So Many Selves, So Many Sensuous Worlds
Sometimes the world comes at us with such intensity, it’s hard to stay upright. It has been that way for us since our return to California. Life has strutted onto the stage, flaunting its stunning beauty but not withholding the horror, all in the same moment, and we who bear witness are struck dumb.
Hence, I have not written.
Some of the problems are prosaic ones: a septic system issue, cows disturbing an irrigation set-up, an old California laurel bay tree that suddenly seems diseased, dropping yellowed leaves. Others are more pervasive: the far-from-over pandemic, of course, the ongoing threats to democracy, the disillusioning folly of a species that seems doomed not to learn from mistakes. And here, front and center, in all its fury: fire.
Smoke plumes rose above the hills, and with it came the eerily familiar sense of fear and vulnerability and evacuation robo-calls in the early morning hours. We made sure our emergency “go” bags were packed…and it occurs to me that such a concept implies a chronic uncertainty and disequilibrium, and an underlying recognition of the ephemeral nature of things. We made the decision not to frantically stuff our car with objects, the photographs and paintings and sentimental valuables. It was too overwhelming. We’d just be ready to exit and let fate determine the rest.
And we have been spared, although I know a few who were not so fortunate. As ever, we are grateful for the heroic efforts of our firefighters, and newly in love with our little community of neighbors and friends who share this life at the edge and understand what it means to be here. We have had a few gatherings since, potlucks with big bowls of salad, a crockpot filled with vegetable chili, lemon bars and melty ice cream, and toasts of friendship and thanks. Welcome to California. Welcome home.
It is so hard to believe how recently we were in England, walking the leafy streets beneath bright autumnal skies, and getting to know our grandson Felix, who I now miss in a profound and almost physical way.
Like a child, I distract myself. I stay busy and stomp around. I groom my to-do list. I’m working on a children’s book with my eight-year-old best friend Virginia, the co-founder of Open Mind Publications, our little book-making company, which is not quite concrete, but more than just pretend. Virginia envisions shelves full of Open Mind books someday, chapter books, myths and mystery, just not “regular real life”, she says, because that would be boring. Ho hum. Who cares? A good story needs ACTION, a big problem to be solved, characters with magical powers, and an exciting battle or adventure. As for me, I doubt that I could handle more adventure than my little real life is dishing out, but I love Virginia’s spirit, and she helps keep me going.
The passing years bestow as much bewilderment as wisdom. Sadness accrues, loss sculpts our souls, the sparks of old regrets ignite and burn. And then someone sets a dish of pomegranate seeds on the table, like a vessel filled with rubies, and the moon rises like a blessing above the hills, and a hummingbird hovers near the window, and I nearly swoon. My friend Diane restored a wooden dollhouse for a little girl’s birthday, with windows and paisley fabric curtains, and even tiny lights. Monte and I chased away a few cows the other day, waving our hats and hooting, later laughing at the incongruity of it all. I got a letter in the mail from someone I knew in 1966, and a video of Felix in his little yellow vest, walking in the woods, reaching up to hold his father’s hand. I wave to airplanes now, in his honor, and we have seen quite a few in the last week, dropping flame retardant. I marvel at gleaming trucks and tractors. I walked at the edge of a vineyard with silver-haired girlfriends, a kaleidoscope of crones, and the air was hot and dry, but grandmother oaks spread their arms against the sky, and we were there to see it.
We inhabit these sacks of skin for a time, and perhaps return to stardust. I have had a lucky life. My only regrets are of kindness withheld…yes, I still haven’t fully forgiven myself. In the meantime, I practice a trick called “let yourself be happy for a moment”, and I’m remarkably adept at this.
My wise friend Dan approves. “Actually, those happy—free of anxiety—moments are just waiting all around us to be enjoyed,” he writes. “They are our ground tone, when we let the static go.”
He quotes Keats: “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
And I can’t resist sharing this last stanza of Wallace Stevens’ Esthétique du Mal (XV) because Wally was so observant and articulate:
One might have thought of sight, but who could think
Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?
Speech found the ear, for all the evil sound,
But the dark italics it could not propound,
And out of what one sees and hears and out
Of what one feels, who could have thought to make
So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,
As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming
With the metaphysical changes that occur
Merely in living as and where we live.
The air is swarming. So many selves, so many sensuous worlds, so many transformations.
I’m a mind in the process of learning, a soul in the midst of being forged. I am here. With humble gratitude.