Tuesday, November 6, 2012
An Artist's Prayer
God in the hot encaustic wax
God in the paint and the palette knife
And God in the whimsical blog post
And God on the wall at Facebook --
Tender with with every foible:
Our cyber-self-promotion
Our private doubting and fearing
Our just not hearing
Architect, poet and author, cantor
Dwelling among us
Warming the room
(God the warp and the weft
The yarn and the loom)
I praise Your presence in the strangest places --
You who dance with the pixels,
Defining that elusive spot
Where poet and pointillist meet
I feel Your hand move mine about the keyboard
And pour myself once more
Into your great safekeeping
Relinquishing map and blueprint
Renouncing all planning and trying
(Can this be dying?)
I come to rest
In that inchoate space
That nameless grace
Beyond description
Acknowledging who moves the brush, the pen
Across each pristine page
Who sings the notes just audibly enough
For our transcription
I cede You all of me:
Each dark insomniac question,
The ego’s tedious whine
The motley fears, the bad digestion
My reconstructed spine
All that I thought was mine
Abba, Ima, Midwife, Maker,
Endless compassion streaming in
Calming sustenance above the din
Melech ha’ olam, Ruach ha'olam,
Empathic Rabbi, sweet Kwan Yin
I cannot count the times
You found me supine, flailing
Besieged and set upon
Despairing, failing
And raised me gently to my feet
And choreographed my journey on.
Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez
Funny Thing About Writing A Blog . . .
. . . You find yourself repeating yourself without even realizing it.
Embarrassing as this may be, it can have its upside. By seeing what you are saying more than once, you may begin to discover what topics or aspects of life are more important to you than you realized.
I seem to have quoted William Carlos Williams on poetry at least twice in this blog. In fact, I seem to have written repeatedly about the healing power of poetry, which is not something I normally think much about.
"Consciously," I tend to associate spiritual healing more closely with artmaking, Vipassana meditation, maybe a few body therapies I've been fortunate enough to experience (e.g, Feldenkrais).
Yet before I ever heard of most of these things, something in me was driving me to read and write poetry almost as if my life depended on it.
I remember sharing poetry with a kindred spirit at Walter Reed when I was 14, the summer I spent a week or two there getting sprung from my very last cast (hallelujah!). I wish I could remember her name. She was a beautiful young woman, one year older than I was and everything I was not, or so it seemed to me then. Most of us on the Women's Orthopedic Ward had fairly large problems: spinal deformity, bone cancer, paraplegia. Not to underestimate or downplay this one young person's condition, but in a way she was special. She had recovered from childhood polio with damage to only a single hand. She even had a special, classy sort of doctor: not the usual assortment of motley orthopods who trooped through the ward, but some elite, rather aloof specialist known as a hand surgeon whom she saw at his specially appointed office in another part of the medical center.
I remember her kindness, her lack of judgment. Back home, few girls that pretty and socially graceful would have chosen to be my friend. Maybe this girl was different in some way -- different in the way I was myself, intolerant of any sort of hierarchy or class system or categorization of the cool vs. the uncool -- or maybe we found each other simply because an Army hospital ward is its own kind of democracy and no patient is in much of a position to act snotty. In any case, we soon discovered that we both loved Edna St. Vincent Millay. Actually I had only read one or two of Millay's lyrical pieces -- "Listen children, your father is dead" -- but my new friend had a whole book of her sonnets, which she freely shared with me.
It was a lovely book -- a special, grown-up book -- for marking and celebrating my emergence from plaster after eighteen months in casts.
. . . and if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body limpid with desire?
I had just begun to understand such things, at least partially. Such things come to be understood, at least initially, through our physical organisms. Kim Rosen, writing of a somewhat comparable adolescent experience with a poem, writes, "At the time I did not understand how the rhythms, tones, and movement of a passage permeate the body so that the experience described becomes the experience directly lived."
Suddenly at 14, I was in a position to let things "permeate the body," as I moved back into my body after a considerable absence.
