Arrive at where we started...

I have hit a wall. A large brick wall with some gum stuck to it and a few weeds growing out of the cracks. This wall has been there for a long time, and it grows stronger and taller each year. I can't seem to scale the darned thing, it has no place for me to wedge my fingers in, and no foot holds either. I am convinced that if I could get over it, life would be much better. For such an old wall,it is astoundingly well built. Nothing I do to chip away at it makes a mark.
On the other side of this wall is the rest of the story, the continuation, and the road I need to get back on. If I could get around it, I could get back on course, and possibly I could accomplish the tasks that I need to on this quest I have undertaken. What quest, you may ask? Ah, there is the story in and of itself.
The desire to follow the quest was given to me a long time ago, when I was a child.
It came to me several times, and each time the longing was stronger. The first time was when I looked out of my window at the stars and I wished, very hard. I wished to find something, a treasure, something wonderful, something miraculous. But, I knew, in my logical, empirical mind that wishing on a star was silly and fruitless. Never the less, the desire to find that miracle was sparked.
The next time was when I was standing on the front porch of my childhood home. I was ten years old, and it was summer. It was warm, the kind of lazy summer day crooned about in songs. I could hear the far off sound of a lawn mower, smell the warm sweet grass, and hear little bugs zzzing throughout the stagnant air. As I stood there,an odd feel overcame me. I suddenly could not figure out if I was awake or asleep, if this was a dream or reality. I was frozen for a moment in the thought that dreaming and waking were difficult to decipher and how was one to know what reality really was. That is when the desire for the quest took hold, and I knew that somehow I had to find out what truth was.
Then, in my teens,it happened again. I had not gone to sleep all night, and at sunrise, I went out and stood on our old wooden picnic table to watch the sun rise. It was summer again, and it was a cool, but not too cold morning. I stood on the table because I wanted a higher vantage point, and somehow, just those few feet up changed the overall perspective. You could see the world from a slightly different view. I was filled with the sensations of the dawn, the sweet air, the coolness, the light as it kissed the trees, the house the grass around me in that honey morning sheen. I was enraptured, that is I was until my father looked out his bedroom window to behold his daughter, in her nightie, standing on the picnic table doing the sun dance. He said, "what in the world are you doing?" and it scared the sacred moment right out of me. But I did, for just those few seconds, feel the desire for the quest pour over me.
So, here I am in later days, the haze of midlife, that autumnal time when you start to panic because winter is on the horizon. And I have tried to follow the desire, have attempted to stay on the path, but now have come to this wall. If I press up and put my face against the rough brick, I feel the warmth, I smell the sweet air, but I cannot seem to be able to get around to experience it. I am weak, exhausted from my journeys, my encounters, the hills I have had to climb and the dark valleys I have been tangled in. I sit myself down and ponder. I know I must get past this wall or the quest is lost. Like Percival in search of the grail, I will not let the world distract me. The quest must continue until the goal is accomplished. The wall will come down...if only brick by brick.

I am here...but I can't hear...

I now completely understand what a yo-yo feels like. It is not just the up and down, up and down over and over, it is the fact that you cannot stop it. You are completely controled by the yo-yoee..that person who is tossing you around on the end of the string. Sure, he can make you do some nifty tricks, but there you are, at the mercy of the controler. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, or ungratefull or even resentful. I guess I am just tired of the up/down/up and feeling like I have no way out of it.
After pulling through a tough illness, having stress at work, and feeling like a balloon with a slow leak, I am ready for some kind of upbeat adventure. I am also ready to stop feeling like a cork on the waves. I need to take some control of my own life. I think God would agree with me, he has watched me wither on the sofa for too long, waiting sad time, drifting along, letting everything bufet me around until I am exhausted.
But, the sun is peeking out from behind the clouds...no, really it is...and the vitiman D is seeping into my soul. And for a breif moment, there is hope.
So I sit, in my office, waiting for my life to start moving in a foward direction. I know what I am being called to do, and I have known for years, I am just too overwhelmed by everything ELSE to do it. Now I need to place everything ELSE aside and pursue the calling.

What goes in does not always come out....

Every time I visit France I come up against the same conundrum, I can understand french, read french, even feel french, but I have a terrible time speaking french. This is frustrating. I follow along in the conversations, get the gist of it, nod my head emphatically, but my mouth opens and the gears in my brain start sticking. I have dreamt in french, and in those wonderful dreams I speak it fluently, with a very convincing accent.But, alas, this is not true in the waking world. I stumble along, with my Larousse at hand, frantically looking up a word while those around me carry on. And when it is time to leave, just as I am boarding the Eurostar back to London, all my french comes flooding back. I disembark in the U.K. ready to shout Bonjour...instead of Hello. If I had just stayed on a wee bit longer, I tell myself, all that French, all those sinuous, silky words would slither out in grand secession and I would toss my head, and make a little french pout. Oh, I would be so lovely and understood!

This is way I feel about reading. I love to read. I love to read meaty things like literary criticism and philosophy. I understand what I read, it flows into my brain, stimulating my grey cells, connecting my ideas one to another. I begin thinking, really thinking, pulling from other sources, creating patterns of thought. Synergy! I become inspired and, frankly, quit excited at my own thought processes. And then I open my mouth; it does not come out the same way it went in. I don't seem to be able to put a full, comprehensible sentence together. The same thing happens when I write. I have an attack of brain constipation. Oh, the strain, the feeling of bloatedness. Oh...if I could only snort up a brain ex-lax maybe I could produce a well written essay instead of the simple minded stop/start sentences that appear on virtual paper on my computer.

Take right now for an example. I am reading a very interesting (if not a bit dry) article on Assyrian exoticism in the nineteenth century. It is an article on semiotics, another field that fascinates me. But, all this wonderful information is going in, I understand it, I get it, but will I be able to translate it into my own words? Will I have the same trouble I did in France? This is where fear comes in. I hate to admit it but I am sore afraid. And I think that fear works like a existential steak dinner. It clogs you up.

And why can I write so freely here, letting the words pour out onto the page, seeing such nicely constructed thoughts congeal? I am also writing a paper on a novel by Saul Bellow. I know what I want to say, I understand what I am trying to say...but, can I say it? It jerks out of me in sophomoric sentences, "The book is about ends and beginnings. That is what the book is about." Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but it is akin to my speaking french " Je suis, er um, J'ai...aahh. Je comprend...oui...oui"
I keep trying. I will keep trying...eventually the blockage will come loose and I will write with conviction, knowledge and a freedom of spirit. Ah yes. And someday, I will carry on a conversation in complete sentences with my french friends as well. J'espire'!

Here we go round the mullberry bush...

Starting Graduate school in your 50's is daunting...starting anything in your 50's is daunting! But here I am starting my on and off academic career up again while juggling work, grand kids, a husband and a needy cat. But, this is where I want to be right now. It is frightening, engaging, exhilarating, challenging and feels a lot like juggling crystal glasses and having someone toss in a chainsaw. A lot could go wrong in any of the areas of my life, or, on the other hand, it could all fit together smoothly. So far so good, except for the needy cat.

There are nay sayers out there, people, who for some unknown reason, don't want you to succeed. They are not diabolical about it. No, they are the ones who point out all the things that could or will go wrong, how you will not be at your absolute best in all parts of your life and how this will somehow affect them.

And then there are those, like my husband, who will eat yet another meal of takeout while I feverishly type papers and will re-read several times over my philosophical outpourings, skimming through my fragile thoughts for miss-spellings, typos and general brain mush.

What would I do without him and what can I do to reward him. Make a home cooked meal once in awhile he says, with longing in his voice.

I am learning to schedule my time. I am becoming rather possessive of it too, which is terribly uncharacteristic of me. I am a people person, I give to everyone my heart and my soul. But now I am finding that instead of those long lovely conversation on the phone, I have to sit and read my lit novel, or slush though my philosophy text. Lofty, yes, but lonely. I have actually said no to family outings because I absolutely have to spend the weekend writing a 5 pager.

Nevertheless, I have chosen this new adventure, and I will prevail. Chinese takeout, lonely weekends spent with Plato or Saul Bellows, six drafts of an Art abstract, these are all now apart of my life. Onwards and upwards!

Houses Rise and Fall..crumble

I am longing for a place of my own. A house, with room for a garden, a studio, grand kids, and people to come and stay. A house, a home, a place of refuge, a place of hospitality, a place to share and shelter.  I have been trying to shake this longing, but to no avail. I try to tell myself that there are many many people in the world with no house, no home, who are displaced or seek refuge. I try to convince myself that I, like Paul, must learn to be content and that I, like Christ, have no place to lie my head. 

But I still have a longing.  

I have lived in many houses, big ones, small ones, nice ones...I have housed many people, from all over the world. I have cooked for and cared for other people's children. Now, in my autumnal days, I want to find some place that is mine, that cannot be sold out from under me, that I can tend to.  Why do I feel so guilty  for having this desire?

I wonder if I need to come to terms with where I am, the "bloom where you are planted" idea. Maybe I am just a restless soul who wants change, or maybe I need to learn to take care of what I am given. I don't know. But I have to trust that only good is in store for me, greater good that is for my own good. And if staying put and making some rooms into a home is what I am called to do, then I must heed the call and follow the voice that leads me on. I did fall in love with one house, somewhere in England but must accept that it is not mine and may never be. 

Releasing your desire is difficult, but needed, if desire is to be redirected to the right place.   I have to find that peace of mind and heart that allows me to live day to day with what I have. Give us this day our daily bread...for this day is all we are given. But be mindful that I am dust...and without a vision, the people perish. I can long for a house, but I cannot obsess for one. 

Teach us how to care and not to care....this is the hardest lesson of all. To care for the right thing, for the right reason, and to not care too much for the things that blind us in this world. Once learned the peace will come.

a sense of awe and wonder

It was hot in London the first week in July. This is complicated by the fact that the British do not subscribe to constant creature comfort as we Americans do, and therefore have no air conditioning.  The Brits make due and stiffen their upper lips, while at the same time moaning and comparing their temperatures to Mexico City and finding that London was hotter.  It gave a great deal of conversational topic to a great many people, as weather is wont to do on either side of the pond, and brought out the most lovely of summer dresses on the young women I saw around Bloomsbury. Where did they get all those light airy bits of dress they floated around in? And why would they be able to purchase these dresses in London, whose temps in the summer are moderate at best and downright drizzly at worst. Then it hit me; Spain was only about 6 hours by train, or a couple of hours by air. Turkey, Croatia, Morocco were just a four day holiday outing. Places that to me were exotic and far away, were, to the Brits, as close as it is for me to go to Canada; which is neither far away or exotic (sorry Canada, but you are comfy and close). 

I was in London for a week long summer school at the University of London on T.S. Eliot. It was the first ever Eliot summer school and I felt privileged  to be a part of something so ground breaking and at the same time, so nerdy.  A room, nay, an auditorium full of people madly in love with Eliot's poetry was a chance that this T.S. groupie could not miss.  I think I was the only one there that was not connected to either a university, or was in process of doing their PhD.  I was the layman, the everyman (er in my case woman) that just loved Eliot because, well, he wrote damn good poetry. But it is was bit more for me. I had come this close to being warden, along with my husband, of Ferrar House in Little Gidding. I had gone there because of Eliot and the poem, and had become entrenched there, falling in love with everyone and everything about the place. 

But, we didn't become wardens and sitting in the lectures I realized how much I felt on the outside of it all, looking longingly in. Every day, I would peel myself off my bed, and I say peel because it was so hot in my room, that it made Dante's Hell seem like would would need to bring a sweater, and go to the morning lecture and then to the afternoon class with Dr. Donoghue. And everyday I found how energized I felt during the discussions, and how my brain, which had almost melted away in the heat, would come alive, squeaking and clunking thoughts that would eventually enter and leave my mouth. I spoke up in class, I couldn't help myself, my brain kept firing off ideas and like Horshack in Welcome back Kotter, I would sit with my arm waving in the air almost saying "oh...oh...oh!"  It was euphoric and terrifying at the same time. I never knew if I would say something that revealed my lack of academic credentials or if I would actually say something brilliant. I did both. And I swore after each class, as I scuffled out, that I would defiantly zip it next time. But I didn't. I just went right on becoming excited and bouncing on my seat. 

The last day of class, I got the courage to actually go up and speak to Dr. Donoghue. I wanted to ask him if he could suggested a good university to go for Eliot study. He was more than gracious and spent some time answering my question. We ended up walking out of the university and down the street together chatting. We must have looked a strange pair; he, this very tall elderly Irish man and me, this short plump American woman, but I didn't care. To me this was wonderful, this was the life-a lovely chat with someone about something you are both passionate about. Little did I know my husband was stealthily following us and after we had parted company, he came up behind me and scared the beejeebies out of me. He thought it was sweet and so he didn't want to interfere with our conversation. 

When the week ended, I wanted more, I wanted to stop feeling like I was on the outside and be apart of this academic world.  I loved every stimulating, nerdy thing about it. Sure I felt inadequate but it stirred in me that sense of awe and wonder, that feeling that there is so much more than just plain existing; there is thought, and process and creativity. And there is a world of possibilities that flutter by like those summer dresses destined for exotic places. So, onward and upward; leaving the comfort of Canada for the hot, sticky climate of London. If I can, I will be there next year for the second annual T.S. Eliot school. But in the interim I am gong to get my Masters degree, I am going to get those little gray cells moving again, plumping them up with ideas.  

Worlds apart

Many years ago, when I was in high school, I made friends with our one and only foreign exchange student. She was from Paris and her name was Maryse. Truth be told, she pursued me as she sensed, that I too, was on the fringe, an outsider, a misfit, if you will. Maryse was not a nerd or as the term was way back then, egghead. She was not a "soc"either. She was a very mature, very experienced, wild bohemian girl who had hitch-hiked all over Europe, smoked camels with no filter (in the absence of Galois cigarettes) and found my small town high school to be very provincial. She was right, although most of my class was either high, pregnant or recently out of juvie. I was an exception; I didn't take drugs (just found them boring), didn't sleep around (I'd know everyone since Kindergarten, it would be almost incest) and had a car and the desire to get away. We were very different, but the same; she wanted out of my small, boring, narrow-minded town and so did I. So, we became best friends, and through her, I met other exchange students, who were wild intellectuals as well. I found that there was a world out there, just waiting to be conquered, or at the least, subdued. 

When she left my small town, and let me behind, I went into so much mopey grieving that my father couldn't stand it and sent me off to Paris to visit her. This was my maiden voyage, my virginal trip out into that big world. I had never left home before, and to go all the way to Paris, well, I had no idea what I was doing. I, of course, made every faux pas one could; couldn't speak the language, hadn't a clue about cultural differences or jet-lag.  I slept until noon, didn't clean up after myself (thought that things just magically put themselves away), and was very dependent on Maryse for translation, direction and support. And I found that she was different, she was in her own culture, she was very French. She was patient with me, to say the least. 

But, the one positive thing that happened to me is that I fell madly in love with travel, with Europe, with everything being different from the way it was at home; from the door handles, to the way you flushed to the toilet, to the food, the bottled water, the way they drank wine. I was hooked, a Europe junkie. I even developed a Euro trash accent, a melding of German/British/french so those who met me didn't know I was just a little American girl. 

We went back to Paris three times in five years, then, suddenly I was married to an American (oh, no, from my small town) and had two children. The traveling days were gone, I was a middle class house wife. I lost touch with Maryse, drifted through my marriage until it finally fell apart, raised my kids and went back to school to get my BA. But, always, in the bottom of my soul, was that inexperienced little American girl, wide-eyed and full of wonder, longing to go back, to find my friend and my lost love of adventure. Twenty-six years went by, I re-married, grandchildren came along...and then one day, I found I could look people up in the yellow pages world wide. I found Maryse; she was a doctor living in Montrueil, a suburb of Paris. I wrote to her, she wrote back....we agreed to meet in Paris...and we did. Had she changed? Had I changed? Yes, but when we met, we picked up where we had left off, still crazy girls, still loving adventure and life. We had a raging river under our bridges, and we both had no desire to drift around in the past (like I said, I left my small sad town far behind...it just took a little longer than I thought) but we were middle aged, and finding that we still were wild crazy girls in our heads. 

I have gone back to see her every summer since, it has been four years now. And with every trip, I find that what I love about travel is the people. Seeing Chartres Cathedral was very moving, but seeing it with my French friends is what makes it memorable. Eating fois gras and drinking very good red wine is wonderful, but eating and drinking with my long lost friend while staying in her grandparents 15o year old farm house in the southwest of France is unforgettable.  It is true; returning, you do know the place for the first time because it has new adventures in each homecoming.  I hope I will always be that wild crazy inexperienced girl, who sees the world through wondering eyes.