O Say Can You See?

Blog for July 1^st, 2009

The Fourth of July Weekend is approaching. I plan to avoid the noise and the smoke and the crowds and head down to Camp Island. That is not to say I will not be celebrating. How could I miss the chance to celebrate Independence Day and the ideals of our Constitution?

I really mean that. I have been thinking about the importance of democracy quite often these days. The Petersburg City Council is in conflict and our town is in turmoil. In the middle of the summer salmon season, you would think it was February with all the talk of recall petitions and lawsuits. Too many meetings end in recrimination, and angry commentaries blare across KFSK’s airwaves and Letters to the Editor.

Some council members seem to think their personal agenda for the city is infallible, and they do not want to be bothered with the messy and slow democratic process. Fire the city manager if he opposes you. Why wait until the entire council votes on whether to hire an interim city manager when you can get a potential candidate on the phone today? If city department heads don’t go along with your plans, make them quit or fire them. This kind of rogue behavior is a slap in the face to democracy.

This situation reminds me that the principles of our Constitution call us to a higher standard of behavior and that freedom is hard won and never safe. Democracy is a legacy that requires our vigilance and participation, because greed and selfishness are a constant threat.

This is not to say that the councilors in question are particularly venal or oppressive. They are just self-righteous, and convinced they know more than anyone else does. Hey, I have been there. I remember last summer taking care of my father, when I was convinced I was the only one who knew what to do. Soon I was railing against the nurses, the doctors, my siblings, and health aides…In short, everyone else was wrong. That is when it helps to do the math. I was right, and 25 people were all wrong. When the odds are stacked like that, a “You might be deluded” light should go on in your head.

“Don’t let the Best be the Enemy of the Good”, a friend told me then. This is true, especially when you are trying to build consensus, which is the foundation of democracy.

Yes, the democratic process is messy and convoluted. So much listening has to take place. Building consensus takes time, compromise, and a huge amount of patience. Progress is slow but without this process, there is the danger that one person‘s short-sighted vision and urge for power will create a landscape of fear and oppression. It happens over and over on the small scale of interpersonal relationships, and on a global scale.

On the Fourth of July, we shoot off fireworks and remember wars fought, but “Bombs bursting in Midair” is not the only or even the most important way to support and protect our freedom. Voting serves democracy, and sitting on local councils. Educating ourselves on issues, listening to opposing viewpoints and trying to come to consensus should merit a medal. So should speaking out against those who abuse power, because it protects democracy at its most basic level.

This Independence Day, I am grateful for all those people who came before me, who served democracy in large ways and small. I salute the courage and patience it takes to preserve this ideal, and pledge to support it however I can. Maybe drink beer and light stuff on fire too. After all, it is the 4^th of July…

Sittin’ on the dock of the Bay

 

 

Blog for June 25^{th, 2009}

Sitting in the harbor on the Heron, I am staring out of the pilothouse windows at the boats moving back and forth between the docks. Summer is in high gear. The seiners are in town between salmon openings, and I am listening to the scream of hydraulics and the deep roar of the diesel-powered skiffs. Kids swing on a purse line over a pile of nets, but the actions of most people I see are purposeful and rapid. The season is short, and there is more to do than time to do it.

I feel like the grasshopper that sat and watched the ants putting away their winter stores. Foreboding lurks just under the surface. I remember that story did not end well. There is nothing I can do about it though. This summer charter season is slow. People are cutting back on spending. Vacations are expendable in an economy teetering on collapse.

I worry more about my attitude than the money. I have seen money come and go. Courage matters more. How do I find the flexibility to face changing circumstances with creativity and optimism? It was easier in my early twenties. I am fifty-two. I just want to take a nap.

The first years we had the Heron were much like this. We had no real income. The boat made little money. Everything was new. I was not confident of my ability as a cook or a guide. I worried constantly that we would not get enough trips, then I worried if we could make people happy, and keep them safe. The weight of fear made me ill.

Years later, when the business was successful, I was sorry to think of all the time and energy I wasted worrying. Yet here I am again, circling in the waters of uncertainty, and doubt is the undercurrent of my days. It takes a conscious and energetic effort to beat back fear.

I know so many friends in this predicament, some whose concerns are far more serious, waiting the outcome of a biopsy, praying for recovery, worrying how they will pay for college while deep in debt, trying to imagine how they will keep their house, or heat it next winter. Many sleepless people staring down the Night Hours these days.