I had gone into the first cast nearly flat-chested. I emerged from the last one with a woman's breasts. Getting used to this change was an amazing and somewhat lengthy experience, that June in Walter Reed.
There was only one place on that ward you could find any privacy to speak of -- behind a curtain in one of the ersatz "booths" in the ladies' room. Fortunately there was never any waiting line for the booths, since it took me forever to (supposedly) finish peeing. Whenever I had the chance, I would spend the longest possible time behind that curtain. I would reach up under my shirt or nightgown and cup these two new parts of me in my hands -- incredulous, disbelieving -- just trying to get used to having them and to grasp (grasp literally, in fact, with my own two hands) that I included them now -- that they had come out of nowhere during the months of plaster and were apparently here to stay.
I've wondered sometimes just how it was for other girls, like my hospital friend -- for the large majority who did not have to grow their breasts in secret. What was it like to see yourself develop over time, to graduate from one bra size to another? My only frame of reference for the whole process was a period of pain on one side of my chest, a few months after I came home (in a cast, to another hospital bed) following my spinal fusion. I was rubbing against the cast there, and it hurt, and I couldn't sleep. My mother called the orthopedic specialist on our Army post -- the guy who had initially referred me on for all the plastering and bone-cutting that marked my early adolescence -- to ask what could be done so I would not hurt so much. He said to give me aspirin and wait for the next cast change several months hence.
Puberty. My puberty. How could I have survived it without poetry?
I guess that's what I get repetitive about without meaning to -- the core-things, the things that have sustained me. Stuff that might just bear repeating now and then.
Another fragment or two wafts back to me from my poetry-enabled youth -- this, I think, from Theodore Roethke:
Dark, dark the night, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill:
Which I is I?
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Embarrassing as this may be, it can have its upside. By seeing what you are saying more than once, you may begin to discover what topics or aspects of life are more important to you than you realized.
I seem to have quoted William Carlos Williams on poetry at least twice in this blog. In fact, I seem to have written repeatedly about the healing power of poetry, which is not something I normally think much about.
"Consciously," I tend to associate spiritual healing more closely with artmaking, Vipassana meditation, maybe a few body therapies I've been fortunate enough to experience (e.g, Feldenkrais).
Yet before I ever heard of most of these things, something in me was driving me to read and write poetry almost as if my life depended on it.
I remember sharing poetry with a kindred spirit at Walter Reed when I was 14, the summer I spent a week or two there getting sprung from my very last cast (hallelujah!). I wish I could remember her name. She was a beautiful young woman, one year older than I was and everything I was not, or so it seemed to me then. Most of us on the Women's Orthopedic Ward had fairly large problems: spinal deformity, bone cancer, paraplegia. Not to underestimate or downplay this one young person's condition, but in a way she was special. She had recovered from childhood polio with damage to only a single hand. She even had a special, classy sort of doctor: not the usual assortment of motley orthopods who trooped through the ward, but some elite, rather aloof specialist known as a hand surgeon whom she saw at his specially appointed office in another part of the medical center.
I remember her kindness, her lack of judgment. Back home, few girls that pretty and socially graceful would have chosen to be my friend. Maybe this girl was different in some way -- different in the way I was myself, intolerant of any sort of hierarchy or class system or categorization of the cool vs. the uncool -- or maybe we found each other simply because an Army hospital ward is its own kind of democracy and no patient is in much of a position to act snotty. In any case, we soon discovered that we both loved Edna St. Vincent Millay. Actually I had only read one or two of Millay's lyrical pieces -- "Listen children, your father is dead" -- but my new friend had a whole book of her sonnets, which she freely shared with me.
It was a lovely book -- a special, grown-up book -- for marking and celebrating my emergence from plaster after eighteen months in casts.
. . . and if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body limpid with desire?
I had just begun to understand such things, at least partially. Such things come to be understood, at least initially, through our physical organisms. Kim Rosen, writing of a somewhat comparable adolescent experience with a poem, writes, "At the time I did not understand how the rhythms, tones, and movement of a passage permeate the body so that the experience described becomes the experience directly lived."
Suddenly at 14, I was in a position to let things "permeate the body," as I moved back into my body after a considerable absence.
