Methods & Muses Vol. 35

The Art of Disappearing

I am lucky.

Despite the challenges of July ­– back spasms/limited mobility, scary air quality, relocating (again), and work stress, Benjamin and I were able to visit with family, and sleep (for 20 nights) in a peaceful home, in one of the prettiest regions of Wisconsin.

Menomonie Territory, Place of Tomorrow Seen Clearly.

The bed in this home was firm, so I could heal. I could wander along Marl Lake at Hartman Creek State Park. The AQI shifted to Good, and I could have picnics with my brother, aunts, and uncles, something we haven’t done for many years.

With my Mom’s siblings, I heard stories (gossip) about her, and I learned how passionate my family is about music, each of them arguing playfully over whose generation (50’s, 60’s, or 70’s) had the best songs. As my aunties and uncles laughed and talked, I felt how they held me as a baby, little broken me in my body cast, how each of them sang to me, bolstered my healing.

I needed this time with my aunts and uncles.

Walking with my brother in nature, both of us now in our 50’s, transported me back to when we roamed as children, free range kids with only a dog as our babysitter, through hundreds of acres of prairie, farmed land, and woods. Under the shade of a giant Maple, we ate pasta salad and chatted. Then we meandered on Terrell’s Island, following a break wall trail that stretches into Lake Butte Des Morts. We thanked a turtle and all the birds who joined us, and we quietly agreed that we our brother in Florida would love this place, and we wished he were wandering with us.

I needed this time with my brother.   

Artistically, I needed this break. I’ve been writing my way into another chapbook or possibly full-length collection, working on a second novella, writing collaboratively with my bandmates and new poet friends, and now editing for About Place Journal. This has left me, as my poet-friend, and current APJ teammate, Athene, would say, ‘knackered.’ Thankfully, because she knows it’s hard for me to stop, even when I should, Athene graciously handled more editing work while I was in the countryside, and she attended a meeting as my proxy, so I could take this break. I am so grateful she’s in my life.

Did I fully stop working for this breath of time? No, but instead of pushing to finish several projects, I did slow down. I hung out with one poem. I researched, when the gloriously patchy wifi connection allowed.  I listened and followed the associations that leapt and led me closer to my topic, and I savored the surprises that my pen, my journaling revealed.

Did I finish a draft? No, but I did write a good stanza here and there. What felt right was that I stayed with a single poem, kept the music close, and treated art work like a friend.

I invited different art-friends into the conversation. I collaged and drew. It was a good balance to work in a different medium – to listen to the scratch of color pencils, touch paper and fabric, smell paste (not too deeply ;) and coffee (as I sipped and dyed), and to consider composition.

In my writing practice, structure has it beauty. I love playing with space on the page, experimenting with punctuation, etc., but there’s something even more relaxing, a lovely quiet to moving images/shapes around a surface, shuffling until they ‘work’ together. There’s something clarifying about pinning a drawing to a wall to see what should come next or not.

Exhale.

So I felt lucky in July for having this time to shift. I was grateful for:

Prairie –

that slightly tobacco and mustard scent,

pond ­–

those color changes with the time of day, sometimes root beer, sometimes olive

and

bluff –

curved and thick and lush  

with trees. Life 

in the shapes of: Oak, Pine, Pear, Locust, Birch, and Elm.

Life as Grass, Sedge, Clover, Daisy, Lily.

Life as Deer, Raccoon, Woodchuck, Squirrel, Rabbit, Coyote (Howl!), Garter Snake, Bat, Frog (heart thrum) Monarchs, Swallowtails, Hornets, Dragonflies, Vultures, Hawks, Barred Owl, Green Herons, Blue Herons, Sandhill Cranes, Geese and Goslings, Crows, King Birds, Gold Finches, Indigo Buntings, Phoebes, Robins, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Barn Swallows, Wood Ducks, Vireos, Belted Kingfishers, Hummingbirds, Crested Flycatchers, Sparrows, Chimney Swifts, Wood-Pee-Wees, Catbirds, Starlings, Wrens, Doves, and Red Starts.

I felt lucky to re-connect with Mary Silwance, a writer I met at years ago at the Bread Loaf  Environmental Writers Conference. Mary writes gorgeous poems and essays with images of girls running in their white socks through a field and plants “beneath [her] colander,” plants you can eat like  “violets, day lily, wood Sorel (or pickle weed), broadleaf plantain, dandelion and lambs' quarters (or pigweed).” Mary reminds me to see the whole of everything, everyone. I am lucky to know her.

While I was in the country, I sat beneath some Red Oaks every day, and I wrote this:    

Look at a tree.

Think: I am, I will be, a Tree.

This oneness. This singularity, beautiful and frightening, but with practice,

fear becomes nothing. This is the art

of disappearing.

Your friend who loves plants says something like, Isn’t it great being in a garden?

The plants absorb you, like a hug.

And the Cedars frame her face, leaves touch her hair.

***

Thanks Readers, and as always, may you find your luck and balance.