Lightening Up

I am writing this at 2 a.m. in a room that is filled with moonlight. I couldn’t sleep, so I crept out of bed and found my way to the sofa, laptop in hand. Through the front windows I can see the familiar outline of the hills and a sky so bright its shine is cast in rhombus shapes upon the walls and the living room rug, and everything seems enchanted, the way it does when you catch it by surprise.

A friend observed that my blog is big and serious and fraught with issues of mortality. As blogs go, it’s a heavy one, is what I think he said, and he can correct me if I misunderstood. We were having a casual chat, my friend and me, a bit of online banter between Gaviota and the Czech Republic, like long distance ping-pong, and somehow the subject came up. He did not intend it as a criticism, just a comment, and I am willing to concede that the blog at times has a sadness to it, and is earnest and intense and wordier than it needs to be, and I certainly haven’t been going out of my way to avoid talking about time’s passing, and by implication our own. But I am going to lighten things up around here, build in a few more windows and skylights, maybe remove some of those stacked up coffins and bulky drapes.Here’s a space. Stretch out. Make yourself comfortable. A bit of music, perhaps?

Come to think of it, at some point in the course of our chat, my friend sent me a you-tube link to a performance of the Czech Christmas Mass, a cantata of pastoral motifs by Jacob Jan Ryba, maybe too folksy for the Catholic church, but still popular at Christmas time in Bohemia. He also mentioned that Ryba walked into a forest in 1815 carrying his favorite book, Seneca’s Essay on Peace and Soul, and proceeded to cut his own throat with a razor, a fact that should not appear in my newly lightened-up blog but is too poignant to omit.

The indifferent sky watches; the universe says, as William Stafford puts it, “Your move.”

My sister-in-law came by in the morning on the last day of the year. She lives up in the Bay area and we don’t see her very much, but I am fond of her. I served her my version of coffee; she promptly diluted it with boiling water and sat back in a big plush chair and looked up at the shifting landscape in the window by the ceiling. “I’m a Christian now,” she said. “It’s not that scary.”

Well, it only seems scary when hijacked by the intolerant, judgmental, and ignorant, but then again, so does any religion.  The message I gleaned from my own church-going days was one of inclusiveness, forgiveness, and greatest of all, love.  And I wish I had more certainty about the specifics, but I remain hopeful. When I behold the world it still seems to me that the wonders outweigh the horrors. I suppose it’s easier for me to say this than someone who is in the direct path of misery and terror, but oh well. I even think that miracles occur.Still, it’s all a bit mysterious and ambiguous to me, but maybe that’s because I have forgotten how to listen. More and more, though, I’m thinking that I don’t need it all spelled out, that the important thing is to be a little kinder. I’m thinking…Wait a minute. I’m doing it again. I keep stumbling back into the Bigness.

I rode my bicycle yesterday along the main road, through light that was softly wintered in its angle, whispery and sweet. Jeanne and Cele drove by in a truck crammed with easels and paint, looking for the perfect spot, which was difficult because it was pretty much everywhere. “I wish I could paint,” I said, and Cele said, “Then come and join us next time. I have an extra easel. I have paint.” And I said, “But I don’t know how.” And they said, “Learn. Better yet, play.” I will.I will.

I am planting roses, too. And a lemon tree.  I am sure to become one of those saggy-breasted, craggy-skinned women in a wilted straw hat, a dab of paint on my cheek and dirt beneath my fingernails, puttering happily. There are worse fates.

The sunlight on the garden

Hardens and grows cold,

We cannot cage the minute

Within its nets of gold,

When all is told,

We cannot beg for pardon.

That was Louis MacNiece. My daughter told me about him. We were in a little bookstore in Bath, and she showed me a volume of his poems, and of course I bought it for her then and there. (I think of her whenever I encounter him.) It’s a verse that’s bright with sunlight, but maybe not quite the sentiment I should be going for here in my newly lightened blog.

While we’re in the garden, though, I should mention that a small spate of paper whites has appeared like little blessings by the walkway, along with one extravagant purple iris. I should mention, too, that the orange trees are heavy now with fruit, and I found one ready to snap right off, and I carried it home and sliced it in half and ate it standing at the kitchen sink, and it dripped down my chin and splashed on my glasses, and it was good.Guess what? In the course of one day, I had unexpected contact from people I knew in several different decades. A tiny popping sound and there is a message from Sonja in Laguna Beach, whose daughter and mine were kindergarten friends, and Sonja, who is blonde and stunning, just celebrated her 50th birthday in Tahiti, and we express the usual disbelief at time’s swift passage. Another pop and it’s Lynne, from 1960s Long Island and beyond, wishing me a happy new year. Then a virtual hug from Steve of 70s Syracuse, and, perhaps most amazing and strange, a message from a woman who was in my 4th grade class at P.S. 179, and she writes about Mitchell, our classmate who was electrocuted in 1959, and she thinks about him sometimes, and it still hurts, and she misses her mother, who used to teach us songs, and maybe we are not so far removed from all of that as one might suppose. We contain every bit of it and carry it with us and must turn it into something or implode. I guess the easiest thing to do is talk about it, mention it to someone who also remembers, set it down for a bit and confirm that it wasn’t entirely in your head.

Am I getting intense again? It’s all around us, isn’t it? Love. Death. The search for meaning while the clock is ticking. It’s like a giant game of musical chairs and we don’t want to be caught without a seat.No. It’s not like that at all.

I delight in this era of the Internet, in which random ambassadors from any time period or geography of our lives might spontaneously appear on our computer screen in any given moment.  I picture the lights of those computer screens all over the world, such compelling little windows, opening onto vast oceans of possibility, both as good and as bad as humanity can be — and it amazes me. Well, I suppose the same can be said of books, even if they do not accommodate the impulse to exchange digital bits of impulsive and compulsive chat.Books. Now there’s a thought.

Another thought is the wonderful smell of a baking potato, how it comforts even while it cooks and humbly appeases one’s hunger. I digress, but that was dinner yesterday, and in my new era of blogging, I think I should mention food and sustenance more frequently, and life forces, along with light.And how the surf swelled yesterday, and the waves where they rose and curved were translucent glass, gray-green. There were surfers out there, exuberant and graceful, dancing on the water, and further out, pelicans dove from sky to sea, astonishingly splashy, and on the shore there were dogs running about and children playing and friends walking side by side or sitting happily on the sand, and it was January. How could this be? We climbed a hill and looked down from the bluff, and watched until the sun began to set and the sky was pink and orange and oblivious to all unhappiness and for the moment so were we.