for Jon, Maria and Izzy

the tulip is singing

a song for the broken-hearted.

a song of grief

and a song of rejoicing.

a song of remembering

and of forgetting

of holding and letting go.

I ask myself these questions:

can you let yourself be sung?

(the melody is unknown)

can you let yourself be danced?

(there are no steps)

can you open and open again,

trembling in the wake

of this fierce music?

SHARE & EMAIL

I remember these trains from my childhood.  This one is by the side of the road – part of an ice cream shop outside of Bay City, Wisconsin.

Last night, as I lay in bed, I could hear the distant trains that pass below the bluff along the Mississippi.  I love the sound – distant, eerie wails but comforting somehow.  Hearing them in the night, they feel subterranean – buried in memory – dream trains, bearing hidden cargo, moving between the big cities at night, out of and back into the dark.  Echoes of an earlier time, but here still, calling me now.

Visiting the Midwest is like that for me.  I feel surrounded by the ghosts of old selves, haunted by the layered dust of memory.  My sister and I touch those times tenderly, casually.  Being here feels like traveling backward in time into a present that holds the shapes, smells and tastes of the past.

It used to be that coming home felt like trying to put on ill-fitting, outgrown clothes.  Now it is different.  Time and space seem jumbled, wrinkled and folded in on each other. Everything is familiar and I am the stranger, traveling on the dream train.  Destination unknown.

On another note:  Jon Katz has been sharing poems that go to the heart and this one is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.  There is no confusion here:  past and present woven, shining with appreciation.

SHARE & EMAIL

I read this poem, “When you Can’t Stop Crying”  by Jon Katz on Friday morning and burst into tears   It has been a raw, dark week for me.  There is a part of me that cannot feel into what is coming, or that fears what is coming and prefers not to look.

And then there is my beloved, beloved Capprichio, nose in the grass, hooves on the earth, eye to me, reminding me to taste what is here right now, to stand where I am and breathe all of this in.  And today, when I was appreciating him, and appreciating the warmth, and appreciating the opening blossoms om my crab apple tree, the lilacs, the sun I could feel a budding possibility, beyond my control, beyond even my ability to imagine.

This weekend I am traveling to Minnesota to visit my sister.  Janet is one of the most ebulliant and optimistic people I know.  When the genetic cards were being dealt, she got those.  Whenever I see her, I say I am going to get an infusion of “Janergy.”

Next post from St. Paul.

SHARE & EMAIL

After lunch yesterday with Jon and Maria, Jon told me that he still didn’t know what I do every day, reading my blog.  He also said that he didn’t feel like he knew much about me. He likes the blogs, likes the writing, but wants to feel more of me there.  “Caught,” I thought.

The conversation came around to hiding, to fear.  I talked about not wanting people to know too much of my life.  “Why?’ he said.  I thought that I might burst into tears. The feeling was like the moment before an avalanche.  A huge cliff of hanging snow about to plunge down the mountain, obliterating everything before it.  “I am afraid,” I answered.

“Why?” he asked again.  I talked about the kind of fear and vigilance that I carry.  Twenty-six years married to the same woman.  The love of my life.  And in the world, I walk around with this mantle of fear and caution.  Not all the time, but often.  It seeps into my writing.  It colors how much I will say, how much of myself I will show.

I didn’t talk about age, or even about how I hide my age. I will talk about it later.  I am not sure how much of the fear and hiding I can unravel in one post.

I think that is why I loved being with Rocky. Why I love my horses, Capprichio, Amadeo and Sanne, and why I spend time every week with Nelson.  They do not care about any of that.  They care that I am there, that I am present with them.  And when I am with them, I don’t care about any of those things either.  It all falls away.  Dissolved in love and in the moment.

SHARE & EMAIL

Today Pam and I drove up to visit Bedlam Farm, home of Jon Katz and Maria Wulf.  Our friendship with these two amazing people has grown over the past few months.  Jon is an inspiration and a mentor for me, a budding blogger and writer.  With some trepidation I had asked him to look at a couple chapters of my book, Horse Dancing:  Artists, the body and the bond between horses and humans.  He is pushing me to show myself more, to open more, to step out of the shadows.  I thought I was.  I can see now that I am not, that there is more to show, more to share.

I also wanted to meet Rocky, the 30-year old pony that lives at the future Bedlam Farm.  Jon has posted some beautiful photos of Rocky with me today on his Facebook page and his blog.  To me, Rocky felt like the sleeping prince waiting to be kissed to awaken.  Jon and Maria had been giving him some soft kisses, but Rocky needed a big smooch to wake up.  He has been alone for a long time.

This is what I loved about today, what broke my heart open.  He was ready.  Not that he had just been hanging around waiting, but when he was touched, really handled, it was as if his body remembered all of that and opened to it like a flower in the sun.  I think that is a testament to how deeply he has been loved.  He became animated, eager and responsive with his herd of four humans.

Nelson, the mustang that I work with is like this now.  He wants to be with.  He is relaxed and happy, interested in whatever the next thing is. His life feels pretty good to him now.

I think this is what we all want, each of us in our own way.  To be with, to be touched, to be cherished, to be one.  I know it is what I want.  I am not always able to express that.  I don’t always give myself over to being loved the way Rocky did today.  That is his gift to me today.

