Jun 12, 2010 | Random Thoughts
Ming just returned from a five-day ceramics workshop. He was learning about wedged coil building, which is something he has never done. He loves the wheel, and he is used to making four pieces in an afternoon; but last weekend, it took him four days to finish a single piece.
Every night when I talked to him, he said, I don’t know what I’m doing, I can’t get this done, the clay is too wet, the clay is too dry… He was beginning to face the fact that he might not have a single piece from the entire workshop. It was a new experience for him not to know where he was going, not to be comfortable as he was creating. And every day, the piece changed. Other potters would say, That looks good. Why don’t you stop? Isn’t it done? But it wasn’t.
It was a lesson about time. About how time is an ingredient too. I thought of my own memoir, coming out nine years after I lived it. After two years, the draft I had was too full of me and had to be slashed in half. After four years, the draft became a hybrid novel/memoir; after six years, a meditation on narrative that manipulated form so the memoir moved from third person into first as personal awareness was earned. Now, all of that artifice has fallen away – a gift of time – and the final book is tightly woven and startling to me: this week I read the page proofs, looking for typos and for sections that I will read in public, and I found myself, at times, in tears.
It was the gift of time that I found the courage, in now-forgotten moments over these last nine years, to write this way. It was the gift of time that I could see a bigger picture, a different angle, a universal experience in these little things that happened to me. Each morning, the artist wakes up and looks at the world from a new place. And finally finds himself in the right frame of reference to finish the biggest, most organic piece of work he has ever produced on the very last day of the ceramics workshop.
Jun 2, 2010 | Random Thoughts
If the past has already happened; if it is an event or thing that is at least as far away from “now” as the split second we need to begin to describe it…
And if the future is a realm of possibilities that might manifest someday, but that exists now only as fretting and testing and planning, and if the future too is also something that is far enough from us that we can put words and consideration to it…
If both of these are defined by our ability to articulate them…
Then what is the present?
And what is memory?
Memory is the way we choose to describe the past, from the moment we are in now when we make that choice. A moment which is, of course, “future” to that past we are describing on the timeline we all believe in.
Memory is our only tool to understand and keep the past, whether it is our own memory, or another person’s, or a compilation of memories set down as history in a book.
But if we continue to move into the future, away from the past, and if our lives contain an always new and different constellation of events and perspectives as a result, then the past is always new because the future is always coming.
As this happens, memory changes.
And the past changes too.
May 27, 2010 | Random Thoughts
The last time I saw the Dalai Lama (I love saying that), I had a date with my then-estranged husband to hang out in Central Park and listen to a talk on compassion with some 200,000 people. He didn’t show up (the estranged husband, not the Dalai Lama).
This time, I was sitting in a lunchroom at the Department of Education’s Hearing Office waiting for my son to be called to testify about being shot by a BB gun three times at school, and I picked up a paper out of boredom – I never read the paper – and there was a full page announcing the Dalai Lama at Radio City Music Hall.
What I remember most about the first time was the way that man laughs, how readily he does, and how his upper arms shake with joy. The ad was a sign – as unexpected as me with a newspaper in my hand – it was a gift, a call for peace, on what was turning out to be a very bad day.
Armed only with a texting cell phone, which is high tech for me, and one flickering bar of service, I texted my partner Ming from the lunchroom and asked if he wanted to go, and if so could he get tickets? There was a flurry of texts – which day, what time, which one could Ming reasonably get to immediately upon returning from a ten day trip to Australia and Singapore? He got tickets. But somehow in our truncated back and forth, and our New Yorkers’ assumption of options, we failed to realize there was only one public talk on Awakening the Heart of Selflessness, and what he had purchased were seats for the final in a series of six intensive teachings on the Commentary on Bodhicitta, which was delivered in Tibetan and translated.
We went, of course, because when you have the chance to hear the Dalai Lama, you go.
