I’ve got something on the horizon that scares me. It’s unavoidable, so the only way out is through. But sometimes to keep from spinning out of control, I find a song that grounds me in the moment. Feet firm, breath in and out, listening to the music and reengaging with the beat of life. For me, right now, this song comforts me. I hope it brings you comfort, too.
Sometimes I feel everything in life comes down to the question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’
We are always asking, ‘This one, too?’ And the answer is always, ‘Yes’.
The felon, the refugee, the homeless person, the enemy, the one who hurt you, the one you disagree with, the one who makes your life hard? Yes, always yes.
I’m not a fan of clutter. I’m also quite challenged to part with stuff. It’s a problem. Like some people avoid carbs or sugar, I avoid ‘collecting’ because I know, given my propensities, it will lead to clutter. But there are many things that are clutter-free that I love to collect. Among these are words. Words are just so delightful— the sound and smack of them, their history, their aptness for a particular purpose.
One of my favorite bits of writing advice is to collect words that might fit for the time and place of your story.
In The Writer’s Portable Mentor, Priscilla Long writes:
The writers of deep and beautiful works spend real time gathering words. They learn the names of weeds, and tools, and types of roof. They make lists of color words (ruby, scarlet, cranberry, brick). They savor not only the meanings, but also the musicality of words. They are hunting neither big words nor pompous words nor Latinate words but mainly words they like. They are not “improving their vocabulary” or studying for the SAT or the GRE. They are not trying to be fancy or decorative. This is a different kind of thing.
She suggests keeping a journal of these words and going on quests to capture more:
HANDS ON: MAKE YOUR OWN LEXICON Buy a small bound and sewn blank book, with fine paper. This is your Lexicon. Put in words you like, words that strike your fancy, words you want to own. I suggest giving each word half a page. Put in the word _ lickspittle – and draw a horizontal line dividing the page in half. This way you can put in a word and look it up later. (Under lickspittle write: a contemptible, fawning person; a flatterer or toady.) You will end up with two words per page. This is not a typical vocabulary list full of horrible Latinate words you don’t know and don’t want to know. The rule is, put in only the good words, the juicy words, the hot words. From time to time, savor this book. Look up words you’ve put in (something from your reading) and haven’t looked up yet. Be sure to investigate the root. Put in familiar words along with new words. Play with sounds right in your Lexicon: kitchen matches; cord/weird/word/ fired/turd. From time to time read a big dictionary hunting for a new good word, any word that strikes your fancy: galoot. On some pages make word lists. Fiddle parts – peg box, button, side rib, bridge. Words for blue – cobalt, woad, sapphire, smalt. Words from an art exhibition you especially loved – bone, tin plate; cotton, cord, silk ribbon, silver, galloon; coconuts, shells, ostrich eggs (from Moscow Treasures). Put down things you don’t know the names of. Do you know the parts of a window? (Muntin? Sash?) Do you know the parts of a rocking chair? Draw or describe the thing in your Lexicon and then set about looking (in a book on house repairs or on furniture) for splat or spindle or stile. Do not order your list in any way.
She goes on to discuss making a word trap to fit the piece you are working on, the musicality and derivation of words, the vowel scale, and all sorts of other intriguing ways to add nuance, accuracy, and lilt to your piece. Hers is one of my favorite craft books, of which I have dozens. (See above about my hoarding propensities.)
But this intro brings me to my joy for the day. I discovered someone on Twitter who shares this love of words, who posted a word for the day. It’s blutherbung, an appropriate word for me these days as it turns out.
And then I looked at her feed and found another
Lickspittle, blutherbung, biophony. Aren’t these just wonderful? who do you suppose thought these up, studying human nature or the natural world and coming up with just the word to describe that particular confluence of traits? And now I’ve subscribed to her feed to get these delightful tidbits each day.
As you can probably guess, another thing I collect is quotations. I have a little book to jot them as I’m reading an article or book. I periodically look through this little book and write my thoughts about them. Which is what brought me here to writing Quotable Creek.
Another thing I ‘collect’ is gratitudes. I write the things I’m thankful for in a gratitude journal, to keep them and remember those moments. My next thing I’m thinking of to collect is book impressions. I read quite a bit, but get blutherbunged and forget about them. Perhaps keeping a little thought about each will bring them back to me. It’s another thing I found on Twitter. Probably when I was reading from the word lady’s thread.
Standing up to fear changes a person. It helps you to put matters in perspective. Where once fear loomed over you, insurmountable, now you can honor the courage it took to move past it into unfamiliar territory.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a courageous woman. Despite her husband’s attempts to placate the South, she regularly bucked segregation and was a vocal proponent of civil rights. She was able to call out racism and force others to see it for what it was:
By 1939, ER decided to attack the hypocritical way in which the nation dealt with racial injustice. She wanted her fellow citizens to understand how their guilt in “writing and speaking about democracy and the American way without consideration of the imperfections within our system with regard to its treatment . . . of the Negro” encouraged racism. Americans, she told Ralph Bunche in an interview for Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma, wanted to talk “only about the good features of American life and to hide our problems like skeletons in the closet.” Such withdrawal only fueled violent responses; Americans must therefore recognize “the real intensity of feeling” and “the amount of intimidation and terrorization” racism promotes and act against such “ridiculous” behavior.
You can’t clearly see a problem before you if you are too scared to look at it and call it out for what it is. Where are the injustices in your immediate orbit? Are there people being treated unfairly? How can you add your voice to help identify the problem and move toward healing? These problems are right here, close to home.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said:
Where after do human rights begin? In small places, close to home– so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
Fear is a crippler. It keeps you rooted in a course of action you know to be wrong. Focusing on the fear helps it to loom even larger before you. Instead, focus on the better world you are trying to help build. Spreading love and justice is exciting and uplifting. Being part of something bigger than yourself, working for a common goal, in an effort to improve people’s circumstance is rewarding.
You don’t have to see the whole path in front of you. Take, and keep taking, that next step forward.
Often, when we look back at our lives, we will see strange coincidences that came at meaningful times in our life. That person you met, show you watched, book you read, something you overheard that serendipitously was just what you needed in that moment. My pastor calls these God winks. It feels like someone is watching over you and caring.
Of course, these could be just coincidental. But they are important, pivotal, coincidences.
Emma Thompson puts it this way:
I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them. After my father died, the book that sort of saved my life was Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Because of that experience, I firmly believe there are books whose greatness actually enables you to live, to do something. And sometimes, human beings need story and narrative more than they need nourishment and food.
Emma Thompson in @oprah’s O Magazine.
The most important thing is having the eyes to recognize the impact and the willingness to be open to change and growth.
God winks are everywhere if you develop the eyes to see them.
I recently read the book, Remarkable Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt with my book club. It is a wonderful book of, among other things, the friendship between a 70-year old widow and a giant Pacific octopus. The main character has her own group of friends who have been together for decades and call themselves the Knit-wits because they started with knitting in common.
One of my book club members, the youngest (as she often reminds us) asked at our meeting, “Are we the knit-wits?” I smiled. I have known this group of friends for decades. We raised our children together and now are delighting in grand parenthood together. We’ve weathered storms together, celebrated each other’s victories, and helped each other through loss. We meet religiously every week to catch up with each other. What a delight it is to have ‘through thick and thin’ friends.
I found this sweet friendship poem I offer here to them.
A Friend
A person who will listen and not condemn Someone on whom you can depend They will not flee when bad times are here Instead they will be there to lend an ear They will think of ways to make you smile So you can be happy for a while When times are good and happy there after They will be there to share the laughter Do not forget your friends at all For they pick you up when you fall Do not expect to just take and hold Give friendship back, it is pure gold.
Every day this week, I’ve woken up to birdsong, which is a particularly delightful way to pass from dreams to reality. I’ve been working on the garden—planting, pruning, weeding, trying to make a pretty space. Birds singing out there make me feel like they approve and they’re calling me to the adventure of creating ‘our’ space together. It’s a party out there, and I’m both the host and an invited guest.
Those singing birds make me feel so hopeful.
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all …
As I age, I have a new appreciation for those poets like Dylan Thomas raging against mortality. I do not want to go gentle into that good night. I like it here.
Here is a new variation on that theme I enjoyed:
Sorrow Is Not My Name BY ROSS GAY
—after Gwendolyn Brooks
No matter the pull toward brink. No matter the florid, deep sleep awaits. There is a time for everything. Look, just this morning a vulture nodded his red, grizzled head at me, and I looked at him, admiring the sickle of his beak. Then the wind kicked up, and, after arranging that good suit of feathers he up and took off. Just like that. And to boot, there are, on this planet alone, something like two million naturally occurring sweet things, some with names so generous as to kick the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon, stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks at the market. Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.
It is a kind of love, is it not? How the cup holds the tea, How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare, How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes Or toes. How soles of feet know Where they’re supposed to be. I’ve been thinking about the patience Of ordinary things, how clothes Wait respectfully in closets And soap dries quietly in the dish, And towels drink the wet From the skin of the back. And the lovely repetition of stairs. And what is more generous than a window?
~ from Another River: New and Selected Poems (Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2005)
As we age, there is loss. That loss is like a presence that follows us relentlessly like a shadow. No avoiding it. No pretending. We are mortal. The people we love are mortal, perhaps imminently so. This is part of the rules of engagement. And while most of us avoid thinking too much about it, poets like Mary Oliver offer life instructions:
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal
To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes, to let it go, to let it go.
I honestly don’t know which of these three rules is the hardest. Right now, they each seem nearly impossible. But having the courage to follow these instructions feels like the answer.
Her full poem is below.
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars
of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders
of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is
nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side
is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
QuotableCreek.com 