Author Archive for Robert McDowell
I See
My friend, Paula Deitz, wrote a book about gardens, and I am reading pages from it every morning as part of my practice and meditation.
The book is beautifully written, the language concise, clear, and at appropriate times, poetic. I see the gardens and the fascinating people Paula introduces and describes. I see, and in seeing, I realize how often I don’t see.
I see, for example, how gardens in their design and architecture, in their need, fragility, and perseverance, are a lot like poems. They have a lot in common with writers who envision, plot, map out, make due, experiment, and record with meticulous care. With Paula as my guide, I see this now, and in seeing it so, I realize how much I have not seen through the years.
I’m exhilarated because I’m really learning something beautiful and profound, but I’m sad, too, because I know now that I missed out on so many conversations I could have enjoyed with Paula about gardens. I lacked a context from which I could ask appropriate questions, a context that Paula’s book has now graciously provided.
I want back those opportunities! But we don’t always get the do-overs we cry for. Paula lives in Manhattan and Maine, while I live in Washington on the left coast. I travel little now and have not been east for many years. In fact, it’s been almost ten years since Paula and I last met. Can that be possible? Of course. We fill in the empty air and create illusions at a maddening pace.
But art crosses over, allowing us a fearless glimpse at timelessness where we meet, in the parlance of Egyptian alchemy, our Ka bodies. In that experience we are whole. We are one with the natural world.
So I learn that I needn’t grieve much for lost opportunities, but I should be grateful for connection taking place on a different plane of existence. Thanks to Paula’s elegant book, I feel joyful in learning, and I see clearly. Every morning, she is mentoring me in seeing, and there is precious benefit in that.
As you look up from these words, what do you see, and how do you feel about it?
A woman and man stand alone in the street
A woman and man stand alone in the street.
The street is empty.
No human or animal appears.
Even the birds are absent.
They say to each other what
Are we doing here? Where
Is everybody? Lawn sprinklers erupt.
Automatic, the woman says,
Like most of our thoughts—actions
Without meaning, actions while asleep.
And consequences, the man murmurs.
Oh yes, she agrees, always results.
So, what will we do now? The man asks.
Walk, I guess, the woman says.
They slow down at the edge of town,
Listening to the ruckus over the hill.
What do you think? Machinery?
No, she says, it’s people, a lot
Of people. Hear it now?
Sounds like marching. Sounds like weeping,
Yelling, singing. Let’s go, she says. Why?
Because we’re needed. Because we have to.
How Cool the Grass
The phone buzzes as I come through the door, my arms full of packages, and I rush in, dropping them on the couch. My left hand dives into my jacket pocket, groping for the phone, finding it, and tugging it out. My heart speeds up. My breath quickens. I jab at the screen, and the phone stops.
I check the number, don’t recognize it, and push the call button. Perhaps it’s good news, an accolade, an unexpected pat on the back. Or, it may be a complaint, an accusation. My nerves are on edge. Either way, I feel anxious, pressured. An automated voice greets me—a sales call.
What do I feel? Disappointment. What, no news, no cheer? No awards or trophies? Oddly, I don’t feel much relief, as in whew! No bad news. I’m mildly angry. Why did I allow myself to abandon so quickly the contemplative state of mind I was in as I walked up the path to my door? Am I that weak, that prone to random, outside stimulation like a phone buzzing in my pocket.
Well, yes, I am. Not all the time, but way too often. I am well trained in our world’s system of reward and punishment. The poet Theodore Roethke wrote wonderful lines about mindlessness and waking up from mindlessness:
I run, I run to the whistle of money.
Money money money
Water water water
How cool the grass is.
I would like to remember these lines more quickly next time when I feel myself being yanked around by outside stimulation, when I cave in to craving, the need to feel better than I’m feeling, as if feeling better could last any longer than the way I am feeling now, at this moment, which is already over.
How cool the grass is, how calm the mind in equanimity.
Embrace This Day
I sit up high amidst sleeping maple trees and green bamboo. I’m awaiting the predicted freezing rain. As the afternoon lengthens, the sky has transitioned from a pale, wispy blue to a white, metallic sheen.
I imagine the deer and moose are huddled in thickets, the birds in nests and clumps against the wind and cold. It is quiet on Cloud Mountain.