Courage is what we need, and a hearty dose of joy. That is my focus these days. Looking for inspiration in the lives around me and in my past.

I think of my parents, whose disastrous personal finances coincided with a recession when they were my age. They dropped what they were doing and moved to Zaire in Central Africa. Dad started organizing labor unions for the AFL-CIO, something he had never had any experience with, and my Mom started teaching English as a second language. They completely reinvented their lives, and never looked back.

I don’t plan on anything so drastic, but it reminds me that it is possible to reinvent oneself, given enough imagination and heart.

I don’t have to measure my success by what I don’t have, or by what has been lost. I can choose to expand into the possibilities change is offering me or live in a crabbed and frightened corner of my life. The fullness of the present offers itself again and again if I have the courage to accept it.

It means I have to step off the well-worn path of the routines of summers past, and head off into unmarked territory. This is the challenge we all face at various points in our lives. What do you pack on that kind of journey?

An anchor is no use when you are drifting in deep water. The desire for the old life is useless. So I will try to scrounge up some humor, and leave complaining behind, along with fear. Try to slam the door on doubt, and catch up with Faith, which is strides ahead most days, just beyond my sight. See you on the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hundreds of Ways to Kneel and Kiss the Ground

Blog for May 27^th, 2009

 I am rebelling today against the list-driven life. For some reason, my ambition has flown out the window, and my desire to check off tasks has disappeared. As Greg Brown sings, “The spring wind blew my list of things to do away…”

 This rarely happens to me. I live in a town of hardworking people, who pride themselves on how much they have to do, and how much they can get done.

 Years ago, I was walking down the dock with a fishing pole one sunny spring day, past a bunch of guys with sanders, and they said, “Someone got all their boat work done…” Of course, I hadn’t, and they played me just like a fish. I went sport fishing, but the thought of my undone chores followed me all the way up the creek. That one comment seems to sum up an underlying ethic here in town. It would not work today though. Nothing  is compelling me to answer the call to apply myself.

It might be a Fun hangover from the three-day weekend at Camp Island. We had the 3^rd annual Camp Island Memorial Day Campout, and I am still reveling in the memories of tents in the yard, bonfires on the beach and babies in the grass. I pegged the Fun Meter all weekend. The sun was shining as we wandered the tide flats admiring huge icebergs, and explored the island. I found a new eagle tree, and fell asleep in the deep, soft moss, waiting for the adults to return to their nest.

 My favorite moments were late at night when the tide came in and doused the bonfire. We piled the flames high with drift logs and threw on spruce branches that exploded in a shower of sparks. The tide seeped in unseen in the dark, under the logs, and lifted the fire as water boiled around the glowing coals. The logs on top were still flaming as the coals sizzled, popped and groaned. “It sounds like the Cremation of Sam Magee!” said Eric. Fred finished off the fire by hurling an iceberg into the smoke.

 The wild Easterly wind out of LeConte Bay drove thousands of icebergs onto the beach. I kayaked across the bay with Sharon, and Joe paddled with young Van Abbott against the wind, through the bobbing ice to the grass flats to look for bears. Ben has seen a couple of black bears grazing in the morning. We finally found the lee, and wandered the flats, but all we saw was bear scat. Lots of it. “Hey, don’t worry”, we told Van. “This is several hours old…”There was plenty of it though. I think we have quite a few burly neighbors across the water from Camp Island.

 The next morning we wandered through a labyrinth of blue ice. Bergs the size of houses lined the beach. It was eerie threading a path between dripping icebergs, listening for the sudden crack and roar as one rolled in the tide, or broke under its own weight.

 We explored the tide pools exposed by a minus four-foot tide, and found scarlet prawns, and orange starfish, purple urchins and striped anemones.

 My soul was transported to another reality over the weekend and it has not come back. My body is in town, and my boat is in the shipyard. That should be enough reality to snap me to attention. But nothing is working.

 I always feared this would happen one day, that the rigorous discipline and work ethic I imposed on myself would disintegrate, and I would become a vagabond, a drifter. It doesn’t feel  bad actually.  I may have a future as a  Lotus Eater. As Rumi says:

   “Today like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. “

 

Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now

Blog for May 17, 2009

Today is a raw, rainy afternoon in Petersburg. One year ago, on a day just like this, I flew into the airport on Martha’s Vineyard in a rattling little prop plane, shuddering to a stop on a wet airstrip, on the back of a Northeast wind.

