tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-240674642024-03-13T01:11:51.452-07:00i am hopeA M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.comBlogger339125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-57402973202209639682017-03-02T14:04:00.000-08:002017-03-02T17:23:23.319-08:00the world I live in<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />Overlooking Oaks Bottom in on the first day of March 2017, © Amber Schley Iragui</span></i></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMH0JMYoi41hlsKPRhQUajLTmNJx5JZpd5w89VvJY8i6YaeuJBmmryqB-SlQNM4phPoebXs6csN2swb2-TviP-DKuHU0Jglc6OoOSJ6hcTo-zpOcLd_At3OxsdeCL3D87vot8a0Q/s1600/maryoliver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMH0JMYoi41hlsKPRhQUajLTmNJx5JZpd5w89VvJY8i6YaeuJBmmryqB-SlQNM4phPoebXs6csN2swb2-TviP-DKuHU0Jglc6OoOSJ6hcTo-zpOcLd_At3OxsdeCL3D87vot8a0Q/s640/maryoliver.jpg" title="I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proof. The world I live in and believe in is wider than that. And anyway, what's wrong with Maybe? You wouldn't believe what once or twice I have seen. I'll just tell you this: only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one. —Mary Oliver" width="507" /></a></div>
A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-90530579936698700842017-01-01T14:31:00.002-08:002017-01-01T21:43:37.087-08:00here's to another 365 days of possibility<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1odle_umBlX-6J-m0VNp45qbm9fZ29vk7F2LCOPMnLq0JGZSaqO9Ru1-bSGWJ2dEf-8lsEL2VniUs1mTS_cBEXw8hbqPiWC5qzMV8ZMNxfQNGfPgcWxfNiYf55IzIIDZS4RrlAQ/s1600/VISTUALA2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1odle_umBlX-6J-m0VNp45qbm9fZ29vk7F2LCOPMnLq0JGZSaqO9Ru1-bSGWJ2dEf-8lsEL2VniUs1mTS_cBEXw8hbqPiWC5qzMV8ZMNxfQNGfPgcWxfNiYf55IzIIDZS4RrlAQ/s640/VISTUALA2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-10642737972817525772016-12-28T00:12:00.000-08:002017-01-01T14:31:50.343-08:00I carry this quiet room inside me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM59fFMeotsAYgHJ7d5czo9yizVc9f2pkBcrohjp4Mbpze3tyGsjAeKI7mLNZhC0qjUln1jSOH-Rc4l5jFENUFvQBfuS6Lqg__am7W1jgjUKGxqdLvk5EX7T6Pd9lzeV0ZJd7BVg/s1600/altas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM59fFMeotsAYgHJ7d5czo9yizVc9f2pkBcrohjp4Mbpze3tyGsjAeKI7mLNZhC0qjUln1jSOH-Rc4l5jFENUFvQBfuS6Lqg__am7W1jgjUKGxqdLvk5EX7T6Pd9lzeV0ZJd7BVg/s640/altas.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">© 2016 Amber Schley Iragui</span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oiERLRLcEhqINE78FBWs7c3J15Z11mbvkWnlqv_M87g22OqDUO1VyNxFXAGodD0X5F37TWkIpTDKc55bevt4wBMAsaG0eiBnmJTpOcOkDWr8os-UgDrWSzfDL866T7zLC42fRw/s1600/etty+room2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Etty Hillesum quote" border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oiERLRLcEhqINE78FBWs7c3J15Z11mbvkWnlqv_M87g22OqDUO1VyNxFXAGodD0X5F37TWkIpTDKc55bevt4wBMAsaG0eiBnmJTpOcOkDWr8os-UgDrWSzfDL866T7zLC42fRw/s640/etty+room2.jpg" title="In the past I had to keep withdrawing from the world because it's many impressions confused me and made me unhappy. I would have to escape into a quiet room. But now I carry this quiet room inside me and can escape to it at any moment. –Etty Hillesum" width="384" /></a></td></tr>
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A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-40153362838071652032016-12-12T13:50:00.002-08:002016-12-12T13:50:56.382-08:00because holidays<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"And here I am sitting again, yes, sitting again by this faithful lamp, feeling indescribably serene and unhurried. I shall travel this day's path quite calmly and just take a little holiday—my eyes and head are slightly overstressed and overstrained. One must have the patience to do a little less."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">–Etty Hillesum</span>A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-43728960543445959832016-12-09T15:38:00.000-08:002016-12-09T19:09:17.899-08:00political anxiety<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The house is warm now, although this morning it was colder than usual and I bundled the children up to eat their breakfast. Outside is all ice dripping in the rain and every once in a while a splintery crash as sheets of ice slide off the roof or branches shake off icy coats.<br />
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I am trying to work; I<i> have</i> to work because I have a lot of it at the moment. However, my mind is full of worries, so many are crowding in right now! And if my own private worries were not enough, the election has cast a long cold shadow of anxiety. It's been a month now and I've been speaking with an anxiety I've never met before: a political one<i>.</i> I thought it impossible for Trump to win, and I'm a wee bit nervous that he will make paying attention to politics necessary.<br />
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Politics—that which I've previously left to people who find policy and power interesting. Or to those who can see past all the bluster and posing to the actual running of a country, to those who somehow don't lose heart. Not me.<br />
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Take abortion. I know it's a contentious issue, but bear with me. Studying the issue in college it seemed there were endless ways to evaluate it: from a philosophical, scientific, social, feminist, religious, historical, psychological, etc, point of view. The arguments sat there, in little black and white type on the pages of books. It was exciting to enter each one and see things from this perspective or that—sympathizing with the case for the unborn creature, convinced of the rights of the mother. I walked away from my studies with the conviction that the issue was hopelessly complicated, with no argument clearly triumphant. I felt in the end that both the mother and unborn child had some level of human rights that needed to be balanced against the other. I felt that because the mother was a fully grown, independent human, her rights did in some ways outweigh those of the unborn child—<i>yet not absolutely</i>. In contrast, the rhetoric of the political Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements were extreme and absolute. I felt frustrated by the burden their political rhetoric placed upon young women. Both parties used her dilemma as an opportunity to present their position in a tidy framework, as if it was obvious and easy. And both sides bordered on hysterical in their depiction of the other point of view.<br />
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Politics, I felt, was a ridiculous endeavor. <i>You might as well check your mind in at the door. </i>I put it aside and involved myself in subjects more given to nuance. But, since Trump will be the new president in January, and it seems unlikely he will die before then, I guess I have to gird up my loins.<br />
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And then there is another aspect of political engagement that has been weighing on me. If my Facebook feed is any indication (and I hope it isn't) it seems that the ability to listen to those you disagree with in patience and civility—that is, without freaking out, calling names, denouncing, and "unfriending"—is in mighty short supply. How have we become such thin-skinned, one-dimensional individuals?<br />
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In my early 30s in New York City I met a number of young professionals who were dedicated to liberal causes in a way that vaguely concerned me. To be clear, the causes didn't bother me, it was the way these young idealists regarded those who disagreed with them that did. They reminded me of the fundamentalist Christians I knew growing up: utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause and easily threatened by disagreement. In the Christian circles I had grown up with—anabaptists, fundamentalists, evangelicals—I had become familiar with the look of anxiety when people around them said or did things they flagged as <i>ungodly</i>, <i>secular</i>, or <i>of the world</i>. I saw the same behavior here, but from young liberal activists. The red flags this time around were ideas that seemed <i>conservative,</i> <i>Republican</i> or <i>Christian</i>. Around that time I was dating a thoughtful young Spinoza philosopher who was involved in a satirical culture jamming organization called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaires_for_Bush" target="_blank">Billionaires for Bush</a>. He had grown up in a southern Baptist family and but had left his religious identity behind. He, however, noted the same thing. He said that the religious fervor he associated with church youth groups was uncannily akin to what he saw among political activists. He wondered if some underlying impulse had remained, while the cause had changed.<br />
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It occurs to me now—perhaps as a result of paying attention to politics for a whole month—that what I really want is a political atmosphere akin to my time studying the various perspectives on abortion. I want issues explored from all sorts of angles, hearty discussion, disagreement, and—<i>most of all</i>—the civility to hear each other out. When I meet (or read an article written by) a person who seems adept at looking at things from numerous different perspectives a whoop of joy washes up inside me! <i>How exciting! How beautiful!</i> It doesn't matter if the person passionately espouses one party or point of view—what matters is their ability to listen to and acknowledge the opposition. I want to shout, "Listen! Listen! Here is hope for humanity!"<br />
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I wish we could, as a people, muster up the maturity to listen to those who disagree with us and see if we can find any common ground. Common ground doesn't mean we lose ourselves and our convictions, it means we honor those parts of our human experience we share. And the goodwill engendered may give us a place from which to engage in honest and thoughtful dialogue. It could mean <i>a new idea</i>, <i>a more expansive perspectiv</i>e, perhaps even <i>a win-win solution</i>.<br />
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So here I am, with a mind full of worries and my first case of political anxiety. And, as always, I have come back to the words of Etty Hillesum:<br />
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<i>"I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called wickedness, that I shall only hate the evil that is within me... In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves." </i></blockquote>
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</style>A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-84611607270867008352016-11-02T21:49:00.000-07:002016-11-02T21:53:12.742-07:00there is never enough time<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">From <i>And the Pursuit of Happiness</i> by Maira Kalman</td></tr>
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A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-20124449413244108942016-10-22T21:50:00.002-07:002016-10-22T21:53:21.285-07:00eight plagues not counting the election<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few days ago, walking home with a fresh loaf of bread under my arm, I came to a halt. Ahead of me on the sidewalk was an eight-foot, black-hooded figure stood with a scythe. It was leaning over the sidewalk, blade spanning the walkway like a banner. Okay, it's October. Halloween is quickly approaching. But I stopped. I let a woman walking her dog pass me. I helpfully pointed out the danger ahead, but she merely grunted, her nose buried in her phone. She didn't so much as look up from her screen as she walked past under Death's scythe. I reluctantly followed her. What I wanted to do was cross the street and avoid the ominous figure entirely. But that was silly, I reasoned, so I walked up and took a long look: I noticed the roughly cut black burlap gown, the wires holding the scythe in place, the string that lashed the figure to the fence. It's not that I suspected it might truly be the grim reaper, it's just that it doesn't seem like a good time in my life to take death lightly.<br />
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A few months before my father's death, life put on a Serious Face. I'm naturally prone to seriousness, so it doesn't take much. However, 2016 has given us: job restructuring, my son's testing for a learning disability, my dad's death, the sale of the businesses, my brother's state of mind after the sale of the business, Charles' new (and stressful) job, unexpected & chronic health problems, and of course the horrible horrible election. And, not to be forgotten, my mother-in-law moved near us in the spring. Charles vigorously dubs it "The Year of Challenges."<br />
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I feel less vigorous. I've started reading Rilke and Mary Oliver religiously, and am rereading the<i> Diaries of Etty Hillesum</i>. I started journaling again and begun listening to interviews with poets and philosophers via the <a href="http://www.onbeing.org/programs/latest" target="_blank">On Being</a> podcast. And I walk and walk and walk. I follow a daily loop along Crystal Springs, spying herons and kingfishers, flickers and barn swallows, red winged blackbirds and bushtits. I lean longingly over the creek hoping to spot the silver splash of salmon heading upstream to spawn. I talk to my friends while walking. Jenny called as I walked in a torrential downpour earlier this week, and listened (again) my litany of woe. "What number plague is this?" she asked laughingly, "There are usually seven." Well, I think we are at eight—and that's not counting the election. I think by the eighth plague you can start to expect that things to change for the better. Already I feel a resilience in my bones that wasn't there six months ago.<br />