For days I’ve been thinking about how to conduct myself. As a son of poetry, I am my own sun of radiance and possibility. I reconnect on the deepest levels with the sacred land around me, and I bow to that which makes you and any other unique. I am the daughter of the moon, content to know that I will never know the complete mysteries.
The rain comes closer. Before it arrives, I’m going to walk to the top of the mountain. I’ll listen to my boots crunching on gravel. I’ll be attentive, looking everywhere for sights and sounds of life. That’s where I’ll be. That’s all I’ll be, grateful to have it just so, and grateful if I meet up with you as you, perhaps, come walking your way.
Abide. Love yourself. Embrace this day.
Why I Feel Grateful
I know. It’s not Thanksgiving, but as we come to the winter solstice I find myself turning to the news that seems less popular with the media but feels like soul food to real people.
Rather than dwell on obstructionist politicians, I can’t stop thinking of In-Byung Kim, the rookie LPGA golfer who won her first tournament recently and donated her entire purse to charity. That’s right, the entire purse.
I think of the many millionaires who requested that their Bush tax cuts be allowed to on December 31st for the good of the country (I think of them more than the politicians who ignored them and a majority of our citizens).
I think with a smile of the Malaysian government releasing a study urging the country’s elderly couples to engage in more sex and intimacy as a way to boost national health and happiness.
I also think of The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart devoting a week to keeping some sort of national focus on the plight of 9/11 First Responders whose health benefits have been imperiled by the current Congress. Not one “serious” media news outlet has convened a panel consisting of these ailing heroes, but Stewart did.
Yes, I have much to be thankful for. Here is a poem about gratitude. May your holidays be healthy and happy and wise.
Evolution in Couplets
Hail cataclysm! At first the single cells
Resist with all their mini-might,
Edgy in a dream of fractals, waking
To an orgy of creaturely life forms.
Imaginal cells channel the new world,
Whisking us through heaven and hell to ourselves
Clumping together after infinite explosions,
Surrendering in a field of riotous blossoming.
Set the Space
All spiritual (or soul) work inhabits sacred space. Begin each day, or each writing session, by facing east and forming a circle by lightly pressing together the fingers and thumb tips of your two hands. Or you may choose to form the circle with one hand, pressing together the tips of your thumb and index finger and curling slightly the remaining fingers.
The goal is to acknowledge the sacred feminine shape of the circle, the well, earth, moon, and hearth, the center of all life. As you perform this simple but powerful ritual, recite the following:
Water, Fire, Wind, and Earth,
Come to me, attend my birth.
Clear my obstacles and obstructions,
Make me capable of beneficial decisions.
Bring me wisdom and prosperity,
Bring me equilibrium and humility.
Be with the dearly departed as they make their way
Beyond the ninth wave. Make me brave.
Inspire me! Fill me with the patience of a tree.
Revive my voice, the sound of poetry.
You may connect with these ten lines, these five rhymed couplets, or you may feel inspired to create your own ritual chant. Do so now in your journal. Face the east and recite it as often as you wake up, as often as you sit down to write.
Thankful
Thanksgiving is a day to be thankful, but isn’t every day? The first Thanksgiving was all about going somewhere (a new world) and getting somewhere (a new beginning, a new life). Collectively, we’ve managed to do a lot of pretty fine and awfully terrible things along the way. It’s been that way individually, too. It’s certainly felt like that personally to me. And yet, I am thankful. I’m grateful that I’m still turning with the world, that I’m still around to marvel at horses, trees, mountains, water, people, and the light at magic hour. I still have opportunities to do something more, something beneficial.
I wish the same for you. With many blessings, I wish the same for you. Here is a poem for the day, a poem I wrote with every day of Thanksgiving in mind.
Where I’m Going
I’m going home to the green hills
Among elephants and buffalo,
To the Victory Parade up 5th Avenue,
To air conditioned rooms on summer’s
Cruelest day, to the magic hour
On a county road, one light on in a farmhouse,
To the L.A. Coliseum in 1961,
To the crowd on the day
The president speaks the Gettysburg Address,
To watching so much iniquity and suffering acted out
While I sit by, pushing a pen. I’m going
Home to wind scattering ashes,
To hummingbirds at a feeder
That never goes dry, to trees in full leaf,
To the meditating goddess on the porch,
To father and mother early together,
To the school moment when Promise receives its “F”,
To the corral, to boots and saddles
And riding the lone prairie,
To the library of floor-to-ceiling books,
To the fleshing machine and the paint brush,
To the run for office, to turning in my badge,
To eating much and eating little,
To saying no to war and missing war,
To spiritual anchors and spiritual driftwood.