It was a dense teaching, with a heavy emphasis on how to meditate, offered by a jolly robed man sitting cross-legged on an enormous, ornate throne; a man, I guess I should be calling him His Holiness, who popped a maroon visor (which matched his robe) onto his bald head with a grin to read the scriptures. I enjoyed his English punctuations: “Generally speaking, vegetarian food is best.” “Mainly using common sense, isn’t it?” One of his messages was joyous effort, and amid his directions for how to cultivate a single point of attention, how to understand that appearance is not the true nature of reality, and how we are all too attached to “I,” this comment stood out:
“Just as the wind blows a piece of cotton, so shall I be controlled by joy.”
The wind has blown me all over the place recently, and I am so grateful to have a cheerful, maroon-visored reminder to relax into it and let it be joyful.
May 9, 2010 | Random Thoughts
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. And also Dad, who too often these days has to be Mom too.
Apr 30, 2010 | Motherhood in the Media, Random Thoughts
My son was shot three times – in school – by a BB gun, and I didn’t know it. He was shot in the back, and in the ankle, and at the base of his skull. This was not a single, isolated spree of a crazed shooter in the school yard. Five different sixth graders shot their classmates (three boys, two girls): at recess, on the subway to a fieldtrip, in the stairwells of the school building; while they were standing in line on the fieldtrip, flanked by teachers on either end. It was not a single day either. The gun came back to school again and again in the backpack of a child who sat at the same table, in the same homeroom, as my son.
Many kids were shot.
No one told.
This is not a case ripped from the headlines. This is standard, every day middle school bullying…with gun. For weeks, my son studied with the kids who shot him. He left for school knowing the gun might be there. He had to deal with the fact that a person he’d always thought was his friend sidled up to him at recess and shot him in the back at close range. What haunts me the most in all of this is: none of the kids said anything. When I first asked my son why he didn’t tell anyone, he said, “Because they said if I told, they would shoot me again.”
How could he believe that? I pointed out the obvious: you tell the teacher. You show the place where you got shot, supply the witnesses; she finds the gun and takes it away. Voila! There is no more shooting. This is crystal clear to me.
He looks pained.
He doesn’t believe me.
My son thinks: If it has happened, then it can happen. He doesn’t want to be shot again.
It shocks me that he conceives of a future where such a thing could continue to happen. My perspective is just the opposite: it will never happen again. I will make sure of it. I will take steps. I imagine scenarios of marching my son into the Principal’s office. The weapon is confiscated. Many relieved children begin to speak. Only later does it occur to me that the gun might not have been brought to the school that day, and that the other victims might been too afraid to break their silence. In this country, we are protected against false accusation, and what if we have no proof?
But even then, surely, there would be something I could do. Right is right, after all. We stand up for the innocent, and bullies get what they deserve – even if what sixth grade bullies deserve is compassionate counseling about how life is not a video game and hurting – hunting! – people is a bad thing.
What I have failed to notice in my headlong march down my imaginary hallway is that my need to take action and get this situation under control is fueled by exactly the same fear that I dismissed in my son: I, too, understand on some level that it can happen again.
What if no one listens?
Of course I will listen.
What if no one listens?
Of course the school we chose precisely because it is small and safe and teaches compassion and good citizenship will listen.
But what if they don’t? What if they don’t act, quick enough and with force?
The school in South Hadley didn’t.
Luckily for us, someone eventually told. I got the news first by telephone from the head of the middle school. My son is trying to feel comfortable in his school once again. And I am trying to use the incident to encourage him to ask for help when he needs it and to check in anyway even when he thinks he’s got something under control.
We need to talk about these things, I tell him: the good, the bad, the boring. Don’t leave anything out.
Of course, I have told him this before. I’ve offered my children other adults, who they love, in my place if they need to talk to someone who is not their mother. I’ve also kept him away from violent games and movies. I’ve insisted on empathy, and honesty, and coming to the aid of other children.
None of these things helped in the end.
