communication vs. conversation (and a poem)

I just had to take a minute to share this bit of writing Garrison Keillor just read on The Writer’s Almanac (my blog could just consist of sharing the day's Writer's Almanac if I'm not careful) My ears really perked up when I heard this line:

“…where each is eager instead to share in the task of moving the theme along.”

Good conversation feels good. Like a dancing partner, it won’t happen with everyone you bump into, but when it does those exchanges are as satisfying as the hum of bees in their hive.

 

String Quartet
by Carl Dennis

 

Art and life, I wouldn't want to confuse them.
But it's hard to hear this quartet
Without comparing it to a conversation
Of the quiet kind, where no one tries to outtalk
The other participants, where each is eager instead
To share in the task of moving the theme along
From the opening statement to the final bar.

A conversation that isn't likely to flourish
When sales technicians come trolling for customers,
Office-holders for votes, preachers for converts.
Many good people among such talkers,
But none engaged like the voices of the quartet
In resisting the plots time hatches to make them unequal,
To set them at odds, to pull them asunder.

I love the movement where the cello is occupied
With repeating a single phrase while the others
Strike out on their own, three separate journeys
That seem to suggest each prefers, after all,
The pain and pleasure of playing solo. But no.
Each near the end swerves back to the path
Their friend has been plodding, and he receives them
As if he never once suspected their loyalty.

Would I be moved if I thought the music
Belonged to a world remote from this one,
If it didn't seem instead to be making the point
That conversation like this is available
At moments sufficiently free and self-forgetful?

And at other moments, maybe there's still a chance
To participate in the silence of listeners
Who are glad for what they manage to bring to the music
And for what they manage to take away.

 

Lately I'm thinking about communication vs. conversation...visual, verbal, and written. What responsibilities do we have? What's our motive?

 

What about social media? I believe conversation is possible in social media, but we need to remember, we’re still animals.

the incarnations of the mother and child

On Mother's Day, I took some time to re-read a section of a favorite poetry book. I found this piece by Nancy Rose Meeker:

Here am I,
myself,
but also vessel of creation.

Rhythms of the ages
stir the Womb of Woman,
my own womb -
ancient pulse in my own heartbeat,
nourishment in my own breast.
This life through me
was fathered deep
in fire-consecrated flesh,
and here, behold!
A miracle,
that what was not before
is
now!

This piece stuck out because I have friends who have welcomed new babies this month. My first child was born in the month of May as well and I was reminded of those first days - nothing brings you so fully into the present. The exhaustion, wonder, worries and love shift you into a space that allows for a concentration only a mother will know.

After focusing on the experience of birth my mind wandered to all the women who are mothers and did not birth their children. From there the definition expanded to grandmothers and sisters who have taken over the care of children and those who travel across oceans to find the one they will nurture and protect. Early in the morning I heard Sylvia Boorstein, a Jewish-Buddhist teacher, mother, and grandmother speak about loving and teaching children on Being with Krista Tippett. She said, "Parenting is a spiritual practice" Providing care makes you a care-giver; embracing the practice makes you a Mother.

All of these mothers are complicated and mysterious. I know this now because I am one and I can see there's only so much my children need me to be, or want to see - what I am beyond that doesn't need to be revealed even if it's essential to the practice.  I will wait out those years of first independence when they will inevitably turn away in one way and another so that, after a time, they can look again and we might understand each other differently. They will, like I did, start to piece together a life that happened while I was right there next to them - the incarnations of the mother and child. 

Uma and baby Ganesha

Dorothea Lange/Farm Security AdministrationFlorence Owens Thompson, the so-called "Migrant Mother," whose photo was used to help raise awareness of the plight of migrant pea-pickers in the Great Depression.

Achomawi mother and child

Poem # 3 & 4 (National Poetry Month)

I want to place these two poems next to each other. They are both favorites, and in my mind related. One leaves me shouting a satisfied - Amen! The other leaves my thoughts looping. Do they challenge each other, or are they honoring the same things?


To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.


I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.


I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.


The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

- Marge Piercy

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

- Tess Gallagher

Poem # 2 with visual response

And now to address the other end - the breath. In the midst of daily living I'm always grateful for a reminder to enjoy stillness and to be conscious of how I'm actually breathing. Nothing more complicated than that - just to be still and feel my breath.

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.


When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.


Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

~Kabir

Not rushing the clouds for three minutes (video)

A pause at the end of March

We didn't expect to go back to breaking ice and spits of flurry.
We were ready to let the protection fall. We were ready for sleeping with the window open.

Clouds fell in the forest today. Cold killed the smell of the earth pushed up by sprouts and
the smell the skunk left trailing through the tree line.

Stillness holds the sound to my ear.
We're closed in together - the animals are aware. I can hear the leaves roll and crunch as feet move
self consciously, purposefully.

I pause here.
Knees locked like the horse in the mud.

Breath in -
chill air behind my eyes
Breath out -
warm vapor
resting on my lip and cooling

I'm the blanket on the mountain. I'm the crow in the tree.

"Clump of Trees in Winter" by Joichi Hoshi (1913-1979)

the angels by proxy

Today I read that time was slipping

and spent not a blink surprised.

The bouncing, slack and wrapping ribbon pulls a story

from there to here.

It's written by the hands of the angels by proxy

sent from ahead and behind.

Trapped behind glass -

writing secret codes -

tirelessly leading us home.