I had gone into the first cast nearly flat-chested. I emerged from the last one with a woman's breasts. Getting used to this change was an amazing and somewhat lengthy experience, that June in Walter Reed.
There was only one place on that ward you could find any privacy to speak of -- behind a curtain in one of the ersatz "booths" in the ladies' room. Fortunately there was never any waiting line for the booths, since it took me forever to (supposedly) finish peeing. Whenever I had the chance, I would spend the longest possible time behind that curtain. I would reach up under my shirt or nightgown and cup these two new parts of me in my hands -- incredulous, disbelieving -- just trying to get used to having them and to grasp (grasp literally, in fact, with my own two hands) that I included them now -- that they had come out of nowhere during the months of plaster and were apparently here to stay.
I've wondered sometimes just how it was for other girls, like my hospital friend -- for the large majority who did not have to grow their breasts in secret. What was it like to see yourself develop over time, to graduate from one bra size to another? My only frame of reference for the whole process was a period of pain on one side of my chest, a few months after I came home (in a cast, to another hospital bed) following my spinal fusion. I was rubbing against the cast there, and it hurt, and I couldn't sleep. My mother called the orthopedic specialist on our Army post -- the guy who had initially referred me on for all the plastering and bone-cutting that marked my early adolescence -- to ask what could be done so I would not hurt so much. He said to give me aspirin and wait for the next cast change several months hence.
Puberty. My puberty. How could I have survived it without poetry?
I guess that's what I get repetitive about without meaning to -- the core-things, the things that have sustained me. Stuff that might just bear repeating now and then.
Another fragment or two wafts back to me from my poetry-enabled youth -- this, I think, from Theodore Roethke:
Dark, dark the night, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill:
Which I is I?
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Poetry for What Ails Us? Don't Be Too Quick to Dismiss This Far-Out Prescription!
Do you like poetry? Do you hate poetry? Either way, I urge you to check out this singular book by Kim Rosen, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words.
I'm still reading and savoring this treasure on my Kindle. (The book-book comes with a CD, and the ebook also includes audio downloads which I have been unable to accesss. I eventually bought the paperback as well, mainly to get the CD -- which merits a review of its own; it is a truly special experience, a coming together of various poets' voices in a variety of ways, and it may echo in your head long after you have heard it once or twice.)
Not your preferred way to spend a Saturday night? I guess you must have missed that great show on HBO with Russell Simmons and Spike Lee which grew out of the Brooklyn poetry slams. (I absolutely must note here that the poetry slam concept actually originated here in my home town, Chicago -- which has also been home to the Poetry Foundation since 1912.)
Rosen says we place way too much emphasis on trying to understand poetry, analyzing it to death. She maintains that poetry really comes alive in the body and thus in the soul. The idea is to find a poem that speaks to you deeply and take it into yourself, make it part of your breathing and dancing, your journey, your quest for healing. She says that poetry can heal us. She won't get any argument from me. But don't worry that her suggestions have anything to do with the old stuff, the rote memorization we may have been assigned in elementary school. She counsels a whole other way of getting into a poem and letting it into you, and she predicts that it will change your life. I can personally attest to the truth of that assertion.
Other cultures know all this already -- way better than we do out here in the ad-glutted, mall-ridden, frenetically monetized U.S. of A. I don't really have any viable theory of why we are so conflicted about poetry, why some of us are positively repulsed by it, and plenty of us never think about it or deal with it at all if we don't have to.
In 2006, in the heart of Baghdad and in the midst of ongoing clashes and explosions, a thousand people -- both Sunni and Shiite -- came together in a gigantic tent to share poetry, to dance, and to weep together. Soldiers from both militias ended up joining in, and volunteering to guard the premises. The first such gathering was followed by many others. Poetry broke down the barriers between the factions and became a powerful force for peace. It satisfied some fierce craving people may not even have known they had -- some profound and urgent need that seems endemic to all of this earth, to all of humanity, even if some of us do not yet realize just what it is we are thirsting for down there in the depths of ourselves.
