The Girl Raised By Wolves

On top of a hill with a view
Of the woods and the valley below
Where the grains touch their toes in the wind
Is a fine place to mark your beginning--

Where every day calls your small feet to explore
The uncharted paths stretching out your back door,
Which are carving their shapes in the map of your brain
Just as you make your mark on the terrain.

There's something about the vastness of Space
And the way that it rhymes with that other word, Grace,
That makes them the same sanctuary to those
Who have dwelt in their absence behind closed doors--

Where the walls listened in for the secrets but heard
Only childhood poems carving space between words
For the ache to which language can only aspire,
And the darkness which only tells truth when it lies.

It is thus that life calls to us, thus that we follow
The path through the thicket, the map of tomorrow.
Wherever the space opens up to contain us,
We open our doors to the path that awaits us.

The Effort of Stasis

There is a simple realization that I keep having over and over again throughout my life. And maybe it's no different than the Buddhist concept of "flux." It's just the idea that everything you see is in motion, on a course or a path, and that our perceptions are as immediately artificial as a snapshot. You gather a concept of a person or a thing in your mind and refer to it as if it were fixed, when in reality, it never is.

As a child, I used to see a thin or fit person and think, "Wow, they don't have to worry about what they eat," not realizing that every person's body is the shape of their habits, that what I see when I look at a person's shape is the accumulation of thousands of little actions, the routines by which they conduct themselves.

As I have become a home owner, I've learned that the same is true of buildings, that the picturesque homes through which I've walked are in a constant state of repair, one piece or another always being taken off and replaced. They hold their shape and appear fixed only because of constant effort.

All things are like this. In order to maintain the appearance that something is unchanged, we must change it constantly. Nothing requires more effort than stasis.

Merciful

The only virtue of some things,
Like February and this poem,
Is that they're mercifully short.

The World as Proxy

I live on a very hilly road where I like to run. There's something satisfying about knowing exactly why I feel terrible half of the time during those runs-- it's the half of the time when I'm going uphill instead of downhill. And when I feel good it's because I'm going downhill. There's a very obvious external reason for all of my feelings.

When I run on the treadmill though, as I have been doing during these sub-zero January days, I realize my positive and negative feelings run through the same cycles, despite every step I take being exactly the same. I have learned to abide with the feelings as they come and go, understanding that each one will pass. But something in me deeply prefers what I experience out there on those hills: I think we gravitate toward life situations that validate our inner dynamics, the flow of our feelings. I think there is a pattern to how we feel even in the absence of external stimuli, that sometimes we go seek out the stimuli to give our minds external reasons to latch onto for why we feel the way we do. But the truth is, some feelings just arise because we are who we are.

 

Living On

Recently, a beloved member of the Buffalo running community passed away unexpectedly. Thomas Donnelly was a genuine leader, filling the role of President of WNY's largest running club, Checkers AC, as well as acting as Race Director for the Buffalo Marathon and the annual Turkey Trot race at the time of his death. He had an incredible energy and touched many lives with his enthusiasm. 

Listening to the praise that is all around me given to him, for the moments in his life, great and small, I feel surrounded by a chorus of beautiful grief. I feel fortunate to be able to raise a glass and a voice in such a number as this-- people who have together admired a great leader, who share an appreciation for the beauty of small moments shared with a single life that, like a wine glass that slips out of a hand at a party, spilled itself out unexpectedly.

Tom is not yet gone, as we all will be one day. So much of who we are even while we are living is contained in the people who know us and love us. We do not exist within the confines of our own bodies. Babies who are not nurtured with frequent touch die. We are born into bodies that seek connection with other people. It is the nature of our spirits to spread out, to exist primarily in the connections that we intuitively forge with other receptive souls. We are mostly spirit. So it makes sense that when we pass on, only the part of us that existed in that body goes. The part that was alive in other people lives on as long as they do.

Only a Mother

Even a mother's love is not insatiable to the point
Where she doesn't crave a lonely hour to sit at the edge of a pond,
Where her role in the ecosystem of interdependent needs
Is limited to the few drops of blood she might spare to a mosquito.

Her steps down the forest path draw a ripple of disturbance
In the birdsong that closes behind her,
Her long hours of creeping out of nurseries
Having taught her the role of quiet in sustaining life.

She must bear witness, now and then,
To the enduring, patient indifference with which
The earth mothers her constant offspring.

Only then will her mind close properly on a day
Full of needs she hasn't quite been fit to fill,
Despite her constant search for the right tune

To close the rift in birdsong caused
By her children's overzealous attempts
To seize that which they frighten away.

Whether her soul's piper ever stumbles upon the magic notes
To ease her children's way through life or not,
There will abide, at least, she hopes, this quiet.

Withholding Praise

I like to compliment people. I like to see the good in them, particularly if it is not obvious, and point it out to them. But just as often, when I am not in the mindset to search out such things, I will feel a sudden admiration for another person and reflexively withhold that praise. I'm not sure why I do that.

Sometimes the people whom I choose not to praise are rivals in some way, or people with whom I compare myself unfavorably, so the most obvious motive for withholding praise is jealousy or self-doubt. But I find it's often something I do with people whom I do not envy at all. Perhaps it is merely inconvenient to offer the praise, or may require creative energy which I lack. But there is something more to it-- a reason deeper than all of these easy ones-- that holds me back. I think that the praise I most often withhold is the most sincere. It is the goodness I notice in others which touches me the most deeply. Goodness that stirs me and makes me feel bare to acknowledge. To offer such praise is self-revelatory. It is an offering. To share it requires courage. Yet I have found that praise offered in this spirit is of the kind that can break down barriers between people. It is powerful. It is a deep recognition of our mutual humanity. Offered to a rival, it is humbling to both-- confusing, warm and comforting.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So often the wonder and beauty and raw power that we envy in our rivals is precisely the thing we wish to own within ourselves, and feel lacking. We fear that to praise it in another will point up its absence in ourselves. But instead, praising it has the opposite effect of making us seem to possess it too-- or perhaps, it even causes us to possess it. At the very least, it acknowledges the love that is at the core of envy-- love of virtue, hatred of its lack within ourselves.

What we love in others we can draw into ourselves through open praise. What we praise, we attract. When we envy, we confuse our self-loathing for other-loathing. When we love, we bring our love of others into ourselves.

So the point is: whenever you admire something deeply in another person, and feel the impulse to conceal that admiration, that apprehension is the hallmark of sincerity, and should instead prompt you to give expression to the admiration so that it can flower into the fullness of love for self and others, rather than turning into envy and self-loathing. For such love has at its root the same impulse as its opposite: that soul-bearing appreciation of virtues which we recognize in others and lack in ourselves. These are opportunities to learn, grow, expand, and become more. Yet so many times we instead treat these as occasions to retract, shrink, hide, and lessen ourselves.