Maria said that usually after his apple and a bit of brushing, Rocky wanders away. She said that was a relief, because it marked an end to their mutual commitment.  Rocky was wandering off because there wasn’t a compelling reason to stay.  Now he will stay.  And so will they.  He has felt us, and he knows there is more.  More love, more connection, more of all of us.

SHARE & EMAIL

I read three blogs pretty religiously:  Jon Katz, Maria Wulf, and Seth Godin.

Currently, I am reading Seth’s brilliant new eBook on education, Stop Stealing Dreams.  I am reading it in a non-linear, popcorn way – dropping into whatever jumps out at me from the index.  It is free.  Seth wants us to share it.  I am sharing it.

Since I am doing more teaching, his book is perfectly timed.   It is also perfectly aligned with my ideas about teaching, how we learn and improvisation as a crucial building block in education.  I was very excited to see “improv” in his list of courses he would like to see in schools.

Seth is brilliant.  Reading his posts is like riding, except that I am the horse.  Each post is like what we call in dressage “an aid:”  a touch of the leg here, a shift of the seat there, a half-halt that helps me to connect, direct and refresh my energy.   Each day I receive a subtle, insistent correction of direction, balance and perspective. Seth is what I call and uber-thinker, a true radical.  He lives pretty much outside of any box I can think of.  And he is inspirational.  The other day he wrote:

If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you’ve got… then you’ve handed control over your happiness to the gatekeepers, built a system that doesn’t scale and prevented yourself from the brave work that leads to a quantum leap.

The industrial system (and the marketing regime) adore the mindset of ‘a little bit more, please’, because it furthers their power. A slightly higher paycheck, a slightly more famous college, an incrementally better car–it’s easy to be seduced by this safe, stepwise progress, and if marketers and bosses can make you feel dissatisfied at every step along the way, even better for them.

Their rules, their increments, and you are always on a treadmill, unhappy today, imagining that the answer lies just over the next hill…

All the data shows us that the people on that hill are just as frustrated as the people on your hill. It demonstrates that the people at that college are just as envious as the people at this college. The never ending cycle (no surprise) never ends.

An alternative is to be happy wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, but always hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you’re gone and most of all, doing important work.

For several days I drove by these forsythia that had pushed themselves through the fence.  I liked the feeling of their boldness, their refusal to stay inside the lines, and the wild pattern of color and shadow they created.  That, I hope, is what I have taught my daughters.  And that is what I am learning (and teaching) now.

SHARE & EMAIL

Last summer Pam and I went to Bedlam Farm to interview Jon Katz for my book, Horse Dancing.  I had been reading his blog posts about Simon, the donkey that he and his wife Maria rescued.  The story he was telling in his blog was about a man who loves and knows dogs stepping, no falling, into the equine world.  I wanted that story to be a part of my book.  His book Rose in a Storm, which I read in a storm, is my favorite animal story of all time.

We have been trying to connect since summer and managed a meeting today in Rhinebeck.  It is interesting to move from a virtual relationship to a physical one.  For me it has been mostly the other way around.  But Jon and Maria have been taking friendly shape for me through their writings – Jon in his Bedlam Farm Journal and Maria in her Wulf Howling blog.  Today Jon, Maria, Pam and I stood outside at the farm where we board our horses.  I had just ridden Capprichio, and he stood with us as if he was hearing and understanding everything.  Interestingly, he was not obsessed with getting his nose in the grass, but kept gazing around the little circle, taking in his human herd.

We talked today about connection and finding and creating community through the internet.  About privacy and what we reveal, and how we control the message.  About what one’s story is and how that is shared.  About sharing an artist’s life in this intimate, anonymous way.

I do not always have a clear sense of my audience, and if it is growing or how much I should care about that.  Mostly, I try to find the thread for the day, the thing that I want to push into and explore.  Today felt like friendship steeping, taking on a richer color and fragrance.  Another beginning.

SHARE & EMAIL

This was too delightful not to share.

(I wonder if Jon Katz who reads to his beloved donkey Simon, will take up an instrument. . . )

SHARE & EMAIL

Today like every other day
We wake up empty and scared.
Don’t open the door of your study
And begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do
There are hundreds of way to kneel
And kiss the earth.

                                                     Rumi

I have been reading Jon Katz about Valentine’s Week.  This post touched me deeply, because I too live with an artist, and when I see the light shining from her studio windows, my heart leaps.

Lately she has been painting hearts.  They are ecstatic, wildly beautiful.  I have already picked out mine.  “That one,” I said,  “That one is mine.”

2012 marks 26 years together.  That seems an impossible number, and yet there it is.  The years, the days, the minutes are a complicated dance, a beautiful improvisation, a meditation on listening, on moving, on being moved.  Being a love warrior, which mostly means learning to love oneself deeply enough to love another.

SHARE & EMAIL

Appreciate something.

Light a candle.

Find stillness.

Take a walk.

Take a nap. 

Breathe.

And with appreciation and thanks to Jon Katz, I had to share his Bedlam Farm video of Nicolene, the magical barn fairy.

SHARE & EMAIL