Tending a Fire

I meditated this morning and the first thing that appeared in my head was the long blue (pale and steely, like the ocean) ranch across from our house in New Jersey. The Kelleys lived there and the seven years that we lived across from them, we never met any of them. We saw them from time to time, the son who drove a small car, perhaps a Toyota, blue like the house. He had long hair; my father probably thought he smoked dope. We were neighbors and yet, had no reason to know one another. Perhaps the Kelley's house is a metaphor for the impersonal, for disconnection, the disconnection common to winter.

After the Kelley's house came the boulders. My father hauled them to the edge of our front lawn to serve as a deterrent after some idiot did donuts and tore up the grass. Are they a metaphor for protection? I have been realizing as of late how blessed my husband and I are, by our children, by our belongings, house, and property. We don't realize our own vulnerability, being so close to the street. So far, I've only had to pick up the cigarettes people toss into my flowers.

After that, the wooden path to the Taylor's. I had walked it a thousand times, and dreamed of it; I flew over it, just a few feet off the ground, where I could still see every root and rock. Metaphor? Ahh, we may dream, but we are bound by gravity, by reality; we can only get so high.

A kitten with its paper bones, soft fir, warm vibrations. In Glaspell's Trifles, Mrs. Peters recalls how a boy "took a hatchet, and before <her> eyes"...And then I saw Denise's hawk, the curved beak and stoic eye after it had killed her rabbit. She told the bird she wanted to be there for the eating, and it did wait for her. She wanted to see it to understand, to know, and not have mystery to contend with; the mystery would make it worse. This is a very Buddhist thing, to not give the mind the ammunition of mystery, to make understanding a priority.

Why do these horrid images come up? It's the slaying of the innocent, and on some level, it happens to every one of us. There are reptilian forces out there. They have no empathy; they have no loving-kindness, and it's best to be aware of them. Gaining awareness is the mark of maturity.

Encounters

I've been walking Green Hill lately, behind Ayer School, because the city has cleaned up the woods, cleared paths, kicked out the squatters. My dog Josie and I have a route down to the shore line, up a promontory, down, up, down again, up again, through the woods, on a vine-draped path that reminds me of a setting from Tolkien.

I saw deer prints frozen in the mud one morning, which surprised me because this patch of greenery seemed to small to support deer. I was happy when I saw the symmetrical two-moon prints, because it meant I was closer to a wildness that I originally thought; I wasn't completely engulfed in suburbia.

I wrote a poem about meeting this lonely doe. It was hard to write, and I don't feel that I was successful in describing how I felt "blessed" by encountering her. I have since seen her a half-dozen times, always when I least expect to. One morning, she sprang up out of the wood, ran a few feet, and then stopped. She actually turned around and faced me. I gave her the universal I-come-in-peace sign by raising my hand, palm facing her. She took a few steps toward me. We locked eyes for a moment, and I felt the euphoria one gets when a wild thing trusts her. I coveted her wildness, her freedom; I wanted to run with her.

Josie caught wind of her, and her hair roused off her spine. The deer seemed to sense this, and in a flash, she became the woods again, just as suddenly as she became a deer.

Encounters

what I would speak of rather

is the weightless string of his actually soft and

nervous body the nameless stars of its eyes

                                                ~Mary Oliver, “Ribbon Snake Asleep in the Sun”

They toppled trees, cleared paths to open

the woods and flush out the homeless vets

pitching tents, sleeping in the oak leaves.

I saw the two moon tracks first—incredulous,

that my neighborhood’s patch of woods

could support something as big as deer.

She came to eat the tops of fallen trees.

We came to walk the new paths and view

the river from a different vantage point,

climb the rungs of roots and run loose.

Across the river, skaters motored and

scraped their boards at dusk. Through the
young maples you can see the light turn red.

Across the river, the nameless guard

their personal space, hunched over,

waiting for the train to let down her steps.

I only see her when I am not looking

when I am head-down walking

and then a flash of white, a flash of wing

from some other world.

