Between Here and Gone (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

Seems crazy it's been a week since I blogged.  Daily might have been overwhelming, but weekly feels like too much time in-between.  I might have to find a Happy Medium (maybe a Tuesday *and* Friday routine?).  Speaking of mediums, Sarah and I are looking into psychic readings.  To be continued...

My Sunday was fairly quiet (deliberately so), and then Nancy, Dave, Chico, and I went to see Jennings & Keller in concert; they tour out west from May to October, so they've only been back in town a few weeks.  Great show, in that Laurie debuted a few new songs (one inspired by an essay in Small Victories, an Anne Lamott book I gave her years ago) as well as covered *two* Joni songs (For Free and Woodstock) in honor of Joni's 80th birthday (today, actually!).  Dana played the guitar, dobro, and pedal steel (a master of all three) and their harmonies were on point; I did cry a few times, but I am so glad I went.

You may recall that I've been very insistent on attending an in-person bereavement support group, at least for the first few months, and I did find a few gatherings in the area that qualified.  Chico, Sarah, and I attended one yesterday, fairly close by (every Monday 12:30-2:30).  It was very warm and welcoming, composed mostly of women who had lost their husbands, but still resonated with us (grief is grief, right?).  On one hand, it was difficult to process so much pain from others but, on the other, they are so loving and supportive of each other, a true Village.  Many approached us afterward with hugs and kind words.  I also plan on attending a different group (every 2nd and 4th Wednesday, 5:30-6:30), also pretty close to us.  If I like them both, I'll attend both.  No one says I have to choose.  It feels like forward motion, although even lateral is intentional movement.

I spent a good bit of today on the phone with UnitedHealthcare, in search of therapists in my network; I also asked for the following filters:  close to home, female, in-person, grief... which narrowed the field down to 8 (and then 6, because two of them had *horrible* reviews).  I called one already, but haven't heard back yet.  Thinking positive... 🌞

I did begin re-watching (although it's been decades - 2001- since my first go-around) Six Feet Under, which is now available on Netflix.  I almost shut it down completely in that the first death, a bus/car accident, happened in the first 8 minutes, but I kept going, and continue to be reminded of its brilliance and resonance with my current mindset.  There are 5 seasons, and I'm going slowly, so this could take me into the New Year.

Thanksgiving.  Right now, anything is better than here, where my heart just could not handle sitting around a familiar table with my youngest in absentia.  My sister Mari has thrown herself into this wholeheartedly, for which I am extremely grateful, conjuring the joyful chaos I have cultivated over the years.  We will help, it will all be great, there will be a gap and a hole and a metaphorical empty chair, but there will also be the love of family weaving its way throughout the day... and then we can stamp paid to the first First, with more to follow for the next 11 months, and maybe it will get just a bit easier with each one, or maybe it will feel like The Worst Groundhog Day Ever, in which we rip off the band-aid for Christmas and New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and Valentine's Day and Easter and Mother's Day and Father's Day and E's birthday ad infinitum until it eventually becomes The New Normal (which sounds equally horrifying).  Who knows, right?  In the immortal words of Ani DiFranco:  "it's my first time for this kind of thing".  No Superhero complex here... 🤷

SONG:  Between Here and Gone by Mary Chapin Carpenter

BOOK:  Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo

POEM(S):  Think in poems. Breathe in. 

Sing your grief. Breathe out.

Write your inner ocean in waves of words. Express your fire in exclamations on a page.  

Howl the words. Chirp them. 

Caw them across the sky.

Splash them. Sparkle them. 

Crack them open. Compost them. 

Plant them. 

Writing out the words

Rights what’s inside

And is a magical rite of inner alchemy.

Words are mighty powerful inside and out.

Express them in scribbles

Or sketches.

Express them in circles or spirals.

Keep writing till your hand hurts if you have to.

Till you are empty. Till you are shining. Till your face begins to rain. Till your heart and body and breath returns to center. 