According to Rosen, "in many parts of Latin America, Ireland, and the Middle East . . . it is not unusual for spoken poetry to be heard as part of everyday conversations." According to her students from Ireland, people in that land routinely share poetry by W.B. Yeats or Dylan Thomas well into the night at the neighborhood pub. She also notes that in Iran, poets are national heroes -- and that fans line up in the bookstores of Tel Aviv for a new volume of poetry the way they do here for a best-selling vampire novel. Cubans spray-paint the poetry of Antonio Machado on walls. In the Middle East, there is one TV channel devoted exclusively to poetry -- inspired by the most popular prime-time program in the region, a kind of poetry recitation contest along the lines of "American Idol" which has more viewers than news or sports.
It is impossible to summarize this wonderful book in a brief review, or to distill its major points. The author has spent years studying and teaching poetry as a pathway to spiritual healing, and she has so very much to say on the subject. She shares her own experiences of darkness and despair, relating how bringing poetry alive within herself brought everything else into alignment -- how a true encounter with poetry, a long love affair with a special poem, can strip a human being down to her authentic self, and return her to a sense of oneness with everyone else, and mold her into a formidable force for teaching and healing others.
Rosen provides clear guidelines for doing this -- for adopting a poem and taking it to heart, living with it and nurturing it and letting it sing in your blood and bones. These are really very practical and comprehensible instructions, although I realize that in my enthusiasm, I may sound rather mystical or oody-doody about the whole thing. It is really not some esoteric byway of civilization. It is a crucial, essential part of our heritage, spanning the millennia since Neanderthal peoples, or so some scientists theorize, first spoke to one another in a language which was more like a kind of poem, or poem-song.
Of course the author scatters various poems throughout the book, including some of my own all-time favorites. If any specific quotation may conceivably deliver her message "in a nutshell," it is these lines from the physician-poet William Carlos Williams:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably
every day for lack
of what is found there.
I'm still reading and savoring this treasure on my Kindle. (The book-book comes with a CD, and the ebook also includes audio downloads which I have been unable to accesss. I eventually bought the paperback as well, mainly to get the CD -- which merits a review of its own; it is a truly special experience, a coming together of various poets' voices in a variety of ways, and it may echo in your head long after you have heard it once or twice.)
Not your preferred way to spend a Saturday night? I guess you must have missed that great show on HBO with Russell Simmons and Spike Lee which grew out of the Brooklyn poetry slams. (I absolutely must note here that the poetry slam concept actually originated here in my home town, Chicago -- which has also been home to the Poetry Foundation since 1912.)
Rosen says we place way too much emphasis on trying to understand poetry, analyzing it to death. She maintains that poetry really comes alive in the body and thus in the soul. The idea is to find a poem that speaks to you deeply and take it into yourself, make it part of your breathing and dancing, your journey, your quest for healing. She says that poetry can heal us. She won't get any argument from me. But don't worry that her suggestions have anything to do with the old stuff, the rote memorization we may have been assigned in elementary school. She counsels a whole other way of getting into a poem and letting it into you, and she predicts that it will change your life. I can personally attest to the truth of that assertion.
Other cultures know all this already -- way better than we do out here in the ad-glutted, mall-ridden, frenetically monetized U.S. of A. I don't really have any viable theory of why we are so conflicted about poetry, why some of us are positively repulsed by it, and plenty of us never think about it or deal with it at all if we don't have to.
In 2006, in the heart of Baghdad and in the midst of ongoing clashes and explosions, a thousand people -- both Sunni and Shiite -- came together in a gigantic tent to share poetry, to dance, and to weep together. Soldiers from both militias ended up joining in, and volunteering to guard the premises. The first such gathering was followed by many others. Poetry broke down the barriers between the factions and became a powerful force for peace. It satisfied some fierce craving people may not even have known they had -- some profound and urgent need that seems endemic to all of this earth, to all of humanity, even if some of us do not yet realize just what it is we are thirsting for down there in the depths of ourselves.
