In-Person Visit! Happy Solstice

As hinted at in my last post, this past week has begun a change that I would have expected to be dreadful, but has turned out to give hope that breaking down is also building up (and perhaps "Ecclesiastes" meant that all along). It's no surprise that the situation (about which I'm not yet comfortable being more specific), and its attendant message of a silver lining-and-coating, should arise around the Solstice of what's been a year of piercing upheaval, and often destruction, for most people I know. But the Solstice is also a natural bringer-together of people; an opportunity to rest in the beauty of what-is, and of the special people with whom to share both the beauty and the what-is-ness.

We love each other in my MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. At last count, there are three(!) Facebook groups for us, and any time I go into Facebook, the majority of posts in my feed are from RWW-ers. There are several with whom I have a special connection, and we email as frequently as our schedules allow, usually in great depth and length. I am lucky enough to have two RWW alumnae right here in Homer, whom I love and admire and somewhat heroine-worship. But otherwise, the fact remains that Facebook and email contact is not the same as face-to-face sharing of air. I know. I'm telling you something really surprising.

So what a treat it was that Meagan, who now lives in Olympia but was raised in Soldotna (just 72 miles north of Homer, a third of the way to Anchorage), came home for the Holidays!

 I broke my journey in Soldotna and stayed over (thanks again to her so gracious parents); her dad took a look at the Warthog's barely functioning radiator (having noted how cold my hand was on the initial handshake!); her mom ensured I slept cozy and peaceful; I got to meet her beautiful daughter...it felt special to laugh so hard with people whom I'd never met before, the family of someone I wish I could see more often.

Special, also, to hike the beach at Kenai, the lunar landscape with 3pm alpenglow of sun sinking in the south, being with Meagan as she exclaimed in excitement, awe, fascination--variations of "Wow, this is so cool! This is so beautiful! Unique!" The sea ice with its various textures, its flattened snowflakes like feathers a cell thick, its texturing with pools and ponds frozen just as solid as the rest but with a translucency like an observatory, really is a poem-puller.

There is something so elemental about it. The temperatures were hovering from 3-9 degrees above zero, depending on which thermometer you were looking at (this morning, Anchorage at 16 degrees feels balmy by comparison). And yet it still seemed perfectly natural to lie down on this ice rock, to be against the earth's extra skin.

But even with two coats and many other layers on, that was still a rapid chill!
With gratitude and best intentions for this Solstice...

Briefly stated...

...When the shit hits the fan hard enough, in sufficient quantities, the energything goes very quiet and calm.

Is this feeling of limpness resignation--stunned recrimination--or is it...relief?

Back Home from MFA Residency, Safety Tracks, Changes A-Coming

I'm home from Tacoma: arrived to find Anchorage gray, teeming with rain, just as it was when I left. 

By the evening, when I got to Homer, it was dry and sunny, and had apparently been that way most of the time I was gone. By the next morning, though, the rain had followed me down from Anchorage and it's been just pouring ever since.

The deluge feels apt for my arrival back into this home life, after two weeks of intense, stimulating, exciting interactions with a whole cast of new friends, people whom I hope I'll know for the rest of my life. People among whom I felt safe to deliver a poem from memory, standing on my head, as part of the revelry on the last night before we dispersed.

Could anyone living here make sense of that? 

And how amazing is it, coming from that context, that this is my home?

 Everything has grown up like crazy over the past two weeks. I'm particularly pleased to see such prolific raspberries, after the ravages of the snowshoe hares this past winter--

 --many canes have even set fruit.

The re-entry into "this" life from "that" is messy around the edges, of course. I return home with many more ties to people, many more books (and a renewed anxiety about where to keep them in this tiny space) and a whole program of study ready to unfold in collaboration with my new mentor. The 'mentor assignments' were one of the most talked-about elements of the program for my cohort: for many, there was a lot of excitement and speculation about who they would end up working with in such close concert for this year. I was a little different: I didn't have a strong feeling about any possible individual. Instead, I felt sure that anyone I ended up with would be fantastic and that there were no bad choices: a pretty great way to feel. So I was delighted when I was assigned Stephen Corey, best known as editor of the Georgia Review but a wonderful poet and essayist too, whom I'd experienced by then as a compelling teacher with a whip-keen, wry sense of humor.

I have work to do, and I have support and validation for doing that work. This is probably the most important thing that I bring home with me in terms of its impact on my home life. It feels sort of apt that I saw my therapist in Anchorage right off the plane and then my Naturopath in Homer as soon as I got back. With support, I can stay on the rails. It's alarming to me that conversely, when I wasn't seeing them so often earlier this summer, I started to go off those rails.

This writing commitment is getting big--and I want it to flourish like this horseradish I planted last year, turning into a perennial, luxuriant, pungent monster.

Two-gallon watering can is there for scale.

Fall is coming. The fireweed is just about bloomed out. Red berries everywhere. The nettles are purple with exhaustion and the watermelon berries are ripe.

I see some changes a-coming: for this blog, for this life. I'm still 'betwixt and between,' so I don't have full clarity on what those changes will be but it's not exaggerating to say that the very existence and character of this blog, among other things, are up in the air. More soon when I know it.
Much love.