I’m going home to the railroad and the bar’s
Last call, to the company of pets long gone,
To the wide river and muddy lake,
To the hootenanny, to friends
I outgrew, and friends who left me.
I’m going home to family always running away
And to you, far off at sunset, as you drink from the parting glass.
When I Was
Here is a poem about identification, not just with your inner self, your soul, your partner, or best friend. Not with your dog or bird, your lifelong passion or your current job. It’s a poem about identification with everything and everyone, which is our true grace and predicament. How we spin like tops! How we blow over the waters across the land like thistledown. How we come to rest in ourselves, inanimate objects, and strangers. When I was, what I will be, I will meet you there.
When I Was
Waking up behind the wheel
Of an emergency service vehicle,
I am parked on a rural road
At the head of a gravel drive,
An old farmhouse on its shoulder.
All my lights are on, but no siren.
Someone in that house needs me.
An old woman, fallen down stairs,
Needs reassurance,
My resuscitating skill. A child
Swallows something I must extract,
Or a man grabs his chest, gasping for air.
I have pincers and plenty of oxygen,
Tanks of it, and savvy that comes
Of 10,000 hours of training.
But why was I sleeping? Why
Have I awakened here? I don’t recall
Ever going out solo like this.
The driveway and house look familiar,
But that’s not all that unsettles me.
In this life I’ve been many things,
An accident, an emergency,
A vehicle designed to meet both,
A servant, and yes, even you.
Where I’m Going
My family and I laid my brother-in-law, Howard, to rest this past weekend. The day was warm and cool, changeable, like life itself. Standing outside the canopy, I listened to a tender song about soaring and being there, and as I looked up I saw a single falcon circling the graveyard. As the song ended, the bird suddenly shot due north and within moments was out of site. Driving the three hours home, I thought of this poem.
Where I’m Going
I’m going home to the green hills
Among elephants and buffalo,
To the Victory Parade up 5th Avenue,
To air conditioned rooms on summer’s
Cruelest day, to the magic hour
On a county road, one light on in a farmhouse,
To the L.A. Coliseum in 1961,
To the crowd on the day
The president speaks the Gettysburg Address,
To watching so much iniquity and suffering acted out
While I sit by, pushing a pen. I’m going
Home to wind scattering ashes,
To hummingbirds at a feeder
That never goes dry, to trees in full leaf,
To the meditating goddess on the porch,
To father and mother early together,
To the school moment when Promise receives its “F”,
To the corral, to boots and saddles
And riding the lone prairie,
To the library of floor-to-ceiling books,
To the fleshing machine and the paint brush,
To the run for office, to turning in my badge,
To eating much and eating little,
To saying no to war and missing war,
To spiritual anchors and spiritual driftwood.
I’m going home to the railroad and the bar’s
Last call, to the company of pets long gone,
To the wide river and muddy lake,
To the hootenanny, to friends
I outgrew, and friends who left me.
I’m going home to family always running away
And to you, far off at sunset, as you drink from the parting glass.
The Compassion of Saint Mellors
As we come up on the mid-term election, I’m dealing with a lot of death.
It’s personal death—a family member, three people close to my family—and I find that the grieving process feels appropriate given the mood of our country and all that we’re going through. These are hard times for just about everyone I know. People are either furious, it seems, or darkly disillusioned as they contemplate making their way to the polling booths.
I have lurched between them, feeling one way, then another, feeling both at times, and then I was reminded of a story about Mellor, the Celtic patron saint of wells.
When he was martyred, the murderer cut off Mellors’ head and stuck it on his crozier to carry to the king. The journey was long and difficult, and long before reaching the king’s palace, the murderer’s throat burned with thirst, and he yearned to rest.
The head of Saint Mellors, taking pity on his killer, instructed the man to drive the crozier into the earth. The man did so, and immediately the staff became a beautiful shade tree. Gratefully, the murderer sat down in the shade to rest, and as he did so, he noticed that a beautiful spring had appeared at the base of the spring. Giving thanks to his victim, the man quenched his thirst.
As all of us make effort to modulate the volume of strident discourse around us, and we strive to find the kernel of wisdom in our own pitching thoughts, perhaps the compassion of Saint Mellors can comfort and guide us as we make our way.
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