Morning songs

It's been a Mary Oliver kind of morning, the kind she described in her poem "Morning":

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her,
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.

My morning pages today--those "roll over and write as soon as you wake up" writing practice pages that Natalie Goldberg recommends--today had become about commitment. Goldberg wrote in Wild Mind that committing to a writing practice allows you to go deeper--into writing, into life. I thought about the way a commitment to a career, a family, a time of crisis seems to bring out the best in us because the small things fall into place. Otherwise they can become fritterings that pull down the whole life. That happened to a tree up the street a few weeks ago. It was a very tall tree with lots of branches filled with healthy green leaves. We appreciated its shade while waiting for the bus to work these hot days. It had massive roots that seemed to rest mostly above ground; the tree slanted across the busy street. We had a long drought, like most of the country, then a day of very heavy rains. That night, in perfect stillness, the tree came down, taking power lines with it. I could only guess that the water weighed down the branches so much they pulled the tree out.

I went outside after writing and listened to the cicadas humming in the trees. The sound rose in front of me, then to the left, then to the right... I closed my eyes and it seemed their music was orchestrated, the groups taking turns raising their sound to a crescendo, then down softly, pianissimo, turning the lead over to the other sections... When I finally opened my eyes I was seeing differently. I got my camera and went slowly from image to image. It struck me that just being present is a commitment, and maybe it's the kind the trees make. Requires no degree, no money, no Blackberry.

remembering America

One of my older essays for Common Dreams, but just as pertinent now.

The Memory Project
by Linda O'Brien

More and more Americans are becoming aware there is something very wrong with this administration, and it is frightening them. But there is an emptiness here now where before there was a common thread like a piece of music. We've lost the thread, and the sound is discordant and jagged with vast silences, imbued with fear, between the notes.

To combat the worst designs of the administration, we are going to have to combat fear itself. If we're to have a chance of surviving, much less winning, we have to somehow let the others know we're there for them, not separate or against.

The nation's soul memory has been lost in a fog of induced amnesia. Neither the amnesia nor the emptiness was caused by the attacks of 9/11. It was what came after, when Bush, instead of saying that we are still us, told a nation still in shock that everything had changed, and then proceeded to make that true. The effect was to confirm the insidious thought that comes naturally after a violent assault: "You are not You any more. You were a lie."

Memory and history both were replaced with new realities, a new "identity." "We are vulnerable, we must strike first, they hate us because we are free." Ignoring those who love us, those who fought with us; erasing our role as a light. "We must seek them out here, too, and we must give up some freedoms. I know Americans are with me." So easily, so smoothly, We became I, and Americans not with him became Americans against him. "We" were all but forgotten, split into Us and Them. The strands that held us together are wearing thin; invisible underpinnings are blurred and torn.

And perhaps we are helping, by making our arguments all about Bush. Obliquely, we are confirming that he is America. The reality is that he is almost negligible in the bigger discussion we must have: They're for, we're against, and who are we together?

Right now, we are regaining our equilibrium. Right now, people have found the confidence and sense of self to protest the Patriot Act and Bush. But if we don't clearly redefine, or define for the first time, who we intend to be, then the next great challenge will build on the lost sense of self as well as a decimated social net, ravaged economy, anger, fear, and lost innocence. For months I've been wondering about Germany. Was it just the nationalistic, militaristic propaganda and the manipulation of fear and shame that wiped out enough of a nation's soul to allow Hitler? Or was it also the lack of a sustained countering movement to keep soul, reawaken soul, stir her memory?

I don't think invoking Nazi Germany is too extreme. As Paul Krugman said in a recent interview by the Guardian, "There's this fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the radicalism of the threat we're facing."

We've never been clear, really, about who we are, and that is why the emptiness exists now. In fact, if this administration hadn't screwed up so very badly, there wouldn't have been enough dissent to create a recognizable split. The next coup that occurs will be far smarter and subtler. Now is the time to turn eyes away from Bush and back towards each other, to stir memory that We are America, not this leader or any other.

To fight against the masterful manipulation of instinct, the intentional arousal of shadow forces in the national psyche, we have to go deeper than instinct and beyond rage. Go for the meeting place of our differences. Not the "center" promoted by some as our salvation--that place characterized by the absence of deeply-held beliefs--but the opposite, the seam where Americans' most powerful beliefs intersect along common root lines.

It's as if a beloved family member had died, and we have to go home to siblings we've never been able to talk to and somehow talk about the most difficult things. There is no formula. It's a talking that is half a listening, a silence. Recently, William Pitt's "I Believe" and Marc Ash's "What I Want" for Truthout, in particular, have done it.

My dream is for someone to fund a "memory project" national newspaper created by the hundreds of brilliant, mostly unpaid internet writers. But the calls to memory don't need to be in words; they can be in any creative form that is your own. I think of Daniel Barenboim's concert for Palestinians in Ramallah recently. A member of the audience said, "He's reaching out to the Palestinian people with the utmost solidarity in a very creative and human way. He touches the soul."

You don't have to be a virtuoso. But you do have to go to Ramallah.

People are sick of the emptiness. When I caught a cab this past September 11, the driver asked if I minded the Vivaldi that was pouring from the radio. He said, "There is too much death and sorrow in the news, so I listen to the music." We have to go to that no man's land separating our perception of reality in this terrifying state of amnesia from theirs and trust that the music in the truest thing we have to say will be heard. Then play like our very lives depended on it.

Who will help a nation of half-amnesiacs remember? It has to be us, and it has to be now. Because we are able, and because we have not forgotten yet, but we will.

a paw in the night

More on the subject of my favorite muse....

The Cat

the cat petted me last night
soft paw reaching he gently stroked my face
I watched amazed
and held my breath.

I don’t know who this cat Is
but he reminds me of meetings
I’ve dreamt of for years

with trees and
animals and
Other that surrounds us.

I held my breath
and wondered how I will feel when he’s gone.
It’s not just connection to him,
it’s connection period
and it doesn’t have to be to human, that’s the thing.
I’ve felt more connected to trees and air
at times
than to people;
I’ve known that I’m embraced by them

and in my vision of the afterlife this Meeting finally happens,
stops tantalizing and
explodes like a birthing star.
It can never happen here on earth
it can only call
to those who listen,

if it happened here there would be no Other
there would be no need to join
to meet;
and God would cry
because it is God who calls
I think

and the devil is
just our withdrawing from
the touch
the paw in the night,
afraid to hold our breath
we say,
it’s just a cat.

when the cat goes, I'll be a river

when the cat dies I think, I’ll be ready to go too
to become part of the grass
and trees
or maybe water
water like the creek flow
clear, still, reflecting everything
sky trees air breathing into it.
water can’t be killed
if it overflows its banks it becomes part of the soil
if it’s drunk it becomes part of the animal
if it evaporates it becomes part of the sky
yes, I’d like to be water.

or a tree—but that would require some learning I fear haven’t done.
to be a tree you have to focus, you can’t just be content to stay forever a seed.
no, you have to be willing to let unseen forces move through you
while at the same time staying whole within yourself
for years and years.
I haven’t been good at things like that.
I’ve resisted unsought changes
and the sought ones have been pretty limited,
safe.
a tree can’t want to be safe.
it is vulnerable.
so it’s surprising that so many – millions and millions—grow a hundred feet tall
and sway and turn green
and then die
and then are reborn
year after year after year.

I hope someday to be able to be a tree
to be able to be that brave.