Letter from the Editor: Compassion Conditioning Through Art

Letter from the Editor: Compassion Conditioning Through Art


A student once questioned the point of a compassion anthology: why draw, paint, write about compassion when you could go out and employ it directly? I spent a while pondering this. What I have discovered is that compassion is most often a predicament—something we begrudgingly choose (or choose not) to do. When we give eagerly, it’s during the holidays, because there is a bandwagon effect—everyone else is giving as well— and it makes us feel good.

I’ve had many compassion predicaments in my life, and I’m no exception. There was the elderly lady sitting on a bench outside the Stop & Shop with bags full of food who wanted a ride home; the ride she had arranged beforehand had left her stranded. I was taken aback by this proposition and perceived her as brazen, but being the softy that I am, I gave in. We loaded her groceries into the back of my Toyota Rav4, and I dropped her off at her apartment building down the road. She was especially appreciative, and although I initially felt annoyed and inconvenienced, I experienced a sudden rush of joy as I pulled away. 

And then there was the woman at dusk in the Salem Commons kneeling in the dirt. I couldn’t see her clearly and mistook her for a fire hydrant until she cried out, “Can you help me? Please help.” 

The woman—Mary was her name—was having a stroke; “The right side of my body is dead,” she told me when I approached her. She was seemingly petite and frail, but too heavy to carry, so I reassured her I would be her dead side and, half-holding her, continued to push her right foot forward with my left so that I could get her home.  Managing her and my dog, who was exceedingly uneasy about the situation, took about a half hour: I had to alternate moving and propping Mary, then untying and moving my dog, until I found someone who could help. 

As I was moving Mary, she told me about the death of her husband and of her only living relative—a nephew in Brighton— and how she was terrified of hospitals. We talked about bingo and the religious scandals in the Church. A portal opened into the life of another, and it was meaningful. My nights were typically spent alone back then, with my dog, in my apartment; helping Mary made me feel a part of the continuum of humanity.  

What provoked me to act? Perhaps on some level I saw myself in the dirt, which triggered the Golden Rule—do to others as you would have them do to you—a tenet put in place by the Catholic Church. But I think it was guilt that motivated me more than anything: if I didn’t help these women then how much of a jerk was I? 

Our lives are simply not structured for compassion.  They’re structured for sustaining the comforts we have as well as any inclination toward financial and social advancement; it’s the American way. Especially now, in a troubled economy, we have an alibi. This alibi, however, falls short in the presence of the restless human spirit seeking community and good will. We do a fantastic job of distracting ourselves from this restlessness, but it’s always lurking, waiting for us to turn off the screen.

The root of compassion originates in the meaninglessness of our lives; it begins with existential dissatisfaction, wanting something more, a spiritual need to connect with others. Compassionate works of art help us realize that need. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. conditioned his civil rights activists in non-violence, so too must we become conditioned in compassion. For a lot of us, religion accomplishes this task but art can inspire it as well, through stories, songs, and images.

On my first day back to school this past fall semester, I carried around in my mind a painting titled “Sentience” by Dawn Fisher (see Home and Art pages in The Compassion Project: An Anthology). It came up during my morning meditation and I recalled it several times that day as I went to teach my composition classes with an undercurrent of apprehension.  Would this semester stress me out? Does what I do really matter? Am I making enough money? The image settled me because I recognized that its presence had meaning: sentience, or awareness, is the heart of my job—I dispel ignorance and inform; I bring students to a greater awareness of their own sensibilities and the ways of the world around them. I do important work. The image had dismissed any apprehension and replaced it with justification, with confidence. It inspired me. 

Artists use images to express ideas and emotions, poets and writers, to heighten the meanings of texts, psychics, to communicate with the dead, religions and secular organizations to portray collective beliefs, and advertisers to persuade us to buy. What if we could tap into the subliminal power of images to inspire us to be compassionate? Would we then eagerly choose compassion in a compassion predicament? 

In his New York Times article “Compassion Made Easy," David DeSteno, a social psychologist, affirms “that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves—even a relatively trivial one—the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly.”  

This “association” De Steno speaks of is empathy; this is what causes us to act. And the objective of most art is to connect people through a common thread of humanity—empathy.

Yet, in order for a work of art, be it a poem, a story, a song, or a play to be effective, it must be timely. It must coincide with a compassion predicament. My hope is that this first edition of The Compassion Project: An Anthology will spark empathy in its readers and viewers enough to welcome these compassion predicaments and honor them with compassionate actions, and that these actions will, as DeSteno says paraphrasing the Dalai Lama, “radiate outward and increase harmony for all.”

The works included here depict a wide range of compassionate acts from simple, random acts of kindness as in Enver Rahmanov’s “A Stranger on a Subway,” to the founding of compassionate organizations that combat global suffering, as outlined in Marina Cantacuzino’s “The Forgiveness Project” and Tam Martin Fowles “A Journey to Compassion.” 

Several of our contributors utilize art in a compassionate way as part of their life’s work: Marina Cantacuzino of The Forgiveness Project uses storytelling to explore reconciliation between victims and their perpetrators; Tam Martin Fowles uses cathartic art as a means to accept and overcome adversity; our associate editor Jennifer Jean teaches poetry to sex trafficking survivors, and poet Doug Holder has led poetry groups at McLean Hospital for the past 30 years.

Finally, I hope this anthology will help me with my latest compassion predicament—one that involves the children in Sierra Leone who lost their parents and guardians to the Ebola virus. My predicament is not if I should act, but how I should act to help these kids, because all of my previous attempts have failed. The organization that supports these children is called ChildHelp Sierra Leone and the director, Kaprie Thoronka, is a selfless man who has seen his share of hardship. We’ve been communicating weekly about the Ebola crisis and the emails and pictures he sends me are heart-wrenching. 

On the children’s behalf, I have decided to organize a campaign called Images of Compassion featuring poetry and art. Chosen work will be displayed here, in the anthology, and in an exhibit (I’m still ironing out the details as to where and when). We will charge an entry fee for submitters, and this will go directly to ChildHelp Sierra Leone, as will any proceeds from a silent auction (if we have one). 

If you wish to make a donation now to ChildHelp Sierra Leone, you can visit their 1% Club crowdfunding sitehttps://onepercentclub.com/en/?#!/projects/post-ebola-child-support. If you are interested in submitting to Images of Compassion, we’ll have the submission guidelines up in January, so keep checking our Facebook page and website.

I thank you for visiting our site and wish you peace, compassion, and joy in 2015.

Sincerely,

Laurette Folk, editor of The Compassion Project: An Anthology

 www.compassionanthology.com

The Old Growth Bowdoin Pine

Draw Antonio, draw, and do not waste time.

This is what Michelangelo wrote to his assistant before he died.

Walking amongst the Bowdoin Pines, I found the remnant of a goose beak; a coyote must have finished it off. And then a few yards beyond, an old growth pine, prodigious and solemn. How many secrets did it have? Had its young needles brushed the hem of Hawthorne's coat as he walked these woods as a young man? Here's a sad thing: some ten essay ideas (or more) huddle about me like moths to a porch light and I don't have the wherewithal to write them. There are meals to cook, diapers to change, dishes and clothes to wash. The latest came fluttering while walking amongst the Bowdoin Pines: Survivor vs. Victim. What are the characteristics of a survivor? What are the characteristics of a victim? Survivors take their blows and chalk them up to life experience. They are resourceful--every situation has something to teach them. They hunger for life; they probe its depths, reinvent themselves, come out both arms swinging. Artists are survivors who revere beauty; they seek an image's secrets, like those of the old growth Bowdoin pine. Dillard says in The Writing Life:

Who but an artist fierce to know...would suppose that a live image possessed a secret? The artist is willing to give all his strength and life to probing with blunt instruments those sane secrets no one can describe in any way but with those instrument's faint tracks. It's the writer who wrestles with the alligators of language to portray hidden, mythical meanings and help illuminate so we may "feel again the mystery and power."

But I digress.

Write, Laurette, write.

Victims are beggars not choosers. They beg life for opportunities and whine hopelessly when life does not deliver. We're all survivors and victims to some extent, but we should revere the aim of the survivor. We should see ourselves as survivors.

Survivors have confidence in their abilities. They remember their successes and build upon them. They call forth ingenuity and reap its rewards. Survivors see life as "happening" not "happening to them";  they're a faithful lot and know their bearings. They know the nearest safe harbor.

Victims see every land-ho as a shipwreck. They think of all the shipwrecks of yesteryear, the flotsam and jetsam of spilled life bobbing in the waves never leaves them.

"No victim" is my new motto.

People left gifts for the old growth Bowdoin pine; it was perhaps the greatest one there, the elder, the chief, the survivor of all survivors. There were dried flowers, feathers, and small notes tacked to its bark in reverence. One has to wonder just how deep its roots go, just how high its highest branch. If I were to sit at the top of the old growth Bowdoin pine, how far could I see? Could I see a ship coming to port, the letters on the underbelly of an airplane? What would it be like to leap from limb to old growth limb, leaping and landing, caught by the spindly hands and then thrown upward with a whisper-swish? I think of the majestic sway of the old growth Bowdoin pine; I think of its solidity and stillness, how I seek this stillness and solidity and rootedness in my meditation. But my mind is a flittering bird, tapping at each crumb thrown its way.

Here is a painting by Jean Kigel of a Bowdoin pine:






Kigel did paintings of the pines and exhibited them in Brunswick in 2013. Here's another:




If the first pine is ready to embrace, the second is dancing: we can recognize the emotion, the tenderness, the finesse in stillness. They are rugged and fierce, the characteristics of a survivor, but they are not stoic or stolid. Is this not how we should all be?

Book Review: What We Hold in Our Hands by Kim Aubrey

Kim Aubrey’s debut short story collection “What We Hold in Our Hands” is sensual, real, and richly contemplative.  Readers immediately feel a kinship with Aubrey’s characters—flawed and seemingly stunted as they may be—and can’t help but champion their efforts, the baby steps they take to self-awareness.

In “Over Our Heads,” a teen mother named Janelle longs to be rid of the shackles of marriage/motherhood and embrace the artistic life. This story teeters on possibility and poor decisions that never materialize, thankfully, due to the protagonist’s sense of morality. Janelle is tempted to have an affair with one of her sister’s ex-boyfriends; they meet periodically in a café to talk about books, and although she claims she wants literature not sex from Jackson, she allows the sexual feeling to surface and longs “to pull Jackson close, to feel his bristly face on (her) lips, his hot, sweet breath on (her) neck.” Aubrey’s sensual style is titillating at best, but she makes her message quite clear: Janelle is a woman of conviction, despite all else and this is especially evident in her choice to have her baby, Alice:

I’d appointed myself her champion…I swooped down and saved Alice from non-existence…I’d grown her inside me and pushed her out into the world. But then came the hard part, the days and nights when I had to admit that I might not be up to the job, that the cape I’d donned might not be enough to separate me from the mothers I’d heard about on the news.

The trope of the super hero is appropriate on two levels: Janelle wishes to not only save but be saved and this hope is extended to all troubled mothers. Janelle imagines the superheroes of her beloved comic books “swooping in to rescue, not only the babies, but the mothers too.” What mother has not felt the weight of her sacrifice and needed saving? It’s a crazy-aunt-in-the-basement kind of truth all mothers can relate to and Aubrey does an exquisite job of laying it bare. More important, however, is the theme of coming through a struggle—despite the all too human wish to shrug it off and escape—and how this alone is heroic.

In “Unfinished,” Ann, an empty-nester struggling with her new identity, attends an interactive Yoko Ono exhibit that brings her face to face with her unresolved self, a creative, passionate self she has long suppressed. Ann answers a ringing phone in the exhibit (conveniently titled “YES”) and it’s Yoko on the other line. Ann tells her she loves the exhibit, where glass keys represent opportunities, shards of glass, mornings past, and the number nine, “a spiritual number, meaning unfinished.” When Ann tells Yoko she wants a glass key, Yoko tells her to take it. This is too self-indulgent for Ann at this point; she needs to return to the exhibit again and again, wait for Yoko’s call, miss it, long for her to call again, witness Yoko having her clothes clipped from her and “clutching her arms to her chest, bra straps snipped, slip pared away, breathing hard.”

Aubrey is remarkably patient with her character, meticulously crafting Ann’s wonder and reflection as she processes Yoko’s provocative lessons. Ann ponders the artist’s devotion to her work, comparing this to her own devotion to family and career; she eventually questions her own perspective and encounters her regrets full on. We see that the exhibit is Aubrey’s clever way of leading Ann back to the forsaken artist and recognizing this sets Ann free, allowing her passionate self to rise, as evident by an uncharacteristically bold act.

In “A Large Dark,” Andre, disgruntled and newly divorced, takes a watercolor painting class to escape himself, but finds his marital frustrations seeping into his work:

He painted the oblong of a big rock, but started to do the shadow too soon, and the paint ran. That flower of dark spreading across the rock tweaked his old impatience with himself. He felt the bad mood rise in his chest, rush through his blood…Now the night was goddamn ruined. Liz was the one responsible for these moods. The goddamn divorce couldn’t come soon enough.

We learn how Andre is guilty of objectifying women: he was most happy when his wife Liz was Suzy homemaker or using her body “to nourish their child”; he pays the housekeeper, Bridget, who has become a surrogate mother to his son, “to uphold (his) bourgeois” and seeks the attention of a classmate because he needs “a woman to make his life add up again.”  But just when Andre thinks Bridget and Liz are conspiring against him and the reader anticipates a backlash of feminism, it’s kindness Andre receives, which settles him, “erasing his failures, easing his guilt.”

Not all of the stories involve art as a catalyst to self-awareness, but I especially enjoyed the ones that do. I feel that I have become wiser after reading this collection of stories and perhaps more aware of my own subtle resolutions. These stories tell me, yes, there is resolution, despite our convoluted inner and outer worlds, and it can be freeing and it can be heart wrenching, but it is there and it should count.

Access Denied

It's a fine day in March for snowshoeing
and we take the new path abutting the CSA farm
where there is now a fence-- the same fence
at which the deer halt and peer in
at all that is ripe and lush.

Uphill, I trudge, the claws of my snowshoe
scratch at old ice as I search for the portal
they had found through the brambles.
I loosen my scarf and unzip my coat,
useless, a bear hide across my shoulders.

The slender trunks of gray rise up
from mottled white and scrape the blue sky;
My dog trots her lady dog trot beside me.
My sister, behind me, is further away now
thinking of all the things she could be doing.

I saw them early one fall morning
in the pink mesh of the thicket
crossing the creek, a heard of quiet
in the woods, surefooted and sentient.
They startled me, and I them
and they went to higher ground through
this portal in the brambles.

They perched above me, silent
as if they were etchings on a cave wall
A flutter of tails, they took no chances
and being the mythical creatures
they are, vanished.

This Way, I shout to my sister
who has turned back, who has lost hope
who has no time for guesswork.

My dog nervously pants, as a slender
green whip catches my thigh and
another scratches my cheek. A fallen
limb here, there, my snowshoe a shutter
swaying on its hinge.  I lose my pole and it
too is a slender thing in the snow.

I fight. I slash at the thorns,
I stab and curse all of the year's failures.
Like a tall oak, I sway and creak.
A tendril claws at my cheek.  I try
to come through; I think of coming through.
My sister's voice is small and importunate.  This way.

In the snow-- prints, hooves, pellets; they
could be watching me. I wait; I wait longer
than I should have.  I give up, head back
to the farm where the path is wide and easy.

To the Underworld and Back, a Poem

There is a schism in a cliff in Maine

Where I slipped down through the moss

And knelt in the sand of the river bank

A gilded snake coiled my head, a crown

A carried cloak ruffled my ears

Then turned to wings.

I flew above the firs, I flew

Knowing how to fly, I flew.

I dove, knowing how to dive

And emerged among the selkie women

Lounging without a care on rocks

Picking at Damariscotta oysters

Licking salted pearls, humming

And pruning till nightfall.

At the shore, my father’s form flickered

As the morning fog dusted the cove

He was horse.  He was man.

He was horse again.

I grabbed his mane and hoisted myself

Upon his back and rode out

Remembering, how he carried me

(When I was far too old for carrying)

On his shoulders, through the crowds

Over the Jersey boardwalk,

My useless feet tucked under his arms.