Writing, Respite and Denali

I'm still here in beautiful rural Washington. There's not much to do but relax and listen to the birds, putter around the beautiful house, wander outside and chat with the goats, read novels (Tommy Orange's There, There and Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen), read some poetry (Marie Howe's Magdalene), eat a plum, eat a peach, let a corner of a chocolate bar melt in my mouth, suck on a Tootsie Pop and gaze at the Bird Photographer.

I haven't written much, but I've arranged and re-arranged my hundreds of pages into a sort of order. It took hours and hours to do that much, but a structure is finally, literally, at the tip of my fingers. My plan is to finish up in the next day or so and then, when I get home, re-type the whole lot and send to the editor as a rough -- extremely rough -- draft.

The Pacific Northwest in the summer is perfection. It was here -- or up in Victoria -- where I spent a week by myself only four years ago, a recipient of the magnificent Heather McHugh's organization, Caregifted. That week changed my life and opened me to the possibility of and hope for more respite from the life of caregiving that, while enormously rewarding and filled with grace, has also drained me of myself or the essence that keeps me vital. I realized then how important it was to seek respite in whatever way I could, to open myself up to the possibility of replenishment and to work just as hard to get that as I do to take care of my daughter. While I am aware of the enormous privileges I've been granted that others just do not have, I also remember the nearly twenty years without significant respite. I remember what it was like to have no hope for it.

We caregivers must get back to ourselves as if our life depended on it because it does.

photographer: Carl Jackson

Listen to the latest Who Lives Like This podcast -- a rousing discussion of nurturing the self with Paige Figi, the director of Coalition for Access Now and the mother of Charlotte of the famous Charlotte's Web cannabis oil. Jason and I interviewed Paige just a week before she climbed Denali, the highest peak in North America. Here's the link:

Who Lives Like This?!

Yeah. I know. Not all of us will climb Denali, even if we desired to do so. Yet, still, there's joy to be had no matter how you choose to find yourself.

As my friend, writer Chris Rice said the other day, Your book is your Denali.


Onward.

Gifts, Poetry and Cake

I've had a lovely day -- breakfast with my friend Jenni, flowers from those neighborhood cuties above, and a coconut cake that I bought myself in the late afternoon. Henry surprised me with a card and an apple, carved into a swan.

Who knew?

Oliver gave me the most beautiful blue reclining Buddha. Here it is in front of my friend Moye's gorgeous pottery:

I posted both the apple turned swan and the Buddha on Facebook, and Heather McHugh -- that angel saint poet who gave me the respite week last year and who is the founder of Caregifted -- wrote a comment that is a poem. Honestly, I am in awe and so honored. Here it is:

amazing how much they have in common, the swan and buddha, in these iterations... but though the steadiness of the buddha's eye is to live for, the seediness of the swan's eye is to die for.

Wow. Right?

And then someone left this link on my last post which I believe is perfectly suited to a person who was born in 1963.



So, there you go. Gifts, poetry and cake -- I am rich indeed.

Poetry in Flight

I read this poem in The New Yorker, while I flew over Seattle the other day. Instead of leaving the issue in the back of the seat in front of me, I took it home to savor. Read it, read it again and then read it aloud.

Varieties of Cool

A friend had a friend who winked us past rope lines,
we were enskyed for one night in hipness

it was boring

the champagne tasted no better than wonderful

the music was the same lobotomy of thump
that had been playing for years as dissent
from our Puritan roots

then we freed ourselves in a cab, something yellow
that wasn't a flower but wanted to be, sang
"Homeward Bound" passably to be happy about melancholy
and teach the driver from Sri Lanka a thing or two
about the American wistfulness for home
all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge
and walked across the night and water
that I got down on my belly and said hello to
through the wooden slats

in Brooklyn Heights we ate grapes and waved
at the effort by the various Carnegies
and Seagrams to live forever, my friend had a cough
that became an acronym, I sat beside his missing
a man with my missing a woman in front of homes
we knew from movies but appeared less famous
than cozy at four in the morning as we tried
to decide which house wanted to adopt us

I couldn't get over the grapes

he said, That's New York, you can get anything 
as long as it's not what you really need

he didn't say that

I'm confusing him with Mick Jagger and this poem
with a novel, he said something and I did
back and forth, it was quiet and that's how
conversation works, the grapes were good
and the night air had no idea how bad
his cough would get, I am grateful
that, on balance, the absence of stars
in Manhattan is offset by the number of lights
there's no reason to leave on but people do.

Bob Hicok