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As I'm walking, this line from Rilke comes to me: <i>Now you must go out into your heart / as onto a vast plain</i>. Rilke is a heady draught from which you can only take a few sips at a time. Because, to use his own words, "Everything must be lived" (and living more than a few lines of Rilke at a time can be overwhelming!).<br />
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But out onto the plain I go: quiet and full, empty and expectant.<br />
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Next week Jenny flies in from Kona, and while she's here there is my Father's memorial service, followed immediately by Halloween. A joyful macabre mess awaiting me. Downstairs, in their beds, my children are singing one of my Father's favorite hymns, "Come Thou Fount." I am teaching it to them so they can sing it at my Dad's memorial. First my daughter's voice drops off in sleep, then my son's. The house is locked, and I have a cup of tea next to me. Whatever may come next, I still inhabit this snug little world of clean laundry and messy desks, steaming coffee and wet elm leaves, piles of library books and muddy boots, half-sewn dresses and half-knit mittens, bikes, tears, bird books, old computers, laughter, silence, kisses. A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-3379152493720536442016-09-09T11:45:00.001-07:002016-09-09T11:45:37.140-07:00forty days<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Begin with this. Forty busy days, days that seem to hold whole different days inside of them, days that are more or less negotiations with myself about how much I can get done. After the children are in bed I climb the stairs to my office to continue work, my mind awash with pieces of seemingly disparate puzzles. I feel like a cup full to the brim, but someone is continuing to pour.<br />
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My sister is sifting through the accumulations of my father's life: drawers of string and tape and glue, treasured cuts of exotic wood waiting for a purpose, colored glass, old books with torn cloth and broken bindings, and far far too many small pewter vases. He collected: plastic bags and garden tools, wool and cotton cloth for weaving, seeds, staplers, rocks, dried flowers, pencils, pads of paper with sad little sayings written on them, marbles, meat grinders, dental tools and surgical clamps, peppercorns, coffee pots, jars of honey, bars of soap, corn husks, magnifying glasses, plaid flannel shirts. My father prized that which could be put to use. He gravitated toward items that would be useful for homesteading in the 1800s, or if the electricity went out for a good while. I imagine he saw each busted garden tool restored, the rusted head rubbed shiny with steel wool, then carefully refastened to a newly turned and oiled shaft. As he stashed away plastic bags I suspect he imagined them reused until they turned brittle and torn, then twisted and woven into bath mats.<br />
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There is a lump in my throat that doesn't go away. It is a reminder, but of what I am not sure. I went to the doctor, she glanced down my throat and assured me I didn't have strep.<br />
<br />
Forty days, and then some. Wednesday night we held a <i>panikhida</i>, a short and beautiful rite of remembrance, to mark forty days since my father's passing. I said a silent prayer asking him to forgive me for having a service for him in the Orthodox Church. My father was a man of religious conviction and theological intransigence. I'm not sure he believed I was <i>truly</i> a Christian once I joined the Orthodox Church. To his mind the Orthodox Church was some lesser and more antiquated version of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Roman church he regarded with grave suspicion. But pray for him we Orthodox did anyway, <i>"with the saints give rest / to the soul of thy servant / where sickness and sorrow are no more / neither sighing but life everlasting."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
My eight year old son said afterwards that it was a wonderful service. He wondered if we could also have a <i>panikhida</i> for his beta fish, Thunder, who also recently died. Thunder lies in a decorated box in the freezer alongside his favorite rocks, awaiting burial. "So many people are dying lately," my son said, "Grandpa, Thunder..."<br />
<br />
I have not gone back to my father's house since the night he died. I can see the things all piled up there without going over to see them with my eyes. I remember the way he treasured it all. When I was twenty and moving out, I took a stapler from my parents home. Years later, when I'd moved the stapler with me to New York, my father found it in my apartment while visiting me there. He took the stapler with him back to Oregon. Apparently he'd been missing that particular stapler all the eight years it had been in my possession. My sister reports there are any number of similar staplers at the house and I can have one if I want. But honestly, I do not want a stapler.<br />
<br />
Nor do I want piles of yarn or small pads of paper or pewter vases. I might be tempted by scissors, or local honey, but I don't need more of anything. Not really.<br />
<br />
What I need is time. What I need is time stretched out and softly unfolding in front of me. Time unhindered by crisis or heartbreak or urgent business, just the business of walking and cooking and laundry and applying band-aids and bactine. Time just circling around the weeks like water, like leaves spiraling yellow to the ground. <br />
<br />
<br />A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0Portland, OR45.4807521 -122.642737245.3916906 -122.8040987 45.569813599999996 -122.4813757tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-17374022986097507082016-08-17T14:25:00.000-07:002016-08-17T14:25:49.200-07:00Rilke on the last day of the beach holiday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—<br />
you have seen it growing.<br />
The trees flee. Their flight<br />
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:<br />
he whom they flee is the one<br />
you move toward. All your senses<br />
sing him, as you stand at the window.<br />
<br />
The weeks stood still in summer.<br />
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel<br />
it wants to sink back<br />
into the source of everything. You thought<br />
you could trust that power<br />
when you plucked the fruit:<br />
now it becomes a riddle again<br />
and you again a stranger.<br />
<br />
Summer was like your house: you know<br />
where each thing stood.<br />
Now you must go out into your heart<br />
as onto a vast plain. Now<br />
the immense loneliness begins.<br />
<br />
The days go numb, the wind<br />
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.<br />
<br />
Through the empty branches the sky remains.<br />
It is what you have.<br />
Be earth now, and evensong.<br />
Be the ground lying under that sky.<br />
Be modest now, like a thing<br />
ripened until it is real,<br />
so that he who began it all<br />
can feel you when he reaches for you.<br />
<br />
Book of Hours, II 1A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-37844927480717515652016-08-03T00:07:00.000-07:002016-08-03T17:23:41.128-07:00of kindness, and cabbages, and the death of my father<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Today marks one week since my father died.<br />
<br />
It's not easy to write about my father. At least, it is not easy to write about my father in the manner people expect you to write about a father after he has passed. We did not have an easy relationship. He wasn't really such a good father.<br />
<br />
The morning after my father died I walked seven miles before lunch. I crossed the railroad tracks to the spacious tree-lined neighborhood just east of my home, where the houses seem to preside rather than populate the streets. I usually walk in my own well-ordered neighborhood: small Craftsman homes, rope swings dangling over sidewalks, roadside vegetable gardens, beehives, bikes heaped on porches. But that morning I wanted to wander without knowing exactly where I was, so I crossed over tracks and past the golf course. The roads, no longer gridded, meandered as if they'd lost all track of time. The houses, too, were dreamlike—facades like elegant faces with half-lidded eyes, enormous shrubs like well-coiffed hair. The only people visible were landscapers armed with blowers and wackers.<br />
<br />
I walked. Sometimes I cried. I didn't greet anyone because there was no one to greet.<br />
<br />
When I was a child many people told me I was like my father. As I grew up this seemed to me more a burden than a boon. My father was not a happy man, and his bleak outlook on life seemed to drain joy and spontaneity from any endeavor. I did my best to <i>not</i> be like him, and yet many of my personality traits flowed directly from him anyway. The list of interests we shared is endless: photography, rock collecting, birding, weaving, botany, theology, paper-making, recycling, to name a few. Even making soup—the one kind of cooking I do without consulting a recipe, and by far my only polished skill in the kitchen—was one of his best as well.<br />
<br />
Today my best friend sent me a poem. I texted her,<i> this is the best poem ever!</i> She replied <i>it was written for you!</i> But it could as well been written for my father.<br />
<br />
T H E A R T O F D I S A P P E A R I N G<br />
<i>by Naomi Shihab Nye</i><br />
<br />
When they say Don't I know you?<br />
say no.<br />
<br />
When they invite you to the party<br />
remember what parties are like <br />
before answering.<br />
Someone telling you in a loud voice<br />
they once wrote a poem.<br />
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.<br />
Then reply.<br />
<br />
If they say We should get together<br />
say why?<br />
<br />
It's not that you don't love them anymore.<br />
You're trying to remember something<br />
too important to forget.<br />
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.<br />
Tell them you have a new project.<br />
It will never be finished.<br />
<br />
When someone recognizes you in a grocery store<br />
nod briefly and become a cabbage.<br />
When someone you haven't seen in ten years<br />
appears at the door,<br />
don't start singing him all your new songs.<br />
You will never catch up.<br />
<br />
Walk around feeling like a leaf.<br />
Know you could tumble any second.<br />
Then decide what to do with your time.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
* * * * *</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am that grocery store cabbage, ducking down the aisle to avoid neighbors. And it's safe to say that my Dad was that cabbage too. He didn't go to parties. He didn't like restaurants where the tables were close together. He was a quiet, private person; more comfortable alone than in a room of people. I am the same way: I endure parties, taking long breaks to walk outside. I have spent many a party reading in the car (I rarely feel this is a poor choice).<br />
<br />
A few weeks ago, when my father was still able to carry on a conversation, he said something along the line of <i>It's not easy, but that's just how it is. Life is hard</i>. And I cringed. As a child, it was oppressive for me to hear this message over and over. <i>Life is unfair. Life is hard. People are ungodly. People will disappoint you</i>. I countered my Dad that day, even though I'd sort of given up on countering him at this point. <i>My life hasn't been all that hard</i>, I said. And it is true, all the doom and gloom I'd expected after my childhood never panned out. In fact, the opposite happened. There was so much light and beauty everywhere, people wanting me to do well. Helping me. Light pouring in every window, slipping through every chink in the wall. Some people were bad eggs, yes, and bad things happened: disappointments, heartbreaks, mistakes. But overall, the good seemed so much more substantial; the beauty so much more compelling. And somewhere along the line I found that the darkness bending around the corner was more a challenge to be met than a condition to endure.<br />
<br />
In the last days of my Dad's life we read to him from the <i>Chronicles of Narnia</i>. He'd read those books to us so many times as children, and we knew he loved them. It seemed fitting to read them back to him now. And yet I puzzle over my Dad's love C. S. Lewis' imaginary Narnia—where no matter how bad things seemed there was a griddle on the stove with bacon cooking and buttered bread, where light and solemnity and joy were abundant—with his own darkly suspicious outlook. It seems to me that Lewis' fantasy world was not made up of inaccessible things: friendship, food, valor, beauty, kindness, and honor are available to almost anyone. (Well, of course I'd also like a crimson cloak, a healing cordial, and a friendship with a courtly talking mouse).<br />
<br />
Which brings me to this: while I inherited many traits from my father, depression was not one of them. Once I was able to reject the murky worldview of my childhood, things got a whole lot better. Although I may want to hide from people in grocery stores, it's not because they are—or I am— rotten or evil. It's because I'm an introvert and find small talk exhausting. So many of the things my father seemed unable to appreciate and value in himself, I find also in myself. And yet, here's the rub: they are a source of joy and pride to me. Solace, enjoyment, meaning, hope, mastery, connection, and even professional fulfillment spring from these same traits and interests I share with my father. I protect these things in myself, finding ways to be that let them shine most fully.<br />
<br />
