Vision fugitive…;
In matters such as this
‘tis best to close one’s eyes.
We were in Mearlsylvania for a spring escape from the structures of urban living, a school community gathering and commune with nature. So naturally, the Northwest sky above looked like a torn piece of grey construction paper, large swaths dark and threatening and the rest blue with billowy white clouds. Oh it was raining from the first and chilly, then hail came railing down covering the sodden green fields with dancing dots of ice white. This chased all the adults inside for their civilized chatter in the dark wood lodge, while the kids stayed outside, tongues stuck out to catch god’s frozen morsels, careening bikes flinging mud as they whizzed by like moving Jackson Pollacks at work on canvasses of white sweatshirts, red coats, and blue jeans-- playful evidence, brown sparks of wonder in these young minds…we adults will soon wash them out after we hold forth in circles, trying to remember parent’s names, expressing concern about the middle schools looming large, carefully constructing our children’s futures as if they were our own, embracing old familiar friends, seeking to discover new ones… eventually for me, I had enough of the ceiling as the sky and the coffee was a cold cup to hold onto as I felt myself languishing in the pool of parental wisdom… “Now you Doctor, you’re a sensible broad-minded man, you’ll know which of the schools is best for our budding adolescents.” I looked down at these shuffling boots made for walking. I’ve got holes in the soles of my socks. The pixilated parents were fazing out, and I couldn’t speak, though my mind wanted to cry out loud. The right side of my brain was experiencing perhaps a stroke…of genius.
It was almost April and although it might seem absurd, I buttoned my sweater, zipped up my orange down vest and my green anorak, put on my gloves and hat and through the double doors I pushed out into the frigid spring day moving like the steamy sea as I hummed to myself, bop bop bop I feel free… I can walk down the path, there’s no one there.
Anyway, I tried to leave the left side of my brain in the lodge, inspired by Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroscientist who in her Ted Talk explained the significance and workings of our neglected and dominated right side. “Our brain’s right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.”
Along the fence of Swann’s way I trudged with hands jammed in my pockets, making my way up the slope to the old growth forest, my boots sinking into the muddy path, kids laughter and squealing fading with the distance. . I passed through the gate and was surrounded by towering cedars, jack pines, fir, spruce, and ash and alder, and on each side of the path an undergrowth bursting to life, fern-leaf goldthread, five-leaf bramble, lupines, strawberries and blueberry bushes. A quiet descended with the sun trickling through the dark green moss draped canopy of trees and it seemed to break my simple face…. bring me to release…darling kiss me as I weep. A cool freshness expanded my nostrils as I took in a breath and found myself in search of lost time in these woods.
The cello even played breathing, in and out, in and out, of various durations, like the baaing of new lambs in the distant barn, yo yo ma Bach-ing me down the dark wooded path in a surging tide of sound pleasure, unyielding, substantial, the music alighted the raindrops falling. It gave an impression of order that vanished in the muddy path before me as puddles formed around sunken past footprints, ribbons of water breaking everywhere in rising and falling melody at my feet, silvered and charmed. I was unable to give a name to the harmony resonating within me, my eyes fell upon a gleaming wet clump of ferns with new furry growth about to unfurl, and with it gusts of memories flooded in with a shudder, the vicissitudes of my childhood life patterned in the ribbons of fresh and old broken brown fronds, the unkempt past arranged involuntarily before me, its brevity illusory. I gave over to my mind’s eye as I dipped down and fingered the pattern of my past life, touched the damp cold moss carpet and the lacey lichens around the fern and then I gazed at my wet hand and the raindrops landing and gathering there one by one, magnifying the world, my face, my skin, and the vibrations of the rising, unrelenting sonorous waves all contained within a tiny liquid sphere on my fingertip. Slowly it slid down into the valley of my palm, crossing my heart line, then my fate line, and finally my life line. My mother's child.