I was flying back to bury my Dad. The Hospice Nurse had called a couple of days before to tell me the end was near. So I flew all night, feeling sandy and exhausted from traveling, writing Dad’s obituary in my head.

My friend Bill picked me up at the airport. He’s the kind of friend who would bring cold juice and a muffin, since he figured I had not eaten. I can remember so clearly riding in Bill’s truck, drinking ice-cold orange juice, and staring out the window at the blossoming Dogwood trees. I stopped to pick lilacs, as I gathered my strength and resolve.

The driveway to the family house was strewn with garbage. Raccoons had gotten into the cans and strewn diapers across the yard. The house was dark and still. Inside, it was cold, and filled with dirty dishes and unemptied urinals. I walked in the front door, filled with dread.

Dad was alive, but very weak. His face was waxy and swollen. I held the lilacs under his nose and he smiled. That was the first day of our last summer together. He lived for another four and a half months. I accompanied him from lilac season to “apple weather” in the fall. It was the trip of a lifetime.

The journey with my Dad started long before last May of course. I turned 52 last fall. He was my father all that time, but our relationship never acquired any depth until after my Moms’ passing, in 2001.

I remember the moment when our real journey began. I had returned to the island to put a stone on my mother’s grave. She had died in January. Dad had moved into her house, even though they had been divorced for years.

I was still angry at him, angry for the legacy of pain he had left behind when he left the family, when he divorced Mom. Too many angry things were said. I remembered his gigantic temper, and his apparent lack of interest in his children. My resentment was a well-banked fire.

I had not even planned to see him while I was on the island that fall. There was nothing to say, I thought. We had not spoken since a furious shouting match on the phone in January.

Then I found myself driving by the hardware store where he had found part-time work on the island. I was curious. My father was not a handy man. He was a world traveler, had worked as an educator and a consultant, a Director for the Peace Corps, an advertising executive. He had a Master’s Degree in Public Health, he knew a lot about design, but what he knew about hardware I could write on a bottle cap. So I stopped.

I did not recognize him at once. I was looking for another person. I was searching for the titanic man of my childhood, whose fury could blow through the house leaving a wake of curses and breakage. I thought I would find the sharply critical man whose dismissive and belittling remarks carved people into tiny caricatures of themselves. He was not there.

I found a man who looked just like my father, with a big, grateful smile on his face. He was dusting shelves, and dropped what he was doing when I walked in. “This is my daughter Julie,” he told his coworkers. “She comes all the way from Alaska.” He gave me a big hug.

Ok, I was disarmed by this. Still wary, still wondering who this version of Hy Hoffman was, I agreed to meet him for a walk at the dog park. On a golden October afternoon, with the brisk sea wind blowing bright leaves off the trees, I saw him walking towards me. He was a frail, older man walking two beloved dogs. He had just moved to the island a few months before. His second wife had left him. His retirement money was nearly gone. His prostate cancer had returned.

I looked at him without a lens of anger, without a legacy of pain. I saw his gratitude, and I saw our common history, and realized that sometimes forgiveness is just as simple as opening a window, and letting fresh air blow through.

That is where our journey began.

 

Last night I dreamed he was telling me goodbye, waving me off towards the airport. I was not ready to go, not packed, had lost my ticket, but he was adamant. “Go,” he kept telling me. “It is time you left”. It is the second dream I have had this spring where he has chased me off. Perhaps this is his way of telling me to move on. Obvious, isn’t it?

I am moving on, moving forward, living in the present with a grateful heart. I have more peace of mind now than I had before, less fear. That is because of the story of last summer, not in spite of it. So I visit it now and then, the story of my last summer with Dad, because it still informs me about how it is to live in the midst of dying, and what reconciliation means. It reminds me that mercy is a quality that fills the parched and thirsty places in our hearts.

The story of last summer tells me that we have no idea what lies ahead, but we have everything we need to face the journey. What we do not have, we will find along the way. There is such calm in knowing this. So I am grateful for each step of last summer, for the garbage and the flowers that were strewn across my path, and for every obstacle and every friend that cheered me on. Wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now…

The Restful Rain

 

Blog for Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Rain is falling steadily outside, and I am grateful. The last two weeks of sun have been welcome after the long winter, but I am tired and achy from working hard on the Heron, sanding and painting. My hands are dry and cracked, full of splinters and my soul feels just as parched.

