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Category: perspective

Raft of Hope

Raft of Hope

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When I wrote yesterday’s post I hadn’t yet realized that I’d missed the biggest Oscar news to happen in years. Bigger than when Moonlight’s Best Picture award was momentarily and mistakenly given to LaLa Land in 2017. 

When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock to defend his wife against one of Rock’s jokes, he ignited a storm of controversy that hasn’t let up yet.

What I thought not just after watching clips of that episode but often throughout the three-and-a-half-hour show is how the Oscars —and the world, too — have changed in the last couple of decades, how things have grown darker, starker and meaner. 

At times like these I remind myself of what art can do when it’s at its best: how it salves wounds, promotes understanding, draws us together.  What Ralph Ellison wrote of the novel can sometimes be applied to other arts: “[It] could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic idea.”

A raft of hope! … I’ll cling to that. 

Untidy Course

Untidy Course

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A few days of unseasonably warm weather meant I slept last night with open windows and the early spring air flowing through the room. It reminded me of warm days to come and the freedom of being at one with the outdoors.

It’s another story this morning. Colder and more seasonable air has moved in and the newly popped daffodil blossoms are shivering on their stems.

A good reminder of the halting, sidewise, untidy course of progress.

(Snowdrops along Reston trail.) 

The Iron Curtain

The Iron Curtain

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I grew up with the Iron Curtain, the dividing line between the Soviet Union and the West. A strange image, “iron curtain.” Not iron wall, though the Berlin Wall was part of it. Not iron fence, though barbed wire and guard towers were part of it, too. But iron — hard and unbendable — combined with curtain — soft and pliable.

It was Winston Churchill’s phrase, part of a March, 1946, address where he said, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended upon the land.” I didn’t know he used these exact words until I looked them up just now.

But I did know that something was terribly wrong with the world, that adults were afraid of the division, that it posed harm. The Iron Curtain was not just a dividing line; it was a feeling. It was rigid and gray and hopeless, life drained of color. The Cold War. Nuclear stand-offs.

My children were born as the Berlin Wall was falling. They grew up with a far different Europe than I did. To them, Russian’s invasion of Ukraine must seem preposterous. To me, it seems all too familiar.

(Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, a city I never dreamed I’d see. In the old days, it was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.) 
Without the Directions

Without the Directions

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On a doggie walk this morning I was stopped short in my tracks. Tree limbs were shiny, glazed with ice. It was unexpected and almost magical.

It was the best of both worlds, too, because the pavement wasn’t affected. There was friction on the driveway, fairyland up above.

I hadn’t known this was coming, hadn’t read weather reports that freezing rain was in the forecast.

It struck me then, and I second it now, that life is more exciting when we forget to read the directions.  

Absorbing

Absorbing

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Three years ago on this day I was touring one of the world’s great heritage sites, Angkor Wat in Cambodia. My friend and I, on assignment for Winrock, woke early on our day off, made our way through the darkness to the temple complex, then waited for daylight. We were not alone. 

What we found inside almost defies description: the impossibly steep steps…

the draped statuary…

the play of light on ancient carvings. 

Later that day we visited Ta Prohm and marveled at its ruined splendor. With every new twist and turn, with each new vista, I would think, this, this is the most lovely of all. And then I would walk a few feet and find another view even lovelier. 

For five years, I had a job that paid me not just in money but in experiences. I’m still trying to absorb them all.

Counterclockwise

Counterclockwise

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Today I went left rather than straight out of my neighborhood and took a familiar walk in the opposite direction. 

There were the fronts of houses I usually see only the backs of; there was the wooded trail glimpsed from afar, through a backyard. 

There were ponds glinting in the morning sun, which was in my face rather than over my shoulder. 

There was this warm winter morning, made new by a change in rotation, clockwise, rather than counter.

January 6th

January 6th

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It was only after I had posted yesterday that I remembered the date: January 6, the Epiphany, Little Christmas, a day set aside (by me, at least) to celebrate insight, discovery, the sudden revelation.

But since last year, January 6th has taken on a different meaning, one of anger and fear and ignominy. The opposite of light and wonder. 

You could say that last year’s January 6th was a revelation. It revealed a dark truth about this nation. But I’d rather keep the day free of politics, let it stay in my mind the capstone of the season, a day to reflect with hope on the year just dawning. 

Deep Breathing

Deep Breathing

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Though I try and clear my decks for a true meditation session several times a week, I consider myself a remedial student at best. Worse than remedial, because it seems like it was easier to avoid distractions when I first began than it is now. Not sure why that is!

But in one way this new habit has taken hold, and that is in the practice of deep breathing. My falling-to-sleep routine consists of deep, counted breaths, my falling-back-to-sleep routine too. I have more luck with the former than the latter, but in both areas, I’m definitely better off than I was before.

And then there are those moments. You know the ones I mean: sitting at a long stoplight or in the dentist’s chair. Waiting for a file to load. The small anxieties and trials of daily life. 

Since I began meditating — thanks to my former workplace, which still allows me to join their morning meditation group — I use deep breathing all the time. And it almost never fails to still my racing heart. I’ll be meditating again in a moment. My shoulders are dropping a notch or two right now in anticipation.

Still Life with Hay Bales

Still Life with Hay Bales

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Last evening in the golden hour of slanted light, I walked up the road a quarter mile to a field I’ve been seeing on our drives.  My goal: to capture “on film” a field of daisies. 

But the daisies were a little too far away and the traffic was whipping around me as I stood on the scant shoulder, so I made quick work of the shot. On the way back, though, I raised my phone to photograph another beautiful field, green grass studded with hay bales lit by the lowering sun. 

I’d actually crunched and marched my way across this field when I thought I could reach the daises on foot, before I discovered the rusty wire fence and the treed border. I’d taken some photos of the hay bales from that angle and found them lacking.

But up above, on the berm, I could capture the sunlight and the shadows— beauty on a larger scale. Proof, once again, of the power of perspective. 

Newborn

Newborn

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Happy is the day that dawns unexpectedly cool. The door that swings open into rare air. 

It is the surprise that matters, expecting heat and humidity in mid-July, unaware of weather reports, of fronts arriving or departing.

When you get something else, something altogether delicious and cleansing, it takes your breath away for a minute. 

The world is newborn.