Exceptional Excerpts: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

I was re-reading the ending of this strange and haunting book, and was struck by the idea that the character of Mary Kashpaw, the caregiver of the story’s protagonist, Father Damien, shows a devotion to his infirm body and then his cherished memory as being similar to the devotion that is necessary for bringing about a focused body of work. Even though both of these people are fictional characters, their imagined lives are fascinating and inspiring as they move about in a protected and mostly unobserved service to their community, in quite different ways.

While it would be easy to see this relationship as romantic, it is not, in the traditional vein of novels. Yet it is not strictly filial either, nor even a platonic friendship. It exists outside of a category in its peculiarity. There is simply consistent and applied consideration and detailed attention by the hands of Mary Kashpaw, without recognition or reward from anyone outside of her own soul, as she tends to both Father Damien's public and personal roles.

For a little context to the following excerpt, Mary Kashpaw finds his missing and deceased body on a small island in a nearby lake, a place that she suspects has always held his secrets. He likely would have gone there to die, after divulging these secrets in his "Last Report" to the Vatican, being the longtime Catholic parish priest charged to an Ojibwe reservation. Having cared for him for so long, she also knows his secret, and maintains it as a ritual and as an uninterrupted communion with her beloved. His life is her muse, and his living spaces are her workshop.

Mary Kashpaw

/// “She paddled out to the island in a beat-up and awkward old aluminum canoe. She got out in shallow water, laced together her big rough shoes and slung them over her neck, tied the boat to a tough tree root, and waded ashore. She sat down on a powerful twist of exposed root. Methodically, very carefully, Mary Kashpaw tied the shoes back on her feet. Creaking monumentally, she stood. The island could be traversed side to side in ten minutes. Walking the rough shore might take half an hour to negotiate. The center was rock, piled rock rising in a solid cliff. Everyone knew the cave that Moses Pillger used and where his drum still lived... Birds sang thick in the scuttering bushes, and a red squirrel chattered high in the lyre spread of an old white pine. Mary Kashpaw crossed a bed of soft duff, made her way over to the side of the island where the camping was easiest. There, she saw him right away and she stopped. He was no more than a fold of black cloth crumpled near the white ash circle of his fire. One arm was stretched alongside his hip and the other was bent, a pillow under his head. She knew before she understood that the stillness of his body was the immobility of earth.

"She relighted his campfire, rolled him into a blanket, and laid out his limbs straight and true. She handled him gently, as though his bones were flower stalks, his skull fragile as a blown egg. She folded his arms across his waist, and then Mary Kashpaw sat beside him. Her eyes were clouded, her body stunned, her thoughts far away and tiny as a view through the wrong end of the telescope... Her heart was numb with a kind of odd embarrassment.

"She felt shy now, entrusted with far too much power. Left with the choice whether to bring him back across the lake in the canoe or to bury him here on the island, she froze. She listened to the pines, paced, even considered opening a bottle of the wine at his feet although she never drank. She watched the waves, shut her eyes, fell into a drowsy suspension wherein she received what felt like an answer. She found the Ziploc bag of money and the note. It took a while to read the note, letter by letter she made it out. Of course she understood exactly what he'd expected.

"She buried him in the lake.

"... Later on, the letter was framed and set within the entrance of the little cabin where Father Damien Modeste had once lived, a place the bishop directed, and Jude recommended, be kept as it was and even restored. The little historical shrine was cared for now by Mary Kashpaw, whose attention to detail included a careful stropping of the razor and shining of the copper shaving mug used by Father Damien. Every day, she carefully dusted and arranged the papers on his desk, including words from a long ago sermon she'd saved, scrawled lightly and fading. What is the whole of our existence but the sound of an appalling love?  She polished the wood, washed and changed his sheets and towels. Dusted his piano. Burnished the pedals. She spent as much time as she possibly could at these tasks, where she still felt the comfort of his presence. When her duties on the grounds and in the convent were finished, she often took refuge in his house and sat beside his bed. Her body rocked, though the chair was solid. Her lips moved but she made no sound. Sometimes she dozed off and followed Father Damien through the underbrush. Sometimes she dug her way down with a teaspoon toward her priest, her love, through the layers of the earth."  ///

