In a (Peaceful) Fog

Skies are clear and sunny, but yes, I'm a bit in a fog. In a life full of surrealities, I have to say that not attending your dad's memorial service is pretty high up there. But strangely, I am at peace. If I understand correctly what I was meant to learn from him, I suspect his higher self would have been terribly disappointed if I had attended. Tomorrow, I will have lunch with friends, then meditate in a local formal garden, smelling lilacs and other flowering trees and plants. I'll try to get in touch with the universe's endless stream of love, which hopefully he has returned to. 

I wrote a number of hand-written notes to family. I guess it shows my age that I prefer this kind of note at this kind of time. I truly think our hearts are "in our hands," and that there's a link between our hearts and our writing hands. But for younger people, I suspect the notion of writing a hand-written note is up there with taking the skin off a dead cow, scraping and drying it to make parchment, then toiling for months over an illuminated manuscript. Not happening. Well, I suspect that in my lifetime, we may need to return to offline forms of communication, so I am keeping in practice.

Regarding the clothing issue mentioned last week; as we speak, I am wearing a neon pink tee shirt and a black and white striped skirt. Not exactly mourning. However, a concept seems to be forming, as I ponder my memories of great aunts and grandmothers. I see blue. Light blue linen. Navy blue dotted swiss. Lots of blue dresses. Moving forward, I suspect I will focus more of my wardrobe on blues and turquoises of various tints and shades. I want to wear more skirts and dresses. And I must own a string of pearls. I won't wear them often, perhaps, but it's time to own one.

Strange musings for such a huge transition, I know. The biggest thing is, I need to keep breathing. I keep finding myself holding my breath.

Mourning

I guess it is strangely fitting that on a rather significant post -- my 400th -- I need to tell you that my 92-year-old father has passed away.

It is also strangely fitting that, although it happened 2,500 miles away, it happened about three hours after I returned from my local public library, where, with art paper and colored markers in hand, I created a colorful mission statement/brainstorm for my post-62 life. The ties were that tight, but the universes we inhabited that distant. He was absolutely my life's most influential teacher, but except for genetics, we had almost literally nothing in common. A year or so ago, we said the best good-bye we could possibly have done; recently, his now-defenseless body had become riddled with cancer. He was well taken care of, and apparently the end was almost ideal. He said, "I'm taking a nap now," and closed his eyes for the last time.

So in many respects, I am not mourning. I have commended his soul to the goddess (which would probably not have been his preference) and feel largely at peace. I dearly hope he is too. My rebirth may end up being far more literal than I realized, and I rejoice in the potential liberating joys of the upcoming months and years. But by the same token, there remains much to mourn, and to continue to wonder and rail at about how our respective lives turned out. I've found myself wishing we were back in the Victorian era, and I could wear an elaborate black bombazine dress and wrap myself in a black veil for the next year. I wish in a way that people could see me coming from blocks away and understand that I am dealing with an upended life. I wish we were encouraged to limit our activities when in mourning; our culture's utter avoidance of such rituals has never seemed so unfortunate. At some point in the future, I will look at this month or so as the most important axis in my life, and over the next few weeks, I believe I will figure out some visual/wardrobe change to mark it. I am the honored elder now, the matriarch of some tribe. It is too hot for bombazine, but something about my rather scruffy image must change. I'll let you know what it is.

Stirrings

Yes, I am heading into the ninth month of this pregnancy (such a strange thing to say when you haven't had children!) and this weekend, I could tell that rebirth isn't too far away. It's not just the fact that spring is really here, so hibernation just isn't working any more. It's not just that a short "releasing" ceremony seemed to leave way for the new. A new kind of energy is beginning to take hold. Stirrings.

Yet, is it just me or is it human nature? I have found myself trying to couch this new beginning in the context of old places, people and situations. ("Maybe I'll go back here, or maybe I'll go back there.") I've had so little comfort and security in my life, perhaps it was just a case of wanting to experience something known as I head into something unknown. Metaphorically, it doesn't work. It's like dragging my boat back upriver a few years, a few decades, and returning to the water at an old stretch of river. It's like taking the oil painting of my life -- which I've carefully taken turpentine to and cleaned of much of its old definition and imagery -- and then racking my brain to remember exactly what the painting looked like in order to replicate it. That isn't the point of such a deliberate rebirth. The point is rebirth, not replay. A different energy is beginning to emanate from me, and that will attract experiences with different qualities.

You may be surprised to hear that I did not watch the royal wedding. (I even once sang with the Royal Holloway choir at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and remember the setting well.) But having been in England for all the Charles and Diana celebrations in 1981, and having felt so brokenhearted at subsequent events, I just couldn't watch on Saturday. Since then, I have seen snippets of it online, and I can tell the service was beautiful, musical, uplifting and heartfelt. And I watched a wonderful interview with Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, who performed the wedding, and Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who gave the sermon. The energy of their interview was so positive, joyful and hopeful that I was in tears. They both saw this event as an expression of love, not just the couple's, but of the larger force of love in the world. While their specific spiritual lens and mine may differ because my focus is increasingly on the divine feminine, I resonated with the fact that both of these religious leaders were clearly infused with genuine joy. It was truly stirring. 

