Midwest Miscellany

One of the visually intriguing things about Duluth is that there are a number of large grain and ore silos in the bay which the huge ships on- and offload from. In certain lights, in the fog, at night, and (ahem) if I take off my glasses, some of them look very much like English cathedrals. It is like there is kind of a semi-transparent film over my eyes, showing me something I love in another form.

Yesterday morning, I woke up and handwrote ten single-spaced, college-ruled pages about my dad. It was only later, after a friend asked me if I realized that it was Father's Day, that I made the connection about the appropriateness of the timing. It's amazing the way our brains work. I am not sure yet whether this material will end up in my book or here in my blog. But in a nutshell, I was grieving the fact that I never heard these heartfelt words from him: "Elizabeth, you are my beloved, wonderful daughter. I love you, I am so proud of you, and I want the best for you throughout your life. I would sacrifice almost anything to make your life easier and more fulfilling."

I think that Father's Day must be hard for many women, and men too (although perhaps the issues for them may be somewhat different.) Yes, there are some women who may have wonderful fathers who say this and mean it, and act appropriately and supportively for decades. There must be many women, like me, whose fathers were physically present, but not in any other way. There may be fathers who say such things early in life, then become monstrous predators, twisting the words into knots. And, of course, there are so many women who never meet their real fathers. When there is this gaping hole, it is so very hard to fill even in a lifetime of trying. My heart goes out to anyone for whom yesterday was painful or challenging.

Lilacs are just coming out here. It's so late. Gosh, I think in England they were coming out in March. Duluth's summers are so very short, and it's almost like a Saturnalia...each weekend is crammed with marathons, rummage sales, sailboat races, rowing regattas, farmers' markets, outdoor concerts, you name it. Most of it isn't my thing right at the moment (this summer being devoted to writing my book) but I'm breathing in the life energy and the excitement with gratitude.

Aha!

My readers know that my focus is on writing my memoirs right now, and it was my intention not to blog as frequently. However, I guess this activity is serving to spur my brain cells, generally, and this morning I had an "Aha!" moment that I have been waiting a lifetime for. So I could not wait to share it with my small group of faithful readers. If you've stuck with me this long, maybe this will resonate with you.

OK, here goes.

Over the years, I have met a handful of other women like me, single, strongly focused on their spiritual journeys, and, yes, living either in poverty or very straightened circumstances. Wandering (or stable-yet-hanging-on-for-dear-life) mystics. (There may be men in this category, but I just haven't met many yet!) And, of course, many artists, writers, musicians, poets, and other creative men and women share this experience, and have been made to feel intense shame at their lack of financial success.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but since the late 1980's, I have certainly been exposed to law of attraction teachings, and indeed, believe them to be absolutely true. I believe that "like attracts like," at the very least on this earth plane. For decades, I have tried to "attract" money, income, paid opportunities, gifts, whatever, not just so that I could barely get by, but to try to accomplish the hundreds of things I still wish to accomplish in this life. I've tried visualizing a permanent home and the means to make that possible because I am so tired of wandering. I've loved listening to my favorite law of attraction gurus, and knowing that for some people, affirmations, creative visualization and other tricks really do work. But they most assuredly do not seem to work for me. My life has proved sort of an inverse proportion to the rule; the closer I get to understanding who I am and to my core beliefs and understandings, the less I seem to function in our system and the further I seem to get from "abundance" (as expressed through money, anyway! My life has had other forms of abundance, clearly.)

This morning, it finally hit me. This is, in fact, the law of attraction at work. Our current economic systems and institutions are based firmly in a duality view of life; two planes of reality that are in constant opposition. right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, profit vs. loss, success vs. failure etc. This assumption is at the core of almost all of our societal structures, not just the economy. Think of how we fight illness, war, drug use, pollution and illiteracy. The other political party. You name it.

I think I came into this lifetime with at least a budding understanding of a post-duality worldview. I'm not sure if there is a better word to use..."unity"? "unity through harmony"? "Wholeness"? A world where everything is essentially one and there is no actual split down the middle. Personally, I'm coming more and more to see all Life as a single river of love and beauty, running, literally, in one direction. I feel it as a construct of the divine feminine, although it just may be that, as a woman, I need a more concrete, personal sense of identifying with divine oneness.

As of yet, I do not know of any economic systems based on this paradigm, although gifting and bartering may align with it somewhat more than making a profit. That's a question for another day.  But because our Western economy is based on duality, and my thinking is not, law of attraction is working (ugh!) perfectly. I do not easily attract "money" to my true self, and it is not attracted to me (nor, by and large, are people who are really invested in the system). Those of us who just simply cannot function in a dualistic fashion find all aspects of the dualistic world extremely hard to navigate, practically and spiritually.

