m reading Gretel Ehrlich’s book TheSolace of Open Spaces, a beautiful lament of Wyoming and the people that live and care for the land in that wide open country and in it she refers to Seamus Heaney’s idea that landscape is sacramental. I think this to be true when I go out to my farm and search for what gives me hope when all else fails. The land is a holy thing and in it, we can find comfort lest we forget. So go do it. Go out to the world and feel the dirt no matter where you are because I have a feeling once you do, you’ll see to the world in such a way that tenders your view, keeps you aware of the things that do not seem right, things like metal washed up on the shore, or I guess, hunger on the pavement, where the only dirt present for some is in-between the cracks, or what blows in on the wind, and that’s not enough, not enough to fuel the joy, or give anyone anything.
Shouldn’t we all have a patch of ground to touch?
Go do it. Go touch the earth now and see what happens.
The room I sit in is quiet, darkened by storm, the stone cold hearth warming for the first time in months, sticks of wood from the forest combusting for my comfort. Last week’s zinnias are compactly arranged in fishbowl vases (sixteen of them) decking any available horizontal surface. Summer heat and sun is caught in these bright blooms punctuated with scented leaves of mint, sage, and basil. This decadence of flowers is a tangible, yet temporary reminder of our son’s wedding on the eve of Autumn.
It is hard to let go.
This year fall did arrive on the equinox, which is unusual in the Siskiyou Mountains. The breath of fall might inhale in August for a day or two, just to let us know soon. Then summer exhales still fiery. In September and October, the two seasons push and pull until summer tucks tail and leaves. Not this year. One day it was summer—thirsty and grueling—then it wasn’t. It’s like that with a wedding, all effort and preparation and details, and then it’s over, just another twenty-four hours on our whirling planet, the day no longer than any other for all the time spent on the particulars imagined and executed.
That evening at the wedding, those two young people stood simply (not traditionally; she in handmade appliqued peacock blue, and he in sinew stitched elk-skin slacks.) Witnessed by family and community, they declared their love and commitment and humility.
Donning a wide brimmed hat and a long coat, with the air of a 1900 century circuit rider, the bride’s grandfather, who officiated (and only got a wee choked up once), told all who were gathered his geological theory of love: “I am going to tell you a story. This story might be true, and it might not. I’m not concerned with facts,” he began. “Love is like the Grand Canyon. The top of the canyon has the youngest rock, sandstone, it is soft and not unlike the new love of this young couple.” He continued to explain how just like the layers of rock, love changes and gets stronger as time, pressure, wind, rain, all take their toll.
As he spoke in front of us, this shimmering couple radiated love and hope, many couples were reminded of their own stories, their own love—perfect, or imperfect and for some, love that has broken and mended, hearts bruised, hearts full— all of us clinging to the strata on the canyon wall. For that moment all this fell away as hands were held. Eyes glistened.
“Mr. and Mrs. Shockey?” somebody asked a little later when the party milled about.
My husband turned to answer our moniker but they were not talking to us.
His right lip curled in smile, oh that crooked grin, the one that means trouble. He said, “You know we are not the freshest loaf of bread anymore.”
I looked up at the sequoia-tall dark haired man I married twenty-four years ago. I smiled slowly as images raced through me like a silent movie. That day on a mountaintop when that boy with a scraggly collection of wild flowers tried to find the words, but could not say the word marry. Later, at our wedding, he, so striking in the tux with tails, the aunt who had a heart attack, and the ceiling that caved in at the reception venue. We were the freshly minted. Babies, more babies. Then, Pomona, they were kids hanging like monkeys in your trees, with bags slung from their shoulders rich with your apples. Does time spin faster in a home pulsing with the dervish energy—boundless motion, infinite noise?
I gazed past this man of my soul and saw my parents, the grandparents at this ceremony. Then I watched the boy, our first baby—long like his dad, curly like me—standing with his pretty new bride chatting to a guest. I stared at them, nodded absently, knowing, I said to them in my head, You have no idea.
