Some Principle of Being

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

Stanley Kunitz

Yesterday was a layered composition of loss and presence, change and constancy, vulnerability and resilience. Sometimes life presents itself in a rich and complex tapestry of interwoven threads, and all you can do is marvel, and let it wrap itself around you.

In the afternoon, there was a memorial gathering for Dian at the very place where she and her husband Peter had been married forty-five years earlier. There was no formal ceremony, just friends and family milling around remembering her, sharing anecdotes, and looking at pictures. “What a bad-ass she was!” said someone, reacting to a photo of her as a young woman in a tank top—all muscle and grit and simply gorgeous. And yes, a bad-ass she was.

A lone guitarist strummed behind the murmur of voices, and the train went by, and the sun shone brightly and the tide receded. Yet another passage.

I stood in the golden light, looking West, and thought about these words in a poem by Dan Gerber: “I wonder if I’ll ever get beyond the Milky Way/by dying—I wonder/If atoms of/my living body now/will ever get that far—I wonder what I/mean by I.”

I too wonder what I mean by I. Sometimes I marvel at the tenacity of this “self” that has been with me through all my incarnations and peregrinations, and sometimes I wonder what of it, if any, is the original me. Every molecule of our being is changed over time, but I still look out through what I believe to be the eyes of the child I once was.

In the evening, at the home of some friends, I wandered from the conversation and perused the books on a shelf, pleased to find a poetry collection. Our hostess pointed me to the Stanley Kunitz poem, The Layers (excerpt above), and once again I saw that a poet had expressed in few and perfect words the very things I have been pondering. I have never seen a poem that so stunningly addresses loss and aging, change and continuity, great love and determination…a will intact despite the “feast of losses”, and “every stone on the road precious”. We must dwell not in the wreckage, but within the layers. I believe it is possible to do so.

The next day I walked with a friend up a steep steady hill and we lay on the ground and looked into the sky and floated like the clouds, and we named the feeling delight.

Later I visited someone I have been missing, who is deep in the vortex of grief, and much was said, but more was left unspoken. To be a friend is to bear witness, to see someone clearly and love them unequivocally. It’s not always easy. I often lack the art. But none of this can be about my emotions or that intrusive and baffling “I”.

And at the core of me despite many transformations is a well-meaning little girl who will not stray from some abiding principle of being. I am going to do the best I can to follow the “thread”, as William Stafford called it. That’s the deal. We are lost without that compass. Life must be more than transactional. When the underpinnings erode, all is shifting sand. We’re seeing the consequences at all levels.

Now macadamia blossoms are dripping from the trees in the orchard, like strings of beads, pink and fragrant. The hills gleam green and the grass is trembling. As incongruous as it sounds, sorrow is good soil for extravagant bursts of delight.

My heart has been broken beyond repair but still possesses great capacity for joy, and that joy spills over into thanks and love.

I understand that I too will disappear, falling into everywhere, returning to the mystery.

But I am not done with my changes.