Darlin’ I’m gonna plant my flag with the righteous, the ones Jesus would host on a starlit patio with wine and fresh loaves of bread, talk about the good guys, they’d be his favorites — his ragtag crew of saints and misfits, the migrants who shared his path, the strong sinful woman he loved, the poor and the afflicted, the beggars who had no choice. Forget fear and fallacies, I’m gonna arm myself with love and compassion, unlocked and at the ready, even for you, my sweet, misguided, friend don’t you think love thy neighbor as thyself would look good on a t-shirt, too?
The coffee here in this cottage by the sea is a meditation in itself — never mind the mechanisms of convenience this is hot water from a kettle, poured over rich grounds gravity and steam grace and silence sunrise simmering through glass brewing patience
A poet and a sculptor were walking at Long Point Trail sometime after midnight, the moon was dimmed by evening clouds so while the bear definitely looked like a bear, the two tigers were harder to discern.
He, the sculptor, backed away quietly, tucked himself inside a cabinet of curiosities, emerged apologetically as Hubbell Gardiner, and disappeared up the misty woods road.
She, the poet, picked up a driftwood stick and stood her ground, roared like a lion until the bear ran for its life, turned to face the tigers then knelt down and offered them tender kisses and soft gentle strokes along wicked, wild stripes.
“I have a room all to myself; it is nature.” — Henry David Thoreau
Retracing my steps at Nauset Beach…Lunch at Coast Guard BeachNauset LightNewcomb Hollow BeachDriving the loop at Province LandsA final sunset at Herring Cove
I sense her ghost here on this blustery coast 400 miles east of where she lived and lies, still, now Perhaps she came here with Him, my grandfather kept his house here, too in routine obedience but her haunting is more subtle more hint than apparition she’s a shadow at the window moving white cotton curtains for a first view of morning, a creak in the wood plank floors and a swish of sweeping sand, the smell of ivory soap and eucalyptus by the sink its cold cast iron against my belly sends a chill as I suddenly consider a cup of tea and her early silent pleasures.
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Enjoyed a Poets in the Park Walk around Blackwater Pond with the National Park Service. This was poet Mary Oliver’s favorite place to contemplate nature and poetry.This was a long day that included a hike, shopping in Provincetown, Wicked Little Letters, and a late afternoon hike to Highland Light. This is the oldest and tallest lighthouse on Cape Cod.The view from Highland LightSunset at Herring Cove while watching whales breach in Cape Cod Bay
“Hope is radical openness for surprise — for the unimaginable. If that is the attitude with which we look, listen, and open all of our senses, we enter into a meaningful relationship with whatever Life offers us at a given moment.” — Brother David Steindl-Rast
A quiet walk at Head of the MeadowA good day to write, rest, read. Repeat.The gift of a rainbow…And sunset over Provincetown
“I began to make plans for what my future might be—what once felt like a mad dash to the end of a cliff now felt like an interesting path in a beautiful wood that may or may not lead to the top of a mountain. And yes, the chances of my arrival at that destination were uncertain, but oh! What a mountain! And oh! What a view! And what a pleasure it was to keep moving forward.” ― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons
Coast Guard Beach, Eastham
Sunset from Head of the Meadow, waiting for the MoonThe Frog Moon rises
“Anytime we approach a state of awe, we are in relationship with divinity. We are awake.” — The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Book
Sunrise on the first full dayTime and spaces to read, write, and regroup.Morning walk in Truo, Provincetown in the distance.Feeling very grateful…First view of Nauset Beach in Orleans, my favorite beach.Much later in the day, sunset at Race Point Beach.Sun sets, moon rises…
“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
― Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
Playing on the radio at this very moment? Ace of Base, “I Saw the Sign.” A good sign indeed!First look, Newcomb Hollow Beach
Dear Maya: one also needs provisions.
Water to my east and west…perfect views, perfect spot!Feeling right at home.
moon stones round and white translucent fearless in their devotion to tides the pull of their namesake reveal all and nothing in one full breath of a shimmering wave their stillness a talisman of strength and awakening
Ain’t nothing more Roughneck than a man who castrates bulls with a rope he pulls from the backseat of his pickup, whose hard gravel laugh makes you stand taller, wipe a tear from your eye and matter of factly explain yourself and that goddamn car — you swear for affect — fold up the Damsel with neat corners for her next distress, today you’re a Warrior no more than inconvenienced, a firm hand on the blade tucked in your front pocket and eye on the ironwood stick you keep in the back seat for walking (or wounding, in a pinch).
