It’s Time
I think I need a little Tony Hoagland today.
The Time Wars
by Tony Hoagland
It was the winter we ate a lot of oatmeal to stay warm.
We lived on 17th and G Streets; Kath called it the G spot.
At night in the bathtub I read The Collected Letters of Virginia Woolf,
trying to keep the pages of 20th-century prose from getting wet,
reading the guest lists for her dinner parties
as she knocked out book after book between her shattering depressions.
Sometimes I would meet Richard at the Chinese place for dinner,
and one two three hours would vanish like our food.
We would stand outside The Great Wall, adjusting our scarves
in a pastoral moment of urban separation,
watching the cabs whiz by in the dusk.
The Vietnam War monument was just five blocks away;
on Saturday you would always see a vet or two,
in their windbreakers and baseball caps–
heads down, crying in the shrubs–
the little POW buttons and various insignia attached to their clothing
like they were advertising something.
We ourselves were fighting the Time Wars:
we could feel it speeding up, rapidly escaping,
like the hiss from a leaky ballon.
We were trying to plug it, to slow it down, to decelerate,
but none of us was having much success–
One day in February Kath brought in some roses and said,
“Here, the sun came 93 million miles
to make these flowers that I killed for you,”
and I said, “Kathleen, my talents are not capacious enough
to properly exaggerate your virtues,”
and we both burst out laughing
and time stopped right over our heads like a little red car.
On June 14th, 1940, Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal,
“Windy day. I am the hare, far ahead of my critics, the hounds.”
Something endearing about the mixture of weather report and vanity.
Something lonely about this image of success.
We ourselves aren’t thinking about the future anymore.
What we want is to calm time down, to get time in a good mood,
to make time feel wanted.
We just want to give time many homemade gifts,
covered with fingerprints and kisses.
Urban Pilgrim
I am intrigued by the title of an article I ran across in the BCBS Insight Journal, “Urban Hermit: A Different Way of Being in the World.” While I love the idea of living like a modern-day Thoreau, in a sweet little cabin somewhere off in the woods, I’m pretty sure the reality of it would totally do me in…unless, of course, it was a very cushy cabin…with a nice, clean, flush toilet…and no mice, or snakes, or bugs!
Also, I would want to have access to meaningful, human interaction on a regular basis (as Thoreau did), and to books and to the world of ideas, so this cushy little cabin would have to be within walking distance of a coffee shop. And maybe a diner. And there’d have to be internet access, of course.
So it gets complicated.
I value time alone, but I don’t really want to be a hermit.
I love simplicity, but I know that everything depends on everything else…which makes life complex.
So instead of being an Urban Hermit, I think I want to be an Urban Pilgrim. I want to live in an urban environment, but I don’t want to withdraw into it. I want to live this life as an intentional journey. Looking outward as well as in. With time alone. But also with fellow travelers. And I want to travel as lightly as I can.
So…I’m going to check out a book mentioned in the article, which also has a title that intrigues me. New Slow City: Living Simply in the World’s Fastest City, by William Powers (2014). It’s an account of how he and his wife “jettisoned 80 percent of their belongings and moved from their 2,000-square-foot townhouse in Queens, across the river to a 350-square-foot micro-apartment in Greenwich Village. It chronicles their attempt to live slowly and mindfully in frantic Manhattan.”
Sounds like a great little guide book!
Show, Don’t Tell
I’m back from the weekend retreat led by Anushka Fernandopulle and I’ve been thinking all morning about how to tell you about it….and all I can think of is: there’s nothing I can say that will give you a sense of how sweet it was, how much deeper and more meaningful it was than I had expected it to be (it was “just” a “little” weekend, non-residential retreat after all, and I’m a “very experienced” meditator — right? — so really, how “good” could it be.)
Well, it was great.
But how do I explain to you what I mean by “great”…how do I convey what it’s like to sit and get quiet — even for a weekend — and listen to someone who speaks from very deep personal experience (and who uses very clear, practical, everyday language) about how to learn to live in the world in a radically beautiful, simple, and profoundly peaceful “new” way (which the Buddha outlined 2600 years ago).
