Last Swim

Because of the timing of my travels this summer, today was my last Early Bird lap swim, peaceful, meditative, and smooth, with country music and Carole King on the pool loudspeakers in the background (and louder in the locker room). I continued with naked meditation, today being the Throat Chakra, about communication, a troublesome spot for many women, given...all of known history. And now. The mantra for that meditation stone is "I speak my truth freely and positively," which is pretty much true for me. I am not afraid to say what I think, modified in certain situations by politeness, professionalism, and compassion. There is also a time to be quiet. 

But once again I am glad to be reading the right book at the right time. After sitting peacefully with the throat chakra, I read these words in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao*, by Junot Diaz: "the bruja feeling that comes singing out of my bones, that takes hold of me the way blood seizes cotton." Wow! I'm still scared of my own bruja feelings when they take the form of dreams or premonitions, but when they come "singing out of my bones" as poems, I am more than grateful! And that narrator is Oscar's sister, Lola, the name of my grandbaby, the one I am going to see!

*Kim, you get the book as soon as I'm done!

Heart Chakra, Five-Carat Soul

Today, Day 4 of the meditation-stones experiment (and day 2 of "naked meditation"), was the Heart Chakra, with its mantra, "I love the world and myself effortlessly." Closing my eyes, I smiled big at loving the world effortlessly, letting myself acknowledge that it sometimes takes a little effort to love myself, right after I've been cranky, for instance, or impatient. Also, how will I love my neighbor who just put a Trump sign in her front yard? Oh, but James McBride (and Jesus) already gave me an answer, in Five-Carat Soul, a book of short stories, some of them linked. 

Here is what helped me. (I won't tell you which story, nor give the full context for the quotation, so you can be surprised when you're reading this book!) A character is revealing what someone else said: "He loves the evil in all people. Because in loving their evil, he loves the evil in himself enough to surrender it to God, who washes it clean. He's loving what God made, is what he said." Now, this might be seen as a rationalization by some, or evangelism by others, but it sounds pretty wise and compassionate to me, a way to love thy neighbor as thyself, whether or not within a faith tradition, and a way to love the world and the self...effortlessly.

Yesterday, a Sunday without church because my church space was being used for commerce, a big annual sale, we were sent on a field trip to a church of our own choosing. I chose my usual church of my own backyard, also Emily Dickinson's choice, but, at first, it was raining, so I kept reading Five-Carat Soul indoors and did naked meditation. Then it cleared up, into a wonderful breezy day.

Likewise, this morning there was no swimming--thunderstorm--but I felt a beautiful breeze coming in the window at my back, like an Irish blessing, during naked meditation. It was so easy to love the world!

Naked Meditation

My friend Kim gave me a beautiful box of chakra-based meditation stones, and I have been using them to attempt meditation. Today I sat naked on the edge of my bed, after a shower, holding the solar plexus stone in my palm, watching my thoughts drift by and once thinking it was raining, as my hair dripped onto my nose and cupped hands. The mantra on the box for this chakra was, "I am powerful and radiant in everything I do," which I smiled at in a powerful and radiant mix of sincerity and self-mockery. My husband would have enjoyed discovering me naked, but he was elsewhere, possibly gazing out the window in a calm joy that the light rain would prevent mowing the front yard.

Meanwhile, I have been enjoying walking in nature on the hiking trail or around ponds or in the big natural playground now on the grounds of where my kids went to school. I am doing the BioBlitz for the month of July, a collaboration between the public library and the Ecology Action Center, posting pictures of what we find in nature (plants, animals, insects, fungi, etc.) and sharing them, seeking research-grade idientifications from experts or members of the iNaturalist community. Some of my favorites include flower-of-an-hour, found in scrub grass near Sugar Creek, but which I also remember on the edge of my dad's vegetable garden, itself on the edge of a cornfield (or beanfield, depending on the year), and partridge pea, found yesterday at Hidden Creek Nature Preserve, which is being restored gradually after lots of invasive plants moved in. 

While I have started a small stack of poetry books to read, I realize I won't be participating in the Sealey Challenge this August. I have some August travel and various commitments that will prevent me. Meanwhile, I am reading books from the 100 Best Books of the century so far, provided by the New York Times, with a follow-up readers' list. I had already read 51 of the 100, but now have read The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, and Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell, which had been pulling at me for years. Packed for travel, two paperbacks for the plane: Outline, by Rachel Cusk, and The Color of Water, by James McBride, a memoir about his mother, so it will probably make me cry. 