To my left the great star sets while to my right the full moon rises in between nothing but this odd appendage of land jut out into the sea and I think for a moment that if I stand tall and wide and step one way or the other I might instigate some universal force to move them
up and down
back and forth
at my command
I am Rose on the bow queen of the world ancient goddess who commands the fulcrum
While watching whales, wondering: do they laugh as they breach, squeal in delight, exalt the air with fins and tails and tittering, or is the entirety of joy contained in the ooomph! and huzzah! spouted for all to see?
How are you a ghost here when you were often only a conversation words on a keypad our ethernet tethers and ideals someone I barely knew save for a soft, full kiss on tiptoes and the perfumed promise of again and more on a day that never came
but here, in Truro now, your ghost whispers daily of bourbon and dunes the curve near Longnook a family I never met
and Cassie at the Lobster Pot you, even then, a shadow of what might have been those air wave words “whatever she wants” you told her paying the price from two thousand miles away
Poetry comes sometimes in precious drops hard won from a tea bag saved by the sink folded in foil for a second cup at lunch with saltines and butter — if rations allowed —
her whole life, my grandmother’s, was that spent tea bag, all of its elixir steeped for someone else with none left to spare for her own self rationing every bit so brittle she broke too early
rare glints of love and laughter that peeked out through the folds like poetry almost, or should have been
her sparce, beautiful life a poem, really, that not too many could read
They tell October tales about these things, the damages and injuries, the unforeseen consequences when humans think they control beasts.
It’s why we kept them under beds and in closets, in heavy chests with wrought iron keys and secret words.
Everyone knew the rules: what not to open, where not to go after dark, what should never be said out loud, and what to wear on a strand of string around your neck at all times.
Then they evolved. They made themselves small enough to live in pockets. They lost their tails to roam more freely. They learned to talk to us, to answer our questions. They paid attention.
But we did not.
We loved their companionship, the immediacy of their response. We needed to feel connected and important. They made us seem relevant and center stage.
So now we all have a monster. It tells us where to go and what to do. It knows exactly where we are and where we’ve been. Its shorthand directives — the beeps and dings and whoops — lead us around all day, call us back when we go astray. It monitors our heartbeat, our sleep cycles, and just how fast we can run.
If we could think about it, it would be terrifying.
Her first husband was a rogue too young for what she had in mind but it was high-school sweetheart love and her parents insisted in a Roman Catholic sort of way his too, it was a good investment that soon included the benchmark 2.0 kids in a house-and-white-picket-fence world but he was prone to outrageous fortunes and accidental accidents that practically left him speechless her too, most nights, waiting by the phone so she gave herself a Divorce for Christmas and never, ever looked back.
But he did. Retraced his missteps relived his worst nightmares (and mine) hit rewind and started over with a nimble bride the same age his first wife had been though a better investment this time consented not contrived with two more dividends and a house on a Dream where he sometimes smiles that scoundrel smile to his reflection in the mirror a flash of wicked conceit for an endgame so very well played.
Poetry like the maple’s seed demands fertile ground but more than that temperature and location, location, location clear days and rain but not too much then patience, perhaps room to put down roots figure itself out bide its time pray it’s not interrupted
I’m livin’ on the edge these days distant cousin twice removed from almost everything
Twilight zone or outer limits
or this someplace where everything in between — the meat and cheese of the day — are too much to bear
lettuce pray
I feel crazy, almost, just enough to be scary or raise concern but only if I start talking
and there’s no one to talk to thankfully, maybe on the edge of night and day except the cat
which makes it even madder
I’m considering a nocturnal existence here on the dark side of the clock leave the decision making and negotiating to the day walkers who don’t burn hot when the sun rises
do the birds only wake to the dawn or are their insides flaming like mine wondering what comes next in these unpredictable days
Pay no mind to that man behind the curtain he only thinks he controls his days
every day is unpredictable, darling you’ve just had the blinds ripped off the rug pulled out from under your wings clipped
This too shall pass she thinks with a wicked laugh and what comes next will, too so round and round we go until we, dizzy, die
I feel thin, Bilbo said, stretched like butter over too much bread.
The path to Wit’s End starts wide and unexpected, beckons you with promises of Hope Ahead >>
There are steep hills built high on Anticipation followed by dark valleys of Disappointment that eventually lead to a narrow rocky path marked Just Keep Going >>
eerily dark day or night, its brambles making forward movement near impossible its Switchbacks and Turn-Arounds keeping you sufficiently dizzy enough not to notice you’ve arrived
Wit’s End
breathless heart pounding Fight or Flight muscles glistening
wondering do you follow This Way >> one more time or jump?