 Rereading Wayne Muller’s book called “Sabbath” I am reminded of the importance of time off. I am always forgetting. I have driven myself hard in past seasons, trying to get the boat work done in a small window of good weather, before the charter season starts. I have often lost sight of everything else, concentrating so narrowly on boat maintenance. The work is physically challenging, but more than that, my spirit starts to starve when I refuse to look up from my list of tasks.

This year, I have been trying to work at a slower, steady pace. Taking time off to visit with friends, to go down to Camp Island, to write, to go for walks. I am bucking my own obsessiveness, and the whole culture of busyness, what Thomas Merton calls “The violence of the times”.

 Most women I talk to describe their lives as a whirlwind of responsibilities and activities beyond their control. If I had a dollar for every person I talked to that described themselves as being chaotically busy, I would never have to work again.

 How do we get this way? How is it that people with and without children, in cities and in rural places, all find themselves caught up in a frenzy? It is definitely  a matter of perception, some cultural vision dictating that our value and redemption lies in direct proportion to the busyness of our schedule.

 What burden would you put down? What could you cross off the list? What would that cost you? More importantly, what would you gain?

 This rain is giving me a good excuse not to rush to the boat. For all my intentions to live a more balanced life, I am still driven by my “To Do” list. Rest restores my soul; the way water quenches and softens the ground, and nourishes the plants. I feel so small and foolish, that I can forget such an important lesson. Rest. Replenish. This is a cycle repeated in the natural world that surrounds me. I am surrounded by reminders. My beautiful crocuses slept all winter under a bed of kelp, before bursting into bloom. The trees are budding out at last, and yawning bears are starting to wander the beaches after the long quiet winter.  Dormancy serves a purpose. Even my sander has an “off”  button.

 Wayne Muller talks about the importance of observing some kind of Sabbath time in our lives, whether it is a creative or spiritual space. His book is full of poetry and traditions from around the world. I reread this book from time to time to remind myself that there is another way to live, and it can be a richer, kinder way. I do not have to live on the edge of my nerves running on an ever faster treadmill. This can be a choice I make.

 On this rainy day, I am listening to birdsongs and watching the  falling tide. Choosing not to chase a list of errands, and rest for a while. I have seldom looked at the rain as anything but a nuisance, an obstacle to my plans. In a rainforest, that can amount to a fairly combative relationship with a major factor in my environment. If life is a battleground where our agenda fights constantly with the reality of the world around us, what can flourish there?

 Weeks of rain can drive me crazy, but this gentle afternoon shower is bringing peace to my heart.

 

 

 

 

 

RavenDancer Comes to Town

from www.genetagaban.com

 

Blog for April 21, 2009

 

Last night, a Native Storyteller performed in town. Gene Tagaban once lived in Petersburg, but now he travels the world, telling stories, dancing and playing music. He is a self-described “Indipino”, a mix of Tlingit, Cherokee and Filipino ancestry.

 

Gene has a strong sense of his Native American Heritage, and yet his stories reached across the boundaries of race or age. As he said, “We are all Tribal People”. He engaged the audience in empowering statements, getting everyone to shout “We are Storytellers! We are Birth Warriors!” His approach connected strongly with the audience, and when he asked for volunteers, the children swarmed the stage.

 

The kids drummed for Gene as he donned his Raven Regalia and danced across the floor, and down among the audience. He became Raven, with his cocked head, and swooping wings. The abalone eyes glittered as he hopped across the floor then swirled his wings overhead. Amazing.

 

Gene could be an old man telling a story to his grandson, and at the same time, be that child. He embodied the ravaged veteran at the top of a mountain, about to commit suicide, and the curious deer watching. Then he could be the old Auntie stirring soup, full of knowing when the weary veteran made his way back down to the house. 