According to Rosen, "in many parts of Latin America, Ireland, and the Middle East . . . it is not unusual for spoken poetry to be heard as part of everyday conversations." According to her students from Ireland, people in that land routinely share poetry by W.B. Yeats or Dylan Thomas well into the night at the neighborhood pub. She also notes that in Iran, poets are national heroes -- and that fans line up in the bookstores of Tel Aviv for a new volume of poetry the way they do here for a best-selling vampire novel. Cubans spray-paint the poetry of Antonio Machado on walls. In the Middle East, there is one TV channel devoted exclusively to poetry -- inspired by the most popular prime-time program in the region, a kind of poetry recitation contest along the lines of "American Idol" which has more viewers than news or sports.
It is impossible to summarize this wonderful book in a brief review, or to distill its major points. The author has spent years studying and teaching poetry as a pathway to spiritual healing, and she has so very much to say on the subject. She shares her own experiences of darkness and despair, relating how bringing poetry alive within herself brought everything else into alignment -- how a true encounter with poetry, a long love affair with a special poem, can strip a human being down to her authentic self, and return her to a sense of oneness with everyone else, and mold her into a formidable force for teaching and healing others.
Rosen provides clear guidelines for doing this -- for adopting a poem and taking it to heart, living with it and nurturing it and letting it sing in your blood and bones. These are really very practical and comprehensible instructions, although I realize that in my enthusiasm, I may sound rather mystical or oody-doody about the whole thing. It is really not some esoteric byway of civilization. It is a crucial, essential part of our heritage, spanning the millennia since Neanderthal peoples, or so some scientists theorize, first spoke to one another in a language which was more like a kind of poem, or poem-song.
Of course the author scatters various poems throughout the book, including some of my own all-time favorites. If any specific quotation may conceivably deliver her message "in a nutshell," it is these lines from the physician-poet William Carlos Williams:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably
every day for lack
of what is found there.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Expectations
Back in the Pleistocene when you were young (oh, say 15 or 17 or 20), did you ever picture how your life might be at age 63?
I certainly didn't -- not consciously. I never even imagined reaching such an advanced age. Yet below the surface, I am sure I must have had firm expectations. I must have known that my life would be much like my parents' life was when I was 20. What other example did I have?
I would live in a wonderfully tasteful, not overly large house in some pleasant suburb. I would be living with my husband, who would look much like my dad -- pleasantly paunchy, bespectacled, balding; thoroughly benign and kindly. We would each have our armchair after dinner, or our spot on the Ethan Allen couch, as we tackled the hopeless task of getting through a towering mountain of magazines and journals that resided beside us on an antique table picked up in England some time before the birth of our second child. Our two modest cars would be safely in bed for the night, out in the garage. Our children would be long gone, off to their own families and careers, but perhaps a mutt would remain with us -- snoring in his own designated armchair. We would sip our coffee while exchanging occasional erudite remarks. . . .
I thought of this tonight around midnight, as I walked the blocks down Devon Avenue from Western Avenue to California. It was Saturday night. As on other Saturday nights, Devon was bustling, with people of all ages going about their business despite the late hour. The people who made the most vivid impression on me were a group of men and women I had also seen on other Saturday nights, going to or from some social or religious gathering. They seemed to hail from Western Africa, although I was not at all sure of the country. They wore the most gala garb, both men and women in elaborate headdresses. Not for the first time, I had a powerful impulse to stop one of the women and ask her who they were and where they were from and what they did every Saturday night, in their lovely outfits, wafting perfume . . .
I myself was in jeans and athletic shoes -- my uniform -- hauling my boxy little cart full of groceries and other necessities, the pile of stuff secured by my ever-present bungee cord. I remembered shopping trips as a child, with my mother -- unloading the Ford or the VW bug just outside the kitchen door. I marveled at the fact that I have never really driven a car; that I do all my shopping on foot, sometimes hiking for miles.
I was on my way home to a small urban apartment on a quiet street lined with old trees. My building is also old, dating to 1927. I have lived in this building for more than 12 years with my grown son. My husband lives somewhere else -- has since 1998.