This isn't about making excuses. But it was a wonderful "aha" for a Tuesday morning. I haven't done anything wrong, at least from the perspective of that unified stream of love, unity and beauty. Neither have many other people who haven't flourished. It's just that our essences are not reflected in our economy's essence. This won't make it any easier to function, gosh darn it, but it does make it a little easier to feel better about my life... not a bad thing when I am writing about it, finally!

My Life on Index Cards

As promised, I am well underway writing my memoirs. I tried to do this about four years ago, but really struggled with it, and then came the shocking, unexpected death of my little brother. Quite rightly, this brought the process to a screeching halt. And many things have happened since then...

So what I have decided to do this time is write short episodes and anecdotes by hand on 4x6 lined index cards. I've bought the multicolored ones, so that the cards can be grouped by rough time period. At least as of now, I don't intend this to be a "first this happened, and then this happened" kind of chronological account. Frankly, I have lost track of the exact threads of my timeline. What old datebooks and journals I had have either been tossed, or are in storage back east, and so I'm embracing the rather dreamlike aspect of some of the narrative and working with it, I hope.

One of the things that has become clear to me this go-round is the fact that, given my passion for English cathedral music, most of my life from the age of eight on was, by necessity, a Plan B. In the sixties, young English boys with musical talent would probably find their way into a cathedral choir and accompanying school. If this continued to be an interest, they would study at Cambridge or Oxford and sing in one of the college chapel choirs, and possibly even progress to sing countertenor, tenor or bass in a cathedral choir. This not having been an option for me as a girl and as an American, quite literally most of my life choices went wide of the mark, either slightly or spectacularly. The process of writing about the colorful journey that followed is thus rather bittersweet. I love what I have experienced, and yet I feel angry too at the utter waste of human talent in a specific field. I did my best not to waste divine time (and indeed, I guess my journey to help open up the field was a good use of that time!) but at 63, I can literally feel the pain of how distant certain activities were, and still are, from my core. I realize that this may ultimately be the source of my constant longing to "go home."

The phrase came to me, "my only home is my journey." So far that's been the case anyway! Let's see how many index cards it will take to write about it.

It's Strange

I returned from the UK one week ago, and I haven't even begun to adjust. Everything seems strange, from the quality of the light to the hues of the landscape (still largely greys and browns, with green in the process of popping). I appreciate the wider streets and increased spaciousness. I appreciate the mothering lake. But the actual energy of American life -- from the crime TV shows to the malls and retail strips to the evolving downtown to the news items on a weapons cache in L.A. -- feels harsh. But then it always has, to me. Increasingly, I realize that tuning my heart so early in life to music like Howells's Gloucester Service set an impossibly high bar, one that can probably be met only in a handful of locations and situations.

Still, somewhere in this unlikely stage set is the spot from which I'll write the book that is already taking shape. I may not write as frequently over the next few months, but I promise I'll keep you posted. (Hmm...a pun in the blog era?!)

London's Gate

Regular readers know that after my injury back in late December, I went through a succession of what I called "gates," processes that involved healing and new understandings prompted by being in recovery mode.


This week, I took my first solo trip to London by train. On past visits to England, this was par for the course, but this time, I had become almost phobic about the prospect of dealing with the big city, the crowds, the tube, etc. Indeed, it took me until only about two weeks ago to take the train to a nearby small city. Once I navigated that successfully, it seemed like it was time for London.


I was surprised to find that my big city, New York genes immediately took hold, and although I move much more carefully than I used to, I didn't feel actively afraid, even heading down those mile long escalators in the tube. The day involved seeing some beloved art at the National Gallery, a bus to St. Paul's Cathedral, and then, of course, choral evensong. There were amusing encounters with an exasperated gallery guard (run ragged by people leaning over the guardrails and nearly touching the paintings, and taking close-up photographs), a bus driver light-heartedly teasing me about my not knowing how to use my day travel pass, and a lonely soul on the city bus with a sadly inadequate blond wig, but lots of spirit and knowledge, who tour-guided the way up Fleet Street. The service, although evensong, was not one where they allowed seating in the choir stalls, so it was fascinating to hear the music from the crossing, near the modern altar. As at St. John the Divine in New York, there is almost too much reverberation. Oddly, I found myself less wishing I were singing in the choir, and more wishing I could give a "sermon" in such a vast space, to hear my echoing voice speaking to the crowds.