She is a peculiar cat full of spice with an innate determination and confidence Said “I am here” the first day without qualm and has been persistent since
I wonder sometimes how she came to me what wheel was spun in the great Cat Distribution System that put two and two together to make she and me here at this particular moment in time that demands my own resolve and fortitude asks me to lean in hard like she does, often, insisting I belong here too.
I am most envious of the cat sleeping who knows not the long lists or burdens besides the particular angle of the stranded string its shadow enough to contemplate for this day.
Or: When a Writing Prompt Takes You to a Battleground
The poet’s skin soft from age (perfumed in Calvados perhaps) knows the pulse of waves beneath her feels how they beat within, too remembers well the stories and great heroics of trust and love walks now a gravely path to an expanse of cratered lawn where ghosts commune in whispers and tears are only memory reflected in the morning rain where sharp wires — a final kindness — keep her safe from another fall.
In celebration of my blog’s 14th Anniversary, I offer you these 14 Fun Facts about Random Acts of Writing…
1. Random Acts of Writing is followed by more than 1,700 people around the world, including my high school English teacher who reminded me, early on, that it was important to keep my writing universal so more people could understand and appreciate it.
2. In total, there have been close to 37,000 visits to Random Acts of Writing and more than 110,000 distinct views since 2010.
3. According to WordPress, most folks like to read the blog on Mondays at 11:00 a.m. That’s…random.
5. Travel is often featured here on Random Acts of Writing, with frequent posts about Texas, France, Cape Cod, day trips, and the awesomeness that is the American Road Trip.
6. Alice in Wonderland makes regular visits to this blog, as do Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and my Dad. But it was Gene Kelly who starred in the opening number back in 2010.
7. As a graphic designer as well as a writer, I know the importance of images. That’s why there have been more than 3,000 images posted, including famous and obscure artwork and original photography.
8. Random Acts of Writing is a fifth generation creative effort that has its roots in the 1980s zine culture. The Latest News was its first incarnation, which I published from 1989 – 1996.
9. It turns out, I am an internet research geek. Many of the posts you read are infused with details from Google Books, Wiki Art, the Library of Congress, Wikipedia, Bible Hub, and Quote Investigator. I once spent four totally nerdy hours on Google Patents and had to stop because my mouse hand cramped up.
10. The intention of Random Acts of Writing has shape-shifted over the years, but its most-talked-about topics include creativity, books, nature, spirituality, and poetry.
11. Every April since 2015, I have attempted to write a poem a day for National Poetry Month. You can see all of the results here.
12. All of that writing — more than 2,000 posts — led to the publication of four books: LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, Waiting Out the Storm, and Water Under the Bridge: A Sort of Love Story.
13. All of that writing has also fed my quarterly publication called MANIFEST (zine) and my new book, Sleeping with Ghosts, coming out this fall!
14. This is the 14th time I have written an anniversary post, each of which has ended with gratitude to YOU, my readers, for your Comments, your Likes, and your support since 2010. It has been a blessing to share this journey and this ongoing conversation with you.
These stories — stories of men and women — are familiar, their expectations, disappointments, betrayals.
But my empathy and anguish are subdued now, lingering in corners and far enough across the room to not matter all too much in any immediate sense, like the urge to smoke that rises sometimes with coffee or at 3am with cold, cold stars.
And I swear I will never lie to myself again like that: baking hope in cakes or diamond rings or affairs with unintended consequences.
I will bide my time to 80 (god willing) inhale the old habit as promised, but never again will I lie in wait for those stories — stories of men and women — I used to tell myself.
Three Chairs Publishing is psyched to present MANIFEST (zine) issue #14: You Mean a Woman Can Open It?
As a woman born in the late 60s, there’s never been any question that I can be whatever I want to be. It’s what my parents and teachers taught me. It’s what my role models in the 70s and 80s demonstrated for me — Mary Tyler Moore, Marlo Thomas, Judy Blume, Madeleine Blaise, Madonna, Jane Fonda. And it’s how I’ve lived my life since I was old enough to make my own decisions about things — how I work and play, where I live and love, what I do and how. My own terms. My own expectations.
