Dreams

Looking back,digging around in my memories,I try to see if I had any grand dreams for the future.I don't recall any converstaions about dreams or dream pursuing encouragement from my family.My Great Grandparents came on a ship from Scotland in the 1890s but once plopped down on Long Island, they never went off again.They found jobs,made a living and that was enough.Maybe, getting here was the dream.

Did my parents have wishes beyond an occasional Yankee game at the Stadium? I know this, my Mother had no interests or hobbies beyond a burst of lamp shade making and figurine painting that lasted about a year.Did they have dreams?Did I?

Mine were pipe dreams:singing and dancing in a Broadway show like "Carousel."I had a good voice and loved to sing but when my Mother asked my sister if she should get lessons for me,she said,"Naw,her voice isn't that good." End of dream.It took so little to quash it.

When I finally awoke to wishes of mine, I started to visualize being a manager in the company that I worked for.I could see myself in that office upfront and all the creative ways that I would develop the people that worked for me.Maybe the visualizing did it,I had a rewarding ten years.

Soon,I started thinking of travelling and have been able to do much of that and each trip has been a challenge and reward.I wanted to go to school to be a counsellor but gave that up and it's O.K. Then writing,and writing with a purpose.Not just the pleasure of the word or the scene that is so perfect,that comes from I don't know where,evoking such strong feelings in me.

I will try to find the words:I have looked into the depths of things and seen magic.This sorrow is that but more than that.It has a sheen we can't see,a light that is not clear now but will be.We can change our lives.By doing one thing differently.Let me give you an example.For the last three days, I have been asking my husband if I can do anything for him.This small sentence has brought a mellowness to his face.A small thing.This looking,seeing and changing has come through prayer and writing.

All of this was unearthed by a spare poem that I found and like.It suits me.

"Dreams
not fulfilled
may shatter and embitter
Or deepen understanding
and increase sensitivity
to other's dreams."-Theta Burke

are you a writer?

I am.An unpublished,probably never to be published writer,who has found this deep well of grace inside that strains to be out.This is all I know.That the world I see,smell and revel in, needs to find its way through me and onto a page.

The extraordinary glimpses of the invisible world,the surprises,never to be imagined answers to prayers, need to be held up so the sparkles can be seen.Like a strobe light turning again and again to catch each panel's shining.

I once walked a labyrinth and in that still green meadow heard this:"find a way to let the "Godness" inside your center flow out into the world."So I watch and listen .I take pictures to capture the moment of beauty or grace and later, in writing ,I poke around in the roots of the happening to see its meaning.

I am a writer of bounty,of surprises,answered prayers,sparkles,and reveling.Writing.

the bitter poet

Several years ago, I came across a poem that had drawn me by its title,"April".By the time I was finished,I had tears streaming down my face.It ends this way:

...Not only underground are the brains of men
eaten by maggots
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup,a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly,down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot,babbling and strewing flowers."

This is a poem that stunned me with its bitterness.I laughed out loud at the cheek of it.I always wondered about this contrary artist and finally read of her in Nancy Milford's "Savage Beauty."This is,of course,about Edna St.Vincent Millay, a gifted, highly appreciated American poet.

What a grand girl she was,rising out of a poor,virtually parent less home in Maine,going to Vassar on scholarships.Older women took an interest in her,younger women and men threw themselves at her feet.She was thin,gamine like,with startling red hair and an elusiveness that was seductive.Her poetry helped to speak for the same generation that loved The Great Gatsby,F.Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda.

"The Blue Flag in the Bog" is one of my favorites.Her use of words just leaves me in awe of her gift.This small woman in a man's world took it by storm and lived by her own rules.She loved whoever she wanted for as long as she wanted.And when, twice, new life tried to come through her,she refused.A contemporary wrote:"Edna did exactly what she pleased,when she pleased and where she pleased.One must remember that about her..."

What Edna did was write poems and nothing got in the way of this satisfying,creative act.What she must have felt when she honed a poem into exactly what she wanted to say.I can see her cheeks flushed with contained joy.

As she aged, the poet's life kept turning as she willed, with drink,morphine,and attempts to rehab.Her work suffered as did her relationships.Milford wrote,"They(the drug journals of Edna and her husband)are among the most troubling and pitiful documents in American literary history."I think of Goethe's quote,"We are shaped by what we love ."Edna loved writing poetry.This is what sat on the throne of her life.

It is with great irony and sadness that I read that on October 19,1950,Edna died by falling down a "flight of uncarpeted stairs."Her neck was broken ,her gifts,gone.She was 58.

A Room Of My Own

When I was growing up, I shared a room with my sister.A small room.I did homework in bed; the room was too small for a chair and the desk was stamp size and wouldn't hold a book and a notebook.To keep that room neat with two of us was impossible.What I do remember most and with fondness is the window and the maples beyond, lit by the street light.They were my friends and when I looked out there, I was in a different place.

In her essay,"A Room of One's Own",Virginia Woolf posits that there would have been a plethora of women writers through the centuries if they had had a spot to call their own.A place where a woman could ,undisturbed, spread out her thoughts and come to some conclusions.Without guilt.

That,however,is the past.Today,I am in a room of my own.It faces the back yard where there are trees and grass and in my garden, the nodding yellow heads of the swamp
daisies.Beyond the trees,pine,oak,maple and tulip,is the floodplain and the Flint River which I cannot see.Living near the floodplain assures me that I will never see a house behind me.Just green and brown and grey.

I have three windows in the room which makes it very bright.I do yoga here,listening to music on my P.C.I write,keep up with friends and pray. Around me are pen and ink drawings, old wooden tables and books.And in the corner is a chair, not unlike the one in the painting that I have attached by Gwen John.That picture speaks to me on such a deep level.It says,peace,solitude,writing and simplicity.Margaret Forster wrote a novel about that painting, she was so moved and infatuated with it.It's called "Keeping The World Away".Reading it was a pleasure.

From these windows, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and like ghosts, four deer will have moved onto the grass from the woods.I have seen turkeys wander through and saved a blue jay that had been caught and pinned by a hawk.His flock mates set up such a racket that I had to go out there.

I am blessed to finally have what my spirit needed and didn't know it.

Dick and Jane and Writing

May is a month loaded with birthdays,graduations and other special days.Off we went this morning to buy cards and gifts.The second stop was that incredible sports store,Dick's, where hubby found a light cotton shirt for his trip out West.One birthday down.

For Mother's Day, I bought myself a yoga strap for stretching so I can put away my green Dior scarf.Perfect.
Then ,the last stop-Barnes and Noble.If they put a bench and a blanket in there ,I would move in.

This gift was for my god-daughter who we just put on a bus to Memphis yesterday,it seems, and who is now graduating next week.She reads constantly and is an English Lit. major so I got her a biography of a famous Georgia author who died too young and owned peacocks.Flannery O'Connor.

Anyway, the cover is gorgeous with a small painting of the famous author and a beautiful painting of peacock feathers.I hope she likes it.

While browsing ,I also found a small Jane Austen journal.I confess that I have never read anything she wrote.Sue me.I have seen some dramatizations of her works on PBS and liked the stories but the quote on the cover of the journal spoke deeply to me.She wrote in "Mansfield Park" ; "We have all a better guide in ourselves,if we would attend to it,than any other person can be." This is it.This is why we write.