My parents had steady jobs. There was always enough money. They were financialy prudent and went with the program.
In almost every way I can think of, I have broken away and set myself adrift. Not willfully, you understand; I did not will a sudden devastating spinal deformity, a series of major surgeries, an income reduced to my monthly stipend from Social Security. I did not expect or plan on a marriage from hell. I always expected to have two or three kids, instead of a bum back. I still dream of owning my own little abode. I don't know if I ever will. I am not entirely sure it matters terribly much in the vast scheme of things. My apartment is cozy and pleasant, and I can almost afford the rent.
I make art. I am writing a book. I go to aquatics classes at a medical fitness center. I am good friends with my son, who is 30 years old and still getting his bearings. I would love to have a husband I could adore as my parents adored each other -- someone to grow old with contentedly. That wish may be as amorphous and evanescent as the image of owning my own place.
I am a little bit lonely.
I am not entirely sure where I am. I guess I mean that in the existential sense.
I am actually not really sure of anything.
I hope that this will turn out all right.
I certainly didn't -- not consciously. I never even imagined reaching such an advanced age. Yet below the surface, I am sure I must have had firm expectations. I must have known that my life would be much like my parents' life was when I was 20. What other example did I have?
I would live in a wonderfully tasteful, not overly large house in some pleasant suburb. I would be living with my husband, who would look much like my dad -- pleasantly paunchy, bespectacled, balding; thoroughly benign and kindly. We would each have our armchair after dinner, or our spot on the Ethan Allen couch, as we tackled the hopeless task of getting through a towering mountain of magazines and journals that resided beside us on an antique table picked up in England some time before the birth of our second child. Our two modest cars would be safely in bed for the night, out in the garage. Our children would be long gone, off to their own families and careers, but perhaps a mutt would remain with us -- snoring in his own designated armchair. We would sip our coffee while exchanging occasional erudite remarks. . . .
I thought of this tonight around midnight, as I walked the blocks down Devon Avenue from Western Avenue to California. It was Saturday night. As on other Saturday nights, Devon was bustling, with people of all ages going about their business despite the late hour. The people who made the most vivid impression on me were a group of men and women I had also seen on other Saturday nights, going to or from some social or religious gathering. They seemed to hail from Western Africa, although I was not at all sure of the country. They wore the most gala garb, both men and women in elaborate headdresses. Not for the first time, I had a powerful impulse to stop one of the women and ask her who they were and where they were from and what they did every Saturday night, in their lovely outfits, wafting perfume . . .
I myself was in jeans and athletic shoes -- my uniform -- hauling my boxy little cart full of groceries and other necessities, the pile of stuff secured by my ever-present bungee cord. I remembered shopping trips as a child, with my mother -- unloading the Ford or the VW bug just outside the kitchen door. I marveled at the fact that I have never really driven a car; that I do all my shopping on foot, sometimes hiking for miles.
I was on my way home to a small urban apartment on a quiet street lined with old trees. My building is also old, dating to 1927. I have lived in this building for more than 12 years with my grown son. My husband lives somewhere else -- has since 1998.
My parents had steady jobs. There was always enough money. They were financialy prudent and went with the program.
In almost every way I can think of, I have broken away and set myself adrift. Not willfully, you understand; I did not will a sudden devastating spinal deformity, a series of major surgeries, an income reduced to my monthly stipend from Social Security. I did not expect or plan on a marriage from hell. I always expected to have two or three kids, instead of a bum back. I still dream of owning my own little abode. I don't know if I ever will. I am not entirely sure it matters terribly much in the vast scheme of things. My apartment is cozy and pleasant, and I can almost afford the rent.
I make art. I am writing a book. I go to aquatics classes at a medical fitness center. I am good friends with my son, who is 30 years old and still getting his bearings. I would love to have a husband I could adore as my parents adored each other -- someone to grow old with contentedly. That wish may be as amorphous and evanescent as the image of owning my own place.
I am a little bit lonely.
I am not entirely sure where I am. I guess I mean that in the existential sense.
I am actually not really sure of anything.
I hope that this will turn out all right.
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