Of course, that doesn’t sit well with some folks. Mostly male folks of a certain genre. And there have always been attempts to keep me “in my place” — verbally, physically, financially, and so forth. But like so many countless women, I have persevered and succeeded, despite the obstacles and objections.
YOU MEAN A WOMAN CAN OPEN IT? is in honor of ALL the women who can, who do, and who keep on doing — who persist — no matter what.
INGREDIENTS: collaged elements, color copies, color scans, digital art, ephemera, essays, original photographs, poetry, quotes, vintage artwork. With thanks to the voices of #metoo, Ruth Orkin, Man Ray, Augustin Pajou, Céline (Melle-T), Bethany Armitage, Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, Carol Nicklaus, Elizabeth Warren, and Wonder Woman.
20-page, Full Color 5×7 booklet, free bookmark, and a curated Spotify playlist, Cost: $8.00 or subscribe and get 4 issues for $25.00.
You can pay through PayPal using a PayPal account or any standard credit card. If you prefer the old school approach, please send your check, made payable to Jen Payne, P.O. Box 453, Branford, CT 06405.
As if by maestro’s cue, five black ducks dove bold into the current as Beethoven’s Five Secrets took off in flight, its eddies of sound mirrored in the rain-raged waters, music and a murmuring of shore birds swirled around the sun’s reflection, carried with them their quiet riddles in ripples and whorls, while the familiar and foreign danced in the Sound of shimmering secrets.
See here, this sweep of time that swings in swift strokes from what was to what is what was to what is overlap so seamlessly sometimes I see it all simultaneous joy leaves and smiles fade, trees fell from storms, and silly giggles echo off the shadows of a ghost who seems taller now than the tree itself as I skirt the shore skips stones in a high swell so intent to take what was leave what is what was to what is what was to what is what was to what is
1. The Law of Attraction says that positive thoughts bring positive results into a person’s life, while negative thoughts bring negative outcomes.
and
2. Humans are unable to look away from a train wreck.
I point this out because there is energy in thought. And there is energy in where we put our focus. This is the concept behind prayer as much as the Law of Attraction.
I want to remind you of this — remind all of us — as we head into that contentious and energetic conflict we call Election Season.
Donald Trump and the MAGA zeitgeist is a train wreck of epic proportion, and it’s hard to look away. It’s hard not to watch the video clips and stare at the headlines in agony; not to gasp, mock, or tremble with horror at the hypocrisy and hate spewing forth; not to share “look what they’re doing now” posts on social media.
Believe it or not, all of that — those reactions — are actually innate human responses. Watching disasters — like staring at a car accident when you drive by, watching news broadcasts about tornadoes, or fixating on Trump’s behavior — triggers our survival instincts.
Our brains are wired to perceive potential danger, analyze and interpret the situation, decide if we should fight or flight.
And studies have shown that we are also prone to what is called “negative bias.”
One study published by the American Psychological Association found that we react to and learn more from our negative experiences than we do positive ones. ‘Humans are prone to negative bias and negative potency,’ explains psychologist Dr. Renee Carr. ‘Negative bias is the tendency to automatically give more attention to a negative event and negative information than positive information or events.”(1)
This explains why we know more about Trump’s criminal activities and abhorrent behaviors than we do about all of the good news in our country and around the world.
I bet you didn’t click on any of those links. That’s part of the negative bias. We’re likely more interested in what other angry things I have to say about Trump than we are that deforestation is decreasing in the Amazon Rainforest, that formerly endangered species like the American bald eagle and the humpback whale are recovering, that there’s a new malaria vaccine about to change the face of public health in Africa.(2)
Negative bias isn’t all bad. “The healthy component of watching disasters is that it is a coping mechanism,” says clinical psychologist Dr. John Mayer. “We can become incubated emotionally by watching disasters and this helps us cope with hardships in our lives. Looking at disasters stimulates our empathy and we are programmed as humans to be empathetic — it is a key psychosocial condition that makes us social human beings.”(3)
But let’s come back to the Law of Attraction. As the book explains:
The Law of Attraction says: That which is like unto itself, is drawn.Whenyou say birds of a feather flock together, you are actually talking about the Law of Attraction. You see it evidenced when you wake up feeling unhappy, and then throughout the day things get worse and worse….You see the Law of Attraction evidenced in your society when you see that one who speaks most about illness has illness; when you see that the one who speaks most about prosperity has prosperity.(4)
We are what we think. We attract that on which we focus.
