What an extraordinary year this has been. In the main it has been extraordinarily bad — the most painful year in my adult life. Most of what I have learned this year fills me with despair, broken intermittently by waves of revulsion. The strange thing is, what has happened changes my concept of my past, in particular my childhood, more than it does my future. The future trajectory of my life is, though, also changed forever by what has unfolded. I am reminded of Stanley Kunitz’s question, “How shall we be reconciled / to our feast of losses?”
More recently there has been a positive turn of events, an opportunity — balm in Gilead for me. It feels like a great blessing, one which promises me right livelihood, a chance to do my best work, and an adventure, too.
And here’s what so difficult: Almost all of this — good and bad — is stuff that I cannot write about here. At least not yet. So wouldn’t you think I could simply address less portentous matters, and let these taboo subjects sort themselves out? Apparently not. Hence the long silences.
So for now, as I try to gather myself yet again, I’d like to leave you with this little miracle of a poem by Jane Kenyon.
HAPPINESS
There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
That’s a beautiful poem, and I appreciate your sentiments: you make a place to write it, yet it cannot be said. The gap between what happens and what can be observed and recorded never yawns wider than when we have thus prepared. Fortunate it is, that nothing stops the utterances that we are not quite ready to voice, but do.
When Jonathan Safran Foer used his very new money to get himself an actual office a few years ago, he said, “I have to have someplace not to write.” I hope that once the dust settles on 2010, you’ll write more here. But, to write is to enliven — a thing, an experience — and to put distance on it too. Some stuff demands only to be lived, or perhaps survived, and does not yield to craft. Artistically and in other ways, I respect you for knowing the difference.
I feel understood, Elatia. That’s huge. Thank you.
Sal, So moved by this post, and hope you don’t mind a shout out to my blog readers to come here and read it in its entirety. There’s a wisewoman’s patience and long suffering in your words.
And yes, it is a miracle of a poem. Thank you so much for this.
I have always enjoyed whatever you’ve chosen to post here. And what you write today, especially in that context of “a feast of losses”, speaks deeply to the tenderness of what you hold within and to the value of withholding what is not ours to know.
Jane Kenyon is one of my favorite poets. Your choice of her “Happiness” is moving.
What a beautiful image, too.
[...] friend and fellow blogger Sally Reed (and the writer behind Butter and Lightning) recently posted a very moving message about grief, suffering and loss. I hope you will take a [...]
In order to stay true to myself and to my original intent with this blog, I’ve ended up with a number of what I think of as skunk-at-the-picnic posts, including this one. I’m touched that you all are interested. I feel encouraged. These comments mean more to me than you might guess. Thank you.
I appreciated what you wrote…But in an opposite way = I am coming out of a huge life altering grief and to my great surprise finding life interesting and even delightful, gradually finding away to feel pleasure and it is making me look at the Past in a new way. i have literally been trying to throw out the old to make place for the new. (a wrenching experience) .and your post made me think how rich our minds are. I utterly respect our choice to NOT tell whatever has to remain hidden for now Incubation!
Thank you for such a moving post. And I too, love the Jane Kenyon poem. When I copied and pasted it to my poetry folder, I found this one by Ellen Bass that I offer to you:
The thing is ~ Ellen Bass
to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.
Tears to my eyes, Jane. Thank you. And Namaste.
I actually wrote this offline, so if it seems a little stiff, that is probably why. Unlike Elatia, who focused on writing/utterance, and unlike Judith, who wishes to throw out the old, I am struck by the life changing aspect of not one, but a *feast* of losses. Technician and problem-solver that I am, I decided to share with you a way of being, coping if you will, that may help.
I am thinking about loss that is life-changing (in a non-trivial way). For me, losing a month’s pay would not be life-changing; losing my sight would be. Some losses might be disruptive, that is temporarily changing life’s routine, but not truly life-changing.
After a life-changing loss, I took some guidance from an idea developed by a group of women psychologists in connection with life-changing adult-onset chronic illness (aoci). [“Women With Chronic Illness: Overcoming Disconnection”, Wellesley Centers for Women, 1998] This group of women operate within the “relational” framework of Jean Baker Miller, whose seminal and groundbreaking work “Toward A New Psychology Of Women” appeared in 1976. They called their approach “The Three R’s” for recognition, renegotiation, and regeneration.
Recognition, as I understand it, is somewhat like acceptance in the well-worn Kübler-Ross model of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), although recognition implies not just acceptance of the loss but also conscious acknowledgement and acceptance of its life-changing effects.
Renegotiation is nothing like Kübler-Ross’s “bargaining”, wherein the grief-stricken one attempts to strike a bargain with God, nature, or the world, to mitigate her situation. Renegotiation, to paraphrase the paper, is the process of integrating the experience of the loss into one’s identity – “who am I now that my life has changed?”
Most resonant for me is the concept of regeneration, which the authors state is “is the process of creating meaning and connection in one’s [changed] life.” For these authors, “relational theory provides a framework for understanding the ways in which we respond to, and continue to develop with, [our experiences]. For women, relationships — the inner sense of connection with others — are the central feature of development” (bracketed words are mine). Although they are explicitly concerned with the psychology of women with aoci, I find nothing in what they say that is necessarily inoperative in men or that cannot be used in some way in coping with loss.
Florida Scott Maxwell wrote, “You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done…you are fierce with reality.” I find this to be true and also very difficult to achieve — possessing ALL I have been and done, and claiming ALL the events of my life. Half measures don’t work. I know from fierceness, though, believe me.
John, thank you for bringing your problem solving self to Butter and Lightning. I am familiar with the work of Jean Baker Miller and in general I admire it. The dilemma, which is seldom reckoned with by academics, JBM included, is the 18 inch journey between head and heart.
Ah, yes, the head/heart problem. JBM’s audience is mostly other psychologists and healers. Until the geeks perfect the ITCI (Interpersonal Telepathic Communications Interface) ideas are necessarily imparted head to head. It is then the job of the helpers to use those ideas in their head/heart relationships with their clients. So perhaps I was hasty in quoting from the help desk manual.
Free association on head/heart: sticks and stones may break my bones, but only at the stick/stone/bone interface.
That’s very quotable, John. I’m thinking maybe a t-shirt?