More about painting

Last blog, I spoke about the underpainting in an old masters-style oil painting. On a similar theme, I don't know if I have ever mentioned my reaction the day that I finished my first realistic still life in my tutor's studio. There was a lemon in the front of the still life, and I struggled a bit to paint it realistically on canvas, as I learned to use fan brushes and to internalize the relevant color theory. But with some coaching, suddenly, before my very eyes, there was a lemon that looked so real and three-dimensional, I could have picked it off the canvas and squeezed it into a pitcher of lemonade. I burst into tears. It was such an unexpected sense of power, of creation. To some extent, the key is in the lighting, presenting objects in a bright, focused light that is the catalyst for similarly dark shadows. In subsequent months, I would paint realistic eggs, pears, apples and other circular edibles. The globe shape -- like the face and much of the human body -- makes for very satisfying light-dark contrasts and shadows. 

What does this have to do with my life right now? It's been a wrenching week, as I have at least mentally released some very limiting patterns, relationships, and beliefs. Heading into those darker darks has, however, helped me uncover some hidden joy. For about ten minutes yesterday, I was beside myself with happiness, for no reason. I looked in the mirror, and thought, "I look different, younger." This morning, I'm feeling teary again. Augh! But it's hitting me that anyone who can paint a realistic lemon or pear must, eventually, be able to create a realistic, workable life, one that will hold together as a composition. (And by this, I am thinking "realistic, workable" less by the standards of society, and more by the standards of love.) Maybe shining a little more love "light" on my life will help me see the beauty that already exists in my composition.

Underpainting

The other day, I said that discovering my anger has been a little like being an artist who finds a new color on her palette. It is reminding me of my lessons in old masters painting techniques almost twenty years ago. 

I had never thought I would want to paint in such a traditional way, but my mom was dying, and helping with her care was quite stressful. I needed something new, just for me. I took lessons from a local painter, learning the basics of still life and portraiture in oils. We would set up a still life -- say a bowl with fruit in it, and a piece of fruit in front of it, with a bright light setting up dramatic contrast in light and shadow -- and then set up on the easel a canvas that I had pre-painted with a dark earth tone. This is called the underpainting. The way I was taught the next step was to sketch the outline of the image, as well as the lightest, brightest parts of the painting, with a transparent white, then use layers of colored "washes" to lay out the full sketch. Then you paint "up" to light and "down" to dark with undiluted paint, almost like a sculptor, using any or all colors in your box (and mixtures of them) except for black. Black from the tube has to be used sparingly, if at all, in this kind of oil painting because that hue is so rarely found in nature. For the darkest shadows or backgrounds, you generally mix dark reds, browns, purples, etc.,  

What is interesting is that, although the underpainting is rarely visible in the finished work, its presence can have a subtle, magical relationship to the work painted on it, and it lends a richness to the painting experience that is nearly impossible to attain starting from a "white," bare canvas. Another thing I found over the years is that sometimes if a painting just didn't work, I'd take solvent on a rag and just rub it out, leaving kind of a ghost painting to paint over. The second try -- even if it was a totally different painting -- was always more successful. In other words, a dark, seemingly formless mess of an underpainting can make for a much richer, more three-dimensional final painting.

So I guess the metaphor here is, I realize I have had a dark underpainting under the surface all along. I think I was simply trying to cover it with paint without working with it. Once I really get a handle on how to "use" my underpainting, I think life will take on more color, more dimension, and a dramatic form that makes more sense for me. Some more thoughts about painting and life are coming to me. Next time!

While I am in the wave

Well, I was going to write about something different today -- how regularly in life I have been contradicted or told I was wrong -- only events have conspired to send another tsunami wave onto my beach, another wave that is giving me the opportunity to feel old feelings, fears, terrors.

So I guess I'll just say how I plan to get through this day, and ones like it if they should occur again in the future. I will stay the safest place I can be today. I will keep breathing. I will eat comforting foods, drink tea, and sit in a comfortable chair or allow myself to read, nap or sleep. I will try to identify the feelings I am feeling, if possible, although I won't force the matter. I will try to identify when in my life I first felt this way, if possible, although I won't force the matter. I will try to give my inner self permission to feel whatever I am feeling, and embrace her with the best comfort I can.

However (and I am indebted to Teal Swan's The Completion Process for much of what I have learned about dealing with these dreadful moments), the goal of this day will not be to "feel better." As she puts it, "Instead of feeling better, your aim is to get better at feeling..." (p. 188). When you've spent much of your life trying to out-sail the storm, the whole point now is to experience it, to feel its power. These waves haven't shattered me yet; their truths are actually making me stronger and feistier, as you may be able to tell from some of my recent blogs! But days like today are "breathe, breathe, breathe." Just breathe, breathe, breathe.