Sometimes I almost feel as if I'm gone, a long way from my home. But there you go to the years spent in the woods behind your childhood home with your sisters and your gang of neighborhood friends. This was the sanctuary in which we grew our young souls. Hugging the giant oaks, climbing the maples, gazing up at the black walnut trees, and collecting the black walnuts hard as rock but green, dropping with a thud at our feet. There you stood deep in the woods as a girl in boots at the natural spring that sprung magically each March, where you wielded shovels dragged from the garage to dig a mud depression, digging deep down, getting past your wounds, the many scars and scratches, reaching into the core of the earth, up came gnarled roots, pulled up from the hard earth with your small bare hands with all your might, and it wasn't easy but there in that childhood play, the destruction and construction, was the creation of the pond of your core beliefs. With sticks, smiling, you whacked the air and the tree trunks with tremendous will and force and for no apparent reason other than pure powerful energetic joy. And then you set to work on the method to your childhood madness. You'd kneel in the mud, determined to give purpose to the wild spring, sticking sticks into the mud in a long row, pressing stones and rocks and mud against it, forming an impressive wall, a dam to hold back the imagined floods, tame the current of emotional tumult, ready for the rains to come and fill your mud pond, your grand creation in preparation for the spring delivery of your ducklings. Each year you would walk them there and give them a gift; they could swim and dunk their heads and quack and shake off the wetness and fully realize their being, their freedom in that swim.
Oh yes, we were the mistresses of the woods, the keepers of the pond, the blazers of new trails, the builders of dams. We held the keys to our pandora's box. We were kings and queens, cowboys and Indians, aliens and animals, faeries and goblins, lovers and enemies. It was our kingdom, alive and real yet imagined, where a day’s duration melted clocks until the bell rang and the entire construct of our imagination would collapse around us as we tossed our tools in the bushes and ran home to our mother for dinner.
The persistence of memory washes away the defects into glimmers of hope and longing. Here, I had touched one of those invisible realities, and dipped a bucket into the well of deeply held desire and pulled up the power to consecrate my life. Could I abandon my habit of taking refuge in the trivialities of everyday living, the lust for numbers, the involuntary call to the childhood sonata that speaks to my vain sense of suffering, the sweet solace of utter self-pity, the protective trappings of adulthood. Can I follow the released tide that was sending me on this journey? A journey where with each vision, each reading, a new layer is uncovered, a new meaning emerged.
Is my own child getting enough of this? I wandered further into the tranquility of the dripping forest and went off the muddy path tripping through the undergrowth toward a clump of branches that seemed to call out to me with their eerie beauty, their green iridescence, knots of ribbons, falls of lace, fringes of vertically hanging green jet moving like a dance troop with elongated green arms flailing above their heads loosely gathered, hugging in a circle. The branches formed an undulating skeleton of a big green tent…I crunched my way down the fern strewn path and pushed away the glistening draperies of dripping moss to enter. Could it be a faeries village? And there I sat on the damp forest floor ready for faeries and goblins to emerge from the small dark triangular caves at the base of the two huge cedars several feet away, wearing pointy shoes and green jackets with big eyes and small cheerful voices, and in the hallucination they would dance and sing a new tune and take me in and bring forth more gusts of reverie to stir my soul, the one joyously swinging sticks, the child whose got her own, and carry me away with a wink of connivance, a hint of hidden meaning, a secret understanding found in this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, lighting up for me the way, and for us the moment and the energy flowing between nature and my body, the ferns, the wet moss beneath my bottom, the faeries and goblins, the past, the present, the real and imagined, illuminated in these raindrops glistening on my palm, dripping off my nose, chilling my cheeks, wetting my smile, making my peace.
I wanted to cup this moment in my hands as if it was the liquid of life pouring from the sky. I wanted to hold tight my little girl, the one who was off in the distant fields running free with friends; I wanted to touch her with my love and show her this special quiet place teeming with strange life. The sunlight laughed on my face and the lyrics of a deeply embedded song rose up in me, asking for release, … everybody knows her ribbons and her bows and the twists in her curls…. aha she takes just like a woman, yes she does, and she makes love just like a woman, and she aches just like a woman… but she breaks just like a little girl.
Can it be she creates like a little girl? The light glides through my mind, It was raining here at first. Little darling, here comes the sun, here comes the sun. The smiles are returning to our faces. God bless the child who's got her own.