 

He filled the auditorium last night with ancestors, and spirit animals, with ghosts and with laughter. Gene reminded me to have an open heart, to keep a sense of humor, to judge less and laugh more. We laughed until our faces hurt from smiling. What joy! I am grateful for his spirit, bright as the spring wind, blowing away the last cold drifts of winter…

 

Gene reminds me of my friends from Kake, Mike and Edna.  They too are Citizens of the World. Wherever they go, they are home. I think of Edna coming over to Petersburg around Christmas, putting on an apron, walking into the kitchen full of strangers at the Sons of Norway to help at the potluck. “Oh, I am just a Village Person” she told me. As though she knows, it is all just one Village.  Mike has the gift of meeting people where they are, and sharing what is true and beautiful about this part of Alaska.

 

There are people that I have met who have the gift of connection. They seem to be members of the larger tribe, the Human Family.  They remind me what matters and how to behave. They show me:

 

Be at home on this earth. Be gracious and welcoming.  Remember Family. Look for connection.   Be Grateful. 

 

I am grateful today for all the people in my life that embody these values and show me over and over how to live on this earth, with humor and warmth, with music and stories.

Gunalcheesh! Hoho!

 

 

 fromwww.genetagaban.com

 

 

 

Living in Facebook Village

 

 

Blog for April 7, 2009

   

       Living in Petersburg is a dichotomy. We live in the middle of wilderness, but in a tiny town with no secrets. It is like living in a fish bowl in the middle of the deep blue sea.

        In my town, if you walked down Main Street, you could figure out many of the stories without asking a question. Weddings are listed in front of the gift store. Next door, births are announced in the window of the clothing store. Want to know what people do all day? See the calendar at the side of the bank, or look in the windows of the Drugstore for the latest achievements of local kids. Of course, endless events are posted one on top of another on every bulletin board, and there is even a specific bulletin board just for pets. The radio station announces who is looking for a house, who found some keys, and what the elementary school kids and the old people are eating today.  When all this busyness is through, your name ends up on the door of the Post office, so people can attend your funeral. Our whole town is a Facebook page.

       My life has been a balancing act between needs for connection and solitude. I love the wilderness and I love the town. What works best for me is living close to that border. I could get lost on this island, and my bones would never be found.  On the other hand, my head is so full of the back-stories that even a simple encounter relies as much on history as it does on the present.

        This last weekend was KFSK’s Wearable Art Extravaganza. It is an annual fundraiser where people are encouraged to create art out of found objects that can be worn. This year’s theme was “The World of Contrasts”. It helped to have some back-story, although I think the show was a success on its own merits.

        When one of the medical assistants dressed up as a Dominatrix,  in a dress of recycled materials with a gothic tattoo and a bullwhip, it helped to know her regular persona was as a wholesome young nurse at the clinic. She is the one who takes your blood pressure and temperature, and she has a very sweet, gentle nature. Usually. She did handle the whip expertly though.

 

       Then a group of women came out disguised as colors in the color wheel. It was not hard to determine who was who. We know each other’s movements and shapes. I can recognize people from their walk, or their gestures.

          The familiarity is both a blessing and a curse. This kind of closeness can be a comfort or it can ride up on you like cheap underwear.  I alternate between overcommitting myself to needs in the town and isolation .  I love the closeness and it also gets unbearable, but I would probably choose it again.

           Living this closely in community has taught me  about accountability and the importance of service. I keep relearning  tolerance, and am trying to get a handle on setting boundaries. There is still so much to learn.

            Sitting with Hunger this week, trying not to distract myself with lists and compulsive eating and mindless television has been hard. I wanted to know why Hunger was here, and he said, “Because you called me”.  I wanted to ask more, but Hunger interrupted, “Lady, I don’t like talking. You want to chat, call Faith or Trust”.

 

 

            I remember what my wise friend Edna said about all of us living with our hungers, and  that the key is balance. So I asked Hunger about Moderation, and he just scoffed at me. “Do YOU even KNOW her?”

             Not so much. Maybe instead of concentrating on Hunger, I will think more about balance. Finding a way to live in Facebook Village without losing my mind means finding out about Moderation. Maybe Hunger will slink back out the door, and make room for Faith and Trust again. I think they were just out on a  coffeebreak anyway…They never go too far.

          

Sitting with the Hunger

 

Blog for 09April 4

 

I disabled my Facebook account this week. It was starting to rule my life. I was beginning to live my life around it, as in, ‘What can I do and then report on Facebook?” I took photos of every aspect of my day. I was checking it constantly, and spending way too much time thinking about ways to portray my life, maybe as much time as I spent living it.