“As you observe things on the television or in the newspaper, that, because you do not want them, make you feel negative emotion — you hinder your allowance of what you do want.”(5)
While that negative bias — focusing on the negative — is a good coping mechanism, it also means we’re investing our time and thoughts in seeing all of what is wrong and bad, and not what is good and possible. The negative gets all of the attention, and the algorithm of what we see and how we perceive things gets skewed.
So let’s bring this home — to 2024 and the election season.
The more we focus on Trump and the tsunami of fear and hatred, the more our energy — our emotional energy, our thought energy — is projected in that direction. The more we think about something, the more we attract it. Not to mention the fact that the more we read his headlines and share his news, the more free air time and advertising we’re giving him and his campaign.
In an ideal world, there would be a setting to block how much Trump news shows on our feeds. Like Parental Controls, only maybe called Peace of Mind Controls?
Because the more bandwidth he gets, the less there is for headlines about all of the good things happening here in the U.S. and across the world. And the less we see and share the good news, the harder it is to have faith that things will get better, to have hope for our future as a country, and ultimately, as a race.
Think there’s not enough good news to share? Then check out the Good News Network with positive and uplifting stories about conservation efforts, medical and scientific achievements, people making a difference, and all of the good things happening around the world and right here in the United States!
I was trapped in a house of the past where staircases appeared twisting to nowhere and rooms were puzzle games,
where I walked through old conversations and emerged in the present, my foreign reflection in a hall of faceless mirrors,
the scenes of people I used to know still in their old spaces were so real I could touch the pencil he held in his hand at the desk he used to write from
but only she only she was my only constant
broadcasting into rooms to show me the way with an urgent regard so as not to get trapped there
hurried me to dress and gather my things as if the house were on fire
as if my insistence to stay would alter a future I still have no heart to imagine.
I remember the first time I was ever gobsmacked by art. Do you?
My WHOA! moment was back in the early 80s at Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum. I was wandering one of the galleries clockwise and came first, unmoved, to Thomas Cole’s painting The Present showing a castle in ruins, abandoned and backlit by a sunrise or sunset. But it was his second painting, The Past, that stopped me in my tracks. It depicted the same castle and landscape, only at some mythical point in the past, broad daylight, with throngs of people and a jousting tournament in play.
I remember the paired paintings — and my reaction to them — vividly, to this day.
I love when art MOVES us like that. Makes us stop, gasp, internalize it. Carry it with us, decades later. For me, it’s Rodin’s Crouching Woman at the Hirschhorn Sculpture Garden in D.C., Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss at the Louvre, Shepard Fairey’s Arab Woman at the ICA in Boston, Van Gogh’s Starry Night at Yale.
With that same sense of a visceral experience, I spent several hours at the Yale Art Gallery again this weekend. Maybe it was the fact that it was my first time in a large museum since COVID, or that I spent the day with a friend who was equally enthralled and inspired by the energy of the space and the vast amount of famous and fantastic art — but I left full up with awe and appreciation, and a deep gnawing urge to create something WHOA myself!
Here are some sights from the Gallery…
Plato
Ceiling Tiles from Dura-Europos
Bodhisattva of Compassion, Guanyin
An Allegory of Intemperance, Hieronymus Bosch
Rooms by the Sea, Edward Hopper
Camden Hills From Bakers Island, Marsden Hartley
Sentinel I, Wangechi Mutu
Mayflower, Marisol
Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite, Kehinde Wiley
Across town, the sky was falling. While I settled in for the long, windy night, he laid beneath fallen trees — a trauma compounded.
Everywhere, things were breaking — foundations and forests — and I wonder sometimes if that was the moment we broke as well.
The moment all the cracks and shakes finally finally split us apart.
These days, in the forest where we first and often met, I can see our ruins — mark the day of our beginning, the warped rings of memory. and in the wreckage of canopy, our final silent fall.
Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
— William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
I knew it was coming. In that same way the slight rumble in the sky tells you there’s a storm coming, the telltale first cough told me Sick was about to arrive.
It started on a Friday, early in the morning. By noon, I was enthusiastically coughing, by three, I was losing my voice and canceling dinner and weekend plans.
Dr. Google confirmed it was not one, RSV, and a COVID test outruled the other. So I gathered my potions — wild cherry bark syrup, Throat Coat® tea, slippery elm lozenges, magical immune support tablets — and took to the couch.
Sick transformed pretty quicky into bronchitis. There were some days I swear I was about to meet a lung in person for all of the coughing. I sounded like a Muppet and, thanks to a round of pinkeye, looked like a zombie for most of December.