“You’re right,” I said amused by the marching of time. “We aren’t, but we aren’t the soft rocks on top of the canyon either. We are in deep with the igneous rocks.”
I see a wedge of blue in the sky. I think I will go pick apples. Until next time my friend.
I caught my husband retching this morning—it must have been pre-wedding nerves. It’s an old joke, but now I can tell it with a fun, new twist: my husband is marrying two men this Saturday. No, he is not entering into a three-way, committed gay relationship— he is marrying them, as in officiating at their wedding. Last summer, a different set of friends asked if he would be willing to get an on-line minister’s license and perform their wedding ceremony. When he told me about their request, I responded, “Well, you can’t say no. It will jinx their marriage,” even though he desperately wanted to decline.
My husband is a man of few words who prefers to lurk in the dark shadows of social events on the rare occasions he goes out. He barely showed up at our own wedding, and not because he didn’t love me, I swear. I am not allowed to mention him on my Facebook page or post images of his likeness. He does not know about this blog post, and with your complicity never will. In short, he is a die-hard introvert with all privacy settings firmly in place.
Perhaps out of a sense of duty, my prodding, or some inherent sado-masochistic tendency, he said yes to the first couple. Neighbors and friends complimented his public presence and the sweet blend of humor, tenderness and passion he brought to the ceremony. So began his tenure as our rural neighborhood’s reluctant minister for anarchists and organic farmers.
He can always say no. I tell him not to because of my own desire to be the center of attention, even if I am one step removed. I grew up in a family that values performance and power, charm in the face of a crowd, the limelight at almost any cost. Though not quite as talented or extroverted as some of my siblings, I do love the thrill of getting up in front of people for a show.
Therefore, I must admit that I feel a little jealous of my husband. After all, I am the one who studied comparative religion as an undergraduate and almost attended seminary to become a Unitarian minister. I am the open and demonstrative member of the couple who shares about the trials and tribulations of our fifteen-year marriage with transparency and erudition. Why should my husband be chosen as the sacred vessel of authority in a wedding ceremony?
I am simultaneously proud. He is, after all, my husband, which means that we play for the same team. More than that, I feel a sense of being, well, almost vindicated. My husband makes very little effort to impress people. It takes him years and years to develop close friendships because he only shares a little of himself at a time. But his friendships are deep and rugged and resilient. He is a profoundly loyal and loving man once you have put in your time. I had sex on my side, so the loyalty and love came a bit quicker. When he meets my friends or family members or colleagues, I try to make him show himself, because I want them to understand and love him the way I do. But he won’t perform.
The fact that one couple and now another have asked him to marry them shows that our community has come to see him as I do—solid, trustworthy, kind, funny, reliable, inspirational. The inspiration he engenders arises from his actions and not his words. Day in and day out, he cares for our land, tends the animals, builds the soil, nurtures the crops, asks for little and gives whatever he can. These are the qualities you need to sustain a marriage over the long haul. They are qualities that seem hard to come by.
I have insinuated myself into these weddings by procuring and renewing the $15 minister’s license and writing the ceremonies. I do whatever I can to make myself an invaluable part of the process. My husband appreciates me, while I grapple with a shameless ego. This Saturday, I will sit back in the crowd as he stands before our community and the families of the two grooms. He will read my words, and I will bask in his reassuring presence. Our marriage will be renewed during the ceremony and I will stand proudly in his shadow.
“…and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still.” —Herman Hesse
Dear Pomona,
It’s funny. I often write about place—finding home, becoming rooted, settling into a region in the world and knowing it well and good. I write about the way my creek runs in winter, or how it doesn’t in summer, or the way the farm dies in August, or how my children build forts in the dirt or run from rattlesnakes, or climb up oak trees and swing from branches. I write about how the light looks at the grass or how the skunks come and my dog barks. All of these things I know and write about. And usually, these things make me happy, round out my daily life, provoke me, keep me in wonder and reverence.
