Keep Following the Curve...

Hello again from London! It's evident from the lapse of time between the previous post and this one that I still haven't quite gotten my act together on the resolution to do more creative and communicative writing. There are many things I've wanted to do that I haven't done, and there are many ways I've wanted to be that I haven't been. 
Of course, there are many things that have been right, too, and I'm learning the value of acknowledging what is going well and recognizing what huge learning opportunities I'm being offered as I spend so much time in the company of beings out of whom, (in some ways at least) literally, I'm made.
As my wise and wonderful mentor reminded me, any ardent commitment requires our rededication every single day (for which this image is particularly appropriate as I've been working on a poem about driving the curve for almost a year now). 

"I write today, I write today, I write today." Every day is only "today," but the more "I write" becomes part of "today," the more "I write today" comes to imply "and tomorrow, and yesterday, and next week, and always." If writing is really what I want to do, if literature is really what I want to produce, then the process and the product must reflect that desire.
Or:
I choose not to eat what I know will not serve me--the wrong food, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason, for others, so that I end up feeling bad about myself  and in myself and having to chase every meal with charcoal...and I choose not to excuse myself that in every case it's innocuous food I'm not allergic to: if I know it won't create the "me" through whom I wish to experience the world, I should decline. 

And oh, the devil in the doubt--do I really want to write or should I just edit and translate or go work in a cafe; would I really rather feel safely and comfortably austere in my body, or do I want to be someone who gratefully humors a person offering me gluten free treats or tickling my dark chocolate buds...?

The lesson I keep returning to is that my behaviors and actions reflect my goals. Which means I need to be crystal clear about what those goals are, in a way that I've never been in my life so far. I can choose what goals my actions reflect, rather than having my actions represent goals I might not wish to claim.
After my close brushes with death this summer, this should be even more urgent--but is it? I translate words over and over again, matching meanings, but my own matching to life and self remains unwhole. Unholy? 
Every day is an opportunity, and the opportunity is an honor.
Every moment is a choice, and every choice can be a lean into the curve or a deviation from it.

Please share your thoughts, dear reader. How do you find the resolve to recommit to your desire daily, to form process into practice, to enjoy the product of the process?

Forgive me for being obtuse. I've been burning the candle at both ends. Keep following that curve. Keep learning...

Letter from London--Gathering, Harvesting, First Haircut in Five Years...

Greetings again from London. I've been here a week now, and realize I need to come through on my promise, to myself and to you, to write here more. So far all aspects of my creative writing form the big missing piece in my being here.

As my dear friend Leslie pointed out, I've now been out of the home as long as I was in it--I left for college half my life ago! So, of course, it's a time for revisiting, and for noticing how much has changed while so much else has stayed the same. Same house, but as time wears it down, of course it's not the same house. Analogously for my parents, and for me.

But some delightful new additions, also. Just as my mom bloomed when she became a homeopath and started really helping people, the garden is blooming like it never was when I lived here. Aided by an English summer as unprecedentedly warm as ours was in Alaska, the vines are producing grapes...

 ...and the pear tree, young as it is, had lots of pears.

 Pears in pairs...something so peaceful and companionable about that image.

 Here's a sunny day's harvest of both. (It's mostly been raining while I've been here.)

 And they're really good! There are so many varieties of apple and pear one doesn't find over in the US. It's a delight to have Russet apples and Cox's orange pippin apples, and William pears, and Conference pears, which are what my mom's are. They're kind of like a bosc pear, although they're smaller--similar sweetness and bite.

There was another harvest that had to happen as well. Before I left for England, I mentioned to my mum over the phone that I'd be willing to go to her hairdresser's with her. My hair hadn't been cut since five years ago, when I shaved it completely. It had gotten pretty long--for me. Apparently everyone's hair has a certain length beyond which it won't grow; that's been my life experience. My hair wasn't super long up until last week, but it was about as long as I've ever been able to get it.

When I arrived, my mum was pretty horrified by the tangled mess of split ends that was my hair. It was like one big dreamcatcher, I confess. So my appointment at her hairdresser's was made urgently, and much hair was removed. 
She straightened and styled my hair as well, so I came away looking quite different.

I don't know if the above shot seems kind of contrived, but to bring it back down to earth, the top right is my mom's finger, and the bottom left was a desk lamp on the floor. Accidentally looked kind of neat.
It's been almost a week now, and of course my hair is back to its curly, unruly self.