And while I missed the month-long fray of holidays activities, I also missed the month-long fray of holidays activities. Instead, I rested…a lot.
I took it easy. And I napped. And I slept. And I sat on the couch and read books. And I watched all eight of the Harry Potter movies (again). And then I slept, again.
Even Work took a back seat to Sick for the month. Lots of things did. But, it turns out, being sick was just what the doctor ordered.
In the past month, I’ve managed to reset my nervous system that’s been in fight-or-flight mode for a very long time. I feel calm and centered in a way I have not since the quiet days of 2020.
I have not set my alarm clock since December 1, and my sleep routine feels balanced and healthy. It turns out, I need NINE hours of sleep, not six — and if I allow it, my body sleeps and wakes in an easy natural rhythm.
If I allow it, I move around in an easy, natural rhythm, too. I remember this rhythm — it’s the beat I dance to when I’m on retreat or vacation, when I listen to my inner music that says: go for a long walk, you need a nap, take some time off.
I suspect we all need more rest than we allow ourselves. We all need more time on the couch with books and comfort movies. Now, in these precarious times more than ever.
Question: is it possible that the only resolution for 2024 is REST?
I’ve been doing the Goodreads Reading Challenge for 10 years now, and this is the sixth year I’ve successfully met my personal goal of reading 50 books — 52 actually! This year’s statistics, according to Goodreads’ My Year in Books, included 14,328 pages read with an average book length of 276 pages. The shortest book, clocking in at 52 pages, was Marigold and Rose by Louise Glück, and the longest, at 676 pages, was Habibi, a gorgeous graphic novel by Craig Thompson.
Some of my highest rated books, with five stars, were also some of my favorites: From My Button Box: Collected Essays in a Pandemic Time (Judith Bruder), Leaving Time (Jodi Picoult), The Book of Longings (Sue Monk Kidd), The Invisible Hour (Alice Hoffman), Julia and the Shark and The Dance Tree (Kiran Millwood Hargrave), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), The Book of Lost Names (Kristin Harmel), November 9 and Verity (Colleen Hoover), The Paris Library (Janet Skeslien Charles), and Other Birds (Sarah Addison Allen).
For better or for worse, I often find book inspiration from List Challenge, and I am so tempted to consider reading Rory Gilmore’s Reading List or the 100 Books to Read Before You Die or Books to Read to Be Considered Well Read. But I much more prefer wandering the shelves at the library or following breadcrumbs from this book to the next.
My next pile for 2024 includes not so much books as authors. I want to read more Jodi Picoult because we’ve only just met this year. Also Ann Patchett, John Green, and Isabel Allende.
How about you? What have you been reading lately? And what are you looking forward to in 2024?
“All these migrants crossing the border! They’re destroying our country!” she proclaims, just arrived from Christmas mass, where the whole congregation rejoiced the arrival of Jesus. The hypocrisy shocks me silent, my heart screaming “Jesus was a migrant, for Christ’s sake.” The next chapter in this merry-making-gift-giving story includes his parents’ flight from oppression, how they sought refuge in a foreign country to find a better life for their child. Or didn’t you read that far? Do your holiday prayers exclude empathy and compassion, do unto others, Matthew 25? Did you forget the ALL of the purpose of the child?
I try to tell from the walk, the shadow, the stature, the bow in the legs
is it him?
wonder what we would say after all this time
I should hate him, put the painful slides at the front of the reel
instead I pull out the happy ones, shine a light on what surfaces of those feelings long ago, of all that seemed possible
and even though I know better now I slow down
stare and stare and stare
consider the recognition mine and his a weird and inappropriate reunion in a parking lot at Christmas, Solstice Bells on the CD in my car and he smiles like he still owns me joyful and cruel all at once
The deer path has been excavated from its intimate trail of mossy secrets to a course hewn five feet wide accommodating us, of course, but not the slow poetry of listening here, where the January thaws laid bare a Caretaker’s House like Brigadoon, brief or here, where in the sunrise silence one could hear the Lady Ferns unfurl in fanfare nor here, where small Spring Beauties gathered in gossip beneath the wise old Oak who bears witness now only to the wreckage, the red blaze nailed deep without apology.