Several years ago, I wrote about how I've often felt that my soul has actually been residing in London, and certainly my day there only underscored the feeling that I could easily replicate that experience morning after morning for the rest of my life. As I reach the end of this visit, I haven't crossed that off my bucket list. But I have reached the end of the road in terms of trying to find ways to make "permanence" work. I've run out of  the "excuses" that I always hoped would bring serendipity ("I'm going over to study for a master's, to receive my diploma, to take an art course, to write about Herbert Howells, to sing or write about evensong"...) Now I think England will have to reach over across the Atlantic, and find its own excuse to want me here. Certainly for the short term in the U.S., my goal is to write a book, and get it out into the world. It will be rather different than this blog, which has only attracted small numbers of readers, but I'm not writing it differently to attract readers, just to give this post-63 path a little seasoning.


I am thankful for this portal journey and all its gifts. My life has definitely changed, in ways that I am sure will become clearer and clearer. I'll check in when I get back stateside.

Yeah...

So I'll be returning stateside soon, and despite all my promises to myself not to count down the days or feel bittersweet, I am, of course, doing both of those things. England has always felt like home to me, felt like the place I am rooted, and since reading Sharon Blackie's If Women Rose Rooted, rootedness feels so much more important than ever. I seem to be reasonably good at getting myself over here, touching the soil (and breathing in the expanse of landscape, the sound of birds, bells and choirs), but not so good at engaging deep down into the dark earth.


Yet when I rise (literally) above it all and observe the situation compassionately from a higher self perspective, it does seem that I am taking part in a deeper mystery here. Every aspect of my life has had a shamanic "between realities" quality, and this backing and forthing has to be part of it. Right now, I am much more aware of the need to be at home within myself, first and foremost. My few months here have rooted me more in that sense. I am not so much "homeless" or "between homes" but a universal home for some values that just simply do not yet seem to be well established in the world, leaving it hard to find my place. I have made a commitment to write a book this summer, and hopefully it will provide four walls (as it were) for those values. While writing the book, I may blog even less frequently, but I'll let you know about that in a few weeks.


Before leaving? I'm giving an informal talk, attending one or two more choral evensongs, attending one more physical therapy appointment for my wrist, and generally spending most of the days having a normal "go to the shops/make meals" kind of existence. We are living in such decidedly extraordinary times, it just seems crucial to grab hold of whatever feels normal while that's possible.


Yeah...

Smouldering

There was a terrible deja vu about turning on the news Monday night, to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame ablaze. It's hard to believe it has been almost eighteen years since New York's twin towers, but it came back as if it were yesterday, and frankly, for this lover of gothic cathedrals, watching this fire was emotionally much harder. Putting aside religion, even spirituality, these buildings do seem to be unique places of amplification, transporting human yearning and human music out beyond space and time. When a cathedral burns (and it happened a lot in the Middle Ages, evidently, and even York Minster had a serious fire in the 1980s), I wonder if the sounds of conflagration are also amplified. There was no real audio in the news images I saw, and for much of the time, even the observing crowds were silent, stunned.


You cannot help but kind of scan your own personal connections to a place. I visited Notre Dame on a school trip to France when I was 15...I remember being overwhelmed by its scale and beauty, although my "thing" about cathedrals hadn't quite taken hold yet. Monday night, a BBC interview with a prominent musicologist underscored Notre Dame's importance to western music. Many innovations in Christian chant and the development of organum and early polyphony took place there, with the specific acoustics of the building in mind. My own MMus thesis was about a piece of 12th century music that was written in Aquitaine, in Aquitanian neumes. I doubt that it was ever sung at Notre Dame, but I was fortunate enough to see the original manuscript in 1981 in Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale. And my other tenuous link is having met Notre Dame's current organist out at Helena, Montana's Catholic cathedral, when he gave a spectacular recital a few years ago. Notre Dame's was one of the largest organs in the world; organists are in shock.


The impulse to rebuild just as it was before is understandable, although to me, kind of foreign. I've had to drag myself out of the smouldering ashes of so many aspects of my life and focus on the future so many times, I have rarely wanted to return to how things were. But then, I seem to be an unusually "post-" everything kind of person. My life seems to have largely taken place beyond the structures and strictures of the present. Still, I hold all of us in my heart, as we try to decide what of the past to keep or rebuild, what to incorporate or re-purpose for the present, and what to walk away from. If this event is a symbol for nothing else, surely it is that.