 

This is not to say that Facebook is bad or self-indulgent. I am just realizing that my relationship with it is unhealthy. I can see how it can be important to people keeping in touch with far-flung friends and family. It can also help find old friends who have fallen out of contact.

 

There was an aspect of Finchiness too it though. I used to have a pair of Zebra Finches named Jelly and Beanie. They made a constant peeping sound during their waking hours. It seemed to reassure them about each other’s presence, and since they were generally anxious little creatures, they never stopped checking in on each other.

 

I remember one time when Scott and I were having a terrible trip on the Heron with people who were making me insane. Scott was up in the pilothouse out of the line of fire much of the time, but I would go up there often and ask ridiculous and unnecessary questions as a response to the stress I guess. Finally, he was fed up and just turned to me and went “PEEP.PEEP.PEEP.PEEP.PEEP.”  I got the point.

 

So I was peeping away on Facebook most of the last week, and realized that it was getting in the way of the rest of my life. So I am dropping it for a while. I already miss it.

 

I have been thinking about the nature of addiction. This is always a hard time of year for me for some reason.  I tend to drink more and eat badly. Maybe it is the boat maintenance.  It is a tough season, fighting the cold and wet weather, doing hard physical labor. Finally, I have gotten good enough at it that my results are predictable. In earlier years, I had some frustrating failures. I would get very cranky.  I remember a friend stopping by and telling Scott that he saw me on the dock  drinking a beer at nine in the morning. I think Scott just said, “Let her”. I think my respirator may have saved my marriage. It is almost impossible to understand what I say when I am wearing it.

 

I have gotten much better at boat maintenance after nearly 30 years though, so I am not drinking out of frustration any more. In fact, the hours on the boat are peaceful now. I still have cravings though. Now it is for chocolate eggs. I have already eaten three bags and Easter is a week away. Part of it is from being outside all day perhaps, working hard.. Then part of it is that I have an addictive personality. I can’t eat one piece of candy. It has to be by the handful.

 

Oh well, what is the big deal? Just candy right? Addicts know it is never about the substance though, whatever it is.  It is not even about satisfaction. It is all about the Hunger. Fighting off the Hunger.

 

So I think about that. What does it mean to sit with the Hunger? To quit chasing it away with food or amusements? I thought I would try it for a while. Make some sense of it. Ask it some questions, like “Why are you here?” People who meditate say it is much scarier than you would believe, and more emotional. I am just tired of running. I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

In the presence of ice

 

Blog for March 29, 2009

 

Light snow is falling outside. I nearly wrote January as the date before I was reminded by a chorus of songbirds below me at the feeder that spring is heading this direction. It must be unavoidably detained somewhere far to the south of here though, and sent the birds on ahead.

 

Yesterday Scott and I took the skiff to Camp Island and LeConte Glacier. The signs of spring were subtle. A shadow of shorebirds flashed across the water heading north. Small avalanches in the bay sprayed white veils of snow down the steep walls of the Fjord. The waterfalls are frozen. Snow is deep, burying the valleys and mantling the ridges up in the bay. Winter is curled up and sound asleep at the face of the glacier.

 

Being inside a place of such drama and beauty is hard to describe in words. It is a visceral experience, not  intellectual. I feel tiny and vulnerable in the face of powerful forces. Ice, tides and rock are in relationship here. I am like a little insect landing lightly on the table or a vole running across a meadow, completely exposed to the sky. My life does not even register on the scale.

 

There is no room for mistakes here. We were watching the glacier, waiting for ice to calve off the face, when we suddenly realized the lead behind us was closing in. Scott carefully maneuvered the skiff back into open water as I pushed icebergs the size of small vehicles out of the way with an oar.  It only took a few minutes, but with a steady breeze and the tide, if we had waited we would have been locked up in the ice pack.

 

I realize living here has made me watchful. Sometimes people tell me I “worry too much” or say people in Petersburg are “fear-based”. This trait is described as a Nordic dourness, or a certainty that something is always about to go wrong.  Perhaps it is a vigilance learned by living on the water or at the edge of wilderness, where forethought and caution save your life. Of course, then it can tip into negative thinking which colors everything. It is all a matter of scale.

Thinking about contingencies on the water is an essential survival tool. When it comes to obsessive control over party details, well, then it tips off into craziness. I have seen both in my town, and I believe somehow deep down they are related. Maybe it is the lack of sunlight too.