I'm not willing to start a daily habit of straightening it as my mum does, and as she would like me to. Is that wrong of me? What I will undertake to do is brush it somewhat more regularly, to guard against the dreamcatcher tendency. If I let my dreams move freely from my head, perhaps they will travel where they need to go and plant themselves in some fertile ground or ether.

More soon! Lots of love.

Falling Upward, Letting Words Pour Through Me

Such a postponed post, but I am back. I re-enter this space with the intention to share and be present. There was so much to stay before I left for my two-month trip to visit family in England and Israel. I'm in England now, on which more in my next posts. Here is Homer the morning I left, sunrise over the glacier. Look at that light, or its insufficient reproduction.

I spent the last week in Anchorage, and thanks to the furlough got to have fun and grand times with my friend Terry, rather than just holing up at her house while she worked as originally planned. Fall colors and gleaming silver birches were spectacular.

Fall it is. Falling rapidly into winter in Alaska. Freezing at night in Anchorage and Homer, snowed in Anchorage already, well into snow in Fairbanks and north.
A perilous time of year. Fall, it's called. When things sink, droop, die, rot, go dormant and rest--toward renewal and regeneration but still a long way off.

I had been falling for so long. I lost friends, I lost work, I felt there was no end to the bottoms. But this Fall, it seems I've been falling upward. I feel more stable than I've felt for almost two years. Almost a different person than I was earlier this year. The ways I was being then feel frightening to me now, as they should, but back then they were inevitable to me. 
At the bottom at that time, I found myself with a mountain of translating to do--the dictionary project that I love so much must end at the close of December. And a book to write! Or something like that anyway, my MFA thesis. Also a critical paper. Work to do. Meaningful work. I've been climbing that mountain. I've been working. Just five weeks out of the hospital now, and I moved twice and flew away. At first, I had no energy, I worked and slept. And ate. And worried, but had less time to do that, because I was working.
I'm working on myself too, on my personal stability and safety. My meds are working well, even though I can no longer take lithium, which I thought worked so well, because of the kidney failure. What I'm taking in place of it is working well in a minuscule dose. Mostly, because I'm not feeling crazy now. A good kind of circular effect--upward spiral?

It seems everyone I know is downsizing, myself included. Coming out of the relatively anchored position of being married to someone who owns a home (albeit tiny) with abundant storage space, where I allowed myself to acquire some heavier possessions (loads of books, extra clothes, VitaMix, dehydrator, rebounder, nonperishable goodies), I'm moving back into my former more itinerant way of being. 
I'm so grateful to my wonderful friends Tom and Jeanie for letting me stay in their home for those first four weeks back in town while they were still in the Arctic. A sacred space, and it was a haven. I'm so grateful that a house-sitting position came through for the winter, so I have a living space (if not a home) to return to when I go back to Alaska in December.
I was pleased that with my car not nearly full...

 ...and one scant pickup load...I was moved!

It was good to have that sense of settledness I did, to allow myself to have possessions like normal grown-ups do; it is good to let that go to some extent. On the other hand, having a stable space to be in is so conducive to my writing, and to mental stability, so I'm going to need to find a middle ground. Either get very good at settling in and making a stable space wherever I go, house-sitting permanently from one place to the next, or having a single space--a room of my own--but with the downsized, spare approach and aesthetic.

Gentle on the ground, portable in my work...Another way I enjoyed Anchorage's splendid fall sunshine last week was working at the library. In an armchair, sunlight floor to ceiling, external keyboard on my lap, doing work I love. 

I used to do this translating in fits and bits, flicking away as it loads up rather slowly, writing email or blog posts in between. I've always used the metaphor of the letter Y or a funnel: I'm translating out of ancient Greek and Italian, and making an English version--two languages pouring through me into one. Now, the process as well as the product is a letter Y, a funnel, letting the words pour through me. I translate in a vortex, my arms, shoulders, wrists getting more and more sore; when the pages are slow to load up I stretch and think about the words I'm working on rather than navigating away and doing something else.
Gratitude that I've been less tired despite the intense mental work; gratitude that I've been working on essays, poems, book reviews, critical paper, and that all the translating work has if anything been inspiring to that.

But now, back to writing on this blog also! That's an awful lot of typing...
When we walked up on this impressive bull moose at Kincaid Park in Anchorage (I hope you can see it--the sun was very bright), I thought of his being in a different universe from typing and writing. And my second thought was how sore his shoulders might get from wearing those antlers on his head everywhere he went.

 Greetings to all. Missed you!