While Mary Kashpaw may be a peculiar character, we may follow her example. Know your work so well that even when it gives up on itself, you would know where to find it. Cross whatever terrain is necessary to get to it. Don't give in to carelessness. With humility, sit with it and contemplate your options until you know how to proceed. Commit to your course, even if it's a gamble that risks embarrassment. Tend to its details lovingly-- not because your work is sacred-- but because the doing of it is a gift that has been bequeathed to you by the people who came before you. You are now also a keeper of this gift, and by participating you will be preserving it for others to take up. That sort of love does sound appalling in its reach. And yet its reach need not be sudden and all-consuming. It can come to us one teaspoon at a time.

Louise Erdrich, author extraordinaire

Written for Spring But Flowered in the Fall

There’s nothing like Spring to bring out a writer’s thoughts on rebirth, renewal, and transformation, so am I going to do that? Well, yeah. I’m a writer. This is what I do. I reflect on what is going on in the world around me. I contemplate. I start typing. I read what I write and let it tumble around in my head some more, and then come back to it and start shaping it. The piece doesn’t come out as a whole, perfect egg all at once.

Oh, but you saw what I did there, didn’t you? You saw the reference to an egg. I know, I know. It really is predictable. Sigh. Okay, so now I’m going to have to look up the definition and derivation of the word “predict,” because that’s another thing I do. I look at a word and I realize that I only half-way know it. The dictionary tells me that “predict” is from the Latin “made known beforehand” by combining the root words“beforehand” and “say”. Hmmm. Perhaps that’s why Easter, Passover, Neo-Pagan and other rites have predictable homilies and poems written to celebrate them. To be in the midst of Spring is to try to predict what sort of future growth is coming, based on the past two seasons of winter and fall. Within those predictions is a message of faith that even the Earth is subject to the effects of more powerful forces. If the Earth cannot remain static and immovable, then neither can its smaller inhabitants.

So, here’s a prediction story that comes to mind. You may remember The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was one of my favorites of the series. Why not These Happy Golden Years or By the Shores of Silver Lake? Because I tend to like survival stories and how other smaller survival stories are usually tucked inside them. So one other survival story tucked inside The Long Winter comes along when Pa arrives home from the general store and tells the family what he overheard there. A Native American had come into town to warn the settlers that the coming winter was going to be severe. How did he know that? Because the beavers and muskrats were building their dams thicker than ever. They had measured them to be seven inches thick, and so they natives predicted that the winter would last for seven months. Which it did. So, how did the animals know? That part is not revealed. Darn.

All I know about Spring and Transformations is that they happen. Even if the dam is seven inches thick, and the winter is seven months long, that blanket of snow will begin to melt and water the soil which enfolds the seeds. Or, if you live in the desert, the straightforward freefall of the winter rains will end, the clouds will no longer hover along the mountain ranges, and the poppies will carpet themselves around the cactus and scrub.

But transformations, revolutions, moultings, and sheddings are all very delicate. Sometimes, the new growth comes early, the seeds from the new growth is driven back underground, and the flowering is brief. Also, the process of transformation can be downright scary and revolting. If you’ve ever seen a snakeskin stretched out across a road, with the released snake no where in sight, it’s like coming across some sort of alien gravesite. And the process of watching a caterpillar become a moth is squeamish, in spite of its fascinating beauty and hope. When a crab is moulting, the whole operation looks perilous and sometimes the crab doesn’t survive it. Well, that does’t sound very spring-y. Most of the time, I can only report. I can’t change all of the changing, no matter how much I wish that “writing down” would equal “bringing about”.

A Luna Moth (found on lancasteronline.com). It spends one week of its lifecycle as an adult. 

