On vulnerability and gray space and wisdom

I'd be hard-pressed to remember a time in which this blank screen felt so intimidatingly empty. Usually this white expanse is an immediate thrill, an opportunity, a sure change of committing to memory something funny or meaningful, of processing and coming to better understand something, of making you laugh, of inspiring you to cook.

But since January 20, the ease of writing has felt more elusive, this space more challenging, our easy friendship not as effortless. Oh yes, there have been moments, stretches in which the cursor can hardly keep up with the letters as I lay them down. But in some ways, writing has felt like a sort of work it hasn't before.

Because writing is so often a great source of peace for me, and frankly a peace I have desperately needed since the election and especially since the inauguration, my lack of facility with it as of late has sewn me up and through with a sad sort of tension. It is as if I am without my trusty outlet and so the ugliness of the bigotry and lying and hate and ineptitude spewing from the White House like the most toxic slime settles in but then struggles to escape. 

I am not remotely alone in feeling awash in this stress. DC is like an underdressed person on a frigid day, hunched over, eyes down, shoulders pressed towards each other and forward against a biting wind. My city is agitated, strung out, and pissed off. Even our winter hasn't been normal. We've had only a dusting of snow, and none of it stuck. The cherry blossoms are blooming, weeks ahead of schedule, the tulips are halfway up, the ants have returned to our door jambs. Last week, the kids wore shorts to school one day.

Although February is never my favorite month, it's hardly been much of a February, and I can't attribute much malaise to wearing shorts a few times weeks ahead of schedule. So what gives? And what can I do?

Wise friends in my writing group beseeched me to sit with it all. The grayness and the attendant frustration when I can't understand, in that moment, when I am unable to paint the gray a brighter hue.

"Just keep going. No feeling is final." said J via Rilke.

"...why or what is it that causes you to 'dislike, immensely, this utter discomfort and threading sadness'.......looking for an answer to that, maybe writing about that, could help break up this 'flummoxed all around'" sensation, wrote D.

J offered this poem from Rumi but noted that he sometimes "find[s] it helpful to pause before answering the door."

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

And so I have tried to stew acceptingly, to laugh at unexpected visitors, to sometimes pretend not to be home when they knock. I have tried to limit my stays in the house of horrors downtown, to ignore what might be appalling but not consequential but continue to push back on what is dangerous and offensive and unjust. And I have tried to treat myself with the kindness I would bestow on others, a task that is always more difficult for me than I feel it should be. 

This afternoon, the massage I hoped would help relieve my unyieldingly taut piriformis disappointed in almost every way. And the documentary I'd hoped to see afterwards was foiled by rain and a temperature drop and assorted nonsense. But I took a hot bath, and asked Tom to go to the market, and went to a book club at school where we discussed privilege and justice and race and the sorts of kids we want to raise and how best to be models for them (I do recommend the book we read: We Gon' Be Alright by Jeff Chang). 

Though the rain kept coming, the skies parted, and the gray slunk away, and I thought about how Rilke is right, that no feeling is final.

I thought about the risk but immense reward in being vulnerable, with self and others. That there is great connectivity and healing in exposing myself, yourself, ourselves, even when at first it might seem there's anything but. 

On the arts and their value

Ensconced in a transparent plastic chair with file cabinets of sheet music on one side and a colorful array of instruments on the other, with bleats and squeaks and scales and low frequencies radiating from studios all around, I turn a page in my book and smile. Mozart, the resident dog, ambles over for a scratch behind his ears.

Although I've little musical ability, in Middle C each weekend, as I wait while Jack and Oliver finish their lessons, I feel at home. The test notes and amiable chatter and warm ups and expanding lung capacities are individuals at practice in a place that both challenges and nurtures them. I gravitate toward places like that and the people who both work and learn there.

I felt a similar homeyness during the AWP conference earlier this month, despite the fact that literally thousands were in attendance, and I knew approximately five. Armed with my schedule, badge, and a bag of books -I never go anywhere without reading material; do you?- I made my way from panel to panel, toggling between the convention center and the elephantine Marriott across the street. Lost among friends, really. And happily so.

This is not to say that all musicians and writers and artists are nice, expansive people. Good grief- of course they aren't. Some are egotistical and competitive, and others are pathologically shy. Some are troubled while others prefer words or paint to people. Many have wrestled with periods of feeling awkward or different. Many still do. Some have experienced abuse or trauma or stunning loss. Many are delightfully eccentric, some fit every stereotype.

