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

History/Herstory

"Knowing, therefore, that human prosperity never abides long in the same place, I shall pay attention to both alike." (p. 5) Herodotus The Histories

I picked up The Histories by Herodotus on our shelf today.  I read about 4 pages, maybe.  However, what I was struck by was the tone in which he is writing history.  He sounds so conversational, like, "Yep, this happened... then this guy stole this guy's wife and killed this guy - that's how the war happened."  Still hard to follow and possibly stale, but I liked it.  It made me want to go to Greece. 

I also love history because I think learning about the past is refreshing.  Living in such an extremely future-oriented society, sometimes it's nice to hop off that train.  Especially having been on that train thus far - it's always about the next thing... and finally getting to some kind of end goal.

The other day Jordan asked me what I will do when I'm retired.  What?  To actually be at a point where there is potentially fewer pressure on "the next thing." To actually retire.  Of course I said, "Well, I guess I'd want to be hanging out with my hypothetical grandchildren."  To enjoy the future and not have to work towards it.

I often try to pause and reflect, but sometimes life feels that its moving so fast that there's no time to pause.  Pausing means missing out on something, or missing your chance - at least, to me.  It's hard to even sit here and "work on my blog" because - for what?  Should this be heading towards an end goal of publishing or something?

Nope. 

This is why I like history, yet don't spend enough time in it.  When you read history, you're reminded that there have been whole civilizations which have risen and fallen and been corrupted and damaged the earth.  There have also been incredible advances, precarious times, and moments when people thought the world was ending.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes repeats, "There is nothing new under the sun" and "there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity." There's something sobering about that, especially as I watch the flowers blossom and fall. 

"Human prosperity never abides long in the same place" somehow, to me, gives us permission to "settle down" sometimes and maybe even make mistakes.  Those beautiful and fortunate mistakes that hopefully teach us something and nurture our wisdom. 

Here are some clips from our most recent history... or herstory, if you will...

Summer chasing the birds

The Dune

The gorgeous blossoms in our backyard

When it randomly snowed one morning

The surreal Tamolitch Pool

From Above

Flying through the clouds, I stare and stare at the sea of white puffy puffs and wisps of air catching my eyes for minutes and minutes. 

Suggestion:  Don’t read the end of Farewell to Arms while you’re flying.  Not only is it tragic, but in my copy, it has an appendix of other endings Hemingway thought about trying, one of which is:

“That is all there is to the story.  Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you."

Our plane bumped over a touch of turbulence as I read those words.  Death isn't something any of us have overcome ourselves, yet it touches our lives, molding them so forcefully.  As I sit up on my seat in the sky - 30,000 feet above the land - I think how precarious it all is, how the plane is perhaps one of the strongest vehicles yet entirely fragile.  As I was driving to Trader Joe's yesterday, I watched a tall light that hovers over the road fall over - so gracefully and quietly.  Thankfully, there seemed to be no people or cars in it's path.  The snow piles are gigantic enough to block my eyes from where it actually fell.  In reality, we courageously traverse the precarious sky every single day. 

And yet we continue, we traverse on.  From a conquest over the sea, across lands - horses to planes, 

plus cars and trains, to the moon in a rocket ship, through the air in pixels - moments held in my own hands - in pictures.  There is a miracle of flight, of light and of course, life itself.  

The Book Thief gives Death a different voice, where Death introduces themselves and talks a bit about their trade - how they see the world in color which "merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment" and how "I can be amiable.  Agreeable.  Affable.  And that's only the A's.  Just don't ask me to be nice.  Nice has nothing to do with me."  They go on to talk about their love of distraction and vacation:

"Still, it's possible that you might be asking, why does he even need a vacation?  What does he need distraction from?  Which brings me to my next point.  It's the leftover humans.  The survivors.  They're the ones I can't stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail.  I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise.  They have punctured hearts.  They have beaten lungs."

Here's to all the survivors, courageously fly through this precarious world everyday.