Res ipsa loquitur

There have been some interesting ramifications of my recently having become aware of my feelings of anger. I have been uncharacteristically blunt and truthful in a few situations where, in the past, I might have been more diplomatic. Strangely, I found it exhilarating. And in one instance, I told a really off-color joke, which shocked me more than my listeners. I wanted to melt into the ground, but it was a rocky, somewhat humorous rite of passage.

Perhaps the biggest thing to happen in the last five days has been an important realization. The strange half-light of this new world that I am in certainly makes you see things differently.

As regular readers know, I seem to have reached age 62 with very little "to show for it," certainly from the standpoint of belongings, worldly accomplishments, relationships, and abundance. For a long time, I bought into the criticism of family and even "friends" that I have done "nothing worthwhile with my life." Even now, that belief is like a sludgy undertow, carrying me backward as I try to find my way forward in the stream of life. 

Early Monday morning, I had a moment of grace. In the 4 AM silence, I thought, that is pure unadulterated rubbish! I have thrown myself into the "endeavor of life" with almost unprecedented, courageous vigor. I scanned my life from a different perspective, seeing not one, not two, but three post-high school degrees, two of them "cum laude." I felt the energy of my first job and apartment near Washington, DC, and my enthusiasm for my MMus year in England and travels in Europe. I thought with amazement of my subsequent move to frenetic New York City, nearly a decade of answering letters to the editor on world and international events (me, a music major!) and my volunteer singing and museum work. Even in the decades since then that have taken me to unlikely places and jobs, I have thrown myself into each adventure 150%, giving $10-an-hour jobs at least three times that much excellence, meeting new friends, caring for pets, sick people and lonely houses with compassion and conscientiousness. I've cooked for organic farmers, learned rowing, taught hundreds of students, painted hundreds of paintings (many of them given as gifts), loved big lakes as much as the streets of London, and faced even the hard things with relative aplomb. Re-aligning myself with English church music in "middle age" has brought me accomplishments and peak moments that I am hugely proud of, even if they are nearly invisible to other people ("I finally sang evensong at King's"); yes, at times it has been impossibly hard because I've made so little money, but all in all, mine has been a life of love, passion, and the pursuit of wisdom.  On my best days, I still feel like a force of nature, brimming over with energy and the willingness to learn.

If there's anger, bafflement, and confusion, it's really focused on one thing; why am I measured/judged by what hasn't been reciprocated by our culture's economy, not by what I have done? Do you know what I mean? This is decidedly not about my "not having done anything worthwhile"; it is about someone, way back when, deciding that love, passion, creativity, beauty, and caring were worthless, so that even today, someone like me must fight daily for an iota of stability in her life and for a sense of pride. Indeed, millions of people from all walks of life are fighting for their lives and for a sense of pride. Something is very out of kilter here. Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

The beach

For someone who is so into metaphor, it is rather interesting that sometimes it can be before my very eyes, and I don't see it!  

As most of you know, this winter I metaphorically pulled my boat up on the beach, and have allowed old waves of pain to wash over me. It's been hard, my friendships and readership have plummeted, and I don't recommend it unless nothing else has worked, which was the case in my life. As a matter of fact, this re-birth appears like it may literally take about nine months, and in that context, yesterday was like the seven inning (seven month) stretch -- I had the opportunity to go to the beach in southern Maine. Evidently just about everyone in New England had made the same decision, as it was packed with sun worshippers after a long and hard winter. Yours truly can't take much direct sun, and acted like some old Victorian lady, covering every inch of skin and sitting under an umbrella (although before leaving, I did basically throw myself, clothes and all, into the cold, salty waves). Later, I sat mesmerized at another beach's rocky shoreline, watching waves break into white froth, the brilliant turquoise highlights in the dark blue water, and the meandering of a lobster boat. Mostly, I listened to the coming and going of the waves, and in my mind's eye saw my maternal grandmother Agnes dressed in a 30's era skirt and blouse, set up with all her oil painting supplies, painting an image of the seashore. I saw my mother as a little child, running down to the piers in Kennebunkport, quarter in hand, to buy a lobster from the lobstermen for her family's summer supper. There was comfort in connecting to mother earth and my mothers.  

It wasn't until I was hours from the beach that I thought about how interesting it was that my big adventure of the winter was a day trip that literally manifested my metaphor!

The waves moving in and out, in and out, held healing. None of them broke over or swamped me. But I'm also aware that this anger thing seems to be putting me right on the cutting edge of the culture. Actress Tracee Ellis Ross recently gave a TED talk in which she encouraged women to "acknowledge your fury." TIME Magazine's April 23 issue had a story called "The Rising Political Power of Fed-Up Women." Although it was specifically focused on public school teaching, I think we are all waking up to our lifetimes of indignities. In different ways, and with our personal slants.