Till you are again renewed.

~ The Wild Matryoshka

How We Are Carried by Sierra DeMulder

Did you know

fetal cells stay

in the carrier's body

after the baby 

is born?

Even if they

are not born alive

but birthed

quiet and indigo

as dusk.

For decades,

their DNA can be

found in the blood

and tissue of the one

who fashioned them.

Stuccoed to pancreas,

bone marrow,

heart, of course - 

that basin of folklore,

that antiquary of longing.

See how we were

designed to not let go?

How we are built

to carry love

long after it has

grown up 

and gone?

QUOTE(S):  “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” ~ Graham Greene 

"Write hard and clear about what hurts." ~ Ernest Hemingway

"The goal of the writer is to take what’s inside their heart and make it plain on the page." ~ Ada Limon (current Poet Laureate of the United States)

Mrs. Hemingway (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

I don't know how I managed to skip yesterday, but, for whatever reason, it happened.  Moving forward!

This week on PBS I've been watching:  "Hemingway, a three-part, six-hour documentary film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, examines the visionary work and the turbulent life of Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest and most influential writers America has ever produced. Interweaving his eventful biography — a life lived at the ultimately treacherous nexus of art, fame, and celebrity — with carefully selected excerpts from his iconic short stories, novels, and non-fiction, the series reveals the brilliant, ambitious, charismatic, and complicated man behind the myth, and the art he created."

It's brilliantly and beautifully done, with vintage footage, photographs, and letters from and to Ernest by wives and parents and friends (the one from his mother equating their relationship to a bank account is chilling).  Also, I may have known but definitely forgot that, of Hemingway's immediate family of six (two parents, four siblings), four died by suicide (the father and three of the children, Hemingway included).

I won't attempt to expound on his life and times, but here are a few articles that review the series (which I highly recommend!):

A New Hemingway Documentary Peeks Behind the Myth:  Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s film examines the burden of the author’s performance of himself.

'Hemingway' tackles the writer in a documentary as big as his tumultuous life:  The long history of Ken Burns documentaries ranges from places to people to entire wars. His latest collaboration with Lynn Novick, "Hemingway," falls in that middle category, portraying Ernest Hemingway's war-spanning, tumultuous life over six hours, which might not qualify as Hemingway-esque brevity, but proves fascinating nevertheless.

Hemingway:  Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have done it again. The documentarians who have occupied the top tier of filmmaking about American history with projects like “Baseball,” “The Vietnam War,” and “The Civil War” return to PBS tonight with a three-part series on the life and legacy of one of the most important authors of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway. 

"The writer's job is to tell the truth," Ernest Hemingway once said.  Great article from The Poetry Foundation.

I already have seven tattoos, and will most probably stop there but, should I ever decide on another, it most likely will be the final sentence in The Sun Also Rises, Jake's response to Lady Brett:  

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”  Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

SONG:  Mrs. Hemingway by Mary Chapin Carpenter

BOOK:  The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

POEM:  Montparnasse by Ernest M. Hemingway

There are never any suicides in the quarter among people one knows

No successful suicides.

A Chinese boy kills himself and is dead.

(they continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome)

A Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead.

(no one knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone)

They find a model dead

alone in bed and very dead.

(it made almost unbearable trouble for the concierge)

Sweet oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water, soap suds

and stomach pumps rescue the people one knows.

Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.

QUOTE:  "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." ~ Ernest Hemingway

A Frenchman for the Night (Jimmy Buffett)

For a friend recently returned from Paris - loved the postcard (ooh la la... :-)

SONG: A Frenchman for the Night by Jimmy Buffett

BOOK: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

POEM: Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don't see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors: fixed

notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate

from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

the Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night to become

the fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don't know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent. The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touches,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals,

burn to mix with air

and changes our bones, skin, clothes

to gases. Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

and how infinitely the heart expands

to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

QUOTE: "You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river." ~ Steven Foster