A demonstration of much energy being spent for something ephemeral

However, celebrating Spring means to be dancing on the grave of Death, heralding and predicting and making the way safe for Summer. To prepare for Winter during the fall is to try to anticipate another round of hardship and its possible severity. The older we get, and the number of times we have faced death in nature, death in our lives, the more we can feel like Death always has the upper hand, because it’s inevitable. It may seem not only certain, but steadfast, in a comforting way. And yet, I think, that while Death may contain a kind of mercy, I doubt that this mercy is painless.

It is merciful that the snake can shed his old skin, it is merciful that the moth is no longer trapped inside it’s former creeping caterpillar confines. It is merciful to not force something to endure a way of existing that is painful and bewildering. But, I doubt that death is any easier than birth. I have attended birthings, as well as having been in the throes with my children, and I believe it’s probably best that none of us can remember it. But, it's also possible to observe that where there was once a hidden life that then emerged and became a visible life, it seems that death might be the opposite state— a visible life that submerges into an invisible one. 

This idea is coming from a desire on my part to have things come into balance. I like it when pairs of opposites find union, or reunion, but I am also aware that what comes before that moment of balance is messy, exhausting for all involved, and precarious. Even if the body is at repose in death, it feels, at some intuitive level, that the self is dispersing, but is not destroyed. The end of the body is not the extinction of the being. It’s possible that a permeation occurs. I’m taking that belief from a limited perception of the natural world. I’m taking that belief, because humans are often preoccupied with the questions of self and death, and whether or not we have a soul that lives on. Entire cultures, empires, eras have been defined by the answers proposed to those questions. It doesn’t appear that other natural beings evolve themselves from these questions. They stick to survival and an urge to compete or cooperate in order to perpetuate the species. They form bonds and police and groom each other. They emigrate from barren territories, raid prosperous fields, and mourn the loss of their family members, but they don’t seem to engage in philosophical debate.

They may fear that they have lost their family member or clan leader, but they don’t form groups based on questions about what happened to that life. Then again, if what is true is based only on what is observable, then why bother to wonder about any of it at all. If it weren’t for this natural wonder, then would we strive to refine our instruments of observation, so that we can know more and wonder less? And just like a small survival story tucked inside a larger one, our knowing will always contain the seeds of the next wonderment. You see what I did there again. I said "seeds" while talking about Spring. Please forgive my use of the worn out symbols that surround us somewhat relentlessly with their seasonal repetition. Apparently, we have yet to come up with better ones that are as lasting.

No matter which season you find yourself in-- because each season contains the beginnings of the next one-- I hope you are able to experience the natural world around you on both the level of the immediate kingdom at hand, and also at a remove, on the level of the symbolic. One way or another, they will emerge and submerge in relation to where you are tucked inside it.

Sting Once Asked: What Have I Done to Offend the Gods?

In this TED Talk featuring Sting titled, "How I Started Writing Songs Again" he asks, "What have I done to offend the gods that they would abandon me so? Is the gift of songwriting taken away as easily as it seems to have been bestowed?"

This isn’t your average TED Talk. The celebrated songwriter Sting (Gordon Sumner) shares his thoughts on a period of his life when the songs failed to come and how they came again. According to him, this happened by re-entering his rejected and somewhat spurned territory and community. I felt myself reminded and encouraged that while I sometimes feel writing as burdensome for its constant need of fine-tuning, it holds me together far more tightly than any devotion that I have ever shown to it.

I hope you enjoy this Talk (and Song) from one who has given so much to us with his careful and loving attention to his gift and his gods. He is also a good storyteller. I read his autobiography a few years ago, and scenes from it are included in this musical presentation. His childhood was spent in the literal shadow of a shipyard in England and that was the shore from which his fantasies were cast.

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Talk 
published May 30, 2014

Excerpt:

"Well, they say write what you know. If you can’t write about yourself anymore, then who do you write about? So it’s ironic that the landscape that I worked so hard to escape from, and the community I’d more or less abandoned and exiled myself from should be the very landscape, the very community I would have to return to, to find my missing muse. And as soon as I did that, as soon as I decided to honor the community I came from and tell their story, the songs started to come thick and fast."

Cover Art: Rendering of a shipyard for "The Soul Cages" 1991

One of his most widely beloved songs sung at the end of the talk is appropriately, “SOS Message in a Bottle”. This was one of his early hits with the band The Police. The three of those shaggy blondes jumped around on MTV with Punk Rock, Jazz and Reggae blending into the mostly undiscerning ears of my fellow teens as we embraced the second British Invasion forty years ago. Even after his abrupt departure from the seaside to London, he carried its influence with him, whether intended or not.

Perhaps the longevity of Sting’s craft and career is due to his early discontent to stay in that shadow of the shipyard, and the resulting alienation mixed with inspiration and ambition, and a hope that others were sending out the same messages. How young he was to realize:

“Seems I’m not alone in being alone”

And here he is honored for how much we all need to hear that:

Bruno Mars sings at Kennedy Center Honors 2014

"And yet if you look at your work, could it be argued that your best work wasn’t about you at all? It was about somebody else. Did your best work occur when you side-stepped your own ego and you stopped telling your story but told someone else’s story? Someone, perhaps, without a voice. Where empathetically you stood in his shoes for a while, saw the world through his eyes."

Autobiography Broken Music published by Dial Press Trade 2005

However, we can also be glad that he told us his story through his eyes, through his music and his memoirs.

NOTE: Just this year Sting received a BMI award for "Every Breath You Take" becoming the most played song in radio history.

All These Things

Like so many, always present

Somewhere, but never at once,

Ceded and seeded, unable to be gathered:

A boy in his rustling jacket sitting down for soup

A Red-Flyer that spins downside up

A mouse nosing at leaves inside a rusted hub

A fan that hums a patient radius

A neighbor scraping her cast iron skillet

A silver birch stripped upward by deer

A tennis ball wedged into the stair

All these inevitables, seven scrolls squirreled away

Along with so many betrothals made inside

A remembering hospice of the heart:

A confessional letter, unsent

A waning love, apologetic

A day past solstice, sighing

A dark drop of ink, spreading

A tangled rosary, coiled

A case of ashes, closeted

Fragments of the last bites, served.

And all these: feather, artery, bedside manner, 

horsehead nebula, rumor, soccer, fright.

Sewn together so tightly we must rocket or retreat 

as an octopod unearthed, unsealed.

                   -- Lizbeth Leigh
© copyright 2014 by Guilded Lily Press

sold by Eric Sun, New York

Goodbye to All That and Thank You

En Español, Adios a Todos Eso 

Poet and historian Robert Graves wrote his autobiography Goodbye to All That to explain his change of thought and feeling about English society and other conventions after his experiences in the First World War. Conflict causes many pairs of opposites to arise in sharp relief within us. We cling or renounce, preserve or release, as necessary. Perhaps some renunciations and releases require a great deal of anger and resentment in order to fuel the energy for change. At a certain point in life, though, there are only so many battlefields, courtroom dramas, espionage missions, or alien invasions to be faced with the same degree of certainty and vigor which youth supplies in abundance.

Change can be faced in ways that are far less fraught, maybe less exciting and stirring, but no less effective in the synthesis of opposing values. The following idea isn’t mine, but a ritual that can be engaged in during birthdays or at the outset of a new year is one of assessment and gratitude. We can take some time to think of all of the ways that we were brought to the point in life where we now reside. All of it was a combination of blessings and burdens that shifted as did the circumstance. Some things are passed down to us as valuable assets, lessons, beliefs, attitudes, visions and warnings meant for our good and for a way of life. Yet many of these can become unnecessary or burdensome and no longer serve us or our offspring.

The more it is a part of our identity, the more painful it can be to detach from it. Worry and panic can fill the void it leaves, and so we cling. But nature abhors a vacuum, and as we live and ripen, we can make more conscious choices on how the empty spaces are filled-- because they will be filled-- whether we choose or not. Or perhaps we can learn to tolerate the temporary empty feeling without shoveling something in to relieve the sensation quite so quickly.

Without bitterness, it is possible to lay something aside with compassion for why it was needed for someone else’s well-being. We can imagine the pride and joy it was for those who came before us, or perhaps alongside us, and let the dignity of that fulfillment remain, even as we lay it down. So if we are to say goodbye to all that, we can also add a thank you for those gifts, and face the Way that lies before us, more fitted to our own proceeding. This can be a ritual of our own design, private or shared, simple or elaborate, and can be a balance to the natural desire for mindless oblivion that the end of the calendar year can rouse.

Thank you for reading. As I am in a time of review as well, my blog may shift in its focus accordingly. But I will never stop wanting to share the many ways that life has been witnessed by those in their own time, and discover what will continue to emerge in my time. The instrument I’m writing with didn’t exist when I was a child, and it may not be used or even opened by those who come after me. It's transitory, as technology and style should be. But with confidence I know that what is real and enduring will always be found by someone who needs it.

Feeding the Ducks by Mary Cassatt, watercolor 1894

Autumnal Equinox: The Dog Days Are Over

I am posting this song simply because I like it. When I first heard it coming from my daughter's room, several years ago, I felt it expressing something about the change in the national mood and the reality for many who were struggling financially and making sacrifices just to stay afloat.

It's also a siren song, in the way that Florence sings it, along with the insistent harp strings. Both her voice and the strings hit high and low on the octave like an ambulance. When she slows it down, her eerie, dream-like phrasing reminds me of the winged creatures who wait for Greek sailors to pass by and then try to sink them and gather up the spoils. The wanderer is entranced, no matter how sure of his way and purpose. The most famous traveler, Odysseus, wanted to hear the song, despite the danger. He had his crew tie him to the mast of his ship so that he wouldn't jump overboard into madness. At least he has been forewarned and can prepare. He is striving to get home, but he wants to fully experience his journey, too. So does Florence, but she wasn't prepared. Fortunately for us, she knew when to run,  and knows how to bring us an invigorating song of her own.

Odysseus and the Sirens, circa 475 B.C.

Here are the lyrics, because you know you want to hear it again:

Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her, stuck still, no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with a drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming so you better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can't you hear the horses
'Cause here they come

And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had
And what was left after that too, oh.

Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height
By someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses
'Cause here they come

Run fast for your mother and fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses
'Cause here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses
'Cause here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

What first was singing to us-- the strains of sirens that cause our downfall--  is later turned into the name for the sound of alarm that wakes and warns us that we are heading for calamity. In this song, Florence appears to be singing of heartbreak and the need to run for freedom from passion's speeding locomotives and bullets that threaten disaster upon impact. But the times aren't right for passive acceptance. Apparently, a mired happiness based on hypnotic suggestion, rather than a chorus of awakening, leaves us and our loved ones vulnerable to being trampled.

The drumbeat of the Machine tells us it's time to get going.

Exceptional Excerpts: The Greengage Summer

I can’t recall why my mother bought me The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden when I was in 7th grade, if she ever said. I do recall coming into my blue bedroom and seeing it lying on my rumpled, darker blue bed, among castoff clothing and school papers and other books. The cover art fascinated me, with its genderless poker face peering up at me, full of a secret. I once read that the actress, Demi Moore, had named her oldest daughter after this author, and I’ve always been curious as to why and how books show up for people, and make such a lasting impression.

For me, personally, this book figured into my imaginings for a story of my own that I wrote in college, with its equally languid title, “Ripe Was the Drowsy Hour” from a line in the poem, “Ode to Indolence” by John Keats. In Rumer Godden’s story, greengages are the litter of heaven; in mine, hedgeapples appear, but they are rough and inedible, more of a nuisance than a treasure.  My story drew upon the coming of age theme of The Greengage Summer, and my prose, with its own secret, was as awkward as my adolescence, for all of the same reasons. It was long in length, but not quite balanced at its center, and ranging into directions both silly and sinister, which is how our first forays into adulthood can feel.

Rumer Godden wrote many books set in India, but this one takes place in France, and while I read it, I felt as if I had been introduced to a vintage of wine that had been hidden away for adults, until I had slipped into the bottle itself to become infused and a little intoxicated, breathing in the semi-autobiographical story that was not written for children, but about children, which I still was. The first few paragraphs, below, is what I would call Exposition by Immersion, and I hope you enjoy it as we feel the weight of summer roll away behind us, and down a grassy hill:

“On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages. Joss and I felt guilty; we were still at the age when we thought being greedy was a childish fault and this gave our guilt a tinge of hopelessness because, up to then, we had believed that as we grew older our faults would disappear, and none of them did. Hester of course was quite unabashed; Will— though he was called Willmouse then— Willmouse and Vicky were too small to reach any but the lowest branches, but they found fruit fallen in the grass; we were all strictly forbidden to climb the trees.

"The garden at Les Oeillets was divided into three; first the terrace and gravelled garden round the house; then, separated by a low box hedge, the wilderness with its statues and old paths; and between the wilderness and the river, the orchard with its high walls. In the end wall a blue door led to the river bank.

"The orchard seemed to us immense and perhaps it was, for there were seven alleys of greengage trees alone; between them, even in that blazing summer, dew lay all day in the long grass. The trees were old, twisted, covered in lichen and moss, but I shall never forget the fruit. In the hotel dining room Mauricette built it into marvelous pyramids on dessert plates laid with vine leaves. “Reines Claudes” she would say to teach us its name as she put our particular plate down, but we were too full to eat. In the orchard we had not even to pick the fruit, it fell off the trees into our hands.

"The greengages had a pale blue bloom, especially in the shade, but in the sun the flesh showed amber through the clear green skin; if it were cracked the juice was doubly warm and sweet. Coming from the streets and small front gardens of Southstone, we had not been let loose in an orchard before; it was no wonder we ate too much.

photo credit: found on Goodreads review by Hana

"'Summer sickness,' said Mademoiselle Zizi.

“'Indigestion,' said Madame Corbet.

"I do not know which it was but ever afterwards, in our family we called that the greengage summer.

“'You are the one who should write this,' I told Joss. 'It happened chiefly to you.' But Joss shut that out as she always shuts out things, or shuts them in so that no one can guess.

“'You are the one who likes words,' said Joss. 'Besides'— and she paused— 'it happened as much to you.'

I did not answer that. I am grown up now— or almost grown up— 'and we still can’t get over it!' said Joss.

'Most people don’t have… that… in thirty or forty years,' I said in defense.

'Most people don’t have it at all,' said Joss.

"If I stop what I am doing for a moment, or in any time when I am quiet, in those cracks in the night that have been with me ever since when I cannot sleep and thoughts seep in, I am back; I can smell the Les Oeillets smells of hot dust and cool plaster walls, of jasmine and box leaves in the sun, of dew in the long grass; the smell that filled the house and garden of Monsieur Armand’s cooking and the house’s own smell of damp linen, or furniture polish, and always, a little, of drains. I can hear the sounds that seem to belong only to Les Oeillets: the patter of poplar trees along the courtyard wall, of a tap running in the kitchen mixed with the sound of high French voices, of the thump of Rex’s tail and another thump of someone washing clothes on the river bank; of barges puffing upstream and Mauricette’s toneless singing— she always sang through her nose; of Toinette and Nicole’s quick loud French as they talked to each other out of the upstair’s windows; of the faint noise of the town and, near, the plop of a fish or of a greengage falling.”

To read Keats’s “Ode to Indolence” stroll over here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52995/ode-on-indolence