Grief is for People

After The Swimmers, I read Grief is for People, by Sloane Crosley, checked out from the library at the same time, and also the right book for the right moment. She's writing about randomly connecting the loss (by theft via home invasion) of some jewelry and the loss (by suicide) of a dear friend. "Grief is for people, not things," she says early on in the book, but the connection remains understandable all the way through. She does some risky things--her own detective work, going to Australia to jump off a cliff--but they make perfect sense, too. I really liked her prose style, and will seek out her fiction and essays.

Did these two books suddenly release me? I haven't been writing much lately, nor submitting poems, but this weekend I finished revising a short play and submitted it and also sent 4 poems to a contest. By chance, these submissions both had deadlines days away. Maybe not by chance? Have I become a procrastinator, motivated mainly by deadlines? Or was I inspired by Spenser Davis, who gave a lively, funny, and informative talk about playwriting at Heartland Theatre on Thursday night?

Possibly I was emboldened by this little girl, proud of her ability to stand up on her own in her playpen, and who is practicing walking now, too! Lately, I've been wanting to try new things, like writing songs--the music, not just the lyrics. Or learning tai chi. It seems impossible--I am way too busy!--but also perfectly possible--I could make room! I could change my life!

I've written before, and told people, relentlessly, about how I conflated the loss of our house with the loss of my mother. So it's no wonder I connected with Crosley's book. I was at the hospital with my mom in the morning, attended her transition to hospice care that afternoon, and drove to our house to meet Two Men and a Truck for the last load. That was the end. "Heavy is the enchantment of places you know you will never see again," says Sloane Crosley. 

Yes, but the very next day I flew to Oregon for the birth of my grandbaby. I feel lighthearted at the thought of Lola seeing a whole new world, and me seeing it again through her eyes. I'll be flying out again soon to see her. And here she is with her arms out like wings. 

Swimming in Grief

I'm swimming laps again this summer, as I've done for many years now, early in the morning, as exercise and meditation. I swim in the pool where I took swimming lessons and did water ballet as a child. After the first few lessons, when she watched us and/or read a book, my mother often dropped us off and picked us up, wet, later. Lately, swimming has helped me stay calm, rehearse things I have to do later in the day, let go of everything, and grieve. It's eight months since my mother died, and it surprises me how fresh the grief may be, in tiny moments, and insistent, like rain.

I am also reading a lot, and reading the right book at the right time. Today, I found The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka, and it's, of course, perfect. There's a woman in it named Alice, with mild dementia. "And even though she may not remember the combination to her locker or where she put her towel, the moment she slips into the water she knows what to do." This fits with what I just learned in Remember, by Lisa Genova, about how and what we remember. 

So far The Swimmers seems to be in a community voice, a "we" voice. "And when we are finished with our laps we hoist ourselves up out of the pool, dripping and refreshed, our equilibrium restored, ready to face another day on land." While I don't hoist myself up--I swim over to a ladder--I agree with all the rest of this! And, in keeping with water ballet, I am again awake to the synchronities of life and in my reading.

I'm reading The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu for the non-fiction book group at the library, about saving ancient manuscripts, and I just read (or re-read, as I think I read it as a teen, or part of it) Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, for the adult reading challenge, where July = Africa. I'm aware of the irony of reading two books about Africa by white writers. At least I had already read some others on the list and the display by Black or African authors. With Out of Africa, I was consciously seeking out the author's voice to see 1) why this book is considered her masterpiece 2) what colonialism it carries in tone. Yes, the colonialism is there, along with a deep love and respect for the country and its peoples, and its animals, even the ones she shot. I was comforted when she moved past killing them to watching them.

Contemplating the Africa theme, I'd thought I'd like to learn more about Mali, as my parents housed a young man from Mali several years ago when he came to the United States to get his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He is still a family friend. Timbuktu is in Mali, so yay! I am learning a lot. I can ask if he's read this book in my next letter!

It surprised me--but why, given all the synchronicity lately? and the "plot," as I knew she would be leaving the continent--to find this in Out of Africa, which resonated with the loss of my childhood home: "In this way began for me a strange era in my existence on the farm. The truth, that was underlying everything, was that it was no longer mine, but such as it was, this truth could be ignored by the people incapable of realizing it, and it made no difference to things from day to day. It was then, from hour to hour, a lesson in the art of living in the moment, or, it might be said, in eternity, wherein the actual happenings of the moment make but little difference." This sounds like the emotional denial I witnessed in my dad, and the strange near numbness I sometimes felt, but I was most struck by the living-in-the-moment connection, for that is how I grieved and am still grieving, disconnected from linear time, and from my former self, but, yes, in the moment.

I go back to the moment of swimming. And to this line from The Swimmers: "The moment I see that painted black line I feel fine."

OK, and also this moment! Lola in the water. Eight months old and crawling. In love with her parents and with the world. Always in the moment!

Constantly countering my grief is my joy, from the moment Lola entered the world and my mother left it.