So Long for a While

Flowering of imagination in winter

Today's blog is #50. After an erratic start, I took to posting on seventysomething every second Monday two years ago and have not missed an entry. I've always been drawn to round numbers and fifty has a satisfying ring, plus today is Christmas and my son's birthday. The day screams new birth. Under the weight of all that symbolism, I have decided to make this my last official seventysomething post....at least for the time being. Never close the door, especially on a process that has fostered creativity and discovery and might just generate more learning in a future I don't even know about yet.

The self-imposed structure of silently interviewing myself every two weeks to find out what was on my mind has yielded a rich harvest. I would post on Monday, then mentally wander for ten days, just observing what language was rising to the surface of awareness. On the Wednesday of the following week, I began to write, lost in a forest of words, not really knowing where I was going or whether I would find a way out. Sometimes, I'd comment on our treading polluted water in the political cesspool. Sometimes, I'd meander through the dreamscape of faded family memories. Often, I would engage with the subjects that are most present for me....mortality, spirit, the meaning I make out of my one small life. By Monday, I delivered an essay or memoir piece, sometimes with labor, but other times like those women who give birth in the back seats of taxis on the way to the hospital. I'm wondering now what it will be like to be a writer without that structure, a human body without a skeleton to hold the gut and the heart in place. I don't know the answer to that question, but the continent of unknowing is clearly where I'm headed, which is true of many of us at seventysomething.

A very gratifying aspect of the journey to date has involved curating the art of other older writers and visual artists whose work I've been posting on Facebook. The virtual community of gifted painters, photographers, ceramicists, writers of prose and poets that has emerged, lifts me out of the slough of despond and lights the way in and out of the shadows. Many people in the last third of their lives are doing remarkable, boundary-breaking work. Thrilling work. Recently, I discovered that a friend in Boston bought a painting from an artist in Toronto she knew only from seeing the painter's work on seventysomething. I was the schadchan, the matchmaker, a new role that thoroughly energized me. In this transaction, I was in it and not in it, there and not there. It reminded me of the way it felt when I served as a hospice chaplain, when I became an intermediary between a patient and her understanding of holiness. It resonated with that self-emptying that allowed me to enter other people's lives without getting in the way. This aspect of seventysomething has been magical. Please contact me if you are or know of an older artist you'd like to introduce me to. 

When I think more deeply about self-emptying in the service of entering other people's lives, I realize that what I'm doing is tiptoeing shyly up to the gate of enchantment that leads to writing fiction. I've made some forays in the past, but this time I feel more ready. Still, I will need a good deal more spaciousness to pass through that gate, less glibness, more willingness to fail, less self-judgment. I will need to get to know the people I am conjuring up in all their quirkiness, their humor, their anxiety and courage. I will need to understand that these characters are both me and not me. The very thought of inhabiting the consciousness of someone who is in some ways not me fills me with trepidation and desire. Yet, these are the conditions we all live in, writers and non-writers alike. This is what it means to live in this world and be part of the saga of interbeing. Writing fiction might be extending that condition more intentionally, exercising the capacity for empathy, using the tools of language to carve a golem of one's own invention. Wish me safe travels. I promise to send postcards from truck stops along the way.

seventysomething has its own Facebook page. I will be posting poetry, prose, photography and other work by wonderful older artists there. Please Like the new page. 

Please share seventysomething with other interested parties. I welcome your comments on email, or Facebook. 

Twilight Time

Biblical hillside with telephone cable

I'm huddling in the corner of the couch wrapped in a red and black plaid blanket. The blanket is from the fourteenth century and carries a scent that hovers between cozy and offensive, the interface of coffee and skunk. Still, I like it because it's very large and creates its own toasty environment. I guess you could say it's a security blanket. Winter is coming. My mind wanders in unexpected directions out from this comfort zone. I'm in hiding from the horror and wondering how to write about it. In keeping with this season of new life generated deep underground, I'm thinking about the creation narrative in Genesis. From my wintertime womb on the couch, I'm dreaming about the birth of the world.

Here's what happened on the sixth day according to the scriptural account. The land animals and wild beasts of every kind appeared. Then, man was created in God's image, male and female, and these humans were instructed to be fertile and increase, to fill the earth and master it; to rule over the fish, the birds and the living things that creep on the earth. The animals and the fruits of all the trees were given to humans for food. For purposes of storytelling, for the opportunity to reflect on the mythos of our situation in this wrenching moment, I am suspending disbelief and entering the biblical narrative. I hope you'll understand. Let's just say it's been a very, very long day and humankind is mired in it, exhausted by it. In the course of this sixth day, lies have been told. People have betrayed and enslaved one another. Species have become extinct. Oceans of blood have been spilled and it's not over yet. We are still slogging through this fetid swamp of greed and violence. When will it end, you ask? When will we get to the seventh day, the day of rest and gratitude? Are we there yet?

To help us grapple with the story, to keep us entertained in the back seat when we are really cranky, at the end of our capacity to tolerate fatigue and hunger, Jewish tradition speaks of ten things that were given at twilight on the sixth day, afterthoughts that just made the cut like last minute items tossed in the suitcase.

The list of ten things varies depending on the rabbinic commentary. Among the possibilities are the rainbow that appeared after the flood in the Noah story, the ram in the thicket that Abraham sacrificed in place of his son, and the manna that fell from heaven to feed the Israelites during the exodus from Egypt. All three of these saving graces were created just as the light of the sixth day of creation was fading and long before they were necessary in the unfolding of the biblical narrative. When they finally appear, they come unbidden when they are least expected to remind us that wisdom and generosity, understanding and compassion are ever-present even when they aren't manifest, even when we have reached the outer limits of despair.

You don't have to be a fundamentalist or even a believer to appreciate this redemptive plot twist. I see from my own experience that the way out of the dark tunnel of rage and hurt, judgment and guilt, already exists, even if it's so well hidden that I generally walk right by it. Out of nowhere, it falls from the sky like the manna. I share a bowl of it with a person who always talks at me incessantly. I want to get as far away as possible, but then suddenly, for the very first time, I see this person painfully imprisoned. I'm still irritated by the talking, but also miraculously and gratefully empathic. The manna tastes good and feeds us both. In another instance, people I love feel wounded by one another. My first impulse is to intervene with an outpouring of words to fix the problem, to step into the already dense mix of history and competing allegiances. Then I see the ram in the thicket waiting his turn. I step back into the underbrush to make space for them, hoping I won't become the sacrifice. Every occasion of grace carries a risk.

The rainbow, especially, speaks to me in these dark times. It appears after a storm when the raindrops and the sunlight intermingle at just the right moment. Like all the rainbows before it, the color takes me by surprise, opens my eyes. It reminds me that the repair of all that is broken comes not only from my small, fitful conscious attempts to make the world a better place, but also from the hidden threads woven into the fabric of existence at twilight on the sixth day, the sacred predisposition of life to flourish.

seventysomething now has its own Facebook page. I will be posting the blog there as well as poetry, prose, photography and other work by wonderful older artists. Please Like the new page. 

Please share seventysomething with other interested parties. I welcome your comments on email, Facebook or on this blog. I have recently updated the comments function and hope it is easier to use.