That day after my Dad died, while I wandered along sloping lawns and under old maples, I opened the On Being podcast on my phone. A new podcast popped up, a conversation with the poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Nye is one of my favorite poets, and has been posted on my blog many times before. But that day she talked about a poem of hers with which I wasn't familiar: <i>Kindness</i>. As I walked and held the loss of my father—a loss more keen for the sad brokenness of what wasn't—her words on loss, on sorrow, and on kindness walked with me. Her voice creating a path through the sadness, like light streaming through the leaves overhead, and kindness walking beside me.<br />
<br />
K I N D N E S S<br />
<i>by Naomi Shihab Nye</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Before you know what kindness really is<br />
you must lose things,<br />
feel the future dissolve in a moment<br />
like salt in a weakened broth.<br />
What you held in your hand,<br />
what you counted and carefully saved,<br />
all this must go so you know<br />
how desolate the landscape can be<br />
between the regions of kindness.<br />
How you ride and ride<br />
thinking the bus will never stop,<br />
the passengers eating maize and chicken<br />
will stare out the window forever.<br />
<br />
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness<br />
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho<br />
lies dead by the side of the road.<br />
You must see how this could be you,<br />
how he too was someone<br />
who journeyed through the night with plans<br />
and the simple breath that kept him alive.<br />
<br />
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,<br />
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. <br />
You must wake up with sorrow.<br />
You must speak to it till your voice<br />
catches the thread of all sorrows<br />
and you see the size of the cloth.<br />
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,<br />
only kindness that ties your shoes<br />
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,<br />
only kindness that raises its head<br />
from the crowd of the world to say<br />
It is I you have been looking for,<br />
and then goes with you everywhere<br />
like a shadow or a friend.</div>
<br />A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-4472371704001664592016-02-10T10:50:00.002-08:002016-02-15T21:12:28.904-08:00ten thousand steps<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjED83eJeNSiZbC8I_CY1cjA4a__pZlVqVpQSjEJyo36UQdZ-5ofYZI5pH6EQnL_hWJmnSMX2VsCi7cC0pcEhSOTGS2zUMJKBetNwqxi8MFE4BVolcfOE2bd1PCSwhj1GTPmM2kA/s1600/uniqueness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjED83eJeNSiZbC8I_CY1cjA4a__pZlVqVpQSjEJyo36UQdZ-5ofYZI5pH6EQnL_hWJmnSMX2VsCi7cC0pcEhSOTGS2zUMJKBetNwqxi8MFE4BVolcfOE2bd1PCSwhj1GTPmM2kA/s640/uniqueness.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i>out walking, Crystal Springs, © 2016, Amber Schley Iragui</i></td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
I don't write about exercise. It seems like an inconsequential and even impolite subject, something that should stay just between you and your running shoes. That is to say, the miles you ran yesterday? It seems embarrassing to publish those on Facebook. But since I don't exercise much, I'm rarely tempted to overshare. I error in another direction: I don't think about exercise much at all. And when I do, it is in an avoidant, fear-centered way—like <i>I ought to be doing it, and perhaps liking it, and I'll start tomorrow</i>.<br />
<br />
But indulge me in this subject for a moment. I have been thinking about it lately, and the trajectory seems to be veering away from my old worn habits of hate.<br />
<br />
First off, whether or not I admit it, I primarily view exercise as a means to losing weight. And, then, since I also think that the whole pursuit of losing weight is silly and overemphasized, I never truly commit to any exercise regime. I am not saying that good health is not a proper goal; it is an excellent goal. But it is no longer compelling enough to induce any suffering in the department of get-up-in-the-dark, put-on-exercise-gear, go-out-in-the-cold category.<br />
<br />
Nor am I athletic. I cannot think of one sport I enjoy watching, much less actually playing. All the sports I was forced to endure as a child—volleyball for instance—were entirely comprised of dread and longing: dreading the ball would come anywhere near me and longing for the game to be over. Compared to team sports, jogging is fun. At least there is nobody counting on your participation.<br />
<br />
The only physical activity I've ever looked forward to, and continued despite the feeling that I might just collapse, was dancing. And then I'm talking dancing to eurotrash at the Bulgarian Bar on the Lower East Side—drunks in suits, international students, Parisian tourists, an entourage of Indians who liked to dance with a chair. And it required no special gear, just something cute with flats.<br />
<br />
And I cannot go any further down this road without a word about gear. Pretty much everyday of my adult life I have worn a cotton dress (or tunic or skirt), with a cardigan, and boots. In the summer with sandals. That is pretty much all I want to wear. It's comfortable, flattering, and goes well with my scarves and earrings. If I have to put on other kinds of things, like logoed tees in blocked colors, or ubiquitous black yoga pants, I feel done. Like my life is pretty much over. I might as well pierce my eyebrow and streak my hair green and buy some ugly Louis Vuitton purses.<br />
<br />
So, well, exercise is not very <i>me</i>.<br />
<br />
So when I saw online link to a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/09/the-running-novelist" target="_blank">New Yorker article</a> with the byline "<i>an essay on becoming a writer and a runner at the same time</i>" I would have hardly paid it attention. Except that it was written by Haruki Murakami, a writer I discovered last year and have a crush on. And surprisingly (or not, considering my crush) Murakami's perspective on running struck a chord. This bit particularly:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...I don’t think there’s much correlation between my running every day and whether or not I have will power. I think that I’ve been able to run for more than twenty-five years for one reason: it suits me. Or, at least, I don’t find it all that painful. Human beings naturally continue doing things they like, and they don’t continue doing what they don’t like."</blockquote>
Of course every good article about exercise will tell you somewhat the same thing, <i>find some activity you like to do and then do that</i>. Except I tried and never found anything I liked to do (besides dancing at the Bulgarian Bar, inconveniently located 3,000 miles away). So I'd go back to my typical pattern of joining a gym, working out primarily on the elliptical machine, hating the florescent lights and tv screens, deciding instead to run outside, realizing it's too cold to go running outside, recalling my hatred of workout gear, giving up.<br />
<br />
But after reading Murakami's article it did strike me that there is one thing I do like doing that is some kind of exercise. And that's walking. Particularly walking with a camera, or walking to do an errand, or walking to get a coffee or see a view. However, if I attempt to walk <i>for exercise</i>—if I go out in sporty gear and try to keep up a brisk pace—the activity will go the way of all my attempts to exercise: I'll get bored and realize I'm wearing spandexy clothing in public. But if I go out walking in what I'm already wearing, and if I carry a camera, and if I don't indulge in silly self-talk like <i>no stopping!</i> or <i>keep up the pace!</i>, suddenly things change. I keep walking, I go farther, I forget this is a chore and I enjoy myself.<br />
<br />
Around the time I read the Murakami article, I also read somewhere that 10,000 steps a day is a healthy daily amount. I opened the little health app on my iphone (I'd been avoiding it because I suspected it was designed to induce exercise-guilt), and found that I was walking far less than 10,000 steps a day. But at the same time I noticed that during our weeks in Italy—where we walked often but hardly enough to feel I'd exerted myself—I walked far more than 10,000 steps a day. And, trust me, I was not dressed in any special walking gear in Italy.<br />
<br />
A month ago I began my non-serious, camera-in-hand, dress-and-boot clad walking. While it takes a little planning to get 10,000 steps into my day, it is not by any means difficult. Walking suits me, and I live in a neighborhood suited to walking (for example, the grocery store is a little over a half mile away).<br />
<br />
It is silly that it has taken me so long to realize this. But I am happy. Happy walking around my neighborhood, keeping an eye on the birds and bums in the park, photographing plastic fairies stuck in tree trunks.<br />
<br />
<i>P.S. This article was supposed to be about uniqueness. I tried at first to play up the uniqueness of how long it's taken to realize that I wasn't going to start Exercising, but then realized that my situation is probably not that unique. However, to find what suits you and to run with it, to accept yourself as you are and do the best with that, is to take hold of one's true uniqueness—in the sense of one's true humanity. Uniqueness plus humility. I like that.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>{ and for a more on-topic post, here's <a href="http://daysdearestwish.blogspot.com/2016/02/home-to-roost.html" target="_blank">Julia's blog</a> }</i><br />
<div>
</div>
A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-42168055562199604932016-01-27T13:52:00.000-08:002016-01-28T10:16:39.161-08:00winter, photos<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwqdkKrgtUyqv8MEUx1KdY3N3Jg7BkQFEK4Bhkh-VaxTI2FUh3XGUoukXrkr4YnZ2J_FH9bxr0h0nFtsg6UykHOQihqwOGKe-Z8Rr3PCRqiOsjCmXp1xuPQua2DwA_JGj58P01cQ/s1600/IMG_8208.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwqdkKrgtUyqv8MEUx1KdY3N3Jg7BkQFEK4Bhkh-VaxTI2FUh3XGUoukXrkr4YnZ2J_FH9bxr0h0nFtsg6UykHOQihqwOGKe-Z8Rr3PCRqiOsjCmXp1xuPQua2DwA_JGj58P01cQ/s640/IMG_8208.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i>looking off the front porch, © 2015 Amber Schley Iragui</i></td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
Winter in Portland is mild. Snow is unusual, and lasts a few hours or maybe a day. It usually changes to rain, freezes again, coats trees and walkways in ice—and the city literally shuts down. Mostly though, winter here is wet. It is damp and cold and dark and rainy. But it is not bitter. It is the end of January and already daffodils are sending up green shoots, the crocuses are blooming. I have the window in my office open a crack and I hear the crows making plans outside.<br />
<br />
At this cheerless time of year, an hour of sunlight is like gold. Yesterday afternoon it was sunny for a bit, and joggers appeared in running shorts. A boy walked down the road in bare feet. A quarter of an hour later it was dark again and raining.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFSG6ldhgAGLqnlHCQxYqhGC5LsECJOukwBA9a1mHdXiICLNUrTLYSDpO2SmRC_VpNKPN13tH6fg-ffNtNOuptOXUjhOu8UsTnuRust7KddFlI6vNcD5FhwhsrgRcaoLolE5pMGA/s1600/winter3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFSG6ldhgAGLqnlHCQxYqhGC5LsECJOukwBA9a1mHdXiICLNUrTLYSDpO2SmRC_VpNKPN13tH6fg-ffNtNOuptOXUjhOu8UsTnuRust7KddFlI6vNcD5FhwhsrgRcaoLolE5pMGA/s640/winter3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i style="font-size: 12.8px;">after morning drop-off, © 2015 Amber Schley Iragui</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtzrSRvk-A2M49gIbfBPjGyW7VS60KMxbGOPIPcUmXW95JBlkWUn1-S2A5VviGxHNxu2f_ug1pRD6Gx3uaxE8RQMHD0D_kH86f-8psjL38lvEOXBSrd0B4DU6bfyqv-wxB1DP5kA/s1600/winter2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtzrSRvk-A2M49gIbfBPjGyW7VS60KMxbGOPIPcUmXW95JBlkWUn1-S2A5VviGxHNxu2f_ug1pRD6Gx3uaxE8RQMHD0D_kH86f-8psjL38lvEOXBSrd0B4DU6bfyqv-wxB1DP5kA/s640/winter2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i style="font-size: 12.8px;">walking to the grocery, © 2016 Amber Schley Iragui</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i style="font-size: 12.8px;">puddles, © 2016 Amber Schley Iragui</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i style="font-size: 12.8px;">ice storm, © 2015 Amber Schley Iragui</i></td></tr>
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{More winter photos over at <i><a href="http://daysdearestwish.blogspot.com/2016/01/winter-warm-and-cool.html" target="_blank">Day's Dearest Wish</a> </i>and<i> <a href="http://msthames.blogspot.com/2016/01/winter.html" target="_blank">Eine Hand voller Stunden</a></i>}A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-39594384139514079432016-01-13T01:01:00.000-08:002016-01-13T22:54:20.594-08:00So little is a stone<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDGiq1qp7Xc0-MOo7dTRIBFTWHwFwqRnYdiN7NvYFDWeW-jM-L8wOH6GvKLwgsUL9WrGZCIJ9MQXN2v8xp2Q7jZD0MkeWp6XMWFU7M6_U_PJPAiNN2Ps9AzaumoMhGNFgkM5juPQ/s1600/IMG_7282.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDGiq1qp7Xc0-MOo7dTRIBFTWHwFwqRnYdiN7NvYFDWeW-jM-L8wOH6GvKLwgsUL9WrGZCIJ9MQXN2v8xp2Q7jZD0MkeWp6XMWFU7M6_U_PJPAiNN2Ps9AzaumoMhGNFgkM5juPQ/s640/IMG_7282.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i>Amber Schley Iragui © 2015</i></td></tr>
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B U R N I N G T H E O L D Y E A R<br />
<i>Naomi Shihab Nye</i><br />
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Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
<br />
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
<br />
transparent scarlet paper,
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sizzle like moth wings,
<br />
marry the air.
<br />
<br />
So much of any year is flammable,
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lists of vegetables, partial poems.
<br />
Orange swirling flame of days,
<br />
so little is a stone.
<br />
<br />
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
<br />
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
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I begin again with the smallest numbers.
<br />
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
<br />
only the things I didn’t do
<br />
crackle after the blazing dies.
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<br />
* * * * *<br />
<br />
It has been raining and raining and I'm having a hard time adjusting. I know that's what <i>it does</i> here: rain. I was born here; I lived here till I was twenty-five. But after fifteen years in New York—with the sun, and snow, and occasional thunderstorms—it's hard not to feel it is just too wet, too deeply damp, outside right now. I lay in bed and think about hibernation, of crawling into a warm little cave and sleeping until spring. A cave with a fireplace, and clearly a mantle, and a deep soft chair, and some books—and then we're basically dreaming about hibernating in my own house. My house but a little farther away from everything; away from the passing cars and the bouncing children.<br />
<br />
But I like the sound of the rain, I admit. I like the sound on the roof of my office, now, as I write this.<br />
<br />
I didn't watch the State of the Union address this evening. I only know that this event took place because, while the kids were falling asleep, I checked Facebook and there were all sorts of postings about it. And it occurs to me that I doubt I've ever heard a State of the Union address. Not one I can remember, at least. And similarly, when David Bowie died a few days ago—alerted again by multitudinous Facebook postings—I could not bring his voice to mind, or any song of his I knew. Disturbingly, his face is mostly familiar to me because a friend of mine owns a David Bowie doll that she dresses up posts photos of on Instagram. And so it seems to me that as far as popular culture and politics go, I'm pretty much hibernating all the time.<br />
<br />
Which is not to say that I don't pay attention to things. I do, but just to a select few things. And to those things I pay close attention. For example: dreams, typography, the birds I see in the neighborhood. I pay attention to my children, not always what they say as much as how they seem to be doing. I pay attention to the plants in my kitchen window, and to book covers, and <i>New Yorker</i> cartoons; I take note of new authors and wait for their names to appear and reappear before I buy their books. I have been paying attention to what's been happening in Syria and Iraq, and watching the refugees streaming into Turkey and Eastern Europe and worrying for them. But I can't, you know, take it all in. There is far too much to pay attention to and I live in this small stucco house with lots of windows, under skies heavy with rain, and have small growing things to tend.<br />
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{ <i><a href="http://daysdearestwish.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-year-sharp-song.html" target="_blank">Julia's poetry wednesday post</a></i> }A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-88884994063432943422016-01-08T22:53:00.002-08:002016-01-11T13:47:25.534-08:00on spiders, and blogging, and four italian novelsI killed seven spiders today, mashed into kleenex against the bumpy walls of my home. As I'm writing this, two more spiders—anemic looking things with pale legs the color of old plastic—crouch on the walls above my desk. (Ok, maybe they aren't really crouching, but they appear hunkered down and vigilant, which I suppose is exactly right. All sixteen eyes on me). Mostly I ignore spiders, the gray-black ones that prefer the basement and their paler cousins who live upstairs. But it seemed there was a spider—crouching, cowering, crawling—everywhere I turned today, so I gathered my courage and began smashing. Last year I went after them with my little rechargeable vacuum, thinking how clever I was to not have to touch them while killing them. To my dismay they merely set up house inside the vacuum, spinning their webs and surviving for weeks, perhaps by eating each other. They would run around the inside of the plastic drum when I turned it on, but otherwise seemed content in their new home. And since the vacuum was the kind you empty by hand, I ended up sealing it in a plastic bag—partly to relieve myself of anxiety that the spiders would find a way out. This, of course, deprived me of its services. And, chagrined as I am to admit it, I left the thing in a bag for later and bought another vacuum. This year I am circumventing this whole problem by resorting to kleenex.<br />
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Otherwise, things are going well.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://daysdearestwish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Julia</a>, sweet dreamy friend that she is, suggested we blog again. And since I haven't blogged in so long the subject matter that keeps rising to the surface seems a bit unwieldy. Like what am I doing with my life besides being a mother and designing theological books and renovating our home and opening (and more excitingly, <i>designing</i>) a coffee shop or two? I just can't think.<br />
<br />
So, moving onto something more bloggable: I've been reading Eleana Ferrante's Neapolitan series, four books detailing the tempestuous friendship between two women. The books are disturbingly obsessive, and do not make good before-bed reading. When I put them down I find my heart racing and my mind whirling. As the cluttered inner geography of the novels fade and my own life reappears, I find myself pondering the muse. The narrator of the series, also curiously named Eleana, is a writer; and her friendship with her "brilliant friend" Lila is a source of both pain and inspiration. Lila serves as Elena's muse, a situation Elena somewhat begrudgingly accepts. Much of the novels find Elena trying to prove, at least to herself, her success as an individual without Lila.<br />
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Which leads me, as I load the dishwasher or pack lunches, to consider the muses in my own life—friendships that gave rise to a poignant longing which found shape in words, or people who stimulated my own artistic vision by putting forth their own. And I realize I don't have many of those sharp and briny relationships eating at the boundaries of my consciousness anymore. Partly I don't have time for them, partly I don't have exposure to such people. I hang out with my family; I talk to other parents at my children's school in that cursory, cheerful, and exhausted way parents communicate; I have insightful phone conversations with my close friends—friends who have remained close partly because our friendships are healthy and supportive. No swampy longing and blistering competition wedging its foot under the door; any muse would find me asleep on the couch or, eyes-glazed-over, swiping my screen in Wordbrain.<br />
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All the more reason to post here. All the more reason to take up Julia's suggestion—<i>twice a month, every second and fourth Wednesday</i>—and run (ok, walk) with it. It's a new year. I have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old who attend school. I have a new camera and can manage to follow a line down through a paragraph about spiders onto Ferrante and muses and my longing for a little more longing, a spider crawling up my wall reminding me that being uncomfortable can sometimes be exactly what I need.A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-16199228798287335562015-08-26T08:38:00.000-07:002016-01-21T22:54:49.130-08:00of stars and tsunamis<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
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I am sitting on a rooftop in Arch Cape, Oregon, surrounded on three sides by the crowns of pine and fir, one papery birch at my back. Before me lies a mist-smudged horizon and between us the cold Pacific, incessant and majestic. Overhead the sky is a dark, cloudless blue. The first night we were here, after everyone was in bed, I climbed the ladder to close the roof hatch and happened to look up. An intricate light webbed the space above me, perhaps a deck light reflecting off millions of wet pine needles. I screwed my eyes to make sense of the ghostlike streaks and stopped with a bolt of fear. The Milky Way lay parallel to the roof, a pale arc in the dark vault of ever receding space. What I understood as something near was instead our galaxy; the reflection of light off needles the burning of a million suns. <br />
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It's been twenty years since I last saw the Milky Way like this, bright in a moonless sky. The face of night seen as humans have seen it for two hundred thousand years at least, but unfamiliar enough to momentarily unlatch my breath and set my heart thundering. As if my heart wasn't thundering enough.<br />
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I shouldn't have read the article. I quickly flipped the page when I first saw it in the <em>New Yorker</em>. I ignored links to it on Facebook, the accompanying blood red map. I've heard this before, <em>earthquake to hit Portland, skyscrapers tumble, bridges collapse</em>. Twenty-year-old fears reared their gigantic heads: friends sleeping in tents, withdrawing wads of cash from the bank, stocking up on bottled water. I was at the beach on that day, in the mid-1990s, when some outspoken Evangelical man predicted--based on a dream--that a massive earthquake would hit Portland. I fell asleep imagining the water being sucked out from shore, leaving fish flopping and exposed like in the story of the <em>Seven Chinese Brothers</em>. And then a roar, a wall of water. <br />
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But that was then. Heck, now I've lived through two nice rattley earthquakes, nothing major. I was just outside of Manhattan on September 11th and watched the towers fall on television--the broadcast sound cut out while grainy images of smoking buildings and things falling from the sky shimmered silently on the screen. Less than ten years later I waited in Washington Heights for Hurricanes Irene and Sandy pass through Manhattan, each time stocking water in the closets, filling the bathtub.<br />
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But what the <em>New Yorker</em> earthquake article predicted was something far worse. And it was no dream; it was good science and vivid storytelling. And I read it, heart racing. A few days later I drove down to the beach for a few days with my dear friend Julia, all jittery. And now, less than a month from when I read the article, I am here again, enjoying two full weeks at our favorite house in Arch Cape. <br />
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Let us say that while the days have been generally relaxing and mostly wonderful, I am nonetheless on edge wiggle-wise, jumping at the noise of a truck downshifting or the slam of a door. Mid-conversation I find myself assessing my location, panickedly rehearsing what I'd do if the room started to wobble, the trees bob, the sand boil. The locations of children appear before me first, then husband, shoes, purse. A calculation on whether my iPhone is worth it. Or the beach tent, in the back of the car. The tsunami maps appear, the names of roads and alphabetized meeting places. (I drove the route on our second day here). I see myself dashing upland, grasping my son by the hand. I calculate the minutes I have until I hear the wave, high as the second or third floor this beautiful house. I take consolation in that, according to Google Maps, the walk time to high ground from where we sleep is only four minutes; the run time must be less.<br />
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Each morning I thank the earth that it continues to sleep, stuck; silent rock jammed against silent rock and staying so. I have three more nights to sleep perched next to the beautiful Pacific, and as much as I have enjoyed these two weeks of blackberries, tide pools, creeks washing out to sea, ice cream, and quaint beach town grocery stores, I will be happy to get in the car and drive out of this godforsaken tsunami zone. A hundred miles back to Portland affords me the luxury to worry about earthquakes minus tsunamis; and I will take that hundred miles thank you very very much.A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-43859860389108613222015-07-24T16:20:00.001-07:002015-07-27T12:52:53.085-07:00a corner in harlem<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>On my street in Harlem,</i><i> October 29, 2009, © </i><i>Amber Schley I</i><i>ragui</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: white;">I</span></span><br />
I'm not sure I should write this. It is difficult. It is full of potholes and heartbreak. Heartbreak that is not particularly mine, but to which I stand witness. There is a young man standing on a corner in south Harlem. It is an early November evening, and violet light deepens in the shadows between the buildings. He is looking at me earnestly, shifting his weight back and forth between his feet. He is smartly dressed, a messenger bag slung over an unbuttoned pea coat, with tan corduroys and brown wingtips. He is asking me for something. My mind is jogging back for an answer, coming up with answers which will not do--not for him. I don't have an answer. He speaks gently, as if to assure me, but also with an edge of desperation. He's sure I have the answer. I am uncomfortable and afraid. I don't know if he will let me go home, let me walk the few short blocks toward Central Park and my infant son with his sitter. Part of me worries that the young man will follow me; part of me longs to help him--but his questions triggered a mental avalanche. What he wants is reasonable, but the implausibility of him asking for it from me lodges between us. There is too much between us. I walked home, but he remained standing on that corner in my mind for six years now.<br />
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I sit before an open window of a beach house. Beyond the scaly limbs of a shore pine, a shallow beach rises toward electric lines and low shingled homes. A stretch of Hwy 101 bisects the seaboard and from where I sit the sound of passing traffic is just slightly louder than the sound of the surf. Yesterday, before driving west two hours to the Pacific ocean, I saw one person of color. He was working at the car rental where my friend Julia and I had hired a car, and he explained that it was only his second week on the job. He was well dressed, overdressed even, as he walked with a clipboard around the white economy, apologetically checking for dents and scratches.<br />
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I do that now, count the black people I see. The day before yesterday I saw two: a mother with a magnificent afro and flowing orange gown pushing her fairer-complexioned toddler, similarly afroed, in a grocery cart. They were leaving the market as I was arriving, and she was narrating their departure in motherly sing-song. The day previous I saw no Afro-Americans, although a Hispanic family of four walked by our home around lunch time. And the day prior to that I espied a black arm resting on the window ledge, in a car ahead of me one lane to my right.<br />
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I recently moved home, to the eleventh whitest city in America, from New York City, arguably the most diverse place to live in the US. My husband and I moved here to be near my family, but also because the school situation in New York City was frustrating. For one thing, the students in my son's kindergarten class, at a public elementary in upper Manhattan, were primarily Dominican. It was by no means a bad school, the principal--a diminutive Afro-American woman who glowed in pastel cardigans--was a stellar leader. I whole-heartedly adored her. But the natural concerns of a school with a majority-Dominican student body (for whom English was mostly a second language) were at odds with my goals for my son. I just wanted him to like school, to love his teacher, to associate learning with positive emotions. I didn't need to "bridge the literacy gap"; whether or not he learned to read in kindergarten was irrelevant to me. After months of fighting with him over homework, and regular reports on his failure to learn to read, it was clear his education wasn't going the direction I'd hoped. He disliked school and I began longing for a simpler, and more appropriate, educational environment. And so, for that reason and others, we moved to Portland, Oregon. To a tree-lined neighborhood with craftsman homes and a novelty butter shop. A neighborhood with antique malls and boutiques selling linen smock dresses and raw-crystal jewelry. And not a black person, not a brown person, in sight. <br />
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It took a few months for it to sink in that I didn't see many non-white people in my day-to-day activities. When I'd moved New York in 1999 it took a few months to realize that the cloudy weather I was accustomed to in the Pacific Northwest wasn't going to appear. Ever. In New York it was mostly going to be blue skies. And now moving home it similarly took awhile to register the homogeneity around me. The cashiers, baristas, gas-station attendants, receptionists, garbage-haulers, even my friendly postman, were all white, mostly tattooed, and generally thirty-something. The families transitioning through the homeless shelter where we volunteered were surprisingly all white too. The parents and teachers at my children's new school were white. One child in my son's class had olive-complexioned skin. Blink, blink: one child was a wee bit not white looking. So I started noticing the people of color I saw each day--I spotted a young black man with dreads riding a skateboard north on 33rd, another young black woman crossed Williams at the slow pace I associated with people crossing the street on 125th in Harlem. Once a day, or once every-other-day, I saw a person who was, or could pass for, black. <br />
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I'm not sure what I think of this. I'm sad. I'm sad for the loss of color and I'm sad that this loss of color makes life simpler and less exhausting. Life is flattened, less beautiful but easier. School here is good for my children, they love their teachers and classmates and excitedly relay what they are learning. Playdates do not involve bridging inscrutable social barriers, or a require tireless diplomacy. When I express my concerns for my son's education with teachers or other parents there is nodding and recognition. We are on the same page, a mostly white page it seems. And I chose this page, dare I say fled to this page, out of frustration and fear.<br />
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When I moved to South Harlem in 2008, a few months before my son was born, I had already lived in New York for nine years. I loved the diversity of people and languages in New York. I loved the Jewishness, the way you could go just a few blocks and find an entirely different ethnic group, a Puerto Rican barrio aside a Polish enclave. I enjoyed the way people in New York asked "what I was"--a baffling question in any other American city. So when we moved to a renovated building on 111th street, between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass, I expected much of the same. To me it just seemed like we were moving near our parish so that Charles could be on time to church and I could be late with minimal hassle. Columbia University was close, and Central Park was one block away. It was an easy commute to work. I hadn't considered Harlem at all. <br />
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But we did live in Harlem, albeit a rapidly gentrifying corner of it. And almost immediately I sensed the hostility. Not from the black tenants in our building, who were young and upwardly mobile, but from the people on the street who felt my presence meant the displacement of their people. I was used to being largely ignored by black people, a geeky white girl in glasses with long brown hair. But suddenly I was visible to them because I represented the white people taking over. I didn't understand this; I didn't self-identify as the white people taking over. At that time I was mostly concerned with the things first-time mothers are concerned with: lack of sleep, nursing, teething, high temperatures, what happened to the person I'd been before I'd had a child. I was walking to Duane Reade to get more diapers not to make a point about race relations. Not to flaunt my white privilege. I don't think I'd even heard that term, <em>white privilege</em>. <br />
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But despite my foggy brain something of what was happening around me did sink in. I found myself packing my son into his stroller and heading south, out of Harlem. Away from where my presence meant anything. I walked to the Duane Reade that was farther away because it caused less anxiety for everyone. And there was also the fact that when I stayed in Harlem I was asked for money, more than once with the preface, "I'm not going to hurt you, but..." A black man once yelled at my husband, across a street: "You rich white people moving in and pushing us out! You know that!" I also noticed something else, black people attributed far more importance to my actions than I did. I often stopped to take photos of light falling into empty lots between buildings, but whenever I did someone would pass by and make a comment like, "Gonna put a building here?" or "Is that lot going up for sale?" It took awhile for me to register that when black residents saw me taking a photo they thought I was in the position to own, or sell, the empty lot--or at least I was working for someone who was. I wanted to say, "Look I'm just some bedraggled mother who likes to take photographs. I can't buy and sell New York real estate." But over time it became clear that for them that I was in that position, that somehow being white made me eligible, in some way that they weren't, to buy empty lots in Manhattan.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to the boy on the corner and what he wanted that November evening. I was raised poor, in poverty that was, at least economically, more severe than the average black Harlem resident. My parents, while more than qualifying for food stamps, never applied for them because food stamps meant not depending on God. We prayed that God would provide our modest mortgage payment, because often my parents didn't have it. And sometimes money did arrive in a white unmarked envelope, brand name groceries in brown boxes. We also prayed that the gas in the tank of our car would stretch like the oil in the widow's jug in the First Kings story of Elijah and the famine. We were homeschooled because our public school was abominable and there was no money to live elsewhere or for the unbelievable luxury of private school. I do not want to dwell upon this too much, but suffice it to say that what I carried with me to New York and into Harlem was the sense that I was far less privileged than most people. And although my adult choices, and education, had propelled me out of poverty I did not feel particularly entitled. I had arrived, a white woman with a baby and a hardworking husband, in Harlem because Harlem was conveniently located and had reasonably priced housing. And I arrived into a Harlem coffee shop with free wi-fi where I was busily working on freelance design project when I realized my babysitter's hours were nearly up. And I stood, stowed my laptop, and headed for home--noticing as I did so that a young, well-dressed black man had watched me get up, had got up also, and had followed me out the door. I noticed that he followed me to the corner, where I stopped and he stopped and I gripped my laptop bag tighter and he turned to me and asked, politely, what work I did and how I got my job and that he was looking for a job and didn't know how to get one. He said he'd applied and applied and never got any responses. He said he'd finished college but still couldn't get a job and that he'd been to libraries and read newspapers and asked friends. And he wanted to know how I'd gotten my job and what I did to get it. And did I know of any jobs he could apply for?<br />
<br />
And that is when it first occurred to me, foggily, as I paced back through my life for some answer, some bit of direction, that while I had risen a good way in my life due to university and wise choices and good friends and a few moments of serendipity, the culture I'd risen into was my own. I did not have the obvious barrier he had. The world I now inhabited, old Harlem residents aside, held no animosity or fear or anxiety on my part. I stumbled over a memory of a job posting I'd accidentally come upon a year after graduating from university that sent me to a small publishing company. And the publishing company didn't hire me but offered me an unpaid internship. And when the internship was done, a part time job, and from there a friend sent me a job opening at a publishing house in New York. And my godmother happened to know the director at the publishing house, and sent a letter of recommendation. And here I was, gainfully employed doing work I loved, with a home and a husband and a baby. And while it was not impossible that a similar train of events could happen to this young man within the circles he inhabited, there was something more--what exactly I couldn't say--between myself and his reality. Between where he stood, earnestly asking, and my minor successes, backing away unsure. <br />
<br />
I wish I could say now that I took his name and number and helped him find a job. I didn't, though. The street was dark and my babysitter needed to catch the train, and I needed to nurse my son, and I was awkward and anxious standing there. Why was he asking me, I wondered, and not someone more obviously qualified to help? Charles told me, later that evening, that I should have taken the young man's number and he would have called him. Why hadn't I thought of that? Maybe I hadn't thought of that because when his questions revealed to me the gulf between us, a gulf I hadn't acknowledged was there until that moment, I was left off balance and speechless. <br />
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Other people have written eloquently about this gulf, about the difference between the reality of Afro-Americans and white people in this country, and that is not my purpose here. I write this because it is mine to stand witness. To acknowledge my part in this sadness, and my flight nonetheless from gazing too closely at it. A year or so after the incident with the young man, when I was pregnant with my daughter, I begged Charles to let us move someplace less stressful. Less black. Where I didn't have to face animosity walking down my street. We moved up to Hudson Heights, a diverse but predominately white (and Jewish) neighborhood in the Northern reaches of Manhattan. A cliff overlooking the Hudson river with nice parks and large apartments. And then, when the school situation there seemed less than ideal, we moved here--to the eleventh-most-white city in America. Where the number of black people I see in one day has never exceeded the digits on one hand. <br />
<br />
The young man still stands on the corner in Harlem. I still don't have any answers.A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-47897648808480496882015-03-11T11:14:00.000-07:002015-07-27T12:38:12.486-07:00what it is like to be married to my husband<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRTx5pSBPcPEVUecTv67r4Stenj799ydapcx0QH5GM7BkEYh9unfjhMqmPSvmuFPrA4BVvUqKdMaQzAYz0mwu9FMn5tCA7qEmVBfSd8NTvJWuKMnAs_oTGL0O3rwFSWf_Y2N32AQ/s1600/photo(345).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRTx5pSBPcPEVUecTv67r4Stenj799ydapcx0QH5GM7BkEYh9unfjhMqmPSvmuFPrA4BVvUqKdMaQzAYz0mwu9FMn5tCA7qEmVBfSd8NTvJWuKMnAs_oTGL0O3rwFSWf_Y2N32AQ/s1600/photo(345).JPG" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I am still suffering under a nasty cold that I've had for over a month, but that is not a story anyone would care to hear. More interesting is my husband, the enigma—my "handsome oppressor" and a first-rate goofball. I could go on in this way trying to describe with contradictory words (for example, both <i>principled</i> and <i>devious</i>) the kinds of adjectives he brings to mind. But no.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">All I wanted for lunch was chicken broth soup. He wanted Mexican. But since tortilla soup was not even going to cut it, we headed to a favorite restaurant—a comfort-food place with a bustling lunch crowd. However, they were only serving clam chowder. We moved onto a second, yet more bustling restaurant: they were also serving clam chowder and something called beer-cheese soup. Yuck? So we moved onto a third, and completely empty, restaurant that did happen to be serving a chicken-broth based soup. We sat down and ordered.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">And yes, my husband did give up on the Mexican food idea for me, and yes, that is also what is it like to be married to my husband, but no that's not what I'm writing about either. About half way through our meal Charles looked up and said, "Wow, this place has gotten busy!" Indeed it had, all the booths were filled. He then said this classic Charles thing: "We probably helped to pick-up the business by coming in!" (I'm not sure he used the word <i>probably</i>.)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">So: we do things and they have a direct and immediate positive influence on others. This <i>is</i> what is like to be married to my husband, because he is always saying things—and doing things—in this way. Comments like this used to ricochet around me in their incomprehensibility: either this man was horribly pompous or merely ridiculous. I couldn't tell which. Or both? Inside my more comprehensible universe, if a restaurant crowd picked-up around one o'clock in the afternoon it was because that happened to be when people were hungry, not because we were seen eating there.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Here is a little story to sum up this difference:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">A miserable-looking gent is sitting on the side of the road with a sign that reads <i>help me</i>. I walk by. I look at the man and wonder: is this is a man I should help? I consider my realm of influence; I try to gauge how much time and effort I have to give vis-a-vis how much he will need. Ultimately I decide to help (for the record, more often than not I'd probably just continue on my way). I sit down beside him and ask about his problem. I try to empathize. I try not to offer solutions but to hear him out. I begin to feel a little down myself, because his problems seem insurmountable. But I'm there and I can listen. I eventually excuse myself and tell him I will pray for him and will be by to check on him tomorrow. This all takes at least an hour.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">A miserable-looking gent is sitting on the side of the road with a sign that reads <i>help me</i>. Charles walks by. He stops and says<i> hello</i> and engages in some light conversation. He reaches a hand down and helps the guy to his feet. He walks with him to the corner and points him in the direction of a coffee shop. Then he reaches into his pocket and gives the man a twenty and a comradely pat on the back. He goes about his day. This all takes at most ten minutes. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">I used to think I was totally in the right, right? Obviously. But it's been eight years of arguing with Charles and blinking in disbelief. Lord God, it hasn't been easy to see things from his perspective, but I think I am finally getting it. I'll take that twenty, thank you.</span>A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-36003749872104352002015-01-24T19:59:00.001-08:002015-07-27T12:41:52.417-07:00look down, shoot feet 2007 – present<span style="font-size: small;">Lens cast down—a glimpse of coat or skirt, shod feet, an expanse of sidewalk. I shoot this way habitually, as a way of passing through space with a camera. A modest way to capture beauty without making a production of a posed shot, or requiring that others stop and smile. Simply using what I have on hand (or foot). Over time I have collected quite a few of these shots, a few of which are shown here.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Most of these were culled from my album, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ambery/sets/72157594473739453/" target="_blank">Looking Down</a> on Flickr:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6AH4RfLaVoBknnLwPLX5y3uoDuxRCUL2C-dkB6c2sP7ySwV2VrItHrQA3WJ-ZJX0a9D9WSU_-vt3mp8nrihcTgMUtf0lmrqulg5GOdu6-N1bK1HQrgeJRoo5MPrMeS03-eYQPQ/s1600/01rachel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF6AH4RfLaVoBknnLwPLX5y3uoDuxRCUL2C-dkB6c2sP7ySwV2VrItHrQA3WJ-ZJX0a9D9WSU_-vt3mp8nrihcTgMUtf0lmrqulg5GOdu6-N1bK1HQrgeJRoo5MPrMeS03-eYQPQ/s1600/01rachel.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">With Rachel, walking to Union Seminary, red China flats; Manhattan, 2007. </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP3U0Av6TrkT8fMR9PvUcZC7dzFsou3GOfPHGSepxIIV9zXfqSRehPtAVrRUIOvjWpA08WWYmreeGtRcUHK9o2N_Xm2Jiv9xv8U5X7WXpBAwdB8_3YsjxePRVOcQoXO3FOytX-ZQ/s1600/02colormag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP3U0Av6TrkT8fMR9PvUcZC7dzFsou3GOfPHGSepxIIV9zXfqSRehPtAVrRUIOvjWpA08WWYmreeGtRcUHK9o2N_Xm2Jiv9xv8U5X7WXpBAwdB8_3YsjxePRVOcQoXO3FOytX-ZQ/s1600/02colormag.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Inside the new location of St Mary Magdelen's, then under construction; Manhattan, 2007. </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZXQXh8hWykVlkAPKrKXgVQ-xCPp6GhQLzI8-yYhdv7NlLyLVV3G9htiCxc1Tm9dVCFPEygp4oV2Wp1k9Xl3t7rti6EdWYgXmqLvGk0PDi2ISQ5eaR9kXUJGbausV_hOAkAEsBaA/s1600/03messy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZXQXh8hWykVlkAPKrKXgVQ-xCPp6GhQLzI8-yYhdv7NlLyLVV3G9htiCxc1Tm9dVCFPEygp4oV2Wp1k9Xl3t7rti6EdWYgXmqLvGk0PDi2ISQ5eaR9kXUJGbausV_hOAkAEsBaA/s1600/03messy.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kitty litter, blue coat, brown leather boots; Crestwood, 2007. I was single and had time to shoot things like kitty litter.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPfFfZlLHVKHIQkzrrkzElGRUfNKro8feNThes9l3oS_dU_7FBbOH9jLZbWgE0rQoTfl7r0atc_ncA-WyFtVDr2CYRjKLstk_zyquoGHhAVecDSAvw0HonnRlNH3rDn73wv8lJEA/s1600/06wedding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPfFfZlLHVKHIQkzrrkzElGRUfNKro8feNThes9l3oS_dU_7FBbOH9jLZbWgE0rQoTfl7r0atc_ncA-WyFtVDr2CYRjKLstk_zyquoGHhAVecDSAvw0HonnRlNH3rDn73wv8lJEA/s1600/06wedding.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In Oregon for my mom's wedding; Arch Cape, Oregon, 2007. </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsMxU8V3vrAOIPQuDKpYD72cV-sKHZz4LnIA85zz-Q7wqj-2qtktm7oe8hSVjcMjQIRRyJbp5MAhzlyueGKhSW3R_7Zx9b38ABVjYH7VRaFe1oRpQ9fKNQiWFEHMSA7Xi8jpe7Zg/s1600/07abelly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsMxU8V3vrAOIPQuDKpYD72cV-sKHZz4LnIA85zz-Q7wqj-2qtktm7oe8hSVjcMjQIRRyJbp5MAhzlyueGKhSW3R_7Zx9b38ABVjYH7VRaFe1oRpQ9fKNQiWFEHMSA7Xi8jpe7Zg/s1600/07abelly.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Pregnant with Isaiah; Manhattan, 2008. Things are about to change.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDIjbs9B3BfS_wN6aIEBkLQV_2K_iIE3x9VE18dNlNIpyIGiQ3avMI8OBmxaWPNlk0BZEBc7zBuNhAEDi0YRseK4yf9CqP0UyAb-ncVcr83FHMVmAnG1B2uayQAAEALjbWyd_W7w/s1600/07baby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="635" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDIjbs9B3BfS_wN6aIEBkLQV_2K_iIE3x9VE18dNlNIpyIGiQ3avMI8OBmxaWPNlk0BZEBc7zBuNhAEDi0YRseK4yf9CqP0UyAb-ncVcr83FHMVmAnG1B2uayQAAEALjbWyd_W7w/s1600/07baby.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Now little feet show up in my looking down photos; Barbados, winter 2009. </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_kAit-Ibso3uK4p6nxqcN9huOPDdpvlh7eSpmJjzUTdc4Ee85Ii2iu-jD3k6gPB2vy1Q7uUQ9uxNTqcgQ1xmDuJl6HHRnnzGm0YptzYXUclrscbAu8XrKQ4XteEtuL-eytvHISw/s1600/08clay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_kAit-Ibso3uK4p6nxqcN9huOPDdpvlh7eSpmJjzUTdc4Ee85Ii2iu-jD3k6gPB2vy1Q7uUQ9uxNTqcgQ1xmDuJl6HHRnnzGm0YptzYXUclrscbAu8XrKQ4XteEtuL-eytvHISw/s1600/08clay.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">And the things that come with little feet. Like peacock feet and gray play doh. Manhattan, 2011</span>.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg4LOg4kgpTbgh51TLtIl4WpI3efBpVntZmq9c2vppspM0I63ONLLHzg2gFUOo5BiniYD8HVhSef1CK4Spg7f8zGA2hZAdx-NsnQhSgaYHGR1Uf4tw-PT_UvjMhM0NovpW2iWn6A/s1600/09france.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg4LOg4kgpTbgh51TLtIl4WpI3efBpVntZmq9c2vppspM0I63ONLLHzg2gFUOo5BiniYD8HVhSef1CK4Spg7f8zGA2hZAdx-NsnQhSgaYHGR1Uf4tw-PT_UvjMhM0NovpW2iWn6A/s1600/09france.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Shooting down is also a way to distance myself from the urgency of tears and tantrums. Traveling while pregnant with Genevieve. Just a hint of the sturdy sandals we bought in Germany; France, 2010.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv0recihFNa5xehfb6eghboD-ILoL8_r4qeT5x5Z8zuXXPGs-UTiji4CbBU5ri37HZaDbTrAMk2vBRwfIkKCHyuOwo6Cg-tmZtWeiNE6PqsKafKQruLTRrbRng9p9ffpU-ttYmdA/s1600/10G.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv0recihFNa5xehfb6eghboD-ILoL8_r4qeT5x5Z8zuXXPGs-UTiji4CbBU5ri37HZaDbTrAMk2vBRwfIkKCHyuOwo6Cg-tmZtWeiNE6PqsKafKQruLTRrbRng9p9ffpU-ttYmdA/s1600/10G.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">At the playground with Genevieve, beaded flip-flops; Upper Manhattan, 2011. </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCK02EdRVBOSQSkElSDoRxwE_z7GibpCFMrIofjfjBdi1CjKT_ZrOp8FZNkOdYPgtO3XIUHtkW13EQmoKK3IUO_CcZ68A8Qc8zxkqtrdhhWOb8sCpvVcxKM95W4avNwM_GdA1BBw/s1600/11wh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCK02EdRVBOSQSkElSDoRxwE_z7GibpCFMrIofjfjBdi1CjKT_ZrOp8FZNkOdYPgtO3XIUHtkW13EQmoKK3IUO_CcZ68A8Qc8zxkqtrdhhWOb8sCpvVcxKM95W4avNwM_GdA1BBw/s1600/11wh.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">My favorite green flats. Fort Tryon Park, Upper Manhattan, 2011.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sometimes my feet are still unaccompanied, here contemplating a snarl of sea-litter on the shore of Barbados, 2009.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Or picking rosehips. Forest Beach, Cape Cod, 2011</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Beside our favorite stream. Arch Cape, Oregon, 2014.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Here I am hardly alone—at my Mom's home in Olympia, Washington, 2010.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi84VJugmhxiv3whcchlpOm_deY82XNvc68m2oQTEqRaqxxARG-6SOA45MZpuPFeYWMxbtH6gUCHHeGV0ecSGvqacapSDHmdu9W66ZzxsWuuaaYIFt3x0LCYh990E0LeoZkeuj41w/s1600/15uro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi84VJugmhxiv3whcchlpOm_deY82XNvc68m2oQTEqRaqxxARG-6SOA45MZpuPFeYWMxbtH6gUCHHeGV0ecSGvqacapSDHmdu9W66ZzxsWuuaaYIFt3x0LCYh990E0LeoZkeuj41w/s1600/15uro.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Enjoying a soak in a Japanese furo, accompanied by my best friend. Volcano Rain Forest Retreat, the Big Island, Hawaii, 2011.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCJgI8qAanBqAyJdlGxKfufV850QiiGXl7DQAGBxXA50uwzChpZREyFzIVsBKiEO-w10qZfLxHUaoY_V4mVMrS4y6VU6bVP0YAgJKQSBD3ZZYIuOzZtqc2g5pZTEmS1oO8fWpi1w/s1600/15whill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCJgI8qAanBqAyJdlGxKfufV850QiiGXl7DQAGBxXA50uwzChpZREyFzIVsBKiEO-w10qZfLxHUaoY_V4mVMrS4y6VU6bVP0YAgJKQSBD3ZZYIuOzZtqc2g5pZTEmS1oO8fWpi1w/s1600/15whill.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Favorite green flats again. Wave Hill, Bronx, New York. 2012.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sometimes the shots <i>are</i> accidental. Hudson Heights, NY, 2012.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhuoOr3irJIHnBbac6nSC5tfcCzeOepdZjD2Fv2-qyTax-lKPYmN8AS43iG_mJDAYs6phbz4STCfhbeRw0tQ5yAqwunu5_W-ZQhBz_Q7FMfPxB7E6kChAk8hr76B7HYXf3CBk1Bg/s1600/bootspurple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhuoOr3irJIHnBbac6nSC5tfcCzeOepdZjD2Fv2-qyTax-lKPYmN8AS43iG_mJDAYs6phbz4STCfhbeRw0tQ5yAqwunu5_W-ZQhBz_Q7FMfPxB7E6kChAk8hr76B7HYXf3CBk1Bg/s1600/bootspurple.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">And some are posed. Cabrini Blvd in spring, with Genevieve, fox rain boots; Upper Manhattan 2013.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Date night on the High Line, Manhattan, 2013.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4swIOww0XWjphoVpaBErKrMEUn9f8UNStwitcY7yg9yLvYo0Oo77X0bMbEU1Z9oLtVPWxu6Z0md4i9g2TJfgNoL3EIZ2eauU-s-cqe3k1kDENZ-iFqkSYtiuQTjKHUWnmScFRHg/s1600/home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4swIOww0XWjphoVpaBErKrMEUn9f8UNStwitcY7yg9yLvYo0Oo77X0bMbEU1Z9oLtVPWxu6Z0md4i9g2TJfgNoL3EIZ2eauU-s-cqe3k1kDENZ-iFqkSYtiuQTjKHUWnmScFRHg/s1600/home.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">At home in Hudson Heights, Manhattan, 2012.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In Japan to see the Gallahers, with Charles and my first pair of Frye boots. Kyoto, November, 2014</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Earlier today waiting for brunch, with Genevieve and chalk. Portland, 2015.</span></td></tr>
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<br />A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-38894614729653293342014-10-18T22:00:00.000-07:002016-01-21T22:55:41.984-08:00The landscape I know<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sometimes I cannot remember where I am. I cannot remember if I'm in Oregon or New York. For example, I just read that Jonathan Safran Foer lives in Brooklyn and I thought <em>Of course</em> and I pictured Brooklyn as a grayish spot on a map, a hub of brownish buildings cobbled up over sidewalks lined with black garbage bags and London Plane trees, all far east across the continent. And then I thought, <em>No, it's just across the East River</em>. And just a few days ago I thought of London Plane trees and how their hardy leaves make good ghosts and that we should go pick up some to paint for Halloween and then stopped because I don't know if London Plane trees grow in Portland. I think they don't. Because I was in Portland then. (Where we have two enormous healthy elm trees that make as good company as the Hudson River, but that is another story.)<br />
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The story today began with a trip up the Hudson to Cold Spring, NY, where we bought pottery and dress-up clothes. We had duck with fennel and guinea hen with apple ragu for lunch. The leaves along the Taconic were orange and yellow, and sometimes blew across the road. The sky in the afternoon turned dark blue-gray and splattered us with some heavy drops, but not too many. There were barn sales and tag sales and traffic. And I said it was odd, the way I love the Northeast landscape. The old rocks and huge deciduous trees, the soft hills and majestic light. It makes sense to me. Woods with little underbrush and white three-story farmhouses. Its odd because I still feel like I'm a foreigner here; all the memories of these places were made by my adult mind in the last 15 years. And even though I've repeatedly visited places like Rhinebeck or Saugerties or Cape Cod I know I don't exactly belong. That is not to say that I do not drive like a New Yorker, or expect people to be direct and knowledgeable like New Yorkers, but that in my heart of hearts I am not a New Yorker. <br />
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And it is the opposite in Oregon. I feel that the landscape is my own, not because it makes sense to me or is beautiful, but because I just know it. Because as we drive the geography reveals itself like the shape of my own arm. I know where to turn for Canby without knowing that I knew where to turn for Canby. I can guess that the trees in the orchard we are passing are hazelnut, but I wouldn't have known three minutes ago how to describe a Hazelnut tree. Not the way I could describe a Linden, Honey Locust, or Copper Beech. New York is my adult mind. Portland holds my child's mind, a mind that holds far more than I knew. <br />
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Years ago my Dad came to visit me in New York, and then we drove out near Akron, Ohio, where he was born and raised. And as we rode down wide, flat lanes lined by brick houses so far back from the road that the lawns seemed oddly large, he would tell me things like, <em>This is where Aunt Anna lived</em> or <em>This is where we sold flowers on Saturday</em> or <em>This is the road to the old coal mine</em>. And while the landscape seemed hot and yellow-green and sort of all-the-same to me, it spoke of different things to him. I wonder if he has felt like Oregon is a foreign country all this time.<br />
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To my adult self the hills around Portland are dark and spiky and a little unfriendly. They seem too new and the deciduous trees too small (and too few). There isn't any schist lying around sparkling, not enough rock in general. I despair of split-level or ranch homes or slanty-wood-fronted buildings. I despair of people who never disagree with you, of people who drive slow. People who drive as if they are apologizing for their carbon footprint with timidity, <em>No, no, you go ahead</em>. At least the bicyclists are worth their salt and seem to think the point of transportation is getting there. <br />
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And yet, despite all this, Portland is where I belong. The land is connected to places and people that are my own. The roads lead to Dad's house or Mom's house, to the old nursery, or by skate church, or near my high-school, or my university, or Saint Nicholas. Hippo Hardware hasn't changed, nor all the strip clubs, or the coffee shops. I pass the place where I fell out of Dad's truck and Heidi yelled <em>Amber's dead!</em> and I felt myself all over and thought <em>I don't think I am</em>. I live a few blocks from the dry cleaner where I worked two afternoons a week in high school. I don't feel even remotely foreign there.<br />
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I think of the children's book by Allan Say, many times read to my children, <em>Grandfather's Journey</em>. When the grandfather was in Japan he longed for California, and when he was in California he longed for Japan--and when the grandson grew up and moved from Japan to California he felt much the same way. (Allan Say, coincidentally, lives in Portland, Oregon.) And I too, long for a different landscape: for golden magnificence of New York when I am in Portland, and for the damp clean of Portland when I am in New York.A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-39285415081853383132014-09-26T22:47:00.000-07:002014-09-26T22:53:08.324-07:00I remind myself of the point, publicly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5juk40kK8MyX7mlWJuYFk9JlJVa0vjZMQBAD8UndXVIhYBW8KHEBvbqnzLz4ZOtZ_q42DhGyvITyxcS_JmP0k04UQKRSPHnAts2b_lyLUuhAnMEiSaTXZt_TrmBsYyUmnpbvHMA/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-09-26+at+10.41.22+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5juk40kK8MyX7mlWJuYFk9JlJVa0vjZMQBAD8UndXVIhYBW8KHEBvbqnzLz4ZOtZ_q42DhGyvITyxcS_JmP0k04UQKRSPHnAts2b_lyLUuhAnMEiSaTXZt_TrmBsYyUmnpbvHMA/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-09-26+at+10.41.22+PM.png" height="424" width="640" /></a></div>
I just finished another Alice Munro paperback, <i>Moons of Jupiter</i>. I bought it in a sleepy bookstore in Manzanita, when we were down at the Oregon coast for the last week of holidays. My children were in the store with me, and they were not using inside voices. They begged me to buy toys from the children's section, jumping up and down while holding various packages of brightly-colored things. Genevieve was bouncing directly under my nose in order to compete with the height advantage her brother was using to lobby for a set of dinosaur books he held (without bouncing) in my face. It was over their whining heads that I spied <i>Munro</i> on the shelves. I felt the book and I shared a secret, as if the scene with my children was something we were both observing: my exasperation, their insistence, my longing for a quiet book to hide myself with. I bought the book and not the toys.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I think about how I'd be described if I was a character in an Alice Munro story—makeupless in print dresses and boots, long messy hair with gray roots, direct conversation, practical second marriage, extra baby weight, a longing to escape social gatherings, a vague unease and pride about how my life's turned out. It's not terribly flattering, but comforting all the same. But I would want to leave it there—no sifting through the contents of my mind to reveal the weaknesses and unsolvable entanglements. The whimpering and prejudice.<br />
<br />
One of my <a href="http://www.flakedoves.blogspot.com/2014/08/flakedoves-swan-song.html" target="_blank">dear friends</a> has given up writing her blog, and so doing made me ponder why I still post here. Why do I write this blog? I suppose the answer is simple. I want—<i>need</i>—to write, and I prefer writing here to writing in a private journal. I've kept a journal since I was eleven. Five years ago my journals were damaged in a flood, and as I flipped through their water stained pages I felt I needed to stop. It is easy to be lazy, repetitive and pathetic in a private journal. Writing online pushes me to avoid complaining, to find a solution to a problem, or make sense of chaotic lived experience. That is to say, I write here for myself. I know there are a select few people who do read my blog, and I am pleased with a little readership. I am not writing for a general audience, even if the site is available to anybody (or any bot) with an internet connection. Thankfully, I am not popular and so can pretty much write as I please.<br />
<br />
Writing connects me to myself, and it also connects me to others in the same way I connected to the Munro book at the sea shore bookstore. The part of me that began writing journals at eleven was borne of reading. Books were my childhood friends. Authors and titles I read in the years before I went to high school—most of which I haven't seen in over thirty years—appear without effort:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Elizabeth George Spear's <i>The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Bronze Bow, The Sign of the Beaver</i>; Marguerite De Angeli's <i>Thee Hannah, The Door in the Wall</i>; Elizabeth Enright's <i>Four-Story Mistake, Return to Gone Away</i>; L. M. Montgomery's <i>Emily of New Moon</i><i>, Anne of Green Gables</i>; E. B White's <i>Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpeter Swans</i>; A. A. Milne's <i>The World of Pooh</i>; Daniel Pinkwater's <i>Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death</i>; C. S. Lewis' <i>The Chronicles of Narnia</i>; Tolkien's <i>The Lord of the Rings. </i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
These books, and many others, provided me with a way to make the world sane. They gave me templates for feelings and experiences I had not yet had. They directed me to what was important: honesty, friendship, laughter, curiosity, loyalty, endurance, love. They reassured and inspired me. And it follows that my writing does some of this same work now. I remind myself of the point, publicly. <br />
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/azrasta/5088254388/in/photolist-i7XYjL-mM3VBi-dRhn5k-f3ze57-oYHm-dDusA-3JQ1cg-aGsP14-dsYZgk-51t5TC-99cX1t-9hBXf8-8KCCKW-4Jcu56-4hn47g-u99Sd-8b9rja-7PozJp-mBGj-asbZp7" target="_blank"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></i></a>
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/azrasta/5088254388/in/photolist-i7XYjL-mM3VBi-dRhn5k-f3ze57-oYHm-dDusA-3JQ1cg-aGsP14-dsYZgk-51t5TC-99cX1t-9hBXf8-8KCCKW-4Jcu56-4hn47g-u99Sd-8b9rja-7PozJp-mBGj-asbZp7" target="_blank"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo credit: Azrasta, Flickr</span></i></a>A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-81606321940928331182014-09-03T00:43:00.001-07:002016-01-21T22:56:38.851-08:00tragedy, humility, sauerkraut<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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A raccoon is on my roof eating Asian pears. It is dark, and everyone is asleep—besides me and the raccoon. Every once and awhile a pear drops with a thud and then I hear a scamper or a dragging sound. In the morning there will be half-eaten Asian pears on the ground. It is also garbage night, which means that every hour or so a car pulls up in front of our house and someone pokes around in the bins at the curb. In Manhattan people did this all the time, pushing grocery carts heaped with black bags of cans and bottles, like a troupe of homeless Santa Clauses moving along the trash-bag piled sidewalk. I recognized the regulars. But I haven't gotten used to it here. Should I stick my head out the door and say hello, as a security measure of sorts? Or—more reasonably—let them delve in peace?<br />
<br />
Tomorrow is the first day of school. A cute little school with cute kids and well-dressed parents, the teachers kind and friendly. Everyone speaking French, unsnobbishly. I will drive my children, with their lunchboxes packed with healthy food, in their well-chosen clothes, to their white-and-yellow private French school. And then I will get a latte. Meanwhile the world is in <i>horrible, horrible </i>shape. Iraq! Ukraine! Gaza! Ebola! For a few weeks I refused to register the events in Ferguson, Missouri because there was just no room for them in my head. <i>Sorry, glass full of tragedy already.</i> I am having a hard time reconciling my life with the world at large. I am fretting over the ingredients in the seaweed snack packs, the too-largeness of of kids' yogurts containers, what kinds of grasscloth roller shades to purchase; meanwhile people are being beheaded. Worse things. I suppose this has always been the case? I fret about my little problems while somewhere else people are fleeing for their lives, hiding their children in garbage cans.<br />
<br />
I could just cry. Which I do to little end. What <i>can</i> I do? The atrocities of ISIS are beyond my circle of influence, though clearly not beyond my circle of anxiety. A few weeks ago our priest circulated a letter written by the metropolitan entitled <i><a href="http://oca.org/news/headline-news/metropolitan-tikhon-issues-pastoral-letter-concerning-violence-and-extremis" target="_blank">A Pastoral Letter Concerning Violence and Extremism in the Middle East</a>. </i>I read the letter, which may be a first for me. OK, I didn't even read it, I skimmed it, but for long enough to find this: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>If we are truly concerned about the strife in the world today, let us
begin by overcoming anger in our own hearts by striving for meekness and
humility. If we are upset by the violence and destruction in the Middle
East, let us direct our energy to bring peace to the conflicts within
our own families. If we are horrified by images of human beings injuring
and killing one another, let us offer an image of Christ by giving alms
to those in need in our own neighborhood.</i></blockquote>
That's the spirit. I'm not pretending that I come anywhere near this in practice. I can think of a few ways I could have overcome anger in my heart and been more humble in the last few days, heck, the last few hours. But I can take sausage and sauerkraut to my Dad. I can read my children the same book for the fifteenth time. I can sit with my son when his anger overtakes him. I can let my daughter wear pink and purple together. I can be patient when Charles and I have yet another of those conversations where we seem to be talking entirely past each other about the same exact thing for five minutes. I can feed raccoons; I can stop fretting about trash-pickers, grasscloth shades, seaweed snacks. I can be grateful for the good life that's been given to me.<br />
<br />
Because it is a good life. And of course, there are some things I <i>can</i> do:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://theacero.org/mosul-appeal/" target="_blank">ACRO Mosul Appeal</a><br />
<a href="http://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/iraq-crisis-response/" target="_blank">Samaritan's Purse</a>A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-33851418637758897442014-07-17T00:28:00.002-07:002014-07-17T00:28:33.030-07:00this arrival<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPIT3Nw0yNyNck0vYCchEfH9YoeUALBQ_QqUsDd9jAMuLs-GDEMXu_aXyJvk3CDGwqtWRgiSXmzEgjeg-oYLgjL0WBlmVKxHn-nOOKgdK44KlKmer-7djT7RwtUxisAKdpps3tpw/s1600/home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPIT3Nw0yNyNck0vYCchEfH9YoeUALBQ_QqUsDd9jAMuLs-GDEMXu_aXyJvk3CDGwqtWRgiSXmzEgjeg-oYLgjL0WBlmVKxHn-nOOKgdK44KlKmer-7djT7RwtUxisAKdpps3tpw/s1600/home.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
It will be a month, tomorrow. A month since we arrived in Portland, Oregon at the end of a long drive across the country. A truly lovely—spectacular even— nineteen-day cross-country road trip. And now we've been nearly a month in our new home.<br />
<br />
At first it was all highlights. Having a back yard, sprinklers, grass. Having a dishwasher, a kitchen that could hold more than one person, two sets of stairs, oodles of empty space: a basement, a garage. Two walk-in closets. Antique stores and a farmers market a few blocks away.<br />
<br />
But in no time I was bone-tired. Charles headed back to New York, I had two children, long days, and no nanny. The dryer was leaving long slim burns on all our sheets and clothes. We had no wi-fi, no table at which to eat, no blinds on the windows, no routine, lots of boxes to be unpacked and lists of things to buy, and a lawn that needed to be watered and mown. I suddenly needed to sleep. I got cranky, the five-year-old got cranky; I was impatient, the five-year-old began throwing tantrums. My mom and sister appeared in shifts with paint brushes and plants and watering cans and platters of food. They took care of the kids. I learned how to sort and put out the garbage. I had phone conversations with internet people. I interviewed sitters. I watered. I despaired of finding a sitter. I bought things. I returned things. I went to IKEA four times. I made piles by the door of things to be returned (the pile is still growing). This is now.<br />
<br />
My father and sister came over for dinner this evening, we ate pizza at our new dining room table. The kids played in their rooms. When our guests left and the kids and Charles went to sleep, and I found myself doing laundry in the basement. Ironing dresses, hemming the cuffs on my son's new taekwondo pants. Maybe I can do this, with lots help of course.A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-36871697193371957902014-05-29T18:43:00.002-07:002014-09-26T22:53:32.614-07:00i am ready for that and weary of this<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Tomorrow the movers come. Today Genevieve walked around our mostly-packed apartment and complained, "everything keeps disappearing." Disappearing into brown cardboard boxes that my mother has diligently continued to fill, despite the fact that I don't really want everything packed up. I dislike the transition, not knowing where the fingernail clippers are—or my phone or favorite sweater. I linger about the apartment, soaking in the space I love so much. Dismantling it perhaps a bit too slowly. Each day I've been taking photos from my bedroom window of the locust trees blooming above the Hudson, the Palisades peeking through the foliage. I will miss the trees and the river, the sunsets, and shadowy sunrises, the hawks and gulls. I will miss this little space full of light and peace, even as I won't miss the garbage-laden sidewalks, rushing pedestrians and honking cars, the tiresome culture of competition. <br />
<br />
I am looking forward to getting into our car on Saturday and driving west. Of course, our drive across the country is living in transition as well, but the decisions have mostly been made. Where to go, what to wear, where to sleep. There are many friends to see, and sights to show the children: the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, the vast flatness of Kansas, the mountains in Colorado, the Grand Canyon, the Redwoods. And then the drive up 101 to Oregon. I am ready for that, and am I weary of this.<br />
<br />
So I am excited (if not still a bit anxious) the movers are coming tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to the responsibility for all these possessions weighing on someone else's shoulders for awhile. And then just be the four of us, a suitcase, and a car.<br />
<br />
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A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-77393191515381587102014-04-23T20:50:00.000-07:002016-01-21T22:57:40.209-08:00the hidden place that heals<div style="text-align: left;">
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Over and over by us torn in two,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">the god is the hidden place that heals again.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">We are sharp-edged, because we want to know,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">but he is always scattered and serene.</span><br />
<br />
—Rainer Maria Rilke <br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">from <i>The Sonnets to Orpheus, </i>XVI</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #ead1dc;"><span style="color: #fce5cd;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #fce5cd;">• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • </span></span></span><span style="color: #ead1dc;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #fce5cd;">• • • • •</span></span></span><br />
<br />
It is Bright Wednesday, or at least the dying nub of Bright Wednesday, and I am finally sitting down to write. All day a cool, steady wind passed through the trees out my window. Each time I looked the sky and river changed color as if trying on different outfits: clouds once low and thin above choppy gray water, another moment green and heavy over gold glitter.<br />
<br />
It was a productive day, both children (finally) back in school after a lingering spring break. And I finally began preparing for Genevieve's eye surgery for esotropia next week. By prepare I primarily mean <i>prepare myself—</i>I have already spent plenty of time preparing Genevieve. My habit is to focus on <i>getting through</i> all the unpleasantness and anxieties by clenching in and checking out during the difficult moments. I want to be done with it all and take off her bandages and have her eyes see straight. I want the healing well underway. Just like I want to be done with packing and saying goodbyes and sorting the keeps from the throw-aways. I want to plug through without engaging the uncertainties; pit-pat, all squared away. But I'm learning is that while this method might have worked well for me at one point in my life, and may still function OK at times, it certainly isn't helpful for my three-year-old. (And, surprise, surprise, it isn't great help to me either.)<br />
<br />
Fear of engaging the present moment in favor of waiting for a more serene future moment is in essence living in fear. This literally means that my back is tense, my neck and shoulders clench, and my derriere is tucked in. I am trying to keep it all together by walking around stiff as a board. And what's more: no one can keep it all together anyway. Not even God. Isn't that what we learn during Holy Week? <i>Today the Redeemer of the world is slapped on the face. </i>Those lines from Holy Friday always catch in my heart. I have to ask myself, was Jesus walking around stiff as a board for thirty years, dreading his crucifixion? Wanting to get this <i>being human</i> thing over and done with? As I recall, he only allowed himself one night of that.<br />
<br />
<i>Over and over by us torn in two / the god is the hidden place that heals again</i>. To be broken and feel my brokenness, to sit with uncertainty and accept it—this is part of the goal. But more importantly I am trying shift my focus away from the things I am dreading. To instead regard the whole situation with curiosity and gentleness. To remember that we are having this surgery now because we have an awesome doctor here, a surgeon who is an expert in this procedure. I can't be sure nothing will go wrong, but that small fear is only a small part of a much larger picture. The vast majority of things in my life, and in Geneveive's life, are going incredibly well. I know that hidden place that heals again, I've been there before. Now I just have to trust and<i> live</i>, breathe, through it. To be there—awake—for both of us. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #ead1dc;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">{ <a href="http://www.flakedoves.blogspot.com/2014/04/tidy-hens-paschal-moments.html" target="_blank"><i>p o e t r y w e d n e s d a y</i></a> }</span></span></span></span>A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24067464.post-39222331186630768072014-04-15T21:08:00.000-07:002014-04-16T02:01:15.086-07:00this loss speaks no disaster<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRvuazOJLLNqEtAJTUrq8veGK5MRRpeq0WCA9w2hpSTxdgSRueQq5kn4jl2IWutT2uYIIAhVLQ-1OOQcFoXi_-Ka-ubxP0BKPX3U0iGN0UzHTeSDoEhb1Elq-g3JcDuPzL-JdXCQ/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+8.25.57+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRvuazOJLLNqEtAJTUrq8veGK5MRRpeq0WCA9w2hpSTxdgSRueQq5kn4jl2IWutT2uYIIAhVLQ-1OOQcFoXi_-Ka-ubxP0BKPX3U0iGN0UzHTeSDoEhb1Elq-g3JcDuPzL-JdXCQ/s640/Screen+shot+2014-04-10+at+8.25.57+AM.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>photo by Mark Guy</i></span></td></tr>
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O N E A R T<br />
<i>by Elizabeth Bishop</i><br />
<br />
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;<br />
so many things seem filled with the intent<br />
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.<br />
<br />
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster<br />
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.<br />
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.<br />
<br />
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:<br />
places, and names, and where it was you meant<br />
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.<br />
<br />
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or<br />
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.<br />
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.<br />
<br />
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,<br />
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.<br />
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.<br />
<br />
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture<br />
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident<br />
the art of losing’s not too hard to master<br />
though it may look like (<i>Write</i> it!) like disaster.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #fce5cd;">• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • </span><br />
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Maybe the best indicator of maturity is the ability to lose. To walk away, to give up: demands, cities, dreams, rivers, people. I first felt the sting of real loss in my late twenties, a true friend gone—or, more precisely, divorced. It was both disorienting and freeing. I remember clearly the huge weight of it sliding off of me, and there in that open space the pain of missing someone I knew well. After that I could imagine losing other things with more ease. Trying on loss like a hat: this one or that? <br />
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But perhaps maturity is the ability to know what is worth keeping. Loss may feel less disastrous over time, but acknowledging the things which cannot be lost may be central to maintaining identity. Nearly three years ago I walked back and forth along a wooded stretch on our street, talking on the phone and crying. Not understanding why I was crying, but knowing that my best friend was in some inexplicable danger and that I could not follow her where she was going. I was surprised that I felt the pain so keenly: my body welled with anger, fear and loss. But I also felt confident we could ride it out; that our friendship would prove resilient, that she was resilient. And I was right. <br />
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We are six weeks from our move to Portland, but in significant ways the loss of New York has already happened. Our dear friends moved away a week and a half ago, a grief for us all but particularly the children. I watch as my son processes the absence of his best friend. I remind myself to be patient through the breakdowns and fits of anger, this is his first time losing something important to him. He is also getting ready to lose the city he was born in, his beloved nanny, and all his friends. I, however, am ready to go; this loss speaks no disaster to me. I can imagine our life in Portland down to the smells and the color of the light. The Hudson River may be sublime, but now I see her as a stand-in for the Columbia. The tangley woods of New England, however quaint and storied, lack the deep, wet stillness of a Douglas Fir forest.<br />
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Leaving New York is not really a loss, but just the turning of a page. I grew into an adult in this state—I learned how to party, to grieve, to be independent, assertive and beautiful here; I learned how to negotiate, to shovel snow, to parent, and to parallel park here. There is not much chance I will really lose New York when we leave. I will miss her and I will not miss her. There is joy and there is sorrow, they mingle together—it is no disaster.A M B E Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01568015218380741354noreply@blogger.com1