I've often wondered just how mental health, creativity, and intelligence co-exist, for many have written of "madness" as creative fire, of angst as a torturous fuel, of tragedy and loss as a sort of generative phoenix. A spherical spectrum seems to fit the bill of any synchronicity better than a linear one. 

Most every artist I've ever encountered relishes or at least feels the utter need to get at the root of who they are, who we are, and to express those selves in some way. Communities of artists are like multi-celled organisms undulating toward kernels of truth and understanding, toward justice and inclusion. The arts push the boundaries of what is and should be accepted, what is and should be normed. They teach us empathy, allow us to better understand the beauty and strength in difference, usher in respect and tolerance, and diminish fear and hate.

It is not hard to understand why dictators seek to control messaging and especially artistic expression. So really, stay sharp right now in the face of alternative facts (bullshit), lies messaged as news (also bullshit), the spread of fear versus hope (carnage, anyone?), and attempts to quash the humanities (the Trump admin's desire to cut the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, disallow peaceful protests, etc). 

Politics aside, this post is actually a piece about me and the gratitude I feel for the arts.

When I was a young child, my parents (who both studied art history in college and have collected art for decades), sister, and I often played two games: one was an artist and artwork flashcard-based gig (more fun that it now sounds), and the other was a sleuthing game in which the player whose turn it was donned a blindfold, reached into a paper bag to pluck a cardboard object from a large assortment, felt its curves and angles, size and stature, and ventured a guess as to what it was.

I attended summer arts camps and took drawing and painting lessons for years. I have spent more than a night in Corning, NY, because my father wanted to see the glass museum there and specifically a piece, Jay Musler's Cityscape, in it. I remember that our B&B smelled like tequila and lime and that the proprietor was a zany woman who sang "Customers, come here!" when we knocked on the wrong door. Cityscape remains vividly seared in my mind, a stunning piece of glass rendered meaningful in a gifted man's hands.

Courtesy of the Corning Museum; isn't this magical? Although sadly, I read it so much differently than I did when younger. Now, though still beautiful, it strikes me as environmental doomsday.

And yet, with all that steeping in the arts, I wasn't comfortable expressing myself artistically until my thirties. The general aging process has helped, but I wouldn't be nearly as complete a person as I am (and let's be clear, it's a real work in progress with more work to do; likewise it's not painless!) without open artistic expression which began with cooking, segued into photography, slid easily into blogging about those things, and has evolved into so much more.

I don't consider myself a Writer yet (though I aspire to be such), but I do know that writers and artists and those who truly appreciate them are my truest tribe. The sensitivity and openness, the shared experience of some struggle and the gentle embrace of what has challenged each of us, the multitude of identities lived and loved and celebrated...all of those things are treasures, gifts, and each time I experience, witness, or grow from relationships forged in and around arts communities, I become more me. More of the me I want to be. More of that fully unhusked kernel of self truth.

Happily colliding worlds of Nanny at the AWP Conference

I don't know if I've ever told you much about Nanny and Papa's house. Oh sure, bits and pieces here and there. How it sat in both sun and dappled shade on a corner lot at Moss and Division streets. About Papa's blackberry patch out by the old shed, and the towering pecan trees in the side yard by the Duhon's house, and Nanny's flowers all over. 

Maybe I've told you that white wooden house was where my mom and her siblings grew up, and where Nanny lived for more than sixty years until she died there, in her bed, at the age of 92, Mom right beside her.

It's the house where I, in many ways, grew up too. It's where we used to shelter for hurricanes threatening Lake Charles because it had always withstood even the strongest ones. It's the home in which we gathered for countless Sunday lunches of spaghetti and roast, salad and French bread, tall glasses of Lipton iced tea, and pie or a cheesecake or Crown Jewel or Nanny's lemon-lime refrigerator sheet cake.

Perhaps what I've not mentioned is that the property included four or five apartments, some separate from the big house and others attached to but not part of it. Nanny and Papa let those apartments for helpful supplemental income, and when Papa died, Nanny continued to keep the places rented.

The extra money was great, but I also liked that Nanny seemed to attract some really special tenants who became much more than simply renters. At some point, the head of the writing program at McNeese, the university in Lake Charles, started sending graduate students Nanny's way. The early referrals became a self-perpetuating means of keeping the apartments full.

One MFA student, a thirty-something named Neil, approached Nanny fourteen or fifteen years ago, and asked if he could rent an apartment month to month rather than signing a year-long lease, which was her standard first-year requirement, due to some personal concerns. Never one to turn down any sincere ask for help, Nanny said yes. 

