Poetry & Chaos

Multnomah Falls

"I always say that poetry is language against which you have no defenses...that moment in a conversation where you have to have the other person understand what you’re saying. And sometimes, it’s when you’re delivering terrible news, news of a death or an accident. And you have to tell the other person, and they have to hear it. And you have to say it in such a way that it’s heard fully. But you have to say it, also, with the intimacy of care and of understanding at the same time." 

David Whyte

Sometimes I like to listen to podcasts to tune my mind into a different conversation.  As I was driving to the Redmond ER the other day, I was listening to On Being (one of my favorite reflective podcasts).  Whenever my mind focuses on "the broken [mental health] [you name it] system" I can become pretty judgmental of reflections offered by poets, writers, and thoughtful intellectuals.  Great ideas, hard to put into practice.  The boy I was headed to visit in the ER was there because his former placement and family doubted they could keep him safe from himself or others.  He could become aggressive in different ways.  There was nowhere for him to be placed at the moment besides a windowless room in the ER with glass sliding doors letting in whatever crisis may be happening in that pocket of the hospital.  He had to stay calm and wait for the conversations of mental health professionals to finally find at a solution, which could take days.

My mind was skipping back to the scene from that night before, where I had a sweeping feeling that this client would possibly throw something at my supervisor and I when we delivered the news that he would be staying in the ER that night.  "This is NOT going to work for me!" he said, his hands crumpling the sheets between his fingers and his eyes quickly shifting from content to desperate.  I glanced at all the objects in the room that he could possible detach and throw at us.  I became quickly in tune with his body posture.  How this interaction would end seemed so uncertain.  

As I was getting closer to the hospital, I heard this poet start talking about the poetics of conversation (quoted above).  In my mind, I thought, blah... but then, the part about communication being like poetry in which the person you are speaking with may "have no defenses" caught me.  Hmm... thinking. 

When I arrived to the ER, this client was sitting up on his bed watching cartoons.  I opened the sliding glass door and said, "I don't know how you were able to sleep here last night." 

"I know," he said. 

I wasn't kidding either.  I mean, nobody wants to be in the ER (no fresh air!) and mental health professionals certainly don't prescribe it as effective treatment.  He doesn't want to be there, we don't want him to be there, the ER certainly doesn't want him there - there's just nowhere else for him to go yet.  And so, in the waiting, we have conversation.  He told me all the reasons why he can't stay there and I agreed with every single one, which was the truth.  Trying to sleep in the ER sucks.  He just had to wait it out the best he could, which he was doing.  The room became full of big sighs and rolling eyes as we endured this frustrating situation together.

*

This past week, I also had the pleasure of visiting a few waterfalls - the kinds of waterfalls I have never experienced.  Sometimes nature provides a revelation or two.  The words "wonderful" and "awesome" were brought to life in a way that East Coast waterfalls don't typically inspire in me.  Watching the water fall from such a height to land so gracefully is smile-forcing.   I could also tell the water was slowly eroding the rocks it spilled off of, so much so that one day the water would eventually transform it into a different place.  Everything is always changing.

Change is the norm, not control.  Our surroundings and ourselves are always vulnerable - we're always coping coping coping with loss, newness, frustrations, wonders, and change.  Vulnerability is one of those trendy words these days, but I still like it.  I agree with Brene Brown who talks about how to grow up is to become more vulnerable.  And lastly, I will end with David Whyte's words regarding vulnerability:

Excerpt from Consolations:

“Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without; vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present, and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability, we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

“To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely, illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers, powers eventually and most emphatically given up as we approach our last breath. The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance. Our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.”

http://www.onbeing.org/program/david-whyte-the-conversational-nature-of-reality/8560

Tamanawas Falls