Archive | Spirit Matters

The Hazards of Building a Bildungsrosman

One of the weirdest things about writing a book about my early life, which is why I call this memoir a bildungsrosman, is that there are days when I’m channeling my elementary school self or my mother at 16 or my dad at 26. Somedays this is interesting, other days it’s plain devastating. Today falls under the devastating category and it’s like I just watched the goodbye scenes in Terms of Endearment: Ain’t no way I can hold back the tears pouring down my cheeks though I don’t notice them until I feel wet on my cheeks and even then assume the ceiling has sprung a leak. Metaphorically at least, this is not so far from the truth. It’s all coming down.

New Moon Rising (Through the Past)

Darkdarkdark, and yet I’m up, roused by the prayer I uttered before falling asleep last night. Help me go from there to THERE in this bildungsrosman that I’m writing, I asked higher spirit, divine mommy, the universe–whatever you call the whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts energy that holds us all like we’re kittens.* At 4:30 am I was pulled awake in the darkdarkdark with the gift of where to go and how; now I’m just waiting for coffee to move me onto that path. The sun’s not up, but it will be.

*I call it G-d.

Scene from a Hermitage

There was a time when all my blog posts were about quietly shuffling in my kitchen, stirring something on the stove while permakitten Grace wove in between my legs and the city blinked right outside my window. Then my life exploded along with the country, and an urgency replaced any peace I harbored. Truro has restored my calm. I had a mediocre writing day and was late to both sunrise and sunset. But I caught the last vestiges of both, and the glory of autumnal Cape Cod held me like a beloved child. Tonight I am cooking with ingredients gathered from farmstands and my finely feathered city: lamb and lentil stew with kale, cilantro, cumin, and hot-hot sauce swiped from Modern Pilgrim’s prodigious collection. I’m sipping red wine while Stevie croons so sweet and the stars are blinking brighter than NYC. I know where I am if not where I’m going, and will sleep and eat and drink so well. For now, this is enough.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy