Shouldn't…but Do

In the west of Ireland, a  river flows from Lough Corrib into Galway Bay and out into the Atlantic.  Where  River Corrib mingles with the Bay was the fishing village of Claddagh, which today, is one of the tonier areas of Galway.

It is said from this place came the distinctive design of the Claddagh ring, a heart held by two hands, topped by a crown.  It is a potent symbol,  hands of friendship, a heart of love,  the bond of loyalty.

Devotion – of spirit, heart, of self.  The highest devotion is that of a person to the world, to the many, that is grounded in the practice of devotion to one, or a few – for it is really only a few that any of us can know in a lifetime.

And it is to those few that I know, the souls I have been lucky enough to experience, from long ago, and just yesterday, that I send these words, and my deep gratitude for your presence in my life.

Anam Cara is an Irish phrase whose meaning mixes probably too easily in my mind with the Hindu namaste, both infer a recognition and respect for the divine within, the imperishable light that flows back and forth between people, between lives, years — between people of the heart.

February 14 is Valentine’s Day.  In an uneasy world, it is easy to be cynical about last minute roses, and the easily swept away glitter on drugstore Valentine’s cards.  But at the center of its cardboard heart, Valentine’s Day too speaks of hands that hold, loves that give and take, and loyalty to the life that give us the grace to experience it all.

My Valentine to the world would be to sing Nina Simone’s Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood to a thousand people, and then make love to just one.  Neither is going to happen, so this blog will stand instead.

Regardless of cultural provenance, for better, or worse, for those not deceived by division, all we have is that imperishable light, to honor, to love, to swear our fealty, to many, or to one – we are as countless rivers to the sea.  Happy Valentine’s Day.

I am a woman of a certain age.  Never a beauty, I was passable.  Not cute.  Heads do not turn when I enter a room, unless I trip, or to gawk at hats and decor I am fond of wearing on my head from time to time.

I have been watching my hands for years.  Hands are honest.  They show wear and tear, not afraid to admit their age.

My hands are thin, venous, too cold come winter.  Once solid, industrious, my hands  flicker now, sparklers cutting through a 4th of July night, working harder than ever, infrequently at rest.

Older things travel south.  People seeking warmth, skin sloughing, unwilling to hold up any longer.  Crinkling, crystallizing skin – once unimaginable except on my mother – is now my own.  But loss of surface tension is not such a bad thing.

Years ago I saw a magazine picture of an old woman, her body receded with age, leaving bright blue eyes of startling intensity and depth.  Presence, warmth, connection,  far more beckoning than magazine covers of physical perfection.

Life experience is worn by  people of every age – in gesture, posture.  But with time,  the hands, and the eyes, have it.  Eyes carry much – dull anticipation, utility, warmth.

Young eyes carry questions.  Sometimes older eyes seem burdened by  answers.  The converse is true as well, youth hardened by their truth, older folks twinkle with knowing, even wisdom.

After the first half of life, the business is about living and leaving.  Requires taking stock.  Some did not get what they wanted, brittle, shellacked, dull, sometimes quick to anger.  Eyes need.

Others loved, lost, loved, lost, the exercise stretched and warmed them, resilient, kind eyes ahead into the world.

Emptiness lingers around both kinds – the first, a hollowness.  The second, a fullness that seeks to expand into, not fill, emptiness.

Hollow people, by this age, are difficult to fill, except perhaps on deathbed.  A daring statement to be sure, but I wager its truth.

Full people – like the aged woman in the photograph –  spill beyond their relaxing skin.  Not waiting for death to release them, they flow out, between, refusing to recognize interloping walls and miles.

Entwining with colours, people, and space that surrounds them, Full people hold hands with the world, past, present and potential.  They are not empty, cannot fill those who are.  The secret of these folks is that by being, they are becoming.

Forever half empty, forever half full.

Eventually even hands fall away, eyes say it all.  A warm breeze on the cheek,  attention called away, one more smile, and on it goes.

Stainless steel, composite bottom, two rivets, well balanced handle.  An inexpensive frying pan, used almost every day.

I formerly owned  non-stick, but let’s face it, everything sticks, sooner or later.  Stainless steel scours clean every time, no history, no knicks in the coating, tabula rasa.

Useful tools, pans take the heat – saute, boil, simmer – and when attention lapses, burn.

The value of a pan, holding the heat, cannot be seen, only felt.  Food, mixed, transformed, broken down, no longer raw,  can feed.

Pretty fancy trick – apply heat, cause change.  Magic.

Putting a lid on it increases pressure, riles things up, sometimes speeds the process, sometimes makes it boil over.

Pans conduct – convey intent into expression,  recipe into finished goods.  There is a lot more to the process though, a  cook, raw materials, and of course, heat.  All food for thought.

Lots of expensive cookware out there, specialized pans for specialized needs.  Mine? Quiet, shiny, used.  It is good.

The word is out.

Minds of every age consider the question of what medium, what  expression, best gives evidence of the human condition – what  form best presents humanity as it passes into history?

The trick is preservation, observation, without concretization.  Concrete is heavy, tends to crush what it captures.  Dogma is rarely illuminating.

Words, pictures, thoughts, shared at high speed.  Instant access, instant message to friends.  Friends – a word being drained of  meaning.

Twitter, Dogg, blogs, electronic touch, touch down, restlessly move on to the next touch, the dogma of these days.

Uninhabited words zinging back and forth, some cleverly constructed, some not, valued for arrangement, rather than content.   Neuronal massage, maybe a little dopamine, and then off for more.

What is it that can express a human moment, or a lifetime, that holds and releases, costs nothing, cannot be horded or sold, and usually contains the indelible essence of any person?  Something understood across any language, both ephemeral and explanatory, that  cannot be electrified, painted,  or destroyed?

The word is out.

It is a sigh.

Same snow, different day.

It is back.  The plow wall.  Two feet high, three feet wide, frozen road slush slung up around a neighborhood corner and slammed across my driveway, blocking access to car and mail carrier alike.  Snow blower won’t touch it.

Offspring at school, the plow wall is left to me.  It is not going anywhere, and apparently, neither am I.

Cut, clean, quick.  Hurled over my shoulder, snow fort fodder.   I will pay for it in pain tomorrow, but not today.

The unreasonable pile of stuff that usually gives me breathless pause – worked, attacked – shovel by shovel.  Save the grief, it is done.  Cleared.

Make room for what is coming through.

C. terniflora.  A vigorous, late flowering member of the clematis  family.  Mine resides on a wooden lattice fence.  By August, in combination with a half-moon gate, this mature vine voluntarily takes on a trumpeting elephantine shape.

In bloom, hundreds of star shaped flowers exude the fragrance of vanilla, making good on its common name sweet autumn clematis.  A munificent vine, it provides refuge for birds,  bees, and me.

Come autumn,  garnished with scarlet, orange, or yellow zinnia’s for eyes, and other floral accents for bejeweled cape, the Hindu Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, Lord of  Roads emerges in the  shape of that clematis.   His presence, as with all deities, constitutes both warning and  blessing.

After petal fall, gloriously red coloured fruit – achene –  appear, attached to a plumose style, feathered for flight.  The seed-headed puff balls appear as tangled dancers, sashaying forth, arguing, receding again as the styles fluff and slim with rain, humidity.  Gone to seed, the vine is almost as glorious as full bloom.

By January, sun, storms, and snow have weathered and worked the seed heads to their limit.  The cherry dancers have cleared out, the heated, tangled arguments have lost  importance.  Many seeds remain, now only  in congress with the single whiskered style that might carry them on – that must carry them on – before a new season’s growth surges and laughs at their withered beauty.

Those brown seeds, and the empty receptacles that held their kin, alone, wind torn, represent the full imperative – they are the beginning, they are the end. The tangles are no more.  Cutting winter air brings clarity, leaves only germ, past and future, the seed – all in one.

Though there is moisture all about, locked in snow, small icicles hanging off  crinkled leaves, and stored deep in the root, the vine is dry.   The tangle, for this plant, this season, is done.  Stoic, vulnerable, beautiful in its aged state.  It tells a tale.  Its ends are met.

Tis’ the season.

It has been a year.  Time has worn on, time has worn down.   From the perspective I love best, it has been a year of great depth.  And that is all that can, or should, be said.

Autumn stretched long this year, plentiful  time for breakdown, decomposition.  In hopes of a spring I pray one day arrives, I cleaned up part of my garden a few weeks ago.

I have a favorite pair of garden shears, bypass type.  I should call them secateurs – but they are not.  They are old, rusted, purchased a lifetime ago while living in Canada, yellow handled, maybe $10 new.

They have persevered – assisted, been left in the rain, found, stashed, forgotten, used unmercifully – and continued to work with me as I built, maintained, and still  try to save my garden.

Working in November to cut ornamental grasses, I  noticed my efforts, and my shears,  were having little effect.  Serious blades opposing each other, but no progress.  Upon inspection, the spring between the handles had broken.

I sat for awhile with my shears on that grey day, back against the faded wooden fence.  Like friends, these shears have been with me, helped me work, helped me  find pleasure and meaning  in sometimes backbreaking, mind- numbing labor done in the spirit of a greater cause, a bigger, richer landscape.

Like the spring in my shears, friends help me come back, regather energy and tension needed to do the job.  Brute, blunt force cannot accomplish what the spring in a shear, or in my step, can accomplish.  When a spring breaks, sharp, great forces dulled by loss of rebounding connection pass each other without purpose, focus lost.

My shears gave me years of service, and in their end,  gave me a precious gift realizing the quality of resilient relationship I hold so dear in friends.  Aged, maybe missing a spring, but never to be discarded,  they will always have a safe home with me.

Tis’ the season, and this is my holiday greeting, the only I have energy to send this year.  Thank you, bless you, may we all have health, and maybe a bit of happiness in the coming days and years.

Forget the calendar, I need only the garage door opener to remind me it is December.

Last week, I made the mistake of admiring the fact that the door was still working.  A year ago, the device broke in early December and financial straits being what they were, I was unable to have it repaired until early February.

Last Friday, in a rush to pick up my son, I exited the driveway, pausing as I pulled away to notice the garage door was going back up.  Furtive attempts at disconnection and other jerry-rigging were of no consequence.

The result of leaving my car outside in freezing rain was frozen car door locks.  Note to self, the old trick of heating up the key does not work on car locks anymore.

I scraped up some cash  for the service call, hoping the mechanism had not completely given me up for lost.

The diagnosis was a faulty bearing,  causing the motor to lose awareness of its limits.  It could not ascend high enough to admit, could not descend low enough to rest.

A restless machine, bearings shot, worn out of shape.  I viewed the torqued oblong metal piece – once in the round – misshapen by relentless stress to exceed its natural boundaries.

$75 and it is no longer confused.  Opens wide enough to admit my vehicle, closes gently at the level.  Something to that.