Happenings

Last night I dreamed I went back to the assisted living facility looking for my mother. I came bearing trinkets and gifts and a heavy load of sorrow and yearning. Nothing looked familiar anymore. A very old man sat in a chair in a corner, by the pale blue light of a television set, cradling a baby-sized bundle in his arms, wrapped in blankets. For a moment I irrationally thought he was holding a shrunken version of my mother, but when I drew nearer, I saw it was a newborn baby, which he held with great tenderness, as though it were the sole reason for his existence.

I climbed a staircase and continued to search for my mother among the rooms upstairs, and when I found her, she was changed and aloof. Not even a sequin pin in the shape of a kitten was of interest, but I began to sing to her. When I woke up, the song was still clear in my head. I tried to hold onto it during the day, but now it is gone. I wish I could have walked around humming it in my wide-awake world, because it seemed to be some cross between a ditty and a hymn, and it may have had power.

And I don’t know what any of this means, other than the usual themes, but I set out into the day with a sense of mystery and wonder about the weird universe inside my head and the amazing one in front of me. From the steam rising up from my coffee cup to the fog clinging to Santa Rosa Island on the distant horizon, everything was astonishing. To be alive is to have your heart carved out with grief and then discover that the cut has left you lighter and more akin to star dust. To be alive is to strive for meaning while at the same time accepting absurdity. To be alive is to connect to other kindred souls, but to stand alone in the dark sometimes too, as steadily as you can, feigning courage.

I’ve had some wonderful conversations and correspondence with friends this week. On the exasperation (even rage) triggered in us by the current administration’s refusal to concede and spiteful obstruction of vital information needed to combat the pandemic, one friend wrote: “I'm not sure what it means to navigate this period gracefully. I think feeling a certain amount of anger is appropriate, given the circumstances, though it's not something we should act on, and certainly not something that should be allowed to morph into hate.”

But she describes the comfort of her solitary walks by the shore, and her observation of the varieties of birds, which little by little are sorting themselves out before her untrained eye, and she is learning to identify them. Her musings reminded me of the work of Robert MacFarlane, and his quest to re-wild the language, retrieving lost words for natural phenomena of landscape and wildlife. "Good names, well used, open onto mystery, grow knowledge and summon wonder. And wonder is an essential survival skill for the Anthropocene.”

A few days ago, I walked with another friend on a steep cross-country trail in the heat of mid-day, pausing now and then to catch my breath and sip some water. Somehow these shared expeditions yield intimate conversation, and as we wended our way back along a canyon road, we talked about our own histories of loss and detours leading to the complex and shining present. I found myself telling an old tale of regret, and the elusiveness of self-forgiveness. The following morning, with the ding of a text, these words from her arrived: “I hope you don’t mind me saying that it as just as important to forgive oneself as others. I have struggled with that too. Life brings such complicated questions, and I can see your heart strives to find what is right and good. As for mercy, know that there is more than an ocean for each of us.”

My religious beliefs have gotten misty over the years, but I am an active member of the Church of the Outdoors, and the Church of Friendship, and the Church of Trying My Best. An old man holds a newborn baby in my dreams, and I sing songs to my mother, who is in her own state of enchantment and distraction, and all of this is happening always. I step across the streams on myths and dreams, and there is truth on the other side.