 

The landscape and weather of Southeast Alaska have shaped us. When the skies are clear for a few days in a row, people in my town run themselves ragged being outside. If dry weather continues for more than a few weeks, soon people are getting crabby and exhausted and secretly hoping for rain. They become worn out. They won’t clean their house or do any inside chores because they know it is going to start raining again, and it might be weeks before it stops. So they run around outside and garden and paint decks that take a week to dry, and don’t stop moving until it gets dark and when the days are long, this takes a toll at least among the over-30 set.  When the sun shines here it is on of the most beautiful places on the earth.  This just doesn’t happen that often.

 

You think I am exaggerating, but I know children who did not see the Full moon until they were two years old. I remember summer days in Petersburg when businesses on Main Street closed because it was sunny for the first time in weeks.   When I would go back and visit my family on Martha’s Vineyard in the fall, the weather would still be balmy and warm. I would run from sunup to sunset, biking, clamming, swimming, boating, scalloping, and hiking all in the same day. My sister and mother were mystified. They asked, “Why is she like this? Is she on drugs?” Part of my behavior was a reaction to being trapped in the galley on the boat all summer, but part of it was a reaction to the sun. I was drinking it in like a parched person, marveling at the subtleties of shadows and light.

 

WHY DO you live there?? I hear this over and over. People here sometimes ask themselves the same question. I look out at the gray and green landscape and the snow flurries this morning, and realize I love it here. I love the snow-shrouded mountains, and the strong tides rushing past the harbor. I love LeConte Bay and being in the presence of wilderness and forces of nature that dwarf human endeavor. People sometimes perceive the silence and slowness of natural forces as emptiness. I see it as a fullness that infuses my heart with peace. Being witness to the forces of ice and water and rock for me is walking in the presence of Grace in the universe.

 

The silence and the solitude create space in my heart and make it possible to live in a small town where lives are so entwined. I bring perspective back like a gift carefully wrapped to sustain me on my journey, lifting me like clouds of shorebirds rising off the water over the details and busyness of my daily life.

Making Friends Facebook style

Blog for March 26, 2009

     I am thinking about connections today, the ones between wires and the ones between people. There is a recurring theme in my day lately. The wires in my MP3 player no longer connect, so the music comes only through one channel.  Sometimes. The Shop Vac on the boat also only works if the plug is in a certain position. I find myself doing an inordinate amount of “jiggling” to find the sweet spot that provides me with music and/or suction.

      I have also been sucked into Facebook. “Come on!” my sister says. “You will find all kinds of people you have lost touch with”. Another friend warns me that it is also like letting down the boundaries it has taken a lifetime to build. I am curious as I picture a horde of Mongol horsemen stampeding towards me.

        Which one of them is right? Well, both of them. I love the example my sister gives of a woman who was a tough bully in high school who asked to be her Facebook friend. When Annie ignored her, she got nasty. Not much change there!

          Much of Facebook takes me right back to school days. There is the tension and expectation surrounding being allowed “in”. I don’t think I have directly asked, “Will you be my friend” of anyone since nursery school. Then there is the “note passing”, which actually was the high point of my educational experience right through college. I think my best friend Cindi kept all of our hilarious notes, and I do not think I have laughed as hard since. Glad I have that memory, because I remember almost nothing of Mineralogy or Petrology.

       One frustrating aspect of Facebook though is that it curtails much communication. The comments have to be limited in length and that reduces experience to a sound byte. It reminds me of cocktail parties, where conversations stay shallow, quippy and short. Irony abounds, and posturing is inevitable.

        So I retreat to the blog, where I can attempt to develop an idea or tell a story. Where the wires connect for more than a short burst perhaps.

          I am new to Facebook, and I am still figuring out the way it works. I post a photo and a comment and it disappears forever. The same way I can only hear Rory Block in one channel right now, no matter how I jiggle the wires. The vacuum wails like a banshee. It is about to give up the ghost. If I move the plug, it stops.

         I remember something I read in Ann Lamott’s writing about when life gets really frustrating in one corner, then something off in another corner is trying to be born. I hope that is true, because on this very grey and snowy day at the dreary end of March, something need to pop its bright green head over the horizon. Winter has already outstayed its welcome. Meanwhile, I keep working on connections. The ones in my hands and the ones that extend into the world beyond this snowy harbor, bordered by shrouded mountains.