But this summer, I’ve been restless, uneasy, fevered for possibility or something different than this home, this place. The moment I arrive home from a trip, I’m ready to turn around and go somewhere else, or when I am here, at home in my place, I’m generally unhappy, cranky, bored, dreaming of other places and people. And too, the endless heat and dry grass makes me angry, which doesn’t help my restlessness. I am troubled by this unease, by this stumbling. I have even gone so far as to ask my husband at dinner, “Would you ever consider moving to Vermont?” Of course, he just shook his head and rolled his eyes. There was no way he would ever move. And he knows me. I have this pattern of restlessness, of boredom, that rises up in me every few years and it usually means I’m about to make a drastic change in my life. Which I do admit, I’ve been having a bit of an identity crisis the last year or so. But, all is well and good on the identity front for the most part as life has progressed nicely with dreams being made and other changes making course, so then, what is this restlessness? This want to be nomadic. Someone said to me the other day, “Wow, you’ve just been on the move lately.” Yes, yes, and yes. And that’s not all—I want to move more. I want to go places. Anywhere but here. Jack Kerouac put it best in On the Road, “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
I looked up the word. Restless comes from the Germanic compound for “stirring constantly, desirous of action.” Desirous for action? Action for what? For the gut of experience? For new people? New places? New energy? Escape? The word’s etymology is lumped with such words as nervous, wave, fever, antsy, solicitous, and I think all of these words describe my state of being for months now—I’ve been waving, wavering, fevered, nervous, but traveling away from home doesn’t seem to be putting out the fire. It is as if I could walk and just keep on walking until I happened upon exactly what I was looking for. But what exactly am I looking for?
The buddhist word for restlessness is uddhacca, meaning to shake. In Buddhism, restlessness is one of the fourth hindrances to peace. Worry and restlessness can impede mindfulness, so by investigating its triggers, seeking rest through meditation, and feeling our way through physical and mental exploration, we can find peace. I like this idea—I may just need to sit with this restlessness for just a span until maybe, I’ll find some rest to the unease.
But still, I wonder about being a nomad. I wonder about what it is that makes me feel so ungratified, so desirous for someplace else. I’ve known restless people in my life and to be honest, their nomadic ways never lured me onto the road. And many of them, obviously, floated away, and I haven’t seen them since.
So, I went to music as I often do when troubled. How do other artists write and sing about restlessness in tune and cadence and song? There’s Joni Mitchell’s “California”, which is about her own longing for home of course, but it’s also about traveling with the line that she strings out over beautiful melodies with, “Will you take me as I am?” I used to listen to this song in a camp kitchen with a lifeguard far away from home. We’d turn it up loud, after lunch, when all the kids were making art, the high notes ringing out over the trees and berry bushes and the mowed grass. I can never feel more of a tug to go when I listen to this song. Growing up, I smoked pot to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” as my dad’s old record twirled on the player and my parents were somewhere not at home. I wanted to be that rolling stone headed out to a future unknown. And further, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” is all about young love, tramping across the pavement where staying put is a trap, a snare. If anything, Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” epitomizes my restlessness with his ripping guitars and lyrics like “I felt so good like anything was possible” and “There’s something good waitin’ down this road.”
In all of these songs, I found one common, true thing—longing. That’s what it’s all about, this restlessness of mine. Longing for something, though I still can’t quite pin down that “something.” But maybe I don’t need to. Maybe the longing is enough. But at least the restlessness has a cause now named—a longing that hangs out there like all the promises and dreams of the road, which I think is the only cure for such a state—feeling the roll of pavement, boxed up in metal, with good music and a few good books, watching a wide sky unfurl before the hood and dashboard, revealing the only way to go: forward and just around that next bend over there.
-M
P.S.—And then, it rained and I was cured. I curled into my couch for several hours just looking out our big windows, watching the rain saturate the brown earth, the hills covered in mist instead of smoke, the birds hiding away in their nests. Everything quiet except for the splatter of drops. I sipped tea and coffee, read novels and essays, wrote a few things. My children played around me. It was perfect. The rain—it was all I needed to call me home.
P.P.S.—Here are a few links to the music. And also, what music sings to you? What do you play when you just need to go without any direction in mind and opportunity just around the corner?
Letters to Pomona 