Hmmm.
Maybe I should just let Anushka do the talking. Click here to watch a video of her speaking at Seattle Insight Center. The title of her talk is “13 Ways of Looking at Dharma Practice.” It won’t be quite like sitting with her for the weekend.
But maybe it will give you a taste.
Enjoy!
The River Keeps Coming
At the River Clarion (final stanza)
by Mary Oliver
7.
And still, pressed deep into my mind,
the river
keeps coming, touching me, passing
by on its
long journey, its pale, infallible
voice
singing.
***
I’m leaving this afternoon for Anushka’s weekend retreat in KC. I’ll post highlights on Monday. Stay tuned.
While I Sit Here
At the River Clarion (continued)
by Mary Oliver
6.
Along its shores were, may I say, very
intense
cardinal flowers.
And trees, and birds that have wings to
uphold them,
for heaven’s sakes–
the lucky ones: they have such deep
natures,
they are so happily obedient.
While I sit here in a house filled with
books,
idea, doubts, hesitations.
The River Still Flows
At the River Clarion (continued)
by Mary Oliver
5.
My dog Luke lies in a
grave in the forest,
she is given back.
But the river Clarion still
flows
from wherever it come
from
to where it has been
told to go.
I pray for the desperate
earth.
I pray for the desperate
world.
I do the little each person
can do, it isn’t much.
Sometimes the river
murmurs, sometimes it
raves.
Then We Give Back
At the River Clarion (continued)
by Mary Oliver
4.
There was someone I loved who grew
old and ill.
One by one I watched the fires go out.
There was nothing I could do
except to remember
that we receive
then we give back.
We Do Not Live in a Simple World
At the River Clarion (continued)
by Mary Oliver
3.
Of course for each of us, there is the
daily life.
Let us live it, gesture by gesture.
When we cut the ripe melon, should we
not give it thanks?
And should we not thank the knife
also?
We do not live in a simple world.
Delight Beyond Measure
I thought I’d continue from where I left off yesterday, with section 2 of “At the River Clarion” by Mary Oliver. (There are 7 sections in all. Stay tuned.)
At the River Clarion (continued)
by Mary Oliver
2.
If God exists he isn’t just butter and
good luck.
He’s also the tick that killed my wonderful
dog Luke.
Said the river: imagine everything you
can imagine, then
keep on going.
Imagine how the lily (who may also be
a part of God)
would sing to you if it could sing, if
you would pause to hear it.
And how are you so certain anyway
that it doesn’t sing?
If God exists he isn’t just churches and
mathematics.
He’s the forest, He’s the desert.
He’s the ice caps, that are dying.
He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine
Arts.
He’s van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and
Robert
Motherwell.
He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning
and preparing
their weapons.
He’s every one of us, potentially.
The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician,
the poet.
And if this is true, isn’t it something
very important?
Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of
God, and
each of you too, or at least
of his intention and his hope.
Which is a delight beyond measure.
I don’t know how you get to suspect
such an idea.
I only know that the river kept
singing.
It wasn’t a persuasion, it was all the
river’s own
constant joy
which is better by far than a lecture,
which was
comfortable, exciting, unforgettable.
***
(image by Robert Motherwell)
And I Too
It feels like a good day for a little Mary Oliver.
At the River Clarion
by Mary Oliver
1.
I don’t know who God is exactly. But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion,
on a
water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices
of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck the stone it
had
something to say,
and the water itself, and even the
mosses trailing
under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became
clear to me
what they were saying.
Said the river: I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too
whispered
the moss beneath the water.
I’d been to the river before, a few times.
Don’t blame the river that nothing happened
quickly.
You don’t hear such voices in an hour
or a day.
You don’t hear them at all if selfhood
has stuffed your ears.
And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway,
through
all the traffic, and ambition.