So I ask him again, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It’s a hard thing,” he says. And a little later, he adds, “I didn’t know…”
This time, I listen because I don’t know either. Except, I know that it’s a hard thing because it seizes me up and sends me into a flurry of phone calls and emails –anything to get a handle on it. We have the same fear. Sharing it makes it seem more possible to overcome.
I told my son that I was sad, that I was deeply saddened for him and for all the children who felt they had to go through this, and struggle with it, all alone. We sat with that feeling together for a long time, and hugged. It’s not a solution to school bullying, but maybe it will keep us out of the headlines.
We can hope.
This post also appears on The Huffington Post. Please feel free to read it there, and share and comment there as well.
Apr 23, 2010 | Motherhood in the Media, Random Thoughts
I made a deal with myself today to let my brain take a break and to be guided instead by my inner knowing, even if I ended up at the pizza parlor when I was trying to get to the dentist’s office. This experiment was to help me get back in touch with my writing voice, after several weeks away. And it would normally be quite safe and simple, since my usual day only takes me around and around my living room, and once to the mailbox.
But today I got a call from my son’s school saying that my son had been shot with a BB gun. Two weeks ago, on a school trip. A child has apparently been bringing this gun to school and shooting kids in parks etc., but they only found out today when the gun was seen inside the school.
So I ask my child why he never told me, and he says, predictably, that he was threatened that he’d be shot again if he told. “That would be four times, Mom. And it hurt.” Four times? It turns out three separate children shot him with the same gun in the same incident. They shot, it seems, “a lot of kids.” None of whom told.
My inner knowing doesn’t know what to do with this. Nor does my brain. How can it be that my son doesn’t assume I can protect him? And what if he is right?
Apr 10, 2010 | Random Thoughts
I found a friend on the telephone recently. I answered it in the house I grew up in, and this caller, upon discovering who I was, told me he’d been following my writing. He said a lot of nice things about it – about how it was male and also female, in the way the ocean is female. That may not make sense to you, but it spoke to me.
He said he liked my writing because I have no agenda. But I do: I want everyone to take the next step down the path they came here to walk. In joy.
Apr 6, 2010 | Random Thoughts
Today is my mother’s 68th birthday. The bad news is, she doesn’t remember. The good news is, we remind her often and she always seems pleased – if surprised. And then there is the cake.
Most of us will, at some point, lose our mothers. Many have already lost her. In my family, we are losing her. Have been losing her for years to early dementia. I can’t say that this is one of the worst ways to go, since I don’t have the experience or inclination to judge other people’s loss. It has certainly been hard not to know what is left, minute to minute, month to month.
But the lack of closure in our current conjugation of the verb “to lose” also means…we still have her.
She laughs when we laugh, even if no joke preceded it. She is always ready to get into the car and go, even if she falls asleep once the engine starts in the way I used to pray that my cranky infants would. She can tell good food from junk. She follows the old songs with a bob of her head. She still trusts us – my sons and I are visiting from the other side of the country and she will follow wherever we want to take her, even if she sometimes asks who we are or marvels that there are two not quite look-alike grandsons ready to take her dark glasses off or get her seatbelt buckled.
She loves pretty things. She loves babies. She loves hugs.
Apr 4, 2010 | Random Thoughts
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
(Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inaugural Speech)
Today, whether you believe in a divine spirit in any form or not, let something go. Pick one thing that you are tired of carrying and drop it. Make room for something new to rise and take its place. Death and rebirth.
Let go, if you can, if you think you might be ready, of your fear of your own beauty.
Mar 26, 2010 | Random Thoughts, The Writing Life
My blog on their blog again! Sorry you have to click the link this time, just trying to raise my voice. :-)
Here’s a sample:
It’s real. People are afraid. Not of what exists, but of the possibility that we aren’t actually sure what’s in front of us. It might be worse than we thought; there might be some underlying problem. We worry that we have something – it’s ours, it belongs to us! – and someone is going to take it away or ruin it. Danger, danger! Warning, warning! It is as if we are standing on the very edge of the cliff and are too afraid to step away in case we slip in the opposite direction and fall over.