Neil stayed for eighteen months, and during that time became close to Nanny. She adored him, and although I didn't live in Lake Charles anymore and so never met Neil, I nonetheless felt I knew him. I knew that he met and married a wonderful woman and that while still in town, they had a son. Nanny loved getting to know his expanding family.

After Nanny died, Mom told me about the beautiful letter Neil had written her describing why Nanny had meant so much to him. His words rang familiar to so many she had touched and made happy over the decades.

Fast forward some, and because the Association of Writers & Writing Programs' (AWP) 2017 conference was slated for DC and I learned of this on the last day of early bird pricing last fall, I registered. When the schedule was announced, I flipped through it like the eager ever-student I am.

Thursday, February 9, noon: Beyond "Show, Don't Tell"
Neil Connelly, Cheryl Klein, Shawn Stout, Kekla Magoon.

Certain that Neil was the Neil from the white wooden house at 601 Division, I emailed Mom. "Yes!" she replied, "I'll put y'all in touch."

I reached out to Neil several weeks ago. He is now an English professor at Shippensburg University and has published eight books. "Neil, I'd love to put a face with the name I've heard about in such fond ways all these years. Might we steal a moment at the conference?"

"Emily, I write you from my office at Shippensburg, looking up at a picture of your grandmother, whom I adored." he replied.

I sat with his lovely note, looking around at the many photos of Nanny peppering my home, her vibrant smile the first thing anyone notices in any of them, and thinking of how special it was that yet another person (for there are many out there) in this big, diffuse world loved and missed Nanny too, and continues to keep her near. I was so touched, but I wasn't surprised.

This morning, after getting the kids ready for school, quickly pulling together a not-mom outfit, and shoving some pens, notebooks, phone charger, and snacks in my "professional bag," I hopped on the Metro and headed downtown, attempting to get there, check in, and make it to the first panel on time.

Being at AWP feels somewhat like being in Vatican City. You're in a small, densely-populated humming city-state: it's overwhelming, but in a way I like. 

The first panel was absolutely great, and then I texted Neil to check in. I'm in the Book Fair at booth 575, he replied. The Book Fair, let's say it's the Vatican within Vatican City, is not small, but sooner than not, I was at 575, sharing a smile and hug with a kind man who once lived in the apartment abutting Nanny's house. 

We found seats at a nearby table and reminisced. 

"Your grandmother and I used to sit on her back steps and talk. About tough stuff or nothing at all. And she would really listen, with no judgment."

That very trait, the true listening and hearing with no judgment or superfluous commentary, is one of the things I most loved about Nanny. I told Neil how much I missed Nanny still, and as I teared up, he said, "She's a person worth crying over." Isn't that a profound compliment? I think I'll remember that simple phrase forever.

He told me that once he moved out he continued to send students to Nanny but with this head's up: "You'll get a place at a good price, but you need to help Florence. Take out her garbage, check in on her, don't upset her."

Nanny took care of Neil, but he took care of her too, and I am so grateful for that. Imagine if we all looked after each other in such ways.

When Neil's first son was born, he and his wife would take him to visit. "To this day when Owen eats a peppermint patty, he thinks of your grandmother's house and how much he liked it there." 

I do the same. So do Jack and Oliver. Nanny always had York mints in the middle drawer of the buffet in her living room, and usually Starlight mints as well, those hard white-and-red peppermints. Maybe some Werther's too, but not as regularly.

"That front room had such great natural light. And high ceilings and those gauzy drapes in the windows." And like that I was back there again, sitting in the recliner across from Nanny's, watching the birds come to the feeder suction-cupped to one of the windows sheathed in translucent fabric, rolling around on the ancient carpet and feeling the familiar highs and lows of the slightly buckled wood floors underneath.

I remember when Jack was little, or was it Ol?, he'd lay quietly on that carpet and run his hand back and forth across the pile. Feeling, noticing, exploring. 

"Once, early in my and Tom's relationship," I told Neil, "I took him home to Lake Charles for a visit, and while there, my parents were trying to figure out how to affix Nanny's recliner to a wooden dais. I can't recall why, but it needed to be sturdy and firmly attached. Tom is an engineer so he got right to helping, and I remember thinking he'd really passed a test. He could see that we all adored Nanny and wanted to do anything for her, and he jumped in to do the same."

The time came to go our separate ways, and I asked if we could take a picture. Though I don't believe in an afterlife, I have to think that in some way, Nanny saw us and smiled her radiant smile.