I am so tired of my humanity of our vulgarities and violence we never learn or we do and forget forget in the name of [insert team logo here] then we crown excellence worship one above the other but it’s not excellence if it’s bestowed and not earned if it’s dishonorable or dishonest He says he loves her because she’s amazing, but she is also a sinner — aren’t we all — according to that book oh but which book? and which god? and which party? and which plight? Nevermind Forget the hypocrisies and contradictions just go shopping — Shop Shop Shop Buy Buy Buy More More More to fill these gaping holes in our souls worship the profits Oh holy night but we kill the stars and everything they manifest a battle of wills and wars and words us, them, he, she, they big end, small end, dead end Dead End all of us with no surgical procedure to repair the despair no subscription prescription no mantra talisman ritual get down on your knees devotion we just spin spin spin round and round and round and round same song, different day different year different decade different century and the beat goes on
This is no place for a cricket I said out loud to him and to nobody, then lifted him gently into the confines of an old coffee cup, belly of a whale for all he knows of Columbia and Sumatra, but they sing there like he does, and who’s to say his are not folklore themselves — long-told stories passed down late at night, to our ear cacophony, to theirs a thousand tales a million years the universe in the short patch of grass now, there, and safe, as safe as Jonah I pray silently
forgive us our trespasses
as I walk back to my car parked askew in the crowded lot.
She knows, of course, it’s why she’s allowed me here this intimate task of parting, of packing up your things, why we smile easily between hidden glances
so this is her
We’ve known each other forever, of course, wondered enough to troll, but we’re like minds and hearts as well, why else would you have loved us both? I don’t tell her I saw you a shadow, a whisper in her room, that your smile was in gratitude for the kindnesses here now, and then, when I held tight your sorrows and secrets.
Instead, we just laugh at your photographs, agree to keep the tape in the top drawer to put things back together after I leave.
In these post-pandemic days with the black veil of politics, wars, mass shootings, and climate change draped over our collective humanity, I suspect we are all suffering, in some way, from what clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Dr. Scott Eilers, calls “ambiguous grief.” It’s the realization that something you always thought you’d have will never come to be, or mourning the loss of an alternate version of yourself — or Your World — that will never exist. This small zine touches on that big subject through seven poignant poems.
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Once upon a time there was a bear and he lived just around the corner from the footbridge where the jays still caw about a troll and hummingbirds wax poetic about jewelweed on the banks of the stream. It was there, one day, a woman stood in utter disbelief as rain fell on a sunny day and the breeze turned into music. People around her raced by fear in their breath eyes full of warning, but she, being a brave sort (or merely hopeless) walked up the path, around the corner, and asked the bear to dance.
Last night, I snuck across the pond to the half-cut trees, their slaughtered limbs strewn across the yard of the large new house and listened while spiders and ants and caterpillars evacuated, slowly. I knelt below the one last Maple in whose branches I once spied turkeys sleeping and I apologized in whispers that sounded like midnight bird wings, while my tears collected in pools around her sweet trunk and we listened as the stars departed and the sun rose and the marsh hawk came to pay its respects one last time.
wonders at the man and woman who move beneath her — the fine strings of connection they don’t seem to notice
the man moves and the woman follows the woman speaks and the man nods somehow symbiotic
each of them picks berries from the autumn olive — share the savoring — pause and pucker at the bittersweet
yesterday’s web tangles in the woman’s hair and the man assists — white web entwined with silver strands he hadn’t noticed as threads of memory spark around them
I wonder what you will look like with gray hair
but wisps of time and love their midnight musings only float on sunbeams now as ephemeral as she herself her dance on fine filaments the dew, the stars, the Universe
The weight of a catbird in its final sleep too close to the road is surprisingly heavy, as if all of her songs — the whistles and whines the cheeps and chirps the mimics of a lifetime — are stored within her feathers so soft to the touch. I pray my long gentle strokes, my whispered comforts, might wake her to forage with her chicks once more and I stay hopeful for fifty-one steps until I lay her, quiet, still in the cool soft moss of the shaded yard, where the stalwart maple keeps eternal watch.
I am sitting on my screen porch in the Love & Relationships bagua of my house eating Liangfen. Called “Rice Bean Jello” on the menu, it is a bowl of delicate, translucent noodles served with cilantro and chili oil; a Sichuan dish sometimes called “heartbreaking jelly noodles.”
If you feel sad or heartbreaking, go and taste it, then your sadness will go with the wind sinceit is too spicy, so that all the feeling you have is a spicy taste.
I ordered Liangfen for just this moment — Sunday lunch on my screen porch and quiet meditations on Love & Relationships — part of a mindful evaluation process a friend and I are working through this fall.
It is not surprising to me that the Love & Relationships bagua of my home — the far right corner of the nine-squared feng shui map — is a screen porch. A place where seasons come and go, where winds shift and conditions often change.
And so, the Liangfen and its intention to chase away sadness are good company as I take inventory of Love & Relationships, and honor all of the changes that line up in multiple columns on what I call my Loss List.
If I were more inspired, the Loss List could probably be one of those fancy word clouds, but for now it’s just a long list; the friends, clients, loves, acquaintances, advisors, and communities to which I am no longer attached. The people and places no longer part of my present — or my future.
Sometimes, I want to point fingers, blame the pandemic, firmer boundaries, age and natural attrition, poor choices, humans. Other times, I just want someone to validate the losses with a giant YES stamp, I GET IT.
This is grief of course — heavy, messy, capricious GRIEF that breezes in and out of my days like the unpredictable breezes from Long Island Sound.
And there’s a lot of it — like climate changing levels of grief. The kind that shifts the ground, floods your reserves, erodes hope. Or…maybe it’s the kind that burns off the detritus in a blazing firestorm to eventually become beautiful new growth?
But I’m not there yet.
Today, I’m sitting on my screen porch enjoying the first chilly afternoon of fall, there’s a hawk bearing witness to my tears, the cause of which is only this bowl of Liangfen — just heartbreakingly spicy enough for a quiet reckoning.
I think to warn the hummingbird of the black snake I met along the trail, then remember: snakes don’t fly, and even the racer would be too slow anyway for the flit flit flit of this apparition I can’t blink to see a solo staring contest until my eyes tear up
sure, sure — blame it on the bird
my eyes were teared already on this quiet, dying Sunday, summer seeping into fall but more than that the things we can’t ignore, the changes that might someday soon require the snake to fly for its supper after all
There’s a spider crawling on the Buddha that sits on my desk, and I wonder if she — the spider — is praying, wonder if I might ask her to do so on my behalf for the butterfly I have no heart to remember, its blacktop last breaths and wingbeats were things I could not bear this morning on my way to the woods that are themselves dying. Good Lord, if I stop to kneel down for each and all of it, there would be no time left.
It started with the shock (And the shock and awe) Then the monetizing of fear and attention stimulated by 24 hour scrolling alarm. There was finger pointing and hate fanning, an us-against-them rip current we couldn’t escape.
We glimpsed Hope then we lost Hope over and over, until the hate spilled out formed a tsunami fueled by the the lock-step dumbing down, the entertainment value of ignorance broadcast on our unescapable devices.
So we coronated a devil the leviathan who gorged on hate and let plague prosper, while swarms of protest were never enough to stave off the the dead ones in school halls, the bloodied rights of masses, the arming of idiots the fires and floods, the crimes of church and state.
Then two decades in to this human debacle, our sanity eroded and collapsing, they announced that aliens walk among us and I wondered, hoped and prayed
I had known her like a lover — the curved slope of her spine, the embrace of a shoulder’s bend, the cool pause of shaded breath. She was my solace, my companion in meditations, my inspiration for poems (and two books).
But it’s been years since we spent time together — she, the two mile loop along the backside of the preserve, and I, her loyal, adoring visitor for some ten years.
I blame it on my knees, say I can’t and shouldn’t.
I blame it on the storm that left her forever altered.
But the truth, I suspect, is that I am altered.
The woman who walked that path and heard the voice of angels…sometimes…has been, for years now, hobbled.
Hobbled by grief. And disappointment. By the other storms that swept through and changed the landscape of what I knew as my life.
I am no longer that walking woman in the same way the woods are no longer what they were when we shared precious time together.
And so this morning, we bore witness to that. She, at seven, was cool and quiet as I walked our familiar path for the first time in four years.
Did she notice, I wonder, the changes in me like I did in her? Her overgrown spots, the pockmarks, the diseases slowly taking over, the things that no longer serve her. Or me.
Did she mourn the losses in me as I did in her? Tears or raindrops, who can tell.
Did she our change for what it is — inevitable, unpreventable…necessary?
Was she as glad to see me after all this time — as I was her?
Photos & essay @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this post, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
There but for the grace of god, I whisper as a prayer in fast passing for the pigeon who lies writhing by the overpass, its fatal injury too much to bear for either of us, so I imagine the wings that catch its final breaths of sunlight are those of angels sent to comfort its frightened spirit, stroke its soft body and hush the pain in the flash of a second I could not.
IMAGE: Study of Mice